The Ahmadiyya Heresy

Islamic spokesmen like to represent their religion as a monolith — the frequently-cited “1.3 billion Muslims” who rise up as one at each new infidel outrage — but the reality is somewhat more nuanced. Offshoots and revised versions of Islam are considered heresies by the mainstream, yet they persist.

The heretics are punished whenever they appear, whether they are violent, as are as the Kharijis, the Isma’ilis, and of course the Shi’a, or peaceful, such as the Baha’is and the Ahmadiyya.

Patrick Sookhdeo, in his book Global Jihad: The Future in the Face of Militant Islam, gives this brief description of the Ahmadiyya sect (p. 195):

A generally non-violent interpretation of jihad is held by the Ahmadiyya sect (considered apostates by other Muslims, and regarded as non-Muslims in Pakistan where they are severely persecuted). Their founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908) rejected violent jihad as unnecessary in “a time of peace and security” such as India was enjoying under British rule. However they do permit fighting in self-defence, to punish aggressors, and to ensure freedom to convert to Islam — hence the raising of a volunteer corps of Ahmadis to fight in Kashmir alongside the Pakistani army after Pakistan’s independence in 1947.

The following account from the Daily News of Sri Lanka serves to illustrate how heretical the followers of Ahmad are from the Sunni point of view:
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As promised in the above verse of the Holy Quran, after the demise of the Founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (Promised Messiah and Mahdi), a system of Caliphate (Khilafat) was instituted in the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat on May 27, 1908, which is similar to the Pious Caliphate (Khilafat-i-Rashida) that followed the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, under divine command founded the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at in March 23, 1889, and began to accept initiation into the Jama’at. In 1890, under Divine Revelation he claimed to be the Promised Messiah as well as Imam Mahdi. He also claimed to be a subordinate Prophet of Hazrat Muhammad (PBUH) commissioned by Allah to serve the religion of Hazrat Muhammad (PBUH).

To proclaim himself not just the Mahdi, but an actual prophet, a successor to Mohammed himself, put Ahmad well beyond the pale of orthodox Islam. No wonder his followers have been persecuted.

The Ahmadis are observing the centenary of their faith this year. The celebration of the event in London went off without a hitch, but the same cannot be said of Pakistan. According to Asia News:

The Pakistani government has prohibited the Ahmadiyya community of Rabwa, one of the largest in the world, from celebrating the great feast of khilafat: this is the system of succession of Islamic prophets, and is considered heretical by Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Federal police agents interrupted the celebrations, and put the promoters of the initiative under house arrest.

This is confirmed to AsiaNews by Saleem-ud-din, spokesman for the community, who says: “The agents came and prohibited us from marching, community meals, even from using fireworks. This is nothing but the latest violation of human rights in Pakistan”. Anthony Nadeem, a member of the Pakistan human rights commission, confirms: “what has taken place constitutes a serious violation of the declaration of human rights, and of the national constitution”.

Nadeem, who visited Rabwa to collect eyewitness reports, recounts: “the police arrested Mirza Younas, a local merchant, because he was selling coloured banners and hats with blessings for the centenary”. Other abuses of this kind have been seen all over the area, but now the Ahmadiyya community will seek to obtain the release of its members. None of those arrested, in fact, has been charged with anything.

The Ahmadiyya claim to be Muslim, but they do not recognise Mohammed as the last prophet: for this reason, they are considered heretics, and suffer severe violence and ostracism on the part of fundamentalists in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. The Pakistani community is composed of about three million members, most of whom live in Punjab.

If Islam were a peaceful, tolerant, open-minded faith — as its spokesman would have us believe — the Ahmadis would be seen as harmless cranks, and would pose no more threat to the larger community than the Quakers do to Christianity.

But Islam can brook no deviation from the True Path. Those who veer from the way of the Prophet will only put themselves at risk.


Hat tip: insubria.

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Let’s Talk to Osama!

So says the head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. According to The Daily Mail :

Top police chief: ‘We must start negotiating with Al Qaeda’

A police chief was slapped down by the Government yesterday for suggesting Britain could open talks with Al Qaeda.

Sir Hugh Orde, head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, said he knew of no terror campaign that had not ended with negotiation.

In other words: “We have been absolute idiots in our dealings with terrorists in the past. Why should we change our methods now?”

The article continues:
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And he said his 30 years spent tackling the IRA had convinced him that security work and arrests were not enough to defeat terrorists.

But his suggestion was immediately dismissed by the Foreign Office.

A spokesman said: ‘It is inconceivable that Her Majesty’s Government would ever seek to reach a mutually acceptable accommodation with a terrorist organisation like Al Qaeda.’

I don’t agree. The present dhimmitude of Her Majesty’s government indicates that such behavior is more than likely at some point. Sir Hugh has just been a bit — ahem — premature in his statements.

Jonathan Powell, ex-chief of staff at Downing Street, also says the Ulster peace deal shows talking to terror groups can work.

He said negotiating with Al Qaeda might seem pointless now, but a political solution would be needed in the end.

The analogy between Al Qaeda and the IRA is a spurious one. The IRA, for all its brutal bestiality, had limited and well-defined political goals: sovereignty over Northern Ireland. It had no aspirations to expand the Irish Ummah and rule the entire world in its name. However detestable it was, its worldview was not eschatological and messianic, nor grounded in a megalomaniacal “holy book”.

The IRA was, and remains, containable for the British government. Al Qaeda is not.

Sir Hugh, a leading contender to take over from Sir Ian Blair as chief of the Metropolitan Police, said: ‘If you want my professional assessment of any terrorism campaign, what fixes it is talking and engaging and judging when the conditions are right for that to take place.’

Asked if he was saying we should talk to Al Qaeda, Sir Hugh said: ‘I don’t think that’s unthinkable, the question will be one of timing.’

He also called for the number of police forces to be slashed from 43 to nine to better fight terrorism.

This last point is an interesting one. Is he calling for the consolidation of existing police forces, to make them more like regional Gestapos than the community-based “bobbies on bicycles” of the past?

If so, it should make it easier to crack down on “racist” speech as well.

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The Whining of Austrian Muslims

Regular readers will remember Omar Al-Rawi, the Austrian Muslim activist (and socialist). In his latest escapade he agitated for the cancellation of a church lecture by an author considered too critical of Islam.

Our Austrian correspondent ESW has translated a couple of articles about the incident from the Austrian press. The first is an editorial from Die Presse.

Commentary

Intervening against every critical remark against Islam
by Erich Kocina

The whining level of the Austrian Islamic community is high. There are actually critical voices that are needed for the much quoted dialogue.

They do not tire of praising cooperation, dialogue, or world peace. Representatives of religious communities also like to praise the (country’s) general openness. But where they themselves are concerned, things are quite different. This happened shortly before a lecture was to take place in Traun, a small town in Upper Austria: Omar Al-Rawi, integration representative of the Islamic community and socialist member of the Vienna city council, had stirred up controversy against Christine Schirrmacher, accusing her of being an “Islamophobe”. He was successful: The organizers, a small church parish, canceled the invitation extended to the head of the Bonn Institute of Islamic Issues. Al-Rawi refers to the book cover (!) of Schirrmacher’s book “Women and the Sharia”. It states: “In the name of Sharia, women are circumcised, forced into marriages, raped, imprisoned, stoned or honor-killed.”

For Al-Rawi, this is an unacceptable “generalization”. A judgment about the attitude of a person on the basis of a book cover, however, apparently is not.

Just so there is no bias here: The Jewish community recently protested against a podium discussion on Gaza, an event that was co-sponsored by strong critics of Israel. And we can also imagine the reaction of the archdiocese if the floor were given to well-known critics of the Church and Christianity. That is pretty much the opposite of dialogue.

The second article is also from Die Presse :
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Islam lecture: Scandal because of cancellation
by Rainer Nowak

SP-council member Al-Rawi accuses well-known scholar Christine Schirrmacher of being an “Islamophobe”.

VIENNA. Interventions at events concerning Islam are slowly becoming a habit. The latest case: A lecture in Traun [a small town in Upper Austria] was cancelled last week. Omar Al-Rawi, the integration representative for the Islamic community and socialist member of the Vienna city council, had accused speaker Christine Schirrmacher of being an “Islamophobe.”

The Islam scholar is apparently a well-known anti-Islamic activist belonging to the evangelical “Lausanne movement”. According to Al-Rawi, Evangelicals are known for their support of anti-Islamic activities. The consequence: The organizers disinvited the head of the Bonn Institute of Islamic Issues. The justification: The fear of presenting an unobjective view of Islam.

The protest against the cancellation was quick to come. Schirrmacher’s criticism of Al-Rawi consists of the fact that his allegations are not supported by quotations from her writings or speeches.

In an interview with “Die Presse” Al-Rawi refers to the text on the back of the book “Women and the Sharia,” which was co-written by Schirrmacher. It states: “In the name of Sharia, women are circumcised, forced into marriages, raped, imprisoned, stoned or honor killed.” Al-Rawi considers this a generalizing statement: “No one is doing this in the name of Sharia, but in the context of patriarchal structures “. He obtained his information about the author from the Internet.

Schirrmacher’s supposed Islamophobia alone would not have led him to protest against the speech: “What bothered me was the fact that someone could have made Islamophobic statements under the guise of an event on integration,” he says. Moreover, not a single Muslim was invited to be on the podium in order to counter the arguments.

Tarafa Baghajati, together with Al-Rawi co-founder of the Initiative Muslim Austrians, used a similar argument last year when he tried to claim a seat on the podium of discussion led by Henryk Broder. The event, organized by a group tied to the Austrian Conservative Party ÖVP, should not offer a one-sided approach, Baghajati said. Broder refused.

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When a Young Man’s Heart Turns to Poetry

(dedicated to Lyle Blake)

From “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” Fifth Annual Horrible College-Student Poetry Competition, here is the fourth place whiner winner of this year’s event.

To my mind, it shines like anthacite, its quality well above the others. On the other hand, poetry is like, you know, subjective and all, like, so who can judge when it comes from the heart?

In fact, all of the entrants should have won first place. It’s the only fair outcome. No doubt, some school official will come down on Hatemongers for not choosing everyone. And deservedly so.

Without further ado, a sonnet by someone named Quincy (you know a poet is first class when he travels under but a single name:

Fourth Runner-Up: “sonnet of (equaliteez)” bai (Quincy)

how R U racist? let me kount teh wayz
U R racist cuz U R (white)
U R racist bai dai n nite,
U R racist cuz U fite
teh ones who teech (equality).
U R racist cuz U dwell
on mai lak of skilz at spell(ing)
U R racist cuz U talk (white)
ai reelee can(not) stand the site,
uv U talking (white)…
ai seez U, (white), az uh sheet,
KKK reddy 2 beet… (me)
(white) az AmeriKKKa!
racist AmeriKKKa!
U R racist cuz U deny teh (truth),
the fundu(mental) equazhun…
racist=(white)

My cat was impressed with Quincy’s efforts here. She is black except for a tiny tuft of white at her throat; no doubt, this physical fact of inky fur was the deciding element for her. With cats you never can tell.

I will leave you to peruse the other winners. A little warning, however, about the third runner-up who seems a bit obsessed with body fluids. Probably a Pisces.


Hat tip: Pundita

[POETRY ENDS HERE, ALAS AND ALACK]

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Irregular Migrants Coming Soon to a State Near You

For the moment (and it will only be a moment) Gitmo is not sitting on the top burner at Amnesty International.

Italy is.

Italia is the latest villain for daring to create a “climate of discrimination”. In fact, their newly enacted immigration procedures have AI worried. In a normal world, such measures would be seen as customary regulations for a sovereign state to enact in order to secure its borders. However, Amnesty International does not breathe the air of a normal world and they are worried, very worried.

Things are so bad in Italy that AI says:

politicians from both sides of the spectrum were legitimizing the use of racist language.

Unbelievable. Next thing you know Italy will be pressuring Italians to practice xenophobia. Get this:

Last week, Italy’s new centre-right government introduced a series of measures aimed at improving security.

Illegal immigration will become punishable by up to four years in prison, it will be easier to expel illegal immigrants and there will be a three-year prison sentence for using minors to beg for money.

Attacks on Roma

But the head of Amnesty International in Italy, Daniela Carboni, said the moves represented “heavy restrictions and new crimes that will target, above all, immigrants”.

This is her DUH moment, surely. The laws are designed to target illegal immigrants. How hard is that to understand?
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She said the organisation was particularly worried by the measure that would mean attempted illegal immigrants could be held for up to 18 months in a detention centre.

“Amnesty International is extremely alarmed both by the contents and haste of these measures… and by the climate of discrimination which preceded them,” Ms Carboni said in the report.

While the rest of us, needless to say, are breathing a sigh of relief at Italy’s courageous stand on protecting Italians…

AI is the enemy of nation-states and the champion of “irregular migrants.”

Here are parts of the cover letter - full text here - from Amnesty International (with editorial comments supplied by GoV) to the President of the EU; the letter accompanied Amnesty International’s 2008 Report (pdf), published to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Dear Mr Barroso,

It is with pleasure that I present to you herewith the Amnesty International Report 2008…

…it documents human rights abuses occurring in 150 countries and territories around the world. Regrettably, the European Union (EU) is by no means free of such problems and with 26 of its member states included in this year’s report, it has no reason for complacency.

According to Amnesty International’s report, in 2007 there was a pattern of discrimination in at least 16 EU countries, mostly on grounds of gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation. In as many member states individuals continued to suffer police brutality and ill-treatment while in custody.

A breach of rights of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees was also identified in at least 18 member states and, as in the previous year, counter terrorism policies continued to be a source of human rights violations in at least 15 EU countries.

Oh, dear. It would seem that unless a nation is willing to concoct an ineffective, wimpy wet noodle counter terrorism “policy” that is designed to fail in protecting its own citizens, then any measures against terrorism are like, you know, really not nice and they’re violating human rights of people just like you and me…except for the fact that they like to engage in such civic activities as blowing up you and me and the mindless bureaucrat who wrote this letter -- while their confederates proceed to video the encounter.

On this last point it is important to stress that EU member States have still not condemned or fully investigated evidence of collusion with the US-led renditions and secret detention programme.

[…]

While Europe remains a magnet for those seeking to escape persecution, violence or poverty,it still fails to sufficiently protect people in dire need because of its repressive approaches to irregular migration.

Imagine that! The EU represses “irregular migration.” That’s the brave new world p.c. speak for illegal immigrants; they’ve all been magically transformed into “irregular migrants.” It makes those who violate a nation’s borders sound like a group of constipated squatters.

The letter earnestly puffs on:

Such approaches undermine the fundamental rights of migrants and impact severely on those of refugees and asylum seekers. The lack of collective political will to address key human rights abuses at home, seriously limits the EU’s credibility to promote human rights in its external relations, where it is also not doing enough.

Thus, according to Amnesty International, unless a nation is willing to let the “irregular migrants” overrun its borders -- causing crime waves, the breakdown of civil infrastructures and general chaos -- then it can’t protest, say, China’s grip on Tibet. What a bunch of malarkey.

As for the “lack of political will” to tear down national borders and welcome the irregulars with open arms…let’s congratulate those who lack the suicidal tendencies to want such an outcome.

The EU has not used its leverage sufficiently in the run up to the Beijing Olympics to make a real impact on the human rights situation in China. By significantly downgrading the input of civil society in the human rights dialogue it diluted its principled approach to one of pure tactical politics, blah, blah, etc., ad nauseam.

Sorry, the bureaucratese began to melt one word into the next, like an overheated box of crayons. What nation on earth - or collective suprastates of same - has sufficient “leverage” to get China to do anything? So here’s the bottom line, here is what Amnesty International wants the EU to do:

to adopt, by the Declaration’s anniversary in December, a Council resolution launching an overall review of its human rights policies and mechanisms, with the aim of finally designing and implementing a coherent human rights policy for the EU.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Nicolas

Oh, of course, I should I have known…the UN’s mini-me, the EU, is going to pass a Resolution, making the world safe for oligarchy. You’ll notice there is no corresponding resolution outlining the concomitant responsibilities to accompany the rights endowed to all these irregular squatters.

Be still, my heart.

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The Lega Nord Wants a Referendum on the Lisbon Treaty

According to AGI:

Calderoli, ‘Lega’ Wants Referendum on Treaty

Rome, May 30 — The ‘Lega’ party has accepted with reservation in the Council of Ministers the parliamentary bill that ratifies the Lisbon Treaty that modifies the EU treaty.

[Minister for Federalism Roberto] Calderoli speaks of “a major loss of sovereignty” and hopes that the Italian population will be granted a referendum on the matter.

Hat tip: insubria.

[post ends here]

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The Death Penalty For Racism?

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.


We know that “racism” is the worst of all possible crimes. In Britain, you apparently deserve to die if you are a “racist.” At the same time, many Western university students are taught that “all whites are racists.” But if all whites are racists, and racists deserve to die, does that mean that all whites deserve to die?

Keith Brown, 52, collapsed and died after being knifed in the back by his next-door neighbour Habib Khan. Khan, 50, was unanimously cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter after a jury heard that he had endured racism, threats and violence from Mr Brown and his son, Ashley Barker, also a BNP activist.

An indoctrination program that was shut down at the University of Delaware last year after it was revealed the teachings included “All whites are racist” is now being revived.


[Nothing follows]

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Execution of a Monarchist in Tehran

A Persian resistance group sent us the following email last night:

Urgent appeal from the Foundation for Democracy in Iran

May 29, 2008: Monarchist reportedly faces imminent execution in Tehran. Dr. Forood Fouladvand, a self-styled monarchist who disappeared along with two associates on the Turkish border with Iran on Jan. 17, 2007, now faces imminent execution by the Iranian authorities, Iranian exiles in London tell FDI. According to these sources, Dr. Fouladvand will be executed tomorrow. “He is like the Robert Spencer of Iran,” one supporter in London said. “He has been studying Islamic texts and using them to convince people to leave Islam” on radio and satellite television broadcasts from London.

Dr. Fouladvand heads a group called Anjomane Padeshahi Iran (API), the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, which advocates restoration of the constitutional monarchy abolished by the Islamic Republic in 1980. He had gone to Iran, apparently lured by promises from an opposition group that was either infiltrated by the regime or that had been cooped by the regime. Fouladvand was traveling with a fake passport under the name of Jahangir Irani and disappeared along with two supporters, identified on his website as Simorgh and Kouroshe Lor.

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More information is available at www.iran.org.

Since this press release was dated yesterday, it may well be that Dr. Fouladvand is being executed today.

Those of us who are old enough to remember events in Iran in 1979 — and thus circumvent the media memory hole on some of the inconvenient details — know that progressives across the West lionized Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and actively lobbied for the overthrow of the Shah. The Left romanticized Khomeini, and acted as cheerleaders for the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

As the revolution devoured its children, and the Iran-Iraq War unfolded, and the full bestiality of the regime became apparent, a cone of silence descended on the subject. The murderous mullahs morphed from romantic heroes — Khomeini had been a sort of Islamic Ché to the café-au-lait set in Europe — into “conservatives”, because, as we all know, the murderous thugs of the world are by definition conservatives.

And so it has continued up until the present day. The media in the West observe every twitch of the mullahs, the same way they did with the genrontocrats in the Kremlin. And we are constantly advised to appease them, because if we don’t the hardliners will gain the upper hand over the moderates — the latter, of course, are only “moderate” because they want fewer stonings and hangings, and don’t advocate the death penalty for people who listen to music on the radio.

Looking back, is there anyone who thinks that Iran is better off now than it would have been if the Shah had not been overthrown? If the dynasty of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi were still in charge, would we be facing a lunatic regime armed with nuclear weapons and preparing for the arrival of the Twelfth Imam?

Under the current circumstances, an Iranian monarchist counts as a “progressive”.

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Which Political Correctness Do You Choose?

Our Swedish correspondent Carpenter sends along the following essay on the cognitive dissonance that is currently plaguing the cultural elites in Sweden.

First, his cover note:

Here’s a report on the aftermath of the Discrimination Ombudsman’s lawsuit, on which you blogged some days ago in a post entitled “The Dhimmi News from Sweden”. I think this lawsuit case turned out to be more than just “dhimmi news”…

Which political correctness do you choose?
by Carpenter

Sweden has a #2 ideology (with Multiculturalism as #1), namely feminism. Feminism in Sweden is a mostly chronic and pathological hatred aimed at ethnically Swedish men who, if we were to believe some of the nutcases, ritually slaughter infants (yes, that actually has been claimed!) Representatives of this ideology are over-represented in the media as a trend-setting voice of the public debate.

There are also feminists who aim their criticism at Muslim patriarchal culture, even if they don’t get the same attention and space in media. We Swedish men are used to being charged for our suggested patriarchal elements, and I at least wonder: Are our attitudes towards women even comparable to the Muslim attitudes?

That being said, I appreciate feminist criticism of Islam’s patriarchal elements. It gives us Swedish men a break from the usual dung of charges against us. But more importantly, for once it puts a focus on a medieval attitude towards women found among Muslims, and away from pseudo-problems.

When this happens, a dilemma emerges for PC people; namely which side to take. If a Muslim had demanded five prayer breaks a day in a job interview and thus did not get employed, the entire establishment would take the Muslim’s side. Everything is in order when a Swedish employer denies a Muslim employment; it becomes very simple who is evil and offensive, and who is good and offended.
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But a woman, another victim of the vast White Male Conspiracy, feeling offended by a Muslim, and vice versa? ERROR! Being politically correct isn’t that easy after all!

It was in yesterday’s Expressen that Maria Hagberg, chairwoman of Nätverket mot hedersrelaterat våld — [the] Network against honor-related violence — took the offensive against the Discrimination Ombudsman of Sweden for her arbitrary attempt to sue. The preamble follows:

DO supports religious oppression of women

A young Muslim man lost both his unemployment coverage and practical training since he didn’t want to shake a female interviewer’s hand for religious reasons. “A serious misjudgement” says DO Katri Linna, who recently submitted an application for a summons against Arbetsförmedlingen [Sweden’s state employment office]. There will be over 160,000 kronor [roughly $27,000] in compensation for the man if DO gets to decide. Maria Hagberg, chairwoman of Nätverket mot hedersrelaterat våld, writes that DO is running the errands of the patriarchy. The religious man should have been reported to DO for discrimination against women, writes Hagberg. [emphasis added]

Leif Abd al-Haqq Kielan, a Swedish convert and Muslim leader, today replies in the same paper (preamble:)

Extreme feminists can’t stand Islam and multi-culture.

If a Muslim man doesn’t shake hand with women he doesn’t know out of respect, it’s of course not a sign of Muslims wanting to take over the world and institute sharia laws. It is common politeness in many parts of the world. Thus writes Leif Abd al-Haqq Kielan, in the light of the criticism of DO who runs a lawsuit for a Muslim man who has been denied a job and unemployment coverage. The assimilation method has crash-landed long ago. Therefore, DO does the right thing taking the side of tolerance [emphasis added]

Women fighting for equality and against patriarchal oppression on the one hand. Muslims fighting for tolerance and understanding of other cultures on the other.

Equality or tolerance. Xenophobia or patriarchy. Feminism or Multiculturalism.

This dilemma has been implicit for decades. But now, we Swedes have officially been offered two kinds of political correctness.

Fellow countrymen reading this: Make your choice!

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The Irresolute Spanish Immigration Policy

The article below was posted by AMDG earlier this month at La Yijad en Eurabia. Visit the original article for links to Spanish-language sources.


The irresolute Spanish immigration policy:
Between repatriation and straight-off naturalisation

The shocking and unsustainable trend of Spanish immigration

Spanish immigration policy is probably the most incompetent and frivolous in Europe. Spain has seen its immigrants increase from a negligible quantity to some10% of the population in around ten years. You can find in this page a table with the basic data of Spanish immigration from 1995 to 2000. If we exclude immigrants from Europe, there were 250,000 immigrants in Spain in1995. In 2007, the figure had risen to around 4.5 million, of which we may estimate that one million are of European origin.


Of course, this trend is not sustainable, and that is why I felt astonished by the comment by CarnackiUK to this post:

This ties in nicely with an item on BBC Radio 4 yesterday in which a member of Spain’s Socialist government was boasting to the interviewer about the success of their mass immigration policy, and offering to share their expertise in this area with Britain and other EU countries (as if these needed any encouragement!)

The main subject of the item was actually the collapse of the birth-rate in Europe and how various countries were tackling the problem. The French for example now claim the highest birth rate as a result of various financial inducements to couples having a third child. This was contrasted with Spain which apparently now has the lowest birth-rate. A couple there would have to have 16 children to obtain the benefits on offer to French women with three children. The Spanish solution is to complacently invite ever more immigrants to replace the aging work force — it’s not that big a surprise that some of those invited are mainly interested in the work of Jihad.

I was astonished indeed to read that members of my government are boasting about the mess they have created, and that they consider a population replacement as a purposely planned policy. But, apart from outrageous, that picture is very far from reality. Immigration has been out of control in Spain; also during the Aznar years. Presenting now the case as a planned policy is a cynical exercise of deception. As a matter of fact, the current government is starting to consider a repatriation policy, in order to cope with the slowdown of economic activity — in particular construction — which will hardly affect the immigrant workers.

Government and trade unions suggest the start of a repatriation policy

The former Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, Rafael Caldera, carried out in 2005 a regularization process for illegal immigrants that officially surfaced 700,000 aliens and brought along even more as a consequence of the “come-to-Spain effect” that it created, estimated to be one million (Spanish). The official statement of the minister after the process finished is very meaningful: “This is an achievement for society and a reinforcement of the ethical commitment of the Spaniards. Today, there are many people who feel better” (Spanish). I am sure that the immigrants who could consequently enjoy Spanish social services felt much better, for the rest of us this is just progressive jargon playing on a guilt feeling that we do not experience.
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The situation is starting to change. The new minister, Celestino Corbacho, appointed after the general elections in March declared in an interview that his immigration policy would be “as many as needed, and one more” (Spanish). He added nevertheless a very meaningful condition: “but with a contract”. In another interview, he suggested a policy of encouraging repatriation (Spanish). It will be very difficult to implement it, when a nonqualified person caring for elderly people can earn in Spain more than a doctor in, for instance, Paraguay. The difficulties of a repatriation policy are analysed in Nuevo Digital (Spanish), an authoritative blog by a free-lance journalist.

Even more surprising is the change of policy by the communist trade union CC.OO., which is supposedly more radical than UGT, the socialist one. They have asked in a recent report for the control of immigration and have stated that “immigration has brought along a not very productive growth model based on low-wage manpower that has weakened social cohesion”. The report is analysed in further detail, again in this article by Nuevo Digital (Spanish). Just a few months ago they were denouncing racism, xenophobia, neoliberalism, alarmist speeches against immigration, etc… What could be the reason for this sudden change? May be the immigrants are not joining the trade unions as they expected?

On the other hand, the current leftist agenda includes granting them voting rights in local elections and speeding up the nationalisation process.

This change of policy — at this stage just suggested in interviews, but not yet made official — has made evident the schizophrenic character of the immigration policy of Spanish left. On the one hand a repatriation policy is suggested, on the other the same leftist voices propose speeding up the granting of political rights to the immigrants, including naturalisation.

In 2006, the same Minister Caldera presented a proposition in Parliament to grant voting rights in local elections to foreign legally residents. Those from EU countries and from countries with reciprocity agreements with Spain can already vote in local elections; extending the voting rights to the other countries can only be seen as a surrender and a weakness. The initiative was gently turned down, but the new minister appointed has again made a declaration favouring it: ‘if these people cannot vote, they will not care about the city they live in’.

He is a former major of a town around Barcelona with an immigrant population of 23%, and claims that integration is not complete because immigrants cannot vote and have therefore no interest in local administration. Again, one cannot avoid the feeling that our left is looking for clients among immigrants and on the other hand they are conveying the message that they are limiting it and repatriating.

Much more dangerous than granting voting rights in local elections are the proposals to grant citizenship to immigrants after a 5-year period of legal residence. The current period is 10 years, and a prudent policy would extend it to 20, or even suspend it.


It should be noted that the Spanish nation has currently three enemies. Two of them are external enemies -the European Union and Islam — the other one is the interior enemy: the secessionist movements. The European Union is only perceived as such a threat by a minority which can be estimated by the percentage of voters that rejected the Constitutional Treaty in the referendum in year 2005: 17% of the voters, out of a low voting turnover that would reduce this figure to a mere 10%. Still, the risk is there, in Mittleuropa, where it has been since Spain got involved in European affairs in the 16th Century. The other two threats are felt by a majority of Spaniards, even if the politically correct pressure has not yet let that majority express that concern. It is of the utmost importance that they are aware of the scope of the threat and that they loose the fear to express it.

It has been curious to see how all this threats support each other since 11-M. I cannot consider it just a coincidence. For instance, this strange news consisting of just a sentence, informs that the Basque regional government has requested the UE to grant voting rights to those immigrants living three years in any European country. Similarly, the Catalonian regional government has proposed to reduce from 10 to 5 years the period of legal residence needed to get Spanish nationality. Last but not least, the regional Government from Galicia has published a study stating that the regional workforce is insufficient, old and not competitive and regretting that Galicia has not benefited from the inflow of immigrants to Spain in the last years.

I want to finish with this issue, in order to show that, contrary to the information in certain comments by Afonso to some of my former posts, while the secessionist movement in Belgium — the VB — is an ally of the counterjihad, the Spanish secessionist movements have taken sides with the Islamic aggression to the former Alándalus; that is, Spain. So much they hate the only country in history that has successfully eradicated a strongly rooted and native Islam, and that has shown historically the way to deal with it.

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Sue Myrick Wants to Wake Up America

For quite a while I’ve been meaning to write about the Hon. Sue Myrick, who represents North Carolina in the United States Congress. Ms. Myrick is one of the few members of Congress who are working tirelessly to expose the efforts of radical Islam to infiltrate and subvert the government of the United States.

We received an email last night in support of Rep. Myrick’s efforts from Charles Kastriot at the Society for the Defeat of Islam:

On behalf of the Society for the Defeat of Islam, I am requesting that you contact your members of Congress to request their support for Rep. Sue Myrick’s (R-NC) “Wake Up America” agenda. The agenda can be viewed at the following address:

The agenda includes the following:

1.		Will call for a government investigation of all US military chaplains who were approved by Abdurahman Alamoudi.
2.		Will call for a government investigation of all US prison chaplains who were approved by Abdurahman Alamoudi.
3.		Will call for the Government Accounting Office (GAO) to investigate the selection process of Arabic translators in the FBI and DoD.
4.		Will call for the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) 501(c)(3) non-profit status which restricts “lobbying on behalf of a foreign government”.
5.		Introduce a bill to make the preaching, publication, or distribution of materials that call for the death of American citizens, attacks on the United States Government or Armed Forces, or the financing of the means and/or operations to accomplish these acts, acts of sedition and/or solicitation of treason.
6.		Will call on the Government Accountability Office to conduct an audit to verify the total sovereign wealth fund investment in the United States.
7.		Will attempt to cancel scholarship student visa program with Saudi Arabia until they reform their textbooks.
8.		Will introduce a bill to restrict R-1/R-2 religious visas for imams who come from countries that do not allow reciprocal visits by non-Muslim clergy.
9.		Will introduce a bill to cancel contracts to train Saudi police and other security forces in US Counterterrorism tactics until the Saudi’s certify the prosecution of Al Qaeda financiers, like Yasin al-Kadi, and the detention of repatriated Guantanamo terrorists that keep being released into the general population after being “rehabilitated”.
10.		Will introduce or sponsor a bill to block the sale of sensitive military munitions, especially Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), to Saudi Arabia.

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For those unfamiliar with Abdurahman Alamoudi, details of his criminal activities can be read at the Department of Justice’s website.

Charles Kastriot
Society for the Defeat of Islam
http://defeatislam.blogspot.com

That’s Abdurahman Alamoudi in the photograph at right, standing with George W. Bush during the 2000 presidential campaign.

If you’re wondering why the Democrats haven’t made any political hay out of the Alamoudi-Bush connection, it might be because Mr. Alamoudi has been dedicated in his bipartisanship. Here’s a brief note about his close encounter with Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign during the same period:

In 2000, the Clinton campaign was forced to return a $1,000 contribution from Abdurahman Alamoudi, who is now serving a 23 year prison sentence for reportedly laundering money from Libya to fund terrorist activities.

Alamoudi, founder of the radical American Muslim Council, held numerous meetings with the Clintons, and once boasted, “We are the ones who went to the [Clinton] White House and defended what is called Hamas.” Incidentally, on its campaign finance disclosure forms, the Clinton campaign listed Alamoudi’s affiliation as the American “Museum” Council. Just a typo?

According to The New York Daily News, as First Lady, Clinton “held several White House Muslim holiday receptions to which individuals opposed to the Mideast peace process and Israel’s existence were invited.”

Remember: Alamoudi is simply one of the few who have been exposed and caught. For every slimeball like him there are dozens more still at liberty, working the halls of Congress and the statehouses in a tireless effort to undermine the American political process.

If your senator or congressman is less than diligent in resisting Islamization, drop him or her a card, send an email, or make a phone call pointing out the work of Sue Myrick and urging support for her.

Bringing about political change is a slow, difficult, and tedious process. It isn’t going to happen on its own; it requires the intervention of ordinary citizens with their political representatives.

Make your congressman feel the heat. Only when enough constituent pressure is brought to bear will change occur.

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Christians, Crosses, Prayer, and Persecution

The persecution of Christians for their beliefs is no novelty. It’s been going on for almost two thousand years. In Muslim countries, especially, one expects that life will be difficult for those who have professed Christ as their savior.

But reading these stories from Algeria made me wonder how the EuroMed initiative is going to be squared with the laws and customs that are considered the norm in North Africa. How are we to “harmonize” the laws of Libya with the laws of the EU?

Here’s the first story, from ANSAmed:

Further Investigation Asked in Convert Trial

Algiers, May 27 — The court in Tiaret, in Algeria’s southwest, has asked for a more in-depth investigation in the trial of an Algerian woman who converted to Christianity four years ago. “The judge could have closed the case of Habiba K. today, given the fact that the crime is not valid,” lawyer Khalfoun told ANSA. The woman is accused of having “practiced an unauthorized non-Muslim worship” and the prosecutor has asked for a three-year prison sentence.

The second story is similar, also from ANSAmed:
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Proselytism Trial Against 6 Algerian Christians

Tiaret (Algeria), May 27 — A trial against six Algerian Christian Protestants accused of proselytism and of having practiced religion in a non-authorised place was opened at the tribunal in Tiaret, 300 km west of Algiers. All six people were arrested after having gone out of a building where they had met to pray. Prosecutor Aissaoui asked for two years of imprisonment for the accused. The trial will be resumed in a week. In Tiaret, a town with some 20,000 inhabitants, the Christian community comprises between 70 and 100 people, according to the accused.

The woman from the first story may face three years in prison for her chosen religion. The six people in the second story may face two years for publicly praying to someone other than Allah.

When the time comes for the Euro-Mediterranean merger, how will these practices be reconciled with European norms? How can the culture of Algeria be aligned with that of Europe?

Well, the ground is being prepped for the change already, at least in England. Consider this article from This is Wiltshire:

A teenage motorist was told to remove an England flag from his car by a police officer because it could be offensive to immigrants.

Ben Smith, 18, was driving back home to Ingram Road in Melksham on Thursday evening after filling up with petrol, when the officer stopped him on a routine patrol.

He checked the tax disc and tyres on his Vauxhall Corsa but when he noticed the flag of St George on the parcel shelf he told Mr Smith to take it down.

Mr Smith, who works for G Plan Upholsterers on Hampton Park West, said: “He saw the flag and said it was racist towards immigrants and if I refused to take it down I would get a £30 fine.

“I laughed because I thought he was joking, but then I realised he was serious so I had to take it down straight away. I thought it was silly — it’s my country and I want to show my support for my country.”

[…]

PC Dave Cooper, of Chippenham Road Policing Unit, said he had never come across an officer asking someone to remove an England flag from their car because it could be racist.

He added: “It all depends on the context of a stop. If they are going past a lot of Polish people, for instance, and abusing them, then we possibly would ask them to take the flag down.”

Polish people, eh?

How likely are Poles in the UK to get upset by the English flag? Really: how likely?

Or is it more probable that certain people of the South Asian persuasion are going to take offense? Adherents, that is, of a religion that we dare not name?

As you can see from the photo, the English flag consists of the emblem of Saint George — a red cross on a white background. Is it a coincidence that the cross is considered offensive and “racist”?

Make no mistake: the subjects of Great Britain are being prepared for their integration into Eurabia.

When the time comes, they’ll be ready.


Hat tips: For the Algerian stories, insubria; for the English flag story, AMDG.

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The Koran and The Psychopathology of The Prophet (Part I)

A couple of days ago I received an email from a Canadian named Sergei Bourachaga, who wanted me to help him post an article he had written. Here’s what he said:

On May 24, 2008, I submitted to the “Public Message Forum” of The Canadian Coalition For Democracies a lengthy article entitled: “The Koran and The Psychopathology of The Prophet (Part1)”. In less than 24 hours the article was removed and the link (canadiancoalition.com/forum/messages/30711.shtml) created by the google search disconnected. The article was deemed “too offending” to the Muslim Community.

I asked him to send me the article so that I could look it over. Its topic lies within our mission statement, and it contains nothing that violates our posting guidelines, so I am happy to republish it here.


The Koran and The Psychopathology of The Prophet (Part I)
by Sergei Bourachaga

Acknowledgment

While writing this article I have had the enormous good fortune to interact with several academics in the field of psychology, and scholars with extensive expertise of the Arabic language during the Jahilyah period and post Islamic era. I can’t identify them by name because Islamic fanaticism has often relied on violence to silence views and opinions that do not agree with the likes or dislikes of Muslim clerics or community leaders. But still I have to credit them for sharing their knowledge without any reservation. I also relied extensively on the writings of several prominent figures who had addressed through books and essays the psychopathological aspect of the Prophet’s personality. Since their views are part of the public domain, I will list all of them just in case readers of this forum decide to go for an in-depth scrutiny of the psychopath declared by the Koran as “insanoul kamel” (Arabic equivalent for) “an excellent model of human conduct” 33:21, God’s gift to humanity according to Islam, but historical facts show that he was nothing but Satan’s curse to mankind.

One source where a wealth of information was gleaned is Dr. Abbas Sadeghian’s book titled Sword and Seizure. Dr. Sadeghian promotes, with the support of solid historical evidence, the view that Muhammad suffered “complex partial epileptic seizures” clearly reflected through the following symptoms: excessive perspiration, light trembling, olfactory, auditory, and visual hallucinations, and hyper-religiosity. Another good source on the psychological profile of The Prophet is Dr. Hafsa bint Sharif, Ph. D and her essay “Psychological Profile of Muhammad”. Author Robert Spencer produced an excellent book entitled The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of The World’s Most Intolerant Religion, covering the 23-year prophetic career of a narcissist whose ramblings were nothing but distorted views stolen from The Old Testament, The Talmud, and Christianity the religion of his first wife Khadija. According to The Biography of The Prophet by Ibn Kathir, following the first apparition of the angel Gabriel, Khadijah took Muhammad to her cousin, Waraqa ibn Nawfal, a man of knowledge and a Christian who “had studied the books of both the Jews and the Christians very closely and he had learned a great deal from many of their wisest people”. Waraqa confirmed to the couple that humanity has been expecting “The Seal/Last of The Prophets (of monotheism)” and the creature of light Muhammad saw was definitely angel Gabriel. Last but not least I recommend the book titled “Understanding Muhammad: The psychobiography of Allah’s Prophet” written by Ali Sina. A must for the proper understanding of a tyrant whose teachings were behind the massacre of 80.000.000 human beings in India alone, from the day the first Islamic armies invaded the land to present. Mr. Sina places Muhammad in the same league of totalitarian butchers such as Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Ze Dong.

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By now too many Canadians are familiar with the Islamic obsessive attachment to the notion that the Koran is the infallible word of God, revealed to Muhammad by Jibril (the Arabic name of angel Gabriel in the Koran), preserved unchanged by Muslim scholars in its authentic form, so perfect that the infallible book together with The Hadith is the basis of The Sharia Law, the “Just Law” that will be implemented and enforced by Muslim Jihadists the day the conquest of this planet is achieved, and the Kouffars/infidels (Jews and Christians) forced to accept the perfect Deen (Arabic for religion) Islam. Of course Islam has a verse “ for the “Perfect Deen” the way it has a verse or a Hadith for every issue that regulates human behavior, thought, bodily functions, from cleansing the self after a bowel movement to dealing with wives or female slaves when they are menstruating, to… Allah announced the “Perfection of Islam” during the “Farewell Pilgrimage” of Muhammad (last one before his death). The Lord reassured him “ This day I have perfected your deen for you and have completed My blessing on you, and have chosen Islam for you as your deen”. The Koran 5:3

How valid is the Islamic claim of the Koran’s infallibility? Is it really the “Word of God” or “after-the-fact” claims designed to satisfy the ego of a psychopathic narcissist masquerading as a “Man of God”?

In part one of my essay I will endeavour to prove to the readers of the forum that the Koran is not even a poor imitation of what perfection is. In future essays, I will try to link verses to specific traits in the personality of the Prophet, and the pathological motives that forced him to introduce each and every verse, and exploit them to further his political agenda and satisfy his obsessions. I would like to start with the critical point that Muhammad was an illiterate, and no Muslim or an infidel has ever challenged this point. On the contrary, Muslim scholars have always pointed out with pride that it was a miracle for an illiterate to memorize such a huge volume of Souras (Koranic chapters) and thousands of verses. Muslim scholars conveniently forget that the Prophet was not born in a social, political, and cultural vacuum. He was the product of the Jahilyah period when illiteracy was the norm, and the oral tradition was the dominant means used by Arab tribes to transmit, from one generation to another, folk wisdom, cultural and religious values, linguistic rules and principles, etc…
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Poets, warriors, and tribal leaders of the Jahilyah managed with casual ease, without Divine intervention from Allah, to memorise huge volumes of poetry known at the time as “Qasida”/poem or “Qasaed”/poems. Poets were highly respected for their talents, their exceptional ability to memorize hundreds of lengthy poems, and their mastery of the spoken word. They were highly rewarded by tribal leaders for their valuable role as custodians of tribal history, since no uniform system of writing was developed at the time for the Arabic language, complicated by the fact that isolated tribes developed different dialects in different geographical areas of the Arab world. So it is not a coincidence or a “Miracle” that Muhammad used the same structure of the “Qasaed” to promote his teachings. Too many Arab poets (Muhammad’s contemporaries) from different tribes did notice that there was nothing exceptional about the linguistic structure of Muhammad’s religious statements fashioned in the principles of the Qasaeds. To defend his plagiarism when confronted with such accusations made by Arab poets, Muhammad had to rely on the authority of Jibril the Angel to promote several verses pointing out to his gullible followers that Heaven is the source of his personal views and not the fallible mind of a narcissist parading as a Prophet —

“By the declining star, your compatriot (Muhammad) is not in error, nor is he deceived. He does not speak out of his own fancy. This is an inspired revelation. He is taught by one (Jibril) who is powerful and mighty.” The Koran 53:1-6

“This (the Koran) is a mighty scripture. Falsehood cannot reach it from before or behind. It is a revelation from a wise and glorious God. “ The Koran 41:42-43

Almost four centuries later, one of the giants of the Arabic literature and poetry, Abu al-Ala al-Maarri (973-1057), who was a dedicated rationalist, picked up again the accusations made by Muhammad’s contemporary poets, and declared the Koran and Islam as a travesty. Abul al-Ala wrote several books, the most famous of them was Fusul wal Ghayat, fashioned and structured in the exact style of the Koran to highlight the point that there was nothing “miraculous” or “divine” about the “Holy Book” of Islam, revered strictly by the sheer power of numbers, millions who blindly accepted its tenets. With an obvious contempt for Islam, Al-Marri accused it of dividing mankind into two groups: “One intelligent without a religion, and the other religious without intellect”.

Now let us go back to the claims of the Koran, and scrutinize closely some of the key pillars upon which the entire book rests. The Koran insists in dozens of verses that God is the author of “The Holy Book of Islam”. It points out that:

“He is God in heaven and God on earth; He is the wise One, the All-knowing… ” 43:85

… the source of infinite wisdom, infinite mercy, infinite… ad infinitum.

“We have revealed the Koran in the Arabic tongue that you may grasp its meaning. It is a transcript of Our eternal book, sublime, and full of wisdom.” 43:1-5

The All-knowing Allah of Islam selected Muhammad to spread His message/will/commands to mankind, and to avoid any misunderstandings or confusions, instructed Jibril to use the Arabic language for His revelations to simplify things to the finite mind of the Prophet. I managed to isolate at least 11 verses emphasizing the selection of the Arabic language as a privilege, as a simple measure to insure the clarity of the message, and a way of undermining the power of the Devil who managed to infiltrate the ranks of The People of the Book (Jews and Christians), and forced them to commit the ultimate evil of rejecting the Prophet and his teachings. “A Book, whereof the verses are explained in detail; a Koran in Arabic, for people who understand… ” 41:3

What was the first revelation Jibril wanted the Prophet to understand?

“Read, in the Name of your Lord who created, created man of a clot, and your Lord is the Most Gracious, who taught with the pen what he did not know.” 96:1-5

The All-knowing Allah forgot that he is dealing with an illiterate prophet. In order for Muhammad to read to his followers the will of Allah, he first has to master the use of the pen, write and then read. Unfortunately Muhammad was too busy collecting wives, waging wars, and dispensing brutal justice, and all these preoccupations forced him to disregard the very first instruction he received from God, and he died without leaving behind a single manuscript with his own handwriting, where a pen was used to confine his noble thoughts to a piece of paper. May Allah forgive him for this unintentional bad judgement call.

What did Allah say also in the first revelation? “… created man of a clot… ” Didn’t he claim also in the same “Holy Book” that he created man from a germ? “Confound man! How ungrateful he is! From what did Allah create him? From a little germ He created him and proportioned Him.” 80:19-20 Didn’t Allah insist in another verse that He created man from dust? “By one of His signs He created you from dust; you became men and multiplied throughout the earth.” The Koran 30:19

In another verse Allah created man from a sperm, and since Muhammad was never a biologist with proper training in “Reproductive Technology”, he failed to indicate whose sperm was used to create the first man. We can’t blame him; Jibril did not guide him properly, and Jibril cannot be admonished since he was conveying the words of a confused Creator who did not remember how he originally created man in his experimental lab. To justify the confusion of The Creator, his servant Muhammad conspired with Jibril to cover the entire fiasco with the following verse: “Men if you doubt the Resurrection remember that We first created you from dust, then from a sperm, then from a clot of blood, then from a half-formed lump of flesh, so that We might manifest to you Our power.” The Koran 22:5.

It seems that the raw material God needed to create man, was also the subject of the rules of “Supply and Demand” in his heavenly lab. So whenever he exhausted the inventory of one raw material he had to use a different type, four or five in total, to create and recreate the first man. Or, it could well be that Dr. Sadeghian was right, and the epileptic prophet had a seriously flawed memory, and despite the fact that his native language (Arabic) was used by Jibril, he failed to memorize properly how God created man, and contradicted himself throughout the Koran on several critical issues that go well beyond the creation of man.

Well, we have covered the confusing story of the creation of man; now let us address the issue of the earthly kingdom Allah gave him to rule. We know that the man’s kingdom was called earth:

“And it is He Who spread out the earth like a carpet, and set thereon mountains standing firm, and flowing rivers… He draws the night as a veil over the day… ” 13:3

“And the earth We have spread out like a carpet; and rested thereon mountains firm and immovable; and produced therein all kinds of things in due balance”. 15:19

“He Who has made for you the earth like a carpet spread out; has enabled you to go about therein by roads… ” 20:53

Either Muhammad is perplexed and seriously intimidated by the voice of Jibril, thus becoming unable to concentrate on what the angel is saying, or the Creator has become too senile to remember that His perfect design decreed to give planet earth a spherical form meaning round not flat like a carpet. The Creator missed also the critical point that planet earth rotates on its axis, and that phenomenon is enough to create day to toil and night to rest, and thus there is no need to use a giant veil to cover the earth to create night and darkness to rest.

Imagine all these verses were conveyed in Arabic, and yet so much confusion and chaos about how “The Infinite Wisdom” tried to save man’s soul from eternal damnation. But the chaotic thoughts and emotions of the Prophet do not end with the previously mentioned issues. On too many messages conveyed by Jibril, Muhammad failed to offer any explanation, and generations of Muslim theologians faced the same embarrassment for the last fourteen centuries when confronted by foreign scholars with the very obviously incoherent writings in the Koran, that reflect nothing but contempt for human logical thought and reasoning.

Let me be more specific. Read again all the verses mentioned in the entire essay up to this point. Count how many times “We have” and “Our” were used in reference to the single God. Hundreds of “We”s and “Our”s are casually used in the Koran.

It is a blasphemy in Islam to refer to Allah as a collective entity made up of several partners (Al shourk). Was the Prophet assuming that the angels were co-creators and he referred to the entire heavenly endeavour to save the soul of man, as the act of “We” the Gods and Angels? Was the shrewd Prophet trying to recruit pagans who believed in multiple Gods, and the “We”s and “Our”s were clever ways to attract the listening ears of the pagans? Or was our epileptic prophet experiencing auditory hallucinations that precipitated in his mind the impression of dealing with multiple celestial personalities?

Also, too many Souras in the Koran start with a set of isolated letters from the Arabic alphabet (Alef, Lam, Ra, Kaf, Ayn… ). They have no meaning or relationship to the title of the Soura, and often the title itself has no direct or full relevance to issues addressed in the verses of each Soura. The following is the classical explanation placed forward for Western consumption: “If we (Muslim theologians) find an authentic narration leading to the Prophet that explains these isolated letters, we will embrace the Prophet’s statement. Otherwise, we will stop where we were made to stop and will proclaim: “We believe in it (the Koran); all of it is from our Lord” 3:7

Well, what happened to Allah’s effort and the Koran’s insistence that the Arabic language was selected to make The Lord’s will very clear? These letters do not clarify anything, and do condemn Allah’s efforts for clarity to dismal failure. They exist in the beginning of too many Souras. Is Allah so imperfect that he failed to convey his thoughts in a simple direct manner, and needed mystery to attract the attention of Muslims, or perhaps make the narcissistic Prophet the centre of every Muslim’s attention? Or again could it be that the epileptic prophet attempted to start a sentence and failed to finish the first word because the electrical impulses were disrupted in his brain and by the time normalcy and proper chemical balance was restored for the neurons to communicate and thoughts to form, the poor prophet failed to recollect what he wanted to say?.

But despite memory failures let us give the Prophet the credit he deserves for creating “The Personality Cult” for his followers. After all, his charisma managed to convince his intellectually bankrupt inner circle, who committed to memory every word and statement he made, even the most trivial and senseless detail coming from God’s servant, and the meaningless letters were kept in the Koran, not because they are pearls of wisdom from the mouth of God, but because the power of ruthless authority insisted to have them preserved.

Let us not forget also that his many wives were sexually very demanding, and this was the frequent cause of the mental exhaustion the poor Prophet experienced. “The Prophet used to visit all his wives in a round… they were eleven in number… Had the Prophet the strength for it? We used to say that the Prophet was given the strength of thirty men” Hadith-Al Bukhari Vol.1 Book 5 Number 269

I can write hundreds of pages about the systematic inconsistencies, contradiction of views and thoughts permeating the pages of the hate literature called “The Koran”. But such a goal will be boring and banal for readers. It will be more interesting to explain to Canadians how a psychopath shaped a “Holy Book” in his psychological image, and the venoms of hatred it carries to demonize and dehumanize Jews and Christians are nothing but a reflection of the psychopathic thoughts and warped political agenda he pushed for a self-serving glory.

Part II will be covering those details.

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Standing up for Gregorius Nekschot

Not everyone in the Netherlands is fully dhimmified. Some members of the Dutch Parliament have shown that they’re willing to stand up for free expression and against censorship and intimidation.

According to NIS News Bulletin:

VVD, Wilders Set up Museum for ‘Forbidden Art’

The conservatives (VVD) and Party for Freedom (PVV) are jointly initiating an exhibition space in the Lower House building where art can be exhibited that is ‘forbidden’ by politicians for fear of offending Muslims.

The VVD is making a space in the Lower House building available for the work. This is a room the party itself normally uses for small meetings and receptions. The PVV is supporting the ‘free-thinkers space’.

VVD leader Mark Rutte said he has had contact with cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot. The artist would be prepared to exhibit the eight cartoons in the room that are according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office (OM) criminal productions.

The OM had Nekschot arrested by 10 police in his home in Amsterdam two weeks ago on charges of discriminating against Muslims and people of darker skin-colour. This was based on a complaint by a radical Muslim that was made three years ago — in 2005.

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Rutte says the present cabinet, a combination of Christians and socialists, is killing freedom of speech in the Netherlands. The government allowed a painting to be removed from a town hall because two women showed their breasts in it, tried to ban Wilders’ anti-Islam film Fitna and is now encouraging the Amsterdam police to learn the Koran, according to Rutte.

Work of photographer Sooreh Hera is also welcome in the VVD’s room in the Lower House. She is not however taking up the invitation. “I consider it a good stunt by the VVD but I do not want to link myself with a political party that way,” said the artist in De Pers newspaper.

Hera made photos of two homosexual men wearing masks of the Prophet Mohammed and a nephew. Three museums applauded the work and wanted to exhibit it, but changed their minds, allegedly under threats by radical Muslims.

Meanwhile, Home Affairs Minister Guusje ter Horst has shrugged her shoulders on Lower House criticism of the ‘Koran subsidy’ for Amsterdam police officers. They are given a 50 percent discount if they buy writer Kader Abdollah’s translation of the holy book of Islam. The money comes from Ter Horst’s budget, she confirmed in the House.

The Socialist Party (SP) and small Christian parties ChristenUnie and SGP fear that the neutrality of the police is at risk. Ter Horst’s Labour (PvdA) also said via MP Jeroen Dijsselbloem that the Koran project is giving the wrong signal.

But the minister considered that nonsense. Nor is there any question of the principle of separation of church and state being violated, she said. Ter Horst described Abdollah’s book as “professional literature” for the police.

The VVD and PVV decided on the section for free thinkers after they asked their fellow MPs in vain to include such a room in the House of Democracy that the cabinet wants to set up. The two opposition parties received hardly any support for their joint motion.

Hat tip: TB.

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Strong-Arming the Opposition to the EU

With the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty coming up in just a couple of weeks, the Powers That Be in the European Union are doing their utmost to silence and disable any opposition to their grand project of total European dictatorship integration.

The latest move involves a procedural change in the European Parliament. According to The Telegraph:

Plans to eliminate Eurosceptics as an organised opposition within the European Parliament are expected to be agreed by a majority of MEPs this summer.

The European Union assembly’s political establishment is pushing through changes that will silence dissidents by changing the rules allowing Euro-MPs to form political groupings.

Richard Corbett, a British Labour MEP, is leading the charge to cut the number of party political tendencies in the Parliament next year, a move that would dissolve UKIP’s pan-European Eurosceptic “Independence and Democracy” grouping.

Under the rule change, the largest and most pro-EU groups would tighten their grip on the Parliament’s political agenda and keep control of lavish funding.

In other words, only the big guys will be allowed a seat at the table. The little guys can forget it, and since the Euro-skeptics are — surprise! — a smaller group, they’ll be disallowed.

Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, claimed that the move goes hand in hand with the denial of popular votes on the new EU Treaty.

“Welcome to your future. This shows an EU mindset that is arrogant, anti-democratic and frankly scary,” he said.

“These people are so scared of public opinion they are willing to set in stone the right to ignore it. Freedom requires the governing elite to be held to account. They must be getting very worried if they are enacting such dictatorial powers for themselves.”

“Worried” may not be quite the right word. A combination of “prudent” and “unscrupulous” seems more appropriate to me. The nomenklatura of the EU know that any frank discussion of the Lisbon Treaty will be its undoing, so they are determined at all costs to eliminate any frank discussion.
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Current rules allow 20 MEPs from a fifth of the EU’s member states to form groupings, giving them a say in the Parliament’s administration and power structure.

Under the changes, the threshold would become 30 MEPs from one quarter of the EU’s member states.

The Liberal Democrats, Greens, the far Left, Eurosceptics and other groupings have vowed to oppose the plans during a vote scheduled for July 9. Andrew Duff, leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrat Euro-MPs and a committed EU Federalist, has opposed the silencing of UKIP on the basis of democratic principle.

“Whatever one’s views about their politics it cannot be argued that these small groups do not represent a strand of European public opinion,” he said.

“If the European Parliament is to be the legitimate forum for post-national democracy, all sorts of minority opinions have to be given effective, if proportionate representation.”

The European Parliament, by its very nature, will never be a legitimate democratic forum. It is structurally impossible. The only way the EU can possibly maintain itself is by suspending democratic processes, because the opinion of the European “regions” will always be against it.

The President of the European Commission has resorted to outright threats against the Irish if they have the temerity to say “No” to Lisbon. His strategy is likely to backfire, however, since — if my wife is any indication — the Irish are contrarians by nature.

According to the Irish Independent:

Ireland and Europe will “pay a price” if there is a ‘No’ vote in the Lisbon Treaty referendum, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso warned voters last night.

Putting the gun to Irish heads ahead of the referendum in just over a fortnight, Mr Barroso said rejection of the EU Reform Treaty would be bad for the whole of Europe, including Ireland.

His comments could be used by the ‘No’ campaign to show that Europe is trying to coerce Ireland into voting ‘Yes’.

They will cause a further headache for the ‘Yes’ campaign, which is already watching its lead narrowing while also trying to fight public confusion on the treaty’s details.

Mr. Barroso is emblematic of the cabal of Lisbon-supporters, which includes a who’s-who of senior statesmen, former prime ministers, eminences grises, and various apparatchiks who feed out of the gold-lined trough in Brussels.

On the other hand, the strange bedfellows that make up the opposition are a motley crew. Among the people urging the Irish to vote “No” are hard-core socialists, a prominent Anglican clergyman, and Irish farmers who object to the WTO negotiations being conducted on their behalf by the European Union. And we mustn’t forget the information warriors of the Counterjihad, as represented by the readers of this blog and others like it.

Fjordman has this to say in today’s Brussels Journal:

This is part of a long-term plan to merge Europe with the Islamic world. As I’ve said many times before, the creation of Eurabia constitutes nothing less than the greatest betrayal in the history of European civilization, possibly the greatest betrayal in the history of any civilization. An entire continent, the cradle of the greatest civilization mankind has ever seen, is to be culturally dismantled and turned into an obedient dumping ground for demographic warfare by its Islamic enemies. Those among the indigenous peoples who object to this will be harassed, and opposition to these policies will be banned by law. This is done by the very same individuals who are supposed to be these nations’ entrusted leaders.

The time has now come for the natives of Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, France, Spain, Greece and other countries to treat the European Union for what it is: An aggressively hostile organization fundamentally opposed to anything we hold dear.

Opponents are pinning their hopes on the Irish referendum, and the bookies in Dublin have recalculated the odds in favor of a “No” vote.

So the signs are not auspicious for the EU. According to The Telegraph:

Superstitious EU officials are also keenly aware that the referendum result will be announced on an inauspicious date, Friday the 13th of June.

My advice to the mandarins of the EU is this: watch out for black cats, and don’t walk under any ladders between now and June 13th.


Hat tip: Gaia.

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Generosity is Good, Zakat is Bad

The following is a guest-essay by Henrik Ræder Clausen of Europe News.


Generosity is good, Zakat is bad
by Henrik Ræder Clausen

Zakat, one of the “Five Pillars of Islam”, is a religious tax introduced for the benefit of the poor and needy, as well as for the advancement of Islam itself, and is often quoted as one of the best elements of Islam. This essay sets out to examine the gap between the stated intention and reality, and why the fundamental structure of Zakat works against the stated intention of reducing ‘inequality’.

Historically, Zakat being one of the five ‘pillars’ of Islam, is the holy tax introduced by Muhammad. A bit of background information seems in order.

It is not without precedent, though, as Muhammad’s fifth generation ancestor Qusayy had formalized the religious rituals at the Kaa’ba, including a tax (rifada) on wealthy pilgrims that would enable the poorer pilgrims to afford the costs of the pilgrimage. Depending on one’s view of pre-Islamic paganism, one could consider this tax ‘holy’, or just a tool of the Meccan traders to increase the income from the wealthier pilgrims. As Islam has now replaced paganism, this is mainly of academic interest. It is worth noting, though, that the scope of this tax was tied to the Kaa’ba and the Hajj/Umra pilgrimages.

Zakat isn’t, and that’s important. Zakat is payable to Islamic rulers anywhere, who will then dispose of the resources. Hajj and Umra remain important in Islam as they were in paganism, of course.

The purpose of Zakat

The intended purposes of Zakat are, as listed by SunniPath:

1) “The foremost and primary purpose is to distribute the wealth of the community among the poor…”

The emphasis on the community is an Islamic classic, and it makes sense. For if individuals with talent for trade and business were to have too much economic power, they, not the Islamic leaders, would direct the community. Unfortunately (as will be elaborated below), this is not good for productivity in society. The Soviet Union also emphasized the community over the individual, leading to extensive irresponsibility and neglect. And, as the Soviet Union used to be, Islamic countries have not become affluent by this approach.
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2) “Removing the love of wealth from one’s heart, a spiritual disease that could be detrimental to one’s Imam. Thus, it is a form of Tazkiya (self-purification).”

Now, it might seem weird that any religion would request to remove any kind of love from one’s heart, but this indeed is the case here. It’s a bit contradictory, for what is actually the problem of loving wealth? It is clearly assumed that there is some problem, but the nature of the problem is unclear. Is it wrong to have a nice house, good clothes, healthy food and money to spare with friends and family?

But we do get a clue with the reference to Iman (faith). People who have their material needs fulfilled, and are confident that this will be the case later as well, are less likely to bother with religion. Material wealth does diminish religiousness, as we can see in the West, and that in turn diminishes the power base of religious leaders.

3) “Giving in the path of Allah.”

This is obviously meant to be holy. Giving for the advancement of Islamic faith is considered a good thing in itself, no questions asked, and is a prime purpose of Zakat. Without resources, spreading Islam is very difficult. Muhammad himself spent lavishly on booty and slave trade to finance his wars, and there is no reason for Islamic fundamentalists to deviate from this behavior.

4) “Prevention of monopolies in society.”

The last of these seems a bit off. Monopolies, as in dominant corporations, can exploit their position unreasonably. Also, they tend to become non-religious holders of power, which is obviously bad for the religious leaders’ claim to power. This is just speculative, of course. The point is not elaborated.

Further, it is explained that:

These are just some of the basic reasons behind the obligation of Zakat, but one must remember that Zakat is also a form of worship (ibadah) of Allah Almighty, and an obligation set by Him. As such, one must accept this obligation and the rulings connected to it, even if one is not able to understand the wisdom behind it, for the meaning of ‘worship’ is to submit to the will and command of Allah Most High.

Interestingly, neither the remaining ‘basic’ reasons or any advanced reasons are explained. Instead, we are given a clear directive to pay the Zakat even if the above explanations are found lacking.

Therefore, it is necessary that we accept the various acts of worship (ibadah) as they are and not insist on understanding the wisdom behind it, for Ibadah is something that is carried out in a submissive form without questioning its rationality.

Clear enough. Zakat is a religious duty, not something to be challenged, and giving away a part of ones property constitutes worship. This is submission; rationality on these matters is explicitly discouraged.

As mentioned. Zakat was introduced by Muhammad during his rule in Medina. Along with the early Muslims, he had only a limited selection of incomes. Islamic sources make no mention of Muhammad participating in the rich farming and trading life of Medina, nor did he take up his earlier work as a caravan guide. Additionally, he had heavy expenses purchasing weapons and horses, financing his allies, as well as supporting his many wives and concubines. We find in the Islamic sources that he had mainly three sources of financing:

• Loans from the wealthy Jewish community. Interestingly, Abu Bakr (the future 1st caliph) promised prospective lenders a doubling of their investment, but no mention is ever made of Muhammad paying back his loans. One would expect the Islamic scripture to show concrete examples of honesty by the founder of Islam, and the absence of this detail is puzzling. One can assume that this source of funding dried up quite fast.
  
• Raiding caravans and (mainly Jewish) settlements. This practice started soon after Muhammad moved to Medina, where he would send the Muslims to raid caravans, and later participate himself. It was assumed that if the Muslims successfully plundered a caravan, it was a gift from Allah. The owners of the caravans, however, had a different opinion of this, as did the native citizens of Medina, and the tribe of Quraysh in Mecca. Muhammad and the Muslims initially hesitated taking the booty, as doing so was not only considered immoral, but also could seriously damage their reputation with the Jewish and Arab tribes of Medina and elsewhere. This dilemma was resolved through the revelation of Sura 8, “The Spoils of War”, where booty was legalized, provided Muhammad was awarded a fifth of the spoils, a share named ‘Khums’. The 20% share for holy persons serves as inspiration for certain Zakat rates today, particular those levied on natural resources and wealth increase.
  
• Zakat, the holy tax imposed on all Muslims. Enforcing this tax was, then as today, a problem. No tax is truly mandatory without an effective enforcement, and — as can be seen in the latest Suras of the Quran and the many commands to pay the Zakat — appears to have been a perpetual problem within the original Islamic community. In some cases, the income was so low that it drove the Muslims to plunder additional settlements. This had several benefits. First and foremost, it brought immediate financial relief to the Muslims.

Also, as Muhammad made it clear that only non-Muslims would be plundered, it encouraged more people to convert to Islam in order to protect their lives and property, which would increase the taxable community as well. This introduced a dilemma, however, for these freshly converted Muslims were not eager to fight, and soon earned the title of ‘hypocrites’ for their preference of family and well-tilled lands over sacrificing life and property for Allah’s cause.

Zakat, being mentioned more frequently in the Quran than any other of the five pillars, developed into an intricate system according to the later Islamic tradition, and the various Islamic schools have different interpretations of the details, including the tax rates on various items, the range of items to be taxed, and not least how to handle Zakat on items not invented at the time of Muhammad. Muhammad did not predict future discoveries and inventions, and thus did not prescribe Zakat on items such as TVs, VCRs, etc, which leaves a significant openness of interpretation to Islamic scholars of later days.

Foundation of Zakat

“The basic and essential objective of Zakat is purification of the soul. It cures the lust for wealth.” (Islamic Voice)

“And away from it (Hell) shall be kept the most pious one, who gives away his wealth in order to purify himself” XCIL: 17-18

This is clear enough. Those who pay Zakat avoid Hell, and by implication those who refuse will presumably be cast into the fire.

The Quranic instruction to Muhammad and his followers to take Zakat runs like this:

“Take alms of their wealth, wherewith you may cleanse and purify them.” (9:103)

“The root of all evil is the love of worldly things.” (Mishkat)

Summing up, Islamic Voice concludes: “These verses make the real importance of Zakat quite clear: it aims to emancipate the heart from temporal preoccupations and purifies the soul.”

It remains a mystery, however, that this principle seems to apply to ordinary Muslims only. if wealth is truly such a dangerous things, one would expect Islamic leaders to go in front renouncing it, to set a good example for the Muslims at large. Instead, Islamic leaders, by the example of Muhammad, urges the Ummah to transfer the surplus wealth to these leaders. One can only hope that they are immune from selfish motivations and acts of evil.

An interesting aside is the question of Zakat being voluntary or mandatory. It is stated to be a religious obligation on all Muslims, but that contradicts an important stated principle of Zakat:

“It must, however, be remembered that the aim of Zakat is achieved only when its payment is motivated by sincere desire and practical effort.” (Islamic Voice)

If one follows this principle, payment with insincere motivation, such as a mandatory tax, is void of meaning. Islamic scholars may handle this paradox with surprising arguments, such as:

The purification of the soul to be achieved by paying Zakat is not detailed much, it remains an assumption that wealth and worldly goods are ‘evil’. Usually one pays money in exchange for goods or services, or gives money out of generosity. In the case of Zakat, as has periodically been the case in the Catholic church, the mere giving to ‘holy’ purposes is assumed to be beneficial, period. It remains a fundamental feature of Islam not to be disputed.

Actually, Zakat does not need to have a central, enforcing institution. Being a religious duty, Zakat is, in several countries, voluntary. The giver of Zakat must adhere to the holy principles of who will benefit, but retains a significant say in who gets to receive it. Employers may for instance use Zakat to reward needy employees for good efforts, or prefer giving to family and relatives, even though others may be worse off than the relatives.

Beneficiaries of Zakat

The eligible receivers of Zakat are explained in Sura 9:60: “The alms are only for the poor and the needy, and for those who collect them, and those whose hearts are to be reconciled, and to free captives and the debtors, and for the cause of Allah and for the wayfarer.”

This is a curious mix. Let us look at them bit by bit:

• “The poor and the needy” is the most quoted reason to pay Zakat, and this redistribution is intended to reduce poverty and inequality. Now, Islamic societies tend to suffer from widespread poverty and in many cases extreme inequality too, so the need is certainly there.
  
• “Those who collect them” is obviously a dangerous point. Yes, it motivates more effective gathering, but also opens a door for corruption and inefficiency. Cases have been reported where the share to those who collect Zakat exceeds the share going to the ‘poor and needy’. This is not so good.
  
• “Those whose hearts are to be reconciled”. Good points. It means to use the Zakat money as a tool for creating loyalty, for those who have recently converted to Islam or those who might be about to do so. Giving gifts to purchase loyalty may seem strange to a Western mind, but was a perfectly fine tradition in the time of Muhammad, whose biography includes a chapter on the issue. Calling it ‘corruption’ certainly would not be very friendly.
  
• Freeing slaves or freeing captives is hardly relevant at this point in time. While slavery has been practiced well into the 20th century in Islamic countries, it is largely abolished by now. Demanding ransom for prisoners of war was common practice among the early Muslims, but is abandoned by modern conventions and is generally considered a criminal act, not a justified act of war.
  
• “For the cause of Allah”, however, is a minefield. Fighting in the cause of Allah is the main activity of Muhammad and the Muslims in the later Medina days, and permitting the use of Zakat money for this can be interpreted as a justification of financing war by means of charitable resources. In practice Zakat also goes to non-violent ways of education in Islam, and in several cases Islamic organizations, not the poor directly, benefit most from Zakat.
  
• Finally, helping wayfarers. This might seem odd (why not ‘help orphans’ or something?), but just might stem from the original pilgrimage tax related to Hajj and Umra in pagan times, and forms a kind of ‘travel insurance’ to make it clear that travelers getting in trouble while doing pilgrimage would be given a hand to get back home. This item is not of practical consequence today.

Reality check

The real world results of Zakat can be hard to assess. Timur Kuran in his book Islam and Mammon quotes an embarrassing array of faults and misuses of the Zakat system, with focus on the mandatory systems in Pakistan and Malaysia. The list of faults and misgivings about the system is much too long to repeat here; suffice it to state that the creativity in misusing the Zakat system is amazing, and adapts easily to many different aspects of life and business.

One persistent problem, though, is enforcement. Rich landowners are much more likely to have either creative means, well paid connections or simply enough brute force to avoid paying any significant amount to the Zakat collectors. The poorer landowners are less efficient avoiders, and this seriously damages the stated intent of distributing wealth from the rich to the poor.

For an example of how Zakat is distributed, Kuran goes back to 1970 and quotes one Malaysian state capital, Alor Setar, for the following breakdown:

• 53% went towards teaching Islam.
  
• 22% went to the Zakat collectors.
  
• 15% was spent to the benefit of the poor.
  
• 6% went towards pilgrimage support
  
• 2% went to converts

Other figures quoted by Kuran estimates the share of Zakat going to the poor marginally lower than this, with the same overall tendency:

• The lion’s share of Zakat goes towards teaching of Islam.
  
• Collectors are second on the list, significantly over:
  
• The poor, who receive only 10-15% of the Zakat collected, and
  
• Other religious purposes.

The conclusion of Timur Kuran is clear:

… Zakat has not made a major dent in Muslim poverty and inequality. While it has obviously redistributed some income and wealth, it has not conferred substantial benefits on the poor as a group.

A related conclusion is tempting: Zakat is, in practice, used much more for the benefit of Islam than for the benefit of the poor. Even the administrators of the system have greater benefit than the poor, who then become little but an excuse for exploiting productive people for the benefit of the non-productive.

Purchasing loyalty

The use of Zakat towards those ‘whose hearts are to be reconciled’ points to an interesting feature, that of purchasing loyalty by means of charity, implicitly or outspokenly. The receiver of charity will feel gratitude towards the giver, and this has consequences.

Imagine that charity, rather than being institutionalized, by way of tradition was done by those who had collected personal wealth. One might have a rich uncle helping in an hour of need, and this creates a thankfulness and an openness towards the giver. Who in turn may take the opportunity to teach a lesson:

“You ask, dear nephew, how I became rich? Well, while luck is good, there is nothing like working well and fulfilling the needs of your customers. I had notice that the businessmen of my town had trouble getting mail and errands across town quickly and reliably, and offered them my services. The complaints were both of slowness, but in particular of too many broken goods on the way, so I took extra care to look after the goods as if they were my own. That earned me a reputation for doing a good job and making their lives easier, so I was able to charge higher prices than my competitors, and after a while I was able to buy more cars and hire good people to help me expand my business. This is how I came to run not exactly the biggest but at least the best shipping company in town. Yes, it took a lot of work. Finding reliable drivers is hard, and bad ones can easily spoil my reputation.”

“Wow. And now you are so rich that you can give money away to your family. That is really nice. But I cannot depend on your kindness without giving you anything back. Is there something I might be able to help you with?”

“Well, actually there might be. We have a problem in our quality department, where we just cannot find people reliable enough for the job. Since you are my family, I trust you not to let me down like strangers do. But you would have to do half of year of driving first to get a feel for the business.”

Generosity is good, for it build relations, confidence and openness on the side of the receiving part. And listening in on some well-intentioned advice on how to become self-reliant and diminish the risk of having to ask for help in the future.

Now, building similar relations to religious institutions in turn increases the confidence in these institutions, and openness to the ideas they stand for. However, these ideas tend to focus on worship, not on earning money and becoming self-supporting. Even the question “Can you drive a truck?” might have unusual implications if asked by an Islamist organization.

Which in turns points to a different problem of Zakat. While bringing immediate relief for the needy, it does not by itself eradicate poverty, for the mere giving of alms does not teach how to become economically self-reliant. On the contrary, unconditional giving to the poor can be seen as a kind of reward for poverty more than a tool for getting out of the situation. Giving alms, while charitable, in most cases apart from emergencies, is the wrong cure for the problem of poverty. If Zakat really was a workable remedy against poverty, the Islamic countries should have less poverty than others. The opposite is very obviously the case.

Charity in Palestine

While not directly related to Zakat as such, the case of Hamas as a charity is instructive:

Hamas was for a long time the primary distributor of Western aid in the Palestinian areas, as the PA was considered too corrupt and inefficient to be entrusted the task. While this got the aid out to the needy, it also created a loyalty to Hamas which helped them significantly in the 2006 general elections. The elections, which were widely seen as a protest vote against corruption rather than an endorsement of terrorism, gave Hamas a democratic legitimacy it had not enjoyed before, which in turn helped them seize power in the Gaza strip and abolish democracy there. Unfortunately, the tables have now turned, and Hamas is now actively sabotaging deliveries to the civilian population or simply stealing their supplies. The population of Gaza, in particular, has effectively ended up as hostages to the situation. Their dependency on aid seems endless, but Hamas seems willing to even deepen the crisis of it serves their purposes.

Zakat and funding of terrorism

A compounding problem is that Zakat is administered by religious organizations, where the ‘holy’ status of these frequently frees them of suspicion and scrutiny. Devout Muslims, in particular, may tend to reject any suggested scrutiny of their charitable foundations. This has led these organizations to be important money-laundering channels for terrorists, as has been documented quite extensively, and even led several donors to attempt to force the books in question off the market, such as Alms for Jihad by Burr and Collins.

The relevant response to this challenge, of course, is to double the scrutiny of ‘holy’ charities, not least those of an Islamic leaning. While it may cause some dissatisfaction with Islamic leaders, the results so far have exposed a sufficient number of ‘rotten apples’ to justify a heightened level of suspicion against Islamic relief organizations. We all wish to stop the terrorists, and one of the best way to do so is to cut their sources of funding and resources.

Suggestions

Now, for all its risks and flaws, Zakat isn’t going to just disappear. Paying Zakat is one of the most important elements of a major world religion, and one doesn’t just ‘change’ this. But there are ways to ensure that the system does not breed corruption and terrorism, and first among those is transparency. It should be open to anyone, not just the donors, where the money ends up, how much is used for administration, and what part is spent on religious instruction instead of helping the poor. It is natural to have compassion for those in difficult circumstances, and likewise natural to trust organizations with charitable purposes. On the other hand, abuse of charitable resources for selfish or even criminal purposes is a betrayal of trust at both the donor and the poor, and needs to be exposed and punished, or charity itself may suffer a bad reputation.

Related, protection for those who expose misuse of the resources is important, or wealthy donors may be able to intimidate journalists and authors into silence. A recent case is that of Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, whose book Funding Evil caused a certain amount of offense among rich donors, and a court case in Great Britain against the author. Since she is American, one should consider that to be immaterial, but it turned out that a legal adjustment was needed to ensure her protection. The “Libel Tourism Protection Act” (also known as “Rachel’s law”) renders non-US libel verdicts unenforceable in the US and protects authors and publishers alike.

Being unforgiving is relevant. Religion is supposed to be an uplifting force for humanity, and use of religion for criminal purposes, not least terrorism, gives the religion in question, as well as all religion, a bad name. Abetting, endorsing or tacitly approving terrorism should be immediate and irrecoverable ground for revoking any religious status and privileges awarded to an organization.

Islamic leaders consider Zakat to be religious. The rest of us don’t. Freedom of religion lets Islamic societies use Zakat for strengthening their communities, inefficiencies and pitfalls being irrelevant to the religious status of the system. But the actual use of Zakat deserves no protection on ground of it being considered religious by some.

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Camden Says “No!”

I reported yesterday on the Islamic school that had been proposed for the town of Camden in New South Wales. Tonight (it’s already past midnight in Australia) the Camden town council met and unanimously rejected the planned school.

Here’s the report from the Camden Advertiser :

Camden’s proposed Islamic School has been unanimously rejected by Camden Council at its meeting tonight.

A subdued crowd of about 200 people were at the Camden Civic Centre for what turned out to be a muted debate on planning grounds rather than raw emotion.

Residents clapped when the vote was taken to oppose the school.

“We are the champions,” one man said as he left the civic centre.

But the Quranic Society has already told the Advertiser that it will fight the rejection in the Land and Environment Court.

When I wrote about the issue yesterday, I had no significant information about the Sydney-based Quranic Society (a.k.a. Dar Tahfez El-Quran), the sponsor of the proposed school. Since then I have received several emails from Australian readers with more background on the group:
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The Quranic Society became a society in 1986. They’ve done just enough to stay legal and to stay under the radar of Tax and Business departments.

They are funded entirely by Saudi money.

They had the Architects of the school submit the development application. The question here is, why didn’t they submit it under their own name?

One of the prerequisites of permitting a development such as this school is, can they pay for it?

According to the submission, the school will cost 19 million dollars to build [Note: Zenster predicted the cost very accurately in yesterday’s comments. — BB]. However, the Quranic society has only 345,000 dollars in cash in their bank account and no record of any assets.

They have not submitted who will be the actual owner of the school.

One of the main things we have to fight against is their lack of transparency. All of the above points mentioned have not been detailed with any degree of honesty. If everything is above board and they have nothing to hide, why do they do everything by stealth and deceit?

The main hurdle for us, and indeed anyone else who has to go through this fight, and it’s happening more and more, is, even if the development applications a rejected by the Council, it is then taken to the Land and Environment Court where, because of the unlimited Saudi funds available to them, they simply hire the best whoring solicitors they can and keep bombarding the court until the Councils realise they can no longer afford to fight them.

They also have become adept at switching who the owner will be of a property right at the time of signing and exchange of contracts. That was what they did at Bass Hill. All along it was believed that a developer was buying the land to build medium-density dwellings. When everyone was seated for the signing of contracts, the solicitors informed the Education Department that the land was actually being sold to another party.

If people in the US are having a similar problem, make sure that they go for the transparency issues. Who is the actual owner? Where is the money coming from? Pay particular attention to the planning details. Unfortunately, the planning details are getting harder to circumvent, as they have realised that they have to get the best money can buy to cover themselves in that area. Since money is no object, planning is no longer a problem.

Despite the bottomless pockets of its Saudi sponsors, the proposed Camden Islamic school was defeated, and overwhelming local public opposition played a large part in that defeat:

During the eight months since the Quranic Society lodged its application, the council has received 3083 submissions, which included 3042 objections.

However, in order to defeat the project, opponents had to avoid introducing religion — the dreaded I-word — into their objections. Other criteria had to be used, such as environmental concerns, the need to preserve the character of the neighborhood, traffic congestion, etc.

Camden/Macarthur Residents’ Group president Emil Sremchevich spoke only about rejecting the proposal on planning grounds and did not speak on religious or racial concerns.

[…]

Seven of the councillors spoke, but all stuck to the script of speaking on the planning-based objections rather than wider community concerns.

Councillor Peter Johnson moved the motion that the council staff recommendation to reject the proposal be accepted and praised the report’s depth.

[…]

Cr Johnson said he would welcome an Islamic school closer to his home in Catherine Field, possibly near the planned Leppington train station.

[…]

Mayor Chris Patterson said the decision was made purely on planning grounds, not on ‘‘religion or multiculturalism’’.

There’s much more information about the council’s decision, including video clips, at the Camden Advertiser site.

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This is an important victory for anti-jihad forces in Australia, and we all have reason to celebrate.

However, it’s important to remember that this success is contingent. It depended on several key factors:

• Heavy local opposition. This is not always guaranteed; in areas with a larger Muslim minority, vocal and vigorous local supporters are likely to appear, and non-Muslim residents may be intimidated by the implicit threat of violence that always accompanies dense concentrations of Muslims in any urban area.
  
• Plenty of the right kind of publicity. Any slight missteps by the opposition could have led them into a media fever swamp of “racism and xenophobia”, from which they would have found it hard to extricate themselves. The organizers are to be commended for handling the issue in an intelligent and effective manner.
  
• Finding the right mix of criteria to use in opposition. Success depended on being able to use zoning and land-use regulations to deep-six the school. It won’t always be this easy. What if the school’s planned location had been different, a place where the objections used against the proposal would have been unable to gain traction?

The Camden Islamic school was voted down because the Quranic Society failed to game the system to its advantage. But, generally speaking, Muslims in the West are adept at gaming our systems. They learn a lot from setbacks like this one, and next time they will make a proposal that will be harder to defeat on technical grounds.

That’s why it’s important for opponents eventually to be willing to name the real problem: Islam.

It’s not the endangered species, or the air quality, or the traffic congestion, or the effect on the scenic landscape of Camden. The problem is Islam. Everyone involved, whether for or against the school, knows this.

But the suicidal rules of Politically Correct Multiculturalism forbid any public discussion of the issue in these terms. Political and business leaders risk their careers if they broach the problem frankly. A media firestorm engulfs anyone who dares transgress the defined boundaries of discourse, and ordinary people can even be arrested for speaking their minds.

But long-term success will depend on our courage to reframe the debate.

We need to be willing to stand up and say that it’s not just a school, but an Islamic school that we object to.

We need to prepare detailed, sober, thoughtful, and reasonable data to support our views. There’s no need for hysteria: a simple presentation of the history and current actions of the Great Jihad is all that’s required. The complete facts about Islam are arguments that speak for themselves.

If we don’t do this, then make no mistake: the forces of Islamic infiltration will successfully game the system, over and over again, and gradually erode our culture and our civilization from within.


Hat tip: Nilk.

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Me and You and a Dog Named Allah

This is yet another example of the insane topsy-turvy world of Political Correctness. In PC Land a person from protected minority has an absolute right not to be offended, and that right trumps any rights that people from the oppressive majority might have.

According to Al Arabiya:

A prison officer in the United Kingdom was transferred after he caused a stir amongst inmates by calling his sniffer dog ‘Allah’, press reports said Monday.

Although officer Chris Langridge, 28, insisted the Labrador’s name was in fact ‘Ali’ not ‘Allah’, a Muslim inmate filed an official complaint with Britain’s top Belmarsh high-security jail, The Sun newspaper reported.

“This is political correctness gone mad,” a Belmarsh officer was quoted by The Sun as saying.

According to a prison source there is no suggestion that he did call the dog Allah but it was thought it would be better to transfer him, the paper said.

- - - - - - - - -

Belmarsh contains the highest number of Muslim inmates of any UK prison, including some notorious extremists such as hook-handed Abu Hamza.

What’s notable is that Mr. Langridge didn’t actually call his dog “Allah”. The perception that he called his dog by the name of the Mesopotamian moon-god was enough to bring official sanctions down upon his hapless head.

God help Britain.


Hat tip: Steen.

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Racism and Xenophobia in Bahrain

Consider this IMAGINARY quote from an IMAGINARY news article:

A nationalist parliamentarian in Belgium has called for the expulsion of Moroccan immigrant workers after one of them was accused of a gruesome killing.

“We need to expel all the Moroccan workers that are in our country,” said Bart Debie of the hardline Vlaams Belang, according to a report in the local newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws.

“We cannot tolerate the way in which these people continue to repeat crimes,” he said.

Can you picture the uproar that would greet such a story in Belgium? The accusations of neo-fascism, racism, xenophobia, etc., etc.?

In order to construct the above quote I changed a handful of proper nouns and phrases from the article below. Now read the original from AKI:

Islamic MP calls for expulsion of Bangladeshis

Manama, 26 May (AKI) — An Islamic parliamentarian in Bahrain has called for the expulsion of Bangladeshi immigrant workers after one of them was accused of a gruesome killing.

“We need to expel all the Bangladeshi workers that are in our country,” said Abdel Halim Murad of the hardline Salafi bloc according to a report in the local newspaper Akhbar al-Khalji.

“We cannot tolerate the way in which these people continue to repeat crimes,” he said.

Murad said this during a political debate on Sunday after a Bahraini citizen was allegedly killed by a foreign worker from Bangladesh who worked as a mechanic.

The victim was said to have fought with his killer because they could not decide on the price to pay to repair a car.

“The society in Bahrain has been hit by this barbaric incident and now we have to rise above every limit. It is necessary to have zero tolerance with regards to them,” said Murad.

- - - - - - - - -

Murad also said that an example should be made of the punishment handed out to the Bangladeshi who has been accused of murder.

“He should be immediately sentenced to death and the punishment should be carried out in a short time in order to make an example to everyone,” he added

“It is also necessary to have a plan which will foresee the gradual expulsion of all these people from our country,” he said.

There are an estimated 106,000 Bangladeshis living in the small Arab country.

[…]

Bahrain is not the only country in the Emirates which has had to deal with problems associated with Asian immigration.

An MP in Kuwait had on 28 April called for the expulsion of all foreign workers.

“All the Bangladeshi immigrants who have committed crimes in our country have to be immediately deported,” said Muhammad Hayf al-Mutairi.

This was also suggested by an Islamic politician, who has gained a lot support because of these types of proposals with regards to foreigners.

“Their presence here represents a major danger for our national security because of them, there has been a rise in the number of crimes committed and for this reason the interior ministry must immediately expel them from the country,” said al-Mutairi in an interview on the Arabic satellite television network, Al-Arabiya.

Those Arabs really sound like all those racist xenophobic right-wing extremists in Europe, don’t they?

What makes this story even more interesting is that these dangerous foreigners are not even infidels: both Bangladesh and the Bahrain are Muslim countries.

“Zero tolerance”, indeed.


Hat tip: insubria.

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Resisting a Madrassa in Camden

Camden is a town of about 50,000 people in New South Wales that has recently stumbled into a spot of bother about Muslims and their planned Islamic school. Feelings about the school among local residents are running high: last fall two pigs’ heads with an Australian flag draped between them were left at the site of the proposed school.

According to the BBC:

Town moves against Islamic school

With its lace curtain bungalows and steepled Anglican church, the once tranquil town of Camden in New South Wales seems the most improbable of settings for a row that combines race and religion.

Proud of its rich history, the town promotes itself as “the birthplace of the nation’s wealth”, for it was here, in the early 19th Century, that the sheep and dairy industries first began to flourish.

Now the town, which lies on south-west fringes of Sydney, is confronting a very 21st Century issue: the proposal to construct an Islamic school for some 1,200 Muslim pupils.

Behind the proposal is the Sydney-based Quranic Society, which has purchased 15 acres of land on the fringes of town, and produced detailed plans and designs.

The Quranic Society (which, according to The Sydney Morning Herald, is also known as Dar Tahfez El-Quran) has left only a small footprint on the Internet. By trying various internet searches, the only mentions I can find — besides news stories and blog entries about the proposed school — are bare-bones directory listings like this one :
- - - - - - - - -
Name: Quranic Society
Category: Islamic Organisation
Phone: 97591616
Address: 42 Haldon Street, Lakemba, NSW 2195

In the USA, tracing the pedigree of an organization like this one usually reveals it to be a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate backed by Saudi money. Presumably the same holds true for many of the seemingly innocuous Muslim “charitable” organizations in Australia.

The residents of Camden are not giving in without a fight:

Camden council is currently deciding whether to grant planning permission and allow the controversial development to go ahead.

[…]

Back in November, more than 1,000 local people took part in a public meeting. Many participants expressed themselves with little regard for political correctness.

“This has to be one of the nicest places in New South Wales,” said one woman, who has lived in Camden for the past nine years.

“Everywhere is being destroyed. Why don’t we tell the truth. They’re wrecking Australia. They’re taking us over,” she said.

“Why hasn’t anyone got any guts? They’ve got terrorists amongst ‘em… They want to be here so they can go and hide in all the farm houses… This town has every nationality… but Muslims do not fit in this town. We are Aussies, OK.”

Some of the loudest cheers of the night greeted a speech from a local man in his late 70s.

“Can I just say this without being racist or political?” he said. “In 1983, in the streets of London a parade by Muslims chanted incessantly ‘If we can take London, we can take the world’. Don’t let them take Camden.”

And this is significant:

When the chair of the meeting invited anyone in favour of the development to speak up, no one stepped forward.

No local resident was willing to speak up in favor of the school. So where are its proponents? Evidently most of them are not residents of Camden:

Camden does not harbour a large Muslim community — census figures suggest about 150 families.

Most of the pupils at the proposed school would therefore be bussed in from Sydney, a journey that takes about an hour each way.

So one would expect there to be about 300 or so school-age Muslim children in Camden, yet the school’s pupils will number four times that many. Perhaps the strategy of shipping them from Sydney to a relative backwater is to draw less attention to what is going on.

The BBC is careful to note that the issue risks being co-opted by dangerous right-wing extremists:

Many locals fear that the campaign is being hijacked by right-wing, nationalist groups with their own agendas.

The Australia First organisation has been advertising for members in Camden, and says it plans to field a candidate in September’s local elections.

And, needless to say, Australia has its share of dhimmi multiculturalists ready to weigh in with the usual formulations:

One speaker implored the crowd to stick to planning issues, and not let the campaign be contaminated by racism or xenophobia.

For the time being, the racists and xenophobes in Camden seem to be winning. The Council will rule on the issue tomorrow.


Hat tips: Lugundum and Steen.

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Giving Away the Golan Heights

Until the Six-Day War in 1967, the Golan Heights were a strategic bastion for Syria. At their highest point, the Heights elevated Syrian artillery 3,000 feet above the Sea of Galilee, and for several years before 1967 the Syrians used their commanding position to shell towns and kibbutzim in the lowlands just across the border in Israel.

There was a United Nations buffer zone between Syria and Israel, but it was a joke. When Israel protested to the UN about Syrian shelling, the UN did nothing. That and other evidence of the impotence of the UN convinced Israel’s Arab neighbors that the Jewish State could be attacked with impunity.


And so it could, but only if the aggressors failed to reckon on the punitive power of the Israeli military.

Israel was vastly outnumbered and outgunned on all fronts, and yet managed to repel its enemies and occupy extensive portions of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, in just six days.

Once in possession of such an important strategic position, Israel was adamant that it would not give it up. The Israelis have occupied the Golan Heights for more than forty years to make sure that Syria can no longer threaten the heart of the Jewish State.


At various times since 1967, Israel has engaged in tentative discussions with Syria about the status of the Golan Heights. However, until recently there was never any serious indication that the Israelis might actually return the territory to Syria.

The situation has changed in the last few months. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a weak and vacillating leader, has given unmistakable signals that he is willing to exchange the Golan Heights for peace — or rather “peace”, that familiar and ongoing process in which Israel makes major strategic concessions in return for empty Arab promises and cosmetic gestures.

Considering the advances in military technology that have taken place during the past forty years, turning the Heights over to the enemy would seem the height of strategic folly. With Iranian and North Korean assistance, Syria would soon be in a position to threaten virtually the entirety of Israel. Included in the threat would be the frightening possibility of nuclear weapons — which Syria is known to covet — aimed from the mountaintops above Galilee towards the cities of Israel.

Obviously, the IDF could never allow things to go that far. One assumes, however, that Boy Assad — or whatever thug succeeds him — would be unable to resist making the attempt. Hence the return of the Golan Heights all but guarantees that there will be war.

So why would Mr. Olmert even consider it?


Israel Matzav has been considering the issue of the Golan Heights in a recent series of posts. On Thursday he examined the possible reasons why Prime Minister Olmert would do such a self-evidently foolish thing:
- - - - - - - - -

…most Israelis see Olmert’s [problems with criminal investigations into his alleged corruption] as the driving force behind the negotiations on the Israeli side. Here are some reasons why most Israelis don’t believe there could be much else behind our government entering into these talks.

1. Leaving the Golan is immensely unpopular among the general public. While talking about leaving may keep Labor in the government — which is its main goal — actually doing a deal with the Syrians seems most unlikely. Overnight polls indicate that the vast majority of Israelis are unwilling to come down from the Golan, even if it would bring peace with Syria.

65 percent of Israelis are against a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights, even if this would bring true peace with Syria, a poll published by the Geo-Cartographic Institute revealed Thursday.

64% of respondents were also against partial withdrawal from the Heights and a similar percentage said it was inappropriate that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was holding negotiations with Syria at a time when his political future was uncertain.

Geo-Cartographic Institute president, professor Avi Dgani, told Army Radio on Thursday that “the people are with the Golan and not with Olmert. A big part of the public is against withdrawing from even a part of the Golan Heights.” Dgani was paraphrasing a bumper sticker with the text “The people are with the Golan,” distributed during Israeli-Syrian talks in the 1990s…

2. The Israeli public has been conditioned to the Golan being part of Israel. Unlike much of Judea and Samaria, which is of little interest to those who are not on the right side of the political map, the Golan is part of Israel’s national consensus. It has a very different image than Judea and Samaria.

[…]

3. Topography. Anyone who hasn’t been to the Golan would find it hard to picture. The Golan sits on the eastern side of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) and rises like a steep cliff all along it (go look at the picture from across the Sea of Galilee in the post I just linked). Roads seem to go straight up or straight down until you hit the plateau. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to feel how Syrian troops could have sat on those heights until 1967 and shot down at the Israeli fields below. The older generation still remembers that shooting. Many people in their 50’s and 60’s grew up sleeping in bunkers every night because of it. The vast majority of Israelis don’t trust the Syrians enough to concede the entire game before the negotiations even open, as the Syrians have always demanded. The topography continues to reinforce that lack of trust and the memories of the shooting.

4. Water. A year ago, I wrote a lengthy post about Israel’s coming water crisis. This came from YNet .

The Israeli public should be aware that today whoever controls the areas of Samaria, Judea (which overlie vital ground water supplies) and the Golan (which is a crucial part of the Sea of Galilee’s drainage basin,) also controls of the flow of water to the taps in the nation’s homes and industries.

In order to contend with Israel’s hydrological deficit, estimated at 300-500 million cubic meters per annum, the government has decided, a decade later than it should have, to embark on an ambitious desalination initiative. The objective of this enterprise is to free the country from the fickle whims of the weather in an arid area of the world located on the fringes of a desert, by the large scale artificial generation of water.

The first such plant, sited near Ashkelon, recently began operating, more than five years after the government approved its construction. The plant, which is the biggest and one of the most advanced facilities of its kind in the world, produces 100 million cubic meters annually — i.e. between one fifth and one third of the current hydrological deficit.

This means that even without yielding a single liter of water to any Arab entity, Israel still requires the construction of an additional three to five similar plants — the biggest in the world — to achieve “sustainable management” of the existing hydro-resources i.e. to prevent their over-exploitation and accelerated salting and pollution due to excess extraction.

[…]

If Syria had the Golan, it would be even worse.

See Carl’s post for more details.

Seen from this point of view, the Golan Heights negotiations are an elaborate kabuki dance, and are never intended to result in actual withdrawal. Mr. Olmert is dancing on a precipice, but he is evidently confident that he can avoid actually pitching headlong over the edge.

Dore Gold, in an article written for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, has another perspective on the issue. He goes into some detail on the history of the Golan Heights and the role it has played in the defense of Israel since June 1967.

His important point is this:

If Israel were to agree to the June 4, 1967, line, as Syria demands, it would be rewarding Syrian aggression. Moreover, it could compromise Israel’s control of its largest fresh water reservoir. Israel should not have to be arguing with the Syrians over the question of whether a future Israeli-Syrian boundary should correspond to the June 4, 1967, line or to the older international border, for neither of these lines is defensible.

[…]

It would be a cardinal error for Israel to put into jeopardy its own security by agreeing to come down from the Golan Heights. [emphasis added]

He goes on to say:

Just prior to the outbreak of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Syria deployed 1,400 tanks in this area against a total Israeli force of 177 tanks (a force ratio of 8 to 1 in favor of Syria). In the early 1990s, it was estimated that Syria generally deployed a standing force of five to six divisions in this area against an Israeli force of one division.1

It is incorrectly assumed that with the proliferation of ballistic missiles, the initial terrain conditions of conventional warfare are less important. In fact, should Syria’s considerable rocket and missile forces be used to delay Israel’s reserve mobilization, then the importance of the Golan terrain will increase as Israel’s small standing army will have to fight for more extended periods of time without reserve reinforcement.

Mr. Gold points out the strategic differences between the Sinai and the Golan Heights. The Sinai analogy is inappropriate when applied to the very different situation on the Syrian border:

The fundamental security problems between Israel and Syria — the asymmetry of their standing conventional armies — has been a problem Israel once faced with Egypt. But when Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula, it compensated for its loss of control of the Sinai with “security arrangements” that fundamentally restricted Egyptian forces through demilitarized areas and limited forces zones that were a part of their Treaty of Peace.

But while these “security arrangements” were instituted in the area of Sinai, which is roughly 220 kilometers wide, the territory of the Golan Heights is largely only 25 kilometers wide and is just 12 kilometers wide at its narrowest point. In order to create sufficient security for Israel, it is necessary to institute force limitations on the Syrian Army beyond the Golan Heights, well into southern Syria.5 Given the proximity of Damascus to the Golan Heights, it is likely that Israel’s security needs for demilitarized zones will require Syria to pull back its armored forces behind its own capital.

This problem is exacerbated by Syria’s massive acquisition of ballistic missiles and rockets, especially after the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

There are further difficulties for Israel — the Syrian entanglement with Lebanon and Iran — in any potential deal with Syria. To expect the Assad regime to negotiate in good faith with the Israelis is the height of wishful thinking, given Syria’s track record of aggressive duplicity.

Mr. Gold’s conclusions:

Entering a negotiation when such broad differences of substance exist is highly problematic. Given the continuing strategic importance of the Golan Heights, it would be a cardinal error for Israel to put into jeopardy its own security by agreeing to come down from this dominant terrain. Finally, such an initiative could also jeopardize Israel’s ties with its most important ally, the United States.

All of this is absolutely true. And so we return to the central question: what is Ehud Olmert really doing?

Is he serious? If not, what does he intend to do if the United States holds his feet to the fire and attempts to make him cut a deal with Bashar al-Assad?

The Carter administration began a tradition among American presidents: before leaving office, they attempt to construct for themselves a “legacy” by brokering that most elusive of conditions, peace in the Middle East.

George W. Bush is no exception. Like his predecessor, he has instructed his Secretary of State to engineer a deal that will bring peace — or whatever passes for it in the region — between Israel and “Palestine”.

And, also like his predecessor, the intransigence of the Arabs requires twisting the screws on the Jews. Israel, after all, has proved almost infinitely flexible in the past — why not try one more time?

So the big question still remains: what will happen when the United States calls Mr. Olmert’s bluff and makes him an offer that he can’t refuse?

Will he come down from the Heights?

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Welcome to the Dutch Democratic Kingdom, Part 2

A report on the latest multicultural follies from the Netherlands by our expatriate Dutch correspondent H. Numan.


A busy week, last week. Our halal f(r)iends have been very active. In the village of Huizen a one or two Muslims complained about a nude painting. The dhimmi-in-chief hastened to remove the offensive painting from sight. We really can’t have offended people in the village, can we?

This is the offensive painting. Personally, I don’t like modern art, but it wouldn’t bother me a lot if I saw it hanging in a kindergarten.

Our (former) national carrier KLM also acted very quickly to behave as proper dhimmis have to. A Muslim woman, traveling alone complained to a stewardess she was seated next to a man. This was offensive to her. Kindly remove the infidel. She didn’t utter a word to the man, and rightly so. A woman talking to a strange man! The very idea…

However, I do wonder how on earth it is possible for a (Muslim) woman to travel unsupervised. Surely this must be a harlot! Righteous women would never do such a vile act.

The gentleman in question, Mr. Lex van Drooge, is a CDA city counselor of Amsterdam. You know, the city that never stops. Drinking tea, that is. Nice to see he experienced what it is to be a dhimmi. He was, however, upgraded to business class.


[Nothing follows]

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The Right of Reproduction

Below is the latest guest-essay by our Russian correspondent Dimitri K.


The Right of Reproduction
by Dimitri K.

It is widely accepted that, in the relationship between a citizen and the state, the right of violence has been delegated from the citizen to the state. The state protects its citizens, solves their disputes, and uses violence if necessary.

There are disputes about to what extent that right should be delegated, but almost everybody agrees that to some extent such a delegation is necessary. The result is a more or less peaceful and civilized society.

With the advance of socialism, other responsibilities were also delegated to the state: health, education, food, and much more. That may have created some problems through inefficient management by bureaucrats, but it was still not a complete failure. In most cases states could manage those needs so that society could survive and develop.
- - - - - - - - -
In this reliance on the state, there is one function which nobody usually mentions, but it is one of the most important functions of the society: reproduction. In their reliance on the state, many people decided that the populating of the country can also be delegated to the state. They tacitly assumed that if they pay taxes, they can rely on the state in this delicate issue, too.

The state tried hard, but without citizens’ participation it was almost impossible to achieve. Finally, the state found the only available solution — immigration. Immigration is the bureaucratic mechanism used to populate the country.

Now, the question is: what rights do we need to start having children? Do we need any violence, at least imaginary, in order to reproduce? Do we need any other rights for this, except the right to have sex? What are we missing, people?

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The Dhimmi News from Sweden

Sweden in the 21st century seems to outsiders to be a huge insane asylum. The Swedes that I know — both personally and via email — are well aware of the official lunacy that reigns in their country.

Our Swedish correspondent LN emailed us this morning with a couple of items from the New Multicultural Sweden. First, the latest from Law Enforcement:

This is the new Swedish police car.

Are they perhaps expecting something?

And then he talked about Sweden’s extensive efforts to combat “discrimination”:

This is the logo of DO, Ombudsmannen mot etnisk diskriminering, the Ombudsman against ethnic discrimination (or perhaps the Dhimmification Ombudsman).

The left hand is holding a sphere, and the same left hand is pressing away an identical sphere. Use it as a projective test of your frontal lobes!

I suppose the message is that the two spheres are not treated equally. A genius must have been at work. Skaal!

DO has got an office of almost sixty administrators and lawyers. The latest case resulted in a municipal office having to pay damages of SEK 160,000 ($27,175) to a Bosnian Muslim who did not behave in a normal Swedish way by saying hello and shaking hands with a woman, and thus did not get the job. He was “religiously discriminated against”.

In Rome you do not do as the Romans do any longer.

I did a little research on the Discrimination Ombudsman, and found the website for Ombudsmannen mot etnisk diskriminering. There is an English language version of the instructional page on how to file a complaint about discrimination. When you open the drop-down list to choose your language, this is what you see:
- - - - - - - - -

• ¿Discriminado/a? (sp.)
  
• Arabiska - هل تعرضت للتمييز العنصري؟
  
• Cudahî dîtin? (nordkurd.)
  
• Discriminado/a? (portug.)
  
• Discriminated? (eng.)
  
• Diskriminatsia? (kelderari)
  
• Diskrimineerattu? (meänkeli)
  
• Diskriminiert? (tyska)
  
• Diskriminirani? (bosn/serb/kro)
  
• Diskriminirim/o/i? (rom.arli)
  
• I diskriminuar? (albanska)
  
• Jesteś dyskryminowany? (pol.)
  
• Jiddisch
  
• Laejhteme (sydsam.)
  
• Persiska - آيا مورد تبعيض واقع شده ايد؟
  
• Ressentez une discrimination? (fr.)
  
• Ryska - Вы подвергаетесь
  
• Somaliska - Fal takoorid ah
  
• Sydkurdiska - ههڵاوێردراویت؟
  
• Syrjitty? (fi.)
  
• Thailändska - ถูกกีดกัน?
  
• Türkçe (Turkiska)
  
• Vealahuvvon? (lulesam.)
  
• 你是否被歧视？(mandarin)

Do you notice anything about that list?

Swedish — svensk — isn’t on it.

The list includes North Kurdish and South Kurdish, but not Swedish.

In other words, it’s impossible to discriminate against a “person of Swedish background”.

The page offers the following enticement to a discriminated-against person of non-Swedish background:

Discriminated? (eng.)

Were you bypassed for the job you sought and believe it’s because you wore a veil or head cloth? Were you denied an apartment and believe it’s because you have a foreign name? Do your classmates say insulting things about your skin color, your ethnic group or your religion?

If the answer is yes, then you could have been the victim of ethnic or religious discrimination. There are laws that prohibit discrimination in different areas of society.

What DO can do for you

If you have been the victim of ethnic or religious discrimination you can file a complaint with the Ombudsman against ethnic discrimination (DO). You can call our advice line, phone: 08-508 887 00. You can receive legal support free at this number. You do not need to tell us your name when you call for advice.

DO can even represent you in Court. Send your complaint by e-mail or regular post to DO. You can obtain the form for filing a complaint by downloading it from our website or by calling and ordering it.

This is DO

DO is a government agency with nearly 50 employees. The ombudsman is Katri Linna, who has been appointed by the Swedish government. DO works to prevent and stop all forms of ethnic and religious discrimination in society.

This is how to contact DO
The Ombudsman against ethnic discrimination (DO)
Visiting address: Drottninggatan 89
Postal address: Box 3045
103 64 Stockholm

Phone: 08-508 887 00
Fax: 08-508 887 50
Website: www.do.se
E-mail: do@do.se

If I were a person of Swedish background residing in the nation formerly known as Sverige, I know what I’d do.

I’d deluge the offices of the Ombudsman against ethnic discrimination with phone calls, faxes, emails, and postal letters. Every day I’d write a message in Turkish, Somali, or Yiddish (since Swedish isn’t permitted). In it I’d detail the horrendous discrimination that I, as a helpless person of Swedish background, experience at the hands of Swedish officialdom.

Every day. Repeat as often as necessary. Keep those cards and letters coming, folks!

I’d make those fifty-odd employees of DO earn their generous salaries. I’d keep them hopping. They’d be so busy filing memos — and writing me back to tell me that my case had no merit — that they wouldn’t have time for coffee or falafel breaks.

That’s what I’d do if I were Swedish.

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An Open Letter to Barack Obama

Manda Zand-Ervin and her daughter Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi are Iranian-American human rights activists and co-founders of the Alliance of Iranian Women. Earlier today they posted the following open letter to Barack Obama at Pajamas Media.


May 24, 2008

Dear Senator Barack Obama:

After the recent days of highly charged commentary about “appeasement,” we thought that as Iranian-Americans, we would convey to you the feelings of most people in Iran and the Iranian diaspora at large. It is important that a decision to dialogue with the Islamic Republic of Iran not be made in haste, for the purpose of winning the election. Instead, you now have a unique opportunity to make good on your message of change.

On September 24, 2004, while a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Illinois, you suggested that “surgical missile strikes” on Iran may become necessary. “Launching some missile strikes into Iran is not the optimal position for us to be in” given the ongoing war in Iraq, you told the Chicago Tribune. You continued: “On the other hand, having a radical Muslim theocracy in possession of nuclear weapons is worse”.

Your change in approach is now stunning for many Iranians. It is not that we want our country to be bombed, but the point is, why did you so suddenly and without explanation go from that extreme to the extreme of “unconditional dialogue”?

Senator, since 1979 the Mullahs of Iran have killed upwards of one million Iranians, not to mention the nearly one million sacrificed to the 8-year-long Iran/Iraq war. And what the Iranian people have withstood in terms of outrageous human rights violations is shocking; public hangings, stoning, flogging, cutting off limbs, tongues and plucking out eyeballs are an everyday occurrence across Iran. All are meant to strike fear of the ruling Mullahs into people’s hearts.

Since you began talking about unconditionally dialoguing with the Islamic regime of Iran, you too have struck absolute fear in the hearts of the Iranian people, both inside and outside Iran. The few Iranian-Americans who support you are well-intentioned individuals who have been swept up in the excitement and fervor of your campaign. But we can wholeheartedly assure you that your comments have landslide opposition within the much greater Iranian heart both inside and outside Iran.

Iranians believe that the only country who has the moral authority and is able to support them is the United States of America, a country whose foundation as a melting pot mirrors the true character of the once great Persian Empire. But the fact is, as John Bolton so aptly puts it: “Negotiation is a tactic, not policy.” Your policy of direct and unconditional negotiation will give the Mullahs of Iran the legitimacy that they need for more oppression. The real losers will be the already weary people of Iran, whose dreams of freedom and democracy will be dashed for a long time to come. If you empower that regime, the mullahs will continue to harm a country that is already totally economically devastated, as well as socially and politically oppressed.

And rest assured that they will have no qualms about exporting the kind of rule they have established inside Iran to the rest of the world; that is an undeniable fact that they themselves have openly admitted. One can see the proof in Syria and Lebanon.
- - - - - - - - -
On September 18, 2001, defying the regime’s warnings and pressure, brave Iranians were the only people in the Middle East to hold a candlelight vigil in solidarity with America. The thousands who marched peacefully down one of the main Boulevards of Tehran were brutally attacked by revolutionary guards and paramilitary forces. Many paid a high price for their bravery: they were arrested and hauled off to prison.

Iranians have struggled since the 1850’s for modernity, sovereignty and progress for our nation; Iran had a constitutional revolution in 1906 to separate the government from religion. Iranians are a progressive people and our cultural identity is very different from any of the other nations in the region.

Cyrus the Great wrote the first declaration of human rights in Iran more than 2500 years ago. The actual Cylinder upon which the declaration was carved is housed in the British Museum in London, and its replica is in the second floor lobby of the United Nations.

Senator, Europeans, through Jack Straw of the U.K., Dominique de Villepin of France and Joschka Fischer of Germany, tried negotiations for five years with the so-called moderate reformist, Mullah President Khatami. That effort ended in disaster, with the European Union admitting its failure. President Reagan tried also. He sent a cake and a Qur’an to Khomeini, but Khomeini fed the cake to dogs and willfully ignored president Reagan’s proposal of friendship. President Clinton worked diligently on negotiations for eight years. Two secretaries of State, Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright, both failed — during the regime of the same Mullah President, Khatami. In fact, it was Warren Christopher who called the regime of Iran evil after over three years of unsuccessful negotiations. Mrs. Albright even publicly apologized to the Mullahs of Iran for America’s sins. She eliminated trade sanctions on three items as a goodwill gesture and offered incentives on Iranian frozen assets, but at every point the Mullahs ungraciously found excuses not to hail the repeated gestures of good will, and refused to take one step forward.

The most important fact to remember is that while the negotiations were going on between the Clinton Administration and the Mullahs of Iran, they were continuing the development of their hidden nuclear program. Do you really think you can trust these people?

We appreciate the fact that you believe this administration has not done a good job in negotiations, but they have tried. They tried directly and indirectly, behind closed doors and in public. If the Mullahs of Iran wanted to negotiate, there was the April 2006 package approved by the European Allies and Russia and offered by the U.S. with good will and many incentives. Yet typically and inexplicably, Iran remained recalcitrant and rejected it.

Now here is a proposal for you:

America led the world in supporting the Eastern European Solidarity Movement, by which ultimately the Eastern bloc was able to free itself from communist domination and dictatorships. The international community weakened the South African regime by supporting and empowering Mr. Mandela against South Africa’s racial apartheid regime, which was eventually forced to step aside peacefully and allow change for the better to begin.

The Iranian government is, by all definitions and international laws and United Nation’s resolutions, a gender apartheid regime. What would happen if you declare Iran a Gender Apartheid country and not the representative of the oppressed women of Iran? Support the millions of laid-off and destitute Iranian workers, students, and teachers, as well as the estimated 23,000 innocent political prisoners who are being tortured in prisons for speaking out against these tyrants. Support the average Iranian and not the Islamic regime. Put America’s power behind what is right — and watch the people of Iran usher out the Mullahs and democratically elect a government that truly represents the people of Iran.

This will be a bold and thoughtful way of managing the foreign policy of America. It is the picture of your message of change, at work not only for America, but the world at large, Senator. Appeasement of dictators and oppressors is just as unwise as war. A nation is made up of people, not its leaders. The only people in this case who are worth negotiating with are the people of Iran, who are the only friends America should want in Iran — not the tyrants who have hijacked that great nation.

America is in no position to lose more friends.

In closing, Senator, even if you manage to dialogue with the ruling clergy in Iran, they will never keep their word. They are masters of deception, manipulation, rhetoric and spin. They are incapable of even honoring their own signatures, and refuse to abide by the terms and conditions of treaties that they themselves have agreed upon time and time again, as we have witnessed in their reactions to U.N. resolutions.

We were born and raised in Iran, and we do know Iran’s Mullahs.

Respectfully,
Manda Zand-Ervin and Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

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More on the Exeter Nail-Bomber

The latest news on Nicky Reilly, the alleged Exeter nail-bomber, describes him as an autistic young man who was brainwashed into Islamic radicalism.

If you read the details in today’s Telegraph, you’ll notice that he’s more accurately described as having Asperger’s Syndrome, which is slightly different from autism.

[Update: A correction, via Zonka in the comments:

“Asperger’s Syndrome is a form of high-functioning autism, not ‘slightly different from autism’. Autism is a general diagnosis and people with autism are generally as different from each other as normal people are, and the term autism is as meaningful as ‘dental problems’, which also covers a lot of more precise diagnoses.

“Sorry to nitpick here, but having autistic kids, I am tired of the general ignorance of the autism issue.”]

You’ll also notice that Mr. Reilly himself claimed to be “brainwashed”, even as he continued under the sway of his radical indoctrinators. Somehow he retained enough sense to recognize what had happened to him and describe it to his neighbors.

According to the article:

The man detained over a suspected suicide bomb attack in Exeter was an autistic 22-year-old allegedly radicalised by a gang of suspected Muslim radicals who were being monitored by police and MI5, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Investigating officers said that Nicky Reilly received a text message of “encouragement” hours before the nailbomb attack in a family restaurant.

Police have made the first arrests as the net closed in on the suspected radicals alleged to have groomed the bomber.

Sources close to the investigation said that the alleged corruption of a vulnerable young man — who suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome, had a history of self harm and had attempted suicide several times — was a “new horrific low” for Muslim extremism in Britain.

This may be a “new horrific low” for Muslims in the UK — I’ll let our British readers make the case for or against this assertion — but it’s certainly not a new low for Islam in general. The use of children and the mentally retarded, of the weak, the vulnerable, and the helpless, is now standard operating procedure throughout the bloody margins of the Ummah. A brain-damaged youth is simply a human remote-control explosive device for the psychopaths who direct his actions.
- - - - - - - - -

Detectives believe Mr Reilly planned to commit suicide and allegedly had help in constructing three “rudimentary but viable” bombs that had never been seen in Britain before. They were constructed from sodium hydroxide, aluminium foil strips and an essential oil, combined with kerosene.

It was confirmed that there were three devices in a bag packed with nails. One was partially detonated in the toilets of a restaurant in the Princesshay centre. The other two failed to go off.

“It could be set off by shaking the mixture but we are still not sure if the device was being primed or it was actually planned to be set it off in the toilets, in the belief it would blow out the whole restaurant” the source added.

“If it had gone up it would certainly have caused a huge fireball and the idea that this was happening in a family restaurant packed with children is awful.”

So this is what almost happened in Exeter. How aware were the authorities of what was going on?

Special Branch officers were monitoring a group of alleged radicals in Plymouth, where Mr Reilly lives with his mother. Early investigations suggest comparisons with an al-Qaeda “inspired” attack but not one necessarily directed by a senior figure.

The source said: “We were aware of this group and of Mr Reilly himself but he was right on the fringes of a group that did not appear to be planning any attacks.

Now we know that Special Branch were watching the Plymouth Group, yet they had no inkling of what was being planned. If Mr. Reilly had been luckier or more competent… What then?

“At the moment we are looking at 200 separate groups and this was just one of those. We were observing them at a local level but had no detailed surveillance.”

Two hundred separate groups! How many of them are busy training their own versions of Nicky Reilly? And how may of those human auto-destruct devices will be smarter and more skilled than the would-be nail-bomber of Exeter?

A friend of Mr Reilly said he suffered from Asperger’s — a form of autism — and tried to commit suicide after problems with his girlfriend in his late teens. He was sectioned, and after being released from a mental hospital he was allegedly groomed by a group of radicals.

Locals said Mr Reilly changed his name to Mohammed Rasheed last year and claimed he was “brainwashed” by men, who he would meet at a local internet cafe, kebab shop and outside a fish and chip shop.

This is the strangest part of the story: Mr. Reilly knew he had been brainwashed. Was he unable to stop himself from continuing in his deadly mission? Had he become an automaton, without the agency or volition to change the course of his own behavior?

And what about the “locals” who knew about the brainwashing? What did they think was going on?

Plymouth has a 3,500 strong Muslim community but [Omar Siddiqui, president of the Islamic Society at the university] said he could not believe the possibility that Mr Reilly had been radicalised in the city.

Mr Siddiqui said: “The Islamic community in Plymouth is very peaceful and we have never had any problems her at the mosque or the university.”

He said of Mr Reilly: “He always struck me as being not quite well in the head but he seemed a nice guy. He was always polite and greeted me nicely. He did seem to be extremely religious after his conversion.”

So here’s the story: a nice guy, not quite well in the head, falls in with a new set of companions who introduce him to the joys of Islam. Somehow, despite his mental disability, he learns how to build explosive devices and then tries to blow himself up in a toilet stall.

And yet the local Islamic community is “very peaceful”.

Who are you going to believe, Omar Siddiqui or your lying eyes?

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The Door Out of Islam

I’ve written previously that the portal to Islam is a one-way valve: people may pass through the door into Islam, but no one is allowed to return through it, on pain of death.

It’s certainly true that once Muslims become a majority in a country, they use any and all methods at their disposal — lethal violence, threats, intimidation, legal sanctions, economic incentives, punitive taxation, clan warfare, social pressure — to persuade unbelievers to convert to Islam and stay there.

Take, for example, this news article from AKI, which reports that Al-Qaeda is trumpeting the success of its mission to keep churches out of Arab countries:

Al-Qaeda halts spread of the church in Arab world, claims leader

A senior al-Qaeda leader, Abu Yahya al-Libi, claims that the terror organisation has stopped the expansion of the church in the Arab world.

“If it wasn’t for our heroes, today we would have many churches in the Arabian Peninsula, as we have already seen with the opening of one in Qatar,” said al-Libi in a video message posted to Islamist websites.

He was referring to the Catholic church inaugurated in the Qatari capital, Doha, in March this year.

Al-Libi also talked about the “danger” posed by inter-religious dialogue between the Arab Ulema or Muslim religious leaders and their Christian counterparts.

The 40-minute message entitled, “The moderation of Islam and the moderation of defeat”, seeks to refute the notion of a moderate Islam.

“At this moment there is a crusader campaign against Islam and that has succeeded in corrupting the personalities in our religion,” al-Libi said.

Here we come to the contradiction that lies at the heart of Islam: if the religion of the Prophet is so true, so perfect, so exactly right for the human race, why is force necessary to install it and maintain it?

If Muslims can be “corrupted” by Christian ideas, there must be something inherently attractive about Christianity that lures them away from Islam.

Thus, violent intimidation must be employed to prevent at all costs even the slightest whiff of Islamic revisionism:
- - - - - - - - -

“Changes in Islamic thought are happening in particular in the most important Arab countries. With the excuse of moderation, they are corrupting our faith.”

He said that Christians “use false slogans and declare that civilisations are talking and not fighting, that the religions are getting closer and are not clashing.”

So the slogans are false, but also so convincing that they tempt believers into giving up their faith in Allah. There’s no explanation of why false ideas can gain such ascendancy, but simply an absolute determination to keep them from taking hold.

In particular, the political leaders of Arab states are too blame for their laxity:

Al-Libi criticised these “ideas of the unbelievers”.

[…]

Al-Libi attacked Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, who has suggested hosting a conference on religious dialogue in Saudi Arabia.

“The guardian of monotheism has raised the flag of brotherhood between religions and speaks about things that he does not know,” al-Libi said.

As soon as the door opens to “brotherhood between religions”, many Muslims try to leave through it, and must be forcibly prevented from doing so. True ecumenism would only serve to emphasize the fragility of Islam, and how dependent it is upon coercion, intimidation, and censorship to maintain its hold over Muslims.

Al-Qaeda is well-advised to keep the churches out of Araby, because there is considerable evidence that mass conversion out of Islam occurs whenever possible. This happens even when it is dangerous to do so, as it almost always is. Recently there have been reports that up to a million Iranians have converted to Christianity, despite this horrible risks they face as apostates in Iran.

The latest news concerns Muslims in Kosovo who are converting to Roman Catholicism:

Just last week, a group of 32 individuals of the same family, the Sopi of Lapushnik, converted to Catholicism. Lapushnik is a village located in the north-eastern part of Kosovo, in the same region of Drenica that was the cradle of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and that has traditionally harboured the more fierce resistance against Belgrade. A spokesperson for the family, Ismet Sopi, has told local journalists that there are many more people who intend to convert from Islam in that region, “maybe as many as 320 or 3,200”.

If these reports are true — if, despite the presence of the KLA and hard-line Saudi-funded Wahabbists in Kosovo, Muslims are turning to Christianity — then Islam’s hold at the margins is not as strong as its spokesmen would have us believe.

Members of the Ummah who are only nominal Muslims, when presented with an attractive alternative, tend to shed their Islamic identity rather easily for something that is less harsh and more humane. Christianity does not use a sword to persuade or retain its adherents.

As Pope Benedict XVI said so controversially at Regensburg in 2006:

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the “Book” and the “infidels”, [the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus] addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”. The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. “God”, he says, “is not pleased by blood — and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death…

If the Iranians and the Kosovars are any indication, Al-Qaeda’s efforts to stop the spread of churches are in vain. The “world’s fastest-growing religion” is thus revealed as a sham, a propaganda ploy intended to hoax the infidels into backing a sure winner.

Islam is brittle and vulnerable. One little push will shatter the façade and turn it into the world’s fastest-shrinking religion.


Hat tips: insubria for the AKI article; Queen for the Kosovo story.

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Guess Who’s Last?

Our Swedish correspondent LN sent me this image of a Lega Nord poster from the recent Italian election campaign.

The text reads: “Guess who’s last? For rights on: housing, jobs, and health care.”

Look at those delightfully racist and xenophobic caricatures! No wonder the Italians voted in droves for the Lega Nord.

And the Muslim guy is holding a — gasp! — scimitar.

Islamophobia!


[Nothing follows]

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Sniper shooting Koran hardly “criminal behavior”

Diana West just sent us an email — her latest column didn’t quite make the deadline for newspaper publication, so she has posted it on her blog.

Her editorial concerns the recent incident in which a soldier in Iraq used the Koran for target practice. When news of the incident emerged, Major General Jeffery Hammond was forced to make an abject apology to tribal leaders, and another officer kissed a copy of the holy book to demonstrate his repentance (and that of the U.S. Army).

The situation would be ludicrous except for the fact that — predictably — people have now been killed in Afghanistan during demonstrations about the incident.

What is it about Muslims and the Koran that can reduce even the U.S. military to such a state of slavish submission?

Here’s what Ms. West has to say about the whole sorry affair:

Sniper shooting Koran hardly ‘criminal behavior’
by Diana West

It is late August 1939. American columnist Augusta “Gusto” Nash, played by the incomparable Claudette Colbert in the 1940 movie “Arise, My Love,” is sitting in a French railway car taking her from Paris (and love interest Ray Milland) to her next assignment: Adolph Hitler’s Berlin. Not surprisingly, she is boning up for her new post in the Nazi capital by reading “Mein Kampf.” Turning the pages, she looks increasingly disgusted, finally becoming incensed to the point where she slams the book shut and tosses it out the window.

The audience doesn’t learn precisely what that final straw was, but given the book’s notorious anti-Semitism, racism and militaristic plans for world domination, it’s not hard to imagine. Which makes me wonder: What if, in a 21st-century update of the movie, a columnist were filmed en route to Riyadh reading the Koran? Given the book’s notorious anti-Semitism (not to mention anti-Christianism), Islamic supremacism and jihadist exhortations for world domination, what if a postmodern-day Western-reared correspondent were depicted becoming agitated to the point of throwing the Koran out the window?

Not very easy to imagine this scenario coming to a multiplex near you. At least not without bomb threats, bombast and boycotts from the world of Islam (not to mention assorted yelps and cries from the stateside sensitivity police).

- - - - - - - - -

But it’s a setup worth considering — quietly, privately, in that shrinking mental domain still free from speech controls (for now, anyway) — if only as a bit of a culture check on a real-live news story that came out of Iraq this week when a U.S. sniper was discovered to have used a Koran for target practice in the former insurgent stronghold of Radwaniyah.

And what is the point of comparison here between movie fiction and recent fact? Namely, the contrasting reactions to these two manifestations of contempt for anti-liberty ideologies. Americans in 1940 widely shared Gusto Nash’s loathing for Hitler’s totalitarian message. In 2008, the superiors of the soldier in question, right on up the chain of command to commander-in-chief George W. Bush, only express their respect for, and, in a very frightening way, submission to the Koran despite its totalitarian message — and even at the expense of the soldier’s Constitutional rights.

The fact is, assuming this Koran belonged to the soldier, there is nothing illegal about shooting it or throwing it away. Impolitic, perhaps; but snipers — trained rather specifically in this conflict to kill jihadists, who are, above all, inspired by the violent exhortations contained within the Koran — are not diplomats…

Read the rest at Diana West’s blog.

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Gregorius Nekschot and the Dutch Political Situation

Concerning cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot’s upcoming hearing in the Dutch Parliament, our expatriate Dutch correspondent H. Numan had this to say:

Regrettably, this hearing won’t change anything. That is the benefit of having a solid position in parliament.

You are familiar with the political situation in Holland? Almost every cabinet is formed with the cooperation of the CDA. Without them almost no government can be formed.

The current coalition is CDA, PvdA and CU, in that order. The PvdA is polled at an absolute low right now: 18 seats. They simply cannot afford to blow up the cabinet. CU is there just to make up for the required majority. Not that they have a big problem with this heavy-handed action.

The CDA got two slaps in the face: Hirsh Balin, the Justice minister got his proposal to strengthen the blasphemy laws returned by parliament, and later also by the government itself.

Even if a motion of rejection would be accepted by the house, what then? Hirsh Balin would have to submit his resignation. Likely, so will his fellow CDA ministers, thus collapsing the government.

And then? We will have elections. Almost certainly the PvdA would be sent to the opposition, and not even as leader. The CDA would return to govern again. Also almost certain and inevitable.

- - - - - - - - -

ToN is, as I see it, a fake party, set up to draw voters away from the evil PVV. However, if the government falls, they aren’t ready. They haven’t a program, and I assume they’re working desperately to get at least something going. But ToN has no position on immigrants (read Muslims and East Europeans) which is something that their constituents find highly important. ToN actually supports a Turkish EU membership, completely opposite to what their constituents want.

One can never forecast the outcome of elections, and least of all now. I expect a massive win for the PVV, but even if they go from 9 to 25 seats (which I doubt), will it be enough to break the cordon sanitaire?

There isn’t much choice, though. CDA will win at least 25 seats. PvdA looses massively (they’re out), but it all depends on the voters. Will they switch to the communist party, renamed the Socialist Party? D’66 is a bit of a misfit. Neither outright socialist nor liberal. But they are polled for a come back. The VVD is also loosing massively.

So, to cut a long story short, Hirsh Balin basically says: “Okay. Go ahead. Make my day. I dare you to blow up the government.” Knowing full well the last thing the PvdA wants is an election. The CDA will loose, certainly, but it won’t keep them out in the next round.

Thus, expect the usual waffle and nothing more. But if the government has to resign (stranger things have happened), we are in for a stormy election.

Our Amsterdam correspondent Sagunto weighed in with this:

There’s a special situation at work in the Netherlands that needs a reminder, contributing to the reason many people still voted for the Christian Democrats (our prime Dhimmister JPB) in the elections of 2007, and that is the shock and aftermath of the murder of Pim Fortuyn. People were accustomed to the complacent “post-politics” of the nineties; that situation was completely shattered by the analysis of Fortuyn and his success; then his violent death followed and people fled in fear and disgust to the party that seemed to promise “peace and quiet”.

Balkenende was the right man for the occasion: look at that face. Never not a dull moment with JPB. That, together with the growing support for Wilders and Verdonk, is also changing fast. The peace and quiet attraction is beginning to wear off and the stifling of free speech when Islam is concerned is only creating more resentment among the general populace. Just to get back to the Fortuyn murder: had it been a Muslim who killed him, civil war would have been an almost certain fact, even in 2002.

The difference with Theo Van Gogh in 2004 was of course that Fortuyn was a political focal point for people to rally around and act. Theo van Gogh was an individual filmmaker without a voting-base or organization of some sort. That’s where the simple problem lies: many people — especially in large cities — are not an active member of any (political) group whatsoever and the level of fragmentation is high.

I don’t want to call it “individualization”, because traditionally people in Holland have always had a distinct tendency to mind their own business to the extreme (as opposed to Swedes for instance, who — generally speaking — have a more genuine “egalitarian” sense of community. Which many of the Dutch wouldn’t like at all, myself included). What appears to outsiders as a manifestation of some egalitarian sentiments in Holland is actually quite the opposite: Dutch people on the whole are hyper-individualists in the old sense and “equality” means that no one should get the idea — including the government — that he can meddle into the affairs of his neighbour.

That’s why sometimes the Dutch can really work together, just to make sure their own individual interests are protected. That’s why I keep repeating that for many Dutch, the idea of “the grand Nation of the Netherlands” is still somewhat embarrassing and even laughable. And I know it may sound strange, but that’s the way it should be, because it’s part of Dutch tradition. Just look at the European Championships this summer: you’ll see an army of orange. Not because the Dutch are nationalists but precisely because they know how ridiculous that notion is and how silly they look (they even wore German war-helmets in orange when the World Championships were held in Germany).

That’s also why you’ll never hear too many people shout in a martial fashion at a threat, but make no mistake, the anger will build to a point that the simplest incident can suddenly become the focal point for massive retaliation. That’s also why I’m a bit reluctant to go along with the “conventional war” speech. That doesn’t even apply to the struggle of governments against global Islamic terror, and it sure as hell doesn’t describe what will become reality in a few years: civil war (mainly civilians + avant gardists versus the State, the police-force and the multicultists’ main clients, i.e. Muslims)

The “peace and quit” doctrine of Balkenende will backfire more and more; Wilders and Verdonk will gain support, which will itself lower the threshold for counterjihad initiatives by ordinary people; the elites of the political parties now in charge, will fight to hold on to power, presumably by invoking EU pressure; that will only breed more resentment, and one day an incident on one of our beaches (think of the Australian situation not so long ago) will be the spark that fully ignites the civil war.

All that’s needed are some political focal points, and we have them in place. Now we wait, and I know some will be confused by the relative silence, like the commenter who thought there must be little or no awareness among the people. I know that you know better, and that’s the great value of having international contacts.

So that’s the situation in the Netherlands from the Dutch perspective. If anyone else wants to add his or her two cents’ worth, feel free to include it in a comment.

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Nail Bomb Explodes in an Exeter Restroom

A man reputed to be a mentally ill convert to Islam (is that a redundancy?) has been hospitalized under armed guard after detonating a nail bomb in his own face. The incident occurred in the toilets of a restaurant in Exeter (UK) when the device apparently detonated prematurely while he was arming it. Another bomb was found at the scene.

Here’s the report from The Daily Mail :

A Muslim convert with a history of mental illness was being held tonight after two bombs were found in a family restaurant toilet following an explosion at lunchtime.

Police and bomb disposal teams were called in after Nicky Reilly, 22, apparently attempted to detonate a nail bomb.

Mr Reilly, who suffered serious facial injuries in the blast, is thought to have carried out the attempted attack after being targeted for radicalisation by Islamic extremists.

Diners heard three blasts which sounded like gunshots go off in a toilet at the Giraffe cafe in Exeter city centre as they were having lunch today.

Eyewitnesses said officers had to break down the cubicle door because the 22-year-old refused to come out.

In a further development, police carried out an armed operation in Plymouth, over fifty miles away where they searched a premises in connection with the bombing.

Following the explosion this lunchtime, two further bombs were found in a family restaurant toilet.

Eyewitnesses said officers had to break down the cubicle door because the 22-year-old refused to come out.

When he emerged, wearing jeans and a dark t-shirt, blood was running down his face and all over his clothes.

- - - - - - - - -

He was arrested at the scene and taken to hospital, where he is under armed guard, for treatment to a severely lacerated eye and facial burns. None of the customers or 15 staff at the restaurant was hurt.

There were claims the suspect was a Muslim convert and detectives are now trying to determine whether he has links to Islamic extremism.

Devon and Cornwall police refused to say what offence he was being held on suspicion of but sources close to the inquiry now fear the man was arming a bomb when part of it blew up in his face.

Police revealed that a second device had been found nearby.

Police forensic teams are believed to have recovered one or two canisters of sodium-based home made explosive either from the toilet or outside the restaurant.

A 14-strong team from the Metropolitan’s Counter Terrorism Command has travelled to Exeter to assist in the investigation.

Architect Peter Lacey, 63, and his wife Celia, 60, had just arrived to have lunch at Giraffe when the explosions went off at about 12.50pm.

Mr Lacey, from Exeter, said: “I heard a noise which sounded like a gunshot and at first I thought it was a kitchen accident of some sort, albeit a very noisy one.

“About a second afterwards there was another identical sound and maybe a second later a third…”

Further details may be found in the original article.


Hat tip: Lionheart.

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Insulting the Scientologists

“This is just barmy.”

That’s the voice of traditional British common sense. This story is definitely barmy, but we live in barmy times.

Muslims are normally the only ones who get insulted and then call on British law enforcement to help silence their critics. But this time it’s a different fringe cult that has managed to suppress the free speech of ordinary people.

According to The Telegraph:

Church of Scientology: Boy faces court for ‘cult not religion’ placard

A teenage boy is facing a possible criminal prosecution for holding a sign describing the Church of Scientology as a “cult”, police said on Tuesday.

The boy, who is described only as a minor, was taking part in a demonstration outside the church’s central London headquarters on May 10 when City of London Police officers ordered him to remove the placard.

It read: “Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult.”

When he refused, he was issued with a form of summons for an alleged breach of public order. Police plan to pass a file to the Crown Prosecution Service to decide whether charges can be brought.

Since the lad’s sign was simply stating his opinion, one would think that his protest would be covered by the right to free speech under English Common Law.

But anyone who thinks that is foolishly naïve. By statute, speech may be suppressed if it is “insulting”:

A spokesman for the force said the youth had been “reported” under section five of the Public Order Act, which contains measures against displaying signs considered to be “threatening, abusive or insulting”.

Consider the young boy in the photo at right. I’m insulted by his sign, and I’m sure many “persons of English background” in the UK were insulted, too.

So the police arrested him and he was remanded, right? Sentenced to six weeks of diversity training and multicultural sensitivity courses, yes?

No? Hmm…
- - - - - - - - -
Then how about this photo?

Surely somebody besides the Prophet was insulted by that sign. Were the police insulted? And then they arrested the hateful miscreant holding the sign, right?

[crickets chirping]

We know that Christians can be insulted without causing the arrest of anyone. But now there are two religions, Scientology and Islam, that are officially and statutorily protected from feeling insulted. Will there be others?

And this case has implications that extend beyond religion. Doesn’t it mean that Manchester United supporters can have Leeds United supporters arrested for their slogans and songs? In my day it was, “Dennis Law and Bobby Charlton, too — the biggest set of poofs in football boots!” Not just insults, but homophobia!

The names have changed since then, but surely the sentiments are the same. Are the Lancastrians insulted yet? It’s time to put all those Leeds supporters behind bars!

But back to the article:

Writing anonymously on an internet forum, the boy said: “Within five minutes of arriving … I was told by a member of the police that I was not allowed to use ‘that word’.”

He said he was given 15 minutes to remove the sign, which was eventually confiscated by officers.

Chief Supt Rob Bastable said: “City of London Police upholds the right to demonstrate lawfully, but we have to balance that with the right of all sections of community not to be alarmed, harassed or distressed as a result of other people’s behaviour.”

That last statement describes a Sisyphean task. If the state is to guarantee that none of its citizens will be distressed, then total control of all public behavior will be required. CCTV is just the bare beginning — voice-activated tape recorders will have to be installed in every lamppost, bus shelter, and pub. Sensitivity-enforcement officers will be stationed in all public locations.

Finally, however, the voice of sanity:

The case was described as “barmy” and an attack on free speech by Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, the human rights group.

She said: “They will be banning words like ‘war’ and ‘tax’ from placards and demonstrations next. This is just barmy.”

It’s going to get barmier yet. Just wait and see.


Hat tip: Gaia.

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Indigent Owners of Satellite Phones

Every day, two or three of these stories come across my virtual desk.

Illegal immigrants from North Africa are captured at sea in the Mediterranean, or drown attempting to get to Spain or Italy, or are caught after landing on one of the small islands off the coast of Italy.


It’s routine. If you add up the numbers, hundreds of would-be citizens of EuroMed are captured or die every week trying to cross the Mediterranean.

And those are the ones who drown or are caught. No statistics are available on those who successfully make it across and wash up eventually in Naples, Barcelona, Paris, London, or Brussels.

So this story is just more of the same, but one of the details in it caught my eye. According to ANSAmed:
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Immigration: Illegal Immigrants Rescued Off Lampedusa

LAMPEDUSA (AGRIGENTO), MAY 21 — An inflatable boat with 58 illegal immigrants, including 12 women, on board was rescued by a motorboat of the Financial Guard 35 miles south-west of Lampedusa. The immigrants were the ones to send an SOS signal with a satellite telephone. The rescue operations, coordinated by the Palermo Port Authorities’ operative central, ended at dawn.

A satellite phone! These indigent people — desperate to escape the grinding poverty of their homelands and start a better life for their children in the welfare states of Europe — were crossing the Mediterranean in a flimsy raft while carrying a satellite phone.

Did one of them just happen to pack it into his bindle along with a clean burnoose and a bag of couscous? Or was it perhaps the property of a professional people-smuggler, the Mediterranean equivalent of a “coyote” in the American Southwest?

I hope the Financial Guard are asking some pointed questions during their interrogations of these “migrants”.


Hat tip: insubria.

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Smooth-Talking Liar: Al-Rawi and Naqba

The following article is by our Austrian correspondent ESW, who is now in charge of Mission Europa Netzwerk Karl Martell, which is where it was originally posted.


Smooth-Talking Liar: Al-Rawi and Naqba
by ESW

Frequent readers of this blog will already be familiar with Omar Al-Rawi, the smooth-talking Muslim member of the Vienna city council, who represents not only the socialist party, but also the Islamic Religious Association. Apart from accusing a distinguished gentleman of being “an enemy of Islam”, he hit a new low today: “60 years of Israel equal 60 years of catastrophe”. In an op-ed in the Austrian daily Die Presse, Al-Rawi says, “The world is celebrating Israel, and we should be allowed to commemorate Naqba.”

There are people celebrating 60 years of the founding of Israel, and there are others who are talking about “naqba”, Arabic for “catastrophe”. Joy and sorrow can lie together very closely. Some are celebrating an anniversary, others are still waiting for statehood. No one is speaking of the Palestinians’ right to statehood. Naturally no one will explicitly question this right, but implicitly everything is being done to prevent this from happening. Illegal settlements are crisscrossing the country and preventing it from being economically and politically viable. This is a policy of fait accompli, a done deal.

Ben Gurion himself once expressed its concern that the Arabs would never recognize Israel. Biblical legitimacy is unilateral, which may apply for the Jews, but this cannot obligate others, especially not the Arabs, the immediate adversaries in the conflict. The horrors of the Holocaust constitutes the convincing argument in this discussion, since none other than Abba Eban called the 1967 borders the borders of Auschwitz.

But this legitimacy is only partly universal, because the Holocaust has committed the Western world to its dark pages of history and because the Palestinians have nothing to do with the Holocaust. Still fresh in our memory is the refusal of the then Foreign Minister of Egypt, Amr Musa, who in the 1990’s refused the otherwise obligatory visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, saying that the Arabs could not be committed to the Holocaust.

- - - - - - - - -

What is left for the Arabs is the factualness of recognition of Israel. And this seems the only possible way of a pragmatic solution. Israel should allow more pragmatic rather than dogmatic discussions. Offers for a ceasefire of ten years or more should be accepted, because both politically and militarily the Israelis are overwhelming. They, above all others, bear the responsibility for ensuring that the deadlock point is overcome.

Jerusalem is already ethnically divided

Hamas will turn into a political movement, provided it gets the opportunity to do so. Such metamorphoses have often taken place in history. There must be a solution to the large problems — status of Jerusalem, settlements, right of return of displaced Palestinians — and they must be addressed urgently. Tony Judt says there will be no return of displaced Palestinians; conversely, it is time for the Jews to abandon their claims. Jerusalem is, as he says, already ethnically divided and, at the end of the day, will be the capital of both states. Israel cannot be spared of dark pages of its history and must come to terms with the past.

Thank God the Muslim immigrants in Europe have nothing to do with this dark history of Europe. But our new home obliges us bear and share responsibility with their history. You can not pick just the raisins. Therefore we are allies against any form of racism, anti-Semitism, but also Islamophobia. We will take part in dealing with history. But we will of course also show solidarity with the legitimate demand of the Palestinians. And so it should permitted for us to remember the “Naqba”.

There is only one rebuttal to these outrageous claims as of today. I shall translate and post these as soon as possible.

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Spain: Heraldic Multiculti Revisionism Goes On

This is a report from our Spanish correspondent AMDG. It was posted first on his blog; refer to the original post for links to Spanish-language sources.


This is just the latest case: Two villages in the province of Malaga will remove from their coat of arms the chain that Boabdil wears around his neck, which shows he was subjugated, not captive, by the Catholic Kings after taking over the last remnant of al-Andalus: the Kingdom of Granada. The villages are Canillas de Aceituno (2,336 inhabitants) and Sedella (688 inhabitants).

The mayor of Canillas de Aceituno, Jose Manuel Aranda (PSOE), says that he has taken this decision because the chain “represents an element of confrontation that now belongs to the past”. He adds in a pompous and confusing sentence: “We have decided to remove a symbol with connotations of racism and slavery that deepens the struggle for dominion among races, senseless in a new, free generation”.

The decision was formalized last Friday in an extraordinary plenary meeting. The proposal originated with the party ruling the city council (PSOE) and was supported by the Andalusian Party; the Popular Party voted against it.

“We do not understand how they can vote against and be in favour of continuing to use for Canillas de Aceituno symbols that are the hallmark of inequalities and that can raise xenophobic sentiments”, commented the alderman.


That is the shield before and after: Boabdil has been promoted from subject to king by removing the chain. I think this is opening Pandora’s Box.
- - - - - - - - -
It is not the first case. In 2006, the regional parliament of Aragon started the process to remove the “Moors’ heads” from its coat of arms. The heads represent the conquest of Huesca in 1096. This was the first relatively big village that the King of Aragon was able to seize, in spite of being well protected by its remarkable walls. It allowed the Kings of Aragon to leave the Pyrenees and to expand their dominions to the south; a prelude to the annexation, shortly thereafter, of the fertile lands of the Ebro Valley and its rich cities.

For the time being the Moors’ heads are still in the coat of arms, separated by St. George’s Cross.

Moors’ heads are a rather common heraldic feature. Or at least they have been common up until, now. For instance, Pope Benedict XVI has also one of those Moors’ heads in his coat of arms. In this case it is not a defeated Moor, but a pre-Islamic Moor. An opportune reminder that Moors were Christians before being invaded by the Mohammedan Arabs.

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A Book Party for Andrew Bostom

Last night I took a road trip up to Washington D.C. to attend a party given by Diana West for Andy Bostom to celebrate the publication of his new book, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism. I brought along our copy of his earlier book, The Legacy of Jihad — which has been a gold mine of original source material on Islam for me and Dymphna — and not only did Andy sign it, but I also got a signed copy of his new book. In addition I took along a copy of Diana’s book, The Death of the Grown-up, and asked her to sign it.

So I came home with an armload of celebrity autographs.

The party was a relaxed and informal affair, with a mix of people from journalism, academia, and politics. Some of the guests I had met before; others were new to me. What we all had in common was a strong interest in various aspects of the Counterjihad.

An honored guest was Steve Coughlin, who was fired from his job in the Pentagon in January for daring to point out the penetration of the United States government, including the Pentagon, by front groups of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Below is a photo of (left to right) Andy Bostom, Steve Coughlin, and Jeffrey Imm of the the Counterterrorism Blog. The latter was wearing an excellent tie — not clearly visible in the photo — made up of American flags.

- - - - - - - - -
In the photo at right are Diana West and Andy Bostom.

For several hours the discussion among different groups of people ranged across a variety of topics, including the history of jihad, the delusion that reforming Islam is possible, military affairs, the upcoming election, Ted Kennedy’s health, and inside-the-Beltway politics. I spent a fascinating time in conversation with a well-known historian about World War Two, General McArthur, George McGovern, and Jimmy Carter, among other things.

It was a most pleasant evening, and well worth the drive.

To quote Root Boy Slim:

I used to be from D.C.
But they don’t want no more of me

Still, it’s fun to go back for a visit from time to time.

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Will He Be “Blesséd John Paul” in 2009?

Life in Italy has this report:

Pope John Paul II could take a crucial step towards sainthood some time during the next 12 months, the Catholic news agency SIR reported on Tuesday.

The agency quoted remarks by Monsignor Slawomir Oder, who is heading the campaign to get the Polish pontiff canonized. According to Oder, John Paul II could be beatified ‘‘by the end of spring 2009’’.

Oder’s remarks indicate the beatification, which has already been fast-tracked, will probably not take place on October 16 of this year. There had been speculation this date would be chosen to coincide with the 30th anniversary of John Paul’s election as pope.

Beatification is the intermediate stage on the way to being declared a saint. It means that someone can be called ‘Blessed’ [pronounced “bless-éd” - D.] and that the person can be venerated by Catholics in the place where he or she lived.

The Church took the first step in the beatification process in April 2007, during a mass marking two years since the death of John Paul II.

A weighty dossier of ‘evidence’ of John Paul’s holiness, gathered by the Rome diocese and the Polish diocese of Krakow from which he came, was formally handed over at the mass.

Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the head of the Rome diocese and a longtime aide to the former pontiff, officially closed the first phase of the process with a Latin rite [?Mass].

Also present was a French nun whose inexplicable recovery from Parkinson’s disease, after she prayed to John Paul, is likely to be certified as the miracle that will qualify him for beatification.

[So where are they hiding the Devil’s Advocate in this procedure? It’s certainly not a enviable job, but it is part of the process, codified for centuries]
- - - - - - - - -
John Paul is still some way from beatification because his ‘‘heroic virtue’’ must be approved by theologians, historians and cardinals at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

Over the last three years, officials leading the campaign for beatification have gathered information on John Paul’s life, collected all his writings and heard testimony from some 130 people who knew him.

All the information has been condensed into a single document that will be examined by the three panels at the Congregation.

After beatification, another miracle is required before someone can be declared a saint, and officially venerated by Catholics everywhere.

New reports of miracles attributed to John Paul’s heavenly intervention are said to arrive in Rome every week. During John Paul’s funeral in 2005, crowds held up placards saying ‘Santo Subito!’, calling for the Polish pope to be declared a saint without going through the normal procedures.

Pope Benedict XVI has already accelerated procedures for his predecessor, waiving a rule that says the process cannot begin until at least five years have passed after the candidate’s death.

John Paul’s ‘cause’ was opened three months after his death.

This speedy path to canonization is an interesting turn of events. It has several possible motives. One might be to declare him the Patron Saint of the EU. That might bend a few noses in Brussels.

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Mamma Mia, Pass the Linguini

The way to a country’s soul is through its stomach. And European nations (there are still such things, for a while) are fed up to here with having multi-culti menus shoved on their children at school.

That nasty rule of the p.c. world is about to have its table turned over - napkins, falafel, and all - by the new government in Italy:

Ethnic food may be removed from government schools in the Italian capital, Rome, in the latest gesture by the city’s new centre-right government to target multiculturalism.

Laura Marsilio, city councillor for schools in Rome, said the local government would re-evaluate the ethnic menus of public schools, and replace it with what she called “Italian regional dishes as well as typical Mediterranean cuisine.”

Marsilio spoke to the media on Monday and said that the ‘ethnic menus’, introduced by the previous centre-left government of Romano Prodi “gave insufficient results.”

Marsilio reportedly also plans to look at centres where parents of immigrant children and their relatives are taught Italian, the laws of the country and computer classes.

“We need to see if they are really effective for integration,” Marsilio said.

The councillor also plans to ensure laws are respected with regards to the number of Italian and immigrant children in schools, because in some cases, immigrant children outnumber Italian children.

The 40-year-old Marsilio is a member of the post-fascist National Alliance party, a member of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative coalition.

However, that’s not the only heresy being committed by the Italian government:
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In an interview with Italian daily Il Nuovo in 2002, Marsilio, a city council member at the time said “To give housing to nomads (Roma Gypsies) would be a social injustice” and that they should live in “isolated camps under police surveillance.”

“They have to learn to respect the rules. They steal and mistreat minors, I don’t like them. Not because I am racist, but because they don’t obey the rules,” said Marsilio.

Now there’s a new meme for you: dislike based upon a culture of law-breaking. How novel after so many years of 1984 silence.

Theodore Dalrymple would approve, but the multi-cults must be gnashing their teeth in the outer (and unelected ) darkness.

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Foreshadowing the Lisbon Lunacy

It seems that the EU Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has found a cause to chew on: the fate of poor terrorists imprisoned by the British government.

Can you smell the future? Only the EU will decide on who is a terrorist and who is merely a psychiatric victim:

The European Court of Human Rights is to consider claims from eleven terrorism suspects that they suffered psychiatric damage when they were imprisoned by the British government.

On Wednesday the court will hold a public hearing in Strasbourg to investigate the claims in a case brought against the British government.

The applicants, none of whom have British nationality, were allegedly involved in extreme Islamist terrorist groups with links to al-Qaeda, the court said in a statement.

Six of the applicants are Algerian, and the others are French, Jordanian, Moroccan and Tunisian. Another was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, and is stateless.

Oh yes, he's stateless all right -- thanks to Jordan and the rest of the Middle East, who made sure that the PoorPals were born and died "stateless." I presume that Jordan will be one of the co-defendants, right? Of course they will. After all, this is about justice, no?

All eleven were detained after al-Qaeda’s 11 September, 2001 attacks in the US. They were imprisoned at various times between December 2001 and October 2003 and initially held at Belmarsh Prison in London under Britain’s 2001 Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act.

All the men were allegedly involved in Islamist terrorist groups with links to al-Qaeda such as the Salafite Group for Prayer and Combat (GSPC) formed in Algeria in 1998, the Tunisia Fighting Group.

The men are also said to be linked to a group of Algerian terrorists centred around al-Qaeda and GSPC member Abu Doha, known for his senior role in terror training camps in Afghanistan.

He was also linked to a Frankfurt-based cell accused of plotting to bomb the Strasbourg Christmas market in December, 1995.

The eleven are suspected of supplying false documents, purchasing IT equipment and helping young British Muslims travel from the UK to train for Jihad (holy war) in Afghanistan.

Three of the men were subsequently transferred to Broadmoor secure mental hospital following a deterioration in their mental health, including a suicide attempt.

Another was released on bail in April 2004 under conditions equivalent to house arrest, owing to serious concerns over his mental health.

A visit by Europe’s top human rights watchdog, The Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture, criticised the applicants’ conditions of detention in Belmarsh Prison and Broadmoor Hospital and reported allegations of ill-treatment by staff.

So now we have a Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture. This is the group that will help to free the terrorists and then duck for cover in Strausborg. When the rebellion (about to outlawed by Lisbon’s Lunacy) gets going, I hope one of their first targets is this Court of Human Wrongs. If not, this chamber of horrors will live on to serve as one of the primary euthanasists of justice to the citizens under its purview.
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In a report, The Council of Europe committee concluded the applicants’ poor mental state was exacerbated by the indefinite nature of their detention.

Of course, we have no baseline evidence as to the mental state of these terrorists before their incarceration. But what need for reality in the Land of Utopians?

The British Government categorically rejected the suggestion that the applicants were treated in an inhuman or degrading manner at any point during their detention.

As well as the mental harm they claim their detention in Britain caused them, the men also allege their detention was unlawful and they had only limited knowledge of the case against them and ability to challenge it.

Eight of the men still in prison or at Broadmoor were released after Part 4 of the 2001 Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act was repealed. This followed a March 2005 ruling against it on human rights grounds by the House of Lords, Britain’s upper house of parliament, sitting as the country’s highest court .

The eight men were then placed under control orders, a series of restrictions on the freedom of movement of terrorism suspects.

The control orders were brought in by Britain’s Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 to replace indefinite detention.

More recently, six of the men were place in immigration custody pending deportation to Algeria and Jordan, the European Court of Human Rights said.

Two of the men have returned voluntarily to their home countries, a court official told Adnkronos International.

Weep, Europe, for your children…


Hat tip: c_cantoni1983

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Al Qaeda in Iraq Admits It is Losing

Joe, at No Pasaran sent a link to this fellow’s report on what the jihadists are saying about the failing and falling number of insurgent operations in Iraq:

A prolific jihadist sympathizer has posted an ‘explosive’ study on one of the main jihadist websites in which he laments the dire situation that the mujaheddin find themselves in Iraq by citing the steep drop in the number of insurgent operations conducted by the various jihadist groups, most notably Al-Qaeda’s 94 percent decline in operational ability over the last 12 months when only a year and half ago Al-Qaeda accounted for 60 percent of all jihadist activity!

The author, writing under the pseudonym ‘Dir’a limen wehhed’ [‘A Shield for the Monotheist’], posted his ‘Brief Study on the Consequences of the Division [Among] the [Jihadist] Groups on the Cause of Jihad in Iraq’ on May 12 and it is being displayed by the administration of the Al-Ekhlaas website-one of Al-Qaeda’s chief media outlets-among its more prominent recent posts. He’s considered one of Al-Ekhlaas’s “esteemed” writers.

The author tallies up and compares the numbers of operations claimed by each insurgent group under four categories: a year and half ago (November 2006), a year ago (May 2007), six months ago (November 2007) and now (May 2008). He demonstrated that while Al-Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq could claim 334 operations in Nov. 06 and 292 in May 07, their violent output dropped to 25 in Nov. 07 and 16 so far in May 08. Keep in mind that these assessments are based on Al-Qaeda’s own numbers.

The author also shows that similar steep drops were exhibited by other jihadist groups, and he neatly puts it all together in … two charts…

The charts are on Talisman’s post; just scroll down. Even if the exposition is in Arabic, the scale of the drop is self-evident.

Talisman reports what he predicted (quite accurately as it turns out) for Al Qaeda in Iraq several months ago:
- - - - - - - - -

This sense that they were running out of time compelled Al Qaeda to take a bold initiative of declaring the establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq four months back, appointing the hitherto unknown Abu Omar al-Baghdadi as its head. This was no propaganda stunt for Al Qaeda. This was the real thing: the nucleus state for the caliphate, with al-Baghdadi as the candidate caliph.

But this was a fatal strategic mistake for Al Qaeda, a mistake that threatens to pull down all the other jihadist insurgent groups along with it. Al Qaeda tried to leap over reality, but it was a leap into the abyss of uncertainty. Trying to pick a caliph is fraught with historical and judicial complications since there is no historical precedent - not even from the time of the Prophet Muhammad - that would serve for an uncontroversial transfer of power. It is one of the most delicate ideological matters among jihadists, a matter so sensitive that most of them have decided to leave it aside for the time being lest it result in splintering off dissenters.

But Zarqawi’s successors, who inherited the leadership after his death last June and who are, for the most part, rash young ideologues who consider themselves the avant-garde of contemporary radical Islamism, felt that the doddering old guard of Al Qaeda - aged and increasingly inconsequential has-beens such as Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri - would never summon the nerve to force the issue of the caliphate and get it going. So they rushed into action, and it has exploded in their faces, since no other groups seem enthused to join them in this risky venture. This mistake has huge implications for the Iraqi insurgency since Al Qaeda accounts for most of it, and its strategic and ideological failure can quickly be turned into a battlefield rout.

Now: if the MSM were willing to report on the reality rather than their wishful thinking, this thing could be ended even sooner.

Remember: when victory comes, it will not be because of any help that Iraq or the Coalition received from the media, the useful idiots in our Imperial Congress, or the small but ferocious anti-war leftists who would have had us on the roof of various palaces, helicopters at the ready, to abandon our colleagues to their fate.

These people simply don’t understand commitment beyond the pain of losing soldiers, or staying to fight when the going gets rough. They are the turn-tail-and-run group, which has always existed in American culture, and always will.

We are learning how to build work-arounds against the worst of their predations, and America and her allies will prevail against them this time.

If we can just keep the kid who wants to “dialogue” with murderers and tyrants out of office and we stand a chance for victory in Iraq.

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"sacrific[ing] free... speech at the altar of standards..."

From Fjordman, an update on the Dutch cartoonist…

It appears that Gregorius Nekschot’s situation is going to get a hearing in the Dutch Parliament. There is, thankfully, concern about the right to free speech, and the way in which this was handled by the police and judiciary:

A broad Lower House majority yesterday requested an interlocutory debate on the arrest of cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot.

Labour (PvdA), the Socialist Party (SP), the conservatives (VVD), Party for Freedom (PVV), leftwing Greens (GroenLinks) and independent MP Rita Verdonk all backed a request by centre-left D66 for a debate. As well as Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin, Education Minister Ronald Plasterk will be called to account. He is responsible for culture and media policy.

The Christian democrats (CDA) and small Christian party ChristenUnie are much less critical than the Lower House majority, which considers that freedom of speech is at risk. SP, VVD, PVV and Verdonk in particular are enraged by Nekschot’s arrest.

VVD leader Mark Rutte primarily blamed the CDA ahead of the debate yesterday. “It is time the CDA came to their senses, and publicly support one of the most important basic rights in our country,” he declared, “because it appears that the CDA is prepared to sacrifice freedom of speech at the altar of standards and values.” The PVV described the arrest as the first-ever arrest of a cartoonist in the modern Western world.

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Gregorius Nekschot was arrested last week and kept in custody for 30 hours for cartoons that are “discriminatory against Muslims and people of darker skin”, as the Public Prosecutor’s Office (OM) in Amsterdam put it. Nekschot (‘Neck Shot’) has confirmed reports that around 10 police dragged him out of his home in Amsterdam, seized his computer and telephone and told him his real name would be revealed.

The arrest was particularly remarkable because it followed a complaint dating from 2005. The complaint was made at the time by Abdul Jabbar van de Ven, a Dutch convert to radical Islam. After the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, he said on TV he would thank Allah if he could arrange for MP Geert Wilders to die, “for example of cancer”.

Gregorius Nekschot publishes mainly on the Internet, but also produced a book titled ‘Nekschot: Sick jokes.’ Theo van Gogh, assassinated by a Muslim terrorist in 2004, gave space on his website to the work of Nekschot. Eight specific cartoons that the OM in Amsterdam claims are criminal have meanwhile been removed by the cartoonist from his website.

Opinion magazine HP/de Tijd is printing the eight cartoons by Gregorius Nekschot today. The magazine normally prints a cartoon by him every week.

If someone could have told us twenty years ago that supposedly adult human beings were rampaging over cartoons, we would have considered this soothsayer insane.

Now the reality is here and instead we have large numbers of insane rampagers to consider instead.

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Media Crew Assaulted at Muslim Charter School

A reader sent us an email this morning about an Islamic charter school in Minnesota:

A violent incident that yesterday at the Tarik ibn Ziyad Academy in Fridley, Minnesota, where Muslim school officials physically assaulted a local camera crew that was at a public school that is supported with public funds, while that crew reported on matters of a very public nature and interest.

The reporters who were physically assaulted were from KSTP Channel 5 in Minneapolis. Their report and video can be found here.

The original issue about the Academy — which shares premises with a mosque — is that Friday prayers were being conducted under official school auspices, and that schoolbuses to take children home weren’t available until after post-school religious instruction was finished. This latter practice, for all practical purposes, made instruction in Islam mandatory in a public school financed by the taxpayers of Minnesota.

Here’s what KSTP has to say about the incident:

News crew attacked during report at TiZA charter school

In an attempt to report about the new findings from the Department of Education Monday, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS went to Tarik ibn Zayad Academy in Inver Grove Heights.

While on school grounds, our crew was attacked by school officials. Our photographer was injured while wrestling with the two men over the camera.

Our photographer was examined by paramedics and suffered minor shoulder and back injuries.

The state education department on Monday directed the charter school to “correct” two areas related to religion at the school on Monday.

- - - - - - - - -

Tarik ibn Zayad Academy, which focuses on Middle Eastern culture and shares a mosque with the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, came under fire after a teacher alleged that the school was offering religious instruction in Islam to its students.

“The Minnesota Department of Education goes to great lengths to make clear to charter schools and their sponsors that, while schools should appropriately accommodate students’ religious beliefs, they must be ‘nonsectarian’ under the state’s charter school law,” said the state’s education Deputy Commissioner Chas Anderson.

The allegations first surfaced after an article by a columnist for the Star Tribune. The Education Department subsequently began a review of the south metro school and released its findings Monday.

The agency said it was concerned about the school, with about 300 students, accommodating communal prayer and providing transportation to an after-school religious program.

“We have directed the school to take appropriate corrective actions regarding these matters and will continue to provide oversight to ensure that the school is in compliance with state and federal law,” Anderson said.

Make sure you watch the video so that you can see for yourself the thuggish intimidation practiced by school employees. The guy who reaches his hand out to grab the camera is the same one who spoke so reasonably in other video interviews.

The school maintains that the TV crew was trespassing. I’m not certain that walking on the sidewalk in front of a public school can properly be termed “trespassing”, but — trespassing or not — what was done to the cameraman constitutes assault in my book.

Our emailer said that another news crew that was also there from another station filmed the physical assault. I couldn’t find the video in question, but KARE Channel 11 (also from Minneapolis) has some interesting video of the school.

As a final note, according to our correspondent:

The school is named after the Jihadist warrior who conquered Christian Spain in 711 A.D. His famous speech to his troops, known throughout the Muslim world, promised glorious death in Jihad, revenge, women as war booty, and placed at its center the installment of “the one true religion” by its conquest of the Infidels in Christian Spain. See the translation of the famous speech here.

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No Veils for Policewomen — In Algeria

Presumably Muslim policewomen in Sweden and Britain may wear the veil if so inclined. However, the same is not true in Algeria.

According to ANSAmed:

Algeria: No to Policewomen With Veil

ALGIERS, MAY 19 - The women who wear the hijab (the Islamic veil) will not be admitted in the Algerian police, director of the national security Ali Tounsi announced, cited by the Algerian press.

“The women who want to join the police will have to renounce the veil because this Islamic attribute is incompatible with the difficult job in the police,” Tounsi said during a ceremony of the week on the national security information in Skikda (600 km east of Algiers).

Algeria boasts the “biggest number of female agents in the countries of the Arab world”, Minister Delegate to Interior Ministry and local authorities Daho Ould Kablia said. The women in the police number some 9,000, equal to 7.8% of the total.

By 2010 the police will have some 200,000 agents, against the current 140,000, Tounsi also said. Some 40,000 in Algiers alone, against the current 23,000.

Hat tip: insubria.

[Nothing follows]

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On the Saudi Payroll in Oz

It’s out in the open now: in Australia, at least, all those friendly talking-head Muslims that you see on your TV screen are in the pay of Saudi Arabia.

According to The Australian:

Muslim leaders in pay of Saudis

SIX Australian-based Muslim clerics who are leaders of the Islamic community in the country are on the payroll of the Saudi Government, receiving allowances of up to $2000 a month.

The Australian can reveal for the first time the identity of the clerics — some paid through the Saudi embassy in Canberra, others directly from Riyadh’s Dawah (preaching) Office — who receive between 3500 and 7000 Saudi riyal ($1975) a month.

The payments to the six — who include former Howard government adviser Amin Hady and Melbourne Somali imam Isse Musse — are part of Saudi Arabia’s multi-billion-dollar campaign to transform its hardline image in the West.

However, Sheik Hady told The Australian there were as many as 14 others in the country being paid by the Saudis.

The real scandal isn’t that all the imams and other shills for Mohammed are being paid by Riyadh — which is, after all, no more than what we all expect.

The real scandal is the way that Saudi money corrupts non-Muslims in politics, the government, and academia. In the USA, for example, so many people in high places owe their comfortable lifestyles to Riyadh that a concerted effort to confront Islamization isn’t possible.

Hell, we can’t even name the enemy.

But back to Australia:
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Saudi Arabia has pumped more than $120 million into Australia since the 1970s to fund mosques, Islamic groups and clerics to propagate Wahhabism, the puritanical brand of Islam espoused by al-Qa’ida.

The Malaysian and Indonesian governments have also funded Islamic initiatives in Australia.

Sheik Hady defended the allowance he has received since his arrival in Australia more than 25 years ago, saying it came with no strings attached.

“So far, they never tell any of the preachers what to say and what to do,” said the Indonesian imam at Zetland Mosque, in Sydney’s inner south.

“We are fully independent of what we do… they never instruct that this is what we should teach and this is what we should not.

“I don’t think there is any notion with Wahhabism being imposed by anyone.”

[…]

Asked if he received any orders about what to preach, he said: “No, we’re Muslim, we don’t say what we want, we say what the Koran and the prophet Mohammed want us to understand and to say, and that is what we teach the people. We don’t teach people our opinion.” [emphasis added]

Actually, all of this seems perfectly credible to me.

The Saudis don’t need to tell anyone what to do. All they have to do is hunt up some of their co-religionists, hand them suitcases full of cash, and let ’em rip.

An imam in the pay of the Saudis doesn’t have to teach his opinion, nor does he have to take specific orders from Moscow Riyadh. He and all the others, from the billionaire princes in Jeddah to the fire-breathing imams drawing the dole in London, are reading from the same playbook.

A playbook that happens to be the perfect, eternal, and immutable word of Allah.

A playbook that that demands the blood of the kuffar if they fail to submit.

The Saudis are just paying their man in Sydney or Canberra or Melbourne to do what comes naturally.


Hat tip: DC.

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Michael Moore Can’t Distinguish between War Porn and Nobility

The following is just a part of Michael Yon’s post on the latest episode of the sleazy conduct of Michael Moore:

Many readers have complained that Michael Moore, in the conduct of his latest crusade against whatever he is against this month, has illegally used one of my photos on the banner of his website. Mr. Moore is not the first to have done so, and my readers can get pretty upset when it happens.

My lawyer has demanded that Mr. Moore take it down.

I usually freely grant use of my work to truthful, peaceful, non-commercial, non-political outlets. For instance, a church group wanted to use one of my photos for their congregation. I was honored and gave it to them freely. On another occasion, a peaceful, non-profit Islamic organization wanted to use the same photo that Michael Moore has infringed upon (Major Mark Bieger cradling a little girl named Farah), and I was honored to contribute to their peaceful cause.

For any of you not familiar with the iconic image of Farah dying in the Major’s arms as he runs for medical help, click on Yon’s site to see how Michael Moore has filched it that image and used it for political purposes. You’ll find it on the lower right hand side of the banner Moore has on his website. Yon has a screen cap.

To see the framed photograph of this image, which Yon has titled “Strength and Compassion” (the definition of a mensch, by the way) click here. It is also the picture on Yon’s book, Moment of Truth, available on Amazon, but if you buy it through his website, you can get an autographed copy. I’ve read the book and will be reviewing it eventually. Incidentally, the full title is actually Moment of Truth in Iraq: How a New ‘Greatest Generation’ of American Soldiers is Turning Defeat and Disaster into Victory and Hope -- just in case you wondered what side he was on.

One of the nice things about the book is that he treats the British soldiers with respect.

Michael Yon has lived through this so far. I hope he makes it back.

He says:

I’ve seen grandmothers use my work in technically illegal ways, but since they’re not a big company, they probably have no idea about copyright, and usually use the work in tasteful, appropriate ways, I just smile and say, “Go ahead, Ma’am.”

But frequently, big companies and individuals who are knowledgeable of copyright laws filch my work and use it in ways that many readers consider partisan, highly political or incendiary. When this happens, I usually go after the infringer, and so do my readers.

Now here’s Michael Moore, the latest infringer, using my work for his own crude political purposes.

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I recall some years ago watching one of his movies in Paris, and thinking how sad it was that an American would make propaganda so flagrant that it seemed pornographic. It was sad but at the same time uplifting, because Mr. Moore was able to exercise his right to free speech, rights that should never be infringed upon.

Mr. Moore is influential, rich, and could likely intimidate most photographers. But I ask my readers to please leave him be. Attacking him likely will be counterproductive. I know how to fight, and though I would fight for Mr. Moore’s right to free expression, I will fight against him if he steals my work and uses it in an inflammatory fashion.

The use Mr. Moore made of Farah’s dying moments and the desperation in the bowed head of the Major, fighting to keep her alive, is definitely inflammatory and ugly, in that special Michael Moore degradation of nobility in suffering.

Mr. Yon continues:

It’s got nothing to do with the fact that Michael Moore is anti-war (he’s not just against the Iraq War, but he was also against the war in Afghanistan). I respect Moore’s opposition to the Iraq War; I might even agree with him on some particulars. But I object to the tone of many of his arguments, especially the manner in which he uses my work to further his causes. As I said above, sometimes it seems pornographic. That’s a strong word, so I’ll explain.

Justice Potter Stewart once defined pornography by saying, “I know it when I see it.” Pornography and propaganda are closely related, as they are both cynical attempts at manipulation, rooted in a lack of respect for humanity. War Porn is one of the more disturbing developments in the new media, as people on both sides of the Iraq War get their kicks watching video images of death and destruction - as long as it’s their opponents who get killed.

Whether it’s an Al Qaeda cell-phone video of an IED attack or the grisly footage of a Coalition air strike, War Porn is degrading and incendiary. Of course, some footage is newsworthy and informative and the public deserves to see it. There is also great value to soldiers in watching footage for training purposes and to better understand battlefields and weapons.

But at some point, especially when the material is used to make political points, images of combat can cross the line into pornography. People die in war, but we must never forget that each casualty is a human being, even people as deserving of death as Al Qaeda. Denying our opponents’ humanity, we lose a little of our own.

When someone’s grandmother disseminates the photo of Major Beiger cradling a dying girl in his arms, I allow the usage because I feel she is trying to share the human tragedy.

When Michael Moore puts that same photo on his web site, alongside images of George Bush, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, the clear implication is that Farah’s death is their fault. That is a misrepresentation of the facts on the ground, as well as the story of the photo.

Farah was killed by a suicide car bomb in Mosul on May 2, 2005. Major Bieger and other soldiers literally risked their own lives to save many children and adults that day, but Farah didn’t make it.

Michael Moore apparently does not understand - or refuses to acknowledge - the moral distinction between a man who would murder innocent people, and a man who would sacrifice himself to save them. The photo, as I took it, is the truth, but Moore uses it - illegally - to convey falsehoods. His mind is that of a political propagandist who sees Farah’s death not as a human tragedy, but a tool.

We need to know the truth about the wars we are currently fighting. That’s why I went to Iraq in the first place. Sometimes the difference between War Porn and the truth can be subtle, ambiguous, even subjective. But I know it when I see it. And if Michael Moore learned to respect not just my work, but other aspects of the truth, not to mention respecting his audience’s intelligence, he would better serve his own cause.

There is much more in his post, I recommend that you read it through by using the link provided.

In the meantime, may Michael Moore get all that he deserves in life, in abundance.

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