Recently in Islamic supremacism Category

Besides Iran developing nuclear weapons, the biggest story in the MIddle East is the abandonment of Western values by Turkey and its embrace of political Islam.

While still giving lip service to the EU (in hopes it will be admitted as a member, which would be a disaster economically, culturally and ideologically for the EU) and the U.S. (so as to continue to be a recipient of aid and military technology and information), it has clearly joined Iran (and Saudi Arabia) in the goal of Islamic supremacism.

The Erdogan government has steadily stoked anti-American sentiment -- and anti-Israel attitudes -- during its eight years in power. What had been the most pro-American Muslim country is now the least. The close ties with Israel built up over decades have been torn to shreds.

The latest Erdogan move was to orchestrate the Gaza Free flotilla which set sail from the Turkish-controlled part of Cyprus with the express intent of breaking the Israeli sea blockade of Gaza set in place to prevent the supply of weaponry to Hamas. Israel had offered to allow the flotilla to dock at an Israel port and to transport to Gaza all of the humanitarian cargo once it had gone through security inspection. The Turkish-led fleet refusal of that offer left Israel no choice but to take control of the ships and steer them to an Israeli port. A confrontation was just what the Erdogan government was hoping for; it knew Israel could not allow its blockade to be broken.

Israel's failure was its naivete in assuming the ships would be filled with peaceful, do-gooder activists. All but one of the ships allowed the Israelis to board peacefully and take control. The leading and largest ship flying a Turkish flag was another story. As the Israeli commandoes descended on drop ropes from helicopters they were immediately attacked. Only armed with paint ball guns, the commandoes were outmatched as they were attacked with metal bars, clubs and knives and mob violence. As they were being overwhelmed they were given radio permission to use their handguns to protect themselves.

Even though al Jazeerea TV was onboard and recorded images of the commandoes being attacked as they descended onto the deck, those pictures were ignored as the pre-planned Turkish, Hamas and other Islamist crticism rolled in, soon joined by the usual European charges of "disproportionate" response by Israel. At least the U.S. response was measured, calling for a full and thorough review of the incident.

Erdogan immediately accused Israel of "inhuman state terrorism" and his UN representative charged Israel with an "act of barbarism."

The public relations disaster for Israel the Erdogan government planned and hoped for was a smashing success. The facts didn't matter. The PR avalanche carried the day.

What the U.S. should learn from this is that Turkey is no longer a fit member of NATO. It has switched to the other side and should be now treated as the enemy of the West it has become. Denial and wishful thinking will not chage reality.

Erdogan had long planned to return Turkey to its Islamic roots and to overturn the secularizing by Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s. As mayor of Istanbul, he acknowledged that the route to the power to do that was in the democratic process itself. His words foretold what he was to do: "Democracy is like a streetcar. You ride it to your destination and then get off." Erdogan is dismantling the Ataturk safeguards and installing like-minded Islamists in all positions of power as his political party's domination steadily accumulates more autocratic power. High level military, judicial and academic opponents to his plans have been rounded up and charged with
treason against the state. All the while, his supporting media outlets inflame the population against the West, particularly the U.S. and Israel.
Ralph Peters in the New York Post is at least one writer who got the story right. So did the editors of the Wall Street Journal. Here's what Peters had to say:

Turkish (blood)bath
By RALPH PETERS
June 1, 2010

June 1, 2010

Yesterday's "aid convoy" incident off the coast of Gaza wasn't about bringing humanitarian supplies to the terrorist-ruled territory. It wasn't even about Israel.

It was about Turkey's determination to position itself as the leading Muslim state in the Middle East.

Three ships of that six-ship pro-terror convoy flew Turkish flags and were crowded with Turkish citizens. The Ankara government -- led by Islamists these days -- sponsored the "aid" operation in a move to position itself as the new champion of the Palestinians.

And Turkish decision-makers knew Israel would have to react -- and were waiting to exploit the inevitable clash. The provocation was as cynical as it was carefully orchestrated.

The lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara, just happened to have an al-Jazeera TV crew on board to film Israel's response. Ironically, the early videos would've been counterproductive, had world leaders and journalists not been programmed to blame everything on Israel.

Those videos showed Israeli commandos rappelling onto the ship with both hands on the rope (making it rather hard to use a weapon), yet activists claimed the Israelis opened fire as they descended.

Purely by coincidence, dozens of "peace activists" waited with sharpened iron bars, clubs, slingshots -- and rifles. Of course, the nine dead in the melee were all Israel's victims.

The first wave of Israeli commandos reportedly were armed only with paintball rounds for crowd control. Inspect those videos of maddened peaceniks assaulting the soldiers as they landed on deck. You don't see any Israelis pointing rifles -- they're fending off blows.

But the claims of pro-terrorist "peace advocates" are given instant credence.

The US government's initial response was restrained, but Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understandably canceled his meeting with President Obama, scheduled for today. Bibi's got an emergency on his hands back home, as well-organized protests sweep the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the Europeans and UN bonzes rage at Israel with unseemly relish, but ignore the luxury lifestyles of Gaza's insider elite and the fact that no Palestinian's going hungry. The Israelis had even offered to transfer the aid aboard those ships to the Palestinians -- as long as they could inspect it.

But neither the activists nor the Turkish government wanted a negotiated outcome. This was a stunt from the start.

Now, as we wait to see if Hamas and Hezbollah up the ante, the world ignores Turkey's decisive role in this fiasco.

The US and the European Union cling to the fiction that Turkey's a "westernized Muslim democracy." But Turkey's moving to the east as fast as the Islamist leaders of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) can drag it there.

Turkish leaders visit the West and sing, "Democracy, democracy, democracy!" We coo and clap. Then they go east and cry, "Islam, Islam, Islam!" And we insist they don't mean it.

Then there's Turkey's unfortunate NATO membership. Since the rise of its Islamists, Turkey has been a Trojan horse, not an ally. What happens now if Ankara provokes a military confrontation? How would we respond, given NATO's mutual-defense agreements?

The madcap agenda of Turkey's current rulers is to create a 21st-century version of the Ottoman Empire. Turks even mutter about the caliphate -- headed for centuries by the Turkish sultan. This is explosive stuff. And the Turks are playing with matches.

But we've obstinately ignored every warning sign. First, our "ally" stabbed us in the back on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom, denying our troops their planned routes into Iraq. Then the Turkish media intensified its anti-American fantasies.

Headscarves became de rigeur for the wives of top officials in Ankara as the Turks made mischief in Iraq. Emulating the history-obliterating Saudis, the Turks began work on the vast Ilisu Dam -- which will permanently submerge pre-Islamic and Kurdish archaeological sites of incalculable value. (The Bamiyan Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban were of comparatively minor interest to researchers.)

Then, just last month, the Turks moved to provide the Iranian regime with cover for its nuclear program. And we still didn't get it.

The most dramatic transformation in the Middle East since the fall of the shah is playing out before us. And we can't see behind the mask of the "plight of the Palestinians" (a key Obama administration concern).

In yesterday's confrontation, Israel behaved clumsily. The peace activists behaved savagely. The Turks behaved cynically. The world reacted predictably.

And Washington scratched its head.

Ralph Peters' latest book is "Endless War."

Footnote: Here's the text of the Israeli exchange with the lead Turkish ship on which the only violence occurred, precipitated by the people on the ship.

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Communiques/2010/Israel_Navy_warns_flotilla_31-May-2010.htm

Text:

Israel Navy: "Mavi Marmara, you are approaching an area of hostilities which is under a naval blockade. The Gaza area coastal region and Gaza harbor are closed to all maritime traffic. The Israeli government supports delivery of humanitarian supplies to the civilian population in the Gaza Strip and invites you to enter the Ashdod port. Delivery of supplies in accordance with the authorities' regulations will be through the formal land crossings and under your observation, after which you can return to your home ports on the vessels on which you have arrived."

Response: "Negative, negative."

Now here is a straight-talking American on the war being waged against America by Islam.

You've heard the Attorney General of the United States, who can't seem to comprehend what motivated the Times Square bomber, the Fort Hood killer and the would-be Christmas Day suicide murderer.

It's well worth the three minutes to listen to someone who knows who our enemy is and is not afraid to speak clearly about the threat we face.

Colonel Allen West is a candidate for Congress this November in Florida's 22nd Congressional District which is mostly coastal Palm Beach County and some of Broward County, running along the coast from Jupiter to Fort Lauderdale. He will be an outstanding addition to the House of Representatives. Check out his website and make a contribution.

Two articles this weekend make the same point: It is essential that we understand Muslims and the Islam that is the driving force behind their actions. With a western mindset and political correctness we constantly delude ourselves and fail to recognize the real challenge of Islam and how huge a problem it is.

A new book "Son of Hamas" is by the son of a founder of Hamas who defected and now lives in the United States. He strikes to the heart of the matter in this interview posted by the Wall Streeet Journal:

As the son of a Muslim cleric, he says he had reached the conclusion that terrorism can't be defeated without a new understanding of Islam. Here he echoes other defectors from Islam such as the former Dutch parliamentarian and writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Do you consider your father a fanatic? "He's not a fanatic," says Mr. Yousef. "He's a very moderate, logical person. What matters is not whether my father is a fanatic or not, he's doing the will of a fanatic God. It doesn't matter if he's a terrorist or a traditional Muslim. At the end of the day a traditional Muslim is doing the will of a fanatic, fundamentalist, terrorist God. I know this is harsh to say. Most governments avoid this subject. They don't want to admit this is an ideological war.

"The problem is not in Muslims," he continues. "The problem is with their God. They need to be liberated from their God. He is their biggest enemy. It has been 1,400 years they have been lied to."

Former Army intelligence officer Ralph Peters writing in the New York Post makes somewhat the same point less dramatically:

Our reluctance to understand the Taliban on its own terms is strikingly evident in our insistence that Islam isn't a factor. A confederation of franchises, the Taliban has multiple interests, from a regional power-struggle to local issues that vary between valleys. But the common identity of Taliban fighters is that they're 100% Muslim and overwhelmingly Pashtun, members of a stateless ethnic group of 40 million straddling the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Who can say the truth more clearly and elegantly (and humorously) than Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn: Obama can't say who we're at war with
By MARK STEYN
2010-01-08 10:16:34

Not long after the Ayatollah Khomeini announced his fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the British novelist suddenly turned up on a Muslim radio station in West London late one night and told his interviewer he'd converted to Islam. Marvelous religion, couldn't be happier, Allahu Akbar and all that.

And the Ayatollah said hey, that's terrific news, glad to hear it. But we're still gonna kill you.

Well, even a leftie novelist wises up under those circumstances.

Evidently, the president of the United States takes a little longer.

Barack Obama has spent the past year doing big-time Islamoschmoozing, from his announcement of Gitmo's closure and his investigation of Bush officials, to his bow before the Saudi king and a speech in Cairo to "the Muslim world" with far too many rhetorical concessions and equivocations. And at the end of it the jihad sent America a thank-you note by way of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's underwear: Hey, thanks for all the outreach! But we're still gonna kill you.

According to one poll, 58 percent of Americans are in favor of waterboarding young Umar Farouk. Well, you should have thought about that before you made a community organizer president of the world's superpower. The election of Barack Obama was a fundamentally unserious act by the U.S. electorate, and you can't blame the world's mischief-makers, from Putin to Ahmadinejad to the many Gitmo recidivists now running around Yemen, from drawing the correct conclusion.

For two weeks, the government of the United States has made itself a global laughingstock. Don't worry, "the system worked," said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Incompetano. Don't worry, he was an "isolated extremist," said the president. Don't worry, we're banning bathroom breaks for the last hour of the flight, said the TSA. Don't worry, "U.S. border security officials" told the Los Angeles Times, we knew he was on the plane, and we "had decided to question him when he landed." Don't worry, Obama's counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, assured the Sunday talk shows, sure, we read him his rights, and he's lawyered up but he'll soon see that "there is advantage to talking to us in terms of plea agreements."

Oh, that's grand. Try to kill hundreds of people in an act of war, and it's the starting point for a plea deal. In his Cairo speech, the president bragged that the United States would "punish" those in America who would "deny" the "right of women and girls to wear the hijab." If he's so keen on it, maybe he should consider putting the entire federal government into full-body burkas and zipping up the eye slit so that, henceforth, every public utterance by John Brennan will be entirely inaudible. Americans should be ashamed by this all-fools' fortnight.

On Thursday, having renounced over the preceding days "the system worked," the "isolated extremist," the more obviously risible TSA responses, the Gitmo-Yemen express checkout and various other follies, the president finally spoke the words: "We are at war." As National Review's Rich Lowry noted, they were more or less dragged from the presidential gullet by Dick Cheney, who'd accused the commander in chief of failing to grasp this basic point. Again, to be fair, it isn't just Obama. Last November, the electorate voted, in effect, to repudiate the previous eight years and seemed genuinely under the delusion that wars end when one side decides it's all a bit of a bore, and they'd rather the government spend the next eight years doing to health care and the economy what they were previously doing to jihadist camps in Waziristan.

On the other hand, if we are now at war, as Obama belatedly concedes, against whom are we warring? "We are at war against al-Qaida," says the president.

Really? But what does that mean? Was the previous month's "isolated extremist," the Fort Hood killer, part of al-Qaida? When it came to spiritual advice, he turned to the same Yemeni-based American-born imam as the Pantybomber, but he didn't have a fully paid-up membership card.

Nor did young Umar Farouk, come to that. Granted the general overcredentialization of American life, the notion that it doesn't count as terrorism unless you're a member of Local 437 of the Amalgamated Union of Isolated Extremists seems perverse and reductive.

What did the Pantybomber have a membership card in? Well, he was president of the Islamic Society of University College, London. Kafeel Ahmed, who died after driving a burning jeep into the concourse of Glasgow Airport, had been president of the Islamic Society of Queen's University, Belfast. Yassin Nassari, serving three years in jail for terrorism, was president of the Islamic Society of the University of Westminster. Waheed Arafat Khan, arrested in the 2006 Heathrow terror plots that led to Americans having to put their liquids and gels in those little plastic bags, was president of the Islamic Society of London Metropolitan University.

Doesn't this sound like a bigger problem than "al-Qaida," whatever that is? The president has now put citizens of Nigeria on the secondary-screening list. Which is tough on Nigerian Christians, who have no desire to blow up your flight to Detroit. Aside from the highly localized Tamil terrorism of India and Sri Lanka, suicide bombing is a phenomenon entirely of Islam. The broader psychosis that manifested itself only the other day in an axe murderer breaking into a Danish cartoonist's home to kill him because he objects to his cartoon is, likewise, a phenomenon of Islam. This is not to say (to go wearily through the motions) that all Muslims are potential suicide bombers and axe murderers, but it is to state the obvious - that this "war" is about the intersection of Islam and the West, and its warriors are recruited in the large pool of young Muslim manpower, not in Yemen and Afghanistan so much as in Copenhagen and London.

But the president of the United States cannot say that because he is overinvested in a fantasy - that, if only that Texan moron Bush had read Khalid Sheikh Mohammed his Miranda rights and bowed as low as Obama did to the Saudi king, we wouldn't have all these problems. So now Obama says, "We are at war." But he cannot articulate any war aims or strategy because they would conflict with his illusions. And so we will stagger on, playing defense, pulling more and more items out of our luggage - tweezers, shoes, shampoo, snow globes, suppositories - and reacting to every new provocation with greater impositions upon the citizenry.

You can't win by putting octogenarian nuns through full-body scanners.

All you can do is lose slowly. After all, if you can't even address what you're up against with any honesty, you can't blame the other side for drawing entirely reasonable conclusions about your faintheartedness in taking them on.

After that cringe-making radio interview, Salman Rushdie subsequently told The Times of London that trying to appease his would-be killers and calling for his own book to be withdrawn was the biggest mistake of his life. If only the president of the United States was such a quick study.

Why is Obama so reluctant to acknowledge what he must know? Islam is at war with America and will continue to be so until it has conquered America.

Was Obama, like many, if not most or all, Muslim-born babies, inculcated with the poison of Islam at birth? Does the poison still run through his veins?

Not the Manchurian candidate, but the Meccan candidate?

Hollow Words on Terrorism

By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Janet Napolitano -- former Arizona governor, now overmatched secretary of homeland security -- will forever be remembered for having said of the attempt to bring down an airliner over Detroit: "The system worked." The attacker's concerned father had warned U.S. authorities about his son's jihadist tendencies. The would-be bomber paid cash and checked no luggage on a transoceanic flight. He was nonetheless allowed to fly, and would have killed 288 people in the air alone, save for a faulty detonator and quick actions by a few passengers.

Heck of a job, Brownie.

The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration's response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension. From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism "man-caused disasters." Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9/11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York -- a trifecta of political correctness and image management.

And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term "war on terror." It's over -- that is, if it ever existed.

Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately al-Qaeda has not. Which gives new meaning to the term "asymmetric warfare."

And produces linguistic -- and logical -- oddities that littered Obama's public pronouncements following the Christmas Day attack. In his first statement, Obama referred to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as "an isolated extremist." This is the same president who, after the Ford Hood shooting, warned us "against jumping to conclusions" -- code for daring to associate Nidal Hasan's mass murder with his Islamist ideology. Yet, with Abdulmutallab, Obama jumped immediately to the conclusion, against all existing evidence, that the bomber acted alone.

More jarring still were Obama's references to the terrorist as a "suspect" who "allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device." You can hear the echo of FDR: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- Japanese naval and air force suspects allegedly bombed Pearl Harbor."

Obama reassured the nation that this "suspect" had been charged. Reassurance? The president should be saying: We have captured an enemy combatant -- an illegal combatant under the laws of war: no uniform, direct attack on civilians -- and now to prevent future attacks, he is being interrogated regarding information he may have about al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Instead, Abdulmutallab is dispatched to some Detroit-area jail and immediately lawyered up. At which point -- surprise! -- he stops talking.

This absurdity renders hollow Obama's declaration that "we will not rest until we find all who were involved." Once we've given Abdulmutallab the right to remain silent, we have gratuitously forfeited our right to find out from him precisely who else was involved, namely those who trained, instructed, armed and sent him.

This is all quite mad even in Obama's terms. He sends 30,000 troops to fight terror overseas, yet if any terrorists come to attack us here, they are magically transformed from enemy into defendant.

The logic is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator -- no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation.

The president said that this incident highlights "the nature of those who threaten our homeland." But the president is constantly denying the nature of those who threaten our homeland. On Tuesday, he referred five times to Abdulmutallab (and his terrorist ilk) as "extremist(s)."

A man who shoots abortion doctors is an extremist. An eco-fanatic who torches logging sites is an extremist. Abdulmutallab is not one of these. He is a jihadist. And unlike the guys who shoot abortion doctors, jihadists have cells all over the world; they blow up trains in London, nightclubs in Bali and airplanes over Detroit (if they can); and are openly pledged to war on America.

Any government can through laxity let someone slip through the cracks. But a government that refuses to admit that we are at war, indeed, refuses even to name the enemy -- jihadist is a word banished from the Obama lexicon -- turns laxity into a governing philosophy.

Even the New York Times editorial page may be waking up to the internal threat posed by immigrants from barbarian Muslim societies with values far removed from those of the West.

What's happening in Europe is an advanced stage of what can happen and is happening already in America.

Politicians ignore the danger that citIzens increasingly face from unassimilated -- and unassimilable -- Muslims.

Islam is an all-encompassing ideology demanding submission to its command to wage war until Islam rules the world. Its hold on its adherents inculcated from the moment of birth is difficult to break for most and impossible for many.

European politicians turned a blind eye for decades to this fact as they waved Muslim immigrants in. The result is chaos sweeping through Europe with fear, resentment and anger building among the natives. Many are pessimistic about the chances of European civilization surviving the belligerent Islamic onslaught. Political correctness and multiculturalism stand in the way of an aggressive defense.

Oddmakers are betting on Islam.

Op-Ed Columnist

Europe's Minaret Moment

By ROSS DOUTHAT

They toasted to progress in Europe's capitals last week. On Tuesday, the Treaty of Lisbon went into effect, bringing the nations of the European Union one step closer to the unity the Continent's elite has been working toward for over 50 years.

But the treaty's implementation fell just days after a milestone of a different sort: a referendum in Switzerland, long famous for religious tolerance, in which 57.5 percent of voters chose to ban the nation's Muslims from building minarets.

Switzerland isn't an E.U. member state, but the minaret moment could have happened almost anywhere in Europe nowadays -- in France, where officials have floated the possibility of banning the burka; in Britain, which elected two representatives of the fascistic, anti-Islamic British National Party to the European Parliament last spring; in Italy, where a bill introduced this year would ban mosque construction and restrict the Islamic call to prayer.

If the more perfect union promised by the Lisbon Treaty is the European elite's greatest triumph, the failure to successfully integrate millions of Muslim immigrants represents its greatest failure. And the two are intertwined: they're both the fruits of the high-handed, often undemocratic approach to politics that Europe's leaders have cultivated in their quest for unity.

The European Union probably wouldn't exist in its current form if the Continent's elites hadn't been willing to ignore popular sentiment. (The Lisbon Treaty, for instance, was deliberately designed to bypass most European voters, after a proposed E.U. Constitution was torpedoed by referendums in France and the Netherlands in 2005.) But this political style -- forge a consensus among the establishment, and assume you can contain any backlash that develops -- is also how the Continent came to accept millions of Muslim immigrants, despite the absence of a popular consensus on the issue, or a plan for how to integrate them.

The immigrants came first as guest workers, recruited after World War II to relieve labor shortages, and then as beneficiaries of generous asylum and family reunification laws, designed to salve Europe's post-colonial conscience. The European elites assumed that the divide between Islam and the West was as antiquated as scimitars and broadswords, and that a liberal, multicultural, post-Christian federation would have no difficulty absorbing new arrivals from more traditional societies. And they decided, too -- as Christopher Caldwell writes in "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe," his wonderfully mordant chronicle of Europe's Islamic dilemma -- that liberal immigration policies "involve the sort of nonnegotiable moral duties that you don't vote on."

Better if they had let their voters choose. The rate of immigration might have been slower, and the efforts to integrate the new arrivals more strenuous. Instead, Europe's leaders ended up creating a clash of civilizations inside their own frontiers.

Millions of Muslims have accepted European norms. But millions have not. This means polygamy in Sweden; radical mosques in Britain's fading industrial cities; riots over affronts to the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark; and religiously inspired murder in the Netherlands. It means terrorism, and the threat of terrorism, from London to Madrid.

And it means a rising backlash, in which European voters support extreme measures and extremist parties because their politicians don't seem to have anything to say about the problem.

In fairness, it isn't clear exactly what those leaders could offer at this point. They can't undo decades of migration. A large Muslim minority is in Europe to stay. Persisting with the establishment's approach makes a certain sense: keep a lid on prejudice, tamp down extremism, and hope that time will transform the zealous Islam of recent immigrants into a more liberal form of faith, and make the conflict go away.

Or least keep it manageable. Caldwell's book, the best on the subject to date, has a deeply pessimistic tone, but it shies away from specific predictions about the European future. Other writers are less circumspect, envisioning a Muslim-majority "Eurabia" in which Shariah has as much clout as liberalism.

But even a decadent West is probably stronger than this. The most likely scenario for Europe isn't dhimmitude; it's a long period of tension, punctuated by spasms of violence, that makes the Continent a more unpleasant place without fundamentally transforming it.

This is cold comfort, though, if you have to live under the shadow of violence. Just ask the Swiss, who spent last week worrying about the possibility that the minaret vote might make them a target for Islamist terrorism.

They're right to worry. And all of Europe has to worry as well, thanks to the folly of its leaders -- now, and for many years to come.

COLUMBUS, Ohio November 16, 2009 --Dozens of Christian activists descended on Columbus Monday morning to rally in the name of Rifqa Barry, the central Ohio teenager who converted from Islam to Christianity. Bary fled to Florida during the summer, saying she feared her father would kill her because of her conversion. Would she be another "honor killing" victim in the U.S. or in Sri Lanka, should she be sent back by her family to their Muslim relatives back home?

Bary is now back in Ohio under foster care. Her case is moving through the legal system. A hearing scheduled for Monday was postponed until December 22.

Rally-goers said they are worried about Bary's safety if she is returned to her parents.

"There is the larger question of, 'Is Aamerica going to protect religious freedom at this time and allow this girl to make a choice in conscience to be a Christian, rather than a Muslim," asked Robert Spencer, a co-organizer of the rally.

Spencer was interviewed at the rally about the threat of Islam, which has two aspects of concern to America: violent jihad and stealth jihad. The Fort Hood murderer Major Nidal Hasan is a violent jihadist killing "infidels" in the name of Islam. Those Muslims who constantly seek special privileges for Islamic practices or to silence all criticism of Islam as "racist" are examples of stealth jihadists. The ultimate goal of jihad is universal rule of Islam in the world, including Islamic law replacing the Constitution in the United States.

The interviewer of Robert Spencer in the video clip below is an ex-Muslim Nabil Qureshi. Spencer is one of the most knowledgeable students of Islam in the world.

Political correctness and multiculturalism are major obstacles in the battle to preserve Western civilization.

The problem with Islam is Islam.

The dominant view in Islam today is that promulgated by Saudi Arabia, which maintains that adherence to the words and practices of Muhammad as reflected in the Koran is the only right path for Muslims.for all time in all places.

Consequently, hatred of the other - be it Shiite, Christian, Hindu or athiest -- is inbred from birth. Generations have so been taught around the world by Saudi-funded texts, teachers, schools and mosques. This rigid, aggressive, all-conquering, violence-promoting ideology is a grave threat to western civilization. Islam, as an all-encompassing guide for every aspect of life, allows no deviation or accommodation.

There are three possibilities for non-Muslims: Accept, appease and be dominated by Islam as the implacable force overwhelms the compliant culture. Oppose by all means possible, from warfare to expulsion of aliens from western lands. An internal struggle within Islam will adapt it to western principles of freedom and individual rights.

In Europe, Islamization is on march and there appears to be no force to stop it.

However, some enlightened few within Islam are trying to make fundamental change. Whether these voices among the Islamic elite will have much effect on the more than one billion Muslims worldwide in the short run will have any effect is doubtful. The propensity if not encouragement to violence in the cause of Islamic domination that is a way of life in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, NIgeria and so many other countries where Muslims are numerous has been building for decades and will take at least decades if not centuries to moderate, if ever there is a movement to do so.

Nonetheless, a report from the Barnabas Fund, a British charity whose mission is providing support for persecuted Christians in Muslim lands, on new voices speaking out for moderation in Islam seems to present some hope.

The founder of the Barnabas Fund Dr Patrick Sookhdeo is an ex-Muslim convert to Christianity and is most knowledgeable about Islamic strategies to confuse and diffuse opposition to the advance of Islam.

That he sees something positive in the new report issuing from the Islamic Center at the University of Cambridge discussed at length in the report (Contexualizing Islam in Britain) is not a result of naivete.

However, optimism must be restrained at least somewhat when one realizes that the Cambridge Islamic Center is funded by the Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal. Alwaleed has funded Islamic centers at Georgetown at Harvard which, for example, are promoting the acceptance of Shariah Finance, which was invented decades ago in Pakistan as nothing more than a subtle tool for the spread of Islamic practices in western societies.

The report does express disappointment that some western leaders such as President Obama are not supporting such voices of reform but are catering to those promoting the traditional Islam which is a threat to the West.

The report is well worth reading.

Islam: at war within itself

2009-10-29

Barnabas Fund

Dr Patrick Sookhdeo
International Director, Barnabas Aid

Introduction

Recent months have seen a number of unexpected and extremely encouraging statements coming out of the Muslim world. Respected, mainstream Muslim leaders in a variety of countries have voiced opinions which are at odds with traditional, conservative Islam. They have challenged aspects of shari'a and are calling for a liberal, modernist, enlightened Islam compatible with Western norms. Perhaps the most significant of all is a comment by a group of British Muslims calling for an end to the apostasy law and for full freedom in all religious matters.

Since modernisation first impacted the Muslim world following the imposition of secular laws and education systems by Western colonial empires, there have been tensions between Muslim conservatives and liberal intellectuals. Islamic traditionalists and Islamists have on the whole gained the dominant voice within Islam, especially since the Islamic resurgence which began in the 1970s and has swept all before it. These conservatives saw shari'a as divinely inspired and unchangeable, valid for all times and places, and attacked the few liberal voices seeking to reinterpret the Muslim sources in line with modern contexts and human rights.

A small minority of marginalised Muslim progressives has been bravely defying traditional and Islamist pressures by reinterpreting Islam in a way compatible with modern concepts of secularity, individual human rights, religious freedom and gender equality.

However, recently some significant cracks seem to be forming within the mainstream Islam. Important mainstream leaders are coming out against long-held key traditional views and Wahhabi-Salafi doctrines and practices, openly supporting ideas compatible with modernity. It would seem that the reformist teachings of Ahmad Khan (1817 - 1898) and Muhammad 'Abduh (1849 -1905), which had been suppressed, are now resurfacing within mainstream Islam. As some experts on Islam have always been saying, "the really decisive battle is taking place within Muslim civilization, where ultraconservatives compete against moderates and democrats for the soul of the Muslim public." [1]

Some examples:

Kuwaiti Women MPs refuse to wear hijab

Two Kuwaiti women Members of Parliament, among the first four women to be elected to Kuwait`s National Assembly in May 2009, have refused to wear the Islamic headscarf (hijab) in parliament. They demanded the annulment of an amendment to electoral regulations, introduced by Islamists, that enforces the observation of shari'a in parliament.[2]

Tantawi and the niqab at al-Azhar

During a recent tour of a Cairo secondary school, Sheikh Muhammad Tantawi, the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar University in Cairo (the most important Sunni theological centre in the world), was angered by the sight of a girl wearing the niqab (the full veil which covers the face with only slits for the eyes). He instructed her to remove the niqab, saying "The niqab is a tradition; it has no connection with religion". Ironically, the girl claimed to have worn the niqab in honour of his visit.[3]

Tantawi angrily told the girl that the niqab "has nothing to do with Islam and is only a custom" and ordered her to take it off. He also announced that he would soon issue a formal order (fatwa) banning girls from entering al-Azhar institutions wearing the niqab. "Niqab has nothing to do with Islam, it is just a habit. I know more about religion than you and your parents," he told the student.[4]

Dr. Mahmoud Hamdi Zarqouq, Egyptian Minister of Religious Affairs, went further than Tantawi declaring his utter opposition to the niqab, stressing that "it is just a habit that has nothing to do with religion . . . niqab is an invention that has nothing to do with religion, for the religious men agree that the women`s face and jaws are not improper [to show]." [5]

Imam condemns Church passivity in face of Muslim persecution of Christians [6]

In an interview with Premier Christian Radio earlier this year, Sheikh Dr Muhammad al-Hussaini, founder of Scripture Reasoning and Lecturer in Islamic Studies at Leo Beck Rabbinical College, blamed the church hierarchy in the UK for not protesting vociferously and actively at Christian persecution around the world. Al-Hussaini mentioned specifically horrendous machete attacks on Christians in Nigeria, Iraqi Christians being burned out of their homes and Christians in Pakistan being stoned or attacked on the slightest pretext. He highlighted Barnabas Aid`s efforts on behalf of persecuted Christians as an example of how concerned Christians ought to respond to the plight of their fellow Christians.

While Muslims are hypersensitive to any ill-treatment of Muslims anywhere in the world, he added, they remain silent about the persecution of Christians in their midst. Many Muslims are simply looking for scapegoats to punish for their own troubles. They know that churches in the West will not do more than utter a whimper, as this issue is not sufficiently important to them, mainly because those suffering are neither white nor wealthy, so they can go on with impunity blaming Crusader-Zionist conspiracies for everything.

He called upon the church to be a voice for justice for persecuted minorities, which he claims would speak "into the heart of the Muslim community".

"Contextualising Islam in Britain" report [7]

This report, published in October 2009, is the work of several prominent British Muslim academics and religious leaders. It has broken new ground in coming out with plain statements on key issues, avoiding the ambiguous statements customarily offered by mainline Muslim leaders. It calls for a Muslim worldview based not exclusively on jurisprudence but including Islamic philosophy (falsafah), theology (kalam) and literature (adab).

For Muslims living as a minority in a secular liberal democracy, applying shari'a is a matter of personal conscience and communal suasion rather than legal sanction, says the report. Muslims are not obliged to implement full shari'a against the wishes of their non-Muslim neighbours.[8] Shari'a is not a detailed code of things forbidden and permitted but an ethical system of moral and spiritual education. There are commonalities between the underlying objectives (maqasid) of shari'a and human rights declarations.[9]

The paper opposes the traditional view of divine sovereignty only implemented in an Islamic state under shari'a. It states that this system engenders a lack of democratic checks and balance, a lack of accountability, and may lead to tyranny. An Islamic state is not necessary for Islam to thrive and be practised. Secular democracy as practised in Britain is legitimate because it holds power to account and upholds fundamental freedoms and non-interference in the religious lives of its citizens.[10]

British Muslims, say the authors, are perfectly happy with the British form of procedural secularism (in contrast to ideological secularism) and support its accommodative tradition. The separation of religion from the state and the principle of non-discrimination by the state between religions guarantee freedom and equality for all, giving Muslims the freedom to practise Islam without interference in an atmosphere of respect, security and dignity. [11]

The authors clearly oppose the concepts of takfir [12] and al-wala` wal-bara` [13] which differentiate sharply between perceived true believers and all others, demanding hostility and enmity. Distinctions between believers and non-believers are important only in matters of doctrine and worship, not in matters of social interaction and of seeking the common good of society. In these matters it is important to have friendly relationships with non-Muslims, treating them as equals, and to focus on commonalities and shared values. [14]

The paper states that Islam teaches the equality of all humans regardless of gender and that it forbids forced marriages, domestic violence, female genital mutilation, and honour killings.[15]

Muslims should campaign against injustices and oppression inflicted by Muslims on other Muslims and on non-Muslims. [16]

On suicide terrorism and bombings they state that there are many ways to oppose oppression other than fighting (jihad). These include lobbying, activism, and writing. Foreign conflicts cannot justify violence in Britain.[17] They add that "Islam is opposed to all forms of terrorism, regardless of who sponsors them . . . Both suicide and suicide bombings are absolutely forbidden (haram) in Islam as is the killing of innocent people. [18]

The authors adopt the modern Christian principle of differentiating between religious sin and state-legislated crime. Thus on apostasy they explain that Islam dislikes apostasy but prohibits discrimination against apostates, adding that: "It is important to say quite simply that people have the freedom to enter the Islamic faith and the freedom to leave it". Similarly on homosexuality they state that the Qur`an forbids both the practice of homosexual acts, and discrimination against homosexuals. [19]

The declaration on apostasy is especially important because it goes clearly against the shari'a law of apostasy, accepted by all Islamic schools of law, which lays down a death sentence for those who leave Islam. The authors explain that in early Islam apostasy was conflated with treason in times of war. It was treason that merited the death penalty, not the apostasy. Therefore today "there is no compulsion and people cannot be coerced into a religious commitment". [20] Other Muslim leaders dealing with apostasy had not dared question the validity of the classical apostasy law, but had either asked for the repentance phase (usually 3 days) to be lengthened indefinitely (for example, Ali Gomaa, Chief Mufti of Egypt) or for a moratorium until the time was deemed ripe for the full implementation of shari'a (for example, Tariq Ramadan).

Analysis

There is now a powerful struggle going on for the soul of Islam. It would seem that under the combined pressure of extremist Islamist terrorism, the "war on terror" and the dangers to Muslim regimes and societies, new voices are emerging within mainstream Islamic leadership embracing a new ijtihad [21] compatible with modernity and human rights. They would seem to accept the liberal reformist view of prioritising the core values of Islam, distilled from the Islamic source texts, as spiritual and moral norms that override literalist, coercive, political and social interpretations. They seem to be willing to ignore traditional Islamic concepts that contradict modern humanistic values of pluralism, freedom and equality.

Conclusion

France has forbidden the wearing of the hijab in public places and recently its highest constitutional authority, the Constitutional Council, has refused the introduction of Islamic finance on the grounds that a secular state must not allow principles of shari'a to be recognised in its legislation.[22] In contrast, the governments of the USA and of the UK have consistently sided with the more repressive, conservative and traditional sections within their Muslim communities, apparently hoping to placate, accommodate and appease them by accepting their demands for shari'a implementation in multiple spheres. At the same time they have ignored the more progressive and liberal voices in the Muslim community implying that they are too weak and marginal to be viable interlocutors for governments.

Arab liberals have criticised President Obama`s tendency to endorse conservative and radical forms of Islam while ignoring liberal Muslim trends. A Yemeni liberal journalist accused Obama of appointing Muslim advisors who do not represent the diversity of Muslim opinion and who want to implement oppressive shari'a rules.[23] Others have criticised Obama`s overtures to the Taliban and Iran as strengthening the radicals and weakening the reformists and liberals.[24]

A similar trend is visible in liberal and mainline Christian denominations whose leaders prefer to deal with Islamic traditionalists and hardliners in interfaith dialogue while ignoring the liberal reformist voices emerging within Islam.

It is time Western governments and Christian Churches implemented a policy of rejecting traditional Muslim and Islamist demands and that they shifted to a position of active support for the new voices of reason and moderation within Islam.

Barnabas Aid applauds these encouraging moves and the courageous Muslims advocating them.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Robert W. Hefner, "September 11 and the Struggle for Islam", in Craig Calhoun, Paul Price, and Ashley Timmer, eds., Understanding September 11, Project coordinated by the Social Science Research Council, New York: The New Press., 2002, pp. 41-52.

[2] Richard Spencer, "Kuwaiti women MPs refuse to wear hijab in parliament", Daily Telegraph, 12 October 2009.

[3] Adrian Blomfield, "Egypt purges niqab from schools and colleges", Daily Telegraph, 5 October 2009.

[4] "Sheikh al-Azhar forces a student to remove her Niqab", Mideastwire, 5 October 2009, quoting Al-Masry al-Yawm, "Egypt`s Top Cleric Plans Face Veil Ban in Schools", Asharq Alawsat, 6 October 2009.

[5] "Sheikh al-Azhar: I`m not against Niqab and 80% of religious men...", Mideastwire, 13 October 2009, quoting Al-Masry al-Yawm.

[6] "Imam blames Christian leaders for the Persecution of Christians", Christian Concern for our Nation, 28 August 2009, http://www.ccfon.org/view.php?id=825, accessed 20 October 2009.

[7] Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectives, University of Cambridge in Association with the Universities of Exeter and Westminster, Centre of Islamic Studies: Cambridge, October 2009.

[8] Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectives, pp. 10-11.

[9] Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectives, pp. 10-11, 54.

[10] Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectives, pp. 10-11, 32-33.

[11] Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectives, pp. 28, 33.

[12] takfir - the process of declaring someone to be an apostate from Islam, a process which has been revived by radical contemporary jihadi groups.

[13] Al-wala` wal bara` - "Friendship and Distinguishing", a doctrine applied by radical groups to differentiate and separate between real and false Muslims. True Islam is defined by a love for Muslims and a hatred for non-Muslims.

[14] Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectives, pp. 11-12.

[15] Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectives, pp. 12-13.

[16] Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectives, p. 65.

[17] Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectives, p. 14.

[18] Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectives, pp. 71, 78.

[19] Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectives, p. 75.

[20] Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectives, p. 47.

[21] ijtihad - the process of individual effort by a jurist at logical deduction on a legal question, using the Qur`an and hadith as sources. Ijtihad allows fresh interpretations made from the two sources.

[22] "France court quashes Islamic Finance measure", Al-Arabiya News Channel, 15 October 2009.

[23] "Yemeni Liberal Criticizes Appointment of Dalia Mogahed as Obama`s Advisor on Islam", MEMRI Special Dispatch, No. 2518, 4 September 2009.

[24] "Criticism in the Arab Press of the US Administration`s Initiative to Reach Out to 'Moderates in the Taliban`", MEMRI Special Dispatch, No. 2353, 12 May 2009; "Arab Liberals Eight Years After 9-11: Obama`s Overtures Towards Iran Extremists Seen as a Sign of Weakness", MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis, No. 551, 29 September 2009.

Just another reminder of reality.

Muslim threats to Christians rise in Pakistan

October 4, 2009

Anjum Herald Gill THE WASHINGTON TIMES

LAHORE, Pakistan | Christians in Pakistan are feeling increasingly insecure after several violent attacks by Muslim extremists in the past two months.

In one case, eight Christians were burned to death by a Muslim mob after reports that the Muslim holy book, the Koran, had been desecrated.

Growing Talibanization of the country and a blasphemy law in place for two decades make non-Muslims, especially Christians, easy targets for discrimination and attacks, Christian and human rights activists say.

"The attacks on Christians seem to be symptomatic of a well-organized campaign launched by extremist elements against the Christian community all over central Punjab since early this year," Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Chairwoman Asma Jehangir said at a press conference last month.

The situation has become so serious that Pope Benedict XVI and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari discussed it during a meeting Thursday at the papal summer retreat in Castel Gandolfo, near Rome, the Associated Press reported.

The Vatican said the two stressed "the need to overcome all forms of discrimination based on religious affiliation, with the aim of promoting respect for the rights of all."

Most of the attacks on Christians' houses and churches followed claims of desecration of the Koran. Subsequent investigations generally proved the claims to be false.

Pakistani Minority Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian himself, said that no Christian would even think of desecrating the Koran. Some elements wanted to create an atmosphere of disharmony, but the government would not allow anybody to play with the lives and properties of the Christians, he said.

On June 30, a mob attacked Christians' houses in the village of Bahmani Wala in Kasur district of Punjab province, destroying more than 50 houses after looting.

On July 30, eight people were burned alive in the village of Gojra, also in Punjab, after a purported incident of desecration of the Koran in the nearby village of Korian Wala. Churches were attacked and copies of the Bible and hymn books were burned in both villages. In Korian Wala alone, more than 50 houses of Christians were ransacked.

On Sept. 11, a church in a village in Punjab's Sialkot district was burned after claims that a 20-year-old Christian youth had desecrated the Koran. On Sept. 15, a day after his arrest, Robert Masih was found dead in his jail cell. Police reported it as a suicide, but Mr. Masih's family claims he was killed. Joseph Francis, who runs an organization providing legal assistance to Christians, said he saw marks of torture on Mr. Masih's body.

Christians account for about 4 percent of the 170 million population of Pakistan, which was carved out of India as a state for Muslims at the time of independence from Britain in 1947.

Since then, successive civilian and military rulers have progressively strengthened the Islamic character of the country by introducing Shariah law. A controversial blasphemy law introduced in 1986 also has widened the gap between the minority Christians and majority Muslims.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom listed Pakistan as a "country of particular concern" in 2006, citing forced conversions of Christians to Islam and a rise in hate crimes against religious minorities.

All the recent attacks targeting Christians, activist groups claimed, were provoked by hate speeches made by Muslim clerics on loudspeakers from mosques.

"The rising intolerance and violence against Christians is a result of the Talibanization and promulgation of Shariah law in the country," said Kanwal Feroze, a well-known journalist. "It is not a matter of blasphemy law, but shows a mind-set of the common man."

When the blasphemy law was introduced during the rule of Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, the punishment was life imprisonment. It was changed to the death penalty by the Federal Shariah Court in 1992 when Nawaz Sharif was prime minister.

Since the inception of the blasphemy law, as many as 976 cases have been registered under it, of which 180 were against Christians. When a Christian is accused of blasphemy, he or she can be granted bail only by the top court in the province.

The step-by-step Islamization of Pakistan began in 1956, when the country's name was changed from the Democratic Republic of Pakistan to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. In 1973, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto changed the country's constitution to declare Islam the religion of the state. Non-Muslims were barred from becoming president or the prime minister, and denied seats in the Senate.

Mr. Bhutto - father-in law of current President Asif Ali Zardari - also nationalized church-run schools and institutions. Some of them were denationalized later by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who led Pakistan from 1999 until 2008.

In 1979, Gen. Zia introduced several Islamic laws that discriminated against non-Muslims - strengthening fundamentalist organizations and sowing the early seeds for Talibanization.

Under the Evidence Act of the Islamic law, a Christian man's witness is worth half that of a Muslim. Christian women would not be deemed as witnesses at all.

Muslim men can marry non-Muslim women but a Christian man cannot marry a Muslim woman. The constitutional provisions also welcome a Christian to embrace Islam, but when a Muslim converts to Christianity, the penalty is death.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has promised to review laws that could fuel hate for non-Muslim citizens after the recent attacks. A committee has been formed to look into the laws and make recommendations.

However, hard-line parties such as Jamaat-e-Islami and the banned militant organization Dawat-ul-Irshad already have warned of protests if the blasphemy law is rescinded. Even the mainstream Pakistan Muslim League-Q party of Mr. Musharraf has threatened to resist any change in the law.

One commentator on this report said this:

Wake up world. Muslims have been raping, terrorising and pillaging for 1500 years. The Koran teaches to kill all infidels, unless they convert to Islam. It won't stop on its own. Islam is like a cancer, unless you kill it, it will kill you.

Another:

FINALLY, THE TRUE TARGET OF ISLAMISTS IS BEING REVEALED. IT IS NOT ISRAEL AS MANY LIKE TO BELIEVE. NOR IS IT UNITED STATES, AS SUCH. THE TARGET OF THE WAR ISLAM IS WAGING SINCE MUHAMMAD WENT TO MEET ALLAH, AND EVEN BEFORE THAT, WAS AND CONTINUES TO BE CHRISTIANITY.

While top Obama officials are erasing from their vocabularies such terms as Islamic terrorism, jihad, jihadism, radical Islam, war on terror and Islamic war of world conquest, the Islamic war of world conquest goes on.

It's going on in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Russia, the United Kingdom, Somalia, Nigeria, Somalia, Kenya, the United States, Canada, Australia and India, to name just a few places. It's also fanning out from the Islamic terrorist strongholds in Algeria down into the almost ungovernable states of Niger, Mali and Mauritania.

What's unusual about this report in the Wall Street Journal is that, unlike reports carried in the New York Times, other mainstream media and Associated Press and Reuters newswires the reporter actually uses correct descriptives in telling what's happening.

The Koran commands all Muslims to engage in worldwide jihad until Islam is universal and all infidels are killed or enslaved. Almost all Muslims learn this from birth and many decide the way to glory and Paradise is to take up arms, kidnap, rape, kill and seize the property of others (booty, as Mohammad called it). You can get rich and have fun in the process once you get used to the blood.

Islamic Rebels Gain Strength in the Sahara

Moving South From Algeria, al Qaeda-Affiliated Insurgents Find Support Among Locals in Mauritania, Mali and Niger

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania -- Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels are spreading far beyond their original battleground in Algeria and increasingly threatening Africa's Sahara belt, scaring away investors and tourists as they undercut the region's fragile economies.

Click to enlarge.

Dozens of security personnel, as well as an American aid worker and a British tourist, were killed by militants in several attacks in the region this summer alone. The attacks -- which prompted this year's lucrative Paris-Dakar car race to relocate to South America -- have become more frequent and brazen. Recent hits occurred not just in the remote desert but also in Mali's tourist magnet Timbuktu and in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott, where a suicide bomber attacked the French Embassy last weekend.

Though still dominated by the veterans of Algeria's civil war, this Saharan insurgency has grown deep local roots. Armed bands roaming the desert include hundreds of recruits from Mauritania, Mali and Niger -- vast and impoverished countries that straddle the Arab world and black West Africa, and that relied on the now-collapsed tourism industry as the key source of foreign exchange.

"What had started out as an Algerian problem is now engulfing Mali and Mauritania. They are the weak link," says Zakaria Ould Ahmed Salem, a specialist on political Islam at the University of Nouakchott.

An Islamist insurgency that cost 200,000 lives erupted in Algeria 18 years ago, after that country's secular regime annulled the second round of elections that the Islamists were poised to win. But it is only in the past few years, as Algerian security forces contained the violence at home, that the rebels -- who seek to create an Islamic state encompassing North Africa -- began mounting operations in neighboring Saharan countries that had been unscathed by international terrorism.

Underlining its wider ambitions, the main Algerian insurgent movement, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, re-branded itself in 2007 as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM. Actual operational links between AQIM militants in the Sahara and traditional al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan or Afghanistan are tenuous, if they exist at all, Western officials say.

But the group's new name has made it easier to find money and recruits for the cause outside Algeria. "Someone like Bin Laden is considered a hero here," explains Mohamed Fall Ould Oumere, publisher of La Tribune newsweekly in Nouakchott.

Mauritania, where most people speak Arabic and watch satellite TV chains like Al-Jazeera, is a particularly fertile ground for AQIM's growth, and accounts for a growing share of the movement's cadres, Western diplomats say. In Mali, Niger and Chad, the bulk of AQIM recruits also come from Arab-speaking communities, which in these countries are outnumbered by black African majorities.

AQIM is trying to spread south, "aiming to attract the young Muslims of the region -- white ones and black ones," says Isselmou Ould Moustafa, a specialist on AQIM who interviewed many of the group's members for his Mauritanian publication, Tahalil Hebdo.

Security officials in Nigeria recently claimed that AQIM trained in Algeria some members of Boko Haram, the Islamist sect whose armed uprising cost several hundred lives in northern Nigeria last month. According to some experts on AQIM, there is also evidence of contacts between the Saharan insurgents and the Shabaab, the radical Islamist militia controlling a chunk of Somalia. "It's an arc of fire," says Mr. Oumere.

All the governments in the region say they are fighting back. But the area's political instability and frequent bickering between neighboring countries have long made it easy for Islamist rebels to roam the Sahara, obtaining sanctuary and help from local tribes. Mali and Mauritania both have strained relations with Algeria. Planned regional summits to tackle the cross-border terrorism problem have been repeatedly postponed.

A military coup in Mauritania last year complicated the situation: The U.S. reacted to the overthrowing of Mauritania's democratically elected president by reducing military cooperation with the country and pulling out a reconnaissance plane that flew regular sorties over the Sahara to search for insurgents. Cooperation is likely to be restored now that Mauritania has held a democratic election last month.

Government officials here say that, without outside help, Saharan countries have little chance of defeating AQIM. "This is a zone that can't be controlled. We don't know who's out there in the vast desert and what are they doing," says Mohamed Ould Rzeizim, who served until this week as Mauritania's minister of interior.

To finance its campaign, AQIM is smuggling Europe-bound cigarettes, drugs and illegal immigrants through the desert, Mauritanian and Western officials say. Depots of untaxed cigarettes, often brought in by ship from South America, dot the desert along Mauritania's porous northern borders.

An equally important source of revenue for AQIM is ransom money -- estimated at tens of millions of dollars -- paid by European governments for the freedom of European tourists kidnapped in separate attacks in Algeria, Tunisia, Mali and Niger. The hostages were usually transported across the Sahara to AQIM's bases in lawless northern Mali, where local officials helped negotiate the ransom collection and the tourists' release.

Mali's role as a sanctuary for AQIM has long infuriated Algeria and the U.S. The country appears to be taking a harder line after the Islamist rebels -- who refrained from killing their hostages in the past -- announced in June that they executed their British captive, Edwin Dyer.

A few days after the killing of Mr. Dyer, suspected militants also gunned down in Timbuktu the regional chief of Malian intelligence, Lt. Col. Lamina Ould Bou. The colonel, an ethnic Arab and former Islamist rebel, had played a crucial role in Mali's efforts against AQIM. According to Malian government accounts and al Qaeda Internet postings, armed clashes in the region in following weeks killed dozens of Malian troops and Islamist guerrillas.

"We are now engaged in a total struggle against al Qaeda," Mali's President Amadou Toumani Touré declared last month.

The Saharan rebels have so far targeted only foreigners and security forces, sparing civilian targets like restaurants and hotels. In Algeria, Pakistan and Iraq, by contrast, al Qaeda-affiliated militants showed no concern about killing large numbers of Muslim civilians.

"These youngsters are not yet ready to carry out blind attacks and to explode car bombs, Algerian-style. They have not yet completely broken with the Mauritanian society," says Mr. Moustafa, the AQIM expert. But, he cautions, bloodier attacks are likely to happen soon: "They have bad teachers. Their future targets will be Mauritanian."

Mainstream media outlets in Europe are finally beginning to comment, however gingerly, about the Muslim threat to civilization. Excellent books have been written by Americans Bruce Bawer, Mark Steyn and Walter Laqueur, and now Christopher Caldwell, about the Muslim "time bomb." Leading European media from the BBC to newspapers have pursued a politically correct course of ignoring the problem or euphemistically describing it away.

The London Telegraph has finally waded in with a large survey piece with the arresting opener:

A fifth of European Union will be Muslim by 2050

Britain, Spain and Holland will have an even higher proportion of Muslims in a shorter amount of time, an investigation by The Telegraph shows.

The Telegraph survey article itself (see below) sketches the demographics of the Muslim population explosion resulting from massive immigration and high birth rates, but only alludes to Muslim self-ghettoization while leaving out altogether mention of the accompanying explosions of youth crime and welfare costs.

For example, Caldwell reports these staggering statistics on immigration in Germany, which is overwhelmingly Muslim from Turkey:

Take the example of Germany. In 1970, 82 percent of its immigrants were in the workforce, but by 1980 only 58 percent had jobs. The decline continued: By 1990, just 41 percent were in the workforce, and by 2000 only 33 percent were. Over these five decades the number of foreign residents in Germany rose from 2.7 million to 7.3 million.

Sweden has been particularly welcoming to and accepting of Muslim "culture." As a consequence, Malmo, its second largest city, is virtually under the control of Muslim street gangs who attack the weak elderly for their possessions and native girls for rape. And France has mapped and publicly identified several hundred Muslim "no-go zones" which the public and public officials are advised not to enter.

The European left, which controls the BBC and much of the media and through the Labour Party the present government, not only studiously ignores the threat, but embraces Islam -- the views of which are completely antithetical to theirs except for anti-Americanism and anti-Christianity.

A few conservative political voices are being courageously raised, such as those of Geert Wilders in Holland, but so far political leadership is far behind the public in its opposition to Muslim immigration, separatism and their favored treatment by governments, media and the elites.

Mark Steyn, an early "alarmist," notes the Telegraph piece, declares it understates the problem and the rapidity of change to be effected by Muslim population growth in the major cities of western Europe.

Muslim Europe: the demographic time bomb transforming our continent

The EU is facing an era of vast social change, reports Adrian Michaels, and few politicians are taking notice

By Adrian Michaels
Published: 11:11AM BST 08 Aug 2009

Europe's low white birth rate, coupled with faster multiplying migrants, will change fundamentally what we take to mean by European culture and society.

Britain and the rest of the European Union are ignoring a demographic time bomb: a recent rush into the EU by migrants, including millions of Muslims, will change the continent beyond recognition over the next two decades, and almost no policy-makers are talking about it.

The numbers are startling. Only 3.2 per cent of Spain's population was foreign-born in 1998. In 2007 it was 13.4 per cent. Europe's Muslim population has more than doubled in the past 30 years and will have doubled again by 2015. In Brussels, the top seven baby boys' names recently were Mohamed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza.

Europe's low white birth rate, coupled with faster multiplying migrants, will change fundamentally what we take to mean by European culture and society. The altered population mix has far-reaching implications for education, housing, welfare, labour, the arts and everything in between. It could have a critical impact on foreign policy: a study was submitted to the US Air Force on how America's relationship with Europe might evolve. Yet EU officials admit that these issues are not receiving the attention they deserve.

American columnist Diana West makes an excellent point: We are playing into Islam's hands in its war of world conquest by refusing, because of fear of offending Muslims or the corrosive habit of political correctness (and perhaps fear of violence), to speak of "the gross incompatibility of Islamic ideology with Western liberty."

Fudging with words and terms such as "Islamist" and "Islamofascism" and "radical Islam" is to confuse Americans who need to know the truth about Islam's true nature and why it must be tamed or turned back. The problem with Islam is its core ideology as contained in the Koran and proclaimed and acted out by Mohammad. Our problem is not with fringe groups who have hijacked Islam. Mohammad's Islam is a religion of war, not of peace, and it has been so for 1400 years. Jihad until Islam rules the world is the duty of every true believer Muslim.

But we must not say that.

Muslim organizations are working on "hate-crime" legislation in the UN and in various countries, including the United States, to make it a punishable offense to criticize Islam. The Attorney General of the United States under the leadership of President Obama is currently advocating expanded coverage of hate-crime legislation. (Dutch pro-freedom parliamentarian Geert Wilders and American Islam expert Robert Spencer both support all hate-crime laws.)

We may have the First Amendment and free speech in the United States, but, it we stifle ourselves from telling the truth about Islam, it is as if free speech doesn't exist.

There is an Islamic network of organizations active in the United States today working on their program of subverting the country from within with the goal that one day Sharia, Islamic law, will replace the U.S. Constitution.

Fanciful, you say? Islam has been engaged in this war of conquest against the rest of the world since it was begun by Mohammad. Today, with trillions in oil wealth and more than a billion followers, Islam may be in the best position at any time in its history to press forward with its war.

Strategies of conquest are tailored to the situation in each country. War in Afghanistan, terrror in Nigeria, aggressive immigration, high birth rates and intimidation in Europe, quiet subversion and random terrorism in the United States and building allies for control over human rights and other policies at the UN.

Ms. West delivered her timely warning against pre-emptive surrender to Islam at the free speech conference of the International Free Press Society held in Denmark's parliament on June 17th.

The Impact of Islam on Free Speech in America

Americans are proud, and rightly so, of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, which, among other things, protects speech from government control. The Amendment says in part: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."

Increasingly, however, Americans seem content to regard the First Amendment not as the fundamental working tool of democracy, but as a national heirloom, a kind of antique to admire rather than put to use. I don't think many of my countrymen perceive how profoundly their attitude toward free speech has changed. But there is a difference between having freedom of speech and exercising freedom of speech, one that has become glaringly and distressingly obvious to me since September 11, 2001. So, while it is true that the US government is not Constitutionally empowered to make laws that censor Americans, it is also true, I believe, that Americans have come to censor themselves. But why?

Is the tide of public opinion in Europe starting to turn?

This is the question after Geert Wilders' Freedom Party came in second to the ruling party in the European elections in Holland.

Wilders is saying out loud what many Dutch are afraid to say:

"Islam wants to dominate our society. "It's in opposition to freedom."

"If people are offended, that's not my aim. I don't talk about Muslims but about Islam. Everything I say is against the fascist Islamic ideology . . . ."

"It is civilisation against barbarity."

Wilders is the foremost voice in Europe against the "invasion" of Muslims who refuse to integrate, stay separate and even announce their ilntention of taking over Europe through immigration and high birth rates, turning Europe into a Muslim land under sharia.

Dutch divided over Geert Wilders as radical MP eyes premiership

By Nick Meo in Rotterdam

Telegraph London 14 Jun 2009

Until last week, the Bernard family had the normal concerns of any middle-class Dutch family - putting their teenage children through university, living a greener life, and paying the mortgage.

But that has all changed since the European election - and the triumph by Geert Wilders, the right-wing populist and outspoken critic of Islam who in February was banned from entering Britain as a threat to "community harmony".

To many abroad Mr Wilders, a Dutch MP, appears an old-fashioned racist whose views put him on a par with other far-Right politicians elsewhere in Europe.

Yet in its first ever test of national electoral support among the normally tolerant Dutch, his anti-immigration Party for Freedom which he founded in 2006 won 17 per cent of the votes - making it the second biggest party. That has shaken the country to its core - opening up the real possibility that, through the Dutch coalition system, Mr Wilders could win power at the next general election.

Now, like many others in the Netherlands, the Bernards are desperately worried. "This has the feeling of what happened to Germany in the 1930s," said Alfred Bernard, 52, a lawyer. "Wilders blames foreigners for everything. People are disoriented because of the economic crisis. Everywhere there is dissatisfaction with mainstream politicians.

"After this I really believe that Wilders could become prime minister in the 2011 parliamentary elections, or at least set the political agenda."

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Wilders, 45, was frank about that ambition. Asked about the prospect of taking power in two years' time, he said: "That is our biggest job. We had an enormous success last week and our biggest task is to keep up momentum. I am very confident that we will have an excellent result.

"If my party becomes the biggest party, I would be honoured to be prime minister."

Sitting in his office in the Dutch parliament building in The Hague, protected from the threat of assassination by 10 armed secret service bodyguards, he summed up his antipathy to the religion of many immigrants to the Netherlands.

"Islam wants to dominate our society," he said in fluent and only slightly accented English. "It's in opposition to freedom.

"If people are offended, that's not my aim. I don't talk about Muslims but about Islam. Everything I say is against the fascist Islamic ideology."

To the charge that to many his views appeared to be racist, he responded: "If that was true, we would never have been the second biggest party in the European elections."

Why, then, did Moroccans and Turks living in the Netherlands so fear him? "As long as they don't commit crimes, it's a baseless fear," he said. "If you adhere to our laws, if you act according to our values, you are free to stay. We will help you to integrate.

"But if you cross the red line, if you start committing crimes, if you want to do jihad or impose sharia, we want you to be sent out of the Netherlands and we will get rid of your permits to stay."

An admirer of Churchill and Lady Thatcher, he is charismatic as well as combative. Holland's conventional politicians - mostly dull men in suits - have no idea how to counter his politically incorrect taunts, which outrage the parliamentary chamber but delight his supporters.

He has come a long way since the days when he could be lightly dismissed as an eccentric fringe politician with an extraordinary blond quiff, known mainly for baiting Muslims.

"Half of Holland loves me and half of Holland hates me. There is no in-between," Mr Wilders said. "This is a new politics, and I think it would have a great chance of success in other European countries. We are democrats. On economic and social issues we are centrist. We want tougher laws on crime and we want to stop Holland paying so much money to the European Union.

"We would stop immigration from Muslim countries and close Islamic schools. We want to be more proud of our identity."

He admitted that he is frustrated at his image abroad, especially in Britain, a country which he admires. He claimed to believe in freedom above all else and pointed out that he is despised by Holland's Neo-Nazis, who dubbed him the "blond Zionist" because of his links to Israel - a country which he has often visited and where he counts politicians among his friends.

He is still angered at being banned from entering Britain, where he had been invited to show his controversial 17-minute film linking the Koran with the September 11 terror attacks. Muslim groups were among those who campaigned against his admission, and he dismissed the Home Office ruling as an attempt at "appeasement" of Islam.

Dutch liberals groaned when the British Government refused entry, because they knew Mr Wilders would milk the decision to generate massive publicity at home. He is also being prosecuted in Holland for promoting hate crimes, a case which is thought unlikely to succeed but which has allowed him to pose as a martyr.

In the European Parliament his four MEPs will not ally with the British National party, he said, claiming he had never met a BNP Member. "I understand they talk a lot about blacks and whites. This is disgusting," he said.

Then a dreamy look of a man convinced of his own destiny came into his eyes as he launched into a fresh tirade about the threat to Western civilisation from Islam. "Samuel Huntingdon was being too positive when he talked about a clash of civilisations," Mr Wilders said. "It is civilisation against barbarity."

His conviction explains why families like the Bernards, who know what happened next door in Germany during the 1930s, find Mr Wilders so unsettling.

In the past, the Bernards always had confidence in the post-war Dutch dream of equality and tolerance. But now Mr Bernard and his librarian wife Marjina, also 52, have been forced to ask whether their country is fundamentally changing.

The day after the results were announced, Mrs Bernard joined a mainstream political party for the first time in her life because she thinks that if Mr Wilders is to be opposed, ordinary politics must first be revived.

"It is getting scary," she said. "He is becoming more extreme. He has made it respectable to speak out against Muslims."

They live in an airy ground-floor flat in a neat suburb of Rotterdam, Europe's biggest port with a population of 580,000, about four out 10 of whom are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. On current birth rates, the city is expected to become Europe's first with a Muslim majority in about 2020. That has put it firmly at the centre of Holland's anguished debate about race, immigration and Islam - a debate which is apparently being won by Mr Wilders.

The young watch his irreverent attacks on YouTube, relishing the novelty of a politician who can make them laugh. His older supporters are fiercely loyal to a leader who is bold enough to voice what they think, but for years dared not say.

"I voted for him because immigration isn't working here in Holland any more," said Ben De Reus, a 40-year-old bus driver from Rotterdam.

"He wants to get rid of the Turks and they don't belong here," said an elderly woman supporter in a prosperous southern suburb - wrongly, since Mr Wilders says he would "encourage" repatriation but wants the expulsion only of immigrants convicted of crimes.

Some 15 per cent of the Dutch population of 16.5 million are from ethnic minorities - many from Morocco and Turkey.

Most of the Party for Freedom's 17 per cent of the vote was cast in Holland's four big cities, where the immigrants live and where white voters grumble about high crime rates, chaotic foreigners who don't understand orderly Dutch ways, and Muslim families who refuse to learn the language and fit in.

But it did well in parts of rural Holland too. It polled highest - 39.8 per cent - in Volderdam, a picturesque, overwhelmingly white town surrounded by windmills and tulip fields, where there are no burkhas but tourists queue up to take photos of women in clogs.

His rhetoric has delighted many voters, the ones who fear that their beloved Dutch values are under attack from an alien way of life.

Dutch tolerance has shaped the Party of Freedom to be quite unlike most European Right-wing movements: its election campaigning championed the victims of gay-bashing gangs of Moroccan youths, and Mr Wilders talks often about the threat from Islam to women's rights.

His success is a sign of how the political landscape has changed. Even Dutch left-wingers now have to admit that there is a problem with Moroccan street gangs are a problem, and liberals wring their hands about the failure of immigrants to integrate since the first were admitted during the 1960s and 70s - many from Morocco and Turkey.

"Everybody assumed that immigrants would go home once they had finished their work here. But instead they stayed and brought their families," said Rita Van Der Linde, a spokeswoman for the Rotterdam municipality.

The city's large Moroccan population have found jobs harder to come by in recent years. Unemployed, and often feeling unwelcome, they have become more Islamic and retreated to the security of the mosques in their communities, in the older, scruffier parts of the city where they are isolated from mainstream Dutch life.

"This development has made white Dutch people nervous of them, especially since September 11th 2001," Ms Van Der Linde said.

Hopes for harmony on the streets have been invested in a new mayor, Ahmed Aboutaleb, a member of the Dutch Labour Party whose parents came from Morocco.

He has broken with multiculturalism by urging immigrants to learn the language and fit in, or get on a plane out. He has also pledged to crack down on Moroccan criminals, using language which Right-wingers say would get them branded as racists if they used it.

But in office he has tried to remain aloof from the fray, leaving the field almost clear for Mr Wilders to argue against immigration, which in reality has slowed to a trickle.

Not everyone believes there is enough substance to the Party of Freedom for it to have a chance of achieving real power.

In a little café in Rotterdam which proudly serves only traditional Dutch dishes, owner Martin Voltuees, 46, said of Mr Wilders: "He has a lot of good one-liners but no solutions. We have always been a culture of immigrants ever since the Jews arrived. The difference is that in the past people brought their skills, but now we have immigrants who just bring their poverty.

"Twenty years ago there were plenty of jobs in Rotterdam in the shipyards, and we needed them. That's gone now. But you see in Holland black and white, Muslims and Christians, intermarrying, so perhaps these problems are solving themselves."

Others are less sanguine - not least the Dutch citizens who feel themselves to be under fire.

Omar Kirac, 19, an engineering student at a Rotterdam university whose Turkish parents moved to the Netherlands before he was born, said: "Wilders hates people like me, and of course I hate him. I voted against him - it was the blond people who voted for him.

"We think he could become the prime minister and that would be dangerous for us, and dangerous for the Netherlands.

"Politicians need to focus on the economic crisis, not blame Muslims for everything."

The reaction to the falsities and half-truths in President Obama's Cairo speech to Muslims of the world continues. Brigitte Gabriel, who was terrorized by Muslim violence as a young Christian girl in Lebanon and ultimately settled in the United States, has written a letter to the President that bears careful reading.

An Open Letter to President Obama
June 8, 2009

Dear Mr. President,

You face difficult challenges in matters such as achieving peace in the Middle East and protecting America from the threat of radical Islam and terrorism. These are challenges that have vexed past presidents, going as far back as our second president, John Adams. I have no doubt you appreciate both the gravity of these challenges and the enormous obstacles that exist to solving them.

I also have no doubt that you and your staff understood that, no matter what you said in your speech last Thursday in Cairo, there would be those who would take issue with you. That is always the case when attempting to solve problems that are as deep and emotionally-laden as these challenges are.

I am assuming it is your sincere hope that the approach you have chosen to take, as evidenced by what I'm sure was a carefully crafted speech, will ultimately prove successful. However, it pains me to say this sir, but, while you said in your speech that you are a "student of history," it is abundantly clear that, in these matters, you do not know history and thus, as Santayana noted, you are doomed to repeat it. In doing so your efforts, however well-intentioned they may be, will not produce what you profess to hope they will produce.

A wise man once said that if you start with the wrong assumptions, no matter how logical your reasoning is, you will end up with the wrong conclusion.

With all due respect Mr. President, you are starting with certain assumptions that are unsupported by history and an objective study of the ideology of political Islam.

You began in your speech by asserting that "tensions" exist between the United States and Muslims around the world, which, of course, is correct.

Unfortunately, you then proceeded, incorrectly, to lay virtually all the blame for these tensions at the feet of America and the West. You blamed western colonialism, the Cold War, and even modernity and globalism.

A student of American history, who is not trying to reconstruct it to fit a modern politically correct narrative, would state that tensions between America and Muslims began with the unprovoked, four-decades long assault by the Muslim Barbary pirates against American shipping in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I find it telling that you mentioned the Treaty of Tripoli in your speech but ignored the circumstances that led to it. That treaty was but one of numerous attempts by the United States to achieve peace with the jihadists of the Barbary Coast who were attacking our shipping and killing and enslaving our citizens and our soldiers and who by their own admission were doing so to fulfill the call to jihad.

These jihadists were not acting to protest American foreign policy, which was decidedly isolationist, and there was no state of Israel to scapegoat.

They were doing what countless Islamic jihadists have done throughout history, acting upon the hundreds of passages in the Qur'an and the Hadith that call upon faithful Muslims to kill, conquer or subjugate the infidel.

A student of world history would know that, for all the acknowledged evils of Western colonialism, these evils pale in comparison to the nearly 14 centuries of Islamic colonialism that began in Arabia under the leadership of Mohammed. The student of history would know that Islamic forces eradicated all Jewish and Christian presence from Arabia after Mohammed's death, and then succeeded in conquering all of North Africa, most of the Middle East, much of Asia Minor, and significant portions of Europe and India, eventually creating an empire larger than Rome's was at its peak.

The number of dead and enslaved during these many centuries of Islamic imperial conquest and colonialism have been estimated to total more than 300 million. What's more, the wealth of many of the conquered nations and cultures was plundered by the Islamic conquerors, and millions of non-Muslims who did survive were forced to pay onerous taxes, such as the "jizya," a humiliation tax to the Islamic caliphs. Indeed, in some areas Christians and Jews were made to wear a receipt for the jizya around their neck as a mark of their dishonor.

These facts have not been invented by Christian or Jewish historical revisionists, but were chronicled by Muslim eyewitnesses throughout the past 14 centuries and are available to be researched by any person seeking an objective understanding of how Islam spread throughout the world.

You say in your speech that we must squarely face the tensions that exist between America and the Muslim world. That is a laudable notion with which I agree, but by casting Islam as the historical victim and the West (and by implication, America) as the aggressor, you do not face these tensions squarely, but alleviate the Muslim world from coming to grips with the jihadist ideology embedded in its holy books and acted upon for 1,400 years.

Even worse, you empower and embolden militant Islamists who regard your gestures as signs of weakness and capitulation.

The issue is not that all Muslims are terrorists or radicals or extremists.

We all know that the majority of Muslims are not. We also know that many peace-loving Muslims are victims of Islamist violence.

The issue is this: what drives hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide to call for the death of Jews?

What drives millions of Muslims to riot, destroy property, and take innocent lives in reaction to the Danish cartoons?

What drives tens of thousands of Muslims to demand the execution of a British teacher whose only "crime" was allowing her students to name their teddy bears "Mohammed"?

What drives countless Muslims worldwide to actively participate in, or fund, or provide nurture to terrorist organizations?

What drives Muslims in mosques in America to proclaim and distribute materials that call for hatred of and the destruction of infidels?

What drives entire Islamic countries to prohibit the building of a church or synagogue?

To assume, as you apparently do, that what drives these actions is not an ideology embedded in the holy books of Islam, but rather other "root causes," most of which you lay at the feet of America and the West, is at best naïve and at worst dangerous.

Lastly, I must address your statement that "Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance." Unfortunately, the examples you gave are the exception rather than the rule.

Historically speaking, I seriously doubt the Egyptian Copts, the Lebanese Maronites, the Christians in Bethlehem, the Assyrians, the Hindus, the Jews, and many others who have been persecuted by Islamic violence and supremacism, would agree with your assertion.

For instance, Christians and Jews became "Dhimmis," a second class group under Islam. Dhimmis were forced to wear distinctive clothing; it was Baghdad's Caliph Al-Mutawakkil, in the ninth century, who designated a yellow badge for Jews under Islam, which Hitler copied and duplicated in Nazi Germany nearly a thousand years later.

I witnessed first-hand the "tolerance" of Islam when Islamists ravaged my country of birth, Lebanon, in the 1970's, leaving widespread death and destruction in their wake. I saw how they re-paid the tolerance that Lebanese Christians extended toward them. My experience is not an isolated one. When you make an unfounded assertion about the "proud tradition" of tolerance in Islam, you do a great disservice to the hundreds of millions of non-Muslims who have been killed, maimed, enslaved, conquered, subjugated or displaced in the cause of Islamic jihad.

Mr. President, those of us like me who are ringing the alarm in America about the threat of radical Islam would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world.

Most Americans would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world. The obstacle to achieving this does not lie with us in America and the West. It lies with the hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide, including many of their spiritual leaders, who take seriously the repeated calls to jihad in the Qur'an and the Hadith. Who regard "infidels" as inferior and worthy of conquering, subjugating and forcibly converting. Who support "cultural jihad" as a means to subvert non-Muslim societies from within. Who take seriously the admonitions throughout the Qur'an and the Hadith to convert the world to Islam by force if necessary and bring it under the rule of Allah.

Unless you are willing to courageously and honestly accept this, your aspirations for worldwide comity and peace in the Middle East are doomed to fail.

Sincerely,

Brigitte Gabriel

President Obama has become the self-proclaimed apologist for Islam and is "either unable or unwilling to come to terms with the nature of the radical Islamic threat to America and the West." HIs Cairo speech was a collection of missstatements and half-truths that exaggerated if not falsified Islamic claims for academic progress and tolerance.

His actions with respect to Islamic terrorists are even more alarming: Bringing terrorists captured on the battlefield to New York for a court trial? Reading Miranda rights to Taliban mauraders rounded up in the Afghan mountains? Expressing a willingness to release Guantanomo detainees in the United States? Stacking his administration with Arabists and selling out Israel?

What is the extent of the danger in all this for Americans?

The Bush administration was justifiably taken to task for refusing to recognize or do anything about the nefarious role played by state sponsors of extremism such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in the spread of radical Islam. President Obama has already gone beyond that, with a policy of pandering and appeasement. History teaches us that tolerating the intolerant and appeasing the unappeasable results in more conflict and bloodshed.

Read all of what Alex Alexiev has to say.

June 11, 2009, 4:00 a.m.

Obama's Fantasy Islam
Obama has seemingly chosen to act as an apologist for Islamism.

By Alex Alexiev of the Hudson Institute

With the media's rhapsodic paeans to President Obama's "historic" Cairo speech now receding into the background, this may be an opportune moment to take a sober look at America's policies vis-à-vis the Muslim world and, no less important, at where Islam itself may be heading.

It is now clear that the president is either unable or unwilling to come to terms with the nature of the radical Islamic threat to America and the West. To him, the problem is a few violent extremists, a "small but potent minority of Muslims," which leaves one wondering how a small minority got to be quite so potent. In any case, the West is dealing not with a few militants, or even with terrorism as such, but with a murderous, totalitarian doctrine couched in Islamic terms that has already become the dominant idiom in much of the Muslim world and its diaspora communities. Whether it is called "radical Islam," "Islamism," "Salafism," or "Islamofascism," it aims at nothing short of the conquest of the world for Islam, by violent means if need be. And not just any kind of Islam, but the most reactionary and intolerant interpretation of the Muslim faith.

It is an ideology that elevates violent jihad as a religious obligation for all Muslims, openly discriminates against non-Muslims and women, banishes democracy and secularism, and ordains the murder of apostates and homosexuals. This doctrine is preached today in tens of thousands of Salafi, Wahhabi, and Deobandi mosques and madrassas, and promoted by countless Islamist organizations, from the Muslim Brotherhood networks in America to the Taliban and its fellow jihadists in Pakistan. Extremism and terrorism are the results of this malignant phenomenon. The Taliban and al-Qaeda did not bring Pakistan to the edge of the precipice on their own; rather, 30 years of state-sponsored Islamization of Pakistani society made Islamism the threat it is.

While President Bush was also remiss in explaining to Americans that we're in a deadly conflict with a violent Islamist doctrine that has deep and spreading roots among a quarter of the human population -- rather than with terrorism, which is simply its symptom -- Obama has seemingly chosen to act as an apologist for this ideology. There is no other credible reason for a man with an army of experts, researchers, and fact-checkers at his disposal to utter so many half-truths and outright falsehoods about what Islam is and what it is not. These include his touting ostensible Islamic contributions to music (an art form prohibited among the devout) and printing (regarded by the mullahs as the devil's invention, and not available to Muslims until three centuries after Gutenberg), and his preposterous promotion of Saudi King Abdullah, ruler of the most religiously intolerant country on earth, as a champion of "interfaith dialogue."

More telling still are Obama's historically inaccurate portrayals of Muslims as being at "the forefront of innovation and education," and his blaming colonialism and the Cold War for their falling behind. In fact, Muslims have not been at the forefront of anything since ijtihad (reason) was declared un-Islamic ten centuries ago and replaced by blind obedience to reactionary sharia dogma, which, in turn, ushered in a cultural and intellectual stagnation that is yet to be overcome. Indeed, the greatest Muslim minds over the centuries, from Averoes and Avicenna to Noble Prize physicist Abdus Salam, have invariably been persecuted and declared apostates by the guardians of Islamic orthodoxy. While colonialism is a favorite Islamist whipping boy for all real or imagined ills visited upon the Muslims, it was the result, not the cause, of the inexorable decline of Islam as a world power and civilization that culminated in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century. Nor should it be forgotten that throughout most of its history, Islam has been a premier imperialist and colonialist power itself.

Perhaps the greatest failure of the president's vaunted new approach to Islam is his reluctance to examine the profoundly oppressive and despotic nature of governance in most Arab and Muslim countries as one of the root causes of radical Islam. Worn-out clichés that Islam is "an important part of promoting peace" do little to explain to either Westerners or Muslims the nature of the conflict and how it affects their well-being. It is, of course, a well-known fact that radical Islam would have never reached critical mass without massive financial support and political sponsorship from states such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, and Sudan. What's less well-known is that many Muslim regimes that are considered moderate, or even American allies, have also aided and abetted Islamic extremism.

Egypt, the recipient of billions of U.S. aid dollars, is a case in point. Faced with a virulent Islamist threat from the Muslim Brotherhood, Cairo's dictatorial rulers, from Sadat to Mubarak, sought to appease the Islamists by allowing them to play an ever-greater role in society. First Sadat promoted sharia as one of the sources of law and later proclaimed it the sole source of Egyptian legislation, providing the Islamists with a powerful weapon against their secular opponents. Mubarak then appointed the mullahs of Al-Azhar as the sole arbiters of what books should be published in or imported into Egypt. Predictably, anything that does not meet their medieval criteria is being censored, while books that discuss how many angels could be recruited for a war against Israel (120 million) are encouraged.

This is the same organization that, in President Obama's words, "paved the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment." The inevitable result of such policies is evident in the mufti of Egypt's open support for Hezbollah and Hamas, and in his Taliban-like fatwa that sculpture and sculptors are against Islam.

The inescapable reality is that the policies that have served the venal and corrupt Arab regimes well (by keeping their oppressed populations poor, uneducated, and ignorant) have served the violent religious obscurantism of the Islamists even better. Consider that not a single Western government had the courage to criticize the Organization of the Islamic Conference in 1990 when all 45 of its members voted for the "Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam," which, de facto and de jure, denied most internationally recognized human rights to Muslims by making all rights and freedoms in Muslim countries subject to sharia as their "sole source." To discuss our relations with the Muslim world in the abstract, as the Obama administration is now doing, without even mentioning the vast gulf separating most Muslim regimes from the rest of the world when it comes to the most basic aspects of modern civilization is disingenuous as well as futile.

The Bush administration was justifiably taken to task for refusing to recognize or do anything about the nefarious role played by state sponsors of extremism such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in the spread of radical Islam. President Obama has already gone beyond that, with a policy of pandering and appeasement. History teaches us that tolerating the intolerant and appeasing the unappeasable results in more conflict and bloodshed.

-- Alex Alexiev is an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.

While President Obama did articulate some hard truths that Musllms deny but had to hear, he actually understated much of the oppressive nature of Islam and wildly overstated the history of Islamic "tolerance." Through the centuries Islam has continually oppressed conquered peoples and dangled the threat of death over them. This was so during the fabricated Golden Age of Islamic Andalusia and is so in modern Egypt, where Obama spoke. Today Coptic Christians, once a majority, are a persecuted, shrinking minority. Jews, once flourishing in Egypt, have virtually disappeared. One whose family fled Muslim persecution in Egypt tells his story.

June 9, 2009 New York Times

The Exodus Obama Forgot to Mention
By ANDRÉ ACIMAN

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S speech to the Islamic world was a groundbreaking event. Never before has a young, dynamic American president, beloved both by his countrymen and the nations of the world, extended so timely and eager a hand to a part of the globe that, recently, had seen fewer and fewer reasons to trust us or to wish us well.

As important, Mr. Obama did not mince words. Never before has a president gone over to the Arab world and broadcast its flaws so loudly and clearly: extremism, nuclear weapons programs and a faltering record in human rights, education and economic development -- the Arab world gets no passing grades in any of these domains. Mr. Obama even found a moment to mention the plight of Egypt's harassed Coptic community and to criticize the new wave of Holocaust deniers. And to show he was not playing favorites, he put the Israelis on notice: no more settlements in the occupied territories. He spoke about the suffering of Palestinians. This was no wilting olive branch.

And yet, for all the president's talk of "a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world" and shared "principles of justice and progress," neither he nor anyone around him, and certainly no one in the audience, bothered to notice one small detail missing from the speech: he forgot me.

The president never said a word about me. Or, for that matter, about any of the other 800,000 or so Jews born in the Middle East who fled the Arab and Muslim world or who were summarily expelled for being Jewish in the 20th century. With all his references to the history of Islam and to its (questionable) "proud tradition of tolerance" of other faiths, Mr. Obama never said anything about those Jews whose ancestors had been living in Arab lands long before the advent of Islam but were its first victims once rampant nationalism swept over the Arab world.

Nor did he bother to mention that with this flight and expulsion, Jewish assets were -- let's call it by its proper name -- looted. Mr. Obama never mentioned the belongings I still own in Egypt and will never recover. My mother's house, my father's factory, our life in Egypt, our friends, our books, our cars, my bicycle. We are, each one of us, not just defined by the arrangement of protein molecules in our cells, but also by the things we call our own. Take away our things and something in us dies. Losing his wealth, his home, the life he had built, killed my father. He didn't die right away; it took four decades of exile to finish him off.

Mr. Obama had harsh things to say to the Arab world about its treatment of women. And he said much about America's debt to Islam. But he failed to remind the Egyptians in his audience that until 50 years ago a strong and vibrant Jewish community thrived in their midst. Or that many of Egypt's finest hospitals and other institutions were founded and financed by Jews. It is a shame that he did not remind the Egyptians in the audience of this, because, in most cases -- and especially among those younger than 50 -- their memory banks have been conveniently expunged of deadweight and guilt. They have no recollections of Jews.

In Alexandria, my birthplace and my home, all streets bearing Jewish names have been renamed. A few years ago, the Library of Alexandria put on display an Arabic translation of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," perhaps the most anti-Semitic piece of prose ever written. Today, for the record, there are perhaps four Jews left in Alexandria.

When the last Jew dies, the temples and religious artifacts and books that were the property of what was once probably the wealthiest Jewish community on the Mediterranean will go to the Egyptian government -- not to me, or to my children, or to any of the numberless descendants of Egyptian Jews.

It is strange that our president, a man so versed in history and so committed to the truth, should have omitted mentioning the Jews of Egypt. He either forgot, or just didn't know, or just thought it wasn't expedient or appropriate for this venue. But for him to speak in Cairo of a shared effort "to find common ground ... and to respect the dignity of all human beings" without mentioning people in my position would be like his speaking to the residents of Berlin about the future of Germany and forgetting to mention a small detail called World War II.

-- André Aciman, a professor of comparative literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center, is the author of the memoir "Out of Egypt."

Jeff Jacoby contrasts what Ronald Reagan did with his opportunity in Berlin and what Obama didn't do in Cairo.

What the Brandenburg Gate was for Ronald Reagan in 1987, Cairo University could have been for Obama. Reagan seized the moment, spoke the truth, and helped liberate half a continent. All Obama did was give a speech.

Oh, well. Maybe there'll be a next time.

In Cairo, the president pandered

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
June 7, 2009

PRESIDENT OBAMA went to the Middle East, he said, to speak frankly and forthrightly about the issues that bedevil America's relations with the Muslim world. "Part of being a good friend is being honest," he had said in an interview just before his trip. He warned his Cairo audience that he intended to be blunt. "We must say openly the things we hold in our hearts and that too often are said only behind closed doors," he declared; so he was going to "speak as clearly and plainly as I can."

About some things, the president was indeed direct. He conveyed his impatience with those -- there are many in the Middle East -- who blame the 9/11 terrorist attacks on a Jewish or American conspiracy. "Let us be clear: Al-Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day" and "the victims were innocent men, women and children. . . . These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with."

He was even more scornful about Holocaust denial, which is also rife in the Arab world. "Six million Jews were killed" by Nazi Germany, Obama said -- "more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful."

Would that the rest of his remarks had been equally plain-spoken. As the first American president with Muslim roots, Obama benefits from much acclaim and goodwill in the Middle East. Rarely has a president had a better opportunity to openly address the pathologies and prejudices that drag Islamic societies backward, trapping so many of the world's Muslims in cultures that are unfree and unenlightened. As a candidate for president, Obama had argued that his experience of Muslim life gave him the moral authority to speak truth to Islamic power. "I can speak forcefully," he told The New York Times, "about the need for Muslim countries to reconcile themselves to modernity in ways they have failed to do."
Alas, that is just what he didn't do. Instead Obama pandered to his audience. He repeatedly praised Islamic history and teachings, repeatedly drew attention to American or Western shortcomings -- and repeatedly avoided speaking frankly about the dysfunctions in contemporary Islam.

He spoke of democracy, for example, but only in gauzy platitudes about "the freedom to live as you choose" and the need for "government of the people and by the people." Obama could have mentioned that democracy is almost entirely absent from the Arab world, or called for the release of imprisoned dissidents. He could have used his bully pulpit to urge an end to Egypt's repressive "state of emergency," which has lasted 28 years. He could have contrasted Iraq's hard-won constitutional democracy with the Middle East's ugly autocracies and dictatorships. He could have offered hope and encouragement to persecuted reformers and pro-democracy activists. Why didn't he?

"I want to address . . . women's rights," the president said, as well he might, given the appalling subjugation of women in so many Muslim countries. But about that subjugation -- the gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia, the fanatic misogyny of the Taliban, the widespread female genital mutilation, the "honor" killings of women who get pregnant out of wedlock -- he spoke not a word. The closest he came to denouncing the thugs who blow up girls' schools and murder their teachers was to observe tepidly that "a woman who is denied an education is denied equality." He disagreed, he said, with those who think "that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal." But what about women who are forced to wear a hijab? About them, Obama was silent.

Most astonishing of all, Obama never spoke the words "Islamist" or "Islamism." In a speech directed to Muslims worldwide, he made no effort to refute radical Islam's endorsement of global jihad. He spoke only of "extremists" -- as in "violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security" -- but said nothing about the totalitarian religious ideology that drives them. For Obama, speaking in the heart of the Arab world at a seat of Muslim learning, it was the perfect moment to strike an intellectual blow against radical Islam. It was the ideal venue to implore Muslims to rise up, vocally and en masse, against the jihadists who preach and commit violence in the name of Islam.

What the Brandenburg Gate was for Ronald Reagan in 1987, Cairo University could have been for Obama. Reagan seized the moment, spoke the truth, and helped liberate half a continent. All Obama did was give a speech.

Melanie Phillips is the author of the shocking story of Britain's indifference to and in some ways aid of the rise of radical Islam. "Londonistan" is must reading.

Phillips here does a careful review of the Obama Cairo speech and its carefully crafted anti-Semitic, pro-Muslim messages are revealed.

Obama in Cairo
Melanie PhillipsThursday, 4th June 2009

First, the good bits in Obama's speech in Cairo.

He told the Palestinians unequivocally that violence was wrong.

He said that there was an unbreakable bond between America and Israel.

He told the Arab states firmly:

The Arab-Israeli conflict should no longer be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems. Instead, it must be a cause for action to help the Palestinian people develop the institutions that will sustain their state; to recognize Israel's legitimacy; and to choose progress over a self-defeating focus on the past.

He condemned the persecution of non-Muslims in the Islamic world and urged equal rights for Muslim women.

He referred to Iran's role since 1979 in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians.

Now the bad bits - and they were really bad.

He revealed gross ignorance of the Jews' unique claim to the land of Israel. He said that America's unbreakable bond with Israel was based upon

the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied. Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust...

The Jews' aspiration for their homeland does not derive from the Holocaust, nor their overall tragic history. It derives from Judaism itself, which is composed of the inseparable elements of the religion, the people and the land. Their unique claim upon the land rests upon the fact that the Jews are the only people for whom Israel was ever their nation, which it was for hundreds of years - centuries before the Arabs and Muslims came on the scene. As for antisemitism, he made no mention of the alliance between the Palestinians and the Nazis during the 1930s, and the fact that Nazi-style Jew-hatred continues to pour out of the Arab and Muslim world to this day.

Worse, Obama appeared to draw a subliminal equivalence between the Holocaust extermination camps and the Palestinian 'refugee' camps:

Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed - more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction - or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews - is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people - Muslims and Christians - have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than 60 years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead.

And with this awful and revealing linkage, he duly segued seamlessly into the distorted Arab and Muslim narrative of Israel's history. It is not undeniable that the Palestinians 'have suffered in pursuit of a homeland' because it is untrue. The Palestinians have been offered a homeland repeatedly - in 1936, 1947, 2000 and last year. They have repeatedly turned it down. The Arabs could have created it between 1948 and 1967, when the West Bank and Gaza were occupied by Jordan and Egypt. They chose not to do so. They could have created it after 1967, when Israel offered the land to them in return for peace with Israel. They refused the offer. The Palestinians have suffered because they have tried for six decades to destroy the Jews' homeland.

For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation.

The 'pain of dislocation' was caused by the fact that six decades ago they went to war against the newly recreated Israel to destroy it, and were subsequently deliberately kept in 'refugee' camps by the Arab world. What other aggressors in the world are described as suffering 'the pain of dislocation' caused by their own aggression -- which has continued for sixty years without remission and shows no sign of ending?

Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead.

There is one reason for that and one reason alone - the Palestinians have ensured that Israel has never lived in peace or security, because they have continued to attack it and murder its citizens. And Gaza? Doesn't Obama realise the Israelis no longer occupy Gaza? It is run by Hamas, which shows its commitment to the peace and security of its inhabitants by throwing them off the tops of tall buildings.

So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable.

And what about the intolerable situation of Israel, forced to live in a state of siege for sixty years because of the unending aggression of the Palestinians and the wider Arab and Muslim world? The Palestinians could have lived in peace and prosperity alongside Israel at any time since 1948. If they were to end their attempt to destroy Israel and accept instead the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state -- that crucial qualification Obama omitted to mention -- they could do so tomorrow. The only reason their position is intolerable is because they themselves have made it so. What other aggressors in the world have their situation described as 'intolerable'?

Palestinians must abandon violence.

Good. But then:

Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed.

'Resistance'? 'Resistance' is a term of moral approval. 'Resistance' describes a fight against injustice. But the Palestinians have been engaged in an attempt to wipe out Israel. Obama sees this as 'resistance' - even though he says violence is wrong. And then this:

For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia.

So Obama has equated genocidal terrorism by the Palestinians with the civil rights movement in America and the true resistance against apartheid in South Africa. Thus the moral bankruptcy of the moral relativist.

Next, he repeated that the settlements (all of them? just new ones?) undermined peace and so had to stop. But they don't undermine peace. It is Arab rejectionism that prevents peace in the Middle East, and the settlements are a palpable excuse. Yet Obama delivered no ultimatum of any kind to Iran, the real threat to peace in the region and the world; indeed, he repeated that Iran

should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,

an alarming indication that he might view as acceptable a formulation which might enable Iran to continue to make nuclear weapons under some kind of verbal and political camouflage.

For his egregious sanitising of Islam and its history, and his absurd claims about its contribution to western civilisation, read Robert Spencer here. But in this regard, one of Obama's references in particular made me catch my breath. It was this:

The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.

This is boilerplate misrepresentation by Islamists and their apologists. The fact is that it is Judaism which teaches this as a cardinal precept. The Talmud states:

Whoever destroys a single soul, he is guilty as though he had destroyed a complete world; and whoever preserves a single soul, it is as though he had preserved a whole world.

The Koran appropriated this precept - but altered it to mean something very different. Thus (verses 5:32-5:35):

That was why we laid it down for the Israelites that whoever killed a human being, except as punishment for murder or other villainy in the land, shall be regarded as having killed all mankind; and that whoever saved a human life shall be regarded as having saved all mankind. Our apostles brought them veritable proofs: yet many among them, even after that, did prodigious evil in the land. Those that make war against God and His apostle and spread disorder in the land shall be slain or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished from the land. (My emphasis)

In other words, this turns a Talmudic precept affirming the value of preserving human life into a prescription for violence and murder against Jews and 'unbelievers'. Yet Obama passed it off as evidence of the pacific nature of Islam.

So in conclusion, yes, there was some positive stuff in this speech - but it was outweighed by the United States President's shocking historical misrepresentations, gross ignorance, disgusting moral equivalence between aggressors and their victims, and disturbing sanitising of Islamist supremacism.

In short, deeply troubling.

Obama's Cairo speech unveiling his "inner Muslim" contained much that was astonishing. It misstated and overstated Islamic accomplishments, told lies about the presence of Muslims in America, stated that Islam had a Golden Rule when it does not and cast Israel off to fend for itself against Iran and other Islamic foes. It also gave Iran the green light to acquire nuclear weapons. Ironically, in withdrawing American support for Israel and relinquishing America's role as global policeman of nuclear weapon capability, Obama was reversing or abandoning positions adopted six decades ago by a Democratic president Harry S Truman.

This editorial describes the danger that Truman saw which Obama is plunging America and the world into.

Total Tolerance
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Friday, June 05, 2009 4:20 PM PT Issue of June 8, 2009

Nuclear Proliferation: In the torrent of analysis of the president's Muslim speech, a major policy shift went largely unnoticed. We now endorse equal opportunity regarding what countries can have atomic weapons.

President Obama's Cairo University address to the world's Muslims on Thursday squandered a historic opportunity that perhaps only a president with a Muslim father and a Muslim name could have utilized: effectively rallying the Islamic world against Iran as it pursues nuclear weapons.

Instead, he did pretty much the opposite, declaring that "no single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons."

This is multilateralism taken to its reductio ad absurdum. Since the dawn of atomic weapons, it has been mostly the United States' job -- what Harry Truman called "an awful responsibility which has come to us" -- to act as a kind of global nuclear custodian.
Truman made no bones about defending our building of the bomb, noting that the Nazis "were on the search for it" and that "we know now how close they were to finding it. And we knew the disaster which would come to this nation, and to all peace-loving nations, to all civilization, if they had found it first."

That Democratic president made it clear to the world that "Great Britain, Canada and the United States, who have the secret of its production, do not intend to reveal that secret until means have been found to control the bomb so as to protect ourselves and the rest of the world from the danger of total destruction."

If we are honest with ourselves today, we must admit that even now, nearly six-and-a-half decades into the nuclear age, there remains no foolproof means of controlling the bomb. It continues to be, in Give 'em Hell Harry's words, "too dangerous to be loose in a lawless world."

So it is chilling to hear a U.S. president go to Egypt and, after issuing an unprecedented apology for the 1953 CIA coup that kept Iran and its oil from the clutches of Iran's direct neighbor to the north, the Soviet Union, declare that Iran has "the right" to nuclear power -- which it can easily use to build bombs.

There is nothing new in a president calling for "a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons," as Obama did in Cairo. Ronald Reagan expressed such hopes. But isn't contending that "no single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons" the opposite of zero nuclear tolerance?

How is it a step toward a nuclear-free world when we announce that the West should stop practicing what might be called "nuclear discrimination?" Tehran will interpret Obama's words as carte blanche to pursue its goal of building a nuclear weapons arsenal.

According to the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has now amassed 1,359 kilograms of low-enriched uranium hexafluoride. It has nearly 5,000 centrifuges up and running -- and is making it more difficult for international inspectors to scrutinize its nuclear program.

Yet at the G-8 foreign ministers conference at the end of this month in Italy, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will rub shoulders with Tehran's diplomatic mission, invited to attend by the Italians, just as if Iran were Finland or New Zealand or any other civilized nation, not the Islamofascist threat to the world that it is.

Neither Europe nor the U.N. has the willingness or the fortitude to "pick and choose" multilaterally which nations can be accepted into the nuclear club. Only the U.S. can lead in such an "awful responsibility."

But last week in Cairo we apparently relinquished that grave duty.

Good news out of the Netherlands. In the election for members of the European Parliament, Geert Wilders' Freedom Party scored big, landing at least four seats in its first try, coming in second to the ruling Christian Democratic Party. This is solid evidence that the Dutch public is waking up to the internal cultural threat posed by the 800,000 Muslims living in the Netherlands. The Dutch were in the forefront of welcoming mass immigration of Muslims from North Africa, Turkey and the Middle East and are now realizing that these Muslims intend to remake Holland into an intolerant Islamic society.

Thus far, the Dutch response to the aggressive advance of Islam has been craven: "Don't do anything to irritate the Muslims. They'll be violent." Muslim on non-Muslim crime in Holland is rampant. Muslim births are a multiple of native births and already Muslim children under four years of age constitute a majority of that age group in large cities. Rotterdam has been called the capital of Eurabia. See our earlier report.

Earth Times

ANALYSIS: Geert Wilders, the far-right rising star of Dutch politics

Posted on : 2009-06-05 | Author : DPA

Amsterdam - Geert Wilders, the enfant terrible of Dutch politics, has done it again. On Thursday, his anti-Islamic Freedom Party (PVV) participated in the European Parliament elections for the first time, winning 4 seats and proceeding to become the second-largest Dutch party in Brussels.

The result echoed a similar performance by the PVV two years ago, when it made its debut in national elections and instantly gained nine seats in the 150-strong Dutch parliament.

"The Netherlands is waking up from a leftist nightmare," Wilders said as he celebrated Thursday's result, "a nightmare of tremendously high taxes, crime, bad health care, headscarves and burqa's, impoverishment, mass immigration and islamization."

Wilders, who is 45 and is married a Hungarian woman, openly refers to Islam as a "backward" and "fundamentalist" culture that necessarily clashes with Europe's civilization.

In "Fitna", his 16-minute political film that caused global controversy in March 2008, Wilders warns of Europe's "ongoing Islamization", explaining fundamentalism and terrorism as a Muslim phenomenon.

A frequent target of death threats, he has lived under tight personal security since the November 2004 assassination of another Dutch critic of Islam, filmmaker Theo van Gogh.

Born in Venlo in the overwhelmingly Catholic southern Netherlands, Wilders worked in Israel and travelled extensively in the Middle East during his youth.

Back in the Netherlands, he studied law and worked for an insurer.

In 1990 he started to work for the parliamentary Liberal VVD faction, and in 1998 became a lawmaker himself.

Quickly recognized as an outspoken and talented legislator, the blond politician positioned himself at the party's right wing.

Initially obeying party orders to tone himself down, Wilders returned to the center-stage after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, increasingly raising the issue of what he called the "threat of Islam".

His opposition against Turkish membership of the European Union resulted in a breakaway from the Liberals. On September 2, 2004 he decided to make his voice heard even more by becoming an independent lawmaker.

His international notoriety as a result of the Fitna film has come at a price.

In January 2009, the Dutch district court ruled that he should be prosecuted for alleged discrimination and incitement to hatred and violence. The trial is due to start in several months.

Next month, he plans to sue the British government for denying him entry into Britain on the grounds that he posed a threat to public security. ...

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