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Tolerance: A Two-Way Street?

Sun, 24 Sep 2006 00:38:30 GMT

Tolerance: A Two-Way Street

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, September 22, 2006; A17

Religious fanatics, regardless of what name they give their jealous god, invariably have one thing in common: no sense of humor. Particularly about themselves. It's hard to imagine Torquemada taking a joke well.

Today's Islamists seem to have not even a sense of irony. They fail to see the richness of the following sequence. The pope makes a reference to a 14th-century Byzantine emperor's remark about Islam imposing itself by the sword, and to protest this linking of Islam and violence:

· In the West Bank and Gaza, Muslims attack seven churches.

· In London, the ever-dependable radical Anjem Choudary tells demonstrators at Westminster Cathedral that the pope is now condemned to death.

· In Mogadishu, Somali religious leader Abubukar Hassan Malin calls on Muslims to "hunt down" the pope. The pope not being quite at hand, they do the next best thing: shoot dead, execution-style, an Italian nun who worked in a children's hospital.

"How dare you say Islam is a violent religion? I'll kill you for it" is not exactly the best way to go about refuting the charge. But of course, refuting is not the point here. The point is intimidation.

First Salman Rushdie. Then the false Newsweek report about Koran-flushing at Guantanamo Bay. Then the Danish cartoons. And now a line from a scholarly disquisition on rationalism and faith given in German at a German university by the pope.

And the intimidation succeeds: politicians bowing and scraping to the mob over the cartoons; Saturday's craven New York Times editorial telling the pope to apologize; the plague of self-censorship about anything remotely controversial about Islam -- this in a culture in which a half-naked pop star blithely stages a mock crucifixion as the highlight of her latest concert tour.

In today's world, religious sensitivity is a one-way street. The rules of the road are enforced by Islamic mobs and abjectly followed by Western media, politicians and religious leaders.

The fact is that all three monotheistic religions have in their long histories wielded the sword. The Book of Joshua is knee-deep in blood. The real Hanukkah story, so absurdly twinned (by calendric accident) with the Christian festival of peace, is about a savage insurgency and civil war.

Christianity more than matched that lurid history with the Crusades, an ecumenical blood bath that began with the slaughter of Jews in the Rhineland, a kind of preseason warm-up to the featured massacres to come against the Muslims, with the sacking of the capital of Byzantium (the Fourth Crusade) thrown in for good measure.

And Islam, of course, spread with great speed from Arabia across the Mediterranean and into Europe. It was not all benign persuasion. After all, what were Islamic armies doing at Poitiers in 732 and the gates of Vienna in 1683? Tourism?

However, the inconvenient truth is that after centuries of religious wars, Christendom long ago gave it up. It is a simple and undeniable fact that the violent purveyors of monotheistic religion today are self-proclaimed warriors for Islam who shout "God is great" as they slit the throats of infidels -- such as those of the flight crews on Sept. 11, 2001 -- and are then celebrated as heroes and martyrs.

Just one month ago, two journalists were kidnapped in Gaza and were released only after their forced conversion to Islam. Where were the protests in the Islamic world at that act -- rather than the charge -- of forced conversion?

Where is the protest over the constant stream of vilification of Christianity and Judaism issuing from the official newspapers, mosques and religious authorities of Arab nations? When Sheik 'Atiyyah Saqr issues a fatwa declaring Jews "apes and pigs"? When Sheik Abd al-Aziz Fawzan al-Fawzan, professor of Islamic law, says on Saudi TV that "someone who denies Allah, worships Christ, son of Mary, and claims that God is one-third of a trinity. . . . Don't you hate the faith of such a polytheist?"

Where are the demonstrations, where are the parliamentary resolutions, where are the demands for retraction when the Mufti Sheik Ali Gum'a incites readers of al-Ahram, the Egyptian government daily, against "the true and hideous face of the blood-suckers . . . who prepare [Passover] matzos from human blood"?

The pope gives offense and the Mujaheddin al-Shura Council in Iraq declares that it "will break up the cross, spill the liquor and impose the 'jizya' [head] tax; then the only thing acceptable is conversion or the sword." This to protest the accusation that Islam might be spread by the sword.

As I said. No sense of irony.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/21/AR2006092101513_pf.html

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Must-Watch TV: Muslims Chanting Death to Infidels in Britain

Sun, 24 Sep 2006 00:03:08 GMT

It is something to see and listen to. I think you need a fast connection:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AxYBPiLxuo

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Pope Benedict seen more hawkish in approach to Islam than John Paul II

Sat, 23 Sep 2006 01:08:09 GMT

Pope Benedict seen more hawkish in approach to Islam than John Paul II

By John L. Allen Jr.
9/20/2006
National Catholic Reporter

NEW YORK (National Catholic Reporter) – As Benedict XVI's apology on Sunday plays to mixed reviews, a consensus seems to be emerging around three conclusions about the firestorm triggered last week when the pope quoted a 14th century text asserting that Mohammed brought "things only evil and inhuman":

- In his Sept. 12 lecture at the University of Regensburg, Benedict did not intend to take a swipe at Islam. If he intended to criticize anyone, it was Western intellectuals and their tendency to separate reason from religious faith.

- From a communications point of view, his use of language was at best risky, and arguably ill-advised.

- This crisis aside, Benedict does have a more hawkish approach to Islam than Pope John Paul II, and that promises further delicate moments ahead.

The uproar began last Tuesday during Benedict XVI's visit to Bavaria, when he delivered a 40-minute academic lecture at the University of Regensburg on the relationship between reason and faith. In it, he argued that calls for the "dehellenization" of Christianity, stripping it of its Greco-Roman encrustations and returning it to a state of "pure faith," miss the point. The decision made in favor of the rationality of God under the impact of Greek philosophy was not an accident of history, the pope said, but part of the genetic code of Christianity.

The pope went on to insist that religion and reason need one another, and included a plea against religious violence. Prior to the speech, senior Vatican officials were touting it as a "defining" address of Benedict's pontificate in terms of laying out his core concerns.

Benedict opened the speech with a reference to a 14th century dialogue between the Byzantine emperor Michael II Paleologus and a "learned Persian," in which the emperor criticizes Islam.

The quote that caused the furor followed: "He turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: 'Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,'" the pope said, emphasizing that he was quoting the emperor.

Benedict's main interest appeared to be a series of subsequent lines from Paleologous about the importance of reason.

That context was largely lost, however, as reports made their way around the world, sparking wide protest and a handful of acts of violence. Seven churches were attacked in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while massive rallies took place in majority Muslim states such as Indonesia and Iran, where seminaries were closed in protest.

On Sunday, an Italian nun was shot to death in Somalia after a senior Somali cleric had denounced the pope's remarks, though it was not immediately clear if the slaying was connected to the controversy.

In some cases, according to experts, news agencies in Islamic nations did not indicate that the remarks came not from Benedict but a medieval text that pope had quoted. Descriptions of the lecture also reflected the hasty way the news spread; in one case, an Arabic paper said the pope had been speaking on "technology," apparently confusing the term with "theology."

Despite Vatican statements on both Sept. 14 and Sept. 16 attempting to calm the waters, anger continued to build.

"He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages. He is a poor thing that has not benefited from the spirit of reform in the Christian world," said Salih Kapusuz, a top deputy in the governing Islamic party in Turkey.

"It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades," Kapusuz said, predicting that Benedict would go down in history with leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini. Sensitivities in Turkey were particularly raw in light of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's opposition to Turkey's entry into the European Union.

In heavy rain during his Sunday Angelus address, Benedict apologized for the furor he had caused.

"I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims," he said.

"These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought. … I hope that this serves to appease hearts and to clarify the true meaning of my address, which in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect."

In an unusual move reflecting the sensitivity of the situation, the Vatican released a translation of just this paragraph of the pope's remarks in both English and French, in addition to the original Italian.

While some Muslim leaders called the apology insufficient, others appeared satisfied. Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami called for calm, saying, "My impression of the pope was rather an educated and patient man."

Jesuit Father Samir Khalil Samir, regarded as one of Catholicism's leading experts on Islam, called the violent reaction "exaggerated and misplaced."

"The pope's thoughts are actually quite close to Muslim criticism of the secularized West," Father Samir said. "Muslims seem to be saying: 'You have technology, science, everything, except the essential, since you have marginalized spirituality and God. … [The pope] joins Muslims in criticizing the atheist view of reason whilst offering a critique from within in order to broaden it."

Other experts, however, said the pope's decision to cite Michael II Paleologus was perhaps not a good idea.

Jesuit Father Daniel Madigan, rector of the Institute for the Study of Religions and Cultures at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, said the central point of the speech was that "if we are really going into a serious dialogue with Muslims we need to take faith seriously." But, he said of the quote from the emperor, "You clearly take a risk using an example like that."

Speaking on background, a senior Vatican official said the failure to adequately vet the pope's speech may have been due to a vacuum of key personnel. In February, Benedict sent the Vatican's top expert on Islam, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, to Cairo as his ambassador, meaning he's no longer in Rome to be consulted. The Bavaria trip also fell in a moment of transition between one secretary of state and another.

In the end, most observers cautioned that while the Regensburg comments may have been blown out of context, Benedict's generally more hawkish approach to Islam will almost certainly mean further tension ahead.

Desire for a more muscular stance towards Islam has been building in Catholicism for some time.

In part, it's driven by anti-Christian persecution in the Islamic world, such as the Feb. 5 slaying of Italian missionary Father Andrea Santoro in Trabzon, Turkey. A 16-year-old Turk pumped two bullets into Santoro, shouting Allah akbar, "Allah is great." He later said he had been agitated by Danish newspaper cartoons critical of Islam.

In part, the more challenging line is driven by frustrations over reciprocity. To take the most notorious example, while the Saudis contributed $20 million to build Europe's largest mosque in Rome, Christians cannot build churches in Saudi Arabia. Priests in Saudi Arabia cannot leave oil industry compounds or embassy grounds without fear of the mutawa, the religious police. The bishop of the region recently described the situation as "reminiscent of the catacombs."

Benedict was sensitive to these concerns prior to his election. In a 1997 interview, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said of Islam, "One has to have a clear understanding that it is not simply a denomination that can be included in the free realm of a democratic society." In the same interview, he accused some Muslims of fomenting a radical "liberation theology," meaning a belief that God approves violence to achieve liberation from Israel.

He's taken a similar line as pope.

In a session with Muslims last year in Cologne, Germany, Pope Benedict urged efforts to "turn back the wave of cruel fanaticism that endangers the lives of so many people and hinders progress towards world peace."

On March 23, Benedict summoned his 179 cardinals for a closed-doors business session. Much conversation turned on Islam, and there was agreement with a tougher stance on reciprocity.

His key advisors also reflect the new climate.

Bishop Rino Fisichella, rector of Rome's Lateran University and a close papal confidante, recently said it's time to "drop the diplomatic silence" about anti-Christian persecution, and called on the United Nations to "remind societies and governments of countries with a Muslim majority of their responsibilities."

Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the pope's vicar for Rome, voiced doubts about calls to teach Islam in Italian schools.

"We'd have to ensure [it] would not give way to a socially dangerous kind of indoctrination," Ruini said.

When it comes to Islam, observers say, Benedict XVI is in a sense playing with fire. When he visits Turkey in November, the world will get a better sense of how adept he is at keeping it under control.

- - -

John L. Allen Jr. is National Catholic Reporter senior correspondent.

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Tracking Media Spin: How the Pope's Words Were Morphed into Muslim-Bashing

Sat, 23 Sep 2006 00:45:35 GMT

( http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/sep/06091805.html ) Hilary White tracks how the Pope's scholarly lecture on Muslim-Christian relations was spun into a hate-filled tirade by manipulative media outlets. What is fact and what is media coverage are never the same, and White tracks the "meme," how the coverage of the Pope's remarks was slightly altered over time.

Media outlets expect the masses to be beholden to these manipulative techniques, and expect politicians to hyperventilate over the latest version of events.

The BBC started the flames by being the first to promote a bogus version of the event. Then later it reported that "Muslim anger grows at Pope speech."

>>[quote]The day after the speech, Wednesday the 13th, the Pope’s lecture elicited little response from apparently bored secular journalists who had little interest in what was considered his “obscure” and “academic” points on the relationship between religious belief and the secular world.
Catholic news sources who reported the day after the lecture were also quiet. “Pope spends quiet afternoon at home with brother,” was the leading headline at Catholic World Report.

On Thursday the 14th, however, under the headline “Pope's speech stirs Muslim anger,” the BBC began with a report that police in Kashmir had seized newspapers carrying coverage of the pope’s speech in order “to prevent tension.” The BBC’s coverage did not include any quote from the Indian-administered Kashmiri police force.

The BBC’s September 14th report was transmitted around the world in Arabic, Turkish, Farsi (the language of Iran), Urdu, the official language of Pakistan; and Malay. The next day, the anticipated furor had became a reality.

Immediately after the appearance of the first BBC coverage, the Pakistani parliament issued a declaration condemning Benedict’s speech and demanding an apology.

Later the same day, the BBC published, under the headline, “Muslim anger grows at Pope speech” a report on the Pakistan government’s reaction. It quoted the head of the Islamic extremist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, saying “the Pope's remarks ‘aroused the anger of the whole Islamic world’.

The same day, the Guardian, following the BBC’s lead, ran the headline, “Muslim anger builds over Pope's speech.” From that moment, the internet was flooded with reportage from around the world on the Pope’s alleged “attack” on Islam and the predicted response from Islamic groups began.
[/quote]>>

At first, the New York Times was honest about the true nature of speech, but then jumped on the media bandwagon like everyone else.

>>[quote]On the 13th, the New York Times, focusing on the Pope’s critique of Western secularism ran the headline, “The Pope Assails Secularism, with a Note on Jihad.” The report contained no hint of their later demands for papal apologies.

Ian Fisher wrote, “Several experts on the Catholic Church and Islam agreed that the speech — in which Benedict made clear he was quoting other sources on Islam — did not appear to be a major statement on, or condemnation of, Islam.”

By the weekend, however, the New York Times had dropped its examination of the content and intention of the pope’s lecture, and joined the chorus of demands for apologies in its editorial. [/quote]>>

http://newsbusters.org/node/7776

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British minister infuriates Muslims

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 02:49:15 GMT

British minister infuriates Muslims
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON

Britain's top law-and-order official warned Muslim parents on Wednesday to watch their children closely for signs of extremism.

Home Secretary John Reid told an audience of Muslims in London that they must do their part in a "battle of values," the Home Office said.

Reid's words infuriated an angry listener, who began to yell back at the minister during his speech and had to be escorted out of the room.

"There is no nice way of saying this," Reid said, according to extracts from his speech released in advance. "These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombing, to kill themselves in order to murder others.

"Look for the telltale signs now and talk to them before their hatred grows and you risk losing them forever.

"In protecting our families we are protecting our community."

"Victory in this ideological battle - this battle of values - is the only victory that will secure true peace," Reid added.

Relations between the government and many British Muslims have been strained in recent years by the unpopular invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the July 7, 2005 London transit bombings. The London attacks, which killed 52 commuters and four British-bred bombers, heightened concerns about radicalization within Britain's 1.6 million-strong Muslim community.

Many Muslims feel they are unfairly targeted for suspicion and are bearing the brunt of the government's tough new anti-terror measures.

Several high-profile anti-terrorist operations have heightened the strain, particularly a June raid on a house in east London in which a man was shot. He and his brother were later released without charge.

Seventeen British Muslims arrested last month have been charged in connection with an alleged plot to blow up trans-Atlantic jetliners in mid-air.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1157913669234&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

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THE TEHRAN CALCULUS

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 01:10:54 GMT

THE TEHRAN CALCULUS
by Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post
September 15, 2006
In his televised Sept. 11 address, President Bush said that we must not "leave our children to face a Middle East overrun by terrorist states and radical dictators armed with nuclear weapons." There's only one such current candidate: Iran.

The next day, he responded thus (as reported by Rich Lowry and Kate O'Beirne of National Review) to a question on Iran: "It's very important for the American people to see the president try to solve problems diplomatically before resorting to military force."

"Before" implies that the one follows the other. The signal is unmistakable. An aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities lies just beyond the horizon of diplomacy. With the crisis advancing and the moment of truth approaching, it is important to begin looking now with unflinching honesty at the military option.

The costs will be terrible:

· Economic . An attack on Iran is likely to send oil prices overnight to $100 or even to $150 a barrel. That will cause a worldwide recession perhaps as deep as the one triggered by the Iranian revolution of 1979.

Iran might suspend its own 2.5 million barrels a day of oil exports and might even be joined by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, asserting primacy as the world's leading anti-imperialist. But even more effectively, Iran will shock the oil markets by closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of the world's exports flow every day.

Iran could do this by attacking ships in the Strait, scuttling its own ships, laying mines or just threatening to launch Silkworm anti-ship missiles at any passing tanker.

The U.S. Navy will be forced to break the blockade. We will succeed, but at considerable cost. And it will take time -- during which the world economy will be in a deep spiral.

· Military . Iran will activate its proxies in Iraq, most notably, Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Sadr is already wreaking havoc with sectarian attacks on Sunni civilians. Iran could order the Mahdi Army and its other agents within the police and armed forces to take up arms against the institutions of the central government itself, threatening the very anchor of the new Iraq. Many Mahdi will die, but they live to die. Many Iraqis and coalition soldiers are likely to die as well.

Among the lesser military dangers, Iran might activate terrorist cells around the world, although without nuclear capability that threat is hardly strategic. It will also be very difficult to unleash its proxy Hezbollah, now chastened by the destruction it brought upon Lebanon in the latest round with Israel and deterred by the presence of Europeans in the south Lebanon buffer zone.

· Diplomatic. There will be massive criticism of America from around the world. Much of it is to be discounted. The Muslim street will come out again for a few days, having replenished its supply of flammable American flags, most recently exhausted during the cartoon riots. Their governments will express solidarity with a fellow Muslim state, but this will be entirely hypocritical. The Arabs are terrified about the rise of a nuclear Iran and would privately rejoice in its defanging.

The Europeans will be less hypocritical because their visceral anti-Americanism trumps rational calculation. We will have done them an enormous favor by sparing them the threat of Iranian nukes, but they will vilify us nonetheless.

These are the costs. There is no denying them. However, equally undeniable is the cost of doing nothing.

In the region, Persian Iran will immediately become the hegemonic power in the Arab Middle East. Today it is deterred from overt aggression against its neighbors by the threat of conventional retaliation. Against a nuclear Iran, such deterrence becomes far less credible. As its weak, nonnuclear Persian Gulf neighbors accommodate to it, jihadist Iran will gain control of the most strategic region on the globe.

Then there is the larger danger of permitting nuclear weapons to be acquired by religious fanatics seized with an eschatological belief in the imminent apocalypse and in their own divine duty to hasten the End of Days. The mullahs are infinitely more likely to use these weapons than anyone in the history of the nuclear age. Every city in the civilized world will live under the specter of instant annihilation delivered either by missile or by terrorist. This from a country that has an official Death to America Day and has declared since Ayatollah Khomeini's ascension that Israel must be wiped off the map.

Against millenarian fanaticism glorying in a cult of death, deterrence is a mere wish. Is the West prepared to wager its cities with their millions of inhabitants on that feeble gamble?

These are the questions. These are the calculations. The decision is no more than a year away.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

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10 Reasons Why the West Cannot Defeat the Jihad

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 21:47:29 GMT

"Can the West defeat the jihad? -Ten reasons why not

David Selbourne, author of The Losing Battle with Islam,[ http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1NTAZQP2VY0I9/ref=cm_pdp_profile_reviews/104-0352293-3369568?ie=UTF8 ] has written a piece in the Times entitled, "Can the West defeat the Islamist threat? Here are ten reasons why not" .(His points are well taken -- not so that we can go gentle into that good night, but so that we can begin to address these matters as quickly as possible.) For it is never too late until we are actually put to the sword, and our children pay the jizya and wear the zunnar. And of course, even then begins the reconquista.

1) The first is the extent of political division in the non-Muslim world about what is afoot. Some reject outright that there is a war at all; others agree with the assertion by the US President that “the war we fight is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century”. Divided counsels have also dictated everything from “dialogue” to the use of nuclear weapons, and from reliance on “public diplomacy” to “taking out Islamic sites”, Mecca included. Adding to this incoherence has been the gulf between those bristling to take the fight to the “terrorist” and those who would impede such a fight, whether from domestic civil libertarian concerns or from rivalrous geopolitical calculation.

2) The second reason why, as things stand, Islam will not be defeated is that the strengths of the world community of Muslims are being underestimated, and the nature of Islam misunderstood. It is neither a “religion of peace” nor a “religion hijacked” or “perverted” by “the few”. Instead, its moral intransigence and revived ardours, its jihadist ethic and the refusal of most diaspora Muslims to “share a common set of values” with non-Muslims are all one, and justified by the Koran itself.

Islam is not even a religion in the conventional sense of the term. It is a transnational political and ethical movement that believes that it holds the solution to mankind’s problems. It therefore holds that it is in mankind’s own interests to be subdued under Islam’s rule. Such belief therefore makes an absurdity of the project to “democratise” Muslim nations in the West’s interests, an inversion that Islam cannot accept and, in its own terms, rightly so. It renders naive, too, the distinction between the military and political wings of Islamic movements; and makes Donald Rumsfeld’s assertion in June 2005 that the insurgents in Iraq “don’t have vision, they’re losers” merely foolish. In this war, if there is a war, the boot is on the other foot.

3) Indeed, the third reason why Islam will not be defeated, as things stand, is the low level of Western leadership, in particular in the United States. During the half-century of the Islamic revival, it has shown itself at sixes and sevens both diplomatically and militarily. It has been without a sense of strategic direction, and been unable to settle upon coherent war plans. It has even lacked the gifts of language to make its purposes plain. Or, as Burke put it in March, 1775, “a great empire and little minds go ill together”. In this war with Islam, if it is a war, the combination bodes defeat.

4) Next is the contribution to the disarray of Western policy-making being made by the egotistical competitiveness, and in some cases hysterics, of “experts” and commentators on Islam. They include hyperventilating Islamophobes as well as academic apologists for the worst that is being done in Islam’s name. On this battleground, with its personalised blogsites to assist self-promotion, many seem to think that their opinions are more important than the issues upon which they are passing judgment; and amid the babel of advisory voices, policy has become increasingly inconsistent.

5) The fifth disablement is to be found in the confusion of “progressives” about the Islamic advance. With their political and moral bearings lost since the defeat of the “socialist project”, many on the Left have only the fag-end of anti-colonial positions on which to take their stand. To attribute the West’s problems to our colonial past contains some truth. But it is again to misunderstand the inner strength of Islam’s revival, which is owed not to victimhood but to advancing confidence in its own belief system.

Moreover, to Islam’s further advantage, it has led most of today’s “progressives” to say little, or even to keep silent, about what would once have been regarded as the reactionary aspects of Islam: its oppressive hostility to dissent, its maltreatment of women, its supremacist hatred of selected out-groups such as Jews and gays, and its readiness to incite and to use extremes of violence against them. Mein Kampf circulates in Arab countries under the title Jihadi.

6) The sixth reason for Islam’s growing strength is the vicarious satisfaction felt by many non-Muslims at America’s reverses. Those who feel such satisfaction could be regarded as Trojan horses, a cavalry whose number is legion and which is growing. For some, their principle — or anti-principle — is that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”. Others believe their refusal of support for the war with Islam, if there is such a war, is a righteous one. But the consequences are the same: Islam’s advance is being borne along by Muslims and non-Muslims together.

7) The seventh reason lies in the moral poverty of the West’s, and especially America’s, own value system. Doctrines of market freedom, free choice and competition — or “freedom ’n’ liberty” — are no match for the ethics of Islam and Sharia, like them or not. Yet in the “battle for hearts and minds” the US First Cavalry Division saw fit to set up “Operation Adam Smith” in Iraq to teach marketing skills, among other things, to local entrepreneurs. There can be no victory here. Or, as Sheikh Mohammed al-Tabatabi told thousands of worshippers in Baghdad in May 2003: “The West calls for freedom and liberty. Islam rejects such liberty. True liberty is obedience to Allah.”

8) The next indication that Islam’s advance will continue lies in the skilful use being made of the media and of the world wide web in the service both of the “electronic jihad” and the bamboozling of Western opinion by Muslim spokesmen. It is also a political enterprise in which Muslims and non-Muslims can now be found acting together in furthering the reach of Islam’s world view; the help being given by Western producers and broadcasters to al-Jazeera is the most notable instance of it.

9) The ninth factor guaranteeing Islam’s onward march is the West’s dependency on the material resources of Arab and Muslim countries. In April 1917, Woodrow Wilson, recommending to the US Congress an American declaration of war against Germany, could say that “we have no selfish ends to serve”. American levels of consumption make no such statement possible now. The US is, so to speak, over a barrel. It will remain so.

10) Finally, the West is convinced that its notions of technology-driven modernity and market-driven prog- ress are innately superior to the ideals of “backward” Islam. This is an old delusion. In 1899, Winston Churchill asserted that there was “no stronger retrograde force in the world” than Islam. More than a century later, it is fondly believed that sophisticated hardware and Star Wars defences will ensure Western mastery in this war, if it is a war.
But as the Saudi “scholar” Suleiman al-Omar declared in June 2004: “Islam is advancing according to a steady plan. America will be destroyed.” As things stand, given the ten factors set out here, he is more likely to be proved right than wrong.

The Times article can be found here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2349195,00.html
http://islamic-danger.blogspot.com/2006/09/is-it-too-late-second-question-i-posed.html

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Why this tribe?

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 19:35:39 GMT

Welcome

I was hoping we could use this forum to post articles of current interest. There is so much going on the world. The international issues get lost in the <<POLITICS>> tribe.

I believe we are in a highly important time, and agree with Bush's assessment that what we do now will definitely impact our childrens' and grandchildren's futures.

Al Qaeda and others have said we are already in the third "world" war -- it certainly feels like it to me.

Are we in a war with Islam? I believe we are to some extent. As long as the Muslims will not stand up and denounce the violence that we are beginning to associate with them, the free world should not be surprised to see that the West is beginning to associate violence with them. In fact, here is a fairly recent article (6 mos) entitled "Negative Perception of Islam Increasing" : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/08/AR2006030802221.html

I don't want this tribe to be one where accusations of 'racism' get thrown around. When one reads the article one realises that this negative perception is not a racist one, but one based on real concerns and real things that are going on in this world.

Of course there is more that impacts the international community besides Islam ... There is democracy, the West, US, UN, the great Hindu nation, the tiny Jewish nation, the teensie Vatican and the great Catholic nations...

Please feel free to share interesting & relevant articles here.

Shalom (but not at any price) ;>D

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