Watcher's Council Business

The Watcher's Council is a roundtable group that holds a weekly contest. Each week, the members of the Watcher's Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for best post. The Watcher publishes the results each Friday.

I would like to welcome two new blogs to the Watcher's Council. They are Snapped Shot and Tom White who blogs at the group blog, Virginia Right. Both are very fine blogs. Do check them out.

I also need to post the winners for this past week and the week prior to that. Last weeks Council winner was Bookworm Room for her post. When is a burqa not a burqa? When it’s a weapon. As she writes:

. . . The historic truth, whether or not one wants to acknowledge it is that, from the moment Mohamed began articulating his faith, it was inextricably intertwined with conquest. For that reason, Islam, as a faith, cares not whether the people brought within its fold actually believe the faith. It is enough that, having come under the control of an Islamic government (and do remember that mosque and government are one and the same) they follow its forms.

This is why Islam, as a religion, is entirely comfortable with and, indeed, encourages, both forced conversions and the death penalty for apostates. Faith as we understand it — meaning a belief in and commitment to a God — is irrelevant. Instead, submission is everything. . . .

Only by recognizing that Islam uses as weapons symbols that we, children of the Enlightenment, view as freely expressed signs of a personal faith, can we preserve our liberties and lay claim to true religious freedom. Switzerland and France have taken this step towards understanding why the Islamic religion is different from all other religions. It’s time that the rest of us do so to.

I would add one caveat. What we are seeing is the growing influence of Salafism on all of Islam. Unless and until the West actually engages in the war of ideas inside Isalm, Salafi Islam will triumph, and bloodshed on a much larger scale will be inevitable.

Coming in First Place in the non-Council category was The Other McCain for his post, Jews and Israel: Death by Relativism. In it, he disects "the astonishing spectacle of young Jews who eagerly align themselves with the Sirhan Sirhan wing of the Democratic Party."

The week prior, the winning Council Post was The Razor's exceptional post, Life in a Vise, discussing the attitudes of rank and file North Carolinians towards Obama and the economy:

. . . These men are in a vise – between the failure of the American dream and its expectations of a brighter future for their children on one side, and a government that seems hell bent on reducing them to penury on the other. They aren’t angry; they are enraged. These great- grandsons of confederate soldiers speak rebellion not in whispers but in loud, firm voices that would sound all-too familiar to their forebears. They aren’t traitors; they see their government as betraying them and their country, not the other way around. Seeing what has happened here in North Carolina, it’s difficult to disagree with them.

The Leftist elites might brand them racists and call them hillbillies and rednecks, but those epithets only expose the ignorance of those that hurl them. These men aren’t stupid even though they didn’t attend Ivy League universities. In fact given how poorly the Ivy League elite is governing, these men have a better understanding of economics than the elite does. After all, they live in the economy; they eat, sleep, and breathe it every day. How many University of Chicago professors, K Street lobbyists, or career politicians do that? They aren’t racist: this is former Klan country, with an emphasis on “former.” If this economy isn’t enough to drive men out in their bedsheets, then the Klan is truly dead. But don’t kid yourself. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 didn’t cleanse these men’s hearts of prejudice, their religion and upbringings did. . . .

Coming in First Place in the non-Council category was Sultan Knish for the post, NASA Unveils New Plan for Muslims in Outer Space, exploring additional ideas to improve NASA's new top priority, outreach to the Muslim World. Heh.

You can find the full results of last week's voting here, and the week's prior to that here.