Wolf Bytes: The Freedom To Draw Mohammed

The picture above, drawn by former Muslim Bosch Fawstin, was chosen as the winner of the Draw Mohammed contest held in Garland, Texas on 3 May 2015.

UN Reveals Horrifying Islamist Sex Markets

From Allen West's blog:

Yes, Islamists are terribly offended by pictures of Mohammed, but they don’t seem to have much problem with enslaving, raping and brutalizing women. Nope, that’s just business as usual – at least according to a report prepared by a United Nations official.

As reported by the Daily Mail, “an Islamic State terrorist group forced a sex slave to marry 20 fighters and even made her undergo surgery each time to restore her virginity, a United Nations official said.

The group paraded and traded Syrian and Iraqi girls in ‘slave markets’ before the victims were shipped to other provinces, according to Zainab Bangura, special envoy on sexual violence in conflict, who travelled to five countries and interviewed dozens of women and young girls who had survived brutal sexual abuse.

She said the girls were routinely stripped naked before being categorized and shipped off.

‘ISIL have institutionalized sexual violence and the brutalization of women as a central aspect of their ideology and operations, using it as a tactic of terrorism to advance their key strategic objectives. . . .

I am waiting for all the neo-Stalinist left, including the radical feminists in the U.S., to immediately rush to condemn these atrocities and the Salafi ideology being used to justify them in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

"PAM GELLER IS AN ISLAMAPHOBE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATH OF TWO MUSLIM MEN (who wanted to commit mass murder)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Okay, not the condemnation I was expecting. Actually, for the most part, that has been the response from the left. But to give credit where credit is due, see the next eye-opening entry below:

Salon Author Says It Is Time Progressives Faced The Truth About Islam

After a full throated defense of Pam Geller, and in between a slander of all three monotheistic religions, Jeffrey Taylor at Salon writes:

What is it about Islam that simultaneously both motivates jihadis to kill and so many progressives to exculpate the religion, even when the killers leave no doubt about why they act? The second part of the question is easier to dispense with than the first. Progressives by nature seek common ground and believe people to be mostly rational actors – hence the desire to blame crime on social ills. Unfamiliarity with Islam’s tenets also plays a role, plus, I believe, the frightening future we would seem to be facing as more and more Muslims immigrate to the West, and the world becomes increasingly integrated. Best just to talk of poverty and the like, or a few “bad apples.” But to respond to the question’s first part, we need to put aside our p.c. reading glasses and examine Islam’s basic elements from a rationalist’s perspective. Islam as a faith would not concern progressives, except that some of its adherents choose to act as parts of its dogma ordain, which, to put it mildly, violates the social contract underpinning the lives of the rest of us. . . .

The canonical glorification of death for the sake Islam, or martyrdom, similarly belies those who would argue that the religion’s nature is pacific. . . .

All those who, à la Reza Aslan, maintain that Muslims today do not necessarily read the Quran literally have lost the argument before it begins. What counts is that there are those (ISIS, say, and al-Qaida) who do, and they are taking action based on their beliefs. To the contention, “ISIS and al-Qaida don’t represent Islam!” the proper response is, “that’s what you say. They disagree.” No single recognized Muslim clerical body exists to refute them. . . .

Islam’s doctrinaire positions on women are infamous enough to merit no repetition here. Their sum effect is to render women chattel to men, as sex objects and progenitors of offspring, and foster the most misogynistic conditions on the planet: nineteen of twenty of the worst countries for women, according to the World Economic Forum, are Muslim-majority. Some Muslim countries are deemed more progressive than others, but their progressivity varies inversely with the extent to which Islam permeates their legal codes and customary laws – the less, the better. Not liberal at all, that.

The above are the stark doctrinal and practical realities of which no honest progressive could approve, and which form the bases of the religion. Regardless of what the peaceful majority of Muslims are doing, as ISIS’s beguiling ideology spreads, we are likely to face an ever more relentless, determined Islamist assault. We can delude ourselves no longer: violence is an emergent property deriving from Islam’s inherently intolerant precepts and dogma. The rising number of ethnic Europeans mesmerized by Islam who set off to enroll in the ranks of ISIS attests to this; and may prefigure serious disruptions, especially in France, the homeland of a good number of them, once they start returning. There is nothing “phobic” about recognizing this. Recognize it we must, and steel ourselves for what’s to come.

This is no call to disrespect Muslims as people, but we should not hesitate to speak frankly about the aspects of their faith we find problematic. . . .

. . . We must stop traducing reason by branding people “Islamophobes,” and start celebrating our secularism, remembering that only it offers true freedom for the religious and non-religious alike. And we should reaffirm our humanistic values, in our conviction that we have, as Carlyle wrote, “One life – a little gleam of time between two eternities,” and need to make the most of it for ourselves and others while we can. There is nothing else.

This is not a battle we have chosen; the battle has chosen us.

It’s time to fight back, and hard.

Amen. That should be required reading for all the progs in this land, as well as, it would seem, several blowhards on the right. Yes, Congressman King and Bill O'Reilly, I'm talking to you.

Kirsten Powers & How The Left Is Killing Free Speech

Today's left can best be described as neo-Stalinist. They are enemies of freedom of speech and would much prefer to demonize rather than debate. Gone from the left are such American icons as Scoop Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. But their breed is not completely extinguished. Some exemplars remain, most notably Kirsten Powers, a Fox News contributor as well as a columnist for USA Today and the Daily Beast. She and her new book, The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech, are the subject of very good article by Peter Berkowitz at RCP.

. . . This is not to say that all members of the left today are instinctively intolerant and bent on stifling liberty of thought and discussion. Yet all too rare is the contemporary liberal who is instinctively appalled by the contempt for speech emanating from Democratic Party politicians, the university world and elite media, and who is willing to call his or her comrades to account.

Kirsten Powers is one of these rare liberals. In "The Silencing,” she methodically documents—and exposes the hypocrisy, incoherence, and sheer contempt for evidence and argument that underlie—the delegitimization of dissent that has become the stock in trade of what she characterizes as the "illiberal left." . . .

Kirsten Powers is one of these rare liberals. In "The Silencing,” she methodically documents—and exposes the hypocrisy, incoherence, and sheer contempt for evidence and argument that underlie—the delegitimization of dissent that has become the stock in trade of what she characterizes as the "illiberal left."

Because she is intellectually honest, while I disagree with her more often than not, I always have to make sure that my disagreements are on sound footing and give due consideration to her arguments. She is a voice of reason to be taken seriously by people on both sides of the aisle.

The Regulatory Bureaucracy

Nothing pushes my hot button more than talk of our regulatory agencies and their unconstitutional abuse of power, something I bang the drum about constantly. But beyond that is their practical effect. Powerline explains here:

The regulation of low-cost competitive street retail isn’t limited just to food service where legitimate health concerns come into play; according to a report from the Institute for Justice, 45 of the nation’s 50 largest cities maintain extensive regulation of mobile vending of a wide range of products with no health risks at all (such as handmade clothing), “making it needlessly difficult or even impossible to set up shop in many cities.” Somehow the “disparate impact” these regulatory schemes have on lower-income minorities never reaches the threshold of a civil rights issue.

Bookworm Room, in a brilliant post several years ago that I cannot find at the moment, made the point that the only legitimate use of regulation was to protect us against those dangers that are not open and obvious to a reasonable person. All too often, regulations are misused to protect business from competition or to enforce ideological goals, neither of which is a legitimate use of the regulatory power. Were we ever to apply Ms. Bookworm's rule of thumb, I would imagine we could do away with upward of 75% of the regulations now crushing down upon us.

Malarial Parasites With Woodies

There is an article today at Real Clear Science, "Viagra Could Halt Malaria By 'Stiffening' Infected Cells." Malaria is a disease caused by a parasite that enters the human blood stream through the bite of a mosquito. It then reproduces in vast numbers, causing debilitating, potentially even deadly illness. It is a scourge in many countries, particularly Africa, so this is big news.

If you read into the article though, you'll find that the viagra isn't affecting cells, it's affecting the parasites. It is, in essence, giving them a woody, which, it just so happens, makes it easier for the spleen to trap the parasites, stopping reproduction. There is something just so, so wrong about giving any male the gift of wood, then using said woody to entrap him. But I guess that is human nature, is it not. From humans to parasites apparently, males sporting wood oft are easily led astray.

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Europe's Islamic Problem

One of the major problems that most European countries face today is a large and restive Muslim population within their individual borders that has not integrated. The great European experiment in multiculturalism has failed catastrophically, and this problem of an ever-growing and restive Muslim population in Europe is near intractable now, given the reality that Europe is at a stage where the problem is not simply immigrants who can be dealt with by repatriation if they are dangerously problematic, but second and third generation native born Muslims who are themselves failing to integrate into Western society.

Dr. Nicolai Sennels is a psychologist who works mostly with youths accused or convicted of crime in his native Denmark. That job has brought him into extensive contact with Muslim teens, a group that, along with older Muslims, commits violent crime at a rate many times greater than non-Muslim Danes. Dr. Sennels, in a very detailed and informative article, “Report from the therapy room: Why are Muslims more violent and criminal?” (provided to me by Ms. Bookworm Room), analyzes the causes of this violence, and finds the roots firmly in Islamic culture. It is of note that many of the patients Dr. Sennels dealt with are second and third generation native born Danes.

To sum up Dr. Sennels observations:

1. Muslim culture sees anger, aggression and even violence as appropriate responses to challenges or criticism.

2. Muslims are more likely to be insecure, and thus driven to anger, aggression and violence by anything they perceive as threatening their honor, including slights to their religion.

3. Muslim culture promotes a victim mentality as opposed to a sense of personal responsibility.

4. Muslims discriminate between Muslims and non-Muslims.

5. The extreme repression of women in Islam leads to a variety of dysfunctions, as well as a the very high incidence of homosexuality. Among the dysfunctions are bestiality, pedophilia, and rape ideations. This also fuels aggressive behavior in Muslim men.

6. While many believe that poverty is the primary cause of antisocial behavior among Muslims, the reality is the opposite. For Muslims in Denmark, it is antisocial behavior that leads to poverty. [To add my own note to that observation, most terrorists do not come from impoverished backgrounds, but from the middle class of Muslim society, something which the left regularly refuses to acknowledge. Doing so would mean making judgments about a non-western culture, and moreover, challenges the left's core belief that economics, and more particularly economic redistribution, is the penultimate answer to the world's problems.]

7. There is little emphasis in Islamic culture on knowledge and education outside of the Koran. This lack of respect for education severely limits opportunities in life for many Muslim immigrants in the West.

8. The prevalence of inbreeding among Muslims also has a significant impact on many aspects of immigrant lives, not the least of which is the inability to integrate because of a lack of education.

9. It is a canard to claim that criticism - whether under the rubric of "stigmatization," or, I will add, "Islamophobia" in the West - leads legitimately to feelings of victimization by Muslims and causes them to lash out.

10. In order for Muslims to integrate into Western society, they must want to integrate, they must be in an environment that allows for it, and they must have the capacity to integrate into a society whose values are very much at odds, in many ways, with Islamic teachings. Rarely, it seems, are those three conditions present, particularly in Europe where immigration has been so heavy, and the welfare state such, that Muslims tend to congregate in enclaves. Mr. Sennels then includes this nugget, which gives some sense of both the cause of and the degree to which lack of Muslim integration in European countries is predicated on a socialist welfare state:

First we have to ask ourselves: why should Muslim immigrants want to integrate? They can live their culture, receive enough money, and have a full functioning social life within their Muslim communities without even learning our language or even working. We have Muslim schools, Muslim parallel societies and even Muslim nursing homes. Muslim graveyards have existed for years, so even after death Muslim immigrants do not need to be close to non-Muslims.

After discussing in detail the facts summarized above -- and if you doubt his conclusions, I would urge you to read his article in its entirety -- Dr. Sennels gives his proposed solutions to the problems he has identified. They are sufficiently serious and worthy of consideration that I include them below in full:

Muslim immigration to the West is the greatest sociological and group psychological experiment in World History. The experiment is clearly going wrong, and statistics and facts show us that the problems are accelerating.

Any good scientist with common sense would in such a case start by putting the experiment to a complete halt: Stop Muslim immigration and cut citizenships to resident Muslim immigrants and refugees. Non-Western immigrants and refugees who have not yet attained Western citizenship should only be able to continue their life in our Western countries as long as they can support themselves and are not convicted of any violent crimes. There is nothing wrong with asking unpleasant guests to leave a party.

Our social workers and welfare system have to realize that we are dealing with people for whom cultural and religiously defined restrictions and consequences are the prime tools for regulating peoples’ behaviour.

In general we have to make it so practically difficult and economically unbeneficial not to integrate that immigrants who do not want to or are not able to integrate will find it more tempting to seek their happiness somewhere else. Denmark has an excellent law on repatriation – state sponsored emigration: Immigrants receive up to 15,000 Euros (20,000 USD) if they are willing to give up their citizenships or permanent residence permits and move home to their country of origin. They can also receive economic help for medicine in up to one year and support for buying equipment used for establishing a business in their home country.

Pedagogic strategies, police work, integration projects and social welfare checks are therefore wasted if we are not strictly consequential. Economic social help should be given to people who display social behaviour – it should not support anti-social lifestyles and be a leash so long that the destructive or unintegrated individuals only realize their unwelcome and islamonauseating behaviour when it is too late.

Another important Danish law that hopefully will inspire the rest of Europe is to limit the Child Support from the state to only include the first two children (the country’s average). In Denmark, this has meant that Danish families and well integrated immigrant families can still manage to have more than two children if they wish so — because they work, etc. Less successful immigrant parents will have to think twice, though, before they start or import big families – that by the way in most cases inherit the parents” lack of integration. Economic pressure should also consist of much better control of taxes and VAT in shops suspected or reported of cheating. It should not be possible to move to our countries and live from on Child Support or unpaid taxes to the government.

Muslim organisations and leaders should be able to prove that they are so-called moderate. This should include that they publicly renounce and disclaim any violent and racist passages in the Islamic scriptures, and acknowledge the freedom of women and speech, rule of secular laws, etc. Preaching the Quran as being the truth and stating Muhammed to be an excellent example of good behaviour is telling people to break the law. Islam has to adapt if it wants to be legal according to our constitutions.

Unfortunately we will also need to create laws that will affect the privacy of the general public: We need to install sufficient amount of surveillance equipment (cameras etc.) in areas with serious problems with crime and violent attitudes towards the authorities. Violent habitual offenders should wear a GPS device for a specific periods after being released, so that the police are able to track and follow the convicts.

It goes without saying that we of course should fight the spread of sharia, cancel all present and future attempts of islamization, reassert our own cultural values and do what is necessary to reinstall and secure peace and the rule of secular law in the Muslim ghettos – effectively.

Finally, we need to free the Muslim women. The freedom of the women is our best tool against any kind of aggressive or backward religious tendencies. Female social workers should have regular meetings with the women from immigrant groups that are known for suppression of women (primarily the Muslim groups of immigrants). In this way we have a chance of making sure that the women are safe, free and know their rights to repatriation, to move to a women’s shelter, to contraception, etc. If their men do not like this kind of interference, they are free to leave the country: We will not accept that a medieval view of women takes root in our societies, and we will fight traditional Islam by freeing the Muslim women.

If we do this, we should have a fair chance to integrate the remaining Muslims, minimize their pressure on our democracy, protect the feeling of safety and social coherence in our societies, and keep our welfare systems to a satisfying degree.

Besides actively fighting organisations and regimes that threaten our existence or way of living, our foreign policy must aim at diminishing the population growth in the poor countries. Overpopulation is a cause for conflicts about space, food, pure drinking water, pastures, areas for cultivation, and other important resources. It is also a strain on the environment and climate. It is impossible to create the necessary infrastructure, educational system and a sufficient amount of jobs in overpopulated countries — which of course leads to poverty.

Our development aid to the third world should not be given to their often corrupt governments. Instead it should be given directly to the citizens following the same model as the Nobel Prize winning micro credits: E.g. One dollar per day if one has no or one child, half a dollar per day if one has two children and no money if one starts a big family. In this way the parents do not need to give birth to a lot of children hoping that at least one of them will be so successful that he or she can support the parents when they get too old to work. The parents will then be economically capable to give their children proper education and nourishment (malnutrition harms the development of the brain) which can create the educated middle class that is the motor in all successful societies.

Hungry, poor and uneducated people are usually bad democrats and easily become tempted by the cornucopia of simple explanations and promises offered by political Islam. Putting a lid on the population explosion and thereby focusing on long term solutions for limiting poverty and raising the educational level are necessary tools in fighting the growing religious fanaticism in the Third World. This again will lessen the amount of internal and international violent conflicts in those areas, thereby minimizing the flow of refugees and immigrants to the West.

The many threats and dangers resulting from illegal immigration, including crime, terror, negative economic consequences, social unrest and a general decrease in social coherence, makes it imperative that states and supranational institutions such as the EU and UN secure our national borders and the borders of Europe effectively.

Thankfully, America, with its relatively small population of Muslims and much better track record of integration, is not experiencing the degree pf problems of Europe. But if something radical is not done in Europe to address this problem posed by a lack of integration, it is hard to see how this issue will be resolved in the long term by anything other than bloodshed.

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Egypt Designates Hamas A Terrorist Organization

A tiny bit of good news for the forces of civilization. An Egyptian Court has declared Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot currently in control of the Gaza strip, a "terrorist organization." This from al-Jazeera:

A judicial source told AFP news agency that the court issued the verdict on Saturday, a ruling seen as keeping with a systematic crackdown on Islamist groups by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. . . .

Egyptian authorities have accused Hamas of aiding armed groups, who have waged a string of deadly attacks on security forces in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

In January, an Egyptian court also declared Hamas' armed wing al-Qassam Brigades a "terrorist" group. . . .

Armed groups in Sinai have killed scores of policemen and soldiers since Morsi's overthrow, vowing revenge for a crackdown on his supporters that has left more than 1,400 people dead. Most of the attacks however have been claimed by the armed group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which has pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

There has been no word yet on whether Egypt acknowledges Hamas to be associated with Islam (sarcasm).

The Obama administration has been at odds with Egypt's current administration under President al Sisi since it came to power in a coup in 2013, overthrowing a Muslim Brotherhood administration and Obama ally that was intent on making Egypt into a permanent theocracy. In striking comparison to Obama, President al Sisi is the only politician on a national stage who has had the courage to openly charge that Islamic teachings motivate and cause terrorism. He did so at the same time he challenged the supreme religious council in Egypt to address and correct these teachings.

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Straying Off The Left's Plantation On Islamic Terrorism

Tulsi Gabbard is a thirty-three year old combat veteran and a Democrat Representative for Hawaii. She is also in the midst of learning a harsh lesson in Democrat politics. One does not stray off the Democrat's plantation.

Rep. Gabbard's sin is to be harshly critical of President Obama's refusal to admit that the atrocities being committed around the world by soldiers of Allah for the glory of Islam are in any way associated with Islam. Ms. Gabbard, calling the President's refusal to make the association "mind boggling," has opined:

Every soldier knows this simple fact: If you don't know your enemy, you will not be able to defeat him. . . Our leaders must clearly identify the enemy as Islamist extremists, understand the ideology that is motivating them and attracting new recruits, and focus on defeating that enemy both militarily and ideologically.

She could not be more correct. She is sounding a theme made on this blog for a decade now. And yet, for making that point repeatedly in the wake of the most recent ISIS atrocities and the like, Rep. Gabbard is now suffering the consequences of speaking against the party line:

Her comments have stunned political experts in her home state.

“It is very, very unusual for a junior member in the president's own party to criticize him,” said Colin Moore, assistant professor at the University of Hawaii Department of Political Science. “Especially for someone considered a rising star in the party. This is a serious gamble for her.”

Michael W. Perry, of Hawaii's most popular KSSK Radio's "Perry & Price Show," said that "while Gabbard is correct in her 'emperor has no clothes' moment, she may have lost her future seat on Hawaii's political bench." He said she's committed "a mortal sin" by challenging Obama, and "now the knives are out."

For now, she's taking her hits in the media.

The editorial board of the online political news journal Civil Beat, owned by eBay Founder Pierre Omiydar, said "the bright-red Right" is promoting her criticism but she is not "presenting serious policy arguments."

"One wonders where Gabbard is going with this. Sure, the Iraq war veteran and rising political star is achieving national prominence in a high-profile discussion. But at what cost?" the editorial board wrote, saying her comments could be dismissed "as pandering from a young pol with lofty ambitions."

Bob Jones, columnist for the Oahu-based Midweek, wrote a scathing piece suggesting Gabbard should be challenged in 2016. "I take serious issue when somebody who's done a little non-fighting time in Iraq, and is not a Middle East or Islamic scholar, claims to know better than our President and Secretary of State how to fathom the motivations of terrorists, or how to refer to them beyond the term that best describes them -- terrorists," Jones said.

Right, because the Obama foreign policy as regards Islam and the Middle East has been such a ringing success that it shoudl be beyond debate. What an idiot Mr. Jones is.

As to Ms. Gabbard, a free range intellectually honest democrat is so rare to spot in the wild, really. Haven't seen any since the days of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Zell Miller. Well, maybe Manchin. Jury is still out on him. But one that looks good on a beach in Hawaii . . . that's unique.

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1938: President F.D. Obama Address Violent Extremism

Victor Davis Hanson imagines the speech Obama would give addressing the Nazi threat circa 1938. It is pitch perfect.

. . .“So make no mistake about it: National Socialism has nothing to do with Germany or the German people but is rather a violent extremist organization that has perverted the culture of Germany. It is an extremist ideology that thrives on the joblessness of Germany and can be best opposed by the international community going to the root of German unemployment and economic hard times. Let us not confuse Nazism with legitimate expressions of German nationalism. Stiff-arm saluting and jack boots are legitimate tenets of Germanism, and the German Brotherhood, for example, is a largely peaceful organization.

“So we Americans must not get on our own high horse. We, too, have bullied our neighbors and invaded them. We, too, have struggled with racism and anti-Semitism, slavery and Jim Crow. And our own culture has at times treated American citizens in the same callous way as the National Socialist do Germans. Before we castigate the Nazis, let us remember the Inquisition and the Crusades.

“In the face of Nazi challenge, we must stand united internationally and here at home — opposing workplace violence and man-caused disasters. We know that overseas contingency operations alone cannot solve the problem of Nazi aggression. Nor can we simply take out SS troopers who kill innocent civilians. We also have to confront the violent extremists — the propagandists working for Dr. Goebbels and Herr Himmler, recruiters and enablers — who may not directly engage in man-caused disasters themselves, but who radicalize, recruit and incite others to do so. One of the chief missions of our new aeronautics board will be to reach out to Germans to make them feel proud of German achievement. I want to remind Americans that Germans fostered the Renaissance, and helped create sophisticated navigation, mathematics, and medicine. This week, we will take an important step forward, as governments, civil society groups and community leaders from more than 60 nations will gather in Washington for a global summit on countering violent extremism. We hope that the efforts of those like Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Daladier and others will focus on empowering local communities, especially in Britain and France.

“Groups like the SS offer a twisted interpretation of German culture that is rejected by the overwhelming majority of the world’s German-speaking communities. The world must continue to lift up the voices of moderate German pastors and scholars who teach the true peaceful nature of German culture. We can echo the testimonies of former SS operatives and storm troopers who know how these terrorists betray Germany. We can help German entrepreneurs and youths work with the private sector to develop media tools to counter extremist Nazi narratives on radio and in newspapers. . . .

Do read the entire post. It truly puts, not just Obama's actions, but the entire West's actions in horrid perspective.
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The "Perversion of Islam" Versus Historical Reality

Obama, in his remarks at the closing of the Summit on Countering Violent Extremism, had this to say:

[W]e are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.

True, we are not at war with Islam. But a good portion of Muslim world is at war with us or otherwise supports those who are, and the basis for that is not a "perverted" interpratation of their faith. Their actions are found on the fundamental tentents of their religion. To claim otherwise is a complete denial of the last 1,400 years of history.

Muslims have been spreading Islam by the sword near ever since their religion was conceived in the 7th century. Islam has been the greatest imperial force the world has ever seen. Between the 7th century and the 18th century, Muslims conquered the Middle East, all of North Africa, Byzantium, a goodly portion of central Asia and India, Sicily, parts of Greece, and much of Spain. They threatened to overrun France until stopped by Charles Martel in the 8th century. By 1683, Muslims had conquered southern portions of Central Europe and were laying siege to Vienna, Austria. After 1683, Muslim nations stopped their wars of conquest.

The near three century hiatus the West has had from Islam's wars of conquest has not occurred because Islam has moderated. Islam has never had a Renaissance or Reformation. It was untouched by the Enlightenment. The Islam of today is the same militant, expansionist Islam of the 7th century. The hiatus in the wars of conquest came about simply because the West went through the Industrial Revolution and was too powerful for the Muslim nations to challenge. The only moderating influence on Islam has been the imposition of Western governmental forms in some of the Muslim countries. As Sultan Knish explains:

Islam never became enlightened. It never stopped being ‘medieval’. Whatever enlightenment it received was imposed on it by European colonialism. It’s a second-hand enlightenment that never went under the skin.

ISIS isn’t just seventh century Islam. It’s also much more recent than that. It’s Islam before the French and the English came. It’s what the Muslim world was like before it was forced to have presidents and constitutions, before it was forced to at least pay lip service to the alien notion of equal rights for all.

The media reported the burning of the Jordanian pilot as if it were some horrifying and unprecedented aberration. But Muslim heretics, as well as Jews and Christians accused of blasphemy, were burned alive for their crimes against Islam. Numerous accounts of this remain, not from the seventh century, but from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Those who weren’t burned, might be beheaded.

These were not the practices of some apocalyptic death cult. They were the Islamic law in the “cosmopolitan” parts of North Africa. The only reason they aren’t the law now is that the French left behind some of their own laws.

Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia that were never truly colonized still behead men and women for “witchcraft and sorcery.” Not in the seventh century or even in the nineteenth century. Last year.

The problem isn’t that ISIS is ‘medieval’. The problem is that Islam is.

What progressives mistake for modern Islam, whether while touring Algeria or on the campus of their university, is really an Islam whose practice has been repressed by the West while its ideology remains untouched. Modern Islam is in a state of contradiction. It’s a schizophrenic religion whose doctrine calls for supremacism but whose capabilities prevent it from exercising the full measure of its doctrines.

Islam is the 90 lb. weakling that wants to be the school bully. It can’t punch you in the face, so it stabs you in the back and then blames someone else. When you punch it back, it plays the victim.

Terrorism and the march of ISIS accross the Middle East are not some anomaly of history, they are a resumption of it. That matters because:

“You cannot fight what you refuse to name… and you cannot win against something that you will not fight.”

We have no chance of avoiding continuous war, perhaps apocolyptic, with Islam so long as our governing class refuses to take the first step of acknowledging reality.

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Obama's Surveillance - Everything BUT Mosques

The massive surveillance apparatus that exists under Obama to combat "terrorism" seems to have one massive, gaping hole - it does not include mosques. This from IBD:

The White House assures that tracking our every phone call and keystroke is to stop terrorists, and yet it won't snoop in mosques, where the terrorists are.

That's right, the government's sweeping surveillance of our most private communications excludes the jihad factories where homegrown terrorists are radicalized.

Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee.

Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? Nobody knows; the names of the chairman, members and staff are kept secret.

We do know the panel was set up under pressure from Islamist groups who complained about FBI stings at mosques. Just months before the panel's formation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations teamed up with the ACLU to sue the FBI for allegedly violating the civil rights of Muslims in Los Angeles by hiring an undercover agent to infiltrate and monitor mosques there.

Before mosques were excluded from the otherwise wide domestic spy net the administration has cast, the FBI launched dozens of successful sting operations against homegrown jihadists — inside mosques — and disrupted dozens of plots against the homeland.

. . . This is particularly disturbing in light of recent independent surveys of American mosques, which reveal some 80% of them preach violent jihad or distribute violent literature to worshippers.

What other five-alarm jihadists are counterterrorism officials missing right now, thanks to restrictions on monitoring the one area they should be monitoring?

Religious freedom is at the heart of our "civil rights," as set forth in the Bill of Rights. Our nation was founded on religious tolerance in the decades after the bloody European religious wars. But at that time, our nation was almost wholly sects of Christianity and Judaism.

Our only relationship to Islam at around the time of the founding was external. The merchant ships of our newly formed nation was under sustained attack the "Barbary pirates" - North African Islamic groups that justified their war on us on the basis of their religion, Islam. In a 1796 meeting of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams with an envoy from the pirates:

. . . [Adams and Jefferson] ‘took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the ground of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury.’ The ambassador [from the Barbary States] replied that it was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave.” He claimed every one of their guys who was “slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise.

An argument can be made that at the time of the crafting of the Bill of Rights, Islam was beyond the consideration of the drafters. Moreover, there is no corresponding doctrine of conquest and enslavement of non-believers in either Christianity or Judaism. Indeed, because of these and other related doctrines, Islam is as much a political system as it is a set of religious beliefs. While virtually everyone in this country would agree that there should be no compulsion as to religious beliefs, that alone should not in any way protect Muslims or mosques from full and unfettered surveillance and, where warranted, police action. Arguments to the contrary wrongly conflate Islam wholly with religion - and for many if not most sects of Islam, it is far more than just that.

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The Institution Of Arab Islamic Slavers

From Black Educator:

Here's a brief summation of the history of Arab enslavement of African Peoples. It is important to know this history in order to understand both the evolution of Western capitalism's slave trade and the current atrocities against Africans (by Africans) unfolding in the name of Islam and/or "Arab Civilization.

Islam & slavery by BLACKMUSICS

I touched upon a lot of this in my post, The Origins Of The Slave Trade & The Race Hustler's Holy Grail. The combination of ignorance and falsehoods that surrounds the historical - and modern - institution of black slavery is appalling. That combination is useful only in as much as so many have a stake in promoting slavery as an "original" sin of whites.

And slavery of blacks by Islamists is ongoing. The Washington Post ran a story less than a month ago, Timbuktu's Slaves Liberated As Islamists Flee, documenting the practice by Muslims of enslaving blacks in Mali. As disheartening as the story itself was, equally disheartening was some of the supremely historically ignorant comments. One in particular sticks in my craw - "Religious fundamentalists (conservatives) of all stripes have no problems with slavery." That statement is so hateful, so stupid, and so historically wrong that it leaves me in amazement. White Christian fundamentalists are the people that drove slavery not merely from our nation, but from acceptability on the world stage. The whites who in fact supported slavery, the KKK and other such institutions were Democrats. White Republicans started the NAACP. And the Republican Party was quite literally born out of opposition to slavery. Want more, go here and here.

Update: Almost as if on-cue, just as I am complaining about the complete and total rewrite of history by the left, MSNBC runs a retrospective on segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace, the man who, in 1959, tried to stop blacks from integrating into then all-white Alabama schools. MSNBC identified George Wallace, who was a life long Democrat until registering as an Independent late in life, as a Republican. Scurrilous idiots.

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Polar Opposites: Obama & Allen West Respond To The Muslim World

A real and present threat to the West, albeit a distant second to Iran's nuclear program, is the Muslim world's call to make criticism of Islam a crime. Those calls have increased ten fold in the wake of riots throughout the Muslim nations, nominally in response to the "Innocence of Muslims" film trailer. Obama has been serially apologizing for that film trailer since it came out. And now, what does he say at the UN yesterday, addressing those rioting nations?

The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.

Really???? Of all the things Obama could have said, that was the most insane. It is an affirmation of Muslim outrageous outrage at any perceived slight and an agreement that any criticism of Islam is misplaced. Good God, nothing in this world is more in need of criticism than Islam as practiced in the Middle East, whether Salafi's would consider it "slander" or not. And indeed, no religion is more deeply involved in "slander" towards other religions than are the Muslims.

You can read Obama's full remarks at the UN here. He simultaneously tried to present a luke warm defense of America's First Amendment protection while condemning the "Innocence of Muslims" video. Disgusting.

Compare and contrast the response of Rep. Allen West. This from Politico:

Florida Rep. Allen West ripped President Barack Obama’s United Nations speech Tuesday, saying he would have told the U.N. that America would be an “Angel of Death” that wreaks “havoc and destruction” on anyone who attacks the U.S.

“My statement to the United Nations would have been, ‘The future does not belong to those who attack our Embassies and Consulates and kill our Ambassadors. The Angel of Death in the form of an American Bald Eagle will visit you and wreak havoc and destruction upon your existence,’” the Florida congressman wrote in a Facebook post.

He criticized Obama’s U.N. speech for linking recent attacks on U.S. posts overseas to a trailer for the anti-Islamic film “Innocence of Muslims.” West said terrorism, not a video, sparked the violence.

[Obama] continues to offer up apologies instead of defending our hard earned First Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression,” he wrote. “There is no message to this silly video trailer, and it is beneath the dignity and esteem of the Office of the President of the United States to mention it at all. When tolerance becomes a one way street it leads to cultural suicide. I shall not be tolerant of the intolerant. I know about the UN Resolution 1618 which would make any statement deemed by the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) ‘offensive’ to Islam a crime…..NOT ON MY WATCH FELLAS!”

Those are the messages Islam needs to get - clear, concise, and unyielding - if we are to stop an existential conflict with these radicals. The messages of Obama will lead to war with the West.

Why isn't West running for President?

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A Short Histry Of Muslim Perpetual Outrage

From Michael Ramirez:

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Obama, 9-11-12 & The Collapse Of His Middle East Policy

Lots of posts and columns on the web today about the implosion of the Obama's "Cairo" doctrine, the Obama decision to use our tax dollars to fund an ad in Pakistan with Obama and Hillary attacking the "Innocence of Muslims" film trailer, and lastly, the implosion of the White House claims that the slaughter of our personnel in Benghazi was a spontaneous response to the film trailer.

Before addressing those points, let's note the elephant in the room. There is a huge scandal in this mix - the virtually non-existent security at our consulate in Benghazi on 9-11-12, site of previous attacks and a breeding ground for radicals. That lack of security was beyond negligent; it was criminally reckless. And that does not even begin to consider that no special precautions were taken on 9-11 to increase security there.

The person with the answers to this scandal is Hillary Clinton, which is I suspect why UN Ambassador Susan Rice, who would not even be in the loop on this issue, was offered up on all of the Sunday talk shows last Sunday to address it. She could prevaricate and obfuscate with at least some fall back claim to ignorance. Heads need to roll over this, and I strongly suspect that one of those heads is Hillary's.

The seminal critique of Obama's Middle East policy comes from Charles Krauthammer:

In the week following 9/11/12 something big happened: the collapse of the Cairo Doctrine, the centerpiece of President Obama’s foreign policy. It was to reset the very course of post-9/11 America, creating, after the (allegedly) brutal depredations of the Bush years, a profound rapprochement with the Islamic world.

On June 4, 2009, in Cairo, Obama promised “a new beginning” offering Muslims “mutual respect,” unsubtly implying previous disrespect. Curious, as over the previous 20 years, America had six times committed its military forces on behalf of oppressed Muslims, three times for reasons of pure humanitarianism (Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo), where no U.S. interests were at stake.

But no matter. Obama had come to remonstrate and restrain the hyperpower that, by his telling, had lost its way after 9/11, creating Guantanamo, practicing torture, imposing its will with arrogance and presumption.

. . . his policies of accommodation and concession would consolidate the gains: an outstretched hand to Iran’s mullahs, a first-time presidential admission of the U.S. role in a 1953 coup, a studied and stunning turning away from the Green Revolution; withdrawal from Iraq with no residual presence or influence; a fixed timetable for leaving Afghanistan; returning our ambassador to Damascus (with kind words for Bashar Assad — “a reformer,” suggested the secretary of state); deliberately creating distance between the U.S. and Israel.

These measures would raise our standing in the region, restore affection and respect for the United States, and elicit new cooperation from Muslim lands.

It’s now three years since the Cairo speech. Look around. The Islamic world is convulsed with an explosion of anti-Americanism. From Tunisia to Lebanon, American schools, businesses, and diplomatic facilities set ablaze. A U.S. ambassador and three others murdered in Benghazi. The black flag of Salafism, of which al-Qaeda is a prominent element, raised over our embassies in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Sudan.

The administration, staggered and confused, blames it all on a 14-minute trailer for a film no one has seen and which may not even exist. What else can it say? . . .

Islamists rise across North Africa from Mali to Egypt. Iran repeatedly defies U.S. demands on nuclear enrichment, then, as a measure of its contempt for what America thinks, openly admits that its Revolutionary Guards are deployed in Syria. Russia, after arming Assad, warns America to stay out, while the secretary of state delivers vapid lectures about Assad “meeting” his international “obligations.” The Gulf States beg America to act on Iran; Obama strains mightily to restrain . . . Israel.

Sovereign U.S. territory is breached and U.S. interests are burned. And what is the official response? One administration denunciation after another — of a movie trailer! A request to Google to “review” the trailer’s presence on YouTube. And sheriff’s deputies’ midnight “voluntary interview” with the suspected filmmaker. This in the land of the First Amendment.

What else can Obama do? At their convention, Democrats endlessly congratulated themselves on their one foreign-policy success: killing Osama bin Laden. A week later, the Salafist flag flies over four American embassies, even as the mob chants, “Obama, Obama, there are still a billion Osamas.”

A foreign policy in epic collapse. . . .

Do read the entire column.

Islam is a tool of politics and power in the Middle East - a tool that has not matured from its founding in the 7th century. I made the point here that what goes on in Muslim countries should not be countenanced in the civilized world, a point Rhymes with Right also makes in a very insightful post, Is Speech Against Islam A Crime Against Humanity -- Or Is Islam Itself?

The problem with Obama's Middle East policy is that it is wholly premised on fundamental conceits about the nature of Islam as practiced in the Middle East. Islam there is not rational, peaceful, or susceptible to compromise. It is not civilized. It is not benign. That Obama still bitterly clings to these conceits is the only way to explain why he would allow our State Dept. to spend $70,000 on an ad buy in Pakistan apologizing for and denouncing the "Innocence of Muslims." It is as damaging to America as it is pathetic.



The hypocrisy of Islamist's calls to respect the prophet, even as the Muslim religion is premised on the most fundamental of blasphemies against Christianity, is mind-boggling to me. But in any event, the last thing we should be doing is silencing the criticism of Islam, let alone apologizing for it as a nation.

Our government stance must always be that people have the right to peacefully practice whatever faith they choose inside of our borders free of government sanction. But our Constitutional responsibilities end there. It does not require us to refrain from criticizing a religion mired in the 7th century, that causes bloodshed on a grand scale, that maintains itself by the sword, and that wishes to conquer by the sword. I do not know if Obama actually does not understand that, or whether he is too afraid of kicking the hornets' nest, or whether this is simply the natural result of a drift into anti-semitism and pro-Arab sympathies by those on the left generally.

Lastly, hats off to CBS News for their superb reporting on what actually happened and is happening in Benghazi relating to the deaths of our Ambassador and three other Americans. This from CBS News:



As summarized by Guy Benson at Town Hall:

Let's count the revelations embedded within this minute-and-a-half long clip:

(1) "The FBI still hasn't made it to the crime scene in Benghazi." More on this later, but the fact that the administration is treating our sacked consulate as a "crime" scene is telling. This was a terrorist attack. An act of war. . . . We've dispatched criminal investigators to look into it, but they still haven't even made it to ground zero yet? Nine days after the fact? Why?

(2) "Witnesses tell CBS News that there was never an anti-American protest outside of the consulate. Instead, they say it came under planned attack." As I wrote this morning, the administration is at last beginning to acknowledge the latter fact, but the former element is crucial, too. If there really were no protests outside the consulate before the ambush began -- as multiple news outlets are now reporting -- even the premise of the administration's fictional account is false. CBS says the facts on the ground are in "direct contradiction" to the White House's statements. The administration is still saying that the raid could have spun out from spontaneous protests that didn't even exist.

(3) "What's clear...is that the public won't get a detailed account of what happened until after the presidential election." This conclusion strongly reinforces several of my theories about the White House's foot-dragging and misdirection on the Benghazi raid. We have a murdered ambassador and sensitive intelligence missing, and the administration is in pure political CYA mode.

Nice Deb also has an excellent round-up on these topics.

Dr. Sanity has returned to the blogging world (thankfully) and has a particularly insightful post on the administrations decision to run an ad in Pakistan denouncing the "Innocence of Muslims" film trailer, The Obama Apology Tour Continues:

I regret to inform those that support the constant apologizing, that the increasingly violent Islamic response to appeasement, solicitation, and understanding has always been completely predictable from a psychological perspective. Bullies will always push the envelope of bad behavior when they think they can get away with it.

Here's a tip for the clueless Obama Administration and their supporters:

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What Does It Say When The French More Avidly Defend Free Speech Against The Islamists Than Does The U.S.?

Until today, I thought the last people of French origin worthy of any respect were Charles Martel and his army of Franks - the men who heroically beat back the advance of Islamic armies into Europe. That was in 732 A.D. - a turning point in history.

It has been a long dry spell, but today, I can stand and salute France's stand on free speech, and in particular, the publishers of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, a magazine that has had its headquarters firebombed previously for "blasphemy" against the Prophet of the religion of peace. The magazine is in the midst of publishing more caricatures of Mohammed and the radical Islamists, this time based on the movie "Innocence of Muslims." This from the USA Today:

France stepped up security at some of its embassies on Wednesday after a satirical Parisian weekly published crude caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. The prime minister said he would block a demonstration by people angry over a movie insulting to Islam as the country plunged into a fierce debate about free speech.

The government defended the right of magazine Charlie Hebdo to publish the cartoons, which played off of the U.S.-produced film The Innocence of Muslims, and riot police took up positions outside the offices of the magazine, which was firebombed last year after it released an edition that mocked radical Islam.

What, no phone calls to the publisher from the Chief of Staff? No statements of disgust at the content from the President or the Sec. of State? No calls from the left to have the publisher jailed for blasphemy against Islam? Government protection of the publisher instead of sending brown-shirts to drag him from his home after midnight for questioning - or fingering him for the Islamists?

Hey, this is France, people, the place that quite literally introduced the word "surrender" into Anglo-Saxon English. This is the place that probably has more white flag factories than any other place on this earth. This is the place that gave birth to socialism and the war on Christianity. And their government - albeit with some wavering - and at least a part of their media are showing more backbone than our current administration and media?

The small-circulation weekly Charlie Hebdo often draws attention for ridiculing sensitivity around the Prophet Mohammed, and an investigation into the firebombing of its offices last year is still open. The magazine's website was down Wednesday for reasons that were unclear.

One of the cartoonists, who goes by the name of Tignous, defended the drawings in an interview Wednesday with the AP at the weekly's offices, on the northeast edge of Paris amid a cluster of housing projects.

"It's just a drawing," he said. "It's not a provocation." . . .

On the streets of Paris, public reaction was mixed.

"I'm not shocked at all. If this shocks people, well too bad for them," said Sylvain Marseguerra, a 21-year-old student at the Sorbonne. "We are free to say what we want. We are a country in which freedom prevails and ... if this doesn't enchant some people, well too bad for them."

Khairreddene Chabbara disagreed. "We are for freedom of expression, but when it comes to religion it shouldn't hurt the feelings of believers."

Charlie Hebdo has courted potentially dangerous controversy in the past. Last November the magazine's front-page, was subtitled "Sharia Hebdo," a reference to Islamic law, and showed caricatures of radical Muslims. The newspaper's offices were destroyed in a firebomb attack just hours before the edition hit newsstands.

In 2006, Charlie Hebdo printed reprints of caricatures carried by a Danish newspaper in 2005 that stoked anger across the Islamic world. Many European papers reprinted the drawings in the name of media freedom.

Charlie Hebdo has also faced legal challenges. The weekly was acquitted in 2008 by a Paris appeals court of "publicly abusing a group of people because of their religion" following a complaint by Muslim associations. . . .

For refusing to back down and silence themselves in response to the violent animals of the Middle East - and those in their own midst - I can honestly say that I now have respect for a second group of French people very much in the mold of their great predecessor, Charles Martel. Let me utter words that I honestly thought would never pass my lips: Viva La' France.

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LA Times Op-Ed: Applying A Reasonable Radical Muzzie Standard To The 1st Amendment

Update: Welcome Crusader Rabbit readers. Unless you want to read an exposition on U.S. law of freedom of speech, the parts you want to read are higihlighted in yellow.
_________________________

Writing in the LA Times, Sarah Chayes, like many on the left, is demanding that the producer of the "Innocence of Muslims" be tried for inciting the violence of 9-11-12. Leave aside for the moment that this argument is a pretext to take focus off of Obama's failed foreign policy, just as for the radical Islamists, the movie was itself a pretext for their violence directed at the U.S.

The roadblock to the left's call for prosecution is the First Amendment. But Ms. Chayes has an answer to that - stop applying the test of how a "reasonable person" would react to particular speech, and apply the test of how radical Muslims would react to the same speech. Ms. Chayes would give radical Islamists control over our right of free speech and insert a de facto "blasphemy" exception into our Constitutional law, one applicable only to Islam. This from Ms. Chayes in the LA Times:

In one of the most famous 1st Amendment cases in U.S. history, Schenck vs. United States, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. established that the right to free speech in the United States is not unlimited. "The most stringent protection," he wrote on behalf of a unanimous court, "would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic."

Holmes' test — that words are not protected if their nature and circumstances create a "clear and present danger" of harm — has since been tightened. But even under the more restrictive current standard, "Innocence of Muslims," the film whose video trailer indirectly led to the death of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens among others, is not, arguably, free speech protected under the U.S. Constitution and the values it enshrines . . .

The current standard for restricting speech — or punishing it after it has in fact caused violence — was laid out in the 1969 case Brandenburg vs. Ohio. Under the narrower guidelines, only speech that has the intent and the likelihood of inciting imminent violence or lawbreaking can be limited.

Likelihood is the easiest test. In Afghanistan, where I have lived for most of the past decade, frustrations at an abusive government and at the apparent role of international forces in propping it up have been growing for years. But those frustrations are often vented in religious, not political, terms, because religion is a more socially acceptable, and safer, rationale for public outcry. . . .

As a threshold matter, despite Ms. Chayes's obfuscations, the law applicable to the film in question is crystal clear and long settled. The Supreme Court held, in the 1952 case of Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson that the makers of a sacriligous film could not be prosecuted for their speech:

[T]he state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them which is sufficient to justify prior restraints upon the expression of those views. It is not the business of government in our nation to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine, whether they appear in publications, speeches, or motion pictures.

Ms. Chayes wholly ignores that case law to make her argument. But even then, and leaving aside whether the speech has any intrinsic "value," the Holmes test mentioned by Ms. Chayes is ultimately a test of how a reasonable person in OUR society would react in the circumstances, not how al Qaeda members living in Egypt would react. In America, a reasonable person does not react with violence, even when an artist displays a crucifix in a jar of urine, when Louis Farrakhan regularly denigrates Judaism, when Islam strips Christ of his divinity, or even when the Onion uses an obscene cartoon to make the point that reasonable people in our nation do not respond with violence to criticism of the basest sort against their religion.

Most importantly, there is a historical reason to treat Ms. Shayes's argument with utter derision. The questioning of religious dogma and customs were critical parts of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and such questioning was the entire basis for the Reformation. Those titanic events of Western History took all aspects of our civilization, including our religious practices, out of the Dark Ages and into modernity.

Without these titanic historical periods, we would still be living under the yoke of a Dark Ages interpretation of religion. Witches would be executed, as would blasphemers and heretics. Any criticism of religious dogma would be met with violence. Any who left our religion would be subject to murder. Corruption among the clerics would be beyond reproach. Religion, instead of being a faith, would be a central tool of political power and state control. Our civilization would be dysfunctional, not dynamic.  Our government would subject people of other religions to severe state discrimination. Modern science, sparked by the Enlightenment and the basis for all of the technological advances of Western civilization, would have been severely circumscribed. Wouldn't that be horrendous?

Well, take a look at Islam today as practiced in the Middle East, and that is what you will find - all those things and more in every country with a Muslim government. And as to science, do note that Saudi Arabia only put the flat earth theory behind them with the recent turn of the millenium. A fatwa issued by the Grand Mufti in 1993 instructed "the earth is flat. Whoever claims it is round is an atheist deserving of punishment."

The radical Muzzies  have never gone through a period of Enlightenment, a Renaissance or a Reformation.  And they never will if criticism of their religion, in any and every form, is silenced. That is the world to which Ms. Chayes would consign Muslims, and if not altered, it is a world that will inevitably lead to an existential clash with our own civilization.  Ms. Chayes's proposal is the precise opposite of what is needed, both for the Muslim world and our own.

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How Should We Respond To Charges Of Blasphemy Against Islam

Six months after declaring that all churches in the Arabian peninsula should be destroyed, Saudi Arabia’s top cleric called at the weekend for a global ban on insults targeting all religious “prophets and messengers,” a category that, from a Muslim perspective, includes Jesus Christ.

Leading Sunni Clerics Demand Global Ban on Insults to Islam, CNS News, 17 Sep. 2012

“We never insult any prophet — not Moses, not Jesus — so why can’t we demand that Muhammad be respected?” Mr. Ali, a 39-year-old textile worker said, holding up a handwritten sign in English that read “Shut Up America.”

Cultural Clash Fuels Muslims Angry at Online Video, NYT, 16 Sep. 2012

Allow me to respond to your contentions, Grand Mufti and Mr. Ali.

Your religion is unique in many ways - one of which is that adopts a false Christianity as part of its founding narrative. Islam claims that Jesus is a "prophet" of its religion while ignoring his teachings and denying his divinity. In the Dome of the Rock Mosque, built atop the most holy site in the Jewish faith, there is an inscription now 1,300 years old:

The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, is only an apostle of God, and his Word which he conveyed unto Mary, and a Spirit proceeding from him. Believe therefore in God and his apostles, and say not Three. It will be better for you. God is only one God. Far be it from his glory that he should have a son.

Now, that is blasphemy in its purest sense. It irks me, but I ignore it, thinking only that you are misguided. But if you and your fellow Muslims in the Middle East, on the other hand, are prepared to do violence because someone in the U.S. said something not nice about Mohammed - well, you can pack it where the sun doesn't shine. And if you act violently, expect an appropriate response in return, bearing in mind that our tolerance level for your infantile, hypocritical and outrageous acts is not infinite. At some point, your violence will beget a response of overwhelming force.

As to Jesus, while the Koran claims to adopt him as part of Islamic faith, yet the Koran adopts none of his teachings. Perhaps most importantly, Jesus commanded us to follow the Golden Rule. Mohammed acknowledged no Golden Rule. To the contrary:

Islam does not enjoin believers to do unto infidels as you would have infidels do unto you. On the contrary! Islam tells its followers to subdue infidels; to kill them; to, at best, reduce them to dhimmitude.

And as to the Dome of the Rock, let's talk about the detestable Muslim habit of attempting to wipe out symbols and buildings of other faiths - an act directed by the Koran, verse 018:021. The Dome of the Rock was built on the holiest Jewish site, the Temple Mount, 1,300 years ago. It wasn't until 800 years ago that Muslims justified this on the claim, apparently made out of thin air, that this was a site also intrinsically holy to Muslims because of Mohammed's night ride. Everywhere Islam conquered, they built mosques on top of the holy sites of Christianity, with Constantinople and Cordoba being the two most famous of thousands of examples. Unfortunately, this is not merely historical - it continues to this day, from destroying ancient historic Buhddist statues in Afghanistan to the destruction of Churches in Nigeria, Egypt the West Bank - and let's not forget Jordan's industrial scale destruction of Jewish holy sites after they captured the Jewish Quarter in Jerulsalem.

I could raise an entire litany of other examples. There is the Muslim world's glorification of the most animalistic, subhuman acts of terror directed against Jews and Christians. There is the Koran's direction that it is acceptable to rape and enslave non-Muslims. There is the officially sanctioned discrimination against Christians and the few Jews left in every country with an Islamic government. There is the murder of homosexuals and people accused of witchcraft, not to mention the grossly unequal, violent treatment of women.

I consider the vast majority of these things to be a blasphemy against my religion - and indeed, all of these things to be a blasphemy against humanity. Here is reality. Your nations have produced nothing to advance civilization in the past near millenium. Today, the Arab Middle East is a cesspool of poverty, corruption and dysfunction - and that is not the fault of the West, not the fault of the Crusades, not the fault of 'Western imperialism,' and not the fault of America, where if you want to practice your religion in peace, you are perfectly welcome to do so. It is the fault of Islam and an Islamic culture that is, in the words of Churchill, the most "retrograde force" on this earth.

The best thing that I and the world can do for you is to criticize your religion and demand that you reform it to the point that its believers comport with civilized behavior. The best thing that you can do is evolve your culture and religion.

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The "Turbulent Priest" To Leave Office

The 104th Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the Anglican Church, Rowan Williams, has announced that he will step down from the post in December. Williams has held the post of Archbishop of Canterbury for almost a decade. Whatever else he was in office, Williams was clearly one of a deeply misguided breed - a left wing Christian. He did nothing to protect and defend the Church, let alone further its interests. In my last post about him, I wrote:

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Cantebury, [is doing] to Christianity what Labour is doing to Britain. He is the man who prior to this day had praised Islam, damned America as an imperialist nation to a crowd of Muslims, blamed America for Muslim violence against Christians in the Middle East, refused to proselytize for Christianity among Muslims, and advocated implementing at least parts of Sharia law in Britain. The Archbishop's latest assault on the Christian faith has come in an apologia to Muslims for the violent history of Christianity and what seems an apology for one of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith - the Trinity. This from the Daily Mail:

Christian doctrine is offensive to Muslims, the Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday.  Dr Rowan Williams also criticised Christianity's history for its violence, its use of harsh punishments and its betrayal of its peaceful principles.  His comments came in a highly conciliatory letter to Islamic leaders calling for an alliance between the two faiths for 'the common good'.

But it risked fresh controversy for the Archbishop in the wake of his pronouncement earlier this year that a place should be found for Islamic sharia law in the British legal system.

. . . The Archbishop's letter is a reply to feelers to Christians put out by Islamic leaders from 43 countries last autumn.  In it, Dr Williams said violence is incompatible with the beliefs of either faith and that, once that principle is accepted, both can work together against poverty and prejudice and to help the environment.  He also said the Christian belief in the Trinity - that God is Father, Son and Holy Ghost at the same time - 'is difficult, sometimes offensive, to Muslims'.  Trinitarian doctrine conflicts with the Islamic view that there is just one all-powerful God. . . .

Read the entire article.

Rowan Williams has been a disgrace to his position and a disaster for Christianity in Britain. In addition to his unforgivable sins above, he has been fully in step with the secular left of Labour - a group virtually dedicated to removing Christianity and Christian influence from the public square in Britain. This deeply misguided man will not be missed when he steps down from office in December, 2012.

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Where Are The Muslim Moderates?

The radical muzzies and their allies in the left wing media are on a bender attacking the NYC police for their counterterrorism operations. So where are the moderate Muslims in all of this? They are in NYC for a counter-demonstration in support of the NYPD. This is all part of a much larger fight for the future of Islam. The American Islamic Leadership Coalition, AILC, released the following statement on this issue:

Since the 2007 release of its Intelligence Division's landmark report, "Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat," the NYPD has come under a systematic and coordinated assault by highly-politicized Islamist organizations and their enablers, intent on dismantling the NYPD's successful counter-terrorism and counter-radicalization programs. These groups would prefer to see American Muslims shackled to a mindset of victimization, and thus alienated from American society at large, rather than confront the very real issues we face in our communities, including the threat of extremist ideology.

It is important to note that published NYPD documents clearly and appropriately distinguish between the religion of Islam, and the highly politicized ideology of hatred, supremacy and violence characteristic of political Islam (i.e., "Islamism"), and especially the subset thereof known as "jihadi Salafism." Significantly, since the attacks of 9/11, the NYPD has displayed far greater courage in acknowledging and addressing the ideological factors that cause radicalization among Muslims, than have the majority of federal agencies explicitly tasked with defending our nation and its people.

The AILC deplores the widespread tendency of government officials, journalists, academicians and activists to assume that Islamist organizations historically linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, Jamaat-e-Islami, Wahhabism and Salafism represent mainstream American Muslims or our concerns.

The American Islamic Leadership Coalition recognizes and regrets the widespread fear of Islam and Muslims that has arisen in recent years in North America and Europe. However, we ascribe this rise of anti-Islam and anti-Muslim attitudes primarily to the actions of Muslims themselves (i.e., Islamists), whose efforts to establish an Islamic caliphate, an Islamic state, and/or to impose an antiquated and falsely-divinized human understanding of Islamic law upon others by force, dominate our daily headlines, and inevitably generate a strong sense of disgust-and visceral mistrust-among many of our fellow citizens.

Any and all efforts to conceal the Islamist agenda, or render its discussion beyond the pale of acceptable discourse-by branding such talk as "Islamophobia" or "hate speech"-threatens not only our common freedom and security, but the very future of Islam itself. For the Islamists' prime goal is the silencing of Muslim opposition, and of any voice in the Muslim world that would challenge their monolithic, sterile and shallow understanding of Islam, which lacks the spirituality that enables religion to serve as a true path to God.

A campaign of vilification waged by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its allies against the NYPD has reached new heights over the past six weeks, with no less than eight separate stories having appeared in the New York Times from January 24 - February 15, 2012, including an editorial from its editorial board and a page one feature, which concern the screening of a film entitled The Third Jihad to some 1,400 NYPD officers while they waited for a training program.

In light of the swirling controversy over the New York Police Department's counter-terrorism and counter-radicalization practices, we feel it is our civic, moral and religious duty to publicly address a number of issues raised by this controversy.

We have viewed The Third Jihad, and regard the information presented therein to be both factually accurate, and important for our fellow Muslim and non-Muslim citizens to understand, debate and address. The Third Jihad is narrated by Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, an AILC founding member, and a devout Muslim, physician and former Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy. At the very outset of the film Dr. Jasser states, "This is not a film about Islam. It is about the threat of 'radical' Islam. Only a small percentage of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims are radical."

The Third Jihad explicitly distinguishes between the religion of Islam, and the highly politicized ideology of religious hatred, supremacy and violence characteristic of Islamism. While the film does not examine the pluralistic, tolerant and spiritual traditions of Islam that lie at the heart of our own understanding thereof, this does not imply that the film is inaccurate in its depiction of what it specifically terms "radical Islam," as exemplified by movements such as al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Wahhabism (aka "Salafism") and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Notwithstanding Islamist claims to the contrary, we believe there is nothing inappropriate about the NYPD or other security agencies using the film The Third Jihad to help their staff understand and recognize the ideology that underlies and animates Islamist terrorism.

In recent weeks, other media outlets have targeted the NYPD for its community policing, and its monitoring efforts on college campuses, alleging that these constitute religious discrimination and profiling.

The AILC affirms that all inhabitants of the United States are entitled to equal protection under the law, regardless of race, ethnicity and religion. However, there is a major distinction between alleged religious profiling and sound law enforcement. As Mayor Bloomberg stated recently:

"We cannot repeat the mistakes we made after the 1993 bombing and slack in our vigilance…Reacting after the fact is not enough…We do not target individuals based on race or religion…We follow all possible leads wherever they take us."

The issue at hand is not "improper surveillance." Rather, it is the responsibility of the NYPD to know the communities it must serve and protect, and to anticipate any terrorist threats thereto, including those that arise from the ideological indoctrination of Muslims with a "jihadi-Salafi" mindset. In regard to the legality of the NYPD's activities, we note that according to the modified Handschu guidelines, "[f]or the purpose of protecting or preventing terrorist activities, NYPD is authorized to visit any place and attend any event that is open to the public, on the same terms and conditions as members of the public generally."

To our knowledge, no NYPD counter-terrorism cases have given rise to departmental abuses of power. Nor have any of the scurrilous attacks directed against the NYPD cited specific legal improprieties known to have occurred. We find it particularly disturbing that while seeking to undermine public confidence in the NYPD through innuendo-and issuing calls for "oversight," "corrective training" and "participation" by the "Muslim community" (i.e., Islamists!) in all counter-terrorist programs initiated by the NYPD-none of these reports have cited a single case in which the NYPD has been admonished by executive or judicial authorities for the tactics it employs to prevent terrorist attacks

Unlike those who dream of establishing an Islamic state or caliphate, members of the AILC are dedicated to theseparation of state and religion and the defense of our constitution, which guarantees equality before the law and the right of all individuals to worship as they see fit.

Thus, we come to New York City as a coalition, to proclaim that American Muslims are not monolithic, and that a broad spectrum of Muslims support the courageous work of the NYPD to defend this city, and our nation, from attack.

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