Showing posts with label europe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label europe. Show all posts

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Geert Wilders On Freedom & Islam

The left and political Islamists have made common cause in Europe, and the left uses the police power of the state to punish anyone who complains of the ever growing influence of radical Islam in their countries. Dutch politician Geert Wilders is one man who has not bent to this intimidation. He has spoken out against what he sees as the incremental Islamicization of Europe. For this, he has paid a heavy price. So many death threats have been made against him that he now is surrounded by security 24 hours a day. And in his home country of the Netherlands, Mr. Wilders is on trial, charged with the crime of hate speech.

Wilders is making a swing through America and recently spoke at Cornerstone Church in Nashville, Tennessee. The following is the text of his speech:

Dear friends from Tennessee. I am very happy to be in your midst today. I am happy and proud to be in this impressive church.

My friends, I am here to speak words of truth and freedom.

Do you know why America is in a better state than Europe? Because you enjoy more freedom than Europeans.

And do you know why Americans enjoy more freedom than Europeans? Because you are still allowed to tell the truth.

In Europe and Canada people are dragged to court for telling the truth about islam.

I, too, have been dragged to court. I am an elected member of the house of representatives in the Netherlands. I am currently standing in court like a common criminal for saying that islam is a dangerous totalitarian ideology rather than a religion.

The court case is still pending, but I risk a jail sentence of 16 months.

Last week, my friend Lars Hedegaard, a journalist from Denmark, was fined because in a private conservation, which was recorded without his knowing, he had criticised the way women are treated in islamic societies.

Recently, another friend, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a human rights activist from Austria, was fined because she had criticised islam’s founder Muhammad. She had said that Muhammad was a pedophile because he had married a 6-year old girl and raped her when she was 9.

Unfortunately, there are many similar cases.

I am especially happy to be in your midst because here I can say what I want to say without having to fear that I will be dragged to court upon leaving this church.

My dear American friends, you cannot imagine how we envy your First Amendment. The day when America follows the example of Europe and Canada and introduces so-called “hate speech crimes” which is only used to punish people who are critical of islam, that day America will have lost its freedom.

My friends, let us hope that this never happens.

Last week, we celebrated Liberation Day in the Netherlands. We celebrated the liberation from the Nazi occupation in 1945. Many American soldiers, including many young Tennesseans, played a decisive role in the liberation of the Netherlands from nazi tyranny. We are immensely grateful for that. Young Americans gave their lives so that the Dutch might be free. I assure you: The Dutch people will never forget this.

Unfortunately, however, the Europe which your fathers and grandfathers fought and died for is not the Europe we are living in today.

I travel the world to tell people what Europe has become. I wish I could take you all on a visit to my country and show you what Europe has become. It has changed beyond recognition as a result of mass immigration. And not just any mass immigration, but mass immigration driven by the dangerous force of islam.

My friends, I am sorry. I am here today with an unpleasant message. I am here with a warning. I am here with a battle cry: “Wake up, Christians of Tennessee. Islam is at your gate.” Do not make the mistake which Europe made. Do not allow islam to gain a foothold here.

Islam is dangerous. Islam wants to establish a state on earth, ruled by islamic sharia law. Islam aims for the submission, whether by persuasion, intimidation or violence, of all non-Muslims, including Christians.

The results can be seen in Europe.

Islam is an ideology of conquest. It uses two methods to achieve this goal: the first method is the sword. Do you know what figures on the flag of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a country where Christian churches are banned and Christians are not even allowed to wear a tiny crucifix? There is a huge sword on that flag, just below the Islamic creed. The message is clear. Without the sword islam would not have been able to spread its creed.

The second method is immigration. Islam’s founder Muhammad himself taught his followers how to conquer through immigration when they moved from Mecca to Medina. This phenomenon of conquest through immigration is called al-Hijra. My learned friend Sam Solomon has written a perfect book about it.

I had a copy of Sam’s book sent to all the members of the Dutch Parliament. But most of them are worse than Saint-Thomas in the Bible. Thomas did not believe what he had not seen. Most politicians refuse to believe the things they see before their very eyes.

In Europe we have been experiencing al-Hijra for over 30 years now. Many of our cities have changed beyond recognition. “In each one of our cities” wrote the well-known Italian author Oriana Fallaci shortly before her death in 2006, “there is a second city, a state within the state, a government within the government. A Muslim city, a city ruled by the Koran.” – end of quote.

How did the Europeans get into this situation? It is partly our own fault because we have foolishly adopted the concept of cultural relativism, which manifests itself in the ideology of multiculturalism.

Cultural relativism advocates that all cultures are equal. However, cultures wither away and die if people no longer believe that its values are better than those of another culture.

Islam is spreading like wildfire wherever people lack the guts to say that their values are better than the Islamic values.

Islam is spreading like wildfire because the Koran explicitly tells Muslims that they are “the best of peoples ever raised up for mankind” and that non-Muslims are “the worst of creatures.”

Islam is spreading like wildfire everywhere in the West where political, academic, cultural and media elites lack the guts to proudly proclaim, as I believe we all should proclaim:

Our Judeo-Christian Western culture is far better and far superior to the islamic culture. We must be proud to say so!

Multiculturalism is a disaster. Almost everyone acknowledges this today, but few dare say why. Let me tell you why: Multiculturalism made us tolerate the intolerant, and now intolerance is annihilating tolerance.

We should, in the name of tolerance, claim the right not to tolerate the intolerant. Let us no longer be afraid and politically correct, let us be brave and bold. Let us tell the truth about islam.

Before I continue I want to make clear that I do not have a problem with people. I always make a distinction between the people and the ideology, between Muslims and islam.

Indeed, I have no problems with Muslims, but I do have a problem with the totalitarian Islamic ideology of hate and violence. The fact that there are many so-called moderate Muslims, does not imply that there exists a moderate islam. A moderate islam doen not exist and will never exist.

And because there is no such thing as a moderate islam, the islamization of our free Western societies is an enormous danger.

Only two weeks ago, the British press revealed how the so-called “London Taliban” is threatening to kill women who do not wear veils in the London borough of Tower Hamlets.

In some neighbourhoods Islamic regulations are already being enforced, also on non-Muslims. Women’s rights are being trampled. We are confronted with headscarves and burqa’s, polygamy, female genital mutilation, honor-killings where men murder their wives, daughters or sisters because they do not behave in accordance with Islamic rules.

Polls show that the influence of those Muslims who live according to islam’s aggressive requirements is growing, especially among young people.

Among 15-year-old German Muslims, 40 percent consider islam more important than democracy.

Among Muslim university students in Britain, 40 percent support sharia. One in three of those students considers it legitimate to kill in the name of islam.

Christians are asked to follow the example of Jesus. Muslims are ordered to follow the example of Muhammad. That is why islam is dangerous. While Christianity preaches love, islam preached hatred and practizes violence. Hatred and violence for everyone who is not a Muslim.

Muhammad personally participated in the ethnic cleansing of Medina, where half the population once was Jewish. Muhammad helped to chop off their heads. On his deathbed, he ordered his followers to cleanse Arabia of all Jews and Christians.

To this very day, Christian symbols are prohibited in Saudi-Arabia. If you wear a cross in Saudi Arabia, they sent you to jail.

And now, Europe is beginning to look like Arabia.

Just today, a poll revealed that in Brussels, the capital of the European Union, half the islamic youths are anti-semitic. It is dangerous for Jews to walk the streets in Brussels.

If you wear a cross or a kippah in certain urban areas in Europe today, you risk being beaten up. In the capital of my own country, Amsterdam, a tram driver was forced to remove his crucifix from sight, while his Muslim colleagues are allowed to wear the veil.

In June 2008, the Christian church authorities in the Danish town of Arhus decided to pay so-called “protection money” to islamic so-called “security guards” who assure that church goers are not harassed by islamic youths.

On March 31st, 2010, Muslims entered the Roman Catholic cathedral of Cordoba, Spain, and attacked the guards with knives. They claimed the cathedral was theirs.

Last month, the bishops of Sweden sent out a letter to priests advising them to avoid converting asylum seekers from islamic countries to Christianity, because the converts would risk losing their lives.

In the Netherlands, the city authorities in Amsterdam register polygamous marriages. The authorities in Rotterdam serve only halal meals in municipal cafeterias. Theaters provide separate seats for women who are not allowed to sit next to men. Municipal swimming pools have separate swimming hours for men and women, Muslim lawyers do not have to stand when the judges enter court rooms.

Meanwhile Jews are no longer safe on our streets. In Amsterdam, the city of Anne Frank, Jews are again being harassed in the streets. Even political leaders acknowledged that life has become unsafe for Jews in Holland. Do you know what they said? They advised Jews to emigrate. Jews are already running for Israel. But I say: Jews must not leave, violent Muslims must leave!

What is needed, my friends, is a spirit of resistance.

I repeat: What we need is a spirit of resistance.

Why? Because resistance to evil is our moral duty. This resistance begins with expressing our solidarity to Christians, Jews, indeed, to all people worldwide, who are the victims of islam. There are millions of them.

We can see what islam has in store for us if we watch the fate of the Christians in the islamic world, such as the Copts in Egypt, the Maronites in Lebanon, the Assyrians in Iraq, and Christians elsewhere.

Almost every day, churches are arsoned and Christians are assassinated in islamic countries.

In a report on the persecution of Christians in the world, Archbishop Twal of Jerusalem, wrote recently– I quote: “In the Middle East to be Christian means accepting that you must make a great sacrifice. All too often and in many places, Christians suffer various threats. On some occasions, their homes and churches are burnt, and people are killed. How many atrocities must we endure before somebody somewhere comes to our aid?” – end of quote.

Indeed, how many atrocities before we come to their aid?

Rivers of tears are flowing from the Middle East, where there is only one safe haven for Christians. You know where that is. The only place in the Middle East where Christians are safe is Israel.

That is why Israel deserves our support. Israel is a safe haven for everyone, whatever their belief and opinions. Israel is a beacon of light in a region of total darkness. Israel is fighting our fight.

The jihad against Israel is a jihad against all of us. If Israel falls, we, too, will feel the consequences. If Jerusalem falls, Athens, Rome, Amsterdam and Nashville will fall. Therefore, we all are Israel. We should always support Israel!

Today, we are confronted with political unrest in the Arab countries. The Arab peoples long for freedom. However, the ideology and culture of islam is so deeply entrenched in these countries that real freedom is simply impossible as long as islam remains dominant.

A recent poll in post-revolution Egypt found that 85 percent of Egyptians are convinced that islam’s influence on politics is good, 82 percent believe that adulterers should be stoned, 84 percent want the death penalty for apostates. The press refers to the events in the Arab world today as the Arab spring. I call it the Arab winter.

Islam and freedom, islam and democracy are not compatible.

The death of Osama bin Laden last week was a victory for the free world, but we will be confronted with Islamic terrorism as long as islam exists, because islam’s founder Muhammad himself was a terrorist, worse than Bin Laden.

And here is another truth: The rise of islam means the rise of sharia law in our judicial systems. In Europe we already have sharia wills, sharia schools, sharia banks. Britain even has sharia courts.

In my own country, the Netherlands, sharia is being applied by the courts in cases relating to divorce, child custody, inheritance, and property ownership. Women are always the victims of this because sharia discriminates women.

This is a disgrace. This is not the way we should treat women.

My friends, I told you that we have just remembered Liberation Day to commemorate the young Americans and all the heroes who offered their lives to free the Netherlands from nazi tyranny. It would be an insult to them if we Europeans would give up that precious freedom for another totalitarian ideology called Islam.

That is the goal for which my party and I work day after day. And we are having success.

In the Netherlands, we are successfully starting to roll back islam. The current Dutch government is a minority government which can only survive with the backing of my party, the Party for Freedom.

We have 24 seats of the 150 seats in parliament and we support the government, in return for measures to prohibit certain aspects of sharia law.

We have achieved that the Netherlands will soon ban the burka and the niqaab.

We will also restrict immigration from non-Western countries by up to 50% in the next four years. We are not going to allow islam to steal our country from us. It was the land of our fathers, it is our land now, our values are based on Christianity, Judaism and Humanism and we will pass this on to our children with all the freedoms that the previous generations have fought for.

Let those who want to rob us from our freedoms, stay in their own countries. We do not need them. If you want to wear a burqa, stay in Saudi-Arabia. If you want four wives, stay in Iran. If you want to live in a country where the islamic ideology is dominant, stay in Pakistan, if you don’t want to assimilate in our society, stay in Somalia. But don’t come over here.

We are also going to strip criminals who have a double nationality – for instance Dutch and Moroccan, and who repeatedly commit serious crimes, of their Dutch nationality. We will send them packing, back to their homeland.

My friends, what the Party for Freedom has achieved, shows that it can be done. We can fight the islamization of our societies.

Dear friends, here is my warning. Make no mistake: Islam is also coming for America. In fact, it is already here. America is facing a stealth jihad, the islamic attempt to introduce sharia law bit by bit. Last March, a judge in Tampa, Florida, ruled that a lawsuit against a mosque and involving the control of 2.4 million dollars, should proceed under Islamic law.

My friends, be aware that this is only the beginning. This is also how it started in Europe. If things continue like this, you will soon have the same problems as we are currently facing.

Leaders who talk about immigration without mentioning islam are blind. They ignore the most important problem Europe and America are facing. I have a message for them: it’s islam stupid!

My friends, fortunately, not all politicians are irresponsible. Here, in Tennessee, brave politicians want to pass legislation which gives the state the power to declare organisations as terrorist groups and allowing material supporters of terrorism to be prosecuted. I applaud them for that. They are true heroes.

Yesterday and today, I met some of those brave legislators. They told me that Tennessee in particular is a target of islam. Help them win their battle.

They need your support.

While Tennessee is in the frontline, similar legislative initiatives are also being taken in the states of Oklahoma, Wyoming, South Carolina, Texas, Florida, Missouri, Arizona, Indiana. It is encouraging to see that so many politicians are willing to resist islam.

This gives us hope and courage. I am not a pessimist. We can still turn the tide – even in Europe – if we act today.

There are five things which we must do.

First, we must defend freedom of speech.

Freedom is the source of human creativity and development. People and nations wither away without the freedom to question what is presented to them as the truth.

Without freedom of speech we risk becoming slaves. Frederick Douglass, the 19th century black American politician, the son of a slave, said – I quote – “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”

I have already told you about my court case. This legal charade will not, however, prevent me from saying the truth. Never. I will speak out, even if they drag me before 500 courts and threaten to jail me for a thousand years.

The fact that we are being treated as criminals for telling the truth must not deter us. We are doomed if we remain silent or let ourselves be silenced. Let us not forget, this is our first and most important obligation: defend the right to speak the truth.

Second, we must end cultural relativism and political correctness. We must repeat it over and over again, especially to our children: Our Western culture based on Christianity and Judaism is superior to the islamic culture. Our laws are superior to sharia. Our judeo-christian values are better than islam’s totalitarian rules.

And because they are superior and better, we must defend them. We must fight for our own identity, or else we will lose it. We need to be warriors for the good, because the good is worth fighting for. Neutrality in the face of evil is evil.

Third, we must stop the islamization of our countries. More islam means less freedom. There is enough islam in the West already. We must stop immigration from non-Western countries, which are mostly islamic countries. We must expel criminal immigrants. We must forbid the construction of new hate palaces called mosques.

We must also close down all islamic schools because educating children in a spirit of hate is one of the worst things imaginable. We must introduce anti-sharia legislation everywhere in the free world. Enough is enough.

Fourth, we must take pride in our nations again. We must cherish and preserve the culture and identity of our country. Preserving our own culture and identity is the best antidote against islamization.

And fifth, last but certainly not least, we must elect wise and courageous leaders who are brave enough to address the problems which are facing us, including the threat of islam.

Politicians who have the courage to speak the truth about islam.

Politicians who dare to denounce the devastating results of the multicultural society.

Politicians who – without political correctness – say: enough is enough.

You and I, Americans and Europeans, we belong to a common Western culture. We share the ideas and ideals of our common Judeo-Christian heritage. In order to pass this heritage on to our children and grandchildren, we must stand together, side by side, in our struggle against Islamic barbarism.

That, my friends, is why I am here. I am here to forge an alliance. Our international freedom alliance. We must stand together for the Judeo-Christian West.

We will not allow islam to overrun Israel and Europe, the cradle of the judeo-Christian civilization.

My friends, we will stand together.

We will stand firm.

We will not submit. Never. Not in Israel, not in Europe, not in America. Nowhere.

We will survive.

We will stop islam.

We will defend our freedoms.

We will remain free.

Thank you.

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Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Compare and Contrast: Allen West In America, Geert Wilders In Europe

In the video below, a member of CAIR tries to score points on Congressman Allen West regarding the peacefulness of Islam - and gets an earful from West, who happens to be very well schooled on the history and dogma of Islam. Enjoy this bit of red meat.



The fact that we have intellectually honest people in our government, such as Rep. West, and that our Constitution gives them the freedom to express that honesty, give some small measure of hope both for our future and the future direction of Islam. As I wrote here, unless people like Rep. West and people inside the religion of Islam are able to change the current trajectory of Islam, we are all on course for a bloody, existential collision.

In Europe, however, speaking with intellectual honesty about Islam is not merely repressed, it is repressed with the police power of the state. Were Rep. West to have given this same short soliloquy in, say, the Netherlands, he could have well found himself on the wrong side of that nation's interpretation of its 'hate speech' laws, much the same way Dutch politician Geert Wilders has.

Wilders, currently on trial for hate speech, addresses Islam and the European repression of free speech in a WSJ editorial today:

"The lights are going out all over Europe," British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey famously remarked on the eve of World War I. I am reminded of those words whenever I read about Europeans being dragged into court for so-called hate-speech crimes.

Recently, Danish journalist Lars Hedegaard, president of the International Free Press Society, had to stand trial in Copenhagen because he had criticized Islam. Mr. Hedegaard was acquitted, but only on the technicality that he had not known that his words, expressed in a private conversation, were being taped. Last week in Vienna, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, an Austrian human-rights activist, was fined €480 for calling the Islamic prophet Muhammad a pedophile because he had consummated his marriage to a nine-year old girl. Meanwhile, my own trial in Amsterdam is dragging on, consuming valuable time that I would rather spend in parliament representing my million-and-a-half voters.

How can all this be possible in supposedly liberal Europe? . . .

Early in 2008, a number of leftist and Islamic organizations took me to court, claiming that by expressing my views on Islam I had deliberately "insulted" and "incited hatred" against Muslims. I argued then, as I will again in my forthcoming book, that Islam is primarily a totalitarian ideology aiming for world domination.

Last October, my former colleague in the Dutch parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, wrote in these pages of the way in which Islamic organizations abuse our freedoms in order to limit them. "There are," she wrote, "the efforts of countries in the Organization of the Islamic Conference to silence the European debate about Islam," citing their strategy "to pressure international organizations and the European Union to adopt resolutions to punish anyone who engages in 'hate speech' against religion. The bill used to prosecute Mr. Wilders is the national version of what OIC diplomats peddle at the U.N. and EU."

Indeed, in 2008 the EU approved its so-called "Council Framework Decision on combating Racism and Xenophobia," and the EU's 27 nations have since had to incorporate it into their national legislation. The decision orders that "racist or xenophobic behavior must constitute an offence in all Member States and be punishable by effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties." It defines "racism and xenophobia" so broadly that every statement that an individual might perceive as insulting to a group to which he belongs becomes punishable by law.

The perverse result is that in Europe it is now all but impossible to have a debate about the nature of Islam, or about the effects of immigration of Islam's adherents. Take my own case, for example. My point is that Islam is not so much a religion as it is a totalitarian political ideology disguised as a religion. To avoid misunderstandings, I always emphasize that I am talking about Islam, not about Muslims. I make a clear distinction between the people and the ideology, between Muslims and Islam, recognizing that there are many moderate Muslims. But the political ideology of Islam is not moderate and has global ambitions; the Koran orders Muslims to establish the realm of Allah in this world, if necessary by force.

Stating my views on Islam has brought me to court on charges of "group insult" and incitement to racial hatred. I am being tried for voicing opinions that I—and my constituents—consider to be the truth. I am being tried for challenging the views that the ruling establishment wants to impose on us as the truth. . . .

I should be acquitted. My trial in Amsterdam is not about me, but about freedom of speech in Europe. As Dwight D. Eisenhower, Europe's liberator from Nazism, once warned, freedom "must be daily earned and refreshed—else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die." Today in Europe, freedom is being neither earned nor refreshed.

George Washington once said, "If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." When it comes to Islam, and particularly Islam in Europe, where Islamic minorities are not merely failing to integrate, but actively undermining traditional society, Washington's quote rings true indeed. The Islamist's are aided and abetted by left-wing governments wholly immersed in the toxic philosophy of multiculturalism. I thank God that our founders had the foresight to craft the First Amendment. While in America, we still might be able to influence the trajectory of Islam because of our rights to free speach, Europe is in a much more precarious state.

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Tuesday, February 15, 2011

An Untenable Situation



(H/T Crusader Rabbit)

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Monday, February 7, 2011

Geert Wilders: "The lights are going out all over Europe"

This is the text of Geert Wilders opening statement at his trial in the Netherlands for "hate speech" against Muslims. It is a thorough denunciation of multiculturalism, hate speech laws and the suicidal partnership of the Western leftist elite with the Islamists:

The lights are going out all over Europe. All over the continent where our culture flourished and where man created freedom, prosperity and civilization. The foundation of the West is under attack everywhere.

All over Europe the elites are acting as the protectors of an ideology that has been bent on destroying us for fourteen centuries. An ideology that has sprung from the desert and that can produce only deserts because it does not give people freedom. The Islamic Mozart, the Islamic Gerard Reve [a Dutch author], the Islamic Bill Gates; they do not exist because without freedom there is no creativity. The ideology of Islam is especially noted for killing and oppression and can only produce societies that are backward and impoverished. Surprisingly, the elites do not want to hear any criticism of this ideology.

My trial is not an isolated incident. Only fools believe it is. All over Europe multicultural elites are waging total war against their populations. Their goal is to continue the strategy of mass immigration, which will ultimately result in an Islamic Europe — a Europe without freedom: Eurabia.

The lights are going out all over Europe. Anyone who thinks or speaks individually is at risk. Freedom-loving citizens who criticize Islam, or even merely suggest that there is a relationship between Islam and crime or honour killing, must suffer, and are threatened or criminalized. Those who speak the truth are in danger.

The lights are going out allover Europe. Everywhere the Orwellian thought police are at work, on the lookout for thought crimes everywhere, casting the populace back within the confines where it is allowed to think.

This trial is not about me. It is about something much greater. Freedom of speech is not the property of those who happen to belong to the elites of a country. It is an inalienable right, the birthright of our people. For centuries battles have been fought for it, and now it is being sacrificed to please a totalitarian ideology.

Future generations will look back at this trial and wonder who was right. Who defended freedom and who wanted to get rid of it.

The lights are going out all over Europe. Our freedom is being restricted everywhere, so I repeat what I said here last year:

It is not only the privilege, but also the duty of free people — and hence also my duty as a member of the Dutch Parliament — to speak out against any ideology that threatens freedom. Hence it is a right and a duty to speak the truth about the evil ideology that is called Islam. I hope that freedom of speech will emerge triumphant from this trial. I hope not only that I shall be acquitted, but especially that freedom of speech will continue to exist in the Netherlands and in Europe.

(H/T Gates of Vienna and Crusader Rabbit)

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Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Heh - Terrorist Warning, Snow & Madness

Recent terror threats have caused European countries to raise their threat levels:

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have therefore raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.”

The English have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out.

Terrorists have been re-categorized from “Tiresome” to “A Bloody Nuisance.” The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.

The Scots have raised their threat level from “Pissed Off” to “Let’s get the Bastards.” They don’t have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.

The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from “Run” to “Hide.” The only two higher levels in France are “Collaborate” and “Surrender.” The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France ‘s white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country’s military capability.

Italy has increased the alert level from “Shout Loudly and Excitedly” to “Elaborate Military Posturing.” Two more levels remain: “Ineffective Combat Operations” and “Change Sides.” . . .

Read the whole post at Barking Moonbat EWS.

And in contemplation of all of the snow falling across the U.S., these diary entries from one northeasterner tell a tale of serenity descending into madness:

December 8 - 6:00 PM. It started to snow. The first snow of the season and the wife and I took our cocktails and sat for hours by the window watching the huge soft flakes drift down from heaven. It looked like a Grandma Moses print. So romantic we felt like newlyweds again. I love snow!

December 9 - We woke to a beautiful blanket of crystal white snow covering every inch of the landscape. What a fantastic sight! Can there be a more lovely place in the Whole World? Moving here was the best idea I've ever had. Shoveled for the first time in years and felt like a boy again. I did both our driveway and the sidewalks. This afternoon the snowplow came along and covered up the sidewalks and closed in the driveway, so I got to shovel again. What a perfect life.

December 12 - The sun has melted all our lovely snow. Such a disappointment. My neighbor tells me not to worry, we'll definitely have a white Christmas. No snow on Christmas would be awful! Bob says we'll have so much snow by the end of winter, that I'll never want to see snow again. l don't think that's possible. Bob is such a nice man, I'm glad he's our neighbor.

December 14 – Snow, lovely snow! 8 inches last night. The temperature dropped to -20. The cold makes everything sparkle so. The wind took my breath away, but I warmed up by shoveling the driveway and sidewalks. This is the life! The snowplow came back this afternoon and buried everything again. I didn't realize I would have to do quite this much shoveling, but I'll certainly get back in shape this way. I wish l wouldn't huff and puff so.

December 15 - 20 inches forecast. Sold my van and bought a 4x4 Blazer. Bought snow tires for the wife's car and 2 extra shovels. Stocked the freezer. The wife wants a wood stove in case the electricity goes out. I think that's silly. We aren't in Alaska, after all.

December 16 - Ice storm this morning. Fell on my ass on the ice in the driveway putting down salt. Hurt like hell. The wife laughed for an hour, which I think was very cruel.

December 17 - Still way below freezing. Roads are too icy to go anywhere. Electricity was off for 5 hours. I had to pile the blankets on to stay warm. Nothing to do but stare at the wife and try not to irritate her. Guess I should've bought a wood stove, but won't admit it to her. God I hate it when she's right. I can't believe I'm freezing to death in my own living room. . . .

Read it all at Maggies Farm

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Monday, August 16, 2010

The Dysfunctional Mindset Of Europe - & A Part Of America

French writer and philosopher Pascal Bruckner has written a fascinating essay at City Journal. His topic is the modern - and dysfunctional - European mindset. It is a mindset that sees its own historic sins as unforgivable while forgiving the sins of (almost) all others. It is a mindset that refuses to acknowledge historical realities and indulges in dangerous fantasy. To give you a snippet from his essay:

. . . There is nothing more insidious than a collective guilt passed down from generation to generation, dyeing a people with a kind of permanent stain. Contrition cannot define a political order. As there is no hereditary transmission of victim status, so there is no transmission of oppressor status. The duty of remembering implies neither the automatic purity nor the automatic corruption of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. History is not divided between sinner nations and angelic ones but between democracies, which recognize their faults, and dictatorships, which drape themselves in the robes of martyrs. We have learned over the last half-century that every state is founded on crime and coercion, including those that have recently appeared on history’s stage. But there are states capable of recognizing this and of looking barbarism in the eye, and there are others that excuse their present misdeeds by citing yesterday’s oppression.

Remember this simple fact: Europe has vanquished its most horrible monsters. Slavery was abolished, colonialism abandoned, fascism defeated, and communism brought to its knees. What other continent can claim more? In the end, the good prevailed over the abominable. Europe is the Holocaust, but it is also the destruction of Nazism; it is the Gulag, but also the fall of the Wall; imperialism, but also decolonization; slavery, but also abolition. In each case, there is a form of violence that is not only left behind but delegitimized, a twofold progress in civilization and in law. At the end of the day, freedom prevailed over oppression, which is why life is better in Europe than on many other continents and why people from the rest of the world are knocking on Europe’s door while Europe wallows in guilt.

Europe no longer believes in evil but only in misunderstandings to be resolved by discussion and dialogue. She no longer has enemies but only partners. If she is nice to extremists, she thinks, they will be nice to her, and she will be able to disarm their aggressiveness and soften them up. Europe no longer likes History, for History is a nightmare, a minefield from which she escaped at great cost, first in 1945 and then again in 1989. And since History goes on without us, and everywhere emergent nations are recovering their dignity, their power, and their aggressiveness, Europe leaves it to the Americans to be in charge, while reserving the right to criticize them violently when they go astray. It is notable that Europe is the only region in the world where military budgets go down every year; we have no armies that would be able to defend our frontiers if we were so unlucky as to be attacked; after the Haitian crisis, Brussels could not dispatch even a few thousand men to help disaster victims. We are well equipped to calibrate the size of bananas or the composition of cheeses, but not to create a military force worthy of the name. . . .

Mssr. Buckner draws numerous contrasts with America, such as, for example:

[Europe] has a history, whereas America is still making history, animated by an eschatological tension toward the future. If the latter sometimes makes major mistakes, the former makes none because it attempts nothing. For Europe, prudence no longer consists in the art, defended by the ancients, of finding one’s way within an uncertain story. We hate America because she makes a difference. We prefer Europe because she is not a threat. Our repulsion represents a kind of homage, and our sympathy a kind of contempt.

I would add two thoughts to Mssr. Bruckner's essay. One, though he never mentions the word "multiculturalism," that is precisely what he is describing. It is deeply dysfunctional philosophy that will prove suicidal to Europe if allowed to follow its logical course.

Two, Mssr. Bruckner ignores the contribution of Karl Marx's philosophy to the development of the European mindset. Marx posited that all events should be viewed through the lens of oppressor and oppressed. It is a deeply distorting philophy that is at the heart of the European mindset. I explain this in more detail when writing on virtually the same topic in the essay, "Thoughts on Britain, Colonialism and Multiculturalism." I think it an important point to make as, if this scourge is ever to be vanquished from the national psyche of Europe, then one must understand the origins of the disease.

It is also of note that the dysfunctional mindset described by Mr. Bruckner precisely describes the mindset of the left wing intelligentsia in the U.S., a point made by Victor Davis Hanson in his latest offering at PJM:

. . . This is the most tolerant society in the world, the most multiracial and richest in religious diversity — and the most critical of its exceptional tolerance and the most lax in pointing out the intolerance of the least diverse and liberal.

It is market capitalism, unfettered meritocracy, and individual initiative within a free society that create the wealth for Al Gore to live in Montecito (indeed to create a Montecito in the first place), or for Michelle to jet to Marbella, or for John Kerry to buy a $7 million yacht. We know that, but our failure to occasionally express such a truth, coupled with a constant race/class/gender critique of American society, results in an insidious demoralization among the educated and bewilderment among the half- and uneducated.

In short, the great enigma of our postmodern age is how American society grew so wealthy and free to create so many residents that became so angry at the conditions that have made them so privileged — and how so many millions abroad fled the intolerance and poverty of their home country, and yet on arrival almost magically romanticize the very conditions in the abstract that they would never live under again in the concrete.

A final thought: given what we know of collectivism now and in the past, government in places like Mexico or Syria, multiculturalism in nations as diverse as the Balkans and central Africa, and the role of religion in most locales of the Middle East, how exactly could critics of the U.S. gain the security to protest, the capital to travel, and the freedom to criticize should the system that they find so lacking erode or even disappear?

Indeed, it would seem that the paradigm of the left is to push America towards Europe in all respects, including philosophical. All of the West can be thankful that, as of yet, our left has not been wholly successful in this endeavor.

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Friday, August 29, 2008

Standing At The Crossroads - Identity Politics, Multiculturalism & The Melting Pot (Updated)


Republicans ended slavery. The party of Jim Crow and the KKK was the Democratic Party. The 13th (slavery), 14th (privileges and immunities) and 15th (voting rights) Amendments to the Constitution were enacted by Republicans. The NAACP was founded in 1909 by three white Republicans who opposed the racist practices of the Democratic Party and the lynching of blacks by Democrats. In fairness, it was the Democrat Harry Truman who signed an executive order integrating the military - and that was a truly major development. (My own belief is that the military has been the single greatest driving force of integration in this land for over half a century.) It was a Supreme Court Chief Justice appointed by the Republican President Eisenhower who managed to get all nine justices to agree to the seminal decision on the illegality of separate schools in Brown v. Board of Education. After that came the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Act was championed by JFK - but it was strenthened in committee and passed by a Republican controlled Congress over fierce opposition from Democrats and their repeated attempts at filibuster. Women were added to the Act as a protected class by a Democrat who thought it would be a poison pill, killing the legislation. To the contrary, the Republican Congress passed the Act without any attempt to remove the provision. Martin Luther King, Jr., our nation's most recognizable and laudable civil rights proponent, was a Republican. Bull Connors was not.

Nothing that I say here is to suggest that racism and sexism could not be found in the Republican party or among conservatives in American history. But if you take any period in history and draw a line at the midpoint of racist and sexist attitudes, you would find far more Republicans than Democrats on the lesser side of that line. And you would find a much greater willingness on the part of Republicans, relative to the time, in favor of effectuating equality. That was as true in 1865 as in 1965.

Sometime about 1968, the far left wing took control of the Democratic Party and hijacked the civil rights movement. They made civil rights the very foundation of their politics.

While Republicans sought equality, what the far left sought when they hijacked the civil rights movement was something different entirely. The far left fundamentally altered the nature of the movement. They imprinted the movement with identity politics, grossly distorting its goals - a level playing field for all Americans - and creating a Marxian world of victimized classes entitled to special treatment. The far left has been the driver of reverse racism and sexism for the past half century. And as an aside, that is why it is no surprise that, with the emergence of a far left candidate for the highest office in the nation, Rev. Jeremiah Wright should also arise at his side and into the public eye preaching a vile racism and separatism most Americans outside the far left thought long dead in this country. Nor is it any surprise that the MSM, many of whom are of the far left, should collectively yawn at Obama's twenty year association with Wright. Wright is anything but an anamoly; rather, he is simply an outgrowth of far left politics.

The far left did not merely hijack the civil rights movement, they also wrote over a century of American history, turning it on its head. They managed to paint the conservative movement and the Republican Party as the prime repositories of racism and sexism. The far left has for decades played the race and gender cards to counter any criticism of their policies and to forestall any reasoned debate. It is their central narrative. It has done incalculable harm to our nation.

We are either a melting pot wherein "all men are created equal" - the ideal of our Founders for which we have long strived and are ever closer to succeeding - or we are to become a multicultural nation of pigeon holed special interests. We are to become a nation where groups are encouraged to remain apart, defining themselves by their victim class before defining themselves as Americans. Multiculturalism is unworkable - we can see it destroying Europe and Britain - but that has not stopped the far left in America from their embrace of the concept. Nor has it slowed their efforts to weave multiculturalism irrevocably into the fabric of our society.

The far left has been highly effective in painting the modern Republican Party as not merely an enemy of civil rights for women and minorities, but as an old white man's club with room for women, minorities, gays, etc. only in the back of the tent as tokens. The far left has long held themselves out as the true party of equality. They have done so falsely as, by its very nature, identity politics cements inequality.

The far left has long pushed forward minorities and women to prove that they are the party of inclusiveness. On the right, the process has been slower. You had the percolation of minorities and women to major positions through the natural process of time and selection of the fittest. Only the most jaded would ever argue that Colin Powell and Condi Rice did not earn their positions solely on merit. And love her or hate her, Kristi Todd Whitman was both well qualified and a very good governor.

I have long been waiting for a qualified woman or minority to rise to the very top in Republican politics. It is something that would expose the incredibly damaging canard that the far left has shrilly pushed for near half a century. I had hoped Colin Powell would be that man a decade ago. As to Condi Rice, had things worked out differently for the Bush administration and had she not selected the Sec. of State slot (a killer for anyone with Pres. aspirations) I thought that perhaps she would have a good shot at running in 2008. I've been waiting for Thomas Sowell to run for any elected office for decades - and yes, I would consider him for beatification. These are people for whom neither their skin color nor plumbing makes them a victim. These are people for whom neither their skin color nor plumbing sets them apart substantively from all other Americans. And these are people who earned their success by virtue of their excellence rather than the extent of their connections or the distortions of identity politics.

It is inevitable that one of the two concepts I earlier described - a melting pot of equals or a multicultural morass of victim groups - will gain ascendance in America. I have long felt that we are at a crossroads in our nation for precisely this reason, and that the ramifications of how we decide this issue will be existential.

You will note in a post below, I congratulated Obama for achieving the status of the first African American nominee for President. I meant that sincerely, though I have also said before that he is the product of identity politics. He is anything but the post racial candidate he held himself out to be at first. I believe that the policies he would institute in America would represent the victory of multiculturalism. It would alter our nation fundamentally to create not simply a house divided, but a house with many divides.

Will Sarah Palin represent the opposite choice? I think clearly she does. As Victor Davis Hanson said of her:

Sarah Palin is the emblem of what feminism was supposed to be all about: an unafraid, independent, audacious woman, who soared on her own merits without the aid of a patriarchal jumpstart, high-brow matrimonial tutelage and capital, and old-boy liaisons and networking.

And that really is all feminism should be about. Equality. What we have seen in shrill reaction from the far left to Ms. Palin shines a giant spotlight on their canard. Their goal is not equality for women, else the rise of Sarah Palin would be welcomed on its merits, irrespective of other political disagreements. There would be no need or attempt to delegitimize her. But the frothing and vitriolic reaction of the far left shows their goal not to be equaltiy, but to be a remake of Western society into a vision Karl Marx would recognize. By exposing the canard and threatening the true goal, Sarah Palin is by her very being an existential danger to the far left.

Thus Sarah Palin's ascendance is meaningful indeed. The rise of Obama and Hillary on the left have pushed us to the center of that crossroads, with the only option being of a turn in one direction or another. McCain's utterly brilliant selection of Gov. Palin as his running mate clarifies the issues completely and makes the choices stark. Because of that, my personal belief is that this election will have ramifications long beyond the next four years. This election holds the potential to be a referendum on the future foundation of our nation. I fear if the choice is Obama and his far left positions, we will never be able to unring the bell. The alternative of McCain and Palin will not bring total victory in this contest for the future of America, but it would be a big step in the right direction and a giant step back from the abyss.

Photo at the top taken from Gateway Pundit.

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Wednesday, July 9, 2008

The Utility of Missle Defense & The Futility If Obama Is Elected

Richard Fernandez at The Belmont Club has a good post on the utility of the Missle Defense being pushed by the U.S. and why Russia, among others, is so dead set against it. In essence, it is because it severely degrades Russian capabilities to conduct limited warfare against the West without triggering a massive response from the U.S. The same is true of Iran.

As an aside, we will have nothing to worry about in this regards if Obama is elected. That of course is if he meant it when he promised to strip defense spending, including a halt on deployment of the missle defense shield in Europe:



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This from Mr. Fernandez:

In 1995, during the middle of President Clinton’s first term, the US Strategic Command declassified a document titled the Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence which laid out the principles for dealing with threats from strategic inferiors — both Russia and other nations — after the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. Although the paper was written from the American point of view, it was informed throughout by the implicit assumptions of what hostile nations might attempt to achieve from a position of strategic inferiority.

In other words, the Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence provides a framework within which to understand why the Russian leadership has vowed to consider a military response, or even a renewal of the Cold War in response to the US-Czech accord marking the start of the deployment of missile defenses in Eastern Europe. The NYT reports:

President Dmitri A. Medvedev and his predecessor, Vladimir V. Putin, who is now the Russian prime minister, have told the United States that the Kremlin sees a missile shield in this part of Europe as a threat to Russian security. Mr. Putin has said it could even lead to a new cold war.

But American and Czech officials said the system’s radar component, to be stationed south of Prague, would defend the NATO members in Europe and the United States against long-range weapons from the Middle East, particularly Iran.

“Ballistic missile proliferation is not an imaginary threat,” Ms. Rice said Tuesday after meeting with the Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek. She said Iran continued to work toward a nuclear bomb, along with long-range missiles that could carry a warhead.

The key concept embodied in the Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence is the idea that it rests on an American commitment to inflict an unspecified but devastating response upon any nation or group that attacks it. In order to prevent any adversary from legalistically parsing a pre-announced set of conditions under which the United States would retaliate, all the terms were left intentionally vague so that only American national command authority could say with certainty what would happen next. In the words of the document:

While it is crucial to explicitly define and communicate the acts or damages that we would find unacceptable and, hence, what it is that we are specifically seeking to deter, we should not be very specific about our response. It is however, crucial that the level of our commitment to the things we value be unfaltering, and that the adversary have little doubt of this. Without saying exactly what the consequences will be if the US has to respond, whether the reaction would either be responsive or preemptive, we must communicate in the strongest ways possible the unreakable link between our vital interests and the potential harm that will be directly attributable to anyone who damages (or even credibly threatens to damage) that which we hold of value.

This has the effect of threatening a vastly disproportionate response towards any attempts at aggression by strategic inferiors. While a proportionate response is not ruled out, neither — and this is the essential point — is a wholly disproportionate one. Under such a doctrine a missile defense capability would play a very important role: it would greatly increase the potential lopsidedness of the exchange. Time and again the Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence emphasizes the idea that one of key goals of modern defense is to instill uncertainty in the minds of an adversary — whether that opponent is rational or not.

. . . What a working missile defense shield will do is make any Russian limited WMD attack on the West a very uncertain proposition. While Russia’s arsenal is easily big enough to overwhelm, through sheer numbers, the defensive system based in Poland and the Czech Republic any such attack would also be big enough to guarantee Russia’s destruction in the resulting retaliation. It may be an exaggeration to claim that a missile defense will have the effect of disarming the Kremlin of any viable military response between issuing a diplomatic protest and starting Armaggedon but it is quite clear it threatens to invalidate a large range of the “full spectrum” responses now available to the Russians. How much the Russians value the ability to make limited, but brutal threats is illustrated in a story the Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence relates with a mixture of horror and admiration.

The story of the tactic applied by the Soviets during the earliest days of the Lebanon chaos is a case in point. When three of its citizens and their driver were kidnapped and killed, two days later the Soviets had delivered to the leader of the revolutionary activity a package containing a single testicle- that of his eldest son-with a message that said in no uncertain terms, never bother our people again.” It was successful throughout the period of the conflicts there. Such an insightful tailoring of what is valued within a culture, and its weaving into a deterrence message, along with a projection of the capability that can be mustered, is the type of creative thinking that must go into deciding what to hold at risk in framing deterrent targeting for multilateral situations in the future. At the same time this story illustrates just how much more difficult it is for a society such as ours to frame its deterrent messages-that our society would never condone the taking of such actions makes it more difficult for us to deter acts of terrorism.

Moscow finds limited but savage threats very useful indeed. It recently admitted to killing dissident Russian intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko to send a pointed message, proving that the days of testicles in boxes is not over. But with Russian conventional forces vastly inferior to those of the US, the Kremlin’s nuclear leftovers formed the only means of sending Eastern Europe the proverbial severed finger. That power will become radically devalued with the emergence of a missile shield or at least useful only in the case of Armaggedon. Thus the Kremlin has threatened a military response — likely some new missile or penetrator system essentially invulnerable to the new defenses — in order to regain its strategic flexibility.

The effect of a missile shield on Iran and its proxies would be even more pronounced. Recently Iran threatened to strike at Israel and America should any attempts be made to interfere with the progress of its nuclear program. Once Teheran acquires a limited nuclear weapons capability it could theoretically deter an American doctrine of a vastly disproportionate response. No longer could Americans credibly threaten utter destruction in retaliation for a chemical, biological, dirty bomb or mega-conventional attack if Teheran possessed the credible means to fire even a handful of missiles at Western targets. With a half dozen missiles at the ready the Ayatollahs could be reasonably sure that, short of an actual nuclear attack on an American city, Washington might not dare take disproportionate action. In other words, the uncertainty which forms the kernel of American deterrence would be effectively undermined.

What a missile defense system in Europe would do is restore the ambiguity inherent in the American deterrent posture even in the event Iran has nuclear weapons. . .

Read the entire post.

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Saturday, May 31, 2008

The Perfidy of Europe


According to a Telegraph poll, a plurality of Europe's citizens see America as evil. Further, the socialists of Europe join the ranks of Ahmedinejad, Castro, FARC, Ghadaffi, and other assorted haters of America in desiring to see Obama as President.
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The Telegraph ran a poll of several thousand people in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia to determine attitudes towards America. Question 1 was do you consider America a force for good or a force for evil in the world. The results:

Britain - Evil 35% / Good 33% (Et tu, Britain, et tu?)

France - Evil 40% / Good 28%

Germany - Evil 39% / Good 25%

Russia - Evil 56% / Good 16%

Italy was the one country, surprisingly, that has a very positive view of America - Good 49% / Evil 27%. It is also the only country that has finally rid itself of communists and elected a true conservative to head its government.

I am not surprised by the British response, given the stranglehold socialism has on that country, though I am depressed about it. Britain is a natural ally and our closest European ally.

It should also be noted that in a poll taken last year, 48% of Germans believed that the US is a greater threat to the world then a soon to be nuclear armed Iran. With allies like these . . .

The poll also asked several other questions, including whom would you like to see elected President. In every country, the overwhelming majority went for Obama. The sum total of all polled went for Obama, 52% to 15%. You can find the poll results here.

We pulled Europe out of the fire in two world wars. We spent a great deal of our wealth rebuilding all of Western Europe with the Marshall Plan following WWII. We protected Western Europe against the Soviet threat during the Cold War. Even with the fall of the Soviet Union, we are still spending billions each year in support of European defense through NATO. Indeed, virtually all European nations have taken advantage of the situation to run minimal defense budgets and rely on the U.S. for their protection. With all of that, one might expect a bit of good will towards the U.S. But there is little to be found among the perfidious socialists who dominate Europe. Indeed, Der Spiegel, the BBC, and many of the state owned media outlets of Europe promote a virulent form of anti-Americanism.

The photo at the top of this post adequately sums up my take on this. If you have not seen it before, its LTG George Patton urinating into the Rhine in 1945. Can the U.S. get out of NATO and the UN fast enough? And as to the Middle East, if we can get our oil from other locales, we should leave Iran to the Europeans to worry about. The nuclear missles they will have in two years won't reach America, but Brussels will likely be in range. And while I am willing to defend the classical values of western civilization with my life and the life of my progeny, when I see things like this, it leads me to conclude that there is little of such civilization left in Europe to defend.

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Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Those Fickle Europeans

They can never make up their minds . . .







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This from Der Spiegel:

A few weeks' bad press, and China's attempts to portray itself in a positive light before the Beijing Summer Olympics have all but turned to dust. The full impact of the crackdown on Tibetan protestors and the subsequent protests against the Olympic torch relay has now been made apparent in a new poll of European opinion.

China has now overtaken the United States as the greatest perceived threat to global stability in the eyes of Europeans, according to the opinion poll commissioned by the Financial Times. . . .

Read the entire article. I personally am affronted by this and blame it on a lame duck presidency. It cannot be allowed to stand. The next thing you know, they will be saying something equally ludicrous, such as that a nuclear armed Iran is actually more of a threat to Europe than the impearialist American dogs. Bah. A pox on their house.


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Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Interesting News & Posts - 26 February 2008

The interesting news and posts from across the blogoshpere, all below the fold.
















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Art: Bouguereau, The Rapture of Psyche, 1895

A porkbuster’s update from Instapundit: Senator Jim DeMint is proposing a one year moratorium in the Senate on bills containing earmarks.

Democrats trying to tag McCain as a friend of lobbyists may make for a sound bite today, but it is very far from the reality of the Real McCain.

From Gateway Pundit, free speech under fire in New Mexico as a Christian photographer is hauled before the Human Rights Commission for refusing to accept a job that would have required her to photograph a same-sex wedding.

"Death to . . . the Islamic Regime of Iran." Not the usual crowd chant in Tehran, but it was the one being shouted during a riot after the modesty police attempted to arrest a young woman for not dressing modestly enough to suit Ahmedinejad and his cronies. PJM has the story.

The Irish Elk weighs in on the NYT hit piece on McCain, providing an interesting historical anecdote. And TNOY has the scoop on new bombshell facts the NYT intends to expose in their next McCain piece.

At BizzyBlog, reporting on state government financial woes ignores the woeful over-spending that led to the problems in the first place.

Jules Crittenden’s site is unique in combining biting sarcasm with thoughtful commentary. And he is at it today with Gunga Din.

That said, as Rick Moran rightly states, "Enough with all this "Obama is a Muslim" crap." I concur, though I strongly disagree with Rick’s suggestion that the use of the word "Crusades" by Bush was a major faux pas. I refuse to bow down or rewrite history to serve anyone’s sensibilities – be they Muslim, Catholic or whatever. And the Crusades were merely the first time Christianity fought back against a Muslim onslaught that had been on-going for centuries.

The UN has finally identified the source of Palestinian terrorism. If you thought it might be Salafi Islam or Arab nationalism, think again. Its Israel, of course.

The Conservative Beach Girl still thinks that Hillary is in the race. But, she notes, if you want real Socialism in a hurry and not incrementally, Obama's your man.

From the Intergalactic Source of Truth, is supporting Kosovo independence a wise idea? I have not thought so. IGST offers some thoughtful commentary.

Victor David Hanson ponders whether the ailing Europe wants a President Obama. As he so eloquently puts it: Europe is in a classic paradox. Emotionally and culturally, Europeans are invested in a leftist such as Obama who reflects their soft socialist values and fuzzy multilateralism. But given their inherent military weakness and rough neighborhood, they have grown to count on an antithetical America — religious, conservative, militarily strong — that is not afraid to use force to fulfill its obligations to preserve the shared Western globalized system from its constant multifarious challenges.

Siggy needs to start doing stand-up. See his proposal for the new government seal.

Soccer Dad does an exceptional job of taking a semantic scalpel to the MSM’s agenda journalism.

From JoshuaPundit – Obama gets caught in another whopper. He does seem clueless about the military. Having led an infantry platoon and commanded an infantry company, I can assure you that Obama’s pronouncement gets just about ever possible wrong – all of which JP does a good job of cataloging.

From the Jawa Report, arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyah’s widow is blaming Syria for his assassination.

The Fulham Reactionary discusses the characteristics deemed by Child Services to make a parent unfit in a world dominated by socialists and multiculturalists. MK tells us the same socialists are planning on sex education for five year olds. Meanwhile, at Shield of Achilles, Hamas shows us a different message for children – its Bugs, the psychopathic bunny.

Dinah Lord examines the problem of pedophilia in the Maldives.

Seraphic Secret notes the power of movies to motivate, and the power of movies to in the hands of people with an agenda to spread lies. It is a double edged sword – but the answer to lies is a determination to make the truth known.

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Monday, February 18, 2008

Fjordman's Essay on the Muslim Brotherhood

The Muslim Brotherhood is a radical organization that differs from al Qaeda - one of its offshoots - only in method, not goals or ideology. Fjordman writes extensively on the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood, the dire threat it poses, and documents how it has substantially taken over as the spokesman for Islam in partnership with Europe's incredibly naive left.

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The Muslim Brotherhood is an organization that has combined with Wahhabi / Salafi teachings and Saudi petrodollars to become the vanguard of radical Islam in the West. The Brotherhood's presence in the West is extensive, with two of of its offshoots being the highly influential Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and the Muslim American Society (MAS). Just recently in the US, a person with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hesham Islam, was exposed and has been forced to resign from his very sensitive position as an advisor in the Pentagon. This from Fjordman:

. . . Robert Spencer has dealt with the Muslim Brotherhood in a number of books, for instance in Onward Muslim Soldiers. I would also strongly recommend the recent book "Global Jihad: The Future in the Face of Militant Islam," by former Muslim Patrick Sookhdeo. Sookhdeo does excellent research, particularly regarding the systematic Islamization of Britain, but the same blueprints are used in other countries, too.

The Muslim Brotherhood, today widely regarded as the largest Islamic movement in the world, was founded by Hassan al-Banna in 1928. Its member groups are dedicated to the motto: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."

Research analyst Lorenzo Vidino writes about The Muslim Brotherhood's Conquest of Europe: "Since the early 1960s, Muslim Brotherhood members and sympathizers have moved to Europe and slowly but steadily established a wide and well-organized network of mosques, charities, and Islamic organizations." Their ultimate goal . . . [is to] extend Islamic law throughout Europe and the United States. With moderate rhetoric and well-spoken German, Dutch, and French, they have gained acceptance among European governments and media alike. Politicians across the political spectrum rush to engage them whenever an issue involving Muslims arises or, more parochially, when they seek the vote of the burgeoning Muslim community. But, speaking Arabic or Turkish before their fellows Muslims, they drop their facade and embrace radicalism."

Moreover, "While the Muslim Brotherhood and their Saudi financiers have worked to cement Islamist influence over Germany's Muslim community, they have not limited their infiltration to Germany. Thanks to generous foreign funding, meticulous organization, and the naïveté of European elites, Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations have gained prominent positions throughout Europe. In France, the extremist Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (Union of Islamic Organizations of France) has become the predominant organization in the government's Islamic Council. In Italy, the extremist Unione delle Comunita' ed Organizzazioni Islamiche in Italia (Union of the Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy) is the government's prime partner in dialogue regarding Italian Islamic issues."

The irony, according to Vidino, is that "Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna dreamed of spreading Islamism throughout Egypt and the Muslim world. He would never have dreamed that his vision might also become a reality in Europe."

Al-Banna may not have believed that to be possible in the short run, but he did dream of conquering areas formerly under Islamic rule. German historian Egon Flaig quotes Banna as saying: "We want the flag of Islam to fly over those lands again who were lucky enough to be ruled by Islam for a time, and hear the call of the muezzin praise God. Then the light of Islam died out and they returned to disbelief. Andalusia, Sicily, the Balkans, Southern Italy and the Greek islands are all Islamic colonies which have to return to Islam's embrace. The Mediterranean and the Red Sea have to become internal seas of Islam, as they used to be."

One of the Brotherhood's first pioneers in Europe was Sa'id Ramadan. According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Sa'id Ramadan, who was al-Banna's son-in-law, joined the Muslim Brotherhood in his youth. At the age of 20, Hassan al-Banna chose Sa'id to be his personal secretary and sent him to Palestine to establish a branch of the movement there. After World War II, when Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini returned to Palestine, Sa'id Ramadan helped him to form military groups for the struggle against the Jews. Al-Husseini was an active accomplice in the Holocaust and visited leading Nazis repeatedly. Terrorist organization Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the MB today.

After Hassan al-Banna's assassination in 1949, Sa'id Ramadan returned to Egypt and became a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1954 he went to Jerusalem with another leading Brotherhood member, Sayyid Qutb, in order to participate in the World Islamic Conference, and was elected conference secretary-general.

In the late 1950s, Sa'id Ramadan managed to persuade Saudi Prince Faisal to help him establish Islamic centers in Europe's main capitals. In 1958, he settled in Geneva and there founded the Islamic Center, which became the headquarters of Muslim Brotherhood members expelled from Egypt. In 1964, he opened Islamic centers in London and Munich, and became the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood abroad.

The oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia has for years granted an influx of money to the powerful Islamic Center of Geneva, Switzerland, now run by Sa'id's son Hani Ramadan. He was made infamous by a 2002 article in the French daily Le Monde defending the stoning of adulterers to death. His brother Tariq Ramadan, a career "moderate Muslim," later called for a "moratorium" on stoning. In 2008 it was announced that Hani Ramadan would receive SFr255,000, the equivalent of two years' salary, in damages from the canton of Geneva. He was sacked in 2004 after defending the stoning of persons guilty of adultery. An appeal commission of the education department sided with Ramadan, annulling the termination. The government also agreed to pay Ramadan's legal fees.

It was the Muslim Brotherhood's spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a follower of Hassan al-Banna in his youth, who directed the prayer at Sa'id Ramadan's funeral in 1995, as Tariq Ramadan proudly reports. Sa'id Ramadan had close contacts with Brotherhood member Sayyid Qutb, whose writings have inspired countless Jihadists around the world, for instance terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. According to writer Paul Berman, Ramadan "not only knew Qutb; he was, at the crucial moment, Qutb's most important supporter in the world of the Egyptian intellectuals. Said Ramadan was the editor who got Qutb started on what became his most important work."

According to Dr. Ahmad Al-Rab'i, former Kuwaiti minister of education, "The beginnings of all of the religious terrorism that we are witnessing today were in the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology of takfir [accusing other Muslims of apostasy]. Sayyid Qutb's book Milestones was the inspiration and the guide for all of the takfir movements that came afterwards. The founders of the violent groups were raised on the Muslim Brotherhood, and those who worked with Bin Laden and Al-Qa'ida went out under the mantle of the Muslim Brotherhood."

Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, says decadent Europe will give way to an Islamized Europe. In the 21st century, "The West will begin its new decline, and the Arab-Islamic world its renewal" and ascent to seven centuries of world domination after seven centuries of decline. "Only Islam can achieve the synthesis between Christianity and humanism, and fill the spiritual void that afflicts the West." All good people are implicitly Muslims "because true humanism is founded in Koranic revelations." In a clash with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch-Somali critic of Islam, Ramadan said it was wrong to say that Europe had a Judeo-Christian past. "Islam is a European religion. The Muslims came here after the first and second world wars to rebuild Europe, not to colonise."

Danish theologian Kirsten Sarauw writes in her article A Declaration of War Against the People of Europe that in 2007 in Vienna, Austria, a conference was held about so-called Euro-Islam. Prominent Muslim delegates formulated a strategic vision of a Europe dominated by Islam. Mustafa Ceric, Grand Mufti of Bosnia, envisioned an "upcoming Islamic era." The conference was in agreement about the first and foremost goal, namely the introduction of religious Islamic jurisprudence (sharia) in Europe, "in the beginning at least as a parallel system alongside national laws in European states." As to the real meaning of sharia, they all agreed to avoid publicity as far as possible. According to Sarauw, Tariq Ramadan proclaimed that the real intentions of this work must be concealed from the general public.

In 2007 it was announced that Tariq Ramadan was to hold the Sultan of Oman chair of Islamology at the University of Leiden. Leiden is the oldest university in the Netherlands, founded in the sixteenth century by Prince William of Orange, the leader of the Dutch struggle for independence. Dutch Education and Culture Minister Ronald Plasterk said that he did not object to Ramadan's appointment. Meanwhile, the Amsterdam city council, dominated by the Dutch Labour Party which receives many Muslim votes, developed teaching material warning school children against the opinions of Dutch Islam critic Geert Wilders.

The European Council for Fatwa and Research, headed by Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi, is working on a Muslim Constitution for Europe that will be above national legislation. According to Tina Magaard from the University of Aarhus, behind these ambitions "lies decades of work." Islamic groups have for years aimed at establishing their control over the Muslim communities, and in some cases have won official recognition from government bodies. According to Magaard, "The Imams and Islamists consider the cooperation with the state institutions a transfer of power. Now it is they who rule."

Former Muslim Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo, author of the excellent book "Global Jihad – The future in the face of Militant Islam," warns that the Islamization going on in European cities is not happening by chance. It "is the result of a careful and deliberate strategy by certain Muslim leaders which was planned in 1980 when the Islamic Council of Europe published a book called Muslim Communities in Non-Muslim States." The instructions told Muslims to get together into viable communities, set up mosques, community centres and Islamic schools. To resist assimilation, they must group themselves geographically in areas of high Muslim concentration. According to Sookhdeo, the ultimate goal is Islamic rule in Europe.

Patrick Poole describes how discussion of a document called "The Project" so far has been limited to the top-secret world of Western intelligence communities. Only through the work of an intrepid Swiss journalist, Sylvain Besson, has information regarding The Project finally been made public. It was found in a raid of a luxurious villa in Campione, Switzerland on November 7, 2001. The target of the raid was Youssef Nada, who has had active association with the Muslim Brotherhood for more than 50 years.

Included in the documents seized was a 14-page plan written in Arabic and dated December 1, 1982, which outlined a 12-point strategy to "establish an Islamic government on earth" – identified as The Project. According to testimony given to Swiss authorities by Nada, the unsigned document was prepared by "Islamic researchers." It represents a flexible, multi-phased, long-term approach to the "cultural invasion" of the West.

Some of its recommendations include:

• Using deception to mask the intended goals of Islamic actions

• Building extensive social networks of schools, hospitals and charitable organizations

• Involving ideologically committed Muslims in institutions on all levels in the West, including government, NGOs, private organizations

• Instrumentally using existing Western institutions until they can be put into service of Islam

• Instituting alliances with Western "progressive" organizations that share similar goals.

As Patrick Poole says, "What is startling is how effectively the Islamist plan for conquest outlined in The Project has been implemented by Muslims in the West for more than two decades."

Included in this work was the powerful Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Sylvain Besson and Scott Burgess note the striking similarities between Qaradawi's publication, Priorities of the Islamic Movement in the Coming Phase and The Project. Qaradawi is backed by Saudi money and founded the major English language website IslamOnline, which has several hundred full-time employees and serves as an international outlet for his teachings. He is also leader of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, which spreads its rulings on sharia-related matters to mosques across Europe. He is based in Qatar, home to the influential Arabic satellite TV channel Al Jazeera, where he runs the popular program "Sharia and Life." The intellectual Dr. Khaled Shawkat warns that Al Jazeera "has been hijacked" by the MB "to the extent that three or four Muslim Brotherhood members sometimes appear on a single news program."

Yusuf al-Qaradawi was an important figure during the Muhammad cartoons riots in 2006 and was indirectly responsible for attacks against the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Syria. According to Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen, "Clearly, the riots in Denmark and throughout the world were not spontaneous, but planned and organized well in advance by Islamist organizations that support the MB, and with funding mostly from Saudi Arabia." The purpose was to impose sharia-style restrictions on free speech on Western nations.

Ehrenfeld and Lappen state that the Muslim Brotherhood and its offspring organizations employ the Flexibility strategy: "This strategy calls for a minority group of Muslims to use all 'legal' means to infiltrate majority-dominated, non-Muslim secular and religious institutions, starting with its universities. As a result, 'Islamized' Muslim and non-Muslim university graduates enter the nation's workforce, including its government and civil service sectors, where they are poised to subvert law enforcement agencies, intelligence communities, military branches, foreign services, and financial institutions."

Douglas Farah writes about the largely successful efforts by Islamic groups in the West to buy large amounts of real estate. Some groups are signing agreements to guarantee that they will only sell the land to other Muslims. The Brotherhood, particularly, is active in investments in properties and businesses across Europe, laying the groundwork for the future network that will be able to react rapidly and with great flexibility in case of another attempted crackdown on the group's financial structure. Most of the money comes from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

According to Farah, the governments of Europe and the United States continue to allow these groups to flourish and seek for the "moderate" elements that can be embraced as a counter-balance to the "radical" elements: "We do not have a plan. They do. History shows that those that plan, anticipate and have a coherent strategy usually win. We are not winning."

According to journalist Helle Merete Brix, Muhammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, aided by Saudi Arabia, gives large amounts of petrodollar to various organizations at the forefront of the Islamization of Europe, such as the European Council for Fatwa and Research headed by Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Qaradawi has publicly boasted that "Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror" and that Muslims will conquer Europe and the United States.

Former CIA director R. James Woolsey estimates that the Saudis have spent nearly $90 billion since the mid-1970s to export their ideology into Muslim and non-Muslim countries alike. That may well be a conservative estimate. Since the spike in oil prices following the embargo/financial Jihad in 1973, Arab and Muslim states have received trillions of dollars from the sale of oil and gas, probably the greatest transfer of wealth in human history. A significant portion of this money has been used to buy an army of hirelings and apologists in non-Muslim countries, as well as on financing the global Jihad.

Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, a member of the Saudi Royal Family, is an international investor ranked among the ten richest persons in the world. In 2005, Bin Talal bought 5.46% of voting shares in News Corp, the parent of Fox News. In December 2005 he boasted about his ability to change what viewers see. Covering the Jihad riots in France that fall, Fox ran a banner saying: "Muslim riots." According to Talal, "I picked up the phone and called Murdoch... (and told him) these are not Muslim riots, these are riots out of poverty. Within 30 minutes, the title was changed from Muslim riots to civil riots."

Harvard University and Georgetown University have received $20 million donations from Prince bin Talal to finance Islamic studies. Martin Kramer, the author of "Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America," said: "Prince Alwaleed knows that if you want to have an impact, places like Harvard or Georgetown, which is inside the Beltway, will make a difference."

Georgetown said it would use the gift to expand its Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. The leaders of the Center, renamed to Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, say it now will be used to put on workshops regarding Islam, addressing U.S. policy towards the Muslim world, addressing Muslim citizenship and civil liberties, and developing exchange programs for students from the Muslim world.

Georgetown professor John Esposito, founding director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, has, probably more than any other academic, contributed to downplaying the global Jihadist threat. Kramer states that during the 1970s, Esposito had prepared his thesis under his Muslim mentor Ismail R. Faruqi, a Palestinian theorist of the "Islamization of knowledge." During the first part of his career, Esposito never studied or taught at a major Middle East center. In the 80s, he published a series of favorable books on Islam. In 1993, Esposito arrived at Georgetown, and has later claimed the status of "authority" in the field.

Journalist Stanley Kurtz has demonstrated how the Saudis have managed to infiltrate the US education system and influence what American school children are taught about Islam and the Middle East, not just at the university level but also at lower levels.

Egyptian author Tarek Heggy warns that the Muslim Brotherhood "opposes the notion of a state based on democratic institutions, calling instead for an Islamic government based on the Shura (consultative assembly) system, veneration of the leader and the investiture of a Supreme Guide. In this, they are close to the model established by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran. (…) The Brotherhood calls for a constitutional and legal system based on the principles of Shari'a, including cruel corporal punishments in the penal code (stoning, lashing, cutting off the hands of thieves, etc.)."

Despite this, Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke published an article in Foreign Affairs about the "moderate" Muslim Brotherhood, arguing that the group has "rejected global Jihad" and "embraces democracy." Several US Democratic members of Congress met with the head of the Brotherhood's parliamentary bloc at the home of the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, despite that fact that the Egyptian MB has spawned several terrorist movements.

In a memo, the US State Department told its embassy in Cairo to launch a dialogue with religious groups because clashes with them would incite more attacks against US interests. They advised Washington to pressure the Egyptian government into allowing the MB to play a larger role in Egypt's political landscape. There are signs that American authorities are reaching out to the Brotherhood. Steven Stalinsky, the executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, warns that "A lack of knowledge about the Muslim Brotherhood is evident on the part of U.S. officials who are now cozying up to the organization."

As Youssef Ibrahim of the New York Sun comments, "For years, the Soviet Union benefited from those Vladimir Lenin is said to have dubbed 'the useful idiots of the West' — reporters, scholars, leftists, and assorted romantics who said the Soviet system of totalitarianism was not so bad." He argues that the Brotherhood is now taking over this role. Ibrahim is tired of the silence from the Muslim majority: "In Islam, 'silence is a sign of acceptance,' as the Arabic Koranic saying goes. (…) The question that hangs in the air so spectacularly now — particularly as England has been confronted once again by British Muslims plotting to kill hundreds — is this: What exactly are the Europeans waiting for before they round up all those Muslim warriors and their families and send them back to where they came from?"

The current leader of the MB, Mohammad Mahdi Akef, called on its members to serve its global agenda, declaring "I have complete faith that Islam will invade Europe and America." On its English website, the Brotherhood professes moderation and praises Multiculturalism as a way to spread Islam. However, on their Arabic website, Akef in February 2007 reassured his followers that "the Jihad will lead to smashing Western civilization and replacing it with Islam which will dominate the world." In the event that Muslims cannot achieve this goal in the near future, "Muslims are obliged to continue the Jihad that will cause the collapse of Western civilization and the ascendance of the Muslim civilization on its ruins."

Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 with the vision of restoring the Islamic Caliphate. There are signs that his disciple Yusuf al-Qaradawi hasn't given up this goal. In an interview with German weekly magazine Der Spiegel, Qaradawi said: "Islam is a single nation, there is only one Islamic law and we all pray to a single God. Eventually such a nation will also become political reality. But whether that will be a federation of already existing states, a monarchy or an Islamic republic remains to be seen." Dr. Shaker Al-Nabulsi, a Jordanian intellectual, states that: "The Caliphate has remained unchanged from 632 through 2004 – it has kept its primitive, simple tribal form (the elite's allegiance to the sovereigns) – an un-democratic structure, despotic, and bloody except for a brief period of 12 years during the rule of Abu Baker and Omar Bin Al-Khattab [the first and second Caliphs]. (...) Since the time of [the Umayyad Caliph] Mu'awiya Ibn Abi Sufyan through the last Ottoman Sultan, (that is from the year 661 through the year 1924), the Islamic Caliphate was drenched with blood, and ruled by fist and sword – and even today the situation is the same in most of the Arab world."

Nabulsi quotes al-Qaradawi as saying: "'There are those who maintain that democracy is the rule of the people, but we want the rule of Allah.' Such ideas] are a call for the Rule of Allah, discussed by Sayyid Qutb in his book 'The Milestones.' [Qutb] borrowed this idea from Pakistani intellectual Abu Al-'Ala Al-Mawdudi, who introduced the theory that authority is Allah's, not the people's, and that the sovereign is none other than Allah's secretary and His representative on earth."

In one essay, al-Qaradawi writes that: "Secularism may be accepted in a Christian society but it can never enjoy a general acceptance in an Islamic society. Christianity is devoid of a shari`ah or a comprehensive system of life to which its adherents should be committed." However, "as Islam is a comprehensive system of worship (`ibadah) and legislation (Shari`ah), the acceptance of secularism means abandonment of Shari`ah," and "the call for secularism among Muslims is atheism and a rejection of Islam. Its acceptance as a basis for rule in place of Shari`ah is downright riddah [apostasy]."

The adoption of secular laws and equality for Muslims and non-Muslims amounts to apostasy. Harsh words from a man who has voiced support for the traditional sharia death penalty for those leaving Islam.

According to the major website Islam Online, which is owned by Yusuf al-Qaradawi and sponsored by rich Arabs, "Islam is not a religion in the common, distorted meaning of the word, confining its scope only to the private life of man. By saying that it is a complete way of life, we mean that it caters for all the fields of human existence. In fact, Islam provides guidance for all walks of life — individual and social, material and moral, economic and political, legal and cultural, national and international."

Famed historian Bernard Lewis in 2007 told The Jerusalem Post that Islam could soon be the dominant force in Europe. He warned that this Islamization could be assisted by "immigration and democracy." It is a well-established fact that Muslims vote overwhelmingly for left-wing parties all over Europe.

According to journalist Salam Karam, "For the Muslim Brotherhood, Sweden is in many ways an ideal country, [and it] shares the ideals of the Social Democrats in their view of the welfare society. Leading figures in Muslim congregations are also active within the Social Democratic [Party], and have very good relations with Sweden's Christian Social Democrats – Broderskapsrörelsen. The Social Democrats have, in turn, and perhaps as thanks for the support they receive from the mosque leadership, shown a tendency to shy away from the fact that there is extremism in some of our mosques. This has given the Muslim Brotherhood the freedom to force its ideology upon [the mosque's worshippers]."

Writer Nima Sanandaji states that "The Social Democratic party has started fishing for votes with the help of radical Muslims clergies." They have been working with the influential Muslim leader Mahmoud Aldebe, president of Sweden's Muslim Association, which is widely believed to be inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1999 Aldebe proposed that sharia – the Islamic law – be introduced in Sweden. The Social Democrat Ola Johansson has referred to the book Social Justice in Islam by the Jihadist ideologue Sayyid Qutb as proof that the Socialist ideology could find common ground with Islamic ideas. After the elections in 2002, the Muslim Association sent a congratulation letter to the re-elected Social Democratic Prime Minister Göran Persson, hoping that his party would work for implementing some of the sharia demands of the Association in the future. In 2007, the Social Democrats launched a formalized network for cooperation with Muslims, after they lost the elections the year before.

Walid al-Kubaisi, a Norwegian of Iraqi origins and a critic of sharia supporters, believes Yusuf al-Qaradawi is more dangerous than terrorist leader Osama bin Laden: "In Europe, the Muslim Brotherhood discovered a unique opportunity: Democracy. The democratic system leaves room for freedom of religion and freedom of speech, and finances religious communities and religious organizations. This has been utilized by the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate the Muslim communities, recruit members and build the Islamist networks that have become so visible lately." Whereas bin Laden uses bombs, al-Qaradawi exploits democracy as a Trojan horse. The Brotherhood gets their activities financed from Germany, Britain etc. They gain recognition and infiltrate the democratic system.

According to Walid al-Kubaisi, the journalist Dr.Osama Fawzi has revealed that many of al-Qaradawi's trips to Western countries are for the purpose of receiving medical aid and treatment for impotence because he is married to a girl 60 years younger than himself. Kubaisi, who writes Arabic fluently, sent an email to Qaradawi's website, asking whether it was legal according to Islamic law to marry a nine-year-old girl. He got a "yes" in reply.

Muhammad himself, according to Islamic sources, married his wife Aisha when she was six years old and consummated the marriage when she was eight or nine. Since he is the perfect example to emulate for Muslims for time eternity, this is still legal in Islamic law today: Sahih Bukhari Volume 7, Book 62, Number 64

Narrated 'Aisha: that the Prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained with him for nine years (i.e., till his death).

Yusuf al-Qaradawi has been hailed as a "moderate Muslim" by people such as London's Mayor Ken Livingstone, who represents the British Labour Party. Many Muslims voted for the Labour Party in previous elections, and London has a large and growing Muslim population. The cleric visited the UK in 2004, where he was welcomed by Livingstone, and chaired the annual meeting of the European Council of Fatwa and Research at London's City Hall. In January 2008, prominent Muslims pledged to back Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London during the elections in May 2008. A statement praised Livingstone for his support of a Multicultural society and for protecting Muslim communities against Islamophobia, and said that "We pledge to continue our support for the mayor on all levels possible in order to secure his staying in office for a third term." Among the 63 signatories was Tariq Ramadan.

In February 2008, al-Qaradawi was refused a visa to enter to the UK following pressure from British Conservatives. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said that it deplored the decision, while the British Muslim Initiative (BMI) described the decision to bar al-Qaradawi as "an unwarranted insult to British Muslims." Yusuf al-Qaradawi has called for the death penalty for homosexuality, for the destruction of the state of Israel, has defended suicide attacks and preaches that husbands should beat disobedient wives. He was also indirectly responsible for the torching of the Damascus embassies of NATO member states Denmark and Norway during the Muhammad cartoon riots in 2006.

Read the article here. For more on the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe and its arm in America, the Muslim American Society, please see here, here, here and here.

(H/T Gates of Vienna)

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