Jihad in the U.S. -- Oh, yes, it's underway here too...

[Snowden]

Fitzgerald: What Obama has to do now


The promise by Obama in his AIPAC speech to "personally" take part in a renewal of Israeli-"Palestinian" negotiations is worrisome. Very. It should fill everyone with anxiety. For everything about Obama until now -- the people he has allowed to tell him all about "Palestine" (Rashid Khalidi), the people who were his early financial backers (Anton Rezko, who in turn is backed by an Iraqi billionaire), his early political backers (Rev. Wright, possibly Louis Farrakhan), his choice of foreign-policy advisers (Zbigniew Brezezinski, and Samantha Powers), his endorsement by Jimmy Carter, all point in one direction.

And his endorsement of one undivided capital is "just words," until we see exactly what he means by this. And he should be asked. Does he mean Jerusalem as the Israelis now define it, and include the Old City? And what else does he mean?

Given all of Obama's connections in the past, given that he has not once spoken out about the texts and tenets of Islam, and not shown that he understands why the Iraq war makes little sense (it makes little sense because its goals as now set by the Administration will not weaken the Camp of Islam and Jihad; it would be far better to allow ethnic and sectarian fissures to fester and to widen), but is simply opposed to it for possibly all the wrong chomskyan reasons, the burden is on him.

Those who care about Israel's wellbeing should be doing two things. They should be attempting to persuade McCain to get unstuck from Tarbaby Iraq, and to begin to understand why the Iraq venture does not, and cannot, have much of an effect on the Money Weapon, Da'wa, and demographic conquest, in Western Europe, or elsewhere.

And the second thing they should be doing is trying to persuade Barack Obama that they don't want him involved, "personally" or otherwise, in any negotiations between Israel and the Arabs. Every single bit of peace-processing by any Americans has always led to pressure on the Israelis, and a cruel blackening of their image. Every single attempt has been one more effort where the Americans give credence to a false view of the Arab war against Israel, a war without end, a war that has no "solution" (as some seem to think it does, and even seem to assume that it does, with that silly phrase "the two-state solution").

There is no "solution," but that does not mean that open war is necessarily inevitable. If Israel stays strong, and overwhelmingly so, the principle of deterrence will continue to work. Egypt does not refrain from going to war because it "made peace" with Israel. It does not go to war for the same reason that Syria doesn't, or Saudi Arabia doesn’t. The consequences of such an act -- the damage that Israel could and would inflict -- are too great, and the Egyptian government knows it.

But every single negotiation and bit of peace-processing, every attempt to come to grips with what some American negotiators, such as the comical Aaron Miller, like to call, breathlessly, "thefourcoreissues....settlementsrefugeesjerusalem security" -- misses the point. There are not, as the aaron-millers believe, "four core issues" -- settlemenets, refugees, Jerusalem, security. There is only one issue. And that issue is Islam, and the view that Islam inculcates, the view deeply imbedded in the texts and tenets of Islam: the view that no Infidel nation-state, whatever its size or status, can be permitted to exist on land that was once possessed by Muslims. And that is particularly true if the Infidels in question are the Jews, who under Muslim rule were seen as weak, and therefore to be treated with appropriate contempt, for they had no powerful friends in Western Christendom (as the Christians could at least think they did). And still worse, Israel is located right between the two wings of what the Arabs regard as the heart of Islamdom, the Arab Muslim domain.

Barack Obama, whose father was a Muslim, whose stepfather was a Muslim, who himself was treated as a Muslim when he lived in Indonesia from the ages of 6 to 10, does not see the necessity of learning about Islam, at least without the officious intervention of apologists such as the assorted espositos and MESA-Nostrans, those on the Saudi or other Arab payroll, or those who, being Muslims themselves, or having entered the field, as so many of the non-Muslims in it have, because they are deeply attracted to the idea of Islam. Such apologists would be for Obama dangerous guides indeed, if he is not capable of seeing why he needs to distance himself from Islam -- for the sake not only of those whose support he asks for as he presumes to claim a high office that requires of him the ability to both instruct and protect the citizens, but also so that Muslims do not think they have a secret friend in the White House. That might lead to all kinds of dangerous rashness -- especially since he doesn't understand as yet that the threat or menace of Islamic Jihad is not a fiction dreamed up by right-wing crazies, but has been a fact of world geopolitics for the past 1350 years, and in the past, before the Great Age of Inhibition, all of the keenest minds, from Hume to Tocqueville to Churchill, saw and wrote with apprehension about the nature of Islam.

He has time to educate himself. He is now done with any need to placate Farrakhan, or Wright, or Pfleger, or to limit his learning to that smyler with the knyf under the cloke, a former propagandist for the PLO in Beirut, so we are told -- and the recipient of the no-courses-and-no-waiting D. Phil. that Albert Hourani used to hand out to Arab and Muslim graduate students without too much fuss, with their favorite topic being, bien entendu, "The Construction of a Palestinian Identity."

He's got to do this. This undivided capitol stuff just won't do. He's got to understand what prompts the endless Arab and Muslim war against Israel, because he should not repeat the mistakes of the past presidents, including Bill Clinton, in devoting time and energy to an impossible and depleting and pointless task that can only help the Arabs and weaken Israel (and make many enemies in this country, who will not forget in 2012). He should forget about Israel and the Arabs, and concentrate on the big questions -- the menace of Islam, and the instruments of Jihad that really count, such as Da'wa and deployment of the Money Weapon in a Western Europe about which Barack Obama seems to take no interest. He has said he wants to spend $50 billion in Africa, and there is a very great third-world element to his outlook that, while hardly surprising, is unsettling and potentially dangerous for those who still think the West matters, and the heart of the West, without which the West has no meaning, is Europe.

Will he rise to the occasion? Or will he sink into the swamp of that peace-processing that in and of itself inevitably becomes anti-Israel, for it is Israel that is always asked to give up the tangible for the intangible promise, and Israel that, in every single agreement with the Arabs it has ever made, has scrupulously fulfilled its obligations, only to see the other side breach its own in any way it can, and to do so without the United States stepping in to remind that country that it did, after all, agree to this or to that. Egypt has failed to live up to the only thing it was asked to do under the Camp David Accords, which was to encourage friendly relations and an end to hostility. Mubarak has only once, and only at the border, gone to Israel -- save for Rabin's funeral. The Der-Stuermer-like campaign in the Egyptian press, and on television, including a series based on "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," does not constitute living up to the solemn commitments Egypt -- not Saint Sadat but Egypt -- made under the Camp David Accords. And not once has the American government, which forced the Israelis to make concession after concession, dared to remind Egypt of all this, despite Egypt’s being the recipient so far of $65 billion in disguised Jizyah. For "Jizyah" is the money that is given by Infidels out of fear, and that Muslims receive as by right, without any felt gratitude -- which exactly describes the aid given by the Americans to Egypt.

No one who worries either about Israel's fate, or about the fate of the Infidels, should be consoled by this speech. Obama will have to address, and intelligently, the texts and tenets and attitudes and atmospherics of Islam. He has to offer a strategy for dealing with campaigns of Da'wa, for ending the Money Weapon -- with the Saudis alone having spent nearly $100 billion to promote Islam's spread in Infidel lands, not least by building mosques and madrasas and conducting propaganda campaigns, and buying up academic centers, and employing a small army of Western hirelings -- ex-diplomats, ex-C.I.A. agents, businessmen eager for contracts, journalists, teachers.

He's got to do this. He's got to see Islam plain, and not mimic this Administration's failure to have thought things through, that still rules the day. For that would make even many now applauding his AIPAC speech rue the day.

By god, if he looked at this task in the right way, he would see that it is manageable, if only he doesn't get distracted and sinks into the swamp of "Israeli-'Palestinian' negotiations, and hudnas, and treaties of Al-Hudaibiyya that the Muslim side has a right and a duty to breach whenver it can.

I'd put up right here a dozen things that could be done to divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam and Jihad -- for less than a billion dollars. And that compares favorably with the 2-3 trillion that the fiasco in Iraq, based on messianic sentimentalism (for how else to describe the project of bringing "freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" in the Middle East?), except that I'd rather not allow others in the enemy camp to listen in.

Yes, Obama has to do all of this.

And so, too, of course, does McCain.



Jihad Watch: Fitzgerald: What Obama has to do now

[Snowden]

Seattle jihadist gets mistrial

He said: "I am a Muslim American. I am angry at Israel." He carefully planned his crime beforehand. But the jury was deadlocked, and couldn't decide whether or not he was crazy. I wonder how many crazy people plan their crimes carefully, and explain them in clear ideological terms.

I also wonder why so many jihad-related court cases are ending with deadlocked juries and mistrials -- the Haq mistrial reminds me of this one.

"COURT: Mistrial in case of Seattle Jewish Federation shooter," from The Associated Press, June 4 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Seattle - A judge declared a mistrial today in the case of Naveed Haq, who stormed into a Seattle Jewish center two years ago and shot six women — one fatally — as he ranted against Israel and the Iraq war.

King County Superior Court Judge Paris Kallas ended the jury’s deliberations in their eighth day. The jurors had indicated in questions posed to the judge that they were hopelessly deadlocked and struggling to determine whether Haq of the Tri-Cities was legally insane.

The jurors reached a partial verdict on only one of the 15 counts against Haq, finding him not guilty of attempted first-degree murder of one of the women, but they couldn’t agree on the lesser charge of attempted second-degree murder or any of the other charges.

Haq held a teenage girl at gunpoint to force his way into the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle on July 28, 2006. Once in the second-floor office, he began railing against U.S. policies and opened fire. He shot some people in their cubicles, some in the hall and one, Pamela Waechter, fatally as she fled down a stairwell.

Prosecutors quickly announced they would retry Haq, and representatives of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle expressed their disappointment.

“There is no argument Haq killed Pam. There is no argument he viciously shot five others. There is no argument that he made anti-Israel and anti-Semitic statements. Somehow, all this was not enough,” said Jewish Federation president Richard Fruchter....

Somehow.



Jihad Watch: Seattle jihadist gets mistrial

[Snowden]

How about "Main Motivation: Muslims Blowing Things Up"?

LGF posted this classification of "Islamophobes" from the MPAC-UK forum last week (apparently it originates with our old friend, the venomous and mendacious Umar Lee), and I was not going to comment on it, but since people keep sending it to me, here it is:

Category 1: The Seed Planters

Examples: Steve Emerson, Daniel Pipes, Bernard Lewis
Usual Profession: Academics
Main Motivation: Zionism

Category 2: The Theological Warriors

Examples: Robert Spencer, Craig Winn, Pat Robertson
Usual Profession: Christian preachers
Main Motivation: Religious bigotry

Category 3: The Media Voices

Examples: Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Fox News, Ann Coulter
Usual Profession: Radio and TV personalities
Main Motivation: Money

Category 4: The Fringe

Examples: LGF, Joe Kaufman, Jewish Task Force
Main Motivation: Racism

Category 5: The Politicians

Examples: George W Bush, John McCain, miscellaneous Republican politicians
Usual Profession: Politicians
Main Motivation: Need to court the anti-Islam vote

Could a similar system be used to classify British Islamophobes?

This list is stupid in many, many ways. Emerson is not an academic, but a journalist and researcher. I am not a "Christian preacher," and defy anyone to find any Christian preaching on this site. Even my book Religion of Peace? was designed to combat the fashionable moral equivalence that saps the will of Westerners to defend themselves against the jihad -- not to proselytize or to discuss the truth claims of Christianity and Islam.

Just as silly and inaccurate is the inclusion of people like George W. Bush and Sean Hannity on a list of "Islamophobes," as if their only difference from people like Craig Winn and Pat Robertson were motivation.

But the crowning stupidity of this paranoid little Enemies List is its utter unreflectiveness and displacement of responsibility. In this view "Islamophobic" or Islamorealistic people can only possibly be energized by base motives. You don't see "Main Motivation: Muslims Blowing Things Up" anywhere on this list. It never occurs to the originators and propagators of this list, or they are trying very hard to make sure it never occurs to you, that maybe "Islamophobes" are born every time a Muslim shouts "Allahu akbar" and murders someone in the name of Islam. Every time a Muslim in the West declares that Islam will soon dominate and subjugate non-Muslims, another Islamorealistic person opens his eyes.

But go on thinking it's all about Zionism and religious bigotry and money and vote-getting, guys, if that makes you feel better. Just be aware that as long as you do, and as long as you continue to refuse to clean house and separate yourselves from the Islamic jihadists and Islamic supremacists you profess to abhor, you will just be creating more and more "Islamophobes."

And that, of course, may be just the game, because victim status, as our own CAIR well knows, can be very, very useful.



Jihad Watch: How about "Main Motivation: Muslims Blowing Things Up"?

[Snowden]

Thomas Sowell on what's at stake in November


Thomas Sowell explains that it all comes down to Iran and the global jihad:

[...] While all sorts of gushing is going on in the media, and posturing is going on in politics, the biggest national sponsor of terrorism in the world-- Iran-- is moving step by step toward building a nuclear bomb.

The point when they get that bomb will be the point of no return. Iran's nuclear bomb will be the terrorists' nuclear bomb-- and they can make 9/11 look like child's play.

All the options that are on the table right now will be swept off the table forever. Our choices will be to give in to whatever the terrorists demand-- however outrageous those demands might be-- or to risk seeing American cities start disappearing in radioactive mushroom clouds.

All the things we are preoccupied with today, from the price of gasoline to health care to global warming, will suddenly no longer matter.

Just as the Nazis did not find it enough to simply kill people in their concentration camps, but had to humiliate and dehumanize them first, so we can expect terrorists with nuclear weapons to both humiliate us and force us to humiliate ourselves, before they finally start killing us.

They have already telegraphed their punches with their sadistic beheadings of innocent civilians, and with the popularity of videotapes of those beheadings in the Middle East.

They have already telegraphed their intention to dictate to us with such things as Osama bin Laden's threats to target those places in America that did not vote the way he prescribed in the 2004 elections. He could not back up those threats then but he may be able to in a very few years.

The terrorists have given us as clear a picture of what they are all about as Adolf Hitler and the Nazis did during the 1930s-- and our "leaders" and intelligentsia have ignored the warning signs as resolutely as the "leaders" and intelligentsia of the 1930s downplayed the dangers of Hitler.

We are much like people drifting down the Niagara River, oblivious to the waterfalls up ahead. Once we go over those falls, we cannot come back up again.

What does this have to do with today's presidential candidates? It has everything to do with them.

One of these candidates will determine what we are going to do to stop Iran from going nuclear-- or whether we are going to do anything other than talk, as Western leaders talked in the 1930s.

There is one big difference between now and the 1930s. Although the West's lack of military preparedness and its political irresolution led to three solid years of devastating losses to Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, nevertheless when all the West's industrial and military forces were finally mobilized, the democracies were able to turn the tide and win decisively.

But you cannot lose a nuclear war for three years and then come back. You cannot even sustain the will to resist for three years when you are first broken down morally by threats and then devastated by nuclear bombs.

Our one window of opportunity to prevent this will occur within the term of whoever becomes President of the United States next January....

Jihad Watch: Thomas Sowell on what's at stake in November

[Snowden]

Bat Ye'or reviews Spencer book



The renowned and pioneering historian Bat Ye'or reviews my book Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't at Middle East Quarterly:

Spencer, director of JihadWatch.org, is not a man to recoil from difficulties. In his most recent, solid study, he examines the current state of controversies in the United States relating to Islam and Christianity. He exposes the ignorance and misunderstanding that riddle many discourses on religions.

Beginning in the 1960s, the search for common points led too many academics and intellectuals to efface the oppositions among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in order to distinguish essential common points. But the differences are vast: The totalizing Islamic interpretation of revelation gathers together under a single power the spheres of politics, religion, and justice, something unacceptable to the two biblical religions. And while the Bible does not mention Muslims, who, of course, did not exist at the time of its redaction, the Qur'an mentions Jews and Christians in numerous verses, most often negatively. Other differences include the contents of the sacred texts and differing interpretations of the prophethood.

Spencer's work is crucial, given the stakes of today's worldwide jihadist war. For example, he demolishes false equivalence between jihad (a warrior ideology that is structural to Islam and has been deployed across thirteen centuries) and the Crusades (defensive wars spread over two centuries).

He instructs those many in the West who do not understand the possibility of an Islamist-provoked catastrophe putting an end to democracy's comfortable political and social order. More broadly, Westerners rarely perceive that their foreign policies conform to the exigencies of international jihadi strategies—for example, that European leaders are constrained under the threat of reprisals to accept immigration and to restrain their own freedom of expression to appease Muslim sensibilities. This policy of submission permits Islamist propaganda to dominate Western media and campuses.

If Westerners do not understand the ideological language used to justify the suppression of their liberties, if they ignore the historical, juridical, and theological structure of jihad and its corollary, dhimmitude (subjugation of religious minorities), then they will understand nothing about current events. They will become—like their predecessors of whose history they are ignorant—the slaves of their conquerors.

Written in a clear and easy style, and not without humor, Spencer's latest book Religion of Peace? supplies the keys to understanding the challenges that confront us. He provides the knowledge essential to enable Westerners to defend their democratic institutions as well as the fundamental values of freedom and human dignity.

Jihad Watch: Bat Ye'or reviews Spencer book