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

[Snowden]

Fitzgerald: On whether or not I am mentally ill


"Hugh having read this its clear you are mentally ill. You believe every Muslim follows Islam, preaches Islam and wants to take over the UK by jihad." -- from a curious comment by a Muslim apologist, "istanbulnotconstantinople," at Jihad Watch recently.

I'll leave it to others to decide if I am mentally ill. Were I to be considered such, I would note that I, as a once-perfectly sane Infidel, have had to spend a lot of time, far too much time, on the Belief-System of Islam and all of its permutations and combinations of craziness.

The apologist makes the charge that I am "mentally ill" because, you see, I "believe every Muslim follows Islam" and "preaches Islam." Really? Would that be a crazy thing to think? Or, put otherwise, would it be silly to assume, or to make policies based on the reasonable assumption, that those who continue to call themselves Muslims should be held to "follow Islam"? And to "preach Islam"?

And furthermore, this "istanbulnotconstantinople" apologist further charges me with what in his view is clearly a sign of my being "mentally ill," for he claims that I assume that all Muslims wish "to take over the UK by jihad." But in writing that, he misstates, for he knows that the word "jihad" as used by me means simply the "struggle" to "remove all obstacles to the spread, and dominance, of Islam." And that can be achieved by combat, or qitaal, and that, traditionally, was the way that Islam spread -- through armed conquest. And since Muslims have shown, or a great many have shown, that they do not regard as acts of terrorism many things which we non-Muslims do see as such, but rather see them as new ways of conducting combat in "unequal situations" (yes, how unfair of the Infidels to have been able to produce and manufacture all those tanks and planes that not a single Muslim state has yet been able to produce, despite the oil-rich Muslim states having received more than ten trillion dollars since 1973 alone), those acts of terrorism, whether carried out or foiled, do distract Infidels from concentrating on the larger question of the other instruments of Jihad, that are more dangerous and more effective, and have to be opposed.

Da'wa should not be freely conducted, not in prisons, not outside of prisons. Saudi and other rich Arabs should not be allowed to spend tens of billions of dollars on mosques and madrasas, on buying up existing, or founding new, academic centers or departments or individual professors engaged in "teaching about Islam" or about the Middle East. Armies of Western hirelings -- including those ex-diplomats and former intelligence agents who have behaved so traitorously, should be exposed, and held up for attack and ridicule in the press and in Parliamentary or Congressional committee hearings. This should happen so that they, and others who might be tempted in the future to become paid agents of Islam and of the rich Arabs, will have to think twice about doing so.

Do I think that every single Muslim "follows Islam"? No, but we Infidels are entitled to assume, and to act on the assumption, that anyone who continues, knowing what the texts and tenets of Islam are and remain, and knowing that we Infidels now know, or are coming to know, to identify himself as a Muslim can be held to "follow Islam.”

And if they "follow Islam," then, because the Total Belief-System of Islam makes so many demands, and requires that its followers clearly distinguish, or divide the world between, Believers and Infidels, and are to work, however they can, to push back the boundaries of Dar al-Islam, it would be naive to assume that Muslims, that those who "follow Islam" or can be held to "follow Islam," would not wish to "preach Islam." And furthermore, it would be reasonable to assume that they would wish to engage in the "struggle" to remove all barriers to the spread and dominance of Islam -- which is to say, to participate in Jihad.

If one's writing or arguing or acting on the argument that those who identify themselves as "Muslims" should be assumed to believe in Islam makes one "mentally ill," then among those "mentally ill" are at least a billion Muslims.

Is "istanbulnotconstantinople" among them? Or would he care to tell us in what way someone who calls himself a Muslim, but neither "follows Islam" nor "preaches Islam" is, nonetheless, a Muslim? And how does that "Muslim" who does not "follow Islam" differ from those who are really unwilling-to-admit-they’re-apostate Muslims, one of those Muslims-for-identification-purposes-only Muslims, the ones who are not Muslims at all, in the sense of believing in Islam, but who cling to it for other reasons -- out of filial piety, or some dreamy belief that they have to have an "identity" and that "identity" must surely be connected to Islam, which is not the same thing as being a Believer.



Dhimmi Watch: Fitzgerald: On whether or not I am mentally ill

[Snowden]

Jemaah Islamiyah on Obama's community blogs





The Indonesian Jemaah Islamiyah is responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings, and has been designated a terrorist organization. I am sure this is not the same group, but it doesn't sound much better. This entry in Obama's Community blogs (thanks to Pamela and LGF) is so over the top -- supporting Iranian nukes, raging about the "Zionist entity," saying that Obama will fight for Muslims -- that I think it is a hoax. We shall see how things shake out now that it will be getting a little attention. Surely they will take it down -- won't they?

Jemaah Islamiyah For Obama

We are a group that supports social justice for our oppressed Muslim brothers all over the world. We support Barack Obama for President because he is sympathetic to the plight of Muslims. He is a man of integrity, who will not be bullied by the neo-cons and the zionists. He will stand up for our oppressed palestinian brothers and sisters, whose land is being illegally occupied by that evil zionist entity whose name I just hate to even write.

Greetings Fellow Obama Supporters! By Fatima - Mar 31st, 2008 at 10:13 pm EDT

Welcome to Jemaah Islamiyah! My name is Fatima, and I'm thrilled to be supporting Barack Obama for President. For now, we have a man of integrity, who will fight for the rights of Muslims everywhere. Allah has blessed us with a man who will stand up to the neoconservatives and the racist zionists. I believe with all my heart that Barack Obama will stop the American occupation of Iraq. No longer will American soldiers be able to kill our women and children with impunity.

Mr. Obama will also talk to Iran's leader Mahmoud Amadinejad, whom the current chimp in the White House has treated so badly. I mean why should American and Israel be able to have nukes but not Iran? That is very unfair. Obama will right that wrong.

Furthermore, Senator Obama will take a much more rational approach in the Middle East. No longer will that zionist entity, whose name I hate to even write be able to oppress our Palestinian brothers and sisters with impunity. If anyone can stop the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, I know it is Barack Obama!

UPDATE, 2:51PM PDT: A few hours ago Fatima's message, but not the site posting, was taken down, and now the whole thing is gone.



Jihad Watch: Jemaah Islamiyah on Obama's community blogs

[Snowden]

Fitzgerald: The unsung history boys


The keenest and most aware, in every part of the Western world, are now engaged in one vast, but not collective, History Lesson. Those in this class are necessarily a class of autodidacts, given the failure of our governments to instruct us, and given the near-total monopoly over academic departments and courses on Islam by those engaged not so much in instruction as in apologetics.

Muslims and non-Muslims are conducting that apologetics. In 1970, Muslims constituted 3% of the members of the Middle East Studies Association, or MESA. Now they make up over 60% of the membership of what is known here as MESA Nostra. And they are assisted by non-Muslims who are eager not to offend Muslim colleagues, on whom they may depend for advancement and favors -- summer grants, book blurbs, light teaching loads, not to mention how unpleasant departmental meetings can be made by resentful Muslims, aware that a colleague may be guilty of presenting students with something like the truth about the teachings of Islam and about Jihad, and the treatment of non-Muslims under Muslim rule.

Of course, some of those non-Muslims may well have been attracted to their field in the first place by something in their own mental makeup that made Islam, or the Arabs, appealing to them. That is also true for those in the State Department who man the Middle Eastern desks. These self-selected students of the subject are unlikely to be the best guides. Furthermore, there is so much Arab money around to endow chairs, or even whole centers -- such as the two carefully placed at Georgetown, the better to influence government policymakers and the national media: Esposito's fiefdom, the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (a farcical undertaking, by Esposito, Voll and Haddad, that deserves a book-length study of its own) and Michael Hudson's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. The rich Lebanese contractor who first got Esposito on his way has had his initial funds supplemented by the Saudis and others; the Kuwaitis appear to have been the major donors, early on, to Hudson's undertaking. One center is in charge of misleading Infidels about Islam; the other handles the "Palestinian" matter. Their portfolios overlap, of course.

So here we are, now rediscovering the history of India, even if we are not Indians, and perhaps learning more about it, reading more sympathetically about what Muslim rule did to India, than many Indians who, to prove their lack of parochialism, their freedom from "communalism," overlook the real history, and continuing menace, of Islam in India. Here we are, even those who until a few years ago hardly knew about the Ottomans in Europe, realizing why the Serbs need to be protected from Muslim demands, either by "Bosnians" or by Albanians. Here we are, even those who up until recently had no real understanding of why the Arabs seemed incapable of making any kind of peace or accepting one Israeli compromise and surrender after another of Jewish claims, legal, moral, and historic, but always wanted more. Of course, according to Islam, they must always want more -- as we have learned by teaching ourselves about the Treaty of Al Hudaibiyya, learning, since no one in the press chooses to mention, the basis for all Muslim treaties with Infidels.

And here we are, learning not the Arab or Eurabian version of French rule in North Africa, but the real version. Here we are, learning who it was who stamped out slavery in the Maghreb (the French), and gave freedom from legalized Muslim oppression (1871, la loi Cremieux) to various communities of non-Muslims. We are learning who stamped out the African slave trade conducted by the Arabs in East Africa (the British), and who prevented the Arab tribes from constant mutual slaughter, which is why those "Trucial" states were given their names -- one hudna or truce after another. Here we are, learning about the Seljuk and the Ottoman Turks.

Oh, we are not experts. We can't compete with Schacht and Snouck Hurgronje and St. Clair Tisdall. But we can read Schacht and Snouck Hurgronje and St. Clair Tisdall and Arthur Jeffery and Tor Andrae and Henri Lammens. For that matter, some of us can even read Noldeke and Ignaz Goldziher. We can compare these scholars with what passes for "experts" from Esposito to Olivier Roy, from Khaled Abou el Fadl to Mark LaVine and so many others who have managed to first creep into, and then to slither upwards from rung to slippery rung, in that academic game of snakes-and-ladders with which some are long familiar.

Here we are, all over the world, the unsung History Boys.

And we are learning a lot. And passing it on. And we no longer accept the false authority of those whom, we realize, have been falsely instructing us on the nature of Islam. We have the real authorities to go to -- that Schacht, that Snouck Hurgronje, that St. Clair Tisdall, that Jeffery, and the hundreds of others, from many different countries, who saw Islam steadily and whole, and whose work, preserved in books and articles, can no longer be hidden from view.



Jihad Watch: Fitzgerald: The unsung history boys

[Snowden]

Fitzgerald: John Esposito and his credentials


In response to someone's relaying criticism levelled at him by Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch several months ago, John Esposito did not bother to respond. Or rather, his response consisted of an attack on the "scholarly" background of Robert Spencer -- no Ph.D. in Islamic or Middle Eastern studies, and the enclosure of what in Esposito's worldview constitutes an unanswerably impressive curriculum vitae that supposedly means game, set, match, without any need to actually adduce evidence of any kind about anything: "I attach my bio info" was the elegant phrase which was intended to answer all critics.

That won't do.

Esposito allows himself to believe that mere credentialism -- defense by inflated C.V. -- will be enough to protect him from detailed criticism. With the credulous, admiring Dinesh D'Souzas of this world, who live by such things (and carefully put down every article, every lecture in their own comically ever-expanding C.V.’s), that may indeed work. For intelligent people who are well-versed in the tragicomic and deceptive aspects of curricula vitae, and are skeptical of those suffering from elephantiasis, such a defense will elicit only contempt.


Dhimmi Watch

[Snowden]

Fitzgerald: Lawrence Wright, who came to the party late

Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistani journalist who is always being interviewed on NPR, was discussing this “rethinking-within-Al-Qaeda” business on NPR, at the same time as Lawrence Wright appeared. He was very skeptical of Wright’s notion, and he had a grasp of things on the ground in Pakistan and Afghanistan that Wright clearly does not have, as well as an understanding of what prompts Al Qaeda, and all the other groups, named and unnamed, that are working, locally or more broadly, for the same goals.

Now Ahmad Rashid is a smooth and plausible journalist, not a fearless truth-teller but a quasi-truth-teller. His book Taliban is full of all kinds of defender-of-the-faith misstatements. And he never comes close to discussing, on the page, for Infidel prying eyes, the texts, tenets, attitudes, and atmospherics of Islam -- with which, of course, he is perfectly familiar. He is, however, someone who does not relish the spreading power of the primitive Muslim true-believers, either in his own Pakistan or in those places in the West he likes to visit and live in. He works for a living, and is not, I think, in the same zamindar-league as the Bhuttos, Ispahanis, and such-like.

In Pakistani terms, or even Muslim terms, he might be described as a secularist, but he is still a Defender of the Faith when he feels he needs to be. Long ago he defined “Jihad,” in his book of the same name, in the usual “struggling-internally-to-be-a-good-Muslim” terms that would please Karen Armstrong and John Esposito. That was shameful. He would not, I trust, do so today, for several reasons. The first is that he knows that Infidels, or the more intelligent and alert Infidels, know perfectly well what nonsense that is, and would look askance if he tried at this point to convince them otherwise. And, furthermore, he, Ahmad Rashid, is more worried, I suspect, about the powers of resurrection or recuperation, and indeed the growing power, of the Taliban and of similar Muslim groups. To name them, and to carefully differentiate them, with all kinds of solemn parsing of their programs, would be largely silly, for even if they may sometimes have differences, or slightly different stated goals, when it comes to the Infidels (which is what we, the Infidels, care about), these groups all share the same attitudes, believe in the same tenets, and read the same texts.


Continue reading "Fitzgerald: Lawrence Wright, who came to the party late"


Continue reading "Fitzgerald: John Esposito and his credentials"




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