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The “Speech-Denialists”

June 2, 2015

The “Speech-Denialists,” The Gatestone Institute, Daniel Mael, June 2, 2015

  • In denying the average college student the opportunity to hear, think, question and learn, these minority organizations violated the basic principles of a liberal arts education and what higher learning should presumably be about: challenging assumptions and talking openly about issues that might cause discomfort.
  • Both micro-sensitivity and political correctness require at best, obfuscating information, and at worst, silencing it.

On college campuses, teachers, students and sometimes even administrators seem to have become ever more eager to block any idea with which they disagree.

Often it appears as if their first impulse is to demonize the individual or organization presenting the offending idea, rather than to address the substance of the argument and open a discussion in the “free marketplace of ideas.”

On the campus of Lake Superior State University, wall postings “deemed offensive, sexist, vulgar, discriminatory or suggestive will not be approved.” The campus code of conduct states that if students fail to comply, they may be disciplined — a rule that was named “Speech Code of the Month” for May by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

1092Lake Superior State University’s campus code of conduct states that wall postings “deemed offensive, sexist, vulgar, discriminatory or suggestive will not be approved.” (Image source: Bobak Ha’Eri/Wikimedia Commons)

Increasingly, individuals and groups, perhaps unknowingly betraying the spirit of classic liberalism, seek to shame or ridicule dissenting opinion into silence. Both in politics and on college campuses, it seems as if aggressive shaming has replaced the art of persuasion as the favored means of argumentation. Substantive, non-politically correct discussion is now at a premium.

In her recently published book The Silencing, life-long liberal and Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers documents the escalating efforts of people claiming to be liberal to silence dissent on issues they regard as contentious. The tactic follows what Powers calls the “authoritarian impulse to silence.”

On issues ranging from campus “speech codes” to feminism, these self-described liberals are unwilling to entertain the notion that a well-intentioned individual from the other side of the aisle might have a different remedy for the problems of the day.

When feminist scholar Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute gave a lecture on the campus of Oberlin University on the topic of campus sexual assault and due process, protesters labeled her a “rape denialist” and claimed that they felt “unsafe.” Perhaps we should begin calling such protesters “due-process denialists.”

When the subject is religion, these “liberals” maintain a disingenuous double standard. “While the illiberal left seems to hold a special animosity to Christianity,” Powers notes, in a remark that could also apply to Israel, “it is strangely protective of Islam, despite the fact that orthodox Muslims oppose same-sex marriage.” Not only are Muslim attitudes toward gay marriage overlooked or roadsided completely, but if anyone dares to discuss the issue of minorities in the Muslim-majority world, they are labeled “racist,” “Islamophobic,” or other slurs at arm’s reach.

Meanwhile, critics are unrelenting in their animosity toward observant Christians’ views of homosexuality. “If you think about it, we are at the water’s edge of the argument that mainstream Christian teaching is hate speech,” Senator Marco Rubio recently told CBN News. “Because today we’ve reached the point in our society where if you do not support same-sex marriage you are labeled a homophobe and a hater.”

Last year, at Brandeis University, when I sought to bring a human rights display highlighting the oppression of LGBTQ individuals in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Iran, the initiative was blocked in a flood of administrative bureaucracy. The member of the administration with whom I met was clearly not thrilled by the idea.

Meetings with a gay rights group and the Muslim Students Association (MSA), however, were just as telling. Hoping to solicit partnerships in the initiative, I explained to leaders and members of both organizations that the project was not about Islam, but about how, on a routine basis, certain governments murder people who identify as LGBTQ. Members of the gay rights organization expressed concern about “Islamophobia,” while members of the Muslim Students Association expressed concern about “homophobia.” The initiative was rejected. Both groups evidently prioritized the emotional and intellectual comfort of the campus community over drawing attention to the plight of innocent LGBTQ individuals in the Muslim world.

In denying the average college student the opportunity to hear, think, question and learn, these minority organizations violated the basic principles of a liberal arts education and what higher learning should presumably be about: challenging assumptions and talking openly about issues that might cause discomfort. It is still puzzling why the LGBTQ club and the MSA are not at the forefront of defending other members of their respective groups, regardless of where they may live.

Both micro-sensitivity and political correctness require at best, obfuscating information, and at worst, silencing it. It is incumbent upon those who recognize the dangers of the ever-expanding “speech-denialists” in the “political correctness” movement to put up a fight — figuratively, of course.

Categories: Colleges in U.S., Culture, Diversity, Education, Freedom, Ideology, Islamism, Islamophobia, Leftists, Multiculturalism, Obama's America, Religion, U.S. Constitution
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The rational Ayatollah hypothesis

May 29, 2015

The rational Ayatollah hypothesis, Power Line, Scott Johnson, May 28, 2015

In his Wall Street Journal column this past Tuesday, Bret Stephens took up “The rational ayatollah hypothesis” (accessible via Google here). That hypothesis — asserted, I would say, as a thesis if not a fact by our Supreme Leader about Iran’s Supreme Leader — holds that economics and other such considerations constrain the anti-Semitic behavior of the Islamic Republic of Iran. So about those nuclear weapons that Iran is developing on — Israel is not to worry. Neither are we. It’s the Alfred E. Newman approach writ large.

Obama articulated his thesis in response to a question posed by Jeffrey Goldberg in his recent interview of Obama. I wrote about it in “Obama expounds the limits of Iran’s anti-Semitism.” I struggled because Obama’s observations are both ignorant and obtuse. Stephens takes up Obama’s thesis somewhat more elegantly than I did:

Iran has no border, and no territorial dispute, with Israel. The two countries have a common enemy in Islamic State and other radical Sunni groups. Historically and religiously, Jews have always felt a special debt to Persia. Tehran and Jerusalem were de facto allies until 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini came to power and 100,000 Jews still lived in Iran. Today, no more than 10,000 Jews are left.

So on the basis of what self-interest does Iran arm and subsidize Hamas, probably devoting more than $1 billion of (scarce) dollars to the effort? What’s the economic rationale for hosting conferences of Holocaust deniers in Tehran, thereby gratuitously damaging ties to otherwise eager economic partners such as Germany and France? What was the political logic to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s calls to wipe Israel off the map, which made it so much easier for the U.S. and Europe to impose sanctions? How does the regime shore up its domestic legitimacy by preaching a state ideology that makes the country a global pariah?

Maybe all this behavior serves Tehran’s instrumental purposes by putting the regime at the vanguard of a united Shiite-Sunni “resistance” to Western imperialism and Zionism. If so, it hasn’t worked out too well, as the rise of Islamic State shows. The likelier explanation is that the regime believes what it says, practices what it preaches, and is willing to pay a steep price for doing so.

So it goes with hating Jews. There are casual bigots who may think of Jews as greedy or uncouth, but otherwise aren’t obsessed by their prejudices. But the Jew-hatred of the Iranian regime is of the cosmic variety: Jews, or Zionists, as the agents of everything that is wrong in this world, from poverty and drug addiction to conflict and genocide. If Zionism is the root of evil, then anti-Zionism is the greatest good—a cause to which one might be prepared to sacrifice a great deal, up to and including one’s own life.

This was one of the lessons of the Holocaust, which the Nazis carried out even at the expense of the overall war effort. In 1944, with Russia advancing on a broad front and the Allies landing in Normandy, Adolf Eichmann pulled out all stops to deport more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in just two months. The Nazis didn’t even bother to make slaves of most of their prisoners to feed their war machine. Annihilation of the Jews was the higher goal.

Modern Iran is not Nazi Germany, or so Iran’s apologists like to remind us. Then again, how different is the thinking of an Eichmann from that of a Khamenei, who in 2012 told a Friday prayer meeting that Israel was a “cancerous tumor that should be cut and will be cut”?”

Walter Russell Mead has more here, all of it worth reading. I thought readers who have been tracking the deep thoughts of our Supreme Leader, as we all should, might find Mead’s thoughts and Stephens’s column of interest.

Categories: Antisemitism, Foreign policy, Freedom, Human rights, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian anti-semitism, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Israel, Jews, Khamenei, Obama, P5+1, Supreme Leader
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The Pope and the Palestinians

May 20, 2015

The Pope and the Palestinians, Front Page Magazine, , May 20, 2015

(The article also deal with Islam in general, as to which the Pope’s fantasies reflect those of the Obama Administration and others. — DM)

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Perhaps the ultimate expression of this faith in Islam was Pope Francis’ assertion in Evangelii Gaudium that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”

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Contrary to reports in the mainstream press, Pope Francis did not call Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas “an angel of peace.” The correct translation of the pope’s words is “I have thought of you: that you could be an angel of peace.”

Why, then, was it so easy to believe the initial reports? Perhaps because the initial reports seemed to align with previous papal overtures to Palestinian leaders. Pope Francis had previously called Abbas a “man of peace,” he has shown sympathy for Palestinian grievances, and other popes have given the appearance of lending legitimacy to the Palestinian cause. For example, Pope John Paul II is reported to have received PLO leader Yasser Arafat on twelve different occasions.

Arafat was a terrorist. One would think that the Vatican would have wanted to limit its contacts with him. The same goes for Abbas. He has repeatedly honored and praised Palestinian “martyrs” who have slaughtered innocent Jews. There is evidence that he helped fund the 1972 operation that killed eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. Why is he accorded such a cordial reception at the Vatican?

Although the Church has often declared its spiritual bond with Jews, it has had a less harmonious relationship with the nation where approximately half the world’s Jews now reside. The Vatican was the last Western government to accord diplomatic recognition to the State of Israel (in 1993). In addition, on several occasions, prominent prelates have likened Israel to King Herod, the murderer of innocents; and others have accused Israel of being an apartheid state. Meanwhile, Catholic NGOs such as Pax Christi and Trocaire have been major players in the boycott, divest, and sanctions campaign against Israel.

Of course, the BDS campaign directly impinges on Israeli security. So do the calls by numerous Christian leaders to tear down the security barrier that divides Israel from the West Bank. On his trip to the Holy Land a year ago, Pope Francis allowed himself to be photographed in prayer at a section of the wall where a large graffiti message compared Bethlehem to the Warsaw Ghetto. In a naïve gesture of solidarity with Palestinians, the pope was unwittingly lending credence to the idea that the Israelis could be compared to the Nazi occupiers of Poland.

The wall was constructed to prevent suicide attacks against Israeli citizens. It’s estimated that its construction has saved thousands of lives. To suggest that the wall is offensive, as many Christians have done, is to suggest that Jewish lives don’t matter. Moreover, such judgments betray an entirely lopsided view of the situation. Take the Gaza conflict. The Catholic hierarchy typically had little to say about the daily rocket barrages launched against Israeli citizens from Gaza, but it was quick to condemn Israel on those occasions when it finally retaliated. In a similar vein, Fouad Twal, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, blamed last year’s Gaza war on the Israeli embargo which, he said, had turned Gaza into “a factory of desperate people, designed to easily turn into extremists.”

In short, many Catholic leaders have shown a tendency to blame Israel for defending itself. The implication, of course, is that there would be no need for defense if Israel would only go to the peace table and make the concessions demanded of it by the Palestinians. The Vatican’s recent recognition of the “State of Palestine” reflects this naïve view of the situation. The supposition is that the Palestinians only want to be left in peace, whereas there is abundant evidence that the deepest desire of Palestinian leaders is for the extermination of Israel. Have Vatican officials never seen the photos of Abbas holding up a map of Palestine that encompasses all of the territory currently known as Israel? Are they unaware that he has personally called for a Palestine that is Judenrein? Didn’t they notice that when Israel gambled on disengaging from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Gaza soon turned into a terrorist state governed by an obsession to destroy Israel?

From the Israeli point of view, the call to cooperate with the Palestinian “peace” agenda is a call to cooperate in its own demise. Whenever I hear a UN representative or a Vatican spokesman call for peace talks between Israel and Palestine, I think of that scene from Goldfinger in which James Bond is about to be sliced in two by a laser beam. “Do you expect me to talk?” he asks. “No, Mr. Bond,” replies Goldfinger, “I expect you to die.” The Vatican hasn’t yet grasped the point that the Palestinian leadership doesn’t want the Israelis to talk, it wants them to die.

By words and by actions, the Vatican continues to suggest that there is a moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This policy not only does a disservice to Jews, it also does a disservice to Catholics and other Christians. The main effect of the moral equivalence stance is to sow confusion among Catholics at a time when they need to be clear and unconfused—clear about Islam, that is. The Vatican policy toward Palestine reflects it overall stance toward the Islamic world. In other words, let’s overlook the dark side—the terrorism, the anti-Semitism, the oppression of Christians and other minorities—and let’s put the best face on the Mohammedan faith. For the sake of peace. And also for the sake of maintaining the threadbare narrative that Islam is a close cousin of Catholicism and, therefore, a religion of peace. Perhaps the ultimate expression of this faith in Islam was Pope Francis’ assertion in Evangelii Gaudium that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”

How well has this policy worked? Not very. Catholics and other Christians who lived in Muslim lands and who took seriously the Catholic version of “this has nothing to do with Islam” soon found that the tiny minority of misunderstanders were legion and had murder on their minds. Many found out too late. Years of indoctrination in the myth of Islam’s pacific nature had left them unprepared for the violence. Not that the Church was the only culprit. The secular opinion-makers had been preaching the same gospel. The irony is that the Church wants Israel to adopt the same policy of make-believe about Islam that has contributed to the death and displacement of millions of Christians.

The policy requires an almost total denial of facts. In the case of the Arab-Israeli crisis it means ignoring the terrorist ties of the Palestinian government, its unity coalition with Hamas, the massive state-sponsored indoctrination of Palestinian children, and the oft-stated goal of eliminating Israel. Ironically, it also necessitates that one ignore the ongoing persecution of Christians in the Palestinian territories.

The Palestinian leaders do a good job of hijacking Christian themes and imagery in order to gull Christians into thinking that they are, indeed, brothers in Christ. Thus, Palestinians have milked the massacre-of-the-innocents meme for all its worth. They also like to claim that Jesus was the first Palestinian. Another favorite theme is that the Palestinian people are the “new Jesus” who is being crucified by the Israelis.

Many in the Catholic hierarchy seem to fall for the ruse, but the steady exodus of Christians from the Palestinian territories tells a different story. The overall population of Christians in the Palestinian areas has declined from 15 percent in 1950 to 2 percent today. After the Palestinian Authority took control over Bethlehem in 1995, the Christian population there declined by half. In the Gaza Strip, only a few hundred Christians remain. That’s because Christians in Palestine, like Christians in most Muslim-majority societies, are treated as second-class citizens—subject to rape, intimidation, and legalized theft.

Meanwhile, the Christian population of Israel continues to grow. Palestinian Christians want to live there and so do persecuted Christians in other parts of the Middle East. Despite years of propaganda to the contrary, they have come to realize that Israel is a safe haven in a world of Islamic chaos.

Do Christians who migrate to Israel know something that the Vatican doesn’t know? The facts are there for everyone to see, but not everyone sees them. Why do Catholic leaders persist in assigning moral equivalence when there is no moral equivalence? Normally, a belief in moral equivalence grows out of a relativistic outlook. But presumably we can rule that out in the case of Catholic prelates. A more likely cause of their moral neutrality is a misapplication of the principle of “judge not.” Christians today are highly conscious of the sins of Western civilization and are therefore reluctant to judge those who lie outside it—in this case, Muslims. However, the principle is meant to apply to judgments about the state of an individual’s soul, not his behavior. And it was never meant to apply to withholding judgments about ideologies and belief systems.

The reluctance to see the mote in the other’s eye can eventually slide over into willful blindness. There are numerous warnings in the New Testament about spiritual blindness and they apply to those within the Church as well as to those without. The big danger for Church leaders is not that they will be seen as judgmental in the eyes of the world, but that they will be seen as foolishly naïve in the eyes of history.

“First comes Saturday, then comes Sunday” is a well-known slogan in the Middle East. It means that after the Islamists finish with the Jews, they will come after the Christians. The fate of the Saturday people and the Sunday people is intertwined. And the fate of both is put in jeopardy when Christian leaders insist on holding on to a fantasy-based picture of Islam.

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Appeasement, Christianity, Christians, Diversity, Fatah, Foreign policy, Freedom, Gaza, Human rights, Ideology, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Jerusalem, Jews, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Muslims, Obama, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Pope, Terrorism, Two state solution, West Bank
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Saudi Rapist in Colorado Says Sex Offender Program is Against His Religion

May 17, 2015

Saudi Rapist in Colorado Says Sex Offender Program is Against His Religion, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, May 17, 2015

Homaidan-al-Turki

Rape however isn’t against his religion.

Homaidan al-Turki’s entire defense strategy from the beginning was Islam. The member of a prominent Saudi family claimed that the prosecution was Islamophobic.

“We are Muslim. We are different. The state has criminalized these basic Muslim behaviors. Attacking traditional Muslim behaviors is a focal point of the prosecution.”

He had a point, because the behavior he was charged with was commonplace back in Saudi Arabia.

The victim slept on a mattress on the basement floor, was paid less than $2 a day, and Al-Turki eventually intimidated her into sex acts that culminated in her rape in late 2004, according to prosecutors.

Once in prison, the Saudis tried to get him transferred/released back home, but public outrage stopped that at least temporarily.

Now we’re apparently back to Al-Turki’s insistence that he shouldn’t have to undergo sex offender treatment.

Al-Turki told prison officials in 2013 that the sex offender treatment programme “conflicts with [his] Islamic faith”, according to a letter by the then executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, Tom Clements.

His lawyers told the court in the same year that the program: “would require [him] to look at photos that included women in bathing suits or undergarments as part of the evaluation process”, AP reported.

That would be the Abel Screening which is supposed to test for assorted deviancies. Undergoing it would be an important prerequisite to parole or transferring Al-Turki to a Saudi prison/resort.

Al-Turki’s people have rejected it because it would mean admitting that he did something wrong, also the group would be run by a woman and there are the photos of men, women and children in swimsuits.

Obviously Saudi mores and Islamic law say that Homaidan Al-Turki did nothing wrong. ISIS’ rapes and sex slaves show us how that works, but Saudi Arabia runs a low key version of the same thing.

The entire premise of the program is incompatible with Islam. It’s Islamophobic since it rejects the Islamic idea that Muslim men can rape non-Muslim women within the context of a hostile environment, especially in a non-Muslim country.

So we just have to decide between Saudi ISIS law and American law. It’s that simple.

Categories: Freedom, Human rights, Islam, Islamic supremacy, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Islamophobia, Muslims, Saudi Arabia, Sharia law
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President Strangelove or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

May 14, 2015

President Strangelove or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb, Jerusalem Post, David Turner, May 14,2015

Concerned about Soviet intentions in the region the Truman administration entered into the U. S.-Saudi Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement (MDA) in 1951. The Agreement provided the foundation for what would emerge as an American commitment to provide a defense umbrella for the region to protect American interests in the Middle East. American assurances to states in the region seemed intact until the GW Bush Administration invasion of Iraq. Trapped in a war it completely misjudged and soon realized it could not win the administration sought an accommodation with Iran to control Shi’ite militias battling the Americans.

The Bush policy of “accommodation” with Iran became the Obama policy of “appeasement” towards the Islamic Republic. Thus began a six-year-long quest to intended to encourage that country’s recalcitrant and hegemony ambitious leaders to abandon its nuclear weapons program. With the imminent 30 June deadline for signing an Agreement quickly approaching the president invited the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states headed by Saudi Arabia to Camp David promising a mutual defense agreement assuring the Arab states of American protection in the event Iran proved a threat to the region. In addition to “assurances, the Saudis insisted on a signed and “formal alliance structure with the United States guaranteeingU.S. support against potential Iranian aggression.”

In advance of the conference the White House announced that President Obama would meet with the Saudi king the day beforeCamp David. But at the last minute, “[d]ispleased with Washington’s dealings with Iran, with an emerging deal over its nuclear program and with US security proposals to Gulf Arab nations,” King Salman announced he would not meet with President Obama and would not attend the Camp Davidconference. In the end only two of six Gulf nations decided to attend with heads of state.

The king’s last-minute cancellation, his turn-down of a meeting with the leader of the Free World was described as “a calculated snub for the president’s policies on Iran and the Middle East.” It was revealed that Kerry, in his meeting with the Saudis the week earlier, told the king that Obama was not prepared to finalize according to the king’s timetable any agreement that might result at Camp David.

And then there was the fact that a mutual defense agreement with the Saudis, the 1951 MDA, already existed already assuring the Saudis protection under America’s nuclear umbrella. Mistrust of American intentions and assurances by America’s “allies” built up over the previous twelve years was palpable.

Bush and the Region

“Even before the inauguration [and, of course, the pretext of 9/11], Cheney asked outgoing Secretary of Defense William Cohen to provide Bush with a briefing focused on Iraq… [Bush appointee] Defense Secretary Rumsfeld saw, “September 11, 2001, as a potential “opportunity.””

Symptomatic of hubris resulting from power minus coherent policy President Bush ignored both Arab and Israeli warnings of Foreseen Consequences certain to follow should the administration follow through with its threat to invade Iraq.

“With his latest remarks, [Saudi, later king] Prince Abdullah joined the chorus of Arab complaints about the Bush administration’s talk of taking military action to oust Saddam Hussein and put an end to his programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. At virtually every stop in the Arab world, Mr. Cheney has been told that an American military strike would destabilize the region.”

And, according to Lawrence Wilkerson, a member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, “[t]he Israelis were telling usIraq is not the enemy – Iran is the enemy.” Wilkerson said that the Israeli reaction to invading Iraq in early 2002 was, “If you are going to destabilize the balance of power, do it against the main enemy.”

Bush and the Bomb

“Cut off the head of the snake,” the Saudi ambassador toWashington, Adel al-Jubeir, quotes the king as saying during a meeting with General David Petraeus in April 2008.

In a speech to the Knesset in 2008 to observe Israel’s 60thanniversary Bush told the Knesset, “America stands with you in firmly opposing Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. Permitting the world’s leading sponsor of terror to possess the world’s deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations.” Nowhere in his speech did Bush hint at his long held view that America was not prepared to enter another Middle East war, that there never was a military option with which to threaten Iran’s nuclear weapons program. No accident then that Bush chose war-averse Robert Gates as his defense secretary; and that Gates in turn chose war-averse Admiral “Mike” Mullen as head the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The dovish defense pair would for years be the president’s PR mouthpiece warning against even the threat of force to halt Iran’s nuclear program. The Gates/Mullen oft-repeated warning of “unforeseen consequences” became, over the years a common, almost mantra-like warning against any action against Iran.

No surprise then that the openly dovish, newly-elected President Obama invited Gates to remain on as his defense department head, “a show of bipartisan continuity in a time of war that will be the first time a Pentagon chief has been carried over from a president of a different party.”

Obama and the Region

By way of destabilizing the region Obama has not yet equaled the fallout of Bush’s invasion of Iraq. If Bush gifted Iraq to Iran, set the stage for the “Arab Spring,” Obama did not come in second for lack of trying. The new president followed Bush by targeting his own tyrant, Muamar Qadafi and transformingLibya, as did Bush in Iraq, a political wreck bordering on a failed state.  Libya today is ruled al-Queda, Islamic State and other terror organizations with two governments powerless to assert control. Bordering Egypt Libya today supplies both the Sinai Salafist insurgency and the terror enclave of Gaza with weapons. And as Bush ignored Israeli and Arab warnings regarding the impact of invading Iraq, Obama chose to those same Arab-Israeli warnings regarding his intention to depose America’s principal Arab ally, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. In a single mindless move the U.S. followed up its Iraq disaster with Egypt. And followed the collapse of Egypt’s secular regime, insult to injury Obama endorsed as “democratic government” the same Muslim Brotherhood with a decades-long terror campaign against the government; the group behind the assassination of Anwar Sadat for having sought peace with Israel: the Muslim Brotherhood whose child, al-Quaeda, had flown airliners into New York’s World Trade Center! The list of Bush and Obama Administration policy failures seems to know no limits: Iraq redo, Bahrain,Yemen and the bloodbath of Syria. Lacking capacity to learn from ideology-based failures, it continually repeats its “unintended consequences.”

Obama and the Bomb

If Bush set the pattern for accommodation then the tactic at least had some “justification” as Iran’s IRGC was funding, arming and even leading the Shi’ite insurgency against Iraq’s American invaders. Not provoking Iran might have the result of limiting American casualties. But for Obama, recipient in advance of the Nobel Peace Prize for promising regarding “world peace”; for Obama to provide Iran, a state sponsor of Islamist terrorism a world forum to show up American weakness and enhance Iranian prestige; for Obama whose commitment on entering office was to promote nuclear non-proliferation: for Obama to provide Iran all the time necessary to achieve threshold nuclear armament status and, failing to contain Iran the consequence would be a nuclear arms race in the lands of the Arab Spring… Saudi Arabia,Turkey and Egypt are already moving to parity with Iran whileJordan and several Gulf states are at varying stages of planning.   

Obama, who promised nuclear non-proliferation, has turned out to be godfather to a nuclear arms race in the least stable, most militant region of the world!

Categories: Arab nations, Bush doctrine, Department of Defense, Egypt, Foreign policy, Freedom, Gulf states, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Iraq, Islamism, Israel, Khamenei, Libya, Middle East, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Shiite, Sunni, Syria, Terrorism
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Schrödinger’s Jihad

May 14, 2015

Schrödinger’s Jihad, Sultan Knish Blog, Daniel Greenfield, May 13, 2015

( A MUST read…  Thank you, Dan. –  JW )

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Obama insists that talking about Islamic terrorism ‘summons’ them into being. By admitting the existence of Islamic terrorists, we ‘radicalize’ Muslims. Even the words ‘Islamic terrorism’ creates Islamic terrorists who otherwise wouldn’t exist.

The real threat is not from the terrorists, it’s from the truth.

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The great paradox of the War on Terror is that we are fighting an enemy that doesn’t exist. We are told incessantly that there is no such thing as a Muslim terrorist.

There may be a tiny minority of violent extremists, but they are only a tiny minority of no importance whatsoever. And yet we’ve been at war with this same infinitesimally tiny minority for decades.

This tiny minority has killed thousands of Americans. It has the support of entire governments in tiny countries like Pakistan (182 million), Iran (77 million) and Syria (22 million). We are told that this tiny minority is no way representative of the world’s billion Muslims, and yet it’s hard to find a Muslim country that doesn’t support or harbor a terrorist group.

We were told that the problems was their governments, but the Arab Spring showed us that democratic elections lead to governments that are even more supportive of tiny minority of extremists who are somehow taking over entire countries.

Everything we’ve been told is obviously a lie. And the best evidence comes from the liars themselves.

The media is howling that a bunch of cartoonists in Texas were irresponsible for sketching Islam’s dead warlord because they should have known that Muslim terrorists would come to kill them for it. But if the media is right and Islam is a religion of peace, then why should they have anticipated a terrorist attack?

And if Islam isn’t a religion of peace, then the media has been irresponsibly lying to us and the cartoonists have been risking their lives to warn us of that lie.

The talking heads on the television insist that the cartoon contest was irresponsible because there were bound to be “some crazies” who would “take the bait”. But if Islam is no more violent than any other religion, shouldn’t it be just as statistically likely that some Christian or Jewish crazies would attack one of the art exhibits, plays or musicals ridiculing and blaspheming against their religions?

Weren’t museums and galleries exhibiting “works of art” like Piss Christ or Shekhina provoking and baiting those Jewish and Christian crazies? And since there are more Christians than Muslims in America, isn’t it statistically far more likely that there should have been far more Christian terror attacks targeting blasphemous exhibits?

We can only conclude that there is a much higher proportion of “crazies” among Muslims than among Christians. How much higher? 78 percent of Americans identify as Christians. 0.6 percent claim to be Muslims. Only 0.3 percent appear to be Sunnis, who are responsible for ISIS and Al Qaeda attacks.

There is indeed a tiny minority of extremists in America. It’s known as Islam.

What keeps the lie alive is another paradox. Call it Schrödinger’s Jihad. The more famous Schrödinger’s Cat is a paradox in which a cat in a sealed box with poison that has a 50 percent chance of being released is in an indeterminate state. It is neither dead nor alive until someone opens the box.

In Schrödinger’s Jihad, the Muslim terrorist is in an indeterminate state until some Western observer opens the box, collapses his wave function and radicalizes him. The two Muslim Jihadists were in an indeterminate state until Pamela Geller and Bosch Fawstin and the other “provocateurs” suddenly turned them into terrorists in a matter of days or weeks. It didn’t matter that Elton Simpson, one of the Garland terrorists, had already been dragged into court for trying to link up with Jihadists in Africa.

Every Muslim is and isn’t a terrorist. He is both a peaceful spiritual person who is eager to embrace our way of life and a violent killer who can be set off by the slightest offense. Like the cat in the box that is neither dead nor alive, he is both violent and peaceful, moderate and extremist, a solid citizen and a terrorist. He does not choose which of these to be or to become; we decide what he will be.

The Jihadist paradox is that the Muslim terrorist is always defined by what we do, not by what he does.

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Islamic terrorism does not exist independently of the Western observer. It is not a Jihad with deep historical and theological roots within Islam, but a reaction to our interactions with Muslims.

Obama insists that talking about Islamic terrorism ‘summons’ them into being. By admitting the existence of Islamic terrorists, we ‘radicalize’ Muslims. Even the words ‘Islamic terrorism’ creates Islamic terrorists who otherwise wouldn’t exist.

The real threat is not from the terrorists, it’s from the truth.

When we tell the truth, people die. The truth turns Muslims into terrorists while the lies soothe them back into non-existence. Underneath all the academic terminology is the dream logic of wishful thinking. If we believe that Islam is a religion of peace, it will be a peaceful religion, and if we accept the reality that it’s violent, then it will become violent. Islam does not define itself. We define it however we want. Our entire counterterrorism policy is based around the perverse ostrich belief that Islamic terrorism is a problem that we create by recognizing its existence. If we ignore it, it will go away.

The lies about Islam are sustained by a deep conviction among liberals that the “Other” minorities are not real people with real beliefs and cultures, but victims in a game of power played out in the West. Islamic terrorism, like gay marriage or Global Warming, is just another step in the progressive pilgrim’s progress. It’s a problem that we caused and need to atone for in our cosmic karmic journey.

Westerners are privileged observers who have power while those minorities they observe do not. The duel between the Western left and right is taking place outside the box to determine what will be in the box once it’s forced open, while the oppressed minorities are in a state of indeterminacy in the box.

The Schrödinger’s Jihad paradox has many other adjoining boxes. Some are filled with dictators and criminals. If the progressive observer can open the box and find the root cause, out comes a good person; if the right opens the box, then out will march the terrorists, drug dealers and warlords.

The other side of the rhetoric about oppression and colonization, of punching up and punching down is the conviction that those at the bottom do not have free will or agency. If the mugger chooses to mug, rather than being driven to it by poverty, if Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union gleefully chose conquest instead of being forced to it by Western imperialism, and if the Muslim terrorist is not a helpless victim, but an abuser, then the moral imperative of the left’s worldview collapses in a heap.

If Muslims are real people who are at least as capable of imperialism, racism, slavery and destroying the planet as any Westerner, and who have been doing all of these things a lot longer, then leftists would have to accept that they are tearing down the most progressive civilization on the planet on behalf of ridiculously reactionary civilizations. Not only would they no longer be the privileged observers in control of the future, but they would have to see themselves as destroyers of what is left of the future.

The left refuses to blame Islam or Muslims because that would mean admitting that they are people.

Schrödinger’s Jihad is a child’s toy box for overgrown children who view Muslims as social justice dolls and terrorist action figures instead of people as flawed and complicated as they are. The left refuses to take Islamic theology seriously because it is incapable of understanding different points of view.

It approaches Islam as a race, rather than a religion, because it refuses to delve into what its beliefs are. Instead it chooses to see Muslims as blank slates to be filled with its ideology, as indeterminate patterns that can be reshaped into whatever they want them to be. It does not want to know what it says in the Koran, because that ruins its wonderful fantasy of Muslims as an oppressed race, rather than a creed.

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Lies that are based on what we want to be true are the hardest to disprove. A lie that is tied into identity cannot be touched without destroying the entire identity of an individual or a movement.

The lies about Islam run into the heart of what the left is. To the left, everything is indeterminate and everything can be reshaped. Existence flows from power and power is pitted against progress. By destroying that which exists, they can bring their dreams to life. The dream is stronger than reality.

The left doesn’t really believe that Muslim terrorists exist except when we bring them to life. The real animating force behind Al Qaeda was George W. Bush or Dick Cheney. The true power behind ISIS is Pamela Geller or the Pentagon. The Westerner opens the box and the Muslim terrorist comes out. When Western civilization as we know it is destroyed, then the left believes Muslim terrorism will end. Kill the observer and the cat never existed. Destroy the dreamer and the nightmare dies with him.

The truth is more dangerous than the terrorists. Terrorists can kill the body, but truth can kill the dream.

Categories: Diversity, Foreign policy, Freedom, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Obama, Shiite, Sunni, Terrorism
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U.S. State Dept. Invites Muslim Leaders, Denies Christians

May 10, 2015

U.S. State Dept. Invites Muslim Leaders, Denies Christians, Gatestone Institute, Raymond Ibrahim, May 10, 2015

  • “After the [Christian governor] told them [U.S. authorities] that they were ignoring the 12 Shariah states who (sic) institutionalized persecution … he suddenly developed visa problems. … The question remains — why is the U.S. downplaying or denying the attacks against Christians?” — Emmanuel Ogebe, Nigerian human rights lawyer based in Washington D.C.
  • “In the same week that the State Dept says it will take the engagement of religious leaders seriously … it refuses a visa to a persecuted Christian nun who has fled ISIS, Sister Diana.” — Chris Seiple, President, Institute for Global Engagement.

Late on the evening of May 8, Newsmax TV announced that pressure from Americans acquainted with Sister Diana Momeka’s visa rejection has just caused the State Department to reverse its decision and permit her entry into the United States. Until then, however, she and others were barred

After inviting a number of foreign religious leaders, mostly Muslim, the U.S. State Department, for the second time in a row, denied the sole Christian representative a visa — despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that Christians are the ones being persecuted by Muslims.

Sister Diana, an influential Iraqi Christian leader and spokeswoman who was scheduled to visit the U.S. to advocate for persecuted Christians in the Mideast, earlier this month was denied a visa by the U.S. State Department, even though she had visited the U.S. before, most recently in 2012.

Sister Diana was to be one of a delegation of religious leaders from Iraq — including Shia and Yazidi — to visit Washington, D.C., to describe the situation of their people. Every single religious leader from this delegation was granted a visa — except for the only Christian representative, Sister Diana.

Similarly, in March 2014, after the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) brought together the governors of Nigeria’s mostly Muslim northern states for a conference in the U.S., the State Department had also blocked the visa of the region’s only Christian governor, Jonah David Jang, an ordained minister, citing “administrative” problems. The USIP confirmed that all 19 northern governors were invited, but the organization did not respond to requests for comments on why they would hold talks without the region’s only Christian governor.

According to Emmanuel Ogebe, a Nigerian human rights lawyer based in Washington D.C., the Christian governor’s “visa problems” are due to anti-Christian bias in the U.S. government:

The U.S. insists that Muslims are the primary victims of Boko Haram. It also claims that Christians discriminate against Muslims in Plateau, which is one of the few Christian majority states in the north. After the [Christian governor] told them [U.S. authorities] that they were ignoring the 12 Shariah states who (sic) institutionalized persecution … he suddenly developed visa problems. … The question remains — why is the U.S. downplaying or denying the attacks against Christians?

Regarding Sister Diana, determined Christian and human rights activists in the U.S. called on the State Department to reverse its decision. According to Johnnie Moore, an activist who met her in Iraq: “Sister Momeka is a gift to the world and a humanitarian whose work reminded me — when I met her in Iraq — of Mother Teresa. It is incomprehensible to me that the State Department would not be inviting Momeka on an official visit to the United States, as opposed to barring her from entry.”

1065The Iraqi Christian nun, Sister Diana Momeka (left), this month received a visa to visit the U.S. as part of a delegation of foreign religious leaders. The State Dept. had originally denied her visa request, only allowing in non-Christian delegates. Last year, the United States Institute for Peace invited to the U.S. the Muslim governors of Nigeria’s northern states, but the sole Christian governor, Plateau State Gov. Jonah David Jang (right), was denied a visa.

Chris Seiple, President of the Institute for Global Engagement, wrote in a post, “In the same week that the State Dept says it will take the engagement of religious leaders seriously (as announced in its quadrennial review two days ago), it refuses a visa to a persecuted Christian nun who has fled ISIS, Sister Diana.”

Similarly, discussing the nun’s visa denial, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said: “This is an administration which never seems to find a good enough excuse to help Christians, but always finds an excuse to apologize for terrorists … I hope that as it gets attention that Secretary [of State John] Kerry will reverse it. If he doesn’t, Congress has to investigate, and the person who made this decision ought to be fired.”

In an interview on Newsmax TV with host J.D. Hayworth, Johnnie Moore credited Newsmax TV viewers with helping to put enormous pressure on the Obama administration to allow Sister Diana Momeka to come to Washington to talk about the persecution of Christians in her war-torn nation: “It worked — people raised their voices. They wrote their congressmen and senators, they put pressure on everybody, everywhere. … She has been approved. … It’s exhibit A of what happens when people in this country start raising their voices.”

But Ogebe’s question remains: Why is the U.S. downplaying or denying attacks against Christians?

Categories: Christians, Diversity, Foreign policy, Freedom, Human rights, Ideology, Islam, Islamism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Obama, Obama administration, Terrorism
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The Cartoon Wars

May 8, 2015

The Cartoon Wars, Gatestone Institute, Douglas Murray, May 7, 2015

  • It is most important to keep on challenging these would-be censors, so that people with Kalashnikov rifles do not make our customs and laws.
  • One of the false presumptions of our time is that people on the political left are motivated by good intentions even when they do bad things, while people on the political right are motivated by bad intentions even when they do good things.
  • When people prefer to focus on the motives of the victims rather than on the motives of the attackers, they will ignore the single most important matter: that an art exhibition, or free speech, has been targeted.
  • It does not matter if you are right-wing or left-wing, or American, Danish, Dutch, Belgian or French. These particularities may matter greatly and be endlessly interesting to people in the countries in question. But they matter not a jot to ISIS or their fellow-travellers. What these people are trying to do is to enforce Islamic blasphemy laws across the entire world. That is all that matters.

ISIS appears to have inspired its first terrorist attack in the United States: in Garland, Texas. This item may have slipped the attention of many people because as is so often the case today, much of the reporting and commentary has got caught up on other, supplementary issues.

The supplementary issues are first, that the attack targeted a competition set up to show images of what people thought Muhammad may have looked like. Then, there is the identity of the people who organized the exhibition and spoke at it.

1061Bosch Fawstin (second from left), the cartoonist who won the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest in Garland, Texas this week, is presented with his prize by (from left to right) Robert Spencer, Geert Wilders and Pamela Geller. (Image source: Atlas Shrugs blog)

Before coming to this, let us just return to that main issue. Since January, the idea that ISIS-like groups can inspire people to carry out murderous attacks in Paris and Copenhagen has come to be accepted. But that this can happen in Texas, of all places, could yet have an even worse “chilling effect” on free speech than the attacks in Paris and Copenhagen. No European country has the constitutional commitment to free speech of the United States. And Texas is not stuck in the moral relativism and fearful multiculturalism of most European countries.

There will be a feeling, post-Garland, that if ISIS can strike in Texas, it can strike anyplace. The entire developed world is therefore a potential site for an attack from ISIS. Although no one will put his hands up and surrender, neither will anyone be likely to draw attention to himself by saying or doing anything that might displease such homicidal censors.

The presence of strong security forces clearly helps to prevent attacks, but it is worth remembering that ISIS will use the opportunity of such “failed” attacks to come up with other ways of operating, which they will judge more likely to succeed.

What is most striking, however, is how silent many of the usual defenders of free speech have been.

Undoubtedly this is partly to do with the idea, becoming ingrained, that if you draw Mohammed or publish such images, you have, in some way, got it coming to you. This is an appalling pass to have come to, but it is in just such way that censorship and self-censorship are allowed to embed themselves.

Very few people say that they will not draw a historical figure because they are scared. But attack by attack, the feeling is growing among the majority of the media and others who have declined to publish such images, that they have failed. So to hide that shame, they tell themselves there is something provocative and even irresponsible in challenging people who would challenge the freedom speech.

One might still get the support of those who cherish free speech if one were accidentally to publish a cartoon of Mohammed, but not if you did so deliberately, and in full knowledge of the consequences. But of course, it is precisely after facing the consequences of challenging these would-be censors that it is most important to keep on challenging them, so that people with Kalashnikov rifles do not make our customs and laws.

As people come up with ever more elaborate ways to justify what they probably know in their hearts to be contemptible, it becomes harder and harder for them to change course.

Then there is the other only-occasionally-spoken-about supplementary issue, which may well be at the root of the difference between the assaults in Europe and the response to the attempted Texas assault. The January massacre at the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo undoubtedly woke up a portion of the general public in the West because the victims were cartoonists and editors at a “left-wing” magazine. That is, Charlie Hebdo stood for a type of robust secular, anti-establishment type of French politics, which a portion of the left worldwide could recognize as its own.

This stands in contrast to the comparative lack of solidarity after threats to the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in the wake of the 2005 Mohammed cartoons affair. To varying degrees, Jyllands-Posten was described as a “conservative” paper. In this context, unsure whether “conservative” meant anything from “establishment” all the way to “racist,” there was often suspected to be some dark, ulterior motive for publishing cartoons of the founder of Islam.

There is, however, no escaping such smears. Plenty of people proved willing, in the wake of the Paris attack, to smear the murdered cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo as far-right-wing or racist.

The organizers at the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, are not left-wing journalists but conservative activists; and because the Dutch politician Geert Wilders spoke at the opening of the exhibition, that added a layer of complexity for people who like labeling actions with political valences, rather than just seeing actions as apart from them. It seems clear, however, from the pattern of condemnations on one side and silence on the other, that a cartoonist may be worthy of defense if he is associated with a left-wing organization, but not if he is associated with a right-wing one.

Of course, this idea goes to one of the false presumptions of our time: ­that people on the political left are motivated by good intentions even when they do bad things, while people on the political right are motivated by bad intentions even when they do good things. So a cartoon promoted byCharlie Hebdo may be thought to be provocative in a constructive way, whereas one promoted by AFDI can only be thought if as being provocative in an unconstructive way. Whether people are willing to admit it or not, this is one of the main problems that underlies the reaction to the Texas attack.

Such a distinction is, needless to say, a colossal mistake. When people prefer to focus on the motives of the victims rather than on the motives of the attackers, they will ignore the single most important matter: that an art exhibition, or free speech, has been targeted. The rest is narcissism and slow-learning.

It does not matter if you are right wing or left wing. It does not matter if you are American, Danish, Dutch, Belgian or French, or whether you are from Texas or Copenhagen. These particularities may matter greatly and be endlessly interesting to people in the countries in question. But they matter not a jot to ISIS or their fellow-travellers. What these people are trying to do is to enforce Islamic blasphemy laws across the entire world.

That is all that matters. If we forget this or lose sight of it, not only will we lose free speech, we will lose, period.

Categories: Blasphemy, Cartoonophobia, Charlie Hedbo, Freedom, Human rights, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamism, Islamophobia, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Political correctness, Sharia law
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I Support Free Speech, But… | Afterburner with Bill Whittle

May 8, 2015

I Support Free Speech, But… | Afterburner with Bill Whittle, PJ Media via You Tube, May 8, 2015

 

Categories: Bill Whittle, Free world, Freedom, Ideology, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamism, Islamophobia, Terrorism
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Cartoonists are Controversial and Murderers are Moderate

May 5, 2015

Cartoonists are Controversial and Murderers are Moderate, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, May 5, 2015

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[I]f you believe the media, cartoonists are more controversial than killers. A former Muslim sketching a cartoon of Mohammed is bigoted, but justifying attacks on Jews is moderate. Plotting to overthrow the United States and replace it with an Islamic theocracy is right up the alley of your local civil rights group, but a cartoon contest threatens the nation and all of creation by bringing down the wrath of men who spent their time at moderate and Muslim organizations which only occasionally support terrorism.

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Controversial, intolerant and provocative. Mainstream media outlets broke out these three words to describe the “Draw the Prophet” contest, the American Freedom Defense Initiative and Pamela Geller.

While the police were still checking cars for explosives and attendees waited to be released, CNN called AFDI, rather than the terrorists who attacked a cartoon contest, “intolerant.” Time dubbed the group “controversial.” The Washington Post called the contest, “provocative.”

Many media outlets relied on the expert opinion of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a multi-million dollar mail order scam disguised as a civil rights group, which had listed AFDI as a hate group. Also listed as hate groups were a number of single author blogs, including mine, a brand of gun oil and a bar sign.

The bar sign, which hangs outside a bar seven miles outside Pittsburgh, appears to be made out of metal and plastic. It is reportedly unaware that it is a hate group and has made no plans to take over America.

The SPLC’s inability to conduct even the most elementary fact checking did not stop news networks from inviting its talking head on to suggest that AFDI got “the response that they — in a sense — they are seeking.” Neither CNN nor MSNBC were impolitic enough to mention that no AFDI supporter had used its materials to plan a killing spree, while at least one of SPLC’s supporters had done just that.

But being “controversial” and “provocative” has nothing to do with who is doing the shooting. It’s a media signal that the target shouldn’t be sympathized with. The Family Research Council, which was shot up by a killer using the SPLC’s hate map, is invariably dubbed “intolerant.” The SPLC, which targeted it, is however a “respected civil rights group” which provides maps to respected civil rights gunmen.

A contest in which Bosch Fawstin, an ex-Muslim, drew a cartoon of a genocidal warlord is “controversial” and “provocative,” while the MSA, which has invited Sheikh Khalid Yasin, who has inspired a number of terrorists, including apparently one of the Mohammed contest attackers, is a legitimate organization that is only criticized by controversial, intolerant and provocative Islamophobes.

Khalid Yasin has held such controversial and provocative views as claiming that the US created AIDS, that gays should be stoned to death and that women should be beaten. But the mosques and MSAs that he has appeared at have not been described as controversial, intolerant and provocative for inviting him.

Elton Simpson, the first gunman, attended the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix. The mosque was listed as being controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood’s North American Islamic Trust front group.

The Muslim Brotherhood holds such controversial and provocative views as “waging Jihad” against American infidels, “raising a Jihadi generation that pursues death” and “destroying the Western civilization from within.” Despite these extremely provocative and intolerant views, the Muslim Brotherhood is usually described by the media as a “moderate” group.

The Brotherhood’s American arm believes in launching a “Grand Jihad” to Islamize America. Its final phase calls for “Seizing power to establish their Islamic Nation” in the United State.

Some might say this is a slightly more controversial activity than drawing cartoons of a dead warlord.

The Islamic Community Center of Phoenix featured an appearance by Lauren Booth, a convert to Islam employed by Iran, who has been photographed with the leader of Hamas, and holds such controversial and provocative views, as the Boston Marathon bombing being faked and attacks on Jews being justified as “a frustrated backlash.”

Some might say Booth’s views are controversial, provocative and intolerant. And that the gunman’s mosque was intolerant for inviting her. But don’t expect the media to call out terrorist intolerance.

Booth came as part of a fundraising effort for the Muslim Legal Fund of America, which funded the defense for Islamic Jihad boss Sami al-Arian and aided some of the terrorists involved in the provocative and controversial Fort Dix terror plot to “kill as many soldiers as possible.”

If the two Mohammed cartoon gunmen had survived, the Muslim Legal Fund of America might be having Lauren Booth spout Jewish conspiracies to fundraise on their behalf.

But if you believe the media, cartoonists are more controversial than killers. A former Muslim sketching a cartoon of Mohammed is bigoted, but justifying attacks on Jews is moderate. Plotting to overthrow the United States and replace it with an Islamic theocracy is right up the alley of your local civil rights group, but a cartoon contest threatens the nation and all of creation by bringing down the wrath of men who spent their time at moderate and Muslim organizations which only occasionally support terrorism.

Cartoons can be provocative, but the only people inspired to kill over them, are killers. No one took a shot at Gary “Punching Up” Trudeau, despite decades of mocking conservatives. None of the assorted arts projects that involve defiling and mocking the sacred symbols of Christianity and Judaism resulted in gunmen in body armor trying to storm a cartoon competition. And yet it keeps happening with Islam.

Satire exposes sociopaths and sociopathic ideologies. And it’s the very attack on the “controversial” and “provocative” contest that shows why exposing them is so important.

Elton Simpson had already been on the radar of the FBI. He should have been in jail, but Judge Mary H. Murguia, a Clinton appointee who has been bandied about as a possible Obama Supreme Court nominee, chose to believe a claim by his public defender that when he was taped talking about Jihad, it might have meant “an internal struggle to maintain faith,” instead of killing non-Muslims.

Simpson had said that Allah loves those who fight non-Muslims, that Jihadists go to paradise and stated, “I’m tellin’ you man. We gonna make it to the battlefield… it’s time to roll.”

But that was just too ambiguous for Judge Murguia, who wrote, “It is true that the Defendant had expressed sympathy and admiration for individuals who “fight” non-Muslims as well as his belief in the establishment of Shariah law, all over the world including in Somalia. What precisely was meant by “fighting” whenever he discussed it, however, was not clear.”

“Neither was what the Defendant meant when he stated he wanted to get to the ‘battlefield’ in Somalia,” she added.

If nothing else, events like these help clarify the question of just what “fighting” non-Muslims involves, and whether it’s an internal struggle to maintain faith or an external struggle waged with assault rifles.

Satire helps expose the idiocy and absurdity of our betters, whether it’s Gary Trudeau or Judge Murguia. Every act of Islamic terror discredits them and their dishonest worldview even further. And they know it.

We cannot fight Islamic terrorism until we deal with it and we cannot deal with it as long as we are burdened by a political establishment that frantically censors any mention of its existence or its agenda.

The two gunmen did not attack the cartoon event simply because they were offended, but because they believed that their religion gave them a mandate to impose Islamic law on Americans. Until we deal with this supremacist reality, any effort to fight Islamic terrorists will be futile and will ultimately fail.

The Mohammed cartoons are so vital because they expose the theocracy at the heart of Islamic terrorism. When Muslim terrorists attack cartoonists, they’re not fighting our foreign policy; they are killing and dying to impose the foreign policy of the Muslim Brotherhood and its numerous daughter groups, such as Al Qaeda, Hamas and ISIS, on us.

The controversial and provocative cartoonists go into battle with pencils in their hands. The terrorists come with body armor and assault rifles. This clash is what real political dissent looks like.

The cartoonists believe in the controversial, intolerant and provocative idea that America should not be a theocracy. But the only people who should be provoked by that provocative idea are the Jihadists who want to impose a theocracy on America and the useful idiots lying and denying on their behalf.

Categories: Blasphemy, Charlie Hedbo, Freedom, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamism, Islamophobia, Jihad, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Muslim Brotherhood, Sharia law, Terrorism, Theocracy
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