Archive for the ‘Islam’ category

Obama: “That’s Not Who we Are.” Part I, America and Islam

January 18, 2016

Obama: “That’s Not Who we Are” Part I, America and Islam, Dan Miller’s Blog, January 18, 2016

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

Obama keeps telling us what America is not. What does He think she is? Does He think that Obama’s America is America, or that His supporters are what America is? Does He think they make America great? Will America become acceptable to Obama, and hence “who we are,” only after He or His successor finishes her fundamental transformation?

“Benefits” of the Iran Scam

By virtue of the now-implemented Iran nuke “deal,” Iran’s possession of an atomic and/or hydrogen bomb will be delayed for a few years unless she cheats (as in the past), reneges on the “deal” or out-sources nuke development to her long term partner, North Korea.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is now reaping the benefits of more than $100 billion in immediate sanctions relief plus a settlement of Iranian claims amounting to $1.7 billion.

Secretary of State John Kerry said today that the settlement is $400 million debt and $1.3 billion in interest dating back to the Islamic revolution. That’s separate from the sanctions windfall Iran will receive.

Iran will also benefit on a long-term basis from trade with countries formerly prohibited by sanctions.

According to Tasnim News Agency,

Back in June 2015, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei had outlined the general policies of the country’s 6th quinquennial development plan.

On defense and security, the proclamation necessitated an increase in Iran’s defense capabilities at the level of a regional power in order to fulfill the national interests by allocating at least 5 percent of the national budget to boosting the defense power. [Emphasis added.]

With increased funding, Iran will be able to increase its already substantial support for Shiite terrorism throughout the Middle East; it will likely do so.

Iranians continue to experience Islamic human rights. Here’s a link to an article titled The Real War on Women in a Nightmarish Islamic State by Dr. Majid Rafizadeh. An Iranian-American political scientist and scholar, he is the president of the International American Council and serves on the board of the Harvard International Review at Harvard University.

When it comes to executions, girls are systematically more vulnerable due to the Islamist penal code of Sharia law.

Let’s take a look at the Islamist state of Iran, which creates its laws from the legal codes of Sharia and Quran. The first type of discrimination is related to age: girls are held criminally accountable at the maturity age of 9 Lunar years. (This will automatically put girls at a higher risk of execution by the court.)

Iranian ruling politicians hold the highest record when it comes to the most executions per capita in the world. Intriguingly, in the last two years that the so-called moderate, Hassan Rouhani, has been in office, there have been more than 2000 executions conducted in Iran. That is nearly 3-4 executions a day.

More importantly, Iranian leaders are also the largest executioner of women and female juveniles. Some of these executions were carried out on the mullahs’ charge of ‘Moharebeh’ (enmity with Allah), or waging war against Allah, ifsad-i Fil Arz (Sowing Corruption on Earth), or Sab-i Nabi (Insulting the Prophet). [Emphasis added.]

There are three methods of execution for women and female juveniles: 1. Stoning  2. Public hanging 3. Shooting. Some women are also beaten so severely in the prison that they die before reaching the execution. Shooting, which is the fastest method of the three for execution, has not been used since 2008. Instead, the most common method to execute women is public hanging or stoning. Some of these women are flogged right before they are hanged. Public hanging not only imposes fears in the society but also aims at dehumanizing and controlling women as second-class citizens. According to the Islamist penal code of Iran, women offenses are classified as: Hadd, Diyyih, Ta`zir, and Qisas. [Emphasis added.]

Please read the entire article. Isn’t it heartwarming that “we” are giving even more than a mere $100 billion to Iran? Perhaps some of the new money can be used to buy sharper stones and new devices for hangings. How about some new torture devices?

Islam, The Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates

The Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas-affiliated Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) claims to represent Muslims in America. They do represent those who favor terrorism and despise human rights (in the name of which they ironically claim to act).

[T]he Council on American-Islamic Relations, is a prominent Islamic group, but which has a long history of involvement with extremist and terrorist causes. In 2009, during the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial, U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Solis concluded that, “The government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR… with the Islamic Association for Palestine, and with Hamas.” [Emphasis added.]

During the trial, CAIR was designated an “unindicted co-conspirator.” As a result of CAIR’s apparent links to a terrorist movement, the Justice Department in 2009 announced a ban on working with CAIR. The FBI also severed relations.

The FBI’s no-work-with-CAIR policy was commonly ignored, according to a liberally redacted Justice Department report released in 2013, and now appears to have become moribund. CAIR representatives are often invited to the Obama White House:

[F]or the past seven years, the Obama White House has opened its doors to the entire spectrum of radical Islamist groups, just like CAIR. These groups have rationalized the actions of Islamic terrorist groups that have killed Americans, warned American Muslims against cooperating with law enforcement, smeared genuine Muslim moderates like Zuhdi Jasser and Asra Nomani as traitors and accused anyone who dared to utter the term “radical Islam” as “Islamophobic.” These are the groups that the White House should have marginalized. The fact that Obama legitimized radical Islamist groups will be his real legacy. [Emphasis added.]

Returning to the previously quoted article about CAIR and whom it claims to represent,

Very few American Muslims, however, seem to feel that CAIR is a legitimate ambassador for American Islam. According to a 2011 Gallup poll, about 88% of American Muslims said that CAIR does not represent them. Muslims all over the world, in fact, apparently do not think CAIR is a moderate or legitimate Muslim group: in 2014, the United Arab Emirates, a pious Muslim state, designated CAIR a terrorist organization, along with dozens of other Muslim Brotherhood organizations.

In reality, American Muslims are extremely diverse, and no single group can claim to speak on their collective behalf. American Islam comprises dozens of different religious sects and political movements, many of which advocate distinctly different ideas. But for Islamist bodies such as CAIR, it suits their agenda if American Muslims are portrayed as a monolithic community. If American Muslims can be seen as homogenous, then a group such as CAIR has a better claim to represent their interests.

Even CAIR’s own research, however, undermines their claim to speak on behalf of American Muslims. A 2011 report reveals that a majority of American mosques are not affiliated with any American Islamic body.

Addressing a conference in 2000, Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi, a Muslim cleric and secretary general of the Italian Muslim Assembly, explained that, “[CAIR] is a Muslim Brotherhood front organization. It works in the United States as a lobby against radio, television and print media journalists who dare to produce anything about Islam that is at variance with their fundamental agenda. CAIR opposes diversity in Islam.”

In truth, CAIR only speaks on behalf of a small extremist ideology that, as discovered by federal prosecutors, emerged across the United States during the 1990s out of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Although CAIR does not represent American Muslims, it managed, before the Holy Land Foundation terror trial in 2008, to persuade a great many people that it did. Enough time has passed that CAIR seems to believe it can try this move once again.

Are CAIR and other similar Islamist organizations who claim to represent Muslims in America who we are? Not according to a bill now pending in the Congress, which would

state that Congress believes the Muslim Brotherhood fits the State Department’s criteria of a Foreign Terrorist Organization. The Secretary of State would be required to designate the Brotherhood within 60 days or to provide a detailed report explaining why it does not. Three U.S.-based Brotherhood entities named in the bill are CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). [Emphasis added.]

The House version of the bill (HR3892) was introduced by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) with Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Randy K. Weber (R-TX), Diane Black (R-TN) and Mike Pompeo (R-KS) as original cosponsors. They are now joined by Reps. Steve King (R-IA); Steven Palazzo (R-MS); Kay Granger (R-TX); Jim Jordan (R-OH); Steve Stivers (R-OH); Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA); Ilena Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL); Charles W. Dent (R-PA); Bill Johnson (R-OH) and David A. Trott (R-MI).

HR3892 was referred to the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security on December 4, 2015. Two cosponsors, Rep. Gohmert and Rep. Trott, sit on that subcommittee.

The Senate version of the bill (S2230) was introduced by presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and later cosponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT). It was referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on November 3. Two of Senator Cruz’s presidential rivals, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) sit on that committee and have not taken a position on the bill.

Although the bill has yet to earn bi-partisan support at this early stage, it is supported by members of Congress from different spectrums of the Republican Party. It includes endorsers of the presidential campaigns of Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and John Kasich and not only supporters of Ted Cruz.

If enacted by the Congress, Obama will almost certainly veto it. If He signs it, He will ignore or bypass it as He often does.

Britain recently declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Here are thirteen quotes from the British Government’s review and Prime Minister Cameron’s official statement:

1. “The Muslim Brotherhood’s foundational texts call for the progressive moral purification of individuals and Muslim societies and their eventual political unification in a Caliphate under Sharia law. To this day the Muslim Brotherhood characterizes Western societies and liberal Muslims as decadent and immoral. It can be seen primarily as a political project.”

2.  “Aspects of Muslim Brotherhood ideology and tactics, in this country and overseas, are contrary to our values and have been contrary to our national interests and our national security.”

3.  “From its foundation the Muslim Brotherhood organized itself into a secretive ‘cell’ structure, with an elaborate induction and education program for new members…This clandestine, centralized and hierarchical structure persists to this day.”

4.  “The Hamas founding charter claims that they are the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim Brotherhood treat them as such. In the past ten years support for Hamas (including in particular funding) has been an important priority for the MB in Egypt and the MB international network.”

5.  “From at least the 1950s the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood also developed an international network, within and beyond the Islamic world. Europe became an important base for the growing Muslim Brotherhood global network.”

6.  “The wider international network of the Muslim Brotherhood now performs a range of functions. It promotes Muslim Brotherhood ideology (including through communications platforms), raises and invests funds, and provides a haven for members of the Brotherhood who have left their country of origin to continue promoting Brotherhood activity.”

7.  “[F]or the most part, the Muslim Brotherhood have preferred non violent incremental change on the grounds of expediency, often on the basis that political opposition will disappear when the process of Islamization is complete. But they are prepared to countenance violence—including, from time to time, terrorism—where gradualism is ineffective.”

8.  “Muslim Brotherhood organizations and associated in the UK have neither openly nor consistently refuted the literature of Brotherhood member Sayyid Qutb which is known to have inspired people (including in this country) to engage in terrorism.”

9.  “[The review] concluded that it was not possible to reconcile these [MB] views with the claim made by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in their evidence to the review that ‘the Muslim Brotherhood has consistently adhered to peaceful means of opposition, renouncing all forms of violence throughout its existence.’”

10.  “In the 1990s the Muslim Brotherhood and their associates established public facing and apparently national organizations in the UK to promote their views. None were openly identified with the Muslim Brotherhood and membership of the Muslim Brotherhood remained (and still remains) a secret.”

11.  “[MB fronts] became politically active, notably in connection with Palestine and Iraq, and promoted candidates in national and local elections…sought and obtained a dialogue with Government….were active members in a security dialogue with the police.”

12.  “The Muslim Brotherhood have been publicly committed to political engagement in this country. Engagement with Government has at times been facilitated by what appeared to be a common agenda against al Qaida and (at least in the UK) militant Salafism. But this engagement did not take into account of Muslim Brotherhood support for a proscribed terrorist group and its views about terrorism which, in reality, are quite different from our own.”

13. “Senior Muslim Brotherhood figures and associated have justified attacks against coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The linked article goes on to note that

The U.S. government, without even conducting any kind of review of its own, issued a statement to the Investigative Project on Terrorism rejecting any ban or even any “de-legitimizing” of the Brotherhood at all. [Emphasis added.]

Do the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates represent Obama? Are they or Obama “what we are?” I don’t think so and hope not.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali and reformation of Islam

In Heretic (which I reviewed here), Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote,

For years, we have spent trillions on waging wars against “terror” and “extremism” that would have been much better spent protecting Muslim dissidents and giving them the necessary platforms and resources to counter that vast network of Islamic centers, madrassas, and mosques which has been largely responsible for spreading the most noxious forms of Islamic fundamentalism. For years, we have treated the people financing that vast network — the Saudis, the Qataris, and the now repentant Emiratis — as our allies. In the midst of all our efforts at policing, surveillance, and even military action, we in the West have not bothered to develop an effective counternarrative because from the outset we have denied that Islamic extremism is in any way related to Islam. We persist in focusing on the violence and not on the ideas that give rise to it. [Emphasis added.]

Here is a video of which Hirsi Ali was the executive producer. It features Muslim and former-Muslim women discussing Islam and the Islam-mandated male domination of women.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbTATkLntBU

Here’s Part II of Honor Diaries:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVsDUTQ2_1M

Here’s a video characterizing Hirsi Ali as an “Islamophobe.”

Along with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Azeezah Kanji — the featured speaker in the above video — has been very active in disparaging Hirsi Ali and Honor Diaries. Like CAIR, she has ties to the Obama White House and was named a “Champion of Change” by the White House in 2011. What changes in Islam does Ms. Kanji champion? None, apparently, of those intrinsic to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEpMfYDUahA

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the CAIR, condemned Hirsi Ali as “one of the worst of the worst of the Islam haters in America, not only in America but worldwide.”

On becoming a U.S. Citizen

On becoming a U.S. Citizen

Who better represents American values? Hirsi Ali, once a refugee from Somalia and a proud citizen of the United States since April 25, 2013, or President Obama? In the immediately linked Wall Street Journal article, she offers suggestions on American immigration with which I plan to deal in a subsequent post. In the meantime, here is her 2014 address at the William F. Buckley Program at Yale University on the clash of civilizations. If you have not yet watched it, please do so. If you have watched it, please do so again. I just did. Every time I watch it, there is something I had not previously considered.

Conclusions

To Obama and His acolytes, Islam is the religion of peace and tolerance; the Islamic State, its equally non-peaceful and intolerant franchisees and other comparable terrorist organizations are “not Islamic.” If “not Islamic,” what are they?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwdazWbznfQ

Despite Obama’s many statements and gestures, He has yet to convince any Islamic terrorist group that it is not Islamic. He has convinced them only that He is ignorant of Islam, a liar or both.  Perhaps He needs a better joke writer.

Obama’s last State of the Union Message

was very striking for the one-sidedness and disproportion of the president’s concern for religious suffering.

President Obama worried that “politicians insult Muslims, whether abroad or fellow citizens.”

But he couldn’t bring himself to worry aloud about the Christians being driven from Middle Eastern countries, the churches being burned from Nigeria to Malaysia, or the 22 Coptic Christians who were beheaded on video on a beach in Libya by Islamic supremacists.

Insulting Muslims: bad. Killing Christians: irrelevant. [Emphasis added.]

Will our next president at least make a concerted effort to un-transform Obama’s America? Will he name and fight our enemies, foreign and domestic? Or will he simply “go with the flow” and do none of the above. Much depends on who it is and on the composition of the Congress.

During the Democrat Party debate on January 17th, Hillary Clinton “linked herself to the president again and again. And again.” An Obama clone to continue Obama’s fundamental transformation of America is the opposite of what we need. Nor will merely “fixing” broken parts of the governmental apparatus with duct tape and bailing wire be satisfactory. As I wrote last September, To bring America back we need to break some stuff.

In later posts in this series, I hope to deal with immigration, race relations, the ways in which Obama is distorting the Constitution, the decline of education and Obama’s very foreign foreign policy.

Obama blasts bullying, ignores beheading

January 16, 2016

Obama blasts bullying, ignores beheading, Washington Times, Newt Gingrich, January 14, 2016

ye_2015_top_10_stories_c24-0-1854-1067_s885x516EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – This image made from video posted online April 19, 2015 by supporters of the Islamic State militant group on an anonymous photo sharing website, members of an IS affiliate walk captured Ethiopian Christians along a beach in Libya. The video purportedly shows two groups of captives: one held by an IS affiliate in eastern Libya and the other by an affiliate in the south. A masked militant delivers a long statement before the video switches between footage that purportedly shows the captives in the south being shot dead and the captives in the east being beheaded on a beach. (Militant video via AP, File)

The 2016 State of the Union address was very striking for the one-sidedness and disproportion of the president’s concern for religious suffering.

President Obama worried that “politicians insult Muslims, whether abroad or fellow citizens.”

But he couldn’t bring himself to worry aloud about the Christians being driven from Middle Eastern countries, the churches being burned from Nigeria to Malaysia, or the 22 Coptic Christians who were beheaded on video on a beach in Libya by Islamic supremacists.

Insulting Muslims: bad. Killing Christians: irrelevant.

The president went on to say that when “a kid is called names, that doesn’t make us safer, it diminishes us in the eyes of the world.”

Why is our civilization — or Islamic civilization, for that matter — diminished by name-calling, when the real damage to both is being done by virulent, violent Islamic supremacism? (After all, the vast majority of Muslims being violently killed are killed by Islamic supremacists.)

The president saw fit to blast bullying in his State of the Union speech, but he said nothing of the beheadings that leave Americans justifiably afraid. Nor did he mention San Bernardino — the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11 — where the attack occurred just over a month ago.

If calling a kid names is bad enough to diminish us all, how does the President feel about the incident in France this week, in which a Muslim student in Marseille pulled out a machete and tried to kill his Jewish teacher? Indeed, the situation in France is so hostile to Jews that the leader of the Jewish community in Marseille advised that they should stop wearing yarmulkes because it makes them targets. Not since the Nazis have Jews been told it is dangerous to be overtly Jewish in a European country.

Moreover, if calling a kid names diminishes us all, how would the president characterize the hundreds of assaults and rapes of German women by immigrants over New Years? How would he describe the German media’s and German government’s efforts to censor the news so that people would not know about it?

The president talks about “telling it like it is,” but neglects to mention the thousands of women and girls sold into sexual slavery by ISIS. He says that the United States has the most powerful military on the planet, but offers no strategy for ending the brutal rule of ISIS over millions of people.

Finally, the president highlighted his delusions about the dangers of the real world at the close of his speech, when he said that he was optimistic that “unarmed truth … will have the final word.”

This is a wonderful phrase for a preacher.

It is a terrible phrase for a commander-in-chief.

Unarmed truth would have its head cut off by ISIS.

Unarmed truth would be sold into slavery by Boko Haram.

Unarmed truth would be massacred by Al-Shabab.

It is a sad reality that while President Obama is very sympathetic to the plight of Muslims, he is stunningly silent about the plight of Jews and Christians.

It is a frightening reality that President Obama has no idea how dangerous the world would be if truth did not have the protection of the American military.

This was a very disturbing State of the Union speech — an address that explains much of our current danger.

Egyptian Author Sayyid Al-Qemany: Al-Azhar Is a Terrorist Institution

January 13, 2016

Egyptian Author Sayyid Al-Qemany: Al-Azhar Is a Terrorist Institution, MEMRI-TV via You Tube, January 13, 2016

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6sJrrR8VaA

 

According to the blurb following the video,

In a January 2 interview on the Egyptian ON TV channel, author Sayyid Al-Qemany said that Al-Azhar should be placed on the list of terrorist organizations. “There are people working on this. They will file a suit in the international court, and I will provide them with documentation,” he said. ِFollowing the interview, it was reported in the press that Al-Azhar was planning to file a lawsuit against Al-Qemany for defamation of the institution.

Are Western Leaders Sellouts To Islam?

January 11, 2016

Are Western Leaders Sellouts To Islam? PamelaGeller.com, Nonie Darwish, January 10, 2016

obama-muslim

Is someone holding a gun to the heads of Western politicians, forcing them to state immediately after every Muslim terror attack that “Islam has nothing whatsoever to do with terror”? Who cares about whether Islam has or has not something to do with terror? The only people who care about Islam’s reputation are the so-called “moderate” Muslims who have been making excuses for jihad terror, and covering up for Islamic atrocities for centuries, while blaming Western foreign policy for their jihad.

As for all the jihadist groups themselves, they couldn’t care less about associating terrorism with Islam. In fact, jihadists have no problem with expressing pride in their terrorism, and love to see us disappointed and confused in our Western dilemma over what is or what is not Islam.

But now Western leaders are joining the ranks of “moderate” Muslims to cover up the real agenda of Islam. While their statements defending Islam are getting more and more outrageous and even sickening in the eyes of the informed Western citizen, they continue to mislead people as they blame Western thinking for not being tolerant enough.

It is not the job of Western leaders to defend Islam’s reputation from being connected with terror, especially if major Muslim institutions have consistently refused any condemnation of ISIS as un-Islamic. In fact, not one major Islamic university or leader in the Muslim world has condemned ISIS as un-Islamic. Usama bin Laden continues to be called Sheikh and held in high regard by many Muslims, even by the Arab media itself. The leaders of Al-Azhar University in Cairo keep telling the world over and over again that if Al-Azhar condemned ISIS, it would mean they are condemning themselves and their own teaching as un-Islamic.

So why do President Obama and the embarrassed moderate Muslims keep hammering us with defending Islam? The only explanation for this defense of Islam as having nothing to do with terror is that it is really not intended to please Muslims, as many might think. But in fact, it is intended to shame the uninformed American citizen into respecting Islam and capitulating to its agenda.

The head of the cheerleading team for Islam, President Obama, has inspired many other American politicians and world leaders to do the same thing, disciplining their own citizens to put up with Islamic tyranny to the point of insanity. In that process, Western leaders have no problem with using twisted logic, such as the idea that whatever negativity is done in the name of Allah must be tolerated because it has nothing to do with Islam.

The virus of this defective logic has penetrated the minds of almost all Western political leaders and the media, including the very people who are supposed to inform and protect us, such as the mayor of Philadelphia, Hillary Clinton, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They are all echoing the same thing in order to silence their citizens into accepting the dawn of a new multicultural era in which lawlessness, rape, and terror are to be tolerated and excused, lest we speak ill of Islam.

Western leaders are acting like hostages of the Islamic State, and are seriously expecting the obedient Western citizens to believe them. Nothing seems to work to remind those leaders as to who they are actually working for. They are not only defending Islam, but are also covering up for it and minimizing its danger to Western freedom, stability and law and order.

Even the mainstream media seems unshaken by all that is going on, and is cooperating with the political leaders into the shaming the side that supports freedom and the truth.

Discontent and fear are now brewing among the average Western citizen, who feels defenseless and scared to death of the Islamic agenda, and of loosing life in an orderly society. But instead of getting the message, Western leaders are doubling down on their assault on their own citizens, in order to force them into respecting anything and everything Islamic and never ever criticizing it.

It is now obvious that the 9/11 terror attack has achieved its Islamic goal, and has worked wonders on the psyche of the West. Terrorism is an old Arabian trick and tool for submission, and has always achieved wonders for Muslims. Even Mohammed was quoted saying, “I have been made victorious through terror.” Now that most Western leaders have capitulated, and instead of fighting back against Islam’s declaration of war, they have chosen to fight their own citizens.

Who could have ever imagined that this would have happened a little over a decade after 9/11? That Islamic rape, terror and violence would be running wild daily all over Europe and America, and Sharia blasphemy laws which go against all Western constitutions are being illegally enforced on Western citizens.

The defense of Islam by Western leaders has become pathological and extremely offensive to the majority of Americans, especially families and friends of victims of terrorism. And thus the only logical explanation for it is that Western leaders are selling out to Islam.

The abuse of the Western citizen, not only by Islam, but also by Western political leaders and its mainstream media, must end, because this is a recipe for disaster and a guarantee of future violent confrontations between the forces of freedom and forces of dhimmitude to Islam.

AFDI Geller Fellow Nonie Darwish is the author “The Devil We Don’t Know” and president of “Former Muslims United,” a program of the American Freedom Defense Initiative.

 

The volcano of Islamic terrorism

January 10, 2016

The volcano of Islamic terrorism, Israel Hayom, Yoram Ettinger, January 10, 2016

Terrorism has dominated the history of Islam, as demonstrated by the murder of three of the first four caliphs who succeeded the Prophet Muhammad: Umar ibn Abd al-Khattab (644 C.E.), Uthman Ibn Affan (656 C.E.) and Ali ibn Abi Talib (661 C.E.). Islamic terrorism has been one of the most active and dangerous volcanoes — domestically, regionally and globally — since the inception of Islam in the seventh century. Historically, all Arab regimes have achieved, sustained and eventually lost power through domestic violence, subversion or terrorism.

Currently, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Libya have become battlegrounds of rival Islamic terror organizations. Pro-U.S. Arab regimes such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE face clear and present terror threats. Iran and Saudi Arabia — the two leading sources of funding for Islamic terrorism — are confronting each other militarily, economically, ideologically and religiously. Intra-Muslim fragmentation, unpredictability, instability, intolerance, subversion, terrorism and the provisional nature of Islamic regimes have been recently intensified in an unprecedented manner.

So far, the lava of Islamic terrorism has affected mostly Muslims, but it is aiming to spill over into the abode of the “infidel” and is currently spreading into the streets of the U.S., Europe, Russia, China, India, Africa, Asia and Australia.

While most terrorists are Muslims, the majority of Muslims are not terrorists. However, the will of the majority has been systematically suppressed or oppressed in most Muslim societies (including Muslim communities in Western countries). These Muslim societies have never experienced democracy, exposing the majority to tectonic eruptions of violence by rogue regimes and organizations.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the 1,400-year-old volcanic Islamic terrorism has traditionally not been triggered by social and economic deprivation or by the absence of civil liberties. It has been triggered by the 14-century-old megalomaniacal, supremacist, intolerant, anti-democratic, repressive, non-negotiable and eternal aspiration — led by educated Islamic elites — to force the world of the infidel and the apostate to submit to Islam. The latter is, supposedly, the only legitimate religion, divinely ordained to rule the world.

According to the Quran, Islam is the only worthy and legitimate successor to the Abrahamic and Mosaic Judaism. Thus, the subordination of humanity to the legacy of Muhammad should be achieved, preferably, via nonviolent means (dawah), deceit/double-talk (taqiyya) and immigration (hegira). But, in face of defiant infidels and apostates, the believers should resort to non-compromising, non-merciful violence (jihad), subversion, breach of international accords and terrorism.

Unlike the Western definition of terrorism (the deliberate and systematic targeting of civilians), the Quran’s definition of terrorist (irhab) is the derivative of the verb arhaba (to terrify, scare), which is a tactic employed against the infidel to advance the goals of Islam (Quran 8:60). The Muslim bottom line is that “there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.”

Contrary to political correctness — and as demonstrated by the 1,400-year-old track record of Islamic violence and terrorism and the lack of intra-Muslim peaceful coexistence — Islam has never considered itself to be “a religion of peace” as defined by Western dictionaries.

According to Muhammad’s legacy, the term salam (peace) — which is derived from the same root as Islam — is employed when addressing fellow Muslims, but not when addressing non-Muslims, unless constrained by temporary military, economic or political inferiority.

Furthermore, Arab/Muslim societies invoke verses from the Quran and precedents from Islamic history as guidelines for contemporary, daily, personal, tribal, regional and national conduct. For example, Sura 20, verses 47-48 state that “peace be on whoever follows the guidance [of Allah] … and punishment shall afflict those who deny and turn their back [on Allah].” Thus, salam is reserved only for those who submit to Islam, while those who renege on their commitment to Islam are doomed. Moreover, any agreement with the infidel is defined as sulh, hudna, a tenuous truce of limited duration, until the balance of power facilitates total submission of the infidel to Islam.

Sacrificing reality and long-term national security on the altar of political correctness and short-term convenience, key Western policymakers and public opinion molders have refused to recognize the central role (or any role) played by Islam in the intensifying threat of terrorism. These movers and shakers have also insisted that providing employment and educational opportunities is the most effective way to combat terrorism.

Tariq Alhomayed, the former editor-in-chief of leading Saudi daily Asharq Al-Awsat, wrote on February 22, 2015: “ISIS is not looking for jobs, neither are al-Qaida or Hezbollah. … According to [U.S. President Barack] Obama, oppressing the opposition leads to extremism and terrorism. However, the oppression of the Green Revolution by the Iranian regime has not led to extremism or terrorism in Iran. … Why is the entire Middle East, except Iran, targeted by terrorism? Why are some of al-Qaida’s leaders in Iran?”

Winston Churchill’s famous words on relations with communists apply even more so to terrorists: “Trying to maintain good relations with a communist is like wooing a crocodile. You do not know whether to tickle it under the chin or beat it over the head. When it opens its mouth, you cannot tell whether it is trying to smile or preparing to eat you up. … An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping that it will eat him last.”

What is Sharia?

January 7, 2016

What is Sharia? What is the Threat, January 7, 2016

sharia-300x225

Earlier this week, UTT published the first in a series of articles about sharia (Islamic law) entitled “Understanding the Threat” which amplified the fact that sharia is the focal point and driving force behind everything jihadis across the globe are doing.

Today, we will breakdown what sharia actually is and its origins.

All Islamic sources define Islam as a “complete way of life governed by sharia.”

According to the most widely used text book in Islamic junior high schools in the United States (What Islam is All About), “The Shari’ah is the ideal path for us to follow.”

There are two sources of sharia:  the Koran and the Sunnah.

Islam is the system of life under sharia.  Those who submit to Islam and the sharia are called “Muslims.”

The Koran (also Quran or Qur’an)

According to Islam, the Koran is the “uncreated word of Allah,” who is the Islamic god, and the contents of the Koran were revealed to the Prophet Mohammad between the years 610 A.D. and 632 A.D. in the Arabian peninsula through an angel.  The Koran has 114 chapters or “suras” which are arranged in no particular order.  They are generally arranged by size from largest to smallest.  However, the first chapter is approximately the smallest, and the sizes of the chapter vary so this is not a perfect rule.

The Islamic scholars have authoritatively listed the chapters of the Koran in chronological order.  This is very important because Allah said in the Koran (2:106, 16:101) that whatever comes chronologically last overrules anything that comes before it.  This is called “abrogation.”  Allah revealed his message to Mohammad progressively over time.  By the time it was all revealed, what came last was the most important and overrules anything that was said earlier.

“It is a Qur’an which We have divided into parts from time to time, in order that though mightest recite it to men at intervals: We have Revealed it by stages.” (Koran 17:106)

So, for instance “Let there be no compulsion in religion” (Koran 2:256) is overruled or abrogated by “Whoever seeks a religion other than Islam will never have it accepted of him” (Koran 3:85) which is why we get “Take not the Jews and the Christians as your friends…” (Koran 5:51).  Chapter 5 in the Koran is the last chronologically to speak about relations between Muslim and non-Muslims.

Chapter 9 is the last to discuss jihad.

“Fight and slay the unbeliever wherever you find them, capture and besiege them,  and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush (strategem of war).” (Koran 9:5)

Furthermore, every verse in the Koran has been legally defined in the Tafsir.  The most authoritative Tafsir scholar in Islam is a man named Ibn Kathir.  For instance, the Tafsir defines a portion of verse 9:5 above as follows:  “This is the Ayah (verse) of the sword…’and capture them’ (means) executing some and keeping some as prisoners…’and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush’ (means) do not wait until you find them.  Rather, seek and besiege them in their areas and forts, gather intelligence about them in the various roads and fairways so that what is made wide looks ever smaller to them.  This way, they will have no choice, but to die or embrace Islam.”  (Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Vol 4, pages 375-376)

tafsir-300x203

The Tafsir is taught at mosques in the United States on a regular basis.  There is no such thing in Islam as a “personal interpretation” of a particular verse of the Koran.

The Sunnah

The Sunnah is the example of the Prophet Mohammad who is considered the al Insan al Kamil in Islam – the most perfect example of a man.  If Mohammad did it or said it, it is an example for all Muslims to follow for all time.

His words and deeds are recorded in the authoritative biographies (Sira) and the collection of the Hadith or stories about him. In Islam there are many Hadith scholars, but the most authoritative are by men named Bukhari and Muslim.

The Prophet said, “The hour of judgment will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. It will not come until the Jew hides behind rocks and trees. It will not come until the rocks or the trees say, ‘O Muslim! O servant of God! There is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.”  Al-Bukhari: 103/6, number 2926. Volume: Jihad; Chapter: Fighting the Jews

The above quote from Mohammad is doctrine in Islam.  Mohammad said it and it is authoritatively recorded by Bukhari, the most authoritative hadith scholar in all of Islam.  This is why the above quote is not only in the Hamas Covenant, it is taught at the first grade level in Islamic schools.

Example:  Why is it okay for a 60 year old Muslim man to marry an 8 year old girl?  Because Mohammad married Aisha when she was six (6) years old and consummated the relationship when she was nine (9). Mohammad is the perfect example, therefore, it is a capital crime in Islam to suggest this is wrong behavior.

The Koran, as understood with the Koranic concept of abrogation, and the Sunnah form the “Sharia” or the way for all Muslims to follow. This is a totalitarian legal system and cannot be altered or amended because it comes from Allah and was exemplified by the actions and words of Mohammad.  Therefore, when it comes to the definition of jihad, the obligation of jihad, the law of jihad, the obligation of the Caliphate (Islamic State), the rules under the Caliph, and relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, there is no disagreement among any of the scholars.

If Allah said it chronologically last in the Koran, Mohammad said it, and Mohammad did it, how could there be a legal “gray area” in sharia?

  1. “Fight and slay the unbeliever wherever you find them, capture and besiege them,  and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush (strategem of war).” (Koran 9:5)
  2. Mohammad said:  “I have been commanded to fight people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Mohammad is the Messenger of Allah.”  Hadith reported by Bukhari and Muslim
  3. Mohammad went out and fought many battles against non-Muslims until they converted to Islam or submitted to Islam.  Those who did neither were killed.

Any questions?

A Strategy to Defeat Islamic Theo-fascism

January 7, 2016

A Strategy to Defeat Islamic Theo-fascism, American ThinkerG. Murphy Donovan, January 7, 2016

Surely, whatever passed for American foreign or military policy in the past three decades is not working. Just as clearly, in case anyone keeps score these days, the dark side of Islam is ascendant at home and abroad. What follows here is a catalogue of policy initiatives that might halt the spread of Islamic fascism and encourage religious reform in the Ummah.

Some observers believe that the Muslim problem is a matter of life and death. Be assured that the need for Islamic reform is much more important than either. The choices for Islam are the same as they are for Palestine Arabs; behave or be humbled. Europe may still have a Quisling North and a Vichy South; but Russia, China, and even America, at heart, are still grounded by national survival instincts – and Samuel Colt.

Call a spade a spade

The threat is Islam, both kinetic and passive aggressive factions. If “moderate” Islam is real, then that community needs to step up and assume responsibility for barbaric terror lunatics and immigrants/refugees alike. Neither America nor Europe has solutions to the Islamic dystopia; civic incompetence, strategic illiteracy, migrants, poverty, religious schisms, or galloping irredentism. The UN and NATO have no remedies either. Islamism is an Ummah, Arab League, OIC problem to solve. Absent moral or civic conscience, unreformed Islam deserves no better consideration than any other criminal cult.

Western Intelligence agencies must stop cooking the books too. The West is at war and the enemy is clearly the adherents of a pernicious ideology. A global war against imperial Islam might be declared, just as angry Islam has declared war on civilization.  A modus vivendi might be negotiated only after the Ummah erects a universal barrier between church and state globally. Islam, as we know it, is incompatible with democracy, civility, peace, stability, and adult beverages.

Oxymoronic “Islamic” states need to be relegated to the dustbin of history. If the Muslim world cannot or will not mend itself, Islamism, like the secular fascism of the 20th Century, must be defeated, humbled in detail. Sooner is better.

Answer the Ayatollahs

Recent allied concessions to Tehran may prove to be a bridge too far. If the Persian priests do not abide by their nuclear commitments, two red lines might be drawn around Israel. Firstly, the ayatollahs should be put on notice, publicly, that any attack against Israel would be considered an attack against America — and met with massive Yankee retaliation. Secondly, any future cooperation with NATO or America should be predicated on an immediate cessation of clerical hate speech and so-called fatwas, those arbitrary death sentences.

Clerical threats to “wipe Israel off the face of the earth” and “death to America” injunctions are designed to stimulate jihad and terror globally. The only difference between a Shia ayatollah and a Sunni imam in this regard these days seems to be the torque in their head threads.

Ostracize the Puppeteers

Strategic peril does not emanate from Sunni tacticians like Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, or Abu Bakr al-Baghadadi. Nor does the real threat begin with or end with al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezb’allah, Hamas, or the Islamic State. Lethal threat comes, instead, on four winds: toxic culture, religious politics, fanatic fighters, and furtive finance, all of which originate with Muslim state sponsors. The most prominent of these are Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan.

Put aside for a moment the Saudi team that brought down the Twin Towers in New York. Consider instead, the House of Saud as the most egregious exporter of Salifism (aka Wahabbism) doctrine, clerics, imams, and mosques from which ultra-irredentist ideologies are spread. The Saudis are at once the custodians of Islam’s sacredshrines and at the same time the world’s most decadent, corrupt, and duplicitous hypocrites. Imam Baghdadi is correct about two things: the venality of elites in Washington and Riyadh. The House of Saud, an absolutist tribal monarchy, does not have the moral standing to administer “holy” sites of any description — Mecca, Medina, or Disneyland.

The cozy relationship between Europe, the European Union, and Arabia can be summarized with a few words; oil, money, arms sales, and base rights. This near-sighted blend of Mideast obscenities has reached its sell-by date. The “white man’s burden” should have expired when Edward Said vacated New York for paradise.

Jettison Turkey and Pakistan

What Saudi Arabia is to toxic ideology in North Africa, Turkey and Pakistan are to perfidy in the Levant and South Asia. Turkey and Pakistan are Islam’s most obvious and persistent grifters. Turkey supports the Islamic State and other Sunni terror groups with a black market oil racket. Pakistan supports the Taliban, al Qaeda, and ISIS with sanctuary and tolerance of the world’s largest opium garden. Oil and drug monies from Arabia, Turkey, and South Asia are financing the global jihad. Turkey also facilitates the migration of Muslims west to Europe while sending Islamist fighters and weapons south to Syria and Iraq.

With the advent of Erdogan and his Islamist AKP, Turkey has morphed into NATO’s Achilles Heel, potentially a fatal flaw.  Turkey needs to be drummed out of NATO until secular comity returns to Ankara. Pakistan needs to be restrained, too, with sanctions until it ceases to provide refuge for terrorists. Pakistani troops harassing India could be more prudently redeployed to exterminate jihadists.

Sanctions against Russia and Israel are a study in moral and political fatuity whilst Arabs and Muslims are appeased midst a cultural sewer of geo-political crime and human rights abuses. If NATO’s eastern flank needs to be anchored in trust and dependability, Russia, Kurdistan, or both, would make better allies than Turkey. Ignoring Turkish perfidy to protect ephemeral base rights confuses tactical necessity with strategic sufficiency.

Recognize Kurdistan

Aside from Israel, Kurdistan might be the most enlightened culture in the Mideast. The Kurds are also the largest ethnic group in the world not recognized as a state. While largely Muslim, the Kurds, unlike most of the Ummah, appreciate the virtues of religious diversity and women’s rights. Indeed, Kurdish women fight alongside their men against Turkish chauvinism and Sunni misogyny with equal aplomb. For too long, the Kurds have been patronized by Brussels and Washington.

While Kurdish fighters engage ISIS and attempt to control the Turkish oil black market, Ankara uses American manufactured NATO F-16s to bomb Kurds in Turkey and Syria. Turkish ground forces now occupy parts of Iraq too. In eastern Turkey, Ergdogan’s NATO legions use ISIS as an excuse for bookend genocide, a cleansing of Kurds that might rival the Armenian Christian genocide (1915-1917).

195876_5_Kurdish angel of death

All the while, American strategic amateurs argue for a “no-fly” zone in contested areas south of Turkey. Creating a no-fly zone is the kind of operational vacuity we have come to expect from American politicians and generals. Such a stratagem would foil Kurdish efforts to flank ISIS and allow the Erdogan jihad, arms, and oil rackets to flourish. A no-fly zone is a dangerous ploy designed to provoke Russia, not protect Muslim “moderates.”

Putin, Lavrov, and the Russians have it right this time; Turkish and Erdogan family subterfuges are lethal liabilities, not assets.

Washington and European allies have been redrawing the map in Eastern Europe, North Africa, South Asia, and the Mideast since the end of WWII. The time has come to put Kurdistan on the map too. Kurdistan is a unique and exemplary case of reformed or enlightened Islam; indeed, a nation that could serve as a model for the Muslim world.  If base rights are a consideration, Kurdistan would be an infinitely more dependable ally than Turkey or any corrupt tribal autocracy in Arabia. America has a little in common with desert dictators — and fewer genuine friends there either. Indeed, at the moment America is allied with the worst of Islam.

Create New Alliances

NATO, like the European Union, has become a parody of itself. Absent a threat like the Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact, Brussels has taken to justifying itself by meddling in East Europe and resuscitating a Cold War with the Kremlin. Indeed, having divided Yugoslavia, NATO now expands to the new Russian border with reckless abandon; in fact, fanning anti-Russian flames now with neo-Nazi cohorts in former Yugoslavia, Georgia, and Ukraine.

NATO support for the Muslims of one-time Yugoslavia is of a piece with support for Islamic troublemakers in Chechnya and China too. Throughout, we are led to believe that jihad Uighurs and caliphate Chechens are freedom fighters. Beslan, Boston, Paris, and now San Bernardino put the lie to any notion that Islamists are “victims” (or heroes). Indeed, the Boston Marathon bombing might have been prevented had Washington a better relationship with Moscow.

Truth is, America has more in common with Russia and China these days than we do with any number of traditional European Quislings. Indeed, it seems that Europe and America can’t take yes for an answer.

The Cold War ideological or philosophical argument has been won. Moscow and Beijing have succumbed to market capitalism. Islamism, in stark contrast, is now a menace to Russian, Chinese, and American secular polities alike. The logic of a cooperative or unified approach to a common enemy seems self-evident. America, China, and Russia, at least on issues like toxic Islam, is a match made in Mecca.

The late great contest with Marxist Russia and China was indeed a revolution without guns. Now the parties to that epic Cold War struggle may have to join forces to suppress a theo-fascist movement that, like its Nazi predecessor, will not be defeated without guns. The West is at war again, albeit in slow motion. Withal, questions of war are not rhetorical. Saying that you are not at war does not make it so. Once declared, by one party or the other, the only relevant question about war is who wins and who loses. Losers do not make the future.

If America and Europe were as committed to Judeo/Christian secular values as Islamists are committed to a sick religious culture, then the war against pernicious Islam would have been won decades ago. Or as Jack Kennedy once put it: “Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

Trump Footnote

Donald Trump made several policy suggestions on the Islamism issue, one on immigration, the other on Mideast oil. On the former, he suggests a hiatus on Muslim immigration until America develops a plan or reliable programs to vet migrants. On Arab oil, he suggests, given the lives and treasure spent liberating Kuwait and Iraqi oil fields, America should have held those resources in trust and use oil revenues to finance the war against jihad, however long that takes. The problem with both Trump ideas is that they come perilously close to common sense, an American instinct in short supply these days.

 

Islamic Reformation and Ayaan Hirsi Ali

January 2, 2016

Islamic Reformation and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Dan Miller’s Blog, January 2, 2016

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

In Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali describes her execrable life as a devout Muslim girl in Somalia, Kenya and Saudi Arabia. She explains why she became an Infidel after experiencing freedom in the Netherlands. In Heretic, she seeks a reformation of Islam, with a focus on women’s rights but including tolerance and freedom of thought and speech for all. That will not happen soon, even though there are other current and former Muslims who want it and others who claim to want it. 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

From the first page of Heretic:

On ______, a group of ______ heavily armed, black-clad men burst into a ______ in ______, opening fire and killing a total of ______ people. The attackers were filmed shouting “Allahu akbar!”

Speaking at a press conference, President ______ said: “We condemn this criminal act by extremists. Their attempt to justify their violent acts in the name of a religion of peace will not, however, succeed. We also condemn with equal force those who would use this atrocity as a pretext for Islamophobic hate crimes.”

. . . .

Let me make my point in the simplest possible terms: Islam is not a religion of peace. For expressing the idea that Islamic violence is rooted not in social, economic, or political conditions— or even in theological error— but rather in the foundational texts of Islam itself, I have been denounced as a bigot and an “Islamophobe.” I have been silenced, shunned, and shamed. In effect, I have been deemed to be a heretic, not just by Muslims— for whom I am already an apostate— but by some Western liberals as well, whose multicultural sensibilities are offended by such “insensitive” pronouncements. [Emphasis added.]

_______________________

Heretic explores differences between political Islam and Islam as a religion. Hirsi Ali tells of some horrors of Islam as currently practiced in Islamic states, officially pursuant to Sharia law but also unofficially and with little or no intervention by those states to prevent or ameliorate it. Here is an example of the latter type of political Islam:

Political Islam is rooted in and, I think, inseparable from, religious Islam as commanded by the Qu’ran, the Hadith and Sharia law. An article titled The Lure of Fantasy Islam disparages hopeful reformers such as Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a self-described “devout Muslim,” as promoting “fantasy Islam” by obscuring the nature of Islam as it has developed over the centuries and as it now is.

Dr. Jasser advocates the separation of mosque and state. He

is the Founder and President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) and is the author of A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith (Simon & Schuster, June 2012). On March 20, 2012, Dr. Jasser was appointed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) where he currently serves as a Commissioner.

That’s very good; but how can a “devout Muslim” call for the separation of mosque and state? He also appears to pretend that Islam today is something it is not: a peaceful, tolerant religion. Obama and organizations He supports do the same. He and they do not seek Islamic reformation but instead oppose it. Obama apparently believes that Islam is fine as it is. He is not stupid and must know what Islam is now and has long been.

Hirsi Ali does not pretend that today’s Islam is what it is not: she recognizes today’s Islam as a violent, intolerant and otherwise evil religion that seeks civilizational domination. She is the executive producer of, and appeared in, this Clarion Project Honor Diaries Video as well as others:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbTATkLntBU

For producing the Honor Diaries videos, Hirsi Ali is deemed an “Islamophobe.” Although the suffix “phobia” in “Islamophobia” still invokes the notion of irrationality, that seems to have disappeared in current usage. Now, Islamophobia “(or anti-Muslim sentiment) is the prejudice against, hatred towards, or fear of the religion of Islam or Muslims” — regardless of the rationality of such prejudice, hatred or fear.

Along with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Azeezah Kanji — the featured speaker in the above video — has been very active in disparaging Honor Diaries. Like CAIR, she has ties to the Obama White House and was named a “Champion of Change” by the White House in 2011. What changes in Islam does Ms. Kanji champion? None, apparently, of those intrinsic to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEpMfYDUahA

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the CAIR, condemned Ayaan Hirsi Ali as “one of the worst of the worst of the Islam haters in America, not only in America but worldwide.”

Please see also my article titled Islam: Hate, Honor, Women’s Rights and Congress. Obama’s “Champion for Change” would most likely agree with the proponents of House Resolution 569 that “Islamophobia” is a hate crime.

What can we do to promote an Islamic reformation?

To a great extent, it’s up to the Muslims. However, Hirsi Ali suggests the following in Heretic:

There is probably no realistic chance that Muslims in countries such as Pakistan will agree to dispense with sharia. However, we in the West must insist that Muslims living in our societies abide by our rule of law. We must demand that Muslim citizens abjure sharia practices and punishments that conflict with fundamental human rights and Western legal codes. Moreover, under no circumstances should Western countries allow Muslims to form self-governing enclaves in which women and other supposedly second-class citizens can be treated in ways that belong in the seventh century. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

It is no longer plausible to argue that organizations such as Boko Haram— or, for that matter, Islamic State— have nothing to do with Islam. It is no longer credible to define “extremism” as some disembodied threat, meting out death without any ideological foundation, a problem to be dealt with by purely military methods, preferably drone strikes. We need to tackle the root problem of the violence that is plaguing our world today, and that must be the doctrine of Islam itself. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

[The]  phenomenon of Christophobia (as opposed to the far more widely discussed “Islamophobia”) receives remarkably little coverage in the Western media. Part of this reticence may be due to fear of provoking additional violence. But part is clearly a result of the very effective efforts by lobbying groups such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Over the past decade, these and similar groups have been remarkably successful in persuading journalists and editors in the West to think of each and every example of perceived anti-Muslim discrimination as an expression of a deep-rooted Islamophobia. [Emphasis added.]

What does Islam need to reform?

Islam . . . . needs a Voltaire. But I have come to believe it is in dire need of a John Locke as well. It was, after all, Locke who gave us the notion of a “natural right” to the fundamentals of “life, liberty, and property.” But less well known is Locke’s powerful case for religious toleration. And religious toleration, however long it took to be established in practice, is one of the greatest achievements of the Western world.

. . . .

Most Americans, and indeed most Europeans, would much rather ignore the fundamental conflict between Islam and their own worldview. This is partly because they generally assume that “religion,” however defined, is a force for good and that any set of religious beliefs should be considered acceptable in a tolerant society. . . . [Emphasis added.]

But that does not mean we should be blind to the potential consequences of accommodating beliefs that are openly hostile to Western laws, traditions, and values. For it is not simply a religion we have to deal with. It is a political religion many of whose fundamental tenets are irreconcilably inimical to our way of life. We need to insist that it is not we in the West who must accommodate ourselves to Muslim sensitivities; it is Muslims who must accommodate themselves to Western liberal ideals. [Emphasis added.]

Unfortunately, not everyone gets this.

In the fall of 2014, Bill Maher, host of the HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher, held a discussion about Islam that featured the best-selling author Sam Harris, the actor Ben Affleck, and the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Harris and Maher raised the question of whether or not Western liberals were abandoning their principles by not confronting Islam about its treatment of women, promotion of jihad, and sharia-based punishments of stoning and death to apostates. To Affleck, this smacked of Islamophobia and he responded with an outburst of moralistic indignation. To applause from the audience, he heatedly accused Harris and Maher of being “gross” and “racist” and saying things no different from “saying ‘you’re a shifty Jew.’ ” Siding with Affleck, Kristof interjected that brave Muslims were risking their lives to promote human rights in the Muslim world. [Emphasis added.]

After the show, during a discussion in the greenroom, Sam Harris asked both Ben Affleck and Nick Kristof, “What do you think would happen if we had burned a copy of the Qur’an on tonight’s show?” Sam then answered his own question, “There would be riots in scores of countries. Embassies would fall. In response to our mistreating a book, millions of Muslims would take to the streets, and we would spend the rest of our lives fending off credible threats of murder. But when IS crucifies people, buries children alive, and rapes and tortures women by the thousands— all in the name of Islam— the response is a few small demonstrations in Europe and a hashtag [# NotInOurName].” [Emphasis added.]

Islam is apartheid and should be recognized as such.

Too often, when it comes to women’s rights (and human rights more generally) in the Muslim world, leading thinkers and opinion makers have, at best, gone dark. [Emphasis added.]

I cannot help contrasting this silence with the campaign to end apartheid, which united whites and blacks alike all over the world beginning in the 1960s. When the West finally stood up to the horrors of South African apartheid, it did so across a broad front. The campaign against apartheid reached down into classrooms and even sports stadiums; churches and synagogues stood united against it across the religious spectrum. South African sports teams were shunned, economic sanctions were imposed, and intense international pressure was brought to bear on the country to change its social and political system. American university students erected shantytowns on their campuses to symbolize their solidarity with those black South Africans confined to a life of degradation and impoverishment inside townships. [Emphasis added,]

Today, with radical Islam, we have a new and even more violent system of apartheid, where people are targeted not for their skin color but for their gender, their sexual orientation, their religion, or, among Muslims, the form of their personal faith. [Emphasis added.]

. . . . As I have repeatedly said, the connection between violence and Islam is too clear to be ignored. We do no favors to Muslims when we shut our eyes to this link, when we excuse rather than reflect. We need to ask: Is the concept of holy war compatible with our ideal of religious toleration? Should it be blasphemy— punishable by death— to question the applicability of certain seventh-century doctrines to our own era? Why, when I have made these arguments, have I received so little support and so much opprobrium from the very people in the West who call themselves feminists, who call themselves liberals? [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

A Unique Role for the West

Whenever I make the case for reform in the Muslim world, someone invariably says: “That is not our project— it is for Muslims only. We should stay out of it.” But I am not talking about the kind of military intervention that has got the West into so much trouble over the years. For years, we have spent trillions on waging wars against “terror” and “extremism” that would have been much better spent protecting Muslim dissidents and giving them the necessary platforms and resources to counter that vast network of Islamic centers, madrassas, and mosques which has been largely responsible for spreading the most noxious forms of Islamic fundamentalism. For years, we have treated the people financing that vast network— the Saudis, the Qataris, and the now repentant Emiratis— as our allies. In the midst of all our efforts at policing, surveillance, and even military action, we in the West have not bothered to develop an effective counternarrative because from the outset we have denied that Islamic extremism is in any way related to Islam. We persist in focusing on the violence and not on the ideas that give rise to it. [Emphasis added.]

Are you listening, President Obama? Not at all likely.

Why the Tide Is Turning

Three factors are combining today to enable real religious reform:

• The impact of new information technology in creating an unprecedented communication network across the Muslim world.

• The fundamental inability of Islamists to deliver when they come to power and the impact of Western norms on Muslim immigrants are creating a new and growing constituency for a Muslim Reformation.

• The emergence of a political constituency for religious reform emerging in key Middle Eastern states.

Together, I believe these three things will ultimately turn the tide against the Islamists, whose goal is, after all, a return to the time of the Prophet— a venture as foredoomed to failure as all attempts to reverse the direction of time’s arrow.

. . . .

In November 2014, an Egyptian doctor coined an Arabic hashtag that translates as “why we reject implementing sharia”; it was used five thousand times in the space of twenty-four hours, mostly by Saudis and Egyptians. In language that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, a young Moroccan named Brother Rachid last year called out President Obama on YouTube for claiming that Islamic State was “not Islamic.”[Emphasis added.]

Here is the referenced video: Please listen. It’s powerful and compelling, albeit “Islamophobic.”

. . . .

I agree with Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize– winning Pakistani schoolgirl whom the Taliban tried to kill:

The extremists are afraid of books and pens. The power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women. The power of the voice of women frightens them. That is why they are blasting schools every day— because they were and they are afraid of change, afraid of the equality that we will bring to our society. They think that God is a tiny, little conservative being who would send girls to the hell just because of going to school.

Here, surely, is the authentic voice of a Muslim Reformation.

Conclusions

Islamic reformation will take a long time. Until there is an Islamic reformation, those who cry “Islamophobe!” — a made-up word intended to box people to keep them “politically correct” — will have won. So will those who despise our freedoms and want to “fundamentally transform” America.

Until we, and our “leaders,” stop damning “Islamophobes” and helping such organizations as CAIR, there will be no significant reformation. If and when we and our “leaders” also begin to take the other steps Hirsi Ali suggests, there may eventually be a reformation that will benefit us as well as Muslims.

 

It is time for Muslims to begin a deep self-examination

December 31, 2015

It is time for Muslims to begin a deep self-examination, Washington Post, Yasmine Bahrani, December 30, 2015

(Few Muslims speak favorably about an Islamic Reformation and many speak unfavorably about it. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in Heretic, urges that there be a reformation and points to the voices for and against. I just finished Heretic and plan to write a review. — DM)

In the wake of the Paris bloodbath, the attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and Bamako, Mali, and murders elsewhere before and since, people desperately want to understand the root cause of all this violence. That’s true not only in the West, where many blame Islam itself. It’s true in the Middle East, too, where we are struggling to come to grips with the carnage and the region’s role in it.

Many of the usual suspects were singled out in the reaction here to the most recent attacks. Various Arab and Muslim writers blame Iran and Israel; others point to the West’s policies in the Middle East and the Muslim world. Of course, some media voices repeat the well-worn view that we Arabs are the victims of hidden conspiracies. But more self-critical voices have arisen as well.

Though their influence might still be minimal, a few journalists are speaking out. In the Arabic newspaper Al-Mada, Iraqi writer Adnan Hussein offered a suggestion: We must overhaul the educational system. In a piece published just two days after the Paris attacks on Nov. 13, he said that from elementary school through university, our young people are taught — sometimes with a stick — that Islam is not only great, but also better than other religions, and that those who are not like us belong in hell. What has emerged, he wrote, is a “savage faith that stirs up decapitation, spills blood, instigates plunder and rape.” As for the real Islam, he lamented: “It has no place in our lives, or in the best of cases, it has a barely audible voice that almost nobody hears.”

On the same day, celebrated Lebanese writer and editor of the Al-Hayat newspaper Ghassan Charbel wrote that to rescue itself, the Arab and Muslim world must participate in the struggle against Islamism. Charbel called for shutting down platforms of hate and said the Middle East needs to undertake “a deep re-examination” of its society. He called for “universities, schools, mosques, TV and electronic sites to reclaim their platforms from that handful” of destructive ideologues who control them. “What threatens the Arab and Islamic world today,” he said, “is no less dangerous than the threat that Nazism posed to Europe.”

Such writers are asking Middle Easterners to examine their institutions and society more broadly for their share of the responsibility for the violence. But this view is not limited to elite journalists; it is one that many of my own students at American University in Dubai share.

Recently, I asked my students what they thought about commentary that appeared in the Guardian newspaper in November suggesting that France and Britain had failed their immigrants through clumsy — and ultimately alienating — efforts to promote multiculturalism (in Britain’s case) and assimilation (in France’s). In this way, author Kenan Malik said, French and British policies gave Islamism an entrée into isolated Muslim communities.

Nearly all my students rejected the premise, arguing that immigrants were responsible for their own actions whether they were isolated or not. Of course, many of these students come from families who fled countries terrorized by Muslim extremists and have no sympathy for them. But they don’t blame Western multiculturalism for the rise of home-grown Islamism. “That’s silly,” shrugged one Syrian girl.

Why, then, I asked them, don’t Muslims march in the streets of London, Paris and New York loudly condemning the Islamic State? Because, they answered, mainstream Muslims are too scared that the extremists would come after them. The class brainstormed about what could be done instead. Most concluded that they, too, would be afraid to call attention to themselves.

When I asked another class what responsibility we have to explain to others that terrorists don’t represent all Muslims, the response was mixed. One Saudi student said it was not at all our responsibility. “If a (Western) person wants to learn about Islam, he should Google it,” she said. Another, an Egyptian, was angered by the question: “If I hear one more time that Muslims have not done enough to condemn terrorists. . . .” Many Muslims are weary of such criticism.

But others emphasize the work that needs to be done, whether it is in coming to terms with their own cultures’ problems, as Hussein and Charbel urge, or through advancing the acculturation of Muslim communities into Western societies. The Jordanian journalist Mousa Barhouma has written about such challenges for years, advising Muslims living in the West to integrate. If you are a Muslim who moves to Holland, he told me, “Don’t act shocked if they serve beer at the local restaurants.”

In a recent piece in Al-Hayat, Barhouma wondered whether anyone was struck by the fact that the carnage at Paris’s Bataclan theater took place on Boulevard Voltaire. Perhaps they were, and perhaps it was in response to this assault against not only life but also against reason itself, that more voices demanding responsibility are beginning to be heard.

 

Founding Fathers’ Criticism of ‘Musselmen’ Sinks Suhail Khan’s Islam-Is-American P.R.

December 30, 2015

Founding Fathers’ Criticism of ‘Musselmen’ Sinks Suhail Khan’s Islam-Is-American P.R., BreitbartJordan Schachtel, December 29, 2015

Suhail_Khan

Suhail Khan, an official in the George W. Bush administration, is engaged in a media campaign that claims Islam is ingrained in the founding of the American republic.

In his Foreign Policy piece, titled “Islam is All-American,” (which would later be re-published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette with the title “One Nation Under Allah“) Mr. Khan begins by insisting that American Muslims are under attack–a plea to perpetual victimization that seeks to immediately quash any legitimate debate.

Khan targets GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, insisting he has called for the “registration of all Muslim-Americans,” which is not true. As Breitbart News has shown, this was a media-created suggestion.

Khan claims that “5 million to 7 million” Muslims are living in the United States, without offering any evidence.

He tells us to look to former President George W. Bush for a more “unifying message,” and claims that “poll after poll” demonstrates support for “anti-Muslim sentiment,” without citing one such poll.

What Khan does here, whether purposely or not, is conflate criticism of Islam’s doctrines with “anti-Muslim sentiment” aimed at Muslim individuals. Unsurprisingly, he never addresses whether criticism of Islam is legitimate.

In many Islamic countries, majorities or large percentages of the population favor the death penalty for “apostates,” which includes people who criticize Islam, according to Pew Research. These countries say that the Koranic Sharia law demands they live by such methods.

Across the globe, critics of Islam are slaughtered (see Charlie Hebdo, Bangladesh secular bloggers, Saudi atheists) simply for discussing the “religion of peace.” The “lucky ones,” such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Salman Rushdie, and others, have mere fatwas placed on their head.

While many in the Islamic world react violently to criticism of their religion, others, such as Suhail Khan, seek to delegitimize these free voices as ones that make Muslims “feel singled out.” He insists that our enemy “makes no distinction about our race, ethnicity, or religion – attacking us only because we are Americans.”

Americans turn on their televisions and see hundreds-of-thousands of Muslim men fighting on behalf of Islam, engaged in a wholesale murder campaign against religious and ethnic minorities. The free-thinking American people are gravely concerned to see these deeply-religious Islamic groups, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, targeting people simply because they’re Jews. Or whether it’s Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, and the Islamic State hunting down Christians simply because they’re Christians.

Yet, Mr. Khan tells us that the conflict is our fault. This supposed “anti-Muslim sentiment” trend in America needs to stop, he demands. How dare we start “casting suspicion on an entire faith group,” he suggests.

And the founders of the republic supported Islam, he claims, because they made clear their views on religious freedom, and their assertion that a belief in a particular religion should not prevent a man from holding office.

But in reality, the founders had plenty to say about Islam’s doctrines.

John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1814, stating that Islam’s Muhammad was a “military fanatic” who “denies that laws were made for him” and “arrogates everything to himself by force of arms.”

Ben Franklin, another founding father, said of Islam:

“Nor can the Plundering of Infidels be in that sacred Book [the Quran] forbidden, since it is well known from it, that God has given the World, and all that it contains, to his faithful Mussulmen (Muslims), who are to enjoy it of Right as fast as they conquer it.”

Thomas Jefferson, who would later become engaged in a war against the Barbary pirates, observed that peace was not possible with Islamic zealots, stating in a letter to Secretary of State John Jay:

“The ambassador answered us that [the right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

Our 6th president, John Quincy Adams, wrote that the Islamic Prophet Muhammad “spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth.”

“He declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind …The essence of his doctrine was violence and lust: to exalt the brutal over the spiritual part of human nature … As the essential principle of his faith is the subjugation of others by the sword; it is only by force, that his false doctrines can be dispelled, and his power annihilated.”

None of those critiques make their way into Khan’s piece, as he concludes, incoherently: “In this time of real danger, let’s not allow our zeal to defend our ideals destroy them.”