Latin American leaders and President Trump must make a courageous decision now. The world will hopefully follow.
**********************************
The Venezuelan opposition scored a major victory on Sunday July 16th, as millions of Venezuelans rejected the regime of Nicolas Maduro in a popular referendum.
This referendum, also called a “popular consultation” in legal terms, was organized by the Venezuelan opposition, approved by the legislative power (which is in the hands of the opposition), and disapproved by the Electoral National Council or CNE (which is totally being ran as a puppet of the Maduro government).
This public consultation was initiated by the opposition after three months of popular protests against the regime of Nicolas Maduro that left 100 people dead, including a woman killed on the day of the vote by government thugs, also known as “colectivos.” The idea of the referendum is embedded in Article 71 of the Venezuelan constitution of 1999 approved and supported by Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez. According to this constitutional article, “issues of special national importance can be subjected to popular referendum either by initiative of the President, by a vote by the majority of the members of the National Assembly, or by a petition of a minimum of 10% of those who are registered to vote.
Likewise, the referendum finds ground in article 350 of the constitution that allows civil disobedience or non-recognition of a regime or authority whose behavior contradicts the values and principles of the Republic, fails to guarantee democratic governance, or undermines the rights of Venezuelan citizens.
The referendum was also conducted in reaction to Maduro’s call for a new constituent assembly that would reform the current constitution. Maduro’s constitutional reform has been widely interpreted as an attempt to consolidate the de-facto dictatorship he has imposed on the Venezuelan people. In fact, it is an anti-constitutional constitution.
Thus, the referendum sought to reject Maduro’s “constitutional” initiative by asking the question, “Do you reject the constitutional assembly without the previous approval of the people of Venezuela?” The consultation also poses the question, “are the Venezuelan Armed Forces to obey the 1999 Constitution and abide by the decisions of the National Assembly?”
This second question is the result of the fact that throughout the years the Chavez and Maduro regimes have co-opted the armed forces by purging certain officers and promoting others in order to subordinate the armed forces to the political project of the regime. Thus, the Armed Forces have ceased to be subjected to the constitution and the laws of the state and instead they have become tools of the regime’s prerogatives and arbitrary will.
The last question asked of the citizens is if they approve that the renewal of the public powers and the restoration of free elections is to be followed by a government of national unity.
The third question, in fact, asked the people if they are interested in new free elections that could lead to a transition from the current authoritarian rule.
The referendum was not approved by the CNE. Therefore, this body has claimed the result of the consultation is not binding. On the other hand, the opposition claims the results should be binding because the National Assembly has the constitutional authority to convene it.
Regardless of whether the Maduro government recognizes this referendum or not, or whether its results are legally binding or not, in a country where the government itself is illegitimate, the referendum reflects this very illegitimacy.
Interestingly enough, when the CNE decided not to provide its stamp of approval to the referendum, it also remained powerless to conduct any type of fraud. Elections organized and approved by the government have always been suspected of being fraudulent. In fact, in the last parliamentary election, where the opposition won the majority, Maduro attempted to manipulate the results. However, such move was halted by the Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino, most probably afraid of a popular uprising.
Now after Sunday’s victory, the National Assembly feels it has a mandate to name a new transitional government, new ministers, new electoral authorities, and new Supreme Court justices. (The “zero hour”)
This “zero hour” also means that the population is encouraged to resist and strike until the Maduro regime collapses.
But the “zero hour” also applies to us, the international community, and to the United States in particular.
This time the overwhelming defeat suffered by the Maduro government reflects the real will of the people and most importantly, their courage to express rejection of the Venezuelan dictatorship. The world must see this and react with the moral integrity that the situation requires. Respect the results of this referendum and support the opposition.
Latin American countries and the entire international community, including the United States, must recognize the results of the popular consultation as legitimate. Latin American presidents that supported OAS action on Venezuela must be the first ones to do it.
The world needs to proceed to apply sanctions, particularly mega sanctions. President Donald Trump must set the pace. Freeze the assets of CITGO, the American branch of the Venezuelan oil-giant PDVSA, and the main lobbying force in the U.S. on behalf of this dictatorship that is also a narco-state with ties to terrorists. The political and military leadership of Venezuela must be isolated, sanctioned, and their assets must be frozen. Dissidence must be encouraged among those who are part of the government. There have been already some acts of desertion within Chavista ranks, and this popular consultation may bring more defectors.
Latin American leaders and President Trump must make a courageous decision now. The world will hopefully follow.
The establishment media and the political elites are reeling, and we have every reason to believe they will never recover.
Considering the massive coalition Donald Trump and his movement had to fight against, it may truly be said that the people — the people alone — have spoken more clearly than they have at any time in recent memory.
Against the always shrill, often hysterical opposition of the establishment media and the leaders of both the Democratic and the Republican parties, the American people have made it clear: they’re tired of politics as usual. It is time indeed to drain the swamp.
Trump’s victory shows that the hegemony of the globalists, the internationalists who have held sway in Europe and North America for decades, is decisively weakening. The Brexit vote in the UK and both the Trump candidacy and his victory show that huge numbers of people on both sides of the Atlantic are fed up with lies, hypocrisy, and self-serving corruption. The free world is fed up with the suicidal policies of the political elites, and their bought-and-paid-for mouthpieces among what are supposed to be objective news outlets.
Not that those elites are going quietly into the night. The upset win, they say, is proof of America’s deep-seated “racism” and “xenophobia.” It’s a sign that Americans are misogynistic, unwilling to countenance a female president and all too forgiving of Trump’s tasteless locker room bluster.
This is the line they took throughout the campaign. Few who opposed Trump — either among the Democrats or among the neo-mugwump NeverTrump faction — ever grasped what made him popular in the first place. They still (still!) have no idea what enabled this man, who had never been a politician and had all sorts of negatives regarding his personal behavior, to defeat sixteen Republican challengers, including several movement conservatives, and then to defeat the Clinton machine.
Trump’s success isn’t a sign that America is “racist.” It’s a sign that significant numbers of Americans want the United States to survive as a free nation. Among all those who excoriated Trump for his proposed temporary moratorium on Muslim immigration never addressed why he actually made the suggestion: not because of their lazy charge of “xenophobia,” but because of the real, rational concern that jihad terrorists will enter the United States among peaceful refugees.
The Islamic State has vowed to embed jihadis among the refugees; refugees were among the jihadis who murdered 130 people in Paris in November 2015.
No one who opposed Trump’s proposal ever offered an alternative way to keep jihadis out of the country. (Of course, the problem of those who learn jihad inside the U.S. is also acute, and must be addressed). Some glibly opined that Trump should ban “Islamists,” not Muslims as a whole, yet never suggested a reliable way to distinguish “Islamists” from ordinary Muslims. Indeed, the Islamic State has instructed its operatives to appear secular — to avoid ostentatious displays of Islamic piety that might arouse suspicions of “radicalization.”
Hillary Clinton promised that the refugees would be “vetted,” but in light of her refusal to acknowledge the Islamic doctrinal roots of Islamic jihad terrorism, it was unclear how she proposed to do this. How could U.S. officials vet for an ideology that they don’t admit exists? Tashfeen Malik, the Islamic jihadist who, along with her husband Syed Rizwan Farook, murdered fifteen people at a Christmas party in San Bernardino last December, showed how effective this “vetting” is: she had passed five separate background checks from five different U.S. agencies.
A majority of the American people saw through the same-old, same-old hollowness of Clinton’s proposals, and opted for a real choice, not an echo.
As Donald Trump begins his presidency, we may only hope that he continues his stinging critique of the political and media elites, and that he never surrenders to their inevitable attempts to regain power. They are the ones who have gotten us into this fix. It’s time for new faces with the courage and the will to do what it takes to get us out of it.
Yesterday afternoon, Muslim terrorists associated with al-Shabaab attacked a hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia, killing at least 35:
The assault, the latest in a series by the Islamist group targeting hotels and restaurants, began when a suicide bomber detonated a car laden with explosives outside the building.
Gunmen then stormed Mogadishu’s Naasa Hablood hotel and gunfire rang out for several hours, witnesses said, before the authorities declared the attack over.
The car-bomb blast came at about 4.30 pm on Saturday local time and produced a large column of smoke over the hotel, which is frequented by politicians.
A cabinet minister was among those murdered.
Gunmen fought their way inside, and a witness said they began shooting randomly at hotel guests.
Blood was splattered on the hotel floor. …
It is the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when extremists often step up attacks in this volatile country in the Horn of Africa.
Likewise, Christians launch terrorist attacks during Lent. Just kidding.
“They came shouting ‘Allahu Akbar!’ and fired bullets on every side,” said a hotel staffer who escaped through the back door.
Of course they did. They always do, to emphasize that their murders have nothing to do with Islam.
“They are devils who merely care for death and blood.”
“Devils” is a fair, well-considered characterization. I have nothing particular to say about this attack–one of many–except that I don’t think it should pass unnoticed. al-Shabaab is devoted to establishing sharia law in Somalia. Who knows, it might succeed. Certainly it won’t fail due to any intelligent action on the part of the Obama administration or other Western powers.
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Whether Islam will eventually be reformed is an open question. The topic is much discussed by Muslims, a few of whom favor reformation and more of whom oppose it. The issue is important for America, and indeed the free world in general. There is little that non-Muslims can do to assist a reformation beyond recognizing the substantial differences between moderate and radical (mainstream) Muslims, supporting the former and purging the latter. Please don’t conflate the cops with the killers.
Reformation of Islam
Here’s are comments by an American Muslim reformer, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser
In the following December 2015 video, the Fox News host misrepresented Donald Trump’s position as banning “all” Muslims, apparently permanently. Trump’s proposal was to ban Muslims until we can vet them adequately. Dr. Jasser agreed that Muslims advocating Islamist political ideology should be banned and that we should temporarily ban them alluntil we can distinguish moderate Muslims from “radical” Muslims. His suggestions for vetting Muslims included cessation of reliance on the Council on American – Islamic Relations (CAIR), et al, which are on the side of the Islamists.
An article by Raymond Ibrahim delves into Muslim perceptions of moderate vs. “radical” (i.e., mainstream) Islam and posts these views, as articulated by Dr. Ahmed Ibrahim Khadr, an Islamist. Dr. Khadr stated,
“Islamic researchers are agreed that what the West and its followers call ‘moderate Islam’ and ‘moderate Muslims’ is simply a slur against Islam and Muslims, a distortion of Islam, a rift among Muslims, a spark to ignite war among them. They also see that the division of Islam into ‘moderate Islam’ and ‘radical Islam’ has no basis in Islam — neither in its doctrines and rulings, nor in its understandings or reality. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
Among the major distinctions (translated verbatim) made in Khadr’s article are:
Radicals want the caliphate to return; moderates reject the caliphate.
Radicals want to apply Sharia (Islamic law); moderates reject the application of Sharia.
Radicals reject the idea of renewal and reform, seeing it as a way to conform Islam to Western culture; moderates accept it.
Radicals accept the duty of waging jihad in the path of Allah; moderates reject it.
Radicals reject any criticism whatsoever of Islam; moderates welcome it on the basis of freedom of speech.
Radicals accept those laws that punish whoever insults or leaves the religion [apostates]; moderates recoil from these laws.
Radicals respond to any insult against Islam or the prophet Muhammad — peace and blessing upon him — with great violence and anger; moderates respond calmly and peacefully on the basis of freedom of expression.
Radicals respect and revere every deed and every word of the prophet — peace be upon him — in the hadith; moderates do not.
Radicals oppose democracy; moderates accept it.
Radicals see the people of the book [Jews and Christians] as dhimmis[barely tolerated subjects]; moderates oppose this [view].
Radicals reject the idea that non-Muslim minorities should have equality or authority over Muslims; moderates accept it.
Radicals reject the idea that men and women are equal; moderates accept it, according to Western views.
Radicals oppose the idea of religious freedom and apostasy from Islam; moderates agree to it.
Radicals desire to see Islam reign supreme; moderates oppose this.
Radicals place the Koran over the constitution; moderates reject this [assumption].
Radicals reject the idea of religious equality because Allah’s true religion is Islam; moderates accept it.
Radicals embrace the wearing of hijabs and niqabs; moderates reject it.
Radicals accept killing young girls who commit adultery or otherwise besmirch their family’s honor; moderates reject this [response].
Radicals reject the status of women today and think that the status of women today should be like the status of women in the time of the prophet; moderates oppose that women should be as in the time of the prophet.
Radicals vehemently reject that women should have the freedom to choose partners; moderates accept that she can choose a boyfriend without marriage.
Radicals agree to clitorectomies; moderates reject them.
Radicals reject the so-called war on terror and see it as a war on Islam; moderates accept it.
Radicals support jihadi groups; moderates reject them.
Radicals reject the terms “Islamic terrorism” or “Islamic fascism”; moderates accept them.
Radicals reject universal human rights, including the right to be homosexual; moderates accept them.
Radicals reject the idea of allying with the West; moderates support it.
Radicals oppose secularism; moderates support it. [Emphasis added.]
Dr. Jasser’s views on what American Islam should be are remarkably similar to the perceptions of moderate Islam set forth by Dr. Khadr, albeit with contempt as “a slur against Islam and Muslims, a distortion of Islam, a rift among Muslims, a spark to ignite war among them.” Mr. Ibrahim concludes his article by suggesting that “the West may need to rethink one of its main means of countering radical Islam: moderate Muslims and moderate Islam.” I agree. What is being done now is actually furthering “radical” Islam.
Here’s an address to the Canadian Parliament by a moderate Muslim journalist. Please watch the whole thing, because it sets forth quite well the differences between Islamists who want to overpower us and moderate Muslims who support freedom and want to eliminate Islamism.
Islamic apologists routinely claim that violent Qur’an verses have no validity beyond Muhammad’s time, but this story illustrates that this is not the mainstream view in Islam. The persecution of Mouhanad Khorchide also shows the uphill battle that genuine Muslim reformers face: branded as heretics and/or apostates, they’re often shunned (or worse) by the very community that needs their ideas the most. [Emphasis added.]
The author, Robert Spencer, quotes a May 23rd article by Susanne Schröter in a German periodical:
When the theologian Mouhanad Khorchide, who teaches at the University of Münster, published “Islam Is Compassion” in 2012, he received a variety of diverse reactions. Many non-Muslims celebrated the work as the revelation of a humanistic Islam: an Islam that no one needs to fear. This feeling arose in part because the author created a picture of God that is not “interested in the labels of Muslim or Christian or Jewish, believer or nonbeliever.”
Korchide threw out the idea that Koran verses that appear violent or hostile toward women or non-Muslims may be valid for all eternity. He wanted them to be viewed as the words of a bygone era.
It seemed that the professor, with the swoop of his pen, managed to brush aside all those reservations that made people wonder whether Islam really “belonged to Germany,” as former President Christian Wulff said famously in a 2010. One might even have thought that Muslims would offer Khorchide a pat on the back.
On the website for DITIB, Germany’s Turkish Islamic union and the country’s largest Muslim organization, one can read that Khorchide’s statements were a “rejection of the teachings of classical Islam” and an “insult to Muslim identity.” For this reason, the professor was removed from his post at the university.
In November 2014, while testifying before the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, I raised the issue of Islamic clerics using mosque sermons to attack the foundational principles of Western civilization and liberal secular democracy.
The Senate Committee session referred to is the one presented in the video referenced above.
Liberal Senator Grant Mitchell was outraged by my testimony that at most Canadian mosques, the Friday congregation includes a ritual prayer asking, “Allah to give victory to Muslims over the ‘Kufaar’ (non-Muslims).” In a heated exchange with me, the senator suggested I wasn’t telling the truth, implying I was motivated by Islamophobia. Sadly, Sen. Mitchell is not alone in such views.
But neither is there any let-up in the attacks on Canadian values emanating from many mosque pulpits and Islamic conferences hosted by radical Islamist groups.
For example, in a sermon on Friday, May 6, delivered at a mosque in Edmonton, an imam invoked the memory of Prophet Muhammad to whip up hatred against Israel. He declared peace accords with Israel are “useless garbage” and vowed that Jerusalem will be conquered “through blood.”
In February, the same cleric predicted Islam would soon conquer Rome, “the heart of the Christian state.”
The Edmonton mosque diatribe was not isolated.
On May 13, just north of Toronto, an Islamic society hosted a celebration of Iranian mass murderer, Ayatollah Khomeini. The poster promoting the event described Khomeini as a, “Liberator and Reformer of the Masses.”
On Saturday, the Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, banned in some countries, hosted a conference to discuss the re-establishment of a global Islamic caliphate.
The first speaker was Brother Mostafa, of Arabic roots. Mostafa started by calling nationalism and sectarian conflict the main reasons for division in the Ummah (Islamic nation). He reminded Muslims that they are obligated to implement Allah’s demands that fulfill the Islamic State. It is “not permissible for us to choose, ” he said. He cited the verse: [Emphasis added]
“It is not for a believing man or a believing woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decided a matter, that they should [thereafter] have any choice about their affair. And whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger has certainly strayed into clear error.” — Surat-Al-Ahzab (33), verse 36. ]Emphasis added.]
. . . .
As the event started late, Naeema [a woman in the audience] began a conversation. We talked about our origins and how long we had been in Canada. She said she had been here 40 years, so I asked about the disconnect between enjoying 40 years of democracy, yet trying to end it. I mentioned a book published by Hizb-ut-Tahrir:
“Democracy is Infidelity: its use, application and promotion are prohibited.”
“الديمقراطية نظام كفر، يحرم أخذها أو تطبيقها أو الدعوة إليها”
Naeema said she was not qualified to debate the topic, but that democracy had done nothing good for people, so she and other believers would follow the rule of Allah. [Emphasis added]
The meeting participants are comparable to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood – Hamas affiliated organization which, along with similar groups, provides Obama and His “fighting violent extremism” cohorts their marching orders on fighting, not Islamist jihad or Islamisation , but “Islamophobia.”
Conclusions
America would fare better in fighting “violent extremism” if the principal enemy were named: it is political Islam — Islamism. Presently, naming it is forbidden and those engaged in “fighting” it — supposedly on our behalf — are Islamists dedicated to the Islamisation of America.
Suppose that, instead of relying on CAIR, et al, as representative of “peaceful” Islam, our government rejected CAIR and its Islamist colleagues favored by Obama and instead supported and relied upon Dr. Jasser’s moderate group, American Islamic Forum for Democracy.
A devout Muslim, Dr. Jasser founded AIFD in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the United States as an effort to provide an American Muslim voice advocating for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state. Dr. Jasser is a first generation American Muslim whose parents fled the oppressive Baath regime of Syria in the mid-1960’s for American freedom. He is leading the fight to shake the hold that the Muslim Brotherhood and their network of American Islamist organizations and mosques seek to exert on organized Islam in America. [Emphasis added.]
Perhaps, if our next president is neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders, we will do that. If we don’t, the Islamists will continue to win, the Islamisation of America will continue and American principles will go down the toilet. We cannot permit that to happen.
We only have the right to live on as free men, so long as we show ourselves worthy of the privileges we enjoy. We must remember that the republic can only be kept pure by the individual purity of its members, and that if it once becomes thoroughly corrupt it will surely cease to exist.
. . . .
All American citizens whether born here or elsewhere, whether of one creed or another, stand on the same footing; we welcome every honest immigrant, no matter from what country he comes, provided only that he leaves behind him his former nationality and remains neither Celt nor Saxon, neither Frenchman nor German, but becomes an American, desirous of fulfilling in good faith the duties of American citizenship. [Emphasis added]
When we thus rule ourselves we have the responsibilities of sovereigns not of subjects. We must never exercise our rights either wickedly or thoughtlessly; we can continue to preserve them in but one possible way – by making the proper use of them.
It has been my observation (and to a substantial extent that of the Canadian journalist and moderate Muslim in a video embedded above) that the principal loyalty of many Islamists is not geographical or to a state. Rather, it is to their version of Islam, be it Shiite, Sunni or some variation thereof. For example, Hezbollah members fight, not to help Lebanon or Syria, but to support the Iranian version of Shiite Islam — an apocalyptic vision in which the hidden iman will return and bring the world to an end. It is reasonable to assume that the principal loyalty of mainstream Muslims (Islamists) in America is, and will continue to be, to Islam, not to America.
American origins and views are very different and perhaps uniquely so.
This land was made, not for Islamists but for immigrants who leave behind their former nationalities and remain “neither Celt nor Saxon, neither Frenchman nor German, but become an American, desirous of fulfilling in good faith the duties of American citizenship.” How many of America’s current crop of immigrants do that?
We have had little of this thus far. How much do we want? It’s pretty much up to us.
♦ In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI said what no Pope had ever dared to say — that there is a link between violence and Islam. Ten years later, Pope Francis never calls those responsible for anti-Christian violence by name and never mentions the word “Islam.”
♦ Pope Francis does not even try to re-evangelize or reconquer Europe. He seems deeply to believe that the future of Christianity is in the Philippines, in Brazil and in Africa. Probably for the same reason, the Pope is spending less time and effort in denouncing the terrible fate of Christians in the Middle East.
♦ “Multiculturalism” in Europe is the mosque standing on the ruins of the church. It is not the synthesis requested by Pope Francis. It is the road to becoming extinct.
♦ Asking Europe to be “multicultural” while it experiences a dramatic de-Christianization is extremely risky. In Germany, a new report found that “Germany has become demographically a multi-religious country.” In the UK, a major inquiry recently declared that “Britain is no longer a Christian country.” In France, Islam is also overtaking Christianity as the dominant religion.
To scroll the list of Pope Francis’s apostolic trips — Brazil, South Korea, Albania, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Cuba, United States, Mexico, Kenya, Uganda, Philippines — one could say that Europe is not exactly at the top of his agenda.
The two previous pontiffs both fought for the cradle of Christendom. Pope John Paul II took on Communism by toppling the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. Benedict XVI took on “the dictatorship of relativism” (the belief that truth is in the eye of the beholder) and bet everything on re-evangelizing the continent by traveling through it (he visited Spain three times) and in speeches such as the magnificent ones at Regensburg, where he spoke bluntly about the threat of Islam, and the German Bundestag, where he warned the gathered politicians against declining religiosity and “sacrificing their own ideals for the sake of power.”
Pope Francis, on the contrary, simply ignores Europe, as if he already considers it lost. This former Argentinian Cardinal, a representative of the “global South” Christianity, made spectacular trips to the migrants’ islands of Lampedusa (Italy) and Lesbos (Greece), but never to the heart of the old continent. Pope Francis has also made it difficult for Anglicans to enter into the Catholic Church, by downplaying the dialogue with them.
Most importantly, however, in his important May 6 speech for the Charlemagne Prize, the Pope, in front of European leaders, castigated Europe on migrants and asked its leaders to be more generous with them. He next introduced something revolutionary into the debate: “The identity of Europe is, and always has been, a multicultural identity,” he said. This idea is questionable.
Multiculturalism is a specific policy formulated in the 1970s. and it was absent from the political vocabulary of Schuman and Adenauer, two of Europe’s founding fathers. Now it has been invoked by the Pope, who spoke of the need for a new synthesis. What is this all about?
Today, Christianity appears marginal and irrelevant in Europe. The religion faces an Islamic demographic and ideological challenge, while the post-Auschwitz remnants of Jewish communities are fleeing from the new anti-Semitism. Under these conditions, a synthesis between the old continent and Islam would be a surrender of Europe’s claim to the future.
“Multiculturalism” is the mosque standing on the ruins of the church. It is not the synthesis requested by the Pope. It is the road to becoming extinct.
Asking Europe to be “multicultural” while it is experiencing a dramatic de-Christianization is also extremely risky. In Germany, a new report just found that “Germany has become demographically a multi-religious country.” In the UK, a major inquiry recently declared that “Britain is no longer a Christian country.” In France, Islam is also overtaking Christianity as the dominant religion. You find the same trend everywhere, from Protestant Scandinavia to Catholic Belgium. That is why Pope Benedict was convinced that Europe needed to “re-evangelized.” Pope Francis does not even try to re-evangelize or reconquer Europe. Instead, he seems deeply to believe that the future of Christianity is in the Philippines, Brazil and Africa.
Probably for the same reason, the Pope is spending less time denouncing the terrible fate of Christians in the Middle East. Sandro Magister, Italy’s most important Vatican observer, sheds light on the Pope’s silences:
“He remained silent on the hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram. He remained silent on the young Sudanese mother Meriam, sentenced to death solely for being Christian and finally liberated by the intervention of others. He remains silent on the Pakistani mother Asia Bibi, who has been on death row for five years, because she too is an ‘infidel’, and [He] does not even reply to the two heartrending letters she has written to him this year, before and after the reconfirmation of the sentence.”
In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI, in his Regensburg lecture, said what no Pope had ever dared to say — that there is a link between violence and Islam. Ten years later, Pope Francis never calls those responsible for anti-Christian violence by name, and never mentions the word “Islam.” Pope Francis also recently recognized the “State of Palestine,” before it even exists — a symbolic and unprecedented first. The Pope also might abandon the Church’s long tradition of a “just war,” one regarded as morally or theologically justifiable. Pope Francis always speaks of the “Europe of peoples,” but never of the “Europe of Nations.” He advocates welcoming migrants and washes their feet, while he ignores that these uncontrolled demographic waves are transforming Europe, bit by bit, into an Islamic state.
In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI (left) said what no Pope had ever dared to say — that there is a link between violence and Islam. Ten years later, Pope Francis (right) never calls those responsible for anti-Christian violence by name and never mentions the word “Islam.” (Image source: Benedict: Flickr/Catholic Church of England | Francis: Wikimedia Commons/korea.net)
That is the meaning of Pope Francis’ trips to the islands of Lampedusa, Italy, and Lesbos, Greece — both symbols of a dramatic geographical and civilizational boundary. That is also the meaning of the Pope’s speech for the Charlemagne Prize.
Has the head of Christianity given up on Europe as a Christian place?
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Ten Islamic words and concepts — well understood by Islamic jihadists and others who strive to impose Sharia law on us — define and articulate the Islamic quest for world domination. However, few charged with “countering violent extremism” understand their meanings and none are permitted to consider such “islamophobic” Islamic concepts when doing their jobs. Thank you, Obama, CAIR and related Muslim Brotherhood – linked Quislings.
Imagine that while learning to “counter violent extremism” on behalf of the Obama-CAIR collective, you encounter a ravenous lion intent upon eating you for dinner. You have been assured, repeatedly, that it, like adherents to “the religion of peace and tolerance,” is only a falsely-maligned, tame and starving kitten in need of food and that you must act accordingly. Don’t succumb to catophobia! What would you do? Become dinner? Run away? Shoot the lion?
A non-fiction article by Matthew Bracken, author of three novels about traitors, foreign and domestic, was recently published by Gates of Viena. The article focuses on these Islamic words and the concepts they embody: dawah, dhimmi, hijra, jizya, kafir, shaheed, shariah, takfir, taqiyya and ummah.
Bracken wrote,
[I]f you are a national security professional, senior military officer or political leader involved in any aspect of the “Global War On Terror,” AKA “Countering Violent Extremism,” these are ten words that should already be a part of your working vocabulary. If you can’t readily discuss their meaning, significance, and relationships, then you are worse than a fool, you are a disgrace to your office and a danger to your country.
He’s right. Obama, Kerry and their many followers are, indeed, dangers to our country as well as to Western Civilization in general. Rather than learn about Islam, they pretend that it is what they have been told, falsely, that it is. Those who understand Islam and want to prevent what it seeks for America from happening are disparaged as “Islamophobes.” Parallels could perhaps be drawn to “idealists” drawn to Communism as a peaceful and tolerant ideology, without bothering to learn about “Uncle Joe” Stalin and what he was doing. Uncle Joe knew what he was doing and thought it was good. Representatives of the fifty-seven Islamist Member nations of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) know the meanings of the words highlighted by Bracken and the purpose of Islam: to make Islam dominant throughout the world. They consider that good and act accordingly.
Mr. Bracken’s important Arabic words are used in context in the following quotations from his article.
[I]f you are an Army general or Navy admiral who, right here and now, without looking at your smart phone, cannot discuss how a kafir becomes a dhimmi, and what a dhimmi’s rights and options (if any) are under shariah, then you are as ignorant of your job as an European-theater Army general circa 1942 who did not know a panzer from a pancake, or a schutzstaffel from a schnitzel. A person as ignorant as you should be kept away from any responsibility for protecting our nation. You are incompetent, and you are a fool.
If you don’t know how to determine when a Muslim suicide bomber is a shaheed and when he is a terrorist according to the shariah, then you are as dangerous to our national safety as a North Atlantic ship captain who believes that icebergs are a fairy tale concocted by conspiracy theorists. Full speed ahead, Captain Smith!
If you don’t know takfir from taqiyya, and can’t discuss the meaning and importance of both, you are as useless as a WW2 intelligence officer who didn’t know the Kriegsmarine from the Luftwaffe, (but who thought that one of them was a private flying club, based on conversations that he overheard among his ever-helpful German cleaning staff).
If you cannot, right now, intelligently discuss the global ummah and its relationship to the OIC in the context of the GWOT, then you should be working for the Department of Parks and Recreation, and not the Department of Homeland Security. If you don’t know what the OIC refers to in this context, put on a dunce cap, and go stand in the corner. And if you don’t know whether your office is in the Dar al Islam or the Dar al Harb, please jump out of an upper-story window, and when you hit the sidewalk, ask any immigrant who is engaged in hijra. He’ll know the answer, even if you do not.
If you don’t know how dawah relates to jihad when faithful Muslims are engaged in long-term hijra, you should turn in your official credentials and take early retirement. You are as oblivious as a WW2 U.S. Army general who thought that the Geheime Staatspolizei were German motorcycle policemen much like our American state troopers, because a helpful German passer-by told him so.
If you don’t know what the three options are for a kafir who violates the shariah when living in the dar al Islam, then please get out of the national security business. If you don’t know why a dhimmi would care about jizya, please retire, and hand your duties over to someone who has the natural curiosity and personal integrity to conduct his own study of our actual enemies and their actual strategies. But in the meantime, you must immediately stop lapping up the false narrative being spoon-fed to you by hostile foreign agents, domestic traitors, useful idiots, and cowards who know better—but who won’t make waves while their pensions are beckoning.
If your job is national security, and you didn’t score at least an eighty on the ten-word quiz, then you have obviously swallowed the big lie that we can safely delegate the understanding of our Islamist enemies to the WW2 equivalent of “moderate Nazis.” Sounds insane, doesn’t it? But under President Obama, this is indeed our national policy for fighting the GWOT: allow a range of Muslim Brotherhood front groups to conduct America’s narrowly limited analysis of so-called “radicalized Islam,” and thereafter guide our policies toward Islam and Muslims in general.
Here is an important example straight from current events. Please tell us, oh national security professional, whom has the United Nations delegated the critical task of selecting and “screening” the Muslim “refugees” who are currently arriving in the USA at the rate of thousands per month? Any guesses? It is the same organization that the Obama administration has also optimistically granted the authority to choose our new Muslim “refugee” immigrants. If you don’t know the answer, please get out of the national security business.
So who is it? It’s the fifty-seven-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, headquartered in Saudi Arabia, which I referenced above. The mission of the OIC is to promote the spread of Islam across the globe until there is no more dar al harb, and all of the kafirs have either been converted to Islam, killed, or forced into submission as dhimmis. If you didn’t know, dhimmis are formally and legally subjugated second-class citizens who must pay the special jizya tax as the price of their being allowed to live under shariah in the ummah.
But this special offer is only extended to Christians and Jews: all others must choose between conversion to Islam, and the sword. That is, if their Muslim conquerors grant them the option of conversion. According to the Shariah, the defeated kafirs may also be killed or enslaved, if either of these two outcomes would be considered more beneficial to the ummah, based on local conditions and needs. (Of course, the captured women and girls may be taken as sex-slaves.) Mohammed did all of the above, and he commanded that these practices be continued in perpetuity, and they are.
The charter of the OIC puts Islamic shariah law ahead of secular law. This means, for example, that the official position of the OIC is that Muslims who leave the faith should be killed, and that any faithful Muslim who kills an apostate ex-Muslim has done no sin, but instead should be thanked and congratulated for the deed. It’s the same with adulterers: they should die, and killing an adulterer is no crime.
Yes, that really is their position, and they really do believe it, and much more than that. The OIC is made up of fifty-seven Muslim nations, united by a common belief in the supremacy of Islam, and their mutual obligation to conduct both dawah and jihad until the Dar al Islam covers the globe, and Allah’s eternal and immutable shariah has supplanted godless democracy and all manmade laws. This dawah includes the practice of using taqiyya when making arrangements or having negotiations with as-yet unsubmitted kafirs in the dar al harb.
So it’s no wonder that ninety-nine percent of the “refugees” being “screened” by the OIC and transported into the USA are Muslim, even though the Christians and other non-Muslims (who until recently made up over ten percent of the populations of Syria and Iraq) are suffering a brutal genocide and holocaust at the hands of Islamic State kidnappers, mass-rapists and mass-executioners.
. . . .
Let me offer you another simple test that you may apply to your own national security work space and mission. If you have been ordered to purge the ten listed Arabic words (and others) from your official GWOT lexicon, and instead to hand over the task of analyzing “Islamic radicalism” to alleged “moderate Muslims,” then you are being played for a fool by our nation’s most implacable and devious enemies, both foreign and domestic.
. . . .
Today, we are literally outsourcing our intelligence analysis in the GWOT to the OIC and various Muslim Brotherhood front groups. Simply do a search for “Holy Land Foundation, Hamas, CAIR, and FBI” to begin your overdue education. Is it any wonder that the official “Countering Violent Extremism” narrative holds that there is utterly no connection between Islamic terrorism and Islam? That the Islamic State, which quotes chapter and verse of the Koran as justification for its every decision, is not Islamic? That Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Caliph of ISIS, who holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from the Islamic University of Baghdad, knows less about Islam than President Obama and his American-trained national security staff? [Emphasis added.]
In 2016, ignorance of the reality of the Islamist threat is no longer an excuse. Many resources are readily available if you are willing to look unblinkingly at the light of truth. I would suggest the online video lecturesgiven by Stephen Coughlin and Dr. Bill Warner as starting points. Those who need or desire to read an exhaustively researched (over a thousand footnotes) academic treatise on the present Islamist threat should carefully study Coughlin’s “Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad.”
After 9-11, Mr. Coughlin was an acclaimed subject matter expert and frequent high-level lecturer at the CIA, the FBI, and the Pentagon, until 2008 when he was made persona-non-grata on federal property as an unwelcome “Islamophobe.” And who made the determination of Mr. Coughlin’s “Islamophobia?” The same Muslim Brotherhood front groups that our intelligence agencies now rely upon for their understanding of “violent extremism,” which, of course, we are assured has absolutely nothing to do with Islam.
We know this must be true, because President Obama has told us so. Unless, of course, he is practicing taqiyya on behalf of the ummah. Taqiyya is a bedrock principle of Islamic shariah, a ready tool for Muslims to use when they are dealing with kafirs. And not only radical Muslims, but ordinary, everyday, “moderate” Muslims. According to the shariah, it’s not a sin when a Muslim lies to a kafir in order to promote Islam. In that case, taqiyya is just a very clever form of dawah, helping to prepare the kafirs for the final Islamic jihad victory.
Conclusions
Obama, et al, complicit with CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups, require “our” Countering Violent Terrorism forces to assist, rather than fight against, Islamic terrorism. That’s perverse and some (I am one of them) consider it treason.
As I observed here, Islamic terrorists torture and murder — quite legitimately under Islamic doctrine — thousands of people. That’s deplorable. What Islamists and their modern-day Quislings have done even without chopping off heads, and continue to do to European nations, is even worse. They have moved in and have done a great job of Islamising entire nations. With the help of Allah, Obama and His band of Quislings, that’s what they are doing and hope to do more of to America.
“Our betters” lie to us, repeatedly.
Hillary Clinton lies even when it’s inevitable that her lies will be discovered. Many of her supporters are attracted, or at best not repelled, by her lying. At least she is consistent: the truth simply is not in her.
Islamists and their fellow travelers who are taking over Europe must be prevented from doing the same to our “land of the free and home of the brave.”
Obama and His followers seek to have us forget all about that as well as those who fought and died to create and then to preserve America. Shall we, must we, become dhimmis and yield to the OIC, Iran, CAIR and Obama’s other Islamist and Muslim Brotherhood friends by electing Obama’s soul mate, Hillary Clinton, as our next Commander in Chief?
Not on my watch, not on Trump’s watch and, I hope, not on your watch. Isn’t it time to make up your mind? The Muslims in the following video have already decided to support Hillary and have contributed funds accordingly.
According to this source, Ms. Clinton managed to collect “half-a-million dollars, making it one of the top five private fundraisers Clinton has had in this country.” She did not get Muslim money because of her charming personality.
Many of the Pakistanis at the event were pleased with Clinton’s vocal support of the Muslim religion.
Aisha Zahid said, “Talking about Muslims and favoring Muslims, so I really appreciate her whatever effort she is making against Islamaphobia, so I really think she needs to be the next President of the United States.”
If you haven’t already watched the following video, please do so. If you have, please watch it again. It makes more sense about “Republican principles” and why we need to honor them today than any other video I have watched.
If we want to continue to affirm these Republican principles, we need to keep a country in which to do it. America still is, and must remain, our country.
Although America remains our country, she is slipping away. How long do we have to stop and reverse the process of Islamisation which is, thus far slowly but inexorably, leading to America becoming part of the ummah? We the people must save her from Islamists, dhimmis and their fellow travelers.
♦ Iran’s sophisticated employment of asymmetrical tactics such as “soft war” — which relies on the other side’s wishes, conscious or not, to be taken in — is apparently part of Tehran’s strategy to level the playing field against the U.S., despite America’s overwhelming military superiority.
♦ Iran is now being treated by most of the world as a normal nation-state rather than the revolutionary, terror-supporting, totalitarian regime that in reality it is.
Iran is waging a “soft war” offensive — media, social media, charm — against the United States. Tehran believes it is scoring significant victories in this war, and it clearly has, as can be seen by the so-called “Iran deal” — technically no “deal” at all: one side, Iran, got everything.
Iran’s sophisticated employment of asymmetrical tactics, such as “soft war” — which relies on the other side’s wishes, conscious or not, to be taken in — is apparently part of Tehran’s strategy to level the playing field against the U.S., despite America’s overwhelming military superiority.
Tehran seems to think, with justification, that it has successfully exploited the Obama administration’s uncorseted desire for better bilateral relations into granting Iran concessions that are not part of the original Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA).
One of these concessions is granting Iran access to the U.S financial system; U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spent last week trawling through Europe, imploring bankers to do business with Iran, despite that minor detail that America will not.
Another concession is the U.S. offer to buy Iran’s heavy water, a product of its planned plutonium bomb-making reactor in Arak.
Still another concession is the U.S. administration’s failure to increase sanctions on Iran for repeatedly launching potentially nuclear-capable ballistic missiles — in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2231.
The Iranian regime may well attribute these American concessions to its employment of the “jang-e-narm” (soft war) tactic of “smile diplomacy”: the media-friendly demeanor of President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
The Iranian regime may well attribute recent American concessions to its employment of the soft war tactic of “smile diplomacy”: the media-friendly demeanor of President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Pictured: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during talks in Vienna, Austria, July 14, 2014. (Image source: U.S. State Department)
Not surprisingly, those are the same tactics that Iran is accusing Washington of using against Iran. Iran has been alleging that the U.S. has been waging soft war attacks against it, via Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, supposedly — according to Iran — to develop sympathies within Iran’s elites for Western culture, policies, and ideals. Presumably the next concession is that the U.S. be quiet and let Iran keep expanding as far as it likes. The other day, Iran threatened to block the transport of oil by closing the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.
This is the problem: Iran is now being treated by most of the world as a normal nation-state rather than the revolutionary, terror-supporting, totalitarian regime that in reality it is.
Iran also is using this narrative of an American-led soft war against Iran to institute tighter controls on Iranian citizens. Iran recently dispatched Basij paramilitary teams to elementary schools to instill revolutionary Islamic values in the students. Iran has also established “Atlas,” a new, government-controlled press agency modeled upon Qatar’s Al-Jazeera network. Iranian authorities most likely hope that this news service will counteract any untoward thoughts of liberalization that the “Arab Spring” might have conjured up to question the regime’s “stability.”[1]Iran has also stepped up internet censorship as well as efforts by the government’s plainclothes police to sever contacts between Western NGO personnel and Iran’s civil society activists.
Evidence of how seriously Iran views the potential of America’s supposed soft war tactics was its establishing a National Data Center to filter messages coming into Iran from Western media, in addition to Tehran’s sponsorship of its first National Forum on Soft War, in the autumn of 2015.
Meanwhile, pursuing both its hard war and soft war offensives, Iran continues to trumpet its ability to produce new weapons systems, including novel and illegal ballistic missiles.
The regime also boasts about its acquisition of weapons from outside the country, such as Russia’s S-300 air defense system.
Not surprisingly, this soft war saber-rattling by Shi’ite Iran has been increasing the security concerns of its neighboring Sunni Arab States. These concerns, in turn, cause the Gulf countries and others to demand that their American ally demonstrate that it is serious about halting Iranian expansion in the region. Recent visits to the Sunni states by high-level American political leaders (President Obama), ranking diplomats (Secretary of State John Kerry), and senior military figures (Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dunford) have sought to allay these fears; it is still not clear with what.
Meanwhile, Iran’s aggressive involvement in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq is clearly creating the impression among Gulf states and others that regional leadership is passing from Sunni Saudi Arabia onto a toxic Shi’ite Iran.
While England Slept is the title of Winston Churchill’s 1938 book documenting the failure of England to counter Germany’s rearmament. Despite the gruesome price paid for ignoring Churchill’s warnings, postwar Europe has slumbered for decades while its cultural dysfunctions have nurtured the jihadist violence erupting across Europe. Last week’s attacks in Brussels, coming four months after the Paris attacks that killed 130, suggests there are more attacks to come. According to AP, 400-600 ISIS-trained terrorists are making their way to Europe.
Europe can’t say it wasn’t warned. In 2002 Oriana Fallaci published The Rage and the Pride, a passionate defense of Western civilization and an indictment of those who appease Islamic illiberalism. Ten years ago Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept gave first-hand reports of Europe’s feckless immigration policies that fostered and appeased Muslim radicalism and violence. A year later Claire Berlinski’s Menace in Europe and Melanie Phillips’ Londonistan sounded the same alarms. And there are the dystopian novels of Michel Houellebecq like Platform and last year’s Submission, which link Europe’s cultural and spiritual exhaustion to the rise of homegrown jihadism and Islamization.
An even more important prophet is Bat Ye’or, whose Eurabia (2005) documented “Europe’s evolution from a Judeo-Christian civilization, with important post-Enlightenment secular elements, into a post-Judeo-Christian civilization that is subservient to the ideology of jihad and the Islamic powers that propagate it.” The result is the dhimmi mentality of Europe’s elites, which manifests in word and deed Western inferiority to Islam, and guilt over alleged crimes against the Muslim world.
But a secularized Europe committed to multicultural fantasies and la dolce vita as the highest goods has dismissed these prophets as bigots and “Islamophobes” who distort the “religion of peace.” Yet after the collapse of the Ottoman caliphate in 1923––the “catastrophe” Osama bin Laden mentioned after 9/11–– the theorists of modern jihadism were forthright and plain in expressing the intolerant and triumphalist Islamic beliefs and jihadist imperative consistent with Ye’or’s analysis. Islam’s nature, Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna wrote, is “to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its laws on all nations, and extend its power to the entire planet.” Fellow Muslim Brother Sayyid Qutb concurred: “Islam has a right to remove all those obstacles which are in its path.” The Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the Iranian Revolution, agreed: “The great prophet of Islam carried in one hand the Koran and in the other a sword; the sword is for crushing the traitor and the Koran for guidance . . . Islam is a religion of blood for infidels but a religion of guidance for other people.”
Nor are these sentiments alien to traditional Islamic beliefs as codified in the Koran, Hadith, Muslim histories, and the biographies of Mohammed. As such, the jihadist imperative, despite anticolonial and nationalist rhetoric, was the foundational motivation for the military attacks on Israel in 1948, 1967, and 1973, and today it still drives the terror campaigns against Israel waged by Hamas, Hezbollah, and the PLO. Jihad in the name of Allah sparked the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the subsequent launching of the Iranian terrorist mother ship from which numerous jihadist organizations have continued to receive training and financial support. The Taliban who gave sanctuary to al Qaeda in Afghanistan are close students of jihad and shari’a law, executing transgressors in a soccer stadium paid for by the EU.
Nor has the West been spared. Jihad lay at the heart of al Qaeda’s serial attacks on the U.S. and its military in 1993 (first World Trade Center bombing), 1996 (Khobar Towers), 1998 (East African embassies), 2000 (U.S.S. Cole), and the spectacular carnage of September 11, 2001, as well as inspiring the terrorist murders in Madrid (2004), London (2005), Fort Hood (2013), Boston (2013), San Bernardino (2015), Paris (January and November, 2015), and now Brussels. And don’t forget the torture, rape, and murders perpetrated by ISIS, the latest and most successful example of modern jihadism inspired by traditional Islamic doctrine.
We know the terrorists’ Islamic bona fides because they continually tell us why they want to kill us, in speeches, internet videos, and writings filled with Koranic verses and precedents from the life of Mohammed. Yet despite this evidence, elites in Europe and the U.S. refuse to confront the religious origins of jihadism, settling for the stale environmental and psychological causes dear to the materialist mentality. Thus they continue to chant the “nothing to do with Islam” mantra, as our president did in response to the Brussels attack. “ISIL is not ‘Islamic,’” the president asserted. “No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim.” The first two clauses are patently false to Koranic commands and Islamic history, and the third is a non sequitur.
But the most powerful refutation of this common delusion is the scarcity of public protests by observant Muslims against the “extremists” who allegedly have “hijacked” their faith. After each jihadist atrocity there is typically more celebratory ululation and cries of “Allahu Akbar” in the Muslim world than marches against terrorism by heretical “extremists.” There are no “million Muslim marches,” no “not in our name movements,” no large scale Muslim attendance at memorial services for the victims. Yet perceived insults to Islam or Mohammed will produce violent mobs and lethal rampages.
Nor should this surprise us, when poll after poll registers significant pluralities and majorities of Muslims who approve of violence against infidels, and support the implementation of illiberal shari’a law. The latest evidence for such support from “moderate Muslims” comes from Brussels, where the planner of the Paris and Brussels attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was hiding in plain sight in the Muslim-dominant district of Molenbeek. Yet it still took four months for Belgian police to find him, and when they moved in for the arrest, they were met with rocks and bottles from residents who knew he was there and never tipped off the authorities.
Yet this is just one of many such enclaves in Europe. Ca n’Anglada in Barcelona, Marxloh and Neukölln in Germany, Seine-Saint-Denis and Clichy-sous-Bois in France, Malmo in Sweden, and many other towns and neighborhoods across Europe house disaffected and unassimilated Muslim immigrants whose faith predisposes them to contempt for the infidel and his secular laws, and justifies violence against the enemies of Islam. And despite the segregation, unemployment, crime, costly welfare transfers, and jihad-preaching mosques in these neighborhoods, Europe has accepted hundreds of thousands more Muslim immigrants in 2015 alone. Undoubtedly among them are untold numbers of ISIS-trained terrorists, many of them from the 5000 European Muslims who have gone to fight for ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
That is the reality everyone knows who wants to know. But too many in the West do not want to know, just as those enamored of Soviet communism did not want to know about the gulags and show-trials and engineered famines that killed at least 20 million. Like yesterday’s communist sympathizers, today the sleepwalkers of Europe are trapped in their ideological fever-dreams––fashionable self-loathing, guilt for colonialism and imperialism, sentimental one-worldism, and noble-savage multicultural fantasies. Worst of all, they are crippled by a refusal to appreciate and defend their political and cultural inheritance––prosperity, human rights, freedom, consensual government, and tolerance––created by their ancestors.
The character of Michel in Houellebecq’s Platform (2001) articulates the failure of civilizational nerve that has paved the way for metastasizing jihadist violence. Europe’s forbears, the jaded hedonist Michel muses, “believed in the superiority of their civilization,” and “invented dreams, progress, utopia, the future.” But their “civilizing mission,” their “innocent sense of their natural right to dominate the world and direct the path of history had disappeared.” All that is left is the dwindling cultural capital being squandered by their descendants, who have lost “those qualities of intelligence and determination,” and who exist only for the present and its material pleasures. Like like Michel, they are “decadent” and “given over entirely to selfishness.”
But at least Michel, unlike the sleepwalking European elite, recognizes that this is cultural suicide: “I was aware, however, that such a situation was barely tenable, that people like me were incapable of ensuring the survival of a society. Perhaps, more simply, we were unworthy of life.”
Strange. After Belgium there is a kind of silence. Those continuous Facebook posts blaming Israel and the Jews for everything have mostly gone underground, as journalists lie low, their opinions shattered into smithereens.
The War of Civilizations is well and truly here, right on our doorstep, for the entire world to see. These are not terror attacks. This is World War III in its incarnation of the enemy within: an asymmetric war that if not halted has the potential to go nuclear as Iran tests its long-range missiles with their leaders proclaiming “Death to the Jews” and “Death to Israel.”
Time has a way of blunting the past. Hitler was not a madman when he marshalled his people to carry out his plans. He had a carefully thought-out agenda which we later labelled the personification of evil. But before the Second World War politicians, intellectuals and decision-makers world-wide did not believe that he could possibly carry out his plans. No, appeasement was the solution until millions upon millions lay dead on the ground, burnt in ovens and even burnt and buried alive.
Then there were the genocides that the world ignored in Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia and Darfur. And the current war in Syria with millions dead, injured or displaced. Life is simply not valued.
Until now massive amounts of money have financed terror in all of its stages of growth.
Many madrassas are financed to promulgate a particular form of Wahhabism that teaches whole populations not to accommodate values that are not their own.
UNRWA finances millions who call themselves Palestinian refugees but are residents of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Gaza who were mostly born there. Most of this money is used for buying military materiel, training troops for warmongering and sending rockets into Israeli civilian areas, not for resettlement.
Part of the Arab minority in Israel are also financed by UNRWA with money used to brainwash whole generations in UN schools to hate Jews and Israel.
Then there is the Iranian nuclear industry now helped by a United States agreement with financing that is increasing the risk of nuclear war. There are millions being made in so many of these corrupt societies by those in control who stir up the pot, encouraging everyone except for their own children to die for their cause.
Now that the West is paying the price, the story is quite different. The West has the tools to stop this war in its tracks and allow the enemy to self-destruct. These tools are simply the control of money, the control of gold and the control of resources. Can large-scale murderous activities continue without money? Of course not. Even trading oil for black money can be stopped when the buyers are nations.
The average human being in most societies, we would like to hope, just wants to live out their life peacefully, not to be forced into a war situation. But either way, remove the money and most of the warmongering will self-destruct.
The world’s powers have obviously forgotten the mantra after World War Two and the Holocaust – “Never Again.” Or was it after the First World War – the Great War – The War to End All Wars?
This is the choice: Call it the War that it is, take action to cut the head off the snake by throttling its money and the resource supplies that it lives on. The alternative is that the West will be responsible for its own self-destruction.
Changing the mindset of its young resident enemy through re-education and tracking killers and their associates after events, as the West honestly believes is should do, is not the solution.
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