President Bush seeks to establish a Jihad stronghold "in the very heart of Europe"

Europe has forgotten its Christian past. It has also forgotten its long war of self-defense against Jihad.

The last two American presidents in particular have acted in apparent indifference toward the former and ignorance of the latter. One bombed Christians in defense of Muslim terrorists (he did nothing to defend America against their co-religionists), the other seeks to achieve by use of American influence what Muslims could not accomplish by force of arms (even with a complicit world media).

From the article misnamed "Kosovo Conundrum" -- the real puzzle is why two of the most powerful men on earth would sacrifice Europe to Jihad:

At the forthcoming summit, among other issues, Presidents Bush and Putin will face the problem of independence for the Serbian province Kosovo.

Kosovo is unfinished business, left over from the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia in the past decade and the legacy of fundamentally flawed American policies promulgated by the Clinton administration and then perpetuated by his successor. In terms and perspective of American long-term geostrategy and the ongoing struggle with radical Islam, it is indeed unfathomable how our foreign policy establishment has rationalized its strategy in the Balkans. Already, a body of impartial evidence strongly suggests an inexplicably steady policy of accommodation by the United States to Islamist demands. Essentially, at several key junctures on the road to peace and stability in the Balkans, America gave veto power to extreme Islamist leadership and its supporters worldwide.

The U.S. objective in Bosnia has been to establish a unitary state governed by Muslims, in effect abrogating the international treaty, the Dayton Accords. Together with the European Union, the United States has exerted consistent and relentless pressure to abolish or at least severely diminish the Serbian entity.

Currently in Kosovo, America is aggressively forcing the establishment of the second Muslim state in Europe. This is in contravention of international law and despite serious misgivings in Europe and resolute resistance by Russia.

An independent Kosovo would be a failed state, ethnically and religiously cleansed of Serbs and other minorities. During the past eight years of U.N. and NATO control of the province, the non-Albanian population experienced ethnic cleansings, destruction of a great number of homes and more than 100 churches and other medieval evidences of overwhelming Christian presence. Add to this a flourishing international drug and white slave trafficking, Kosovo is rather far from the democratic and multicultural model that the U.S. foreign policy establishment professes to support. Obviously these are not credentials for independence.

Equally serious is the undeniable rise of the puritanical strain of Wahabbi Islam and real potential for increased interacting between heroin trafficking and crime with terrorists in Kosovo, Southern Serbia, Bosnia and Northern Macedonia.

Where is the quid pro quo for rendering such significant aid to the Islamist agenda in the Balkans? Putting aside slogans and calculated deceptions, the U.S. geostrategic balance sheet in the Balkans shows perceived assets — such as, for example, the preservation of NATO by activating it in war in Bosnia and against Serbia, testing the functioning of international laws and treaties and institutions in the post-cold war world, standing up for expansion of democracy and multiculturalism, punishing Serbia and ascertaining Russian response, stopping wars and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, imposing its will on Europe and concerns of the European Union and establishing a beachhead in Albania.

Likely, the most significant asset was recently named by the chairman of the House foreign affairs committee, Rep. Tom Lantos. Advocating independence for Kosovo, he said "just a reminder to the predominantly Muslim-led governments in this world that here is yet another example that the United States leads the way for creation of a predominantly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe." Impartial examination of each of these strategic assets may not value them highly. They can in fact be liabilities for our long-term strategic interests and will undermine Europe.

President Bush persists in humiliating himself (and America) by submitting to the Religion of Ignorance and Bloodshed

As has been evidenced for quite a long time -- especially in the recent attempts to obliterate our national sovereignty and our Freedom of Speech -- America's political elites are neither humble nor public servants.

They, as a whole, are betraying their oaths to defend our Nation and Constitution.

And the President -- a leader in the effort to abolish our borders and Liberty -- persists in his suicidal fictions. Of course, it doesn't matter much to him in the short-term; he and his family will have the best security our money can buy.

In the long-run, however, when he discovers too late what the Religion of Equality has always had in store for his daughters -- a fate to which billions of innocents have succumbed over the last one and one-half millennia, a fate he had the power and responsibility to destroy -- perhaps then he will not so easily offer up utterly, contemptibly, inexplicably stupid and false misrepresentations of the doctrine of Mahomet.

The statements (highlighted below) from an authoritative scholar of Islam frighten especially Western Infidels since we have neither the moral fortitude nor intellectual honesty to admit that their truth and authority come from being an accurate representation of the will of Allah and the example of his false prophet.

Islam is not like any other "great world religion," despite the President's protestations to the contrary. It is a totalitarian, absolutist, merciless Ideology of Theft, Rape, and Slaughter. Until our political, media, and academic elites recognize and admit that, photos like the one above will be of happier times.

From Spencer, who points out that everyone told the truth about Islam until the middle of the last century, when lying apologists for Islam infected the West with their politically-correct nonsense about the death cult. And of course, the West was eager to believe it.

And that "self-appointed vanguard presuming to speak for Muslims"? That's President Bush.

When he spoke this week at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Islamic Center of Washington, President Bush said: "In the Middle East, we have seen instead the rise of a group of extremists who seek to use religion as a path to power and a means of domination. This self-appointed vanguard presumes to speak for Muslims. They do not."

There we are again. The Administration and the mainstream media (both Left and Right) take it as axiomatic that the jihad we see all over the world today represents a perversion of Islam, repudiated by the vast majority of Muslims. The American Muslim advocacy industry, chiefly the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which has recently been named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case, has quite successfully portrayed any exploration of the elements of Islam that give rise to and justify jihad violence and Islamic supremacism as a manifestation of "hatred," "bigotry," "Islamophobia." Those who do not accept the iron dogma that Islam contains nothing within it that can reasonably be used to justify terrorism are vilified and marginalized.

However, consider for a moment that if the iron dogma is false, the dogmatists are doing a grave disservice to the United States and even to peaceful Muslims. For if there is nothing in Islam that needs reforming, we cannot possibly offer assistance to Islamic reformers. And if Islam is a fundamentally peaceful belief-system, then we need not reevaluate our immigration policies vis-a-vis Muslims entering the U.S. from a national security standpoint, and we need not call American mosques to account for what they are teaching. If we're just dealing with a few crazies, we need not call upon Muslims in the U.S. and elsewhere to perform a searching and honest reevaluation of their beliefs, and decide whether they want to live in a state of conflict with the rest of the international community on an indefinite basis. I suspect that if the question were posed to Muslims worldwide, many would opt for otherwise universally accepted notions of human rights: the freedom of conscience, equality of dignity of women and men, equality of dignity of non-Muslims with Muslims. But we will never know, because Western leaders wouldn't dare pose the question on those terms. After all, they don't want to be seen as "hatemongers."

But there is another aspect to that hatemongering. And that is that the vision of Islam and jihad that the "hatemongers" present today is identical to the one that was universally accepted by academics, including Muslim ones, up until the age of political correctness and Said's Left-McCarthyite Orientalism swept propagandists like Carl Ernst, Omid Safi, Rashid Khalidi and others into our universities. If this is an unfair picture of Islam, motivated by hatred and powered by selection bias involving the ignoring of peaceful Muslim authorities, that is an exceedingly strange fact. But fact it is. Let us examine, to take just one example, the work of the great Islamic scholar Majid Khadduri, who died earlier this year at the age of 98.

Khadduri was an Iraqi and a scholar of Islamic law of international renown. I've lately been revisiting his book War and Peace in the Law of Islam, which was published in 1955 and remains one of the most lucid and illuminating works on the subject. Khadduri says this about jihad:

The state which is regarded as the instrument for universalizing a certain religion must perforce be an ever expanding state. The Islamic state, whose principal function was to put God's law into practice, sought to establish Islam as the dominant reigning ideology over the entire world. It refused to recognize the coexistence of non-Muslim communities, except perhaps as subordinate entities, because by its very nature a universal state tolerates the existence of no other state than itself. Although it was not a consciously formulated policy, Muhammad's early successors, after Islam became supreme in Arabia, were determined to embark on a ceaseless war of conquest in the name of Islam. The jihad was therefore employed as an instrument for both the universalization of religion and the establishment of an imperial world state. (P. 51)

And:

Thus the jihad may be regarded as Islam's instrument or carrying out its ultimate objective by turning all people into believers, if not in the prophethood of Muhammad (as in the case of the dhimmis), at least in the belief in God. The Prophet Muhammad is reported to have declared "some of my people will continue to fight victoriously for the sake of the truth until the last one of them will combat the anti-Christ." Until that moment is reached the jihad, in one form or another, will remain as a permanent obligation upon the entire Muslim community. It follows that the existence of a dar al-harb is ultimately outlawed under the Islamic jural order; that the dar al-Islam is permanently under jihad obligation until the dar al-harb is reduced to non-existence; and that any community which prefers to remain non-Islamic -- in the status of a tolerated religious community accepting certain disabilities -- must submit to Islamic rule and reside in the dar al-Islam or be bound as clients to the Muslim community. (Page 64)

Khadduri is, in Bush's words, explaining a doctrine that uses "religion as a path to power and a means of domination." Was Khadduri an "Islamophobe"? A "propangandist"? A practitioner of "selection bias"? A diabolical character misrepresenting the testimony of the texts? Did he ignore Islam's peacefulness and moderation? Those who level such charges at those who discuss the jihad ideology of Islamic supremacism today should kindly explain how it is that a scholar like Khadduri (and there are others like him, which I will discuss at another time) could have come to the same conclusions as the "venomous Orientalists" of the 1950s and the "Islamophobic propagandists" of today.

Fair-minded observers, however, should take Khadduri's scholarship as confirming the findings of those who say today that elements of Islam are giving rise to violence and terrorism today, and that that must be addressed by both Muslims and non-Muslims if there is ever going to be an end to it.

Not that Khadduri saw it coming, at least in 1955. In the same book, he wrote that the jihad ideology had largely fallen into desuetude:

The Muslim states, however, are quite aware that at the present it is not possible to revive the traditional religious approach to foreign affairs, nor is it in their interests to do so, as the circumstances permitting the association of religion in the relations among nations have radically changed....the jihad [has] become an obsolete weapon...Islam has at last accepted, after a long period of tension and friction with Christendom, its integration into a world order which, although originating in western Europe, now tends to encompass the entire world. (Pages 295-296)

Those assertions were much truer in 1955 than they are in 2007. Today we are dealing with a global movement that is doing all it can "to revive the traditional religious approach to foreign affairs," and who vehemently reject the idea that "the jihad [has] become an obsolete weapon." They are explicit opponents of the "world order" which originated in western Europe, and posit Sharia as an alternative to it. Note that Khadduri doesn't say that Islamic sects and schools have rejected jihad and reformed the doctrines that mandated Islamic supremacism. Rather, he says that these doctrines were set aside in practice. And now they are being taken up again, fifty years after Khadduri was ready to pronounce them dead -- and now many Western analysts, ignorant of history, think that only we introduce Western ideas into the Islamic world, they will be widely adopted.

In fact, those ideas have long been present, and today's global jihad represents a rejection of them, not a manifestation of ignorance of them. Hugh Fitzgerald has frequently pointed out here that Saudi oil money, massive Muslim immigration into the West, and the revolution in communications technology have made this reassertion possible. I would also add that the Khomeini revolution in Iran has encouraged jihadists in numerous ways, not least by demonstrating that they can capture a state and hold power.

But Bush's address is just the latest example of the fact that Western leaders are largely ignoring all this, and continuing to make policy based on fictions. Karen Hughes is reading John Esposito and Reza Aslan instead of Majid Khadduri and those who confirm his analysis. The negative consequences of this will only grow more obvious as time goes on.

What would the Sons of Liberty do?

115 elected representatives had the unabashed gall to publicly vote to violate The Bill of Rights.

In Colonial times, what was done with those government agents who opposed American Liberty?

From NRO:

The "Fairness Doctrine" Loses [Ramesh Ponnuru]

The House votes 309-115 for a Mike Pence amendment barring the FCC from imposing it.

Serbs defend themselves against Islamic terrorism, and Muslims get their land

From here:

GRACANICA, Serbia (Reuters) - Serbs in Kosovo on Thursday marked an epic medieval battle central to their claim to the province, testing the patience of the Albanian majority already angry at delays to its demand for independence.

How condescending! Of course, the Albanians deserve to have the land they've rightfully stolen!

NATO troops secured the route as U.N. police escorted several busloads of nationalists from the Serb stronghold of Mitrovica to a church service in the Serb monastery enclave of Gracanica, near the capital Pristina.

It's about time NATO "troops" did something other than rape African girls desperate for food. It's too bad no one let them know sooner about the rampant and systematic Muslim destruction of Christian churches there.

The West sees no prospect of returning Kosovo to Serb rule. Albanian leaders have threatened to declare independence unilaterally if the U.N. impasse drags on much longer.

Give us some, or we'll take it all! Of course, when Muslims don't get what they want by asking, they take it by force, echoing their prophet's habit.

June 28, or St Vitus' Day in the Serbian Orthodox calendar, marks the anniversary of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, when Orthodox Christian Serbs lost to the Muslim Ottoman Turks on fields north of Pristina.

The defeat ushered in 500 years of Ottoman rule and became central to a Serb belief in their close links to God.

You mean that Muslim imperialism didn't begin with the Jews in 1947 or President Bush after 9/11? This author must be an Islamophobe!

Late Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic exploited the battle six centuries later, riding the tiger of Serb nationalism into the wars that tore apart Yugoslavia and drew NATO bombs in 1999 to halt the killing of Kosovan Albanians.

Yes, defending one's people against a resurgence of historical Muslim terrorism is "exploiting" an ancient battle.

And of course -- lest we miss this subtle fact -- it is Serb nationalism, not Muslim terrorism, that devastated Yugoslavia!

Why is it that when Bill Clinton decided to bomb here, instead of destroying Muslim terrorists, he devasted Christians? Why is it that when he had opportunities to erase OBL, he chose not to do so? Why is it that after numerous jihadist attacks against America under his watch, he chose to do nothing at all?

No matter how hard President Bush repeats "Religion of Peace," no matter how many discussions with terrorist-supporting nations in which he engages (a person may destroy an enemy by making him his friend -- so much for "if they're not with us . . . ," -- but I don't think this is what President Lincoln had in mind), regardless of how many hard-earned American tax-payers dollars he squanders on terrorists trying to destroy Israel, Clinton's distinction as the First Muslim President appears safe (although, now he's got a new challenger on the horizon: Jimmy Carter).

Almost a million Albanians were temporarily driven out in a two-year Serb counter-insurgency war. NATO forced Serb forces to withdraw and Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since.

Again, the truth accidentally slips through Reuters' filters: "Serb counter-insurgency war."

And that's what you get when you have the UN in charge: Christians dead, their land stolen, and Muslims achieving their goals in establishing the tyranny of Allah over all mankind.

This year's anniversary falls amid deepening diplomatic stalemate over the Kosovo Albanian demand for independence.

Also known as "flagrant Muslim land grab jihad."

Serbian ally Russia has blocked the adoption of a U.N. Security Council resolution that would set Kosovo on the path to statehood, raising fears among NATO powers of Albanian unrest.

We wouldn't want Muslims upset! Isn't that what two-year-olds do, only without IEDs?

Kosovo's U.N. governor on Wednesday banned a self-styled 'volunteer guard' of Serb nationalists from attending the anniversary at the towering Gazimestan monument.

Anything with "-stan" at the end of it cannot be a good sign for Infidels. And that "volunteer guard," they wouldn't happen to be men tired of their people and their land being raped, slaughtered, and stolen, would they?

Kosovo Albanian hardliners had warned that the 'Guard of Tsar Lazar' would be "met with bullets."

A handful of Serbs in Gracanica wore t-shirts of the Tsar Lazar guard, calling for "war for the liberation of Serbian land".

The Congress of Serb Unity said it would pay respects "to the holy Kosovo warriors who fell defending Christian civilization and the whole of Europe from Islam."

Around 100,000 Serbs remain in Kosovo, outnumbered by 2 million Albanians, mostly Muslim but overwhelmingly secular.

Certainly, there's nothing to fear from these "overwhelmingly secular" Muslims (it is obvious these Serbs are not only stuck in the Dark Ages, they're racist too!).

That's why they're demanding land at the point of a gun. Whenever I'm denied the land I've rightfully invaded and occupied -- even after appropriately raping, butchering, and burning my way through it -- I often threaten gun violence.

And why is it that the Left want to deny Americans their right to bear arms, but Muslims get to brag about theirs?

It was at the Gazimestan monument in 1989 that Milosevic addressed hundreds of thousands of Serbs in a speech that foreshadowed the bloody collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Almost a decade later, after wars in Bosnia and Croatia, Milosevic launched a crackdown on separatist Kosovo guerrillas. Independent estimates put the civilian death toll at between 7,500 and 12,000, mostly Albanians.

"separatist," "guerillas," "Civilian." "mostly Albanians." All the euphemisms for Muslim terrorists. And that last phrase means partly Serb.

As unwittingly noted above, at whose feet does the responsibility for that blood fall? Allah's, of course.

Even the great Mark Steyn still makes the false "Islamist" distinction

Mark Steyn in a typically incisive commentary on Rushdie Rage (Muslims are in a Rush for him to Die) and the West's impotence in the face of it and every other expression of Islamic supremacism.

Though he cites one Muslim's Qur'anic justification for his bloodlust, he still doesn't quite get to the point of admitting that the problem is Islam.

Together with his use of "Islamist mob contract," it gives the impression that the jihadist is the aberration -- rather than the representative -- of the Religion of Peace (and that's a fatwa; it's not "Islamist," it is Islam).

Following is one important comment by Edo on Steyn's article. He is right, how could it all have been forgotten? Even more inexplicable now, how is it that six years since 9/11, only a few have rediscovered it?

Islamic cruel imperialism has been on the march for 1350 years.

The West knew this fact until recently, and our schools used to teach The Song of Roland, the history of the battles of Lepanto and Tours and about Charles Martel, and the fight against encroachment by Mohammedan armies up to the Gates of Vienna, where they were finally driven back by the combined forces of Europe under the Polish king Jan Sobieskie.

How has our past, and Islam's millenia-long depredations and brutal expansion, been so outrageously forgotten?

Mark Steyn:

A year or so after the Ayatollah Khomeini took out an Islamist mob contract on Salman Rushdie in 1989, the novelist appeared, after elaborate security arrangements, on a television arts show in London. His host was Melvyn Bragg, a longtime British telly grandee, and what was striking was how quickly the interview settled down into the usual cozy, literary chit-chat. Lord Bragg took Rushdie back to his earlier pre-fatwa work. "After your first book," drawled Bragg, "which was not particularly well-received."

That's supposed to be the worst a novelist has to endure. His book will be "not particularly well-received" – i.e., some twerp reviewers will be snotty about it in the New Yorker and the Guardian. In the cozy world of English letters, it came as a surprise to find that being "not particularly well-received" meant foreign governments putting a bounty on your head and killing your publishers and translators. Even then, the literary set had difficulty taking it literally. After news footage of British Muslims burning Rushdie's book in the streets of English cities, BBC arts bores sat around on talk-show sofas deploring the "symbolism" of this attack on "ideas."

There was nothing symbolic about it. They burned the book because they couldn't burn Rushdie himself. If his wife and kid had swung by, they'd have gladly burned them, just as the mob was happy to burn to death 37 Turks who'd made the mistake of being in the same hotel in Sivas as one of the novelist's translators. When British Muslims called for Rushdie to be killed, they meant it. From a mosque in Yorkshire, Mohammed Siddiqui wrote to the Independent to endorse the fatwa by citing Sura 5, verses 33-34, from the Quran:

"The punishment of those who wage war against God and His Apostle, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land, is execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land."

That last sanction apparently wasn't an option.

Britain got so many things wrong during the Rushdie affair, just as America got so many things wrong during the Iranian embassy siege 10 years earlier. But it's now 2007 – almost two decades after Iran claimed sovereignty over British subjects (Rushdie), almost three decades after they claimed sovereignty over American territory (the U.S. Embassy in Tehran). So what have we learned? I was with various British parliamentarians the other day, and we were talking about the scenes from Islamabad, Pakistan, where the usual death-to-the-Great-Satan chaps had burned an effigy of the queen to protest the knighthood she'd conferred on Rushdie.

I told my London friends that I had to hand it to Tony Blair's advisers: What easier way for the toothless old British lion, after the humiliations inflicted upon the Royal Navy sailors by their Iranian kidnappers, to show you're still a player than by knighting Salman Rushdie for his "services to literature"? Given that his principal service to literature has been to introduce the word "fatwa" to the English language, one assumed that some characteristically cynical British civil servant had waved the knighthood through as a relatively cheap way of flipping the finger to the mullahs.

But no. It seems Her Majesty's Government was taken entirely by surprise by the scenes of burning Union Jacks on the evening news.

Can that really be true? In a typically incompetent response, Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, issued one of those "obviously we're sorry if there's been a misunderstanding" statements in which she managed to imply that Rushdie had been honored as a representative of the Muslim community. He's not. He's an ex-Muslim. He's a representative of the Muslim community's willingness to kill you for trying to leave the Muslim community. But, locked into obsolescent multicultural identity-groupthink, Mrs. Beckett instinctively saw Rushdie as a member of a quaintly exotic minority rather than as a free-born individual.

This is where we came in two decades ago. We should have learned something by now. In the Muslim world, artistic criticism can be fatal. In 1992, the poet Sadiq Abd al-Karim Milalla also found that his work was "not particularly well-received": he was beheaded by the Saudis for suggesting Muhammad cooked up the Quran by himself. In 1998, the Algerian singer Lounès Matoub described himself as "ni Arabe ni musulman" (neither Arab nor Muslim) and shortly thereafter found himself neither alive nor well. These are not famous men. They don't stand around on Oscar night, congratulating themselves on their "courage" for speaking out against Bush-Rove fascism. But, if we can't do much about freedom of expression in Iran and Saudi Arabia, we could at least do our bit to stop Saudi-Iranian standards embedding themselves in the West.

So many of our problems with Iran today arise from not doing anything about our problems with Iran yesterday. Men like Ayatollah Khomeini despised pan-Arab nationalists like Nasser who attempted to impose a local variant of Marxism on the Muslim world. Khomeini figured: Why import the false ideologies of a failing civilization? Doesn't it make more sense to export Islamism to the dying West?

And, for a guy dismissed by most of us as crazy, Khomeini made a lot of sense. The Rushdie fatwa established the ground rules: The side that means it gets away with it. Mobs marched through Britain calling for the murder of a British subject – and, as a matter of policy on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity, the British police shrugged and looked the other way.

One reader in England recalled one demonstration at which he asked a constable why the "Muslim community leaders" weren't being arrested for incitement to murder. The officer told him to "f--- off, or I'll arrest you." Genuine "moderate Muslims" were cowed into silence, and pseudo-moderate Muslims triangulated with artful evasiveness. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, who went on to become leader of the most prominent British Muslim lobby group, mused about the Rushdie fatwa: "Death is perhaps too easy."

In 1989 Salman Rushdie went into hiding under the protection of the British police. A decade later he decided he did not wish to live his life like that and emerged from seclusion to live a more or less normal life. He learned the biggest lesson of all – how easy it is to be forced into the shadows. That's what's happening in the free world incrementally every day, with every itsy-bitsy nothing concession to groups who take offense at everything and demand the right to kill you for every offense. Across two decades, what happened to Rushdie has metastasized, in part because of the weak response in those first months. "Death is perhaps too easy"? Maybe. But slow societal suicide is easier still.

A taste of what you can expect under the benevolence of Allah

This is modern, moderate Iran.

This is government policy.

This is Islamic law.

This is what President Bush, the Left, and other apologists for Islam defend.

A sixteen-year-old girl executed. Women harassed and "taken to the bus" for dressing like moms. Men reportedly brutalized and forced to drink bathroom wash water for their Western dress and hair styles.

This is only a taste of what you can expect under the rule of Allah.

This is only the beginning. From Michelle Malkin:











Do you really want to defend this? You might want to get fitted for your abaya and niqab soon.

The Byzantine emperor's analysis of Muhammad was correct: he spread his faith by the sword

From Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the role of journalism today. Hewitt, Hannity, Rush, et al., ought to imitate her courage:

The first time that I was at a gathering like this one, it was November 2005 at the Krasnapolsky hotel in Amsterdam; not quite like this one, though, because there is only one National Press Club. I was invited to a session on media coverage of Islam, and Submission was shown. Submission is a 10-minute film I made with Theo van Gogh. As many of you know, he was killed for it by a Muslim.

I found myself in the odd position of defending freedom of expression, free press, and the rights of women against Arab-Islamic journalists and commentators. I found it odd because the Western journalists whose conference it was were either quiet, mumbled something about free expression, or approached me after the session and whispered into my ear that I had done a good job. I noticed the embarrassment they felt at defending the very right from which they earn their bread.

I noticed the same sense of uneasiness in early 2006 among Western journalists, academics, politicians, and commentators on how to respond to the cartoons of Muhammad in Denmark. In fact, many seriously defended the assertion that Denmark had to apologize for the cartoons. This attitude was repeated in the fall of last year when the Pope quoted a Byzantine emperor who wrote that the founder of Islam spread his religion by the sword, and the New York Times urged the Pope to apologize.

It is not the end of history. The 21st century began with a battle of ideas, and this battle is about the values of the West versus those of Islam.

Tony Blair, a leader I admire, wrote in the first issue of this year's Foreign Affairs magazine that what we were facing after the 11th of September was a battle of ideas, a battle of values. In his article, Blair began by incisively outlining the most crucial conflict of our time, but then lost the line of his argument in inconsistency when he came to clarifying the parties involved in the war of values. He backpedaled against his argument and declared that the Koran is a great book, ahead of its time and good for women.

Why are Westerners so insecure about everything that is so wonderful about the West: political freedom, free press, freedom of expression, equal rights for women and men, gays and heterosexuals, critical thinking, and the great strength of scrutinizing ideas--and especially faith?

It is not the end of history. The 21st century began with a battle of ideas, and this battle is about the values of the West versus those of Islam. Tony Blair and the Pope should not be embarrassed in saying it, and you should stop self-censoring. Islam and liberal democracy are incompatible; cultures and religions are not equal. And perhaps most important of all, Muslims are not half-wits who can respond only in violence. The Koran is not a great book; it is reactionary and full of misogyny. The Byzantine emperor's analysis of Muhammad was correct: he spread his faith by the sword.

From this perspective journalists like all the rest of us face the unpleasant reality of taking sides or getting lost in the incoherence of the so-called middle ground. The role of journalists serving the West, who understand what this particular battle is about, will be to inform their audiences accordingly.

As I travel from country to country to testify from experience and observation that Islamic dogma creates a cult of death, a cage for women, and a curse against knowledge, I get both support and opposition. Europeans and Americans ask:

But what about the good Muslim living next to me? What about the different schools of thought in Islam? Is there no difference between the Muslims of Indonesia and the ones in Somalia, or the Muslims in Saudi Arabia and those in Turkey? Can we really generalize? What about the women who voluntarily wear the headscarf and the burqa and are happy to relinquish their freedom as their faith requires? If we give Catholics and Protestants and Jews their schools and their universities, isn't it only fair to give Muslims theirs, too? If generations of Jews, Italians, and Irish have assimilated, is it unreasonable to think that Muslims will assimilate too, eventually?" Isn't it more fruitful to engage in debate with your opponent and convince him through dialogue to take back his declaration of war than to attack him? Isn't it obvious that military attacks, such as those in Afghanistan after 9/11 and in Iraq, create more terrorists, and therefore more people who are determined to destroy the West than there would be if we had dialogue with them?

These questions are legitimate and deserve serious answers. Let's make a moral distinction between Islam and Muslims. Muslims are diverse. Some, like Irshad Manji and Tawfiq Hamid, want to reform their faith. Others want to spread their beliefs through persuasion, violence or both. Others are apathetic and do not care much for politics. Others want to leave it and convert to Christianity, like Nonie Darwish, or become atheist, like me.

Islam unreformed, as a set of beliefs, is hostile to everything Western.

In a free society, if Jews, Protestants, and Catholics have their own schools, then Muslims should have theirs, too. But how long should we ignore that in Muslim schools in the West, kids are taught to believe that Jews are pigs and dogs? Or that they should distance themselves from unbelievers and jihad is a virtue? Isn't it odd that everywhere in Europe with large Muslim organizations, demands are made not to teach kids about the Holocaust, while in mosques and Muslim bookshops The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is distributed?

And what about in Muslim lands, where Jews, Catholics, and Protestants cannot have their own schools, or churches, or graveyards? If Muslims can proselytize in Vatican City, why can't Christians proselytize in Mecca? Why do we find this acceptable? If Christians, Jews, and Atheists take to the streets in large numbers to protest against their own elected governments in objection to the war in Iraq, to the war against terror, why don't Muslims march in equally large number against the beheadings of Western aid workers? Why don't Muslims stand up for their own? Why are Jews and Christians and Atheists in the West the ones fighting genocide in Darfur? Why does it pass unnoticed in Muslim lands when Shias kill Sunnis and Sunnis, Shias by the thousands? It doesn't add up, does it? If you ask me, "What is the role of journalism today?" I would urge you to look into these questions.

As a woman in the West I have access to education. I have a job, and I can change jobs as I wish. I can marry the man of my choice, or I can choose not to marry at all. If nature allows it, I can have any number of children I want. I can manipulate nature and freeze my eggs. I can have an abortion. I can own property. I can travel wherever I want. I can read whichever book, newspaper, or magazine I wish. I can watch any movie I want or go to the museum of my choice. I can have an opinion on the moral choices of others and express my opinion, even publish it. And I can change my mind as time goes by. I can establish a political party or join an existing one; I am free to change parties or give up my membership. I can vote. I can choose not to vote. I can stand for election to office or go into business. This is what makes the West so great.

This obsession with subjugating women is one of the things that makes Islam so low. And the agents of Islam from Riyadh to Teheran, from Islamabad to Cairo know that any improvement in the lives of women will lead to the demise of Islam and a disappearance of their power.

In Muslim lands, except for a very lucky few, women are denied education, have no job, and are forced into marriage with strangers. In the name of Islam, women are denied the right to their bodies; they cannot choose whether to have children or how many to have. They have no rights to abortion, and often they die trying to get one. They cannot own property, trade, or travel without the risk of robbery or rape. Most women (and men) live in state and religious censorship on what to read (if they can read at all) and what films to watch, and they have hardly any museums or art they can enjoy. Of the 57 Muslim nations that are members of the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference), only two are democracies. Both are frail and corrupt, and both face the risk of being overtaken by the agents of pure Islam. Turkey has a safety check in the shape of the army and Indonesia none. In none of these countries--except for the usual show-pieces to delude the West--are women allowed to establish their own political parties, play a meaningful role in one, vote, or run for office.

This obsession with subjugating women is one of the things that makes Islam so low. And the agents of Islam--from Riyadh to Tehran, from Islamabad to Cairo--know that any improvement in the lives of women will lead to the demise of Islam and a disappearance of their power. This is why, among other things, they are so desperate to cage in women. This is why they also hate the West.

Please don't be fooled by the few shrill voices--in or out of the veil--that enjoy the status quo and betray their fellow women.

If we do not understand the differences between Islam and the West--why one is so great and the other so low--and we don't fight back and win this battle of ideas in order to preserve our civilization, in my view there is no point to your profession or mine.

Miracle in four words

Paul Potts, Nessun Dorma.

He sings, and we glimpse the Divine.

Here are his semi-final and final performances:

The connection between native Muslim terrorists and their international co-religionists is the will of Allah and the example of his apostle

How is it that the leading Republican presidential candidate and a major conservative pundit can be so unwilling or unable to identify that which motivates our enemy in the GWoT?

According to Hugh, in speaking of American Muslim terrorists the Mayor said, "I think the home grown part is something we’re just getting a fix on. And I think it’s really concerning us, that the way Chris Christie described it was this was not directed by al Qaeda, but it was inspired by al Qaeda. Sometimes, those connections are harder to find, because they’re not taking place over a telephone call, or some kind of communication."

Those "connections" are being made every day in bookstores, libraries, MSAs, mosques, homes, and all over the Internet.

The connection between home-grown terrorists and The Base isn't hard to find at all for anyone with at least basic reading comprehension skills, a modicum of curiosity, and the will to admit the truth.

The "connection" is not poverty -- many jihadists and their supporters are well-educated and financially secure.

Neither can it be Colonial oppression, since Jihad has been waged for fourteen hundred years against first Arabs, then Jews, Africans, Europeans, Persians, Indians, etc. Pagan, Christian, Jew, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Hindu, animist -- all have tasted the malevolence of Allah.

And it can't be Israel's fault, since that nation was only reconstituted sixty years ago and was attacked by its Muslim neighbors repeatedly and without provocation.

That the would-be future president and his host are still so blind after all these years (thirty for the Mayor and almost six since 9/11 for Hugh) is indefensible.

The connection is the will of Allah and the example of his apostle as recorded in Islam's "sacred" texts:

". . . the Messenger of Allah . . . would say: 'Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war . . . When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action . . . Invite them to (accept) Islam . . . If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya . . . If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them...'" (Muslim Book 019, Number 4294).

". . . fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war) . . . " (Qur’an 9:5).

"Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued" (Qur'an 9:29).

". . . fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah altogether and everywhere . . ." (Qur'an 8:38, 39).

"Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you . . . " (Qur'an 2:216).

"Allah's Apostle said: 'I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle . . . '" (Bukhari Volume 1, Book 2, Number 24).

“Muhammad said, ‘A single endeavor of fighting in Allah’s Cause is better than the world and whatever is in it’” (Bukhari Volume 4, Book 52, Number 50).

"Not equal are those believers who sit (at home) and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of Allah with their goods and their persons. Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home) . . . But those who strive and fight Hath He distinguished above those who sit (at home) by a special reward..." (Qur'an 4:95).

“A man came to Allah’s Apostle and said, ‘Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad in reward.’ He replied, ‘I do not find such a deed’” (Bukhari Volume 4, Book 52, Number 44).

"Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain . . . " (Qur'an 9:11).

"Remember thy Lord inspired the angels (with the message): 'I am with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them'" (Qur'an 8:12).

“Allah’s Apostle said, ‘I have been made victorious with terror.’” (Bukhari Volume 4, Book 52, Number 220).

Western ignorance and imprecision aids the global jihad

Dean Barnett filled in for Hugh Hewitt on his radio program today.

I agree with his and his callers' reluctance to paint with too broad a brush while trying to correctly identify our enemy in the GWoT.

However, courtesy that obscures the truth -- especially in a time of war -- is no virtue. In this case, it is costing (and will cost) too high a price in American blood and treasure.

What is this lie? The assertion made by President Bush and other apologists for Jihad that Islam is a "Religion of Peace" and that a "tiny minority of radical, extremist, fundamentalist Islamo-fascists" have "hijacked" that "great world religion."

Nearly fourteen hundred years of Islamic theology, jurisprudence, and history demonstrate the terms "Radical Islam" to be misleading and "Genocidal Islam" to be redundant. And neither are those who would murder the innocent in service to Allah and those who support them a "tiny minority."

"Radical Islam" implies that "normal" Islam is as innocuous as any other major religion. It is not. It is more accurate to describe the doctrine and practice of truly "moderate" Muslims as "Apostate," "Liberal," or "Figurative" Islam.

Islam's "sacred" texts (Qur'an, Sira, and Hadith) make clear that the will of Allah and the example of Mohammed (described by his god in Qur'an as a "beautiful pattern of conduct") require the fighting against, subduing and humiliating, and killing of non-Muslims to establish the tyranny of Allah over all Mankind.

Mohammed commanded:

". . . kill the unbelievers wherever you find them."

"When you meet the Unbelievers, invite them to Islam . . . if they refuse, offer them to pay the jizya . . . if they refuse that, then fight."

"Fight until all religion is for Allah."

The founder of the Religion of Tolerance also confessed: "I have been ordered to fight against the people until they confess that no one has the right to be worshiped but Allah and Mohammed is his apostle," and, "I have been made victorious with terror."

These are not fabrications from Islamophobic racists. These are the very words of Mohammed, considered the Ideal Man in Islam. He is the one whose command is to be obeyed and example is to be followed by the faithful Muslim under all circumstances.

"Radical Islam," "Islamofascism," "Islamic Extremism," "Genocidal Islam," and the rest are all just Western Infidel misnomers for Islam, which requires the use of any means necessary -- including offensive warfare against Infidels, even genocide -- to subjugate all men under Shari'a.

We are only in the latest phase of the ancient War of Self-Defense Against the Malevolence of Allah.

To know how non-Muslims can establish Shari'a and advance its concomitant jihad, Iraq's the Model

The news is not as good as it seemed at first, but any time jihadists kill jihadists, that is good for Infidels.

Posted in reply to this:

I respect President Bush and our military. The president was right to remove Saddam. It may even be said that the president's attempt to create a model Muslim democracy in the Middle East was a noble idea . . . at first. Rather than achieve this, we have instead set up a new nation that codifies Shari'a. The democratic process has been used to achieve not our ends, but Allah's.

Nearly six years since 9/11, President Bush and those on whom he depends for information in making his decisions have had more than enough time to realize that the Source and Sustenance of Islamic terrorism are the word of Allah and the example of his false prophet:

Mohammed said, "I have been ordered to fight the people until they confess no one has the right to be worshiped but Allah and Mohammed is his apostle."

He also commanded, "When you meet the Unbelievers . . . invite them to Islam . . . If they refuse, offer them to pay the poll tax (jizya) . . . if they refuse that, then fight . . . ."

Allah commands, ". . . kill the unbelievers wherever you find them . . . ," and, "Fight . . . the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] until they feel themselves subdued and pay the jizya."

Finally, Mohammed confessed, "I have been made victorious with terror."

In other words, the faithful Muslim is required to fight against, subdue and humiliate, and kill non-Muslims to make the world Islam. No amount of sacrifice, no amount of giving, not even the most creative and generous efforts to "win hearts and minds" will succeed in doing anything other than fueling and financing our own murders.

The sooner President Bush, his Secretaries (most notably of Defense, State, and Homeland Security), and his generals realize this, the sooner our military can do what they do best without sacrificing for those who can never appreciate their service.

Another devilish ideology

Of course, Hillary Clinton is no great evil, but the socialism she advocates is. And only reinforcing the comparison is the Newspeak she uses in trying to deceive the American electorate.

Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a broad economic vision Tuesday, saying it's time to replace an "on your own" society with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity.

"On your own," as in individual responsibility and achievement? No, that would be cruel and insensitive.

"Shared responsibility," as in it is the hard-working, play-by-the-rules American taxpayer's responsibility to fund amoral, lazy, and incompetent corporations and individuals?

"Shared prosperity," as in take from those who work, earn, and achieve and give it to those who do not?

Where is the justice in this? How is it fair for the government to -- at the point of a gun and with the force of law -- take from those who have acquired wealth by honest means and redistribute it to those who have not? The former first lady is attempting to buy others' votes using your tax dollars.

This is socialism, and it is an enemy of Liberty. It is immoral, for it makes both those who receive undeserved benefit from others' hard work and those from whom the product of their labor is stolen slaves. The former is made dependent upon the State, and the latter is forced to fund without consent people and activities they would not otherwise have chosen.

The senator must use language like this to convince the lazy, selfish, and fearful that she really does care about them. This kind of misrepresentation also serves to discourage criticism, for who could be so heartless? And the reporters who dutifully and uncritically relay such deceit are complicit in her crime.

Here' s the attack on property rights and achievement:

The Democratic senator said what the Bush administration touts as an ownership society really is an "on your own" society that has widened the gap between rich and poor.

"I prefer a 'we're all in it together' society," she said. "I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none."

That means pairing growth with fairness, she said, to ensure that the middle-class succeeds in the global economy, not just corporate CEOs.

By "we're all in it together," the senator actually means, "we're going to take your hard-earned money whether you like it or not. You don't? What are you, some kind of greedy, racist, Republican?"

As for government "working for all Americans," our Founding Fathers defined what that would look like and set in place laws to sustain it, while simultaneously ensuring our Liberty and Prosperity. It's called the Constitution. It explicitly defines and limits the proper role of the federal government.

Unfortunately, it seems very few Americans have actually read it. Worst of all, the politicians who swear to defend it only misuse it in achieving their own political objectives.

As for that last statement, to socialists, "fairness" means an equality of outcome and not of opportunity, regardless of merit or effort. It means higher taxes and greater dependence on the government. It means the redistribution of wealth.

The Forced Equality of Outcome (F. E. O.) really is ugly.

That is immoral and unjust, but it's good for politicians, because those who promise it are often rewarded with another term in office and the admiration of a like-minded MSM.

"There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets. But markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed," she said. "Fairness doesn't just happen. It requires the right government policies."

The tyranny of "but."

When a normal person hears "promote our values," they naturally assume the speaker means the values shared by the speaker and the audience. Of course, with Senator Clinton and other liberals, "our" here actually means "my and other socialists'."

As for the "right government policies," could the senator possibly be referring to things like laws prohibiting stealing? Fraud? False advertising? Coercion? No, she means, the "right restrictions on Liberty."

"We have sent a message to our young people that if you don't go to college ... that you're thought less of in America. We have to stop this," she said.

Yes, just ask Jon Cary.

Beyond education, Clinton said she would reduce special breaks for corporations, eliminate tax incentives for companies that ship jobs overseas and open up CEO pay to greater public scrutiny.

Why not just end all entitlement programs, (apart from Social Security to those who've paid for and rightly expect it)?

Clinton also said she would help people save more money by expanding and simplifying the earned income tax credit; create new jobs by pursuing energy independence; and ensure that every American has affordable health insurance.

Another trifecta.

To help people save more money, why not . . . stop taking it?

"Pursuing energy independence" means more wasted tax dollars and greater government. That's a winner!

And of course, Hillary couldn't leave out her baby -- socialized medicine! If at first you don't succeed, get elected president yourself!

. . . In the last six years, productivity has increased, but family incomes have gone down, she said, leading to rising inequality and pessimism in the work force.

There are many reasons for Americans to be pessimistic, but a lack of socialism is not one of them. The senator's cure for these ills created by the meddling of government -- more government -- must be rejected forcefully.

The president's sense of irony

It was unfunny enough when, in speaking of the actions of the nineteen devils who flew our planes into our own buildings, President Bush accused them of "hijacking" a "great world religion."

Now, just weeks after rightly criticizing the Traitor of the House for meeting with Syria's leadership, President Bush chooses to meet with an avowed enemy of the United States on our Memorial Day. A more grave insult to those Americans (and their families) whose lives and health have been taken by Iranian munitions, personnel, and training can hardly be imagined.

There is one other irony worth noting on this occasion: added to other little things -- like damaging our national sovereignty by refusing to enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders six years after 9/11 -- this latest betrayal of the American people will make it necessary for the president to lay a wreath not only in honor of our heroic fallen, but also in memory of his own legacy and the backing even of his most ardent supporters.

The unnecessary sacrificing of American blood and treasure

How many of the Iraqis whom our military valiantly and selflessly risk life and limb to aid believe it is their duty -- just as it was Mohammed's -- to "fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle"? How many of our bravest and best sacrificing for these Iraqi children (and for us) understand that the Ideology which replenishes their enemies' ranks faster than they can deplete them is Islam?

How many of them realize that -- contrary to what our Commander-In-Chief claims -- Islam is not a Great World Religion of Peace but the malevolent dictates of a god of blood? How many realize that the President of the United States, the most powerful man on Earth, is needlessly sacrificing them to the gods of Multiculturalism?

How long will the President persist in this suicidal misapprehension?

Unsurprisingly impeccable judgment from a usual suspect

From here:

. . . even as we provide the global jihad with legitimate justification for attacking the U.S. civilian population by continuing to occupy land that isn't ours.

The moral inversion in this statement is disgusting; it's limited understanding embarrassing.

There is no justification for attacks on our civilians. This author should have said "as we provide the global jihad with another pretext for attacking" our civilian population.

Of course, to Allah and his false prophet, no Infidel civilian is truly innocent (nor, when circumstances require the proper vocabulary, even a "civilian"). Regrettably, to the nescient and self-centered It's All About Us. We Deserve It.

Suicide bombing is just one tactic used in today's Global Jihad. There are many other ways to subjugate or kill Infidels in order to establish the rule of Allah. Just ask the House of Saud, Ahmed Bedier, or Mahmoud A.

How many of those "Communist and Socialist Arab" suicide bombers were Methodists? Of those three-hundred-plus attacks, how many were directed against Israel (wrongly defined by their Islamic, MSM, and European Socialist/Muslim-appeasing enemies as "Occupiers")?

Whose land were we occupying when the Barbary pirates attacked, killed, and enslaved American sailors in the early days of the Republic? What about when a resurgent Jihad exploded against the United States in '79, '83, and throughout the '90's? In 2000? Whom were we oppressing when nineteen devils in the service of Allah used our own planes to slaughter thousands on 9/11?

Whose lands were the ancient pagan, Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Hindu, and animist populations of the Old World "occupying" when Islam slaughtered, raped, enslaved, and subdued them?

What this pundit (and those he mocks) fail to understand is that the only "legitimate justification" needed by the faithful Muslim to war against and kill Infidels is the command of Allah, the example of his false prophet, and the fact that we are not Muslim.

To faithful Muslims, all Infidel land is rightly seen as belonging to Allah. It just our fault for being on it before they got here.

The difficulties facing an honest and decent Muslim

How is a statement like the one below received by other Muslims? Judging by the lack of public demonstrations in support of it, not too enthusiastically.

Surely Dr. Hamid has and will face charges of apostasy and blasphemy from his own, and accusations of intolerance from the Infidel Left for his brutally honest critique of Islam (thereby exposing the suicidal worthlessness of Multiculturalism). In fact, at his site he notes a less-than-tolerant reception from fellow Muslims:

For over fifteen years I have tried to preach my views in mosques in the Middle East, as well as to my local community in the West, but have faced the unwavering hostility of most Salafi Muslims in both regions. Muslims who live in the West—who insist to outsiders that Islam is a “religion of peace” and who enjoy freedom of expression, which they demand from their Western hosts—have threatened me with murder and arson. I have had to choose between accepting violent Salafi views and being rejected by the overwhelming majority of my fellow Muslims. I have chosen the latter.

It appears that "tiny minority of extremists" are neither tiny nor misinterpreting Islam.

And as the President reassures us that Islam is a great religion of peace and "conservative" pundits like Hugh Hewitt refuse to even open Islam's sacred texts (or to receive those who have with anything better than contempt and derision), the problem in the West grows:

As time has passed, this violent and threatening behavior has become more common: Dr. Wafa Sultan in the US, Abdul Fatah in Egypt, and many, many others have received and continue to receive death threats. Recently, Dr. Nawal Al-Sadawi, a liberal Muslim thinker and women’s rights activist, was forced to flee Egypt because of her public statements. Dr. Rashad Khalifa was murdered in the United States after he published his own re-interpretation of the Quran which was less violent than was traditional. In Egypt, Dr. Faraq Fuddah was shot to death after publishing condemnations of Jihadists. Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Najib Mahfouz was stabbed in the neck for writing his novel, Awlad Haretna, perceived by Salafists as blasphemous. The list goes on. Still, the majority of members in many Muslim communities have adopted the violent teachings of the Islamists.

Tragically, the difficulties with Islam cited by the good doctor are the direct expression of the will of Allah and the example of his apostle (as recorded in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira). Finding a way for good, decent Muslims to remain so seems an insurmountable challenge, since the problems Dr. Hamid notes are exactly what Allah and his prophet from hell want:

When I discussed the implications of the violent passages with a few Sufi clergy, they suggested that one “should be good and peaceful to all mankind” and that “the understanding of the violent verses will be clarified on the day of judgment.” These views were not based on rigorous Islamic eschatology, however, or on an objective analysis of the religious books. They merely embodied a desired perception of Islam. My secular parents offered the same tolerant perspective, insisting that Islam is a religion of peace. But for me both responses were unsatisfactory because they suffered from the same problem—they were not theologically grounded. My difficulty was not resolved, and I continued to live with a complex dilemma.

From here:

I was born a Muslim and lived all my life as a follower of Islam.

After the barbaric terrorist attacks done by the hands of my fellow Muslims everywhere on this globe, and after the too many violent acts by Islamists in many parts of the world, I feel responsible as a Muslim and as a human being, to speak out and tell the truth to protect the world and Muslims as well from a coming catastrophe and war of civilizations.

I have to admit that our current Islamic teaching creates violence and hatred toward Non-Muslims. We Muslims are the ones who need to change.

Until now we have accepted polygamy, the beating of women by men, and killing those who convert from Islam to other religions.

We have never had a clear and strong stand against the concept of slavery or wars, to spread our religion and to subjugate others to Islam and force them to pay a humiliating tax called Jizia.

We ask others to respect our religion while all the time we curse non-Muslims loudly (in Arabic) in our Friday prayers in the Mosques.

What message do we convey to our children when we call the Jews "Descendants of the pigs and monkeys"…. Is this a message of love and peace, or a message of hate?

I have been into churches and synagogues where they were praying for Muslims. While all the time we curse them, and teach our generations to call them infidels, and to hate them.

We immediately jump in a ‘knee jerk reflex' to defend Prophet Mohammed when someone accuses him of being a pedophile while, at the same time, we are proud with the story in our Islamic books, that he married a young girl seven years old (Aisha) when he was above 50 years old.

I am sad to say that many, if not most of us, rejoiced in happiness after September 11th and after many other terror attacks.

Muslims denounce these attacks to look good in front of the media, but we condone the Islamic terrorists and sympathise with their cause. Till now our ‘reputable' top religious authorities have never issued a Fatwa or religious statement to proclaim Bin Laden as an apostate, while an author, like Rushdie, was declared an apostate who should be killed according to Islamic Shar'ia law just for writing a book criticizing Islam.

Muslims demonstrated to get more religious rights as we did in France to stop the ban on the Hejab (Head Scarf), while we did not demonstrate with such passion and in such numbers against the terrorist murders.

It is our absolute silence against the terrorists that gives the energy to these terrorists to continue doing their evil acts.

We Muslims need to stop blaming our problems on others or on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

As a matter of honesty, Israel is the only light of democracy, civilization, and human rights in the whole Middle East.

We kicked out the Jews with no compensation or mercy from most of the Arab countries to make them "Jews-Free countries" while Israel accepted more than a million Arabs to live there, have its nationality, and enjoy their rights as human beings. In Israel, women can not be beaten legally by men, and any person can change his/her belief system with no fear of being killed by the Islamic law of ‘Apostasy,' while in our Islamic world people do not enjoy any of these rights.

I agree that the ‘Palestinians' suffer, but they suffer because of their corrupt leaders and not because of Israel.

It is not common to see Arabs who live in Israel leaving to live in the Arab world. On the other hand, we used to see thousands of Palestinians going to work with happiness in Israel, its 'enemy'. If Israel treats Arabs badly as some people claim, surely we would have seen the opposite happening.

We Muslims need to admit our problems and face them. Only then we can treat them and start a new era to live in harmony with human mankind.

Our religious leaders have to show a clear and very strong stand against polygamy, pedophilia, slavery, killing those who convert from Islam to other religions, beating of women by men, and declaring wars on non-Muslims to spread Islam. Then, and only then, do we have the right to ask others to respect our religion.

The time has come to stop our hypocrisy and say it openly: ‘We Muslims have to Change'.

Tawfik Hamid

One island of clarity in a vast sea of conservative nonsense

And not just the MSM are blind when it comes the Source and Sustenance of Islamic terrorism and other forms of Jihad, though on this poll some conservative pundits are experiencing mild to moderate cognitive dissonance.

From Diana West: Media bombs.

Funny how small 26 percent sounds when it describes, for example, the number of American voters who support the Senate's mass-amnesty, goody-bag bill for illegal aliens. In this case, the one in four people polled by Rasmussen this week who hope the legislation pass comes off as a minority voice, especially when compared to the whopping 72 percent of voters who favor border enforcement and the reduction of illegal immigration.

But 26 percent looms large when it describes the number of American Muslims, ages 18-29, who support suicide bombings "in defense of Islam" -- one of the sensational, if sensationally under-reported, findings of a recent Pew poll. According to Pew, the total Muslim population in America is 2.35 million, 30 percent of whom are between 18 and 29. By my figuring, the suicide-bomb-approving cohort works out to 183,000 people. The poll also tells us that 69 percent of younger American Muslims say suicide bombings are never justified. While representing a majority almost as great as the percentage of American voters who favor border enforcement, 69 percent in this particular case is wholly inadequate; indeed, it is a strikingly poor showing.

Why? In the case of the immigration bill, the poll reflects public opinion pertaining to a political process, a no-holds-barred, expletive-laced, free-for-all that, loathsome as it may sometimes seem, remains democratically rooted in a non-violent contest of ideas, politics and flim-flam. In such a context, one-quarter of anything pales next to three-quarters of anything.

In the case of suicide bombing, however, the context changes. According to Pew's data, one-quarter of younger American Muslims approve of the presence of skin-ripping, skull-crushing, organ-piercing violence in civilian life as a religious imperative -- "in defense of Islam." (The Pew pollsters declined to define "defense of Islam," but having lived through Pope Rage, Cartoon Rage, Koran Rage, Satanic Verses Rage, etc., I think it's safe to say this is a rather broad category.) Such approval for religious violence is not just another unfettered political opinion finding expression in a poll-taker's tally. On the contrary, the fact that a significant young chunk of American Islam believes such violence has a place in society indicates something closer to the end of unfettered political opinion. It may signal the beginning of physical coercion as a factor in the American political process. This helps explain why the 69 percent figure is no consolation prize; only unanimity is acceptable here.

It's not that a physical fear factor pertaining to mainly Islamic terrorism hasn't long existed -- just take a look at the dispiriting security perimeter erected around the Capitol, for instance. But this Pew poll may mark the first official acknowledgement that such violence, and, equally important, the threat of such violence, actually find approval within the American polity.

Something new and barbarous under the sun, right? This is why it's all the more disturbing to review the happy headline-spin the story received. The blogger Ace of Spades provided an early roundup of the Orwellian tags, which included: "Poll: Most Muslims seek to adopt American lifestyle" (USA Today); "Muslims assimilate better in U.S. than Europe, poll finds" (New York Times); "Poll: US Muslims Feel Post-9/11 Backlash Despite Moderate Outlook" (Voice of America). My personal fave: "Upbeat portrait of US Muslims" (Sacramento Bee). The accompanying stories were no less giddy.

But why the journalistic rush to depict the shocking story as so much happy talk? Therein lies a tale, one of fanatical religious fervor-on the part of the mainstream media (MSM). Like other politically correct elites, the MSM follow their own version of the "true faith": multiculturalism. Multiculturalism preaches that all civilizations are the same, all religions are the same, all peoples are the same. The Pew results, meanwhile, tell them something else again: Some people -- some young American Muslim people -- approve of suicide bombing in defense of Islam. Does this finding perhaps introduce a qualitative difference among civilizations, religions, and peoples?

That is, is there something more desirable about societies that don't inspire and glorify suicide bombings -- something worth preserving? Conversely, is there something about Islam our own society requires protection against? This is very tricky territory for the MSM. The logical answers are multiculturally blasphemous.

The MSM response: it's better to say nothing at all. Or better yet, just smile. Big grin. Happy story. It's one measly quarter, after all. Just one in four. And isn't that something to be upbeat about?

We do not need racial profiling in the War on Terror

For Islam is not a race.

Neither are we in a war against a tactic -- we are engaged in a War of Self-Defense Against Islam, a war which many have had to enter over the centuries, many of whom were too slow to respond, too unprepared to win, and too weak to survive.In baseball, two out of three would make an MVP or a batting champ. Two out of three here is killing us, and neither President Bush, his cabinet, nor his "center-right" pundits show any signs of realizing their fundamental error.

From here.

Hugh Hewitt is right to call for strong measures against allowing terrorists entry into our country. There is a problem, however.

Last week Hugh noted the need for greater scrutiny of Arab immigrants. He couldn’t be more wrong. This blindness—indicative of many in the West—has (and will) cost many American lives.

The problem is not the terrorists’ race, it is their ideology. That ideology is one of war and conquest of the non-Muslim for Allah. Mohammed commanded: “Fight against the people until they confess that none but Allah has the right to be worshiped and Allah is his messenger.” He also instructed the faithful in how to deal with Infidels: “. . . invite them to Islam . . . if they refuse, offer them to pay the poll tax [jizya] . . . if they refuse to pay, then fight . . . .”

Albanians were planning to carry out attacks here in the U.S. A story today notes that Muslim terrorist groups are recruiting among American blacks because, like Hugh, too many people are looking for “Arabs” or “Middle Eastern-looking men.”

The problem is Islam.

Italian bus jihad

The article only identifies the attackers as "Albanian." Buddhists, of course. From here:

MILAN, Italy (AP) - Three armed men hijacked a regional bus Tuesday in northern Italy and set it on fire after freeing the passengers, officials said. An off- duty police officer was injured and two of the three hijackers were apprehended.

The bus was traveling south from Alessandria to Acqui Terme, cities southwest of Milan, when the men—armed with a pistol and knives—took it over and forced the driver to turn off the highway and onto a state road heading in the opposite direction, a carabinieri official in nearby Novara said.

An off-duty police officer who was on board tried to intervene and was stabbed, but was not in serious condition, the official said.

The hijackers allowed the passengers to get off when the bus reached Alessandria again, but then forced the driver to keep going before the bus came to a stop near Trecate, on the outskirts of Novara farther to the north, Sky TG24 reported.

There was an exchange of fire and the gunmen set the bus on fire before fleeing, officials said. Two of the gunmen, both Albanian, were apprehended and authorities were seeking the third, the Novara carabinieri official said.

Another carabinieri official, who declined to give his name, said one of the gunman who was apprehended was being treated for an unspecified injury.

Fire crews and investigators picked through the burned-out skeleton of the bus as it continued to smolder. Sky TG24 said the men had doused the vehicle with gasoline they had brought with them before torching it.

Religious bigotry fueled by ignorance and bitter experience

Unlike that motivating much of the LDS' wolf-crying, this is an unfounded charge. A few comments on Instadhimmi's inaugural post:

My own experience, however, is that Christians can lose it, too. Death threats aren't the same as murder, of course. But I was appalled at the behavior I experienced, which included nasty threats, wishes that my wife would suffer Terri Schiavo's fate, and nasty phone calls to my home as my wife recovered from heart surgery. That behavior, from religious pro-lifers, seemed kind of un-Christian to me. So pardon me if my faith that things can never get worse is weaker than Bryan's.

It appears a certain personal animosity toward "Fundamentalist" Christians motivates the comparison with the Religion of Jihad. In his own words, Instapundit indicates the comparison is unfounded, yet he still makes it.

This brings certain points to mind:

First, isn't it improper to indict an entire religious group because of the actions of a few? Unlike Islam, name any cases of Fundamentalist Christians threatening and carrying out violence in the name of Christ and citing Biblical justifications for their actions.

Second, anyone who would equate Fill-in-the-Blank Christianity with Islam needs to "hit the books" and get it straight. Such an equivalence indicates compromised judgment, a dearth of knowledge, or both.

Third, Islamic violence against Infidels and Apostates is commanded by Allah and his apostle, and for nearly fourteen hundred years has been carried out around the world as Muslim knowledge, belief, resources, and zeal allowed. Though Christians have done evil, that behavior is contrary to the teachings of Christ and atypical.

Fourth, where are Hugh Hewitt's outrage and cries of "bigotry," or is that only reserved for justified theological criticism of his next PotUS?

Fifth, those who would call themselves "Christian" should strive to behavior properly in all circumstances.

When the facts desert you, just claim Religious bigotry

Is it really though? An all-knowing God must have created us certain in the knowledge that most of His children would never accept his word. He knew, before we were even born what our fates were to be. What sort of God creates a soul knowing full well it is destined only for Hell?

More to come.

Out, damned spot! out, I say!

The spot of false doctrine, that is. Persisting in error despite obvious and overwhelming contrary evidence does not wisdom make.

From here:

Latter day revelation has clarified many of the Biblical inaccuracies and inconsistencies that have resulted from translations.

Without the Original Texts (or their numerous manuscript copies, which we have today), how can you possibly know that "inaccuracies and inconsistencies" exist? Without the Originals (or their copies), how can you make any corrections?

Problems with translations are an entirely different category than copying anomalies. Translations can and should be revised using the best information available. Variations in manuscript copies of the Originals are easy to compare because so many copies exist that are from various geographic locations around ancient Christendom.

That a tilde or number in one family of copies is errant is possible to determine by comparing that manuscript with any of the manuscripts from other families.

All of that leads to a high degree of confidence that we know what the Original Manuscripts actually said.

Besides all of that, there is no way the Apostle John's quotation of Christ's statement that "God is Spirit" is a distortion of "god is an obedient, flesh-and-bone being fornicating on another planet."

To continue to promote such nonsense is utterly indefensible.

This is an area where you and I will most likely come to a disagreement. I believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and I believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.

You believe that your god is either unwilling or unable to preserve his revelation, or if he is, that he doesn't mind contradicting himself.

Any deity that reveals one thing and then later contradicts his first story is a liar and a fraud.

I'm assuming you either do not believe in continued revelation or, at the very least, you do not believe that there is a living prophet today.

I believe that Jesus Christ will not contradict Himself. If any "prophet" comes along and says something other than what God has said, he is a liar and a charlatan.

I do. I have no tangible evidence of this. I have a personal testimony that it is true.

Subjectivism is no basis for religious faith. One's experience should be interpreted in light of what God has revealed through His Prophets and Apostles. If your personal experience leads you to embrace something contrary to the Word of Christ, you have allowed yourself to be deceived.

I agree with the scripture you mentioned. In the next life they are neither married or given in marriage. Marriage is an Early ordinance and cannot be performed after this life. Thus if you are not sealed on Earth you will not be sealed in Heaven.

No, He said they are not married, as in they are not in the state of being married. If he meant only that unions are not made in the next, He would not have then noted [*see below] . . . .

Also, Jesus specifically compares our state in the afterlife with regards to marriage by comparing us to His angels. Unless you want to say that they are married in this life and that carries over into the next, the only reasonable interpretation of this is that angels are unmarried and so will we be.

My whole intent was to share that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints believe in the same God and Jesus Christ that the rest of the Christian community does.

It seems unwise to lie about YHWH and His Christ if you want to please Them.

*Correction on Matthew 22:30:

Shane wrote, "In the next life they are neither married or given in marriage."

In Shane's version, Christ seems to be making a contrast between a status and an act. In Christ's version, he notes our celibacy by comparing our marital status to the angels':

"Jesus answered, 'You’re mistaken because you don’t know the Scriptures or God’s power. When people come back to life, they don’t marry. Rather, they are like the angels in heaven.'"

Shane's "sealed on Earth, sealed in Heaven" adds to (and contradicts) Christ's revelation, something He forbids.

The sound you are about to hear . . .

. . . is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.

. . .

In the event of an actual emergency --

-the destruction of your Constitutional rights in the name of "the People";

-national, state, and local politicians pandering to a lazy, self-centered, greedy, irresponsible, and ignorant electorate (both groups feeding off your still-warm flesh like vultures);

-our political, media, and academic elites sleeping, lying, and stealing as the West hurtles to the edge of the precipice (with some even getting out to push);

-or the ubiquitous lie repeated ad nauseam, ad infinitum that the ideology inspiring fourteen centuries of global slaughter is actually a "Religion of Peace"

-- you would have been instructed where to tune in your area.

But no, nothing to see here, folks. Nothing at all. Move along now.

A more important issue

From here:

While some evangelical Christians are defending the presidential candidacy of Mormon Mitt Romney from an attack by Al Sharpton, another prominent pastor is going further in his condemnation – saying a vote for the former Massachusetts governor is a vote for Satan.

The question of whether or not it is appropriate for Christians to vote for a Mormon for president is not nearly as important as making clear the fact that Mormonism teaches and preaches a false god, a false christ, and a false gospel.

Despite LDS protestations to the contrary, one cannot teach that god was an obedient, flesh-and-blood man procreating on an alien planet -- and that his son was a spirit brother to the devil -- and expect to be defined as "Christian."

Neither will a Christian reject the doctrines found in the Church's universal statements of faith: the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds.