RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND A MOSQUE

ONE OF THE MOST COMMON arguments of the supporters of the Ground Zero mosque includes religious freedom as guaranteed by the First Amendment. Religion is seen as the framework to support building a mosque and community center near the site of the former World Trade Towers. Is this really about religion? Step back and look at the controversy. Do you feel like you are taking part in a religious exercise or a political fracas?

There is a vast confusion about what a religion is and is not. Currently the operative rule is that anything associated with Islam is a religious affair where all of the freedom of religion is applied to the action or event. Islam's actions are religious and if you oppose it, you are an un-American bigot.

It is time to stop and take a look at what we mean by a religion. There are about as many Buddhists in America today as there are Muslims. When was the last time you remember a Buddhist demand of any kind? Do Buddhists set up councils to shape the textbooks and demand Buddhist finance? Does the government make a big announcement when Buddhists are appointed to high posts? Are there even any Buddhists in any White House appointments? Do Buddhists complain? Never, for these are political actions, and Buddhism has almost no political outreach. Buddhism in America is purely religious, not political at all.

Yet the media and the Internet are consumed by talk and argument about Islam. The discussion is never about how many rounds of prayer to do or whether a certain food is halal (religiously proper). No, the focus is always on something that non-Muslims are to do to accommodate an Islamic religious practice.

There is a practical working definition of religion as compared to politics. Religious practices are done by those who follow that religion and are motivated for achieving paradise and avoiding hell. Outsiders are not involved in those religious acts. If it is about going to heaven and avoiding hell, then it is religious. However, if the religion makes a demand on those outside of its own group, then that demand is political.

Most people think that the Koran is a religious text. Instead, 64% of the text (by word count) is about non-Muslims, who are called Kafirs. The Koran is fixated on Kafirs and makes many demands on them. Not the least is that Kafirs submit to the rule of Islamic Sharia law. Ultimately Sharia law is the pure expression of Islamic politics and it completely contradicts our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Under Sharia there is no freedom of speech, wives may be beaten and apostates murdered.

Mohammed had little success with Islam until he transformed it into a political system. He preached the religion of Islam in Mecca for 13 years and made about 150 converts. He left Mecca and moved to Medina. In Medina he turned to politics and jihad. In the last 9 years of his life, Mohammed was involved in an event of violence on the average of every 6 weeks. The political method persuaded every Arab to convert to Islam. The religion did not succeed; it was politics that made Islam powerful.

Bill Warner
Director, Center for the Study of Political Islam

A MUSLIM VICTIM OF 9/11

Dear Gabriel,

We know there are many Muslims in America who do not subscribe to the ideology of political Islam, the advance of jihad, and the imposition of sharia law.

This past Sunday, a courageous Muslim spoke out against the Ground Zero Mosque in a column in the Washington Post (see below).

The buzzing opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque continues to grow, with some polls show opposition now over 60%. Media coverage continues to grow.

This has become, and rightly so, a high-profile national issue, which is why we continue to put out emails about it. Islamists and their politically correct allies are desperately trying to smear anyone who opposes the Ground Zero Mosque. They know they are losing the national debate on this. And as you saw in your email on Saturday, the New York City bus company is censoring a media campaign about the Ground Zero Mosque.

The Ground Zero Mosque is not a done deal. We must keep the pressure on!

***

A Muslim victim of 9/11: 'Build your mosque somewhere else'

By Neda Bolourchi
Sunday, August 8, 2010

I have no grave site to visit, no place to bring my mother her favorite yellow flowers, no spot where I can hold my weary heart close to her. All I have is Ground Zero.

On the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, I watched as terrorists slammed United Flight 175 into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, 18 minutes after their accomplices on another hijacked plane hit the North Tower. My mother was on the flight. I witnessed her murder on live television. I still cannot fully comprehend those images. In that moment, I died as well. I carry a hole in my heart that will never be filled.

From the first memorial ceremonies I attended at Ground Zero, I have always been moved by the site; it means something to be close to where my mother may be buried, it brings some peace. That is why the prospect of a mosque near Ground Zero—or a church or a synagogue or any religious or nationalistic monument or symbol—troubles me.

I was born in pre-revolutionary Iran. My family led a largely secular existence—I did not attend a religious school, I never wore a headscarf—but for us, as for anyone there, Islam was part of our heritage, our culture, our entire lives. Though I have nothing but contempt for the fanaticism that propelled the terrorists to carry out their murderous attacks on Sept. 11, I still have great respect for the faith. Yet, I worry that the construction of the Cordoba House Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center site would not promote tolerance or understanding; I fear it would become a symbol of victory for militant Muslims around the world.

When I am asked about the people who murdered my mother, I try to hold back my anger. I try to have a more spiritual perspective. I tell myself that perhaps what happened was meant to happen—that it was my mother's destiny to perish this way. I try to take solace in the notion that her death has forced a much-needed conversation and reevaluation of the role of religion in the Muslim community, of the duties and obligations that the faith imposes and of its impact on the non-Muslim world.

But a mosque near Ground Zero will not move this conversation forward. There were many mosques in the United States before Sept. 11; their mere existence did not bring cross-cultural understanding. The proposed center in New York may be heralded as a peace offering—may genuinely seek to focus on "promoting integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion through arts and culture," as its Web site declares—but I fear that over time, it will cultivate a fundamentalist version of the Muslim faith, embracing those who share such beliefs and hating those who do not.

The Sept. 11 attacks were the product of a hateful ideology that the perpetrators were willing to die for. They believed that all non-Muslims are infidels and that the duty of Muslims is to renounce them. I am not a theologian, but I know that the men who killed my mother carried this message in their hearts and minds. Obedient and dutiful soldiers, they marched toward their promised rewards in heaven with utter disregard for the value of the human beings they killed.

I know Ground Zero is not mine alone; I must share this sanctuary with tourists, politicians, anyone who chooses to come, whatever their motivations or intentions. But a mosque nearby—even a proposed one—is already transforming the site from a sacred ground for reflection, so desperately needed by the families who lost loved ones, to a battleground for religious and political ideologies. So many people from different nationalities and religions were killed that day. This site should be a neutral place for all to come in peace and remember. I believe my mother would have thought so as well.

The Iranian revolution compelled my family to flee to America when I was 12 years old. Yet, just over two decades later, the militant version of our faith caught up with us on a September morning. I still identify as a Muslim. When you are born into a Muslim family, there is no way around it, no choices available: You are Muslim. I am not ashamed of my faith, but I am ashamed of what is done in its name.

On the day I left Ground Zero shortly after the tragedy, I felt that I was abandoning my mother. It was like being forced to leave the bedside of a loved one who is dying, knowing you will never see her again. But I felt the love and respect of all those around me there, and it reassured me that she was being left in good hands. Since I cannot visit New York as often as I would like, I at least want to know that my mother can rest in peace.

I do not like harboring resentment or anger, but I do not want the death of my mother—my best friend, my hero, my strength, my love—to become even more politicized than it already is. To the supporters of this new Islamic cultural center, I must ask: Build your ideological monument somewhere else, far from my mother's grave, and let her rest.


Neda Bolourchi lives in Los Angeles.

NICE HAIRCUT

Here's an adept adaptation gone viral of a famous poem about the Nazis by Pastor Martin Niemöller—Muslim Outrage:

At first, the Muslims were outraged by cartoons, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't an artist.

And then the Muslims were outraged by history books and news, but I didn't speak up because I don't read much.

And then the Muslims were outraged by women who weren't completely veiled and hidden, but I didn't speak up because I'm not a woman.

And then the Muslims were outraged by the practice of other religions, but I didn't speak up because I'm not very religious.

And then the Muslims were outraged by the existence of Infidels so when they came for me … there was no one left to speak up.

The last line is the ultimate goal of Islam the rest are just steps towards that goal. But atmospherics are beginning to turn. Imagine where Western societies should be a decade from now. More Muslims no doubt will make demographic advances in Western societies some ten years from now but non-Muslims will be even more informed and disgruntled by the surly, superior doctrines and behaviors of the Mohammedans by then.

For Islam to be eventually assigned to oblivion, it is imperative that huge numbers of Muslims see the light and leave their fraudulent faith. We must remain confident this will happen. The more one examines Islamic doctrine and the life of Mohammed, the more unacceptable each becomes for both non-Muslim and Muslim alike.

Knowledge is power and the only path to extinguishing revolutionary Islam in long term.

Alternatively, once the West finds its sea legs in this new paradigm, may not involve "consigning Islam to oblivion" but merely managing it as best as possible through global quarantine—an indefinite war without end, but finally one where we will have the clear advantage, once we wake up and discard the so-called political correctness that rules today.

And part of that waking up process involves the realization that most Muslims will never reform; coming to a mind that cannot really absorb the uniqueness of the full horror of that Islam bestows upon its willing victims, the Muslims; a people who truly, deeply, sincerely love all the evil and dangerous tenets of Islam and who are truly, deeply, sincerely fanatical, paranoid and hateful of all non-Muslims; a people who are hopeless, who will never, in numbers sufficient to solve our problem with Islam, live up to our Western Classical Liberal ideal of universalism where all humans must be, at heart, pro-human, and not anti-human, and if the conditions are right, any anti-human will reform and see the light, wholly rejecting the cult of death they know as Islam.

All other non-Western peoples show sufficient capability of living up to that ideal (some less than others perhaps), but Muslims are not merely the worst of the lot on the same scale, as a group they are off the scale. Unique. In terms of philosophical, psychological, and political science implications, we may say, mytho-poetically, that Muslims qua Muslims exist to kill and be killed.

LET 'EM EAT UPSIDE DOWN CAKE

“Surely something must be terribly wrong with a man who seems to be far more concerned with Jews building houses in Israel than with Muslims building a nuclear bomb in Iran.”
—Burt Prelutsky

WE ARE TOLD NOT TO CAST ASPERSIONS. We are told not not to stereotype. We are told not to assign blame to all Muslims for the strife, hatred and violence their cousins in the Islamist branch of the family tree produce. Sounds fabulously fair, doesn't it? However we are also asked to collectively categorize ALL Tea party marchers as middle-aged, wealthy, white racists who hate having a black president and want poor black and brown people to suffer.

NYC Mayor Michael's Bloomberg's pathetic remarks immediately after the car bomb was discovered are pathetic enough, but seem mild compared to the snarky scolding he issued this morning after the Islamic identity of the bomber was revealed.

Where is all that anti-Muslim backlash our politicians and CAIR keep warning us against? Have some cake...

We are instructed that it is in our best interest as part of the human race to send our money to poorer nations, to stop living in large homes, to cut down on our "carbon" footprints and to accept the science we are shown. We are told this by people who buy huge homes and make tons of money and resolutely disregard dissent.

And this administration, we are told, has a "boot to the neck" of British Petroleum?

Here, have some more cake...

PARSING THE FAILED STATE CONUNDRUM

Democracy don’t rule the world,
You’d better get that in your head.
This world is ruled by violence
But I guess that’s better left unsaid.
—Bob Dylan

"Politics should be the part-time
profession of every citizen who would
protect the rights and privileges of free
people and who would preserve what is
good and fruitful in our national heritage."
—Lucille Ball

Another formidable essay by Hugh Fitzgerald at Jihad Watch...

FOR SEVEN YEARS, SUCCESSIVE American administrations have squandered men, money, materiel, morale (both civilian and military) in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan-Pakistan, wars whose goals—something to do with keeping or making these places unified, prosperous, and above all, preventing them from becoming "failed states" (a strange new and fashionable phrase, that is never defined but simply employed as if its significance were obvious) because then, you see, it doth follow as the night the day that as "failed states" they will become putty in the hands of Al Qaeda, which will move in, lock stock and barrel, and the United States will be unable to do a thing about it, then or at any time in the future.

Meanwhile, Muslims attack and kill non-Muslims in the southern Philippines and southern Thailand; the ISI-backed terrorist groups, slightly quieter after the Mumbai murders, have not been disbanded or weakened in any way by the Pakistani military; the zamindars and generals still share power and still exhibit the same sly meretriciousness toward the Americans as they inveigle ever greater amounts of military equipment, and money, and keep on producing weapons-grade plutonium, that is essentially paid for by American taxpayers. Saudi Arabia continues to spend its tens of billions all over the world paying for mosques, madrasas, campaigns of Da'wa, and propaganda churned out, in part, by armies of Western hirelings, some directly and some indirectly employed on behalf of Saudi Arabia and Islam; in American universities Muslims hire and promote each other, or the occasional non-Muslim willing collaborator, in academic departments devoted to the Middle East or to Islam, and in some Ivy League schools, there have been disturbing reports as to how one or two Muslim faculty members can prevent any open discussion of Islam in its historical context, or subject it to scholarly (i.e., unworshipful) study, and they can do this, sometimes, by even threatening to call on local Muslims to enforce such a ban.

The peoples of Western Europe are now enduring, or suffering, the consequences not of undifferentiated "immigration" but. rather, of Muslim immigration—and the American press hardly begins to touch this topic, to sink beneath the surface of things, and everywhere, the indigenous Europeans regret bitterly the heedlessness of their own political and media elites in allowing in so many Musims over just a short time—the last 20-30 years—and the fact that, because of this large-scale Muslim presence, life for those indigenous non-Muslims who live in societies,and countries, created entirely by non-Muslims (and none of their artistic, literary, musical achievements or political and religious freedoms for one minute conceivable under Islam), has become far more unpleasant, unsettled, expensive, and physically dangerous than would be the case without that large-scale Muslim presence.

The West does not have to squander trillions in these idiotic ventures to save Muslim states and societies from the consequences—political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral—of Islam itself. Indeed, it should not do so. And the fact that so many European countries are now unwilling to contribute to the American Building-the-Bridge-Over-the-River-Kwai project, one that is being conducted by the military who are given a task, but whose highest officers are apparently unwilling to question the efficacy and sense of that task, should give one pause. Why, for example, do those, such as Geert Wilders, who sense most keenly the danger of Islam infiltating and encroaching from within, are the least keen on sending soldiers to Afghanistan, to engage in what they rightly recognize as a snare, and a delusion?

Those countries that are part of the West, or part of the Rest—for the world-wide Jihad is a war of Islam against not the West but against All the Rest, and its ideological promptings are those contained in the Immutable and Uncreated Qur'an, as supplemented or glossed by the Hadith and the Sira, the sayings and deeds and biography of that Perfect Man, Muhammad—need to figure out what Islam, taken straight up and not on the rocks, not diluted by local custom or the ability of some Muslims not to take to heart what the texts teach (though at any point anyone still calling himself a Muslim may revert to that old-time religion, the faith straight up, with dangerous consequences for non-Muslims)—means, and intelligently construct a defense that relies mostly on allowing the pre-existing fissures—sectarian, ethnic, economic—within the Camp of Islam to widen, merely by doing nothing to prevent this.

And the other task—the one that is shown in the colossal failure, over many years, to deal effectively with the nuclear project of the Islamic Republic of Iran—is to make sure that no Muslim state, no Muslim group, no Muslim groupuscule, anywhere in the world, gets its hands, in posse or in esse, on weapons of mass destruction. It should by now be obvious that nothing except military force will stop the Islamic Republic of Iran in its determination to acquire nuclear weapons. Those who did not read what Ayatollah Khomeini wrote, and who thus abandoned the Shah and accepted Khomoeini's ascent to power— what worse group could one imagine being in control of American policy toward Iran than Gary Sick, William Miller (an early promoter of Khomeini), Zbigniew Brzezinski (that fake "realist" so ignorant of Islam and so determiinedly hostile to Israel), Jimmy Carter (ditto, but with an added holier-than-thou belief in the sheer goodness of a "fellow man of faith"—as he addressed Khomeini in a letter)—have not been sufficiently mocked, and their recent ideological heirs, the ones who believe in diplomatic maneuvering and cajoling long after it has run its course, will regret that they did not deal with the nuclear project of the Islamic Republic of Iran when they could.

And it is intolerable as well—flabbergastingly foolish—for the Obama administration to have done everything they possibly can to discourage and prevent Israel, willing—as it has been so many times in the past (bombing the Osirak reactor and then the Syrian nuclear installation, forcing Syrian tanks back from Jordan so as to rescue King Hussein of Jordan, warning Arab rulers of terrorist plots against them).

It should be the United States, and not little Israel, that as a world power and leader—if it saw itself correctly—of those resisting Jihad, should be dealing with the Iranian nuclear project. The claim that this would "only set back the Iranians by a year or two" is unproven, and in any case silly. The mere demonstration of American willingness to destroy major parts of such a program would not result in a renewed effort by a now at long last chasteneed Islamic Republic of Iran, for if the Americans showed themselves willing to attack once, it would be clear that they would be willing to attack again, and in all kinds of places—the port of Um Qasr, for example, or destroying the Iranian navy in the Gulf, or aiding Kurds in northwestern Iran and in another pocket in northeastern Iran, and Arabs in Khuzistan, and perhaps even suggest to the Azerbaijan government that the Americans wouldn't mind, as they did in 1946 with the Red Army, an expansion into northern Iran, to "re-unify" the Azeri people. All kinds of things are possible, but the very idea that an attack on Iran's nuclear project could only be a one-time thing, and that there would be no effect on the Islamic Republic of Iran—which, if it does acquire nuclear weapons, will never be dislodged by its domestic opponents, some of whom at long last realize this, though they cannot openly call for a Western attack on the nuclear project lest they be accused of treason.

It's madness and if, in a year Iran does acquire nuclear weapons, even the folly of the Bush Administration with its crazed and messianic sentimentalism—and the way in which so many policy-makers allowed themselves to be inveigled by Shi'a exiles such as Ahmad Chalabi, and failed to grasp the nature of Iraq and what would inevitably happen—will seem not quite so bad, for the Obama Administration, prompted by a different kind of naivete, but exhibiting the same willful ignorance about Islam, will have outdone even the Bush Administration. And its entire foreign policy will be seen to have been idiotic, and lie in ruins. For some, that will be a grim consolation. For others, more sensible, it will be no consolation at all.

WAS FORT HOOD A FALSE FLAG?

By Chuck Baldwin [ November 20, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

BY NOW, VIRTUALLY everyone has read and reread the copious news accounts of the terrible shooting a few weeks ago at Fort Hood, Texas. This column will not attempt to add new details to what is already a highly scrutinized tragedy. However, I do want to pose three basic questions that, to me, are extremely glaring and, for the most part, absent from the discussion.

Question 1: Why were the soldiers not armed?

After all, this is a military base; more than that, it is an Army base that emphasizes the training and equipping of frontline, combat-ready soldiers. For the most part, these were not clerks or cooks; these were combat troops. Fort Hood is home to the 1st Cavalry Division (the largest Division in the Army). Troops stationed at Fort Hood have engaged the enemy in virtually every hot theater of war to which American forces have been deployed. In recent conflicts that means Somalia, Bosnia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Without a doubt, these are among America's bravest and best.

So, how is it that these intensely trained, disciplined, rugged, highly qualified warriors are not allowed to carry their own weapons on base? This makes about as much sense as the policy forbidding airline pilots from carrying their own handguns on board commercial airliners, or teachers not being allowed to carry their own handguns in the classroom. After all, judges are granted the authority to carry their own firearms into the courtroom. If we can trust lawyers, we should be able to trust soldiers, airline pilots, and teachers.

Question 2: If the federal government—including the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, etc., with billions of dollars worth of technology; tens of thousands of snoops, spooks, and intelligence gatherers; and myriad Patriot Act-type laws—could not protect US soldiers on one of the most tightly secured and heavily guarded military installations in America, how can anyone in the country possibly not break out in cacophonous laughter when politicians tell us we need to surrender more liberties so that they might pass more laws to protect us crummy little peons? Or is it that, because Hasan was a Muslim, the politically correct nincompoops in charge gave him a pass?

Consider: we have learned that the shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, had attempted to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda; that numerous classmates of Hasan had reported his anti-American views, which, according to a column written by Dennis Prager, "included his giving a presentation that justified suicide bombing and telling classmates that Islamic law trumped the U.S. Constitution"; and that Hasan had a long history of pro-Islamic, anti-American activity. All of which begs an answer to the question, How could such an individual not only be allowed in the US military, but also be allowed to advance to the rank of Major?

I think most of my readers have the answer to this question figured out: we have an out-of-control, politically correct federal government that only senses danger from conservatives, libertarians, Christians, pro-lifers, Tea Party protesters, and anti-UN, anti-IRS, pro-Second Amendment activists—and supporters of Ron Paul and Chuck Baldwin, of course. To this politically correct federal leviathan today, anti-American jihadists, militant Black Panthers, or illegal aliens who have committed felonious crimes in Mexico pose no risk to anyone, and must be "understood."

As Prager quotes NPR's Tom Gjelten: since Hasan had never been in combat, he must have suffered from "pre-traumatic stress disorder." No, I'm not kidding. That's what he said. (I'll pause while you pick yourself up off the floor from laughing.)

To the politically correct crowd running things in Washington, D.C., anyone coming from a socialistic, Big Government, or anti-American point of view is harmless, and anyone coming from a conservative, Christian, constitutional, or pro-American point of view is dangerous. Can one imagine how the mainstream media, federal police agencies, and the Southern Poverty Law Center would have reacted had Hasan shouted "Jesus is greatest!" instead of what he really said, "Allah is greatest!" right before opening fire?

If one rejects the notion that political correctness favoring Muslims (and every other minority in the United States) had anything to do with the Fort Hood shooting, then we are back to the original question: If the federal government—including the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, etc., with billions of dollars worth of technology; tens of thousands of snoops, spooks, and intelligence gatherers; and myriad Patriot Act-type laws—could not protect US soldiers on one of the most tightly secured and heavily guarded military installations in America, how can anyone in the country possibly not break out in cacophonous laughter when politicians tell us we need to surrender more liberties so that they might pass more laws to protect us crummy little peons?

Are we now really supposed to believe that all these Patriot Act-type laws, which allow the federal government to trash the Constitution and Bill of Rights—and poke its ubiquitous and meddlesome nose into every corner and crevice of our lives—are actually doing anything to make us safer? You've got to be kidding! The only thing they are doing is stealing our liberties. If the Fort Hood massacre proves anything, it proves that.

Question 3: How could one man (with no combat experience) armed with only two handguns fire over 100 rounds (demanding he reload at least 3 times) into a crowd of scores and hundreds of fearless combat-trained warriors? I must confess: this is the question that bothers me the most.

According to the official story, Hasan was the only shooter, and he was allowed to fire at will into a crowd of America's finest warriors for at least 4 minutes, reloading at least 3 times, firing over 100 rounds of ammunition, killing 13 people, and wounding over 30—and was finally taken out by civilian police officers AFTER EXITING THE BUILDING. I've got to tell you: I cannot get my brain around this one.

Again, these soldiers are warriors. They not only know how to fight, they know how to fight unarmed. They are trained to risk their lives. They are trained to do whatever is necessary to take out the enemy. Had even a small group of soldiers rushed the shooter (especially if they came at him from multiple directions) there is no way that Hasan would not have been subdued—and most likely killed. Yes, a few of the on-rushers would have been hit, but Hasan could not have gotten them all. That is a fact! And yet, we are supposed to believe that Hasan was not only unmolested by soldiers inside the building, but he was allowed to leave the building entirely, and then get shot by civilian policemen? Again, this explanation makes absolutely no sense to me. None.

Initial reports said there were multiple shooters. If that was the case, the scenario is much more plausible. If multiple shooters had opened fire from various vantage points—especially if they had rifles—it would have made unarmed resistance extremely difficult. That scenario would make sense. The "one shooter with two handguns" explanation makes no sense.

I realize that no unarmed man wants to rush an armed attacker. Of course, some who would do so would probably die, but again, these are trained warriors. Furthermore, this was an all-or-nothing, kill-or-be-killed environment: something these men are trained for. If untrained civilian passengers on flight 93 on 9/11 could rush and thwart armed attackers on board a commercial airliner from a narrow aisle way and stop a hijacking—a task infinitely more difficult than for a group of highly trained professional soldiers outnumbering an attacker by scores or hundreds in a large building—tell me again how Hasan was able to open fire with only two handguns, kill and wound scores of people, and calmly walk out of the building unscathed? Again, this makes no sense.

Of course, all of the above is predicated upon the public accounts of the events being a truthful representation of what actually occurred. Which, after trying to comprehend the plausibility of what we are being told, is becoming increasingly difficult to believe. But then again, I haven't believed much that the federal government or major news media has told me since John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And I must say, this story serves only to further fuel my skepticism.

Former Libertarian candidate for US President Chuck Baldwin makes a compelling case that there is ALWAYS something more than "meets the eye" afoot with regard to the US response to this mullah-declared war for global control. The continued efforts to repolish the same tarnished mask of political correctness with every official response to an event of national security have worn a bit thin. Conspiracy theorists now seem to present a much clearer view, one that that jives with the facts with each new Islamic foil. How much longer can we hold this wobbling fixation on multicultural suicide together? Every day the news is packaged in reworked lies and old obfuscations. With an economy in the toilet, an educational system stripped of its purpose, and a seemingly permanent social glitch in our once cherished American pride, we must vigorously question our leaders who must surely know we cannot hold our breath from the stench of faux reality much longer.

JIHAD IN LITTLE ROCK SHOOTING

As plain as day. But still our military intelligence corps stumbles all over itself trying to downplay the obvious. Such immense self-loathing in the broad and toothy face of an army of jihadists so cocksure of its own righteous endeavors, that every makeshift soldier we capture in vain usually sings chapter and verse like a canary before, during, and after an attack, precisely the reason why they are attacking.

Or they invent one on the spot from the latest headlines, knowing how much we the enemy will grieve over our own successes, knowing gleefully by heart the Qu'ran gives them carte blanche to kill the infidels just as a matter of manifest destiny as the West remains deaf, dumb, and moronic in dealing with its adversaries, like a drunken but broken empire already on its knees...

This fellow apparently was a slow learner.

MEMPHIS — A Tennessee man accused of killing a soldier outside a Little Rock, Ark., military recruiting station last year has asked a judge to change his plea to guilty, claiming for the first time that he is affiliated with a Yemen-based affiliate of Al Qaeda.

In a letter to the judge presiding over his case, the accused killer, Abdulhakim Muhammad, calls himself a soldier in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and calls the shooting “a Jihadi Attack” in retribution for the killing of Muslims by American troops.

“I wasn’t insane or post traumatic nor was I forced to do this Act,” Mr. Muhammad said in a two-page, hand-printed note in pencil. The attack, which he said did not go as planned, was “justified according to Islamic Laws and the Islamic Religion. Jihad — to fight those who wage war on Islam and Muslims.”

It remains unclear whether Mr. Muhammad really has ties to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which President Obama has said is behind the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an American plane by a Nigerian man.

But if evidence emerges that his claim is true, it will give the June 1, 2009, shooting in Little Rock new significance at a time when Yemen is being more closely scrutinized as a source of terrorist plots against the United States.

Mr. Muhammad, 24, a Muslim convert from Memphis, spent about 16 months in Yemen starting in the fall of 2007, ostensibly teaching English and learning Arabic. During that time, he married a woman from south Yemen. But he was also imprisoned for several months because he overstayed his visa and was holding a fraudulent Somali passport, the Yemen government said.

Under pressure from the United States government, Yemen deported Mr. Muhammad in late January 2009. But just four months after his return, Mr. Muhammad used a semiautomatic rifle to gun down two soldiers — Pvt. William A. Long and Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula — while they were standing outside a military recruiting station in Little Rock, killing Private Long and wounding Private Ezeagwula.

Read it all.

WORLD PEACE AT A GLANCE

HAPPY 2010 WISHES to all our silent readers, and yes, we have them as our Live Feed attests, but thankfully few are the ones who actually waste theirs or our precious time begging to differ, or in announcing themselves in any number of other less tedious ways...

But in a slow kickoff of the new year of Two-Fisted Quorum (despite the plethora of pungent events of late of which the national media has covered in various degrees of detail), here are a few skewered bits that may have missed your perusal:

Congressional Democrats scheme to push universal voting rights...

China announces new restrictions on its own band of merry Muslims...

Top dozen "media scares" of the past ten years. And you say the conspiracy isn't real?

Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch, inspired by a hard-hitting piece by Charles Krauthammer threw a crush punch at the Obama administration's mishandling of the recent terror attacks on US soil at Fort Hood and Detroit air space. One question Koch, a Democrat who supported Bush in '04 and Obama in '08, raised is why aren't we honoring those who brave men and women who stopped these two catastropes in their tracks? Where indeed?

So, let's piece together the few narrative threads we are offered by the mainstream media. Any Muslim who snaps and shows his true colors is merely an isolated case of an otherwise gentle soul getting his "buttons pushed" while those unfortunate enough to be caught red-handed with "terrorist ties" are part of some Tiny Minority of Extremists™ and surely not representative of mainstream Islam. So no matter how much regurgitated Qu'ran-speak is spewed out by Muslims, it is never representative of the whole. Must be a riot to have the mainstream media and western governments in one's hip pocket.

Ever wondered why you sometimes confuse "inalienable rights" with "unalienable rights" when pondering our Declaration of Independence? Read this for personal resolve. Note Jefferson's choice.

IDEOLOGY AND STRATEGIES OF GLOBAL JIHAD

Dear Gabriel,

Our friend and esteemed colleague Dr. Walid Phares comments below on the unprecedented acceleration of jihadist terror plots we have seen in the past few weeks, the latest in Springfield, Illinois.

Dr. Phares will be presenting a session entitled "The Ideology and Strategies of Global Jihad" at the American Congress for Truth national conference webcast on November 7th.

This conference, entitled "Radical Islam's Threat to America," is available FREE of charge to all elected officials, their staffs, and members of ACT! for America and American Congress for Truth. Log on to Act For America to find out more information and how you can participate.

And please pass the word about the conference to every elected official you know.

As we noted last week, we believe there is a correlation between the Obama administration's accelerated "outreach" effort to the Muslim world and the increase in terrorist plots. Within the world of jihadist Islam such efforts are viewed as weakness. They reinforce the supremacist political ideology shared by jihadists and, in doing so, embolden them.

What's more, these efforts send a message to the so-called "moderate" Muslims that the "strong horse" (to quote Osama bin Laden) they should get behind is, indeed, the jihadists.

Warning: The Jihadists are mushrooming inside America

Dr. Phares writes...

It is unprecedented in American counter terrorism annals: in one day the nation was dealing with three separate Jihadist plots to blow up civilian and other targets inside the Homeland. Although the cases were addressed at different time periods by the FBI and other agencies, nevertheless, the thickening web of Terror attempts breached the crossing line of US national security. This week, authorities revealed three conspiracies by American Jihadists: Michael C. Finton, a 29-year-old man who wished to follow the steps of American-born Taliban John Walker Lindh, was arrested after trying to detonate what he thought was a bomb inside a van outside a federal courthouse in Springfield, Ill.

Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year old Jordanian national was arrested after placing what he believed was a bomb at a downtown Dallas skyscraper. But perhaps the most troubling case is of Afghan-born Najibullah Zazi who set up shop in suburban Denver, scouting the Web and visiting beauty supply stores in a hunt for chemicals needed to build bombs for Al Qaeda. Sources called the alleged plot one of the most significant terror threats to the U.S. since 9-11. Add to the list the North Carolina Jihad cell, led by Saifullah Boyd, which was planning on attacking civilian and military targets across the country.

The immediate question raised by an increasingly worried public is about the connection between all these terror cases: are they all connected? While law enforcement and certainly judicial authorities proceed in a bottom up reasoning, that is to build the case for a global connection between all what is happening with the help of legal evidence, analysts in the field of counter terrorism and conflict are already realizing the meaning of what is happening inside America.

In my book Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against America (2005-2006), I clearly projected that Jihadists, individuals and cells will be mushrooming and expanding inside the United States within few years from then and that they will precisely do what they are trying to do now. I have also projected how large they will become, with time. It was a simple deduction: if the Government doesn't counter this ideological growth, Jihadists will keep coming. And in fact they kept coming, spreading crossing the barriers of ethnicities, races, nationalities and geographical frontiers.

The Jihadists committed to harm the US, and based inside our borders, are now by the hundreds. When I suggested this fact on CNN in 2006, and reiterated it on Oprah's show so that the public realizes what is to come, I raised a few eyes brows. Now unfortunately, we are meeting the cells of Jihadism in our cities and little towns, and sadly the expectation is that we will see more, and we may unfortunately not be able to stop them all from reaching their goals.

The North Carolina cell, the New York subway plot, the Dallas attempt, the Illinois case, added to the previous cases of the shooting of a soldier in Arkansas, the precedent New York cells, Georgia's young Jihadists, all the way back to the infamous Virginia paintball network, if anything gives us the genome of what is morphing inside the country—a vast body of dispersed cells with at least one binding force—the Jihadi ideology. The question thus is to find out who is propagating the doctrines of Jihadism: who is funding it; who is protecting the indoctrination operation which leads naturally to the rise of homegrown or foreign linked, lone wolves or packs of Jihadists, Terrorists. That is the real question: where is the factory?

What should the US Government do? Well, it must first of all come to the front of the threat and lead the nation against it. This is not a matter of only local police or law enforcement efforts. President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders from both parties must give this spreading plague a top priority—for if one of these groups is successful, our national economy will crumble again, or at least will be wounded even more severely, let alone the human consequences of terror.

Americans are watching with great concerns, these terror plots being revealed. They expect their elected officials to address these fears before the worse happens.

THE SPECTACLE OF RACE TWITTERING

In the national debate on Islam, oops, that's right there is none, but here is an honest perspective by Mark Quinn who frequently comments on what most in the West ignore—the obvious nasty nature of Islam.

ONE OF THE MOST frustrating things about the whole debate about Islam and its destructive influence around the world is this notion of racism, perpetuated by the extreme left (liberals) and the extreme right (Muslims), who as we know are all in bed together in some unholy union.

No, it is not correct to call Islam a race. However, if you take a look at the originators of Islam, the Arabic people, you will find no greater example of culture-wide and institutionalized racism. Most of us are extremely frustrated, for instance, when we see the speed with which Islam is growing among people of sub-Saharan African decent. We listen to their naive claims, planted by Muslims, that Islam is the true faith of Africa. We tell them the Arab people enslaved them for centuries, that the entire slave trade itself would have been nil if not for the Arab brokers who started it all. And yet they don't want to listen. The Arabs did far more than practicing "racism" against African people. It was a lot closer to genocide.

And yet, here we are, people who see a legitimate threat from Islam, and we have to endure being called racist when in fact we're the most liberal, modern people in the world. By "we" I mean people in western societies. We intermarry with each other on a fairly regular basis, we provide equal opportunities for people of all races, religions and genders, and generally speaking, we're happy to pull all the strengths of all the cultures of the world to make ours better and unique. I don't think there are too many of us on this forum who would throw a fit if we saw a member of our own race dating a member of another, or if we were working alongside someone from another race.

Now go and try to date a young Muslim woman. Best case scenario, the father would forbid it. Worst case scenario, your bride would be a head shorter.

I'm not so naive to think racism is non-existent in the world. I've seen a lot of prejudice among east Asians with regard to interracial dating. I myself come from an Italian-Irish background, and I know a lot of Italian-American fathers who wouldn't even allow their kids to have black friends come over. But two points on this. First, every decade that seems to fade more and more. Second, there's no such thing as institutionalized "honor killing" in the world at large. Islam might not have strict guidelines about racism, but I think I've made a point about their gross intolerance.

That's why this whole debate is so frustrating. If it wasn't for terrorism, if it wasn't for Jihad, if it wasn't for calls for Sharia Law, if it wasn't for endless demands for special treatment and consideration, if it wasn't for riots over cartoons, any of us would welcome the Muslim people into our societies with open arms.

How many Muslim societies would welcome us, even if we settled in their countries and conducted ourselves more quietly and unobtrusively than so many mice? Go ask the Copts that question, or the Kurds.

So here we are, having to endure this ridiculous argument that we're racist or intolerant, when in fact we've made a gargantuan effort to appease anyone and everyone who settles in our part of the world. Meanwhile, Muslims are an affront to everyone they encounter, and even as they plot our demise in their mosque services and literature, they preach about how horribly intolerant we are.

You almost feel like banging your head against a wall. It's like living in the Twilight Zone.

THE GREAT WALL OF SILENCE

An important series of questions were posited by a concerned US citizen to her elected representatives. The response to her questions were woefully inadequate. One day very soon we will know who among us—standing along the hallowed halls of liberty and freedom, conscience and the rule of law—were on the payroll to look the other way, and who indeed were the best and the brightest and most dedicated patriots of our time. Only then will the appeasers and the slouchers within our leadership ranks and from among the chattering café crowds know the depths of their shameless ignorance concerning the threat that unambiguously approaches.

If you want peace, prepare for war. “Si vis pacem, para bellum” from Flavius Vegetius Renatus circa 375 AD: “If you want peace, prepare for war.” Said another way, when you want something badly enough, you must fight for it. As colonial patriot Patrick Henry once exclaimed, "Give me liberty or give me death!" Our current enemies believe the same. But their version of liberty is not mine.

Watch what people do and you will see their true level of commitment.

Ayn Rand spoke about this kind of bulletproof resolution. “There are two sides to every issue” she said, “one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth.”

Fence sitters and cowards exist in a moral fog where they never really commit to anything but their hatred of success. Achievers are prepared to fight to the death. Sidney Sheldon put it best: “The foolish think the Eagle weak, and easy to bring to heel. The Eagle's wings are silken, but its claws are made of steel.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Winners don’t cut and run. They are in the fight until the end. They stay the course. They know that anything worthwhile will take a bit longer and take some doing. They understand that they will face a few detours, disappointments, and distractions.

"When you push a winner, you find out whom you’re really dealing with." They expect the unexpected. They are warriors who realize that war is war. They don’t make excuses or expect the state or mommy to help them. They don’t find the strongest people to blame for their inadequacies, spinelessness and weakness. They bounce back courageously and fight on. They are the “Steel fist in the silken glove”—when you push them, you find out whom you’re really dealing with.

IT’S THE RELIGIOUS FREEDOMS clause in our Constitution that will do us in. Every letter I have ever written to a politician, some of them lengthy and with references, evoked terse replies admonishing me for my intolerance and reminding me that ALL religions are respected and welcomed in America. In my follow-up responses to these idiotic replies, none of which were acknowledged, I asked these so-called representatives how they could condone the practice of a religion by millions of immigrants( who continue to flood America despite hating it) that brazenly teaches its followers to usurp our government and convert, enslave, or kill all non-Muslim Americans.

I painstakingly outlined the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood and listed every orgainization connected to it that operates in America. I demanded to know why these insurgents and fifth columnists were permitted to operate in our country with impunity when they are dedicated to its destruction. No answer. I demanded to know why Muslim supremacists could carry signs predicting the overthrow of our government while they burned U.S. flags on our streets. No answer. I demanded to know why public funds were allocated to seditionist Islamic organizations like the Muslim Student Association and CAIR, our avowed enemies that intend to cut our throats, seize our property and assets, usurp our government, and implement Islamic law in America.

I demanded to know how my government intended to protect me and my family from the radical jihadists inculcated in American mosques by Saudi Wahabbi clerics. I demanded to know why these America-haters were allowed to come here and spread their vile, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Jew hatred and to explain to me where religious freedom ended and sedition began. I pointed out the explosive, festering situation in Europe with its Muslim supremacists and asked if that was our future. I asked if anyone in Washington had ever studied Islamic history and the doctrine of Islam or if they all relied on the Islamic apologist liars in academia and intelligentsia to provide them with soothing canards so they could ignore the problem of Islam and Muslims.

I listed the terror attacks committed by Muslims in the name of Islam since 9/11 and asked if they really believed that jihad was a marginal problem among a few fanatics. I asked why America stopped limiting immigrants to those who genuinely wanted to become Americans and would contribute to our society and respect our way of life and why we now deliberately and suicidally invite our enemies to invade our country. I concluded by asking them if they were blind and deaf or if maybe they too had been bought by the Saudis.

My representatives are Republicans, except for one. This was a frustrating, infuriating experience that I will never forget and never understand beyond the fact that politicians are shackled by political correctness and fear reprisals from their colleagues and/or the wrath of their constituents if they dare voice valid concerns about Islam. The only thing that will change their attitudes is a flood of complaints and letters of outrage from the people they represent. Someone made the comment in another thread that 9/11 was the best thing that ever happened to Islam and Muslims in America.

Instead of opening the eyes of all Americans to this pernicious scourge, they have been lulled into a false sense of security by lying politicians, politically correct multiculturalists, moral relativists, and well-meaning but ignorant Christian and Jewish clerics. Instead of being isolated and treated with justified suspicion, Muslims have been elevated to victim status and they are the consummate exploiters of genuine good will, a virtue they will never possess or comprehend.

—Susan P.

THE DONNYBROOK AT THE FBI

The WorldNetDaily story below illustrates why I regularly point out how “political correctness” is aiding and abetting the advance of militant Islam in America and to an even far greater degree, in Europe. One line is especially revealing:

“The [FBI] officials said terrorism is "not a new phenomenon" limited to Muslims, and they cited abortion-clinic bomber Eric Rudolph as an example of a Christian terrorist.”

The problem with this stilted reasoning is that very few terrorist acts worldwide are perpetrated by Christians, whereas since 9/11 over 9,000 verifiable acts of terrorism have been perpetrated worldwide by Muslims.

Furthermore, nowhere in the New Testament are Christians exhorted to “smite infidels” or forcibly subjugate unbelievers, as is the case in the Qur’an and the Hadith. To gloss over or rationalize Islamic terrorism by pointing to a handful of “Christian terrorists” is a revealing example of political correctness run amok in the FBI, a political correctness that some field agents tell us they vehemently disagree with.

Nevertheless, true to its directive from on high (Saudi blackmail), the FBI believes its agents still aren't sensitive enough to Muslims and their culture, so the bureau has extended by "a few weeks" its Islamic cultural "enrichment" training program, WND has learned. During a recent outreach event at a Washington-area mosque, FBI officials also reassured a large turnout of concerned Muslims that the bureau is not profiling Arabs and Muslims for terrorism, and has made investigating alleged "hate crimes" against them and other minorities "the second-highest priority in the criminal division of the FBI."

Among the officials who attended the Feb. 8 "town hall meeting" at the large ADAMS Center mosque were Timothy Healy, deputy assistant director for FBI intelligence, and Dave Bennett, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Washington field office. The officials said terrorism is "not a new phenomenon" limited to Muslims, and they cited abortion-clinic bomber Eric Rudolph as an example of a Christian terrorist.

While admitting that they are concerned about the threat from "homegrown terror" perpetuated by second-generation Muslim immigrants, the officials assured the Muslim audience they are no more concerned about such homegrown attacks than they are "about bank robberies," and are not targeting the Muslim community for special surveillance.

Of course, I am also very concerned about recently immigrated terrorists, such as those who flew into the Twin Towers. Recent evidence provided by news stories suggesting both our southern and northern borders are under assault.

One official offered that FBI headquarters has extended the bureau's Arabic curriculum, which includes Muslim culture, by "a few weeks" to expose agents to Islam and cultivate a better understanding of the faith.

"We all need to learn and understand each other," he said, adding that the Muslim sensitivity program is part of basic training for agents.

"One of the things that the FBI believes in is diversity," he said. "Diversity is important."

To that end, he says the bureau is "under a hiring push this year" and is heavily recruiting Muslim agents. The FBI wants to hire 900 FBI agents and 2,000 professional support staff, including Arabic translators, by Sept. 30. [emphasis added and note: why does the FBI routinely reject Christians and Jews who are fluent in Arabic who apply to be translators?]

"One of the things that we are critically seeking are special agents and support staff who are Arabic speakers," he announced to the audience at the ADAMS mosque, which was founded and funded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and has been one of the top distributors of Wahhabist anti-Semitic and anti-Christian dogma.

"We also need folks who, candidly, are familiar with Islam," the official said. "We're learning, many of us. And I've had many conversations with Muslims, and I've learned quite a bit. I'm a Roman Catholic, and there are so many similarities I have learned between Islam and Christianity that was a surprise to me."

ADAMS Center is not the only Muslim Brotherhood-tied organization where the FBI has recruited agents. In September, it also set up a recruitment booth at the annual Islamic Society of North America convention. Just four months earlier, federal prosecutors named ISNA as an unindicted co-conspirator in a major terror fundraising case, and listed it as a member of the U.S. branch of the radical Brotherhood.

What's more, the agency is advertising for agents in ISNA's magazine "Islamic Horizons," as well as on the website of the Saudi-backed Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, which has supported Hamas and other known terrorists.

Last November, Lebanese former FBI agent Nada Prouty was arrested and pleaded guilty to charges in connection with a Hezbollah espionage investigation. As WND first reported, the FBI summarily rejected some 90 Jewish Arabic speakers who after 9/11 applied to become translators and language specialists at the FBI's New York field office.

As WND also first reported in 2003, national Arab-American and Muslim leaders have made presentations at an FBI training course on civil rights at the Washington offices of the FBI, and at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Va., as part of "Enrichment Training Sessions" for new special agents there.

In addition, the imam of a large Manhattan mosque has lectured veteran counterterrorism investigators at the FBI's New York field office about misinterpretation of the meaning of jihad in the Quran, the Muslim holy book. The sensitivity training program, denounced by some active and former agents, was mandated after the 9/11 attacks by FBI Director Robert Mueller. FBI headquarters defends the program as a way to reach out to the Muslim community in America.

"I hate the word 'sensitivity' training," said FBI spokesman Ed Cogswell. "I would call it an awareness training relative to cultural issues."

Mueller has met several times with Arab and Muslim groups since 9/11. He even agreed to be the keynote speaker at the American Muslim Council conference in Washington—a move that drew fire from AMC critics, who note the group has sung the praises of Islamic terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah, and was headed by al-Qaida fundraiser Abdurahman Alamoudi, now serving time in federal prison on terror charges.

"Mueller should lead the FBI in this war, and leave the sensitivity sessions to the human resources department or CNN," complained retired FBI special agent Don Lavey, who served 20 years in the bureau's counterterrorism unit.

"Let's just hope the director is leading the charge in this war against terrorism with an equal amount of zeal that he shows for cultural sensitivities," added Lavey, who claims Mueller is so politically correct he refuses to use "Islamic" and "terrorism" in the same sentence.

Yeah, let's. Unfortunately nationality matters. If a scientist or engineer comes from China to the US for study or employment, there could be security concerns, while the same concerns would be less likely if the person came from Britain. In the 1940s aliens from enemy countries found their movement restricted. During the cold war those with Eastern European connections had difficulty getting security clearances. Today's enemies are motivated by Islam, by and large they come from Muslim countries. Many come from nations that are nominally allied to the US. Yes, this scrutiny causes problems but those problems are unavoidable in a dangerous world. End of story.

BUT ISN'T THE WEST THE BAD GUY?

Author Christopher Hitchens is first slammed by a marginally young peacenik who one presumes doesn't believe that blood should be shed for oil, and then by a well-spoken elderly gentleman who claims to be a Marxist. Hitchens swings back in typical fashion, not missing a beat. Funny stuff in a sad way.



Here, Chris Hitchens mops up spilt milk by telling the elderly gent Marxist where to get off the Hitchens' train.

MAKING THE CASE FOR DARFUR DEFENSE

Arab Supremacy alert: African Muslim refugees from Darfur scatter across Sudan to Chad fleeing genocide at hands of Arab Muslim soldiers.

By Hugh Fitzgerald

Osama bin Laden is now attacking the government in Khartoum, decrying the permission given by the fanatical Arab Muslims in Khartoum to the "infidels"—i.e., allowing in some completely ineffective troops from the African Union to "keep the peace" in Darfur.

He needn't worry. Turabi is still Turabi, and the Muslims of Khartoum are just as fanatically vicious as they ever were. They are just willing to be a bit more mindful of Muhammad's "war is deception" as they attempt to diminish Western pressure on them. Hence that "peace treaty" with the Christians and animists in the southern Sudan, which "treaty" is, of course, merely a hudna or "truce" treaty and, for the past six months at least, has been grossly violated by the Sudanese government—and with seeming indifference by the Western powers, which content themselves with the notion that there is now an agreement, a "peace agreement," in the southern Sudan, and they can all forget about that part of the Sudan.

In Darfur, the Sudanese government has made sure that the troops will only be from the African Union, and has repeatedly said that not a single Western soldier will be allowed in. In other words, there will be no force effective enough to smash the Janjaweed, and protect the black Africans being killed for the crime of being black African, rather than Arab, Muslims.

Osama Bin Laden and his Arabs famously treated the Afghani Muslims with indifference, or contempt. The Arabs, after all, are the "best of peoples" to whom the Qur'an was given, and—so Muslims believe—in Arabic. In his remarks on the Sudan, he reveals his indifference to, or rather his tacit approval of, the mass murdering of black Africans. That is not surprising. What is surprising is how this is overlooked by the entire Western world, including those—such as Nicholas Kristof—who write about the Sudan without any mention, much less understanding, of either Islam, or that aspect of Islam that makes it a vehicle for Arab cultural, linguistic, economic, and political imperialism. That subject is too difficult and too troubling for the heart-on-sleeves (and Pulitzers carefully pocketed) likes of Nicholas Kristof and others like him, who can report, who can be mere reporters, full of their easy anguish, but who cannot make sense, for themselves much less for others, of what it is they have been reporting on. They cannot explain the promptings, the attitudes, the atmospherics, that move the people who run the government in Khartoum. They cannot explain the Arab Muslim view of non-Arab Muslims. Don't expect someone on the mental level of Nicholas Kristof to conceivably beable to make a connection between the massacres of Kurds by Arabs in Iraq, and the cultural and linguistic imperialism of the Arabs directed at the Berbers in Algeria, and what is happening in Darfur, where he reports so much, and understands so little.

No, Bin Laden doesn't have to worry about the Turabi government in Khartoum. They know exactly how to delay any day of reckoning.

But what of the American government? Does it realize what an opportunity it is missing by not sending a few thousand troops to seize all of the southern Sudan (with its oil, that would allow that region to pay for itself, and deny those oil revenues to the Arabs in the north?), and Darfur, and holding them until a referendum on independence can be held? That would be a blow for that "freedom" and "democracy" that, unlike in Iraq, might actually mean something because the southern Sudanese are not Muslims, and those in Darfur are nominal Muslims who, having had a taste of the Arab Muslim attitudes, might be willing to listen to the message of Christianity—already hundreds of refugees from Darfur have apparently, once out of the Sudan, converted to Christianity. Quite an opportunity presents itself for the American government to draw a line against further Arab (and Egyptian Arab) expansion further south, threatening Ethiopia, and Kenya, and the rest of the littoral, including Tanzaniya, which is where the old Arab slave trade had its entrepots, at Pemba and Zanzibar, to ship those black slaves to the Arab slave markets of Muscat, and beyond.

But Tarbaby Iraq gets in the way. It gets in the way of properly dealing with Iran's nuclear project. It gets in the way of domestic surveillance that is amply justified. It gets in the way of thinking clearly about the future of the Western countries now subject to demopraphic assault from within. It gets in the way of considering the Jihad as a world-wide phenomenon, one for which terrorism is the least effective of its weapons.

Bin Laden needn't worry about the Sudan. The government there knows exactly what it needs to do to protect the Arab Muslim position, and it has already violated the "peace agreement" with the south in ways that, if Bin Laden knew, would leave him well-satisfied. And they are doing much the same, or trying to, in Darfur.

Those who need to worry about the Sudan are the Infidels. Why has the American government not yet taken the step—the "humanitarian" step—of rescuing the black Africans of Darfur and the southern Sudan? Why has it not allowed its troops to be deployed effectively, instead of ineffectively—to attain exactly the wrong goals—in Iraq? Why has it not created a situation in which the Arab League would have to denounce the Americans (and other Western troops) for protecting the obviously grateful (see those photographs of smiling black faces surrounding their saviors and protectors) for ending the mass murder, by Arabs, of black Africans. What better way to drive a wedge between Arabs and sub-Saharan Africa? What better way to bring to the attention of black Americans, one group long targetted for sinister campaigns of Da'wa, that the Arabs conducted a slave trade that lasted far longer (indeed lasts to this day, despite Western efforts to end it), and claimed far more victims (see "The Hideous Trade") than the Atlantic slave trade and that the Qur'an permanently recognizes the institution of slavery (and Saudi clerics have restated that position repeatedly), and the fury of the Arab League over the rescue of black Africans in Darfur or southern Sudan ought to tell us all a great deal about the real attitudes and intentions of the Arabs.

The Sudan presents a great opportunity to weaken the Camp of Islam, through a very small deployment and application of force. Iraq, on the other hand, presents a great opportunity to weaken the Camp of Islam not through the bringing of "democracy" and keeping the country together, but by the removal of American troops, in order that the pre-existing fissures, sectarian and ethnic, may work themselves out, as they inevitably will.

There is no contradiction here between a policy of removal in Iraq and intervention in Sudan. Both measures would contribute to weakening the Camp of Islam. And that is, or should be, the goal.

EX-MUSLIM CARTOONIST STRIKES BACK

Speaking of Cartoon Rage, there's a new provacateur on the block. The spot-on main character in The Infidel, the upcoming graphic novel by the ex-Muslim Bosch Fawstin, is also an ex-Muslim cartoonist. This character creates "Pigman," a ruthless counter-jihad superhero, as a response to 9/11. His creating the Pigman comic book brings him face to face with the enemy: his born-again Muslim brother, who has become a jihadist.

Fawstin writes:

Once you allow the murder of human beings as an intrinsic part of spreading your belief system, and as a literal part of your 'holy book', NO irrelevant, out of context good can be claimed. No redemption is possible. Now, from my experience, most Muslims are simply better than Islam, and I attribute that to their humanity, to their ability to ignore Islam and its constant pull to influence the worst part of our natures.

The moment Mohammad crossed the line and used his sword to spread Islam was the moment Islam was revealed as an even more impotent belief system than originally thought. Mohammad understood that without force, Islam would have died with him, and that tells you a lot about his ‘faith’ in his own religion.

It all begins with Mohammad, it all begins with the nature of the man. He is considered the perfect man in Islam. So morality, when it came to Islam, was equated with ‘Mohammed’ and whatever he said and did. It’s no mystery that where Islam dominates, there’s hell on earth.

We’re still looking for ‘the good’ in something bad because that’s our nature. We’re so healthy a culture, relatively speaking, that we're still confounded by what’s going on around us. We need to look to the good for the good and judge evil belief systems as just that. Jihad, holy war against all non-Muslims, [no matter WHAT Muslims would tell you about it being a ‘spiritual journey’,] is the heart of Islam, and without it, Islam’s dead. One Cannot moderate evil. It’s no longer up to Muslims to ‘reform’ Islam, we’ve seen that they’re not morally up to even considering the prospect of it. There’s only the possibility of absolute moral transformation, of a moral revolution of Islam by Muslims. But I don’t think they will do so without the entire world Forcing them to do so. Again, there is NO mass movement of Muslims who are looking to morally transform Islam, the very notion of it offends them.

For our own good, the end game of this jihad, the time when we are forced to choose between us or them, [a day which Will come] is massive destruction of terrorist countries to the point where the Muslim world has NO choice but to join civilization once and for all. To the point where they stop looking at the world as the enemy and see that it’s been Islam all along that’s made their lives hell.

I can go on here, may have went on some tangents, but we are in such deep shit with our sheer gutlessness as a culture in simply seeing the truth about the enemy that I fear it will take another devastating attack for us to see the truth and act on it, even if the actors are wretched politicians. But they will have no choice.

WARRIOR POETS, LORD BYRONS EACH OF THEM

"Poems From Guantanamo is a challenge for even overwhelmingly sympathetic reviewers," says online pundit Mark Steyn.

Well, I had occasion to pick up one of these books and browse through it just last weekend at Washington DC's ever so trendy Busboys & Poets diner and bookstore. The establishment is actually a hopping swell place to be, day or night, no matter what your take on world events, political dodge ball, or cheap but scrumptious food. Open mikes, poetry readings, diligent roundtables, sofa dining, locally-produced contemporary art on the walls, and extra friendly management all give dress up props to any controversy rolling in off the curb.

The book was thin, in hardcover, and driven with poems reeking of sentimental sour mash known to egg-eyed romanticists and incarcerated malcontents everywhere in a phenomenon generally known as the gnashing of teeth, in that former culturespeak now lost to multicultural scapegoating. Artistry? Perhaps. I can except these writings for what they are. I almost even laid out the sixteen bucks it would have cost me to walk out the door with those words. But I soon came to my senses when I leaned over to my wife with a whisper, "Yeah, well, you don't see any poems like these from coalition forces because they are all beheaded within days of their capture," and turned to put the book back on the shelf.

More from Mark Steyn...

The jacket of Poems From Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak shows a photograph by Paul J. Richards of Agence France-Presse: a close-up of the shackles that chain a man's ankles to the floor while he's being interrogated. But what rang a bell with me was the strip of carpet you can glimpse just above it. I visited Gitmo last fall—for Ramadan, as it happens—and, among other highlights, got to visit the interrogation room. The detainees are questioned while seated on a La-Z-Boy recliner or a sofa—blue plush with gold piping. I found this a sufficiently novel form of torture upholstery to ask the guard if he'd mind snapping a picture of me in the jihadist La-Z-Boy. It's sitting in a file at the Pentagon somewhere. But no doubt in 20 years' time I'll be running for public office and my opponent's oppo-research team will use it for an attack ad claiming I was a top al-Qaeda operative at the turn of the century.

There's no point debating Guantanamo anymore. Pretty much everyone's made up his mind. Some of us think the Americans have done the best they could given the unconventional nature of the enemy in this war (no uniforms, no serial numbers, all volunteers from many lands, including Canada). A much larger number of people think it's "the American gulag." Alain Grignard, who visited the camp on behalf of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, objects to the black hole of the detainees' legal status but declares that "it is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons." Still, there aren't many takers for that position. If you think the detainees shouldn't be there, you generally incline, as Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International U.K., does on the back of this book, to the view that the prisoners are pretty much routinely tortured.

So I mention the La-Z-Boy recliner not to make a political argument so much as an artistic one. Presumably when Paul J. Richards snapped his pic for Agence France-Presse, either the La-Z-Boy or the sofa was in the frame. But the Iowa University Press chose to crop the furniture out of the cover shot. Why? You can figure they'd have left it in if there'd been a rickety wooden chair under a bare lightbulb swinging on a frayed cord. But a book with a La-Z-Boy on the front doesn't exactly shriek "Death camp!"

When I was down there, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, who runs the joint, observed that most of what we know about prison camps comes from "bad movies and worse TV shows." And it's striking how reluctant the anti-Gitmo crowd are to abandon the clichés. There was a film out last year called The Road To Guantanamo, and the poster showed the usual emaciated husk hanging in chains from the dungeon wall. One trusts the actor in question did the full Robert De Niro and lost 40 lb. to get himself looking that cadaverous. Back in the real Gitmo, Admiral Harris invited me to sample some of the fresh-baked baklava his pastry chef had made the prisoners for Ramadan. They were truly scrumptious, but a week or two of those and the poster for The Road To Guantanamo would either be showing a dimpled blubbery bloated whale or the entire dungeon wall would have collapsed. It's the only death camp where you put on weight. Average gain: 18 pounds.

Read the entire article here.

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN, STILL SENSIBLE

Hugh Fitzgerald again sums up the situation rather tightly...

A Jihad Watch reader recently wrote: “You don't want them in the UK. And they don't want you in Iraq, Afghanistan. They don't want your diplomatic double standards over Palestine, Somalia, Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan, et cetera. If you want to be left alone, leave others alone.”

Yes, one can partly agree with this. The West should remove itself from Iraq and from Afghanistan, and never try to engage in such a baseless "bringing freedom to ordinary moms and dads" bit of nonsense again. And it should cease the transfer, from Infidels to Believers, of all that wealth, including more than $60 billion to Egypt from the United States alone, and $27.5 billion, if one includes debt relief, to Pakistan by the United States since 2001 alone. The disguised Jizyah of foreign aid to Muslim states that do not have oil does not change the attitudes and atmospherics of Muslim states, attitudes and atmospherics that flow naturally from the tenets, that are derived naturally from the immutable canonical texts of Islam—Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira. The fiasco of Tarbaby Iraq, which has cost the United States $880 billion, more than the total cost of all the wars, save World War II, ever fought by the United States, should be clear.

And it should be clear that the large-scale presence of Muslims in the Bilad al-Kufr, the Lands of the Infidels, has created a situation which, both for the indigenous Infidels, and for non-Muslim immigrants as well, is much more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous than would be the case without that large-scale presence. Once that is clearly understood, sensible measures—beginning with a halt to Muslim migration, and intelligent ways to reverse current trends, can be undertaken. One has only to look around—for Americans, say, to see what has happened in England or France, or the British to see what has happened in the Netherlands, or the Italians to look at Malmo or Rotterdam, or the Americans, who have the advantage of seeing what has happened and is happening in Western Europe—to understand this problem.

Finally, there is no way to "reform" Islam through the efforts of Infidels, and possibly not through the efforts of those who are now aware of the problem, but out of filial piety or embarrassment continue to Defend the Faith, and do not join the impressive and articulate defectors from it, such as Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and many others. For not only is their the fear of what true Believers will do (death for such defectors can and has been the result in some cases) inhibiting, but complete social ostracism is a powerful inhibitor as well. And it is difficult to see steadily and whole a Total System, that regulates all areas of life, and—at no extra cost—explains the universe.

Read more...

CAIR, BEARS OR HONEY?

CAIR Thugs on Islamophobia Patrol: Coming Soon to Your Neighborhood?

By Patrick Poole

FSM Contributing Editor Patrick Poole characterizes CAIR's harassment of a private citizen in his home, which CAIR describes as an "invitation to dialogue," as nothing more than a masquerade for their alarming scare tactics. Jackboot thuggery or inter-faith engagement? You decide.

Three officials of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Ohio admit to going unannounced to a man's home to confront him over a bumper sticker on his car—a testament, they claim, of their tolerance and moderation. The incident occurred last year, but the CAIR trio involved—Ahmad Al-Akhras, CAIR national vice chairman, Asma Mobin-Uddin, CAIR-Ohio president, and Abukar Arman, CAIR-OH board member—have recently recounted this incident to the local establishment media as an example of how they "invite dialogue."

Others, however, believe the incident is additional proof that CAIR regularly resorts to threats, intimidation and demonization to silence its critics. Earlier this month, attorneys for CAIR sent a letter threatening legal action against the Young Americans Foundation if they allowed NY Times bestselling author and JihadWatch director, Robert Spencer, to speak at their conference on "The Truth of the Council on American-Islamic Relations." This thuggery is reminiscent of CAIR's 2004 lawsuit against independent journalist Andrew Whitehead of Anti-CAIR, a suit which was dropped by CAIR in order to avoid responding to required interrogatories about its historic ties to HAMAS and role in terror financing.

The CAIR-OH incident is without known precedent, harassing a private citizen at his home because CAIR officials did not like one of his bumper stickers. One of the trio, Abukar Arman, has described how they set upon their unwitting victim:

Several months ago, a non-Muslim fellow in the inter-faith community brought to the attention of CAIR-Ohio a picture of his neighbor's truck with a bumper sticker that read "Jesus loves you, and Allah wants you dead."

Some of us thought that the appropriate thing to do was to get media involved and use this truck owner as a poster-child of the prevalent assertive ignorance that is widening the post 9/11 political divide between Muslims and non-Muslims. Others, on the other hand, saw this as an opportunity for human contact, discourse, and to build bridges of understanding.

The latter opinion prevailed.

Therefore, I had the privilege of being one of three Muslims (2 male and a female with Islamic veil) who paid a neighborly visit to the truck owner. What ensued was an interesting discourse that I found to be very educational (its final outcome notwithstanding). The truck owner was a former Marine officer who served in Somalia and Iraq. Initially, as he opened the door, he was visibly apprehensive (and rightfully so).

We greeted him and introduced ourselves. We reassured him that we were only interested to get to know him, address any questions or perhaps grievance that he may have, and to give him a chance to meet and dialogue with ordinary Muslims.

Long story short: in a conversation that took place right outside his door and lasted for over an hour, the former Marine talked about how he was very suspicious of Muslims and how, both in Somalia and in Iraq, he and other Americans who "came to help these two countries had their hands bitten..." He talked about how he did not believe there were any moderate Muslims and how organizations such as CAIR were deliberately silent about condemning terrorism. He also talked about being alarmed by the growing Muslim population in Central Ohio and how they may be hiding a terrorist who has in his possession a "briefcase nuke." He said, "I don't want to see a giant mushroom in Columbus" [I will come back to this point].

Lastly, he talked about his career in the private sector...how he worked as a "corporate anti-terrorism expert" and a "consultant to a numerous multinational corporations..."

Arman admits that the original intention was to make this two-war veteran a "poster-child" of Islamophobia and publicly to vilify the man by enlisting the help of the local media—all because they didn't agree with the sentiments the man expressed via a bumper sticker. He also admits that the man was visibly leery of his late-night visitors showing up on his doorstep, what they probably would argue is proof of his Islamophobia.

What makes this situation and Abukar Arman's comments even more appalling is that the former Marine had served in the UN-backed peacekeeping mission in Somalia, Arman's native country, to protect the people there from the warlords that had taken over the country and who were starving the people by the tens of thousands. Additionally, the former Marine had been reported to CAIR by one of his neighbors who was a friend to the CAIR officials in the "inter-faith community."

But imagine if the roles in this case were reversed: imagine if Robert Spencer, Andrew Whitehead and myself showed up on the doorstep of any of these CAIR officials—unwelcome and unannounced—to confront them about their repeated statements of support for extremism, bigotry and terrorism: Ahmad Al-Akhras for his public defense of convicted terrorists, including his "long-time friend," convicted and deported Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Fawaz Damra; Asma Mobin-Uddin for promoting several hate sites with rabidly anti-Jewish content on her own personal website; or Abukar Arman, for his vocal public support of HAMAS, Hezbollah and the al-Qaeda-backed Islamic Courts Union. Would they see such action as "inviting dialogue," or would they instead denounce such an "invitation to dialogue" in a flurry of CAIR press releases as a "hate crime" that would merit restraining orders and warrant federal criminal charges?

With their opponents on the working end of this tactic of cultural terrorism, however, they enthusiastically recount this act of intimidation, attempting to paint their "neighborly visit" as a peaceful effort to "engage" non-Muslims. The establishment media has been quick to pick up this twisted narrative. Earlier this month, in a front page Columbus Dispatch article on Mr. Arman, Mobin-Uddin cites this incident of confronting a man at his home as evidence of Mr. Arman's "kindness":

"Mr. Arman is a man of the greatest integrity, kindness and responsibility," Mobin-Uddin said. She recalled a visit with Arman a few years ago to the home of an ex-Marine who displayed an anti-Muslim bumper sticker.

"We stood and talked with the man on his doorstep for an hour and a half. Mr. Arman never raised his voice. He told the man, 'You know, sir, I have four children. I've lived in this country for decades. If I knew someone who was going to put a bomb somewhere, I would be the first one to jump on them.' "

This isn't the first time, however, that the Columbus Dispatch has pulled out this story as an example of the tolerance and moderation of the CAIR trio and their cohorts.

In an Orwellian-titled article this past April, "Changing Hearts, Minds," Ahmad Al-Akhras gave his analysis of his and his comrades' late-night "invitation to dialogue" to an attentive Dispatch reporter: Changing minds isn't always as pleasant as sharing some snacks and laughs.

Last year, Ahmad Al-Akhras and two other community leaders knocked on the door of a man whose car bore a bumper sticker that read: "Jesus loves you. Allah wants you dead."

Al-Akhras is president of the Islamic Foundation of Central Ohio and is the vice chairman of the national Council on American-Islamic Relations. They spoke to the ex-Marine for more than an hour at his doorstep, telling him they had 11 children between them and cared strongly about America's safety, Al-Akhras said.

"More than 95 percent of the time, we agree on things," Al-Akhras said of Muslims and non-Muslims. But he added that he isn't sure that the visit did any good.

It should be evident that going to a man's home, particularly someone entirely unknown to you, to confront them about the content of their bumper stickers is not an invitation to dialogue, but jackboot thuggery reminiscent of the Nazi SA Storm troopers. One of them admits that rather than painting a symbol on the man's house or business to show their disapproval for his religious statements (much as the SA would mark Jewish homes or businesses with a Star of David and the word "Juden"), they considered calling in the media to condemn this two-war Marine veteran and expose him to public scorn all because they didn't like his bumper sticker.

CAIR has repeatedly demonstrated that their methodology and discourse must rely on increasingly shrill rhetoric to get public attention and publicly attacking anyone who questions their troubling ideology. Nor has CAIR ever hesitated to inflame a situation to further its own agenda to the detriment of the rest of the community, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. As their own supposed constituency continues to abandon CAIR, such now that their membership is less than two thousand nationwide, CAIR will need to resort to more confrontational and escalating tactics to keep the establishment media's attention in order to disseminate their message of hate, alienation and conflict.

CAIR's Islamophobia patrols: coming soon to a neighborhood near you.

BY THE NUMBERS