WORSHIPERS OF DEATH

Worshippers of Death (WSJ)
By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber.

At the recent funeral for the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist Imad Moughnaya -- the mass murderer responsible for killing 241 marines in 1983 and more than 100 women, children and men in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 -- Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times giving the following warning to her son: "if you're not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don't want you."

Zahra Maladan represents a dramatic shift in the way we must fight to protect our citizens against enemies who are sworn to kill them by killing themselves. The traditional paradigm was that mothers who love their children want them to live in peace, marry and produce grandchildren. Women in general, and mothers in particular, were seen as a counterweight to male belligerence. The picture of the mother weeping as her son is led off to battle -- even a just battle -- has been a constant and powerful image.

Now there is a new image of mothers urging their children to die, and then celebrating the martyrdom of their suicidal sons and daughters by distributing sweets and singing wedding songs. More and more young women -- some married with infant children -- are strapping bombs to their (sometimes pregnant) bellies, because they have been taught to love death rather than life. Look at what is being preached by some influential Islamic leaders:

"We are going to win, because they love life and we love death," said Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. He has also said: "[E]ach of us lives his days and nights hoping more than anything to be killed for the sake of Allah." Shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden told a reporter: "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us."

"The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death," explained Afghani al Qaeda operative Maulana Inyadullah. Sheik Feiz Mohammed, leader of the Global Islamic Youth Center in Sydney, Australia, preached: "We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam. Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid." Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech: "It is the zenith of honor for a man, a young person, boy or girl, to be prepared to sacrifice his life in order to serve the interests of his nation and his religion."

THE NAZI ROOTS OF ISLAMO-FASCISM

Seeds of Hate - "Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11" by Matthias Kuntzel - Jeffrey Goldberg (New York Times)

• One day in Damascus not long ago, I visited the gift shop of the Sheraton Hotel, looking for something to read. There was a paperback copy of The International Jew, published in 2000 in Beirut, a collection of columns exposing the putative role of Jews in such fields as international finance, world governance and bootlegging, based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
  
• Next to it was a copy of The Bible Came From Arabia, a piece of twaddle that suggests the Jews are not Jews and Israel isn't Israel. And then there was a pamphlet called "Secrets of the Talmud." Not knowing these secrets, I started reading. The Talmud apparently teaches Jews how best to demolish the world economy and gives Jews the right to take non-Jewish women as slaves and rape them. Anti-Semitic conspiracy literature not only posits crude and senseless ideas, but also tends to be riddled with typos, repetitions and gross errors of grammar, and for this and other reasons I occasionally have trouble taking it seriously.
  
• The German scholar Matthias Kuntzel tells us this is a mistake. He takes anti-Semitism, and its most potent current strain, Muslim anti-Semitism, very seriously. His bracing, even startling, book reminds us that it is perilous to ignore idiotic ideas if these idiotic ideas are broadly, and fervently, believed. And across the Muslim world, the very worst ideas about Jews - intricate, outlandish conspiracy theories about their malevolent and absolute power over world affairs - have become scandalously ubiquitous.
  
• The question is not only why, of course, but how: how did these ideas, especially those that portray Jews as all-powerful, work their way into modern-day Islamist discourse? The notion of the Jew as malevolently omnipotent is not a traditional Muslim notion. In subsequent centuries Jews lived among Muslims, and it is true that their experience was generally healthier than that of their brethren in Christendom, but only so long as they knew their place; they were ruled and taxed as second-class citizens and were often debased by statute. In the Jim Crow Middle East, no one believed the Jews were in control.
  
• Obviously, then, these modern-day ideas about Jewish power were imported from Europe, and Kuntzel makes a bold argument: the dissemination of European models of anti-Semitism among Muslims was an actual project of the Nazi Party, meant to turn Muslims against Jews and Zionism. He says that in the years before World War II, two Muslim leaders in particular willingly and knowingly carried Nazi ideology directly to the Muslim masses. They were Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, and the Egyptian proto-Islamist Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
  
• The former Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi once told me that "the question is not what the Germans did to the Jews, but what the Jews did to the Germans." The Jews, he said, deserved their punishment. Kuntzel argues that we should see men like Rantisi for what they are: heirs to the mufti, and heirs to the Nazis.
  

THE NAZI ROOTS OF MUSLIM ANTI-SEMITISM

'Jihad and Jew Hatred' (NYT)
Read the first chapter of the new book by German scholar Matthias Kuntzel, who argues that Muslim anti-Semitism can be traced to a project of the Nazi Party.

CLEVELAND'S NEW ANTI-SEMITIC IMAM

Meet the New Imam of the Islamic Center of Cleveland (LGF)

When the former leader of the Islamic Center of Cleveland, Fawaz Damra, was linked to funding of terrorists and deported in a very high-profile case, you might have expected that the new imam of the Islamic Center would be more moderate.

Think again: Ohio’s largest mosque hires Egyptian hate sheikh to replace deported terror cleric Fawaz Damra.

Not mentioned in the Plain Dealer’s report is Ahmed Alzaree’s anti-Jewish rants. According to Blumer, in a 15-second Google search, he came across a particular sermon dated March 7, 2003 where Alzaree offers this encouragement to his followers:

Dear brothers and sisters, the talk about the Day of Judgment is long and full of things that will confuse the human mind and put fear in the hearts of the faithful. Every day that comes is much more Worse than the day before it as we get closer to the hour. Among the signs of the approach of Day of Judgment is what the messenger of Allah PBUH said: “The hour of judgment shall not happen until the Muslims fight the Jews. The Muslims shall kill the Jews to the point that the Jew shall hide behind a big rock or a tree and the rock or tree shall call on the Muslim saying: hey, O Muslim there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him, except the Gharqad tree which will not say, for it is the tree of Jews.” Agreed upon. This is seemed to be very soon and close now. We ask Allah SWT not to test us so hardly if we live till this horrible moment insha’allah.

Apparently, the Plain Dealer’s David Briggs didn’t do the same Google search that Blumer performed, even though in his article Briggs states:

Alzaree would not confirm his hiring, at one point saying he would not come to Cleveland because a reporter was inquiring about his background.

Gee, what do you think a reporter might be looking into, Mr. Briggs (real quick wits among these establishment media dhimmis, eh?), and who could possibly be motivated do such an investigation (grin)?

Someone looking at Alzaree’s background (at least if they bothered to look) might also come across the following comment in that same sermon where he highlights the required Quranic “jizya” tax to be imposed upon non-Muslims and his lament at its disuse in the Muslim world:

Abou Hurairah RAA narrated that the messenger of Allah PBUH said: “By Allah it is about the time the son of Maryam comes down and he shall rule with justice and he shall break the cross and kill the pig and will remove the “Jezyah”; (i.e. the supposed tax paid to the Muslim government by non-Muslims who live with them against guarding and protecting them which is mentioned in the Holy Quran in Surat Al-Tawbah (9-29) as a “fard” or requirement in despite of being lost and no longer practiced nowadays by almost all Arab and Muslim Countries), ( that means that only Islam shall be the only accepted faith and religion), and the wealth shall increase to the point the charity is not needed ”

10/22: ISLAMO-FASCIST AWARENESS WEEK!

Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week By Frontpagemag.com
Beginning on October 22, student groups across the nation will hold Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week on their campuses. These protest weeks will feature a series of events designed to bring a message to these academic communities that challenges most of what students are taught about the so-called War on Terror both in the classroom and on the quad.

The Week’s events will include speeches about Islamo-Fascism by prominent figures, including former Senator Rick Santorum (Penn State, Temple and UPenn), Sean Hannity (Columbia), Ann Coulter (Tulane and USC), Dennis Prager (UC Santa Barbara), Robert Spencer (Brown, Dartmouth, University of Rhode Island, and DePaul), Daniel Pipes (Northeastern and UPenn), David Horowitz (Columbia, Emory, Ohio State, Michigan and Wisconsin), Michael Ledeen (Maryland), Nonie Darwish (UCLA and Berkeley), Wafa Sultan (Stanford) and radio talk show hosts Melanie Morgan (San Francisco State), Michael Medved (University of Washington), Martha Zoeller (Georgia Tech), Alan Nathan (George Mason), Mark Larson (to be named) and many others.

A major theme of the Week will be the oppression of women in Islam. ...

The purpose of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is as simple as it is critical: to confront the two Big Lies of the political left: that George Bush created the "war on terror" and that global warming is a greater danger to Americans than global jihad and Islamic supremacism.

VIDEO: THE GRAND MUFTI, THE NAZIS AND MODERN ISLAMISM

Video: The Grand Mufti, the Nazis and modern Islamism (HotAir)
It all sounds like a grand conspiracy theory, but it’s not: The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem before and during the WWII years, Haj Amin El Husseini, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood (founded 1928) aligned with the German Nazis in 1937 and recruited Muslim SS units in Bosnia during the war.

This is the most detailed TV report I’ve seen on the subject of Islamist-Nazi connections. It’s in German, but subtitled in English.



The mufti’s relative, Yasser Arafat, would go on to found the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Fatah, which is the “moderate” faction in the Palestinian territories today.

There are a few takeaway points from all this. First, the jihad didn’t start in 2001 or 1993 or 1983 or even 1979. It goes back quite a bit farther, and isn’t a response to US policies. Second, the jihadis work with secular allies when it suits them. The grand mufti worked hand in glove with Hitler; they would work with anyone else who could provide whatever they believe they need to achieve their goals. Third, the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t dormant or dead — it boast about 20% of Egypt’s parliament, for one thing — and it and its various offshoots are still working toward the goal of global Muslim domination.

PALIS BACK CALIPHATE OVER DEMOCRACY

Palestinians Back Caliphate over Politics - Carolynne Wheeler
By night, a growing number of supporters of Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Islamic fundamentalists who reject modern democracy in favor of a pan-Islamic religious caliphate, gather in the West Bank to recruit the thousands who have grown disillusioned with the vicious stand-off between the secular Fatah and Islamist Hamas. Any talk about a return to the caliphate, any talk about a return to religious values is something that is attractive to people," said Majid Abu Malah, 55, a teacher who attends regularly. He, like many others, says he has given up on both Hamas and Fatah.

Inside the West Bank, the rise of the Islamist group is being met with increasing concern from secular Palestinians still hoping for democracy and a two-state solution with Israel, as well as from Hamas which is seeing its support eroded by the group. (Telegraph -- UK)

HAMAS TURNS GAZA INTO TALIBAN STATE

Hamas Rules: The Talibanization of Gaza by Jonathan Schanzer
National Review Online

The Hamas terror organization that gained power through a violent coup in the Gaza Strip in June is now signaling that it will maintain its rule through a combination of violence, authoritarianism, and Islamism. Witness the Talibanization of Gaza.

Forced Conversions. According to Fatah officials, Professor Sana al-Sayegh, a teacher at Palestine University in Gaza City, was kidnapped two weeks ago by Hamas and forced to convert to Islam against her will. Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh turned down repeated meeting requests from family members and leaders of the dwindling Christian minority in Gaza City. Meanwhile, Ala Aklouk, a senior Muslim cleric in Gaza City asked by Hamas to look into the
case, said the professor converted to Islam of her free will. "She was too afraid to inform her family that she had converted to Islam," he said. Other Christians now fear for their lives, and are making plans to flee.

Muzzling the Media. Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh of the Jerusalem Post reported last week that Hamas's Executive Force (EF) prevented the distribution of three Fatah newspapers, including the al-Ayyam and al-Hayat al-Jadida dailies, in the Gaza Strip. Hamas even took some of the newspapers' circulation officials into custody for a short time. This is the first time that West Bank newspapers were ever barred from the Gaza Strip. According to the al-Jazeera website, Hamas attacked two cameramen from the Abu Dhabi satellite television channel, and stormed the Gaza bureau of al-Arabiya satellite channel. Moreover, the EF has closed a pro-Fatah television station and radio station. In fact, Hamas now controls all electronic media in Gaza, except one radio station linked to the Palestinian
Islamic Jihad (PIJ), another Iran-backed terrorist organization.

Beating Demonstrators. The al-Jazeera website also reports that the Hamas EF beat Fatah demonstrators on Monday when protestors chanted, "What is happening in Gaza is not acceptable," and "What has happened to security and human rights?" According to the al-Jazeera correspondent in Gaza, "Cameramen recording the protest were not allowed to film, or get out of their cars." Hamas has now banned unlicensed demonstrations in Gaza by the Fatah party.

Disintegration of Law. The armed wing of Hamas, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, reportedly seized legal documents from a lawyer that documented the confiscation of a car by Hamas. The militiamen took the lawyer's affidavit at gunpoint. Human and legal rights groups have documented the crime, but since Hamas is now the law in Gaza, they have no way to escalate the matter. Similarly, when the EF recently stormed the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions headquarters, raised the green Hamas flag over the building, and "nationalized" it, the Federation could do nothing. Rule of law continues to deteriorate.

Killing Political Rivals. Hamas has attacked its rivals with utter brutality. During the Hamas assault on Gaza in July, according to a Palestinian human-rights group, some 160 Palestinians were killed, including 45 civilians, and 800 were wounded. Fatah accounted for most of the casualties in grisly violence that included summary executions, kneecapping,
and throwing handcuffed prisoners from tall buildings. More recently, one PIJ member was killed and six were wounded Wednesday in a battle between Hamas and PIJ in the Gaza Strip. Hamas moved against PIJ after gunmen fired their weapons in the air during a wedding celebration. Claiming a need to enforce a ban on firing weapons in public, Hamas fired a rocket at a PIJ stronghold, and gunfire could be heard for hours.

Islamizing the Police. Tellingly, the Hamas Executive Force that has been beating demonstrators and banning free press held a teach-in two weeks ago on being a Muslim policeman. How Islam will play a role in policing Gaza is not yet known, but the very notion of religious police smacks of the Taliban's Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which punished Afghanis for straying from sharia law.

Al Qaeda Links? In 2006, Hamas Interior Minister Said Sayyam stated that he would not order the arrests of operatives who carried out attacks against Israel. This was tantamount to an invitation for al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups to join Hamas in its war against Israel. Embattled Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has since stated that al-Qaeda maintains a presence in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Gaza Strip has never been idyllic. But, under Hamas, as one New York Times reporter notes, "Gaza looks like Somalia: broken and ravenous." Hamas conquered Gaza by force. It will need to maintain its grip on power by force. This is the beginning of the Talibanization of Gaza, and the end of hope for the rule of law.

ISLAMOFASCIST DEATH CULT

The Middle East: Now Playing at a Theater Near You - Thomas Friedman

In the past few years, hundreds of Muslims have committed suicide amid innocent civilians - without making any concrete political demands and without generating any vigorous, sustained condemnation in the Muslim world. Not all Muslims are terrorists. But virtually all suicide terrorists today are Muslims. Angry Norwegians aren't doing this - nor are starving Africans or unemployed Mexicans. Muslims have got to understand that a death cult has taken root in the bosom of their religion. (New York Times)

See also Islam's "Death Cult" - Michael Hirsh

There are many people, in many different societies and cultures, who are angry about many things. Would any other culture or religion produce a group of doctors and professionals who apparently deemed it morally correct to kill innocent people in large numbers? Muslims must find a way to remove this modern cancer - this fundamentalist death cult - that has infected their religion. None of us on the outside can do it for them. (Newsweek)

POVERTY DOES NOT CAUSE TERRORISM

Princeton Economist Says Lack of Civil Liberties, Not Poverty, Breeds Terrorism - David Wessel (Wall Street Journal)
"Each time we have one of these attacks and the backgrounds of the attackers are revealed, this should put to rest the myth that terrorists are attacking us because they are desperately poor," says Princeton economist Alan Krueger. "But this misconception doesn't die."

"As a group, terrorists are better educated and from wealthier families." The Sept. 11 attackers were relatively well-off men from a rich country, Saudi Arabia. Examining 781 terrorist events classified by the U.S. State Department as "significant" reveals terrorists tend to come from countries distinguished by political oppression, not poverty or inequality.

The conventional wisdom that poverty breeds terrorism is backed by surprisingly little hard evidence. The 9/11 Commission stated flatly: Terrorism is not caused by poverty.

• Backgrounds of 148 Palestinian suicide bombers show they were less likely to come from families living in poverty and were more likely to have finished high school than the general population. Biographies of 129 Hezbollah shahids (martyrs) reveal they, too, are less likely to be from poor families than the Lebanese population from which they come. The same goes for available data about an Israeli terrorist organization, Gush Emunim, active in the 1980s.
• Terrorism doesn't increase in the Middle East when economic conditions worsen; indeed, there seems no link. One study finds the number of terrorist incidents is actually higher in countries that spend more on social-welfare programs. Slicing and dicing data finds no discernible pattern that countries that are poorer or more illiterate produce more terrorists. Examining 781 terrorist events classified by the U.S. State Department as "significant" reveals terrorists tend to come from countries distinguished by political oppression, not poverty or inequality.
• Public-opinion polls from Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey find people with more education are more likely to say suicide attacks against Westerners in Iraq are justified. Polls of Palestinians find no clear difference in support for terrorism as a means to achieve political ends between the most and least educated.

So what is the cause? Suppression of civil liberties and political rights, Mr. Krueger hypothesizes. "When nonviolent means of protest are curtailed," he says, "malcontents appear to be more likely to turn to terrorist tactics."

I WOULD SUBMIT THAT THE IDEOLOGY OF ISLAMOFASCISM HAS MORE THAN A LITTLE TO DO WITH IT TO. AFTER ALL, THROUGHOUT HISTORY MANY SOCIETIES HAVE SUFFERED A LACK OF CIVIL LIBERTIES AND POLITICAL RIGHTS AND DIDN'T SPAWN SUICIDE BOMBERS.

IT'S THE ISLAMOFASCISM, STUPID (CONT.)

HERE'S A FOLLOW UP TO AN EARLIER POST, IT'S THE ISLAMOFASCISM, STUPID.

Tanveer Ahmed: Islam must face its uncomfortable truths (Australian)
The latest attack in Britain shows how the Islamist threat is being driven by something much grander than mere foreign policy or feelings of grievance. The perpetrators believe they are soldiers in the perceived historical battle between good and evil.

The methods of attack are becoming more brazen, amateurish and desperate, illustrated most profoundly by the burning terrorist at Glasgow airport shouting "Allah" while struggling with a policeman, but the ideological roots are unchanged.

As a commentator on Muslim affairs and home-grown terrorism, I am often asked whether there is something in Islam itself that is contributing to terrorist acts. As someone who is not a theological expert, I shy away from strong pronouncements on the issue, preferring to discuss the sociological roots of alienation and the modern symbol of protest that Islam has become.

But the question is impossible to avoid and I believe that theology is central and not peripheral to the problem. It is grounded in history, but the sparks have been generated by the information age.

While the images of poverty and war in countries such as Sudan, Palestine or Iraq combined with the relative disadvantage of some Muslim communities in countries such as France or Britain may contribute to radicalisation, the foundation for their acts lies very much in the set of ideas called Islam. I have lost count of the number of occasions disgruntled Muslims have responded to my writings with comments like "Islam is peace" or "You are not a Muslim any more".

Truth be told, I was never a practising Muslim, despite growing up in a Bangladeshi community where religiosity was the norm.

This had more to do with being raised in a secular household and society than any great misgivings about Islam. In fact, I often watched friends who were able to practise a spiritual version of the religion with envy, wishing that I could subscribe to a greater purpose than myself.
But with hindsight, I can see that what we now call extremism was virtually the norm in the community I grew up in. It was completely normal to view Jews as evil and responsible for the ills of the world. It was normal to see the liberal society around us as morally corrupt, its stains to be avoided at all costs. It was normal to see white girls as cheap and easy and to see the ideal of femininity as its antithesis. These views have been pushed to more private, personal spheres amid the present scrutiny of Muslim communities.

But they remain widespread, as research in Britain showed earlier this year: up to 50 per cent of British Muslims aged between 15 and 29 want to see sharia law taken up in Britain. This needs to be seen in the light of American data collated by the Pew Research Centre that showed close to 80 per cent of American Muslims believed they could move up the social ladder in the US and had no interest in Islamic laws on a public level. Like most things Australian, it is likely we sit somewhere between our British and American cousins.

But the threat is very real. It was reported yesterday that up to 3000 young Muslims are at risk of becoming radicalised in Sydney alone, according to research by a member of the now-disbanded Muslim Community Reference Group, Mustapha Kara-Ali. But when these views morph into the violent political act that is terrorism, it is very much based in theology.

At its core, Islam is deeply sceptical of the idea of a secular state. There is no rendering unto Caesar because state and religion are believed to be inseparable. This idea then interacts with centuries-old edicts of Islamic jurists about how the land of Islam should interact with the world of unbelievers, known as dar ul-kufr. The modern radicals then take it further, declaring that since, with the exception perhaps of Pakistan and Iran, there are no Islamic states, the whole world is effectively the land of the unbelievers. As a result, some radicals believe waging war on the whole world is justified to re-create it as an Islamic state.

They go as far as reclassifying the globe as dar ul-harb, "land of war", apparently allowing Muslims to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief. In dar ul-harb, anything goes, including the killing of civilians.

While it may appear absurd to most, this nihilistic but exclusivist world view is clearly attracting significant numbers of young Muslims. British police have suggested the latest attacks and foiled plots may have involved teenagers. But the obvious absurdity of the set of ideas is still grounded in Islam, which, regardless of how theological experts argue, can be interpreted in many ways.

Muslim communities must openly argue precisely what it is they fear and loathe about the West. Much of it centres on sexuality. This is the first step in rooting out any Muslim ambivalence about living in the West. But thereafter, the argument must proceed rapidly to Islamic theology and all its uncomfortable truths - from its repeated glowing references to violence, its obsession with and revulsion at sex and its historical antipathy to the very possibility that reason can exist as separate from God.

SEE ALSO: Former Member of Radical Islam Questions Faction (NPR - Audio) (Hat tip: Uncle Sticky)

IT'S THE ISLAMOFASCISM, STUPID

WSJ-BOTW points out that yesterday the Daily Mail, a London tabloid, had a fascinating piece by Hassan Butt, a former Muslim fanatic:

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network--a series of British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology--I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.

By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this "Blair's bombs" line did our propaganda work for us.

More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

GAZA ISLAMISTS THREATEN TO BEHEAD WOMEN BROADCASTERS WITHOUT HEADSCARVES

Gaza militants threaten to behead women broadcasters without headscarves
(AP)

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- An Islamic group threatened to behead female TV broadcasters if they don’t wear strict Islamic dress, frightening reporters and signalling a further shift toward extremism in the Gaza Strip.

The threat to “cut throats from vein to vein” was delivered by the Swords of Truth, a fanatical group that has previously claimed responsibility for bombing Internet cafes and music shops. The new threat was the first time the organization targeted a specific group of people.

In many parts of the Muslim world, conservative policies keep women out of TV anchor positions or dictate they wear headscarves on air. Headscarves for TV broadcasters are uncommon, however, in Lebanon and Jordan, and even Egypt keeps newscasters who wear them off its TV stations.

25% OF YOUNG US MUSLIMS ENDORSE SUICIDE BOMBINGS

Poll: 1 in 4 younger US Muslims say suicide bombings acceptable (YNet)
One in four younger US Muslims say suicide bombings to defend their religion are acceptable at least in some circumstances, though most Muslim Americans overwhelmingly reject the tactic and are critical of Islamic extremism and al-Qaeda, a poll says.

The survey by the Pew Research Center, one of the most exhaustive ever of the country's Muslims, revealed a community that in many ways blends comfortably into society. Its largely mainstream members express nearly as much happiness with their lives and communities as the general public does, show a broad willingness to adopt American customs, and have income and education levels similar to others in the US. (AP)

POSTER

(Neocon Express)

THERE IS NO "PLAN B" FOR THE JEWISH PEOPLE

No "Plan B" by Saul Singer (Contentions)

In one of the more insightful assessments of the Jewish situation of late, Martin Kramer (of the Washington Institute, the Shalem Center, and Harvard University) stated:

[T]he geopolitical situation of the Jews hasn't ever been stable. As a people, our geopolitics are one part our preferences, and two parts historical forces. These forces never rest. Seventy years ago, the Jewish world was centered in Europe. Now we mostly just fly over it.

The United States and Israel are today the poles of the Jewish world, because some Jews sensed tremors before the earthquake. When the earth opened up and Europe descended into the inferno, parts of the Jewish people already had a Plan B in place. We are living that Plan B.

Today the Jewish people is in an enviable geopolitical position. It has one foot planted in a Jewish sovereign state, and the other in the world's most open and powerful society. One is tempted to say that never in their long history has the geopolitical situation of the Jews been better. Jews did have sovereignty before, in antiquity, but they did not have a strategic alliance with the greatest power on earth. And since it is difficult to imagine a better geopolitical position, the Jewish people has become a status-quo people.

Kramer then lays out five scenarios that would seriously undermine this desirable status quo: the waning of American influence; the "subtraction" of Europe from the power of the West; the emergence of Iran as a regional power on par with Israel; the disintegration of Arab states into Iraq-style internal conflict, producing multiple Hezbollah's on Israel's borders; and finally, the failure of the Palestinians as a nation, leading to the collapse of the two-state paradigm.

Each of these scenarios, Kramer suggests, requires a Jewish "Plan B." He continues:

Now one would have to be a grim pessimist to believe that all five of these trends could merge into a perfect storm. But one would have to be an incurable optimist to believe that that we won't be lashed by any of these storms. And what I am arguing is that we should anticipate conditions that will make storms more frequent than they have been in the last few decades.

Kramer does not suggest what our "Plan B" should be, except to say that "Israel will have to make alliances, strike targets, and redraw borders—and they won't necessarily be the familiar ones." What he does not offer is the scenario that has the only real chance of success, which is to stop "Plan A" from falling apart.

We are at war, a war between the liberal democracies and totalitarian Islamism. If we lose this war, many scenarios can be added to Kramer's five, far worse than the ones he has devised. If we win, all of his bad scenarios can be prevented or accommodated.

We gain nothing by planning to lose. America, Israel, and Europe will not be safe in such a scenario; there is no "Plan B" that avoids catastrophe. Our only viable plan is to use all our resources to ensure the West's victory. Those resources are substantial—and are nowhere near full mobilization.

EUROPE SELF CENSORS; BOWS TO ISLAMOFASCISTS

The Closing of the European Mind by Daniel Johnson (Contentions)

The Times of London reports today on yet another episode in the closing of the European mind—in this instance, a shocking case of academic censorship.

Matthias Küntzel, a German political scientist from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, was invited by the German department at Leeds University for three days of lectures and seminars this week. His lecture on “Hitler’s Legacy: Islamic Anti-Semitism in the Middle East” was expected to draw a large audience. Then the university’s student Islamic society complained about the lecture’s “provocative” title. Last Tuesday, at the behest of university authorities, the words “Hitler” and “Islamic” were excised and the title was amended to read: “The Nazi Legacy: The Export of Anti-Semitism to the Middle East.” But when Küntzel arrived at Leeds this Wednesday, he was informed that his lecture and the rest of his program had been cancelled “on security grounds.” Küntzel was understandably indignant: “I value the integrity of academic debate, and I feel that it really is in danger here.”

Read the rest of this entry »

VIDEO ON ISLAMO-FASCISM

The David Horowitz Freedom Center has produced a short video detailing how the Islamo-fascists we see today are the heirs of the Nazi fascists, with the same goal of world domination and the same genocidal hatred of the Jewish people.

NYC TO CREATE SPECIAL ARABIC PUBLIC SCHOOL

City To Open Arabic Public School In Brooklyn (NY1)
The Department of Education says that it will open a public school next fall dedicated to Arabic language and culture. The Khalil Gibran International Academy is one of 40 new schools that will their debut in the city next September. Education officials say that although half the classes at the school will be taught in Arabic, they want to enroll a diverse student body. The school is set to open in Brooklyn.

WHERE DO I BEGIN? ISN'T THE PROBLEM THAT ARABS AND MUSLIMS AREN'T ASSIMILATED ENOUGH INTO AMERICAN SOCIETY? WILL A SEPARATE SCHOOL SERVE THEM OR OTHER AMERICANS WELL? HOW LONG BEFORE IT IS DISCOVERED THAT THE SAUDIS HAVE IMPOSED THEIR WAHABIAN ISLAMOFASCISM ON THE CURRICULUM? IS NEW YORK GOING TO START PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOR ALL THE YIDDISH SPEAKING KIDS IN BROOKLYN SO THAT THEY CAN STUDY THEIR JEWISH HERITAGE?