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July 2007 Stats for The Big Picture.
From Islam Watch via Fox News:
A report posted on Islam Watch, a site run by Muslims who oppose intolerant teachings and hatred for unbelievers, exposes a prominent Islamic cleric and lawyer who support extreme punishment for non-Muslims — including killing and rape.
A question-and-answer session with Imam Abdul Makin in an East London mosque asks why Allah would tell Muslims to kill and rape innocent non-Muslims, including their wives and daughters, according to Islam Watch.
"Because non-Muslims are never innocent, they are guilty of denying Allah and his prophet," the Imam says, according to the report. "If you don't believe me, here is the legal authority, the top Muslim lawyer of Britain."
The lawyer, Anjem Choudary, backs up the Imam's position, saying that all Muslims are innocent.
Click here to watch the interview with Islamic lawyer Anjem Choudary.
"You are innocent if you are a Muslim," Choudary tells the BBC. "Then you are innocent in the eyes of God. If you are not a Muslim, then you are guilty of not believing in God."
Choudary said he would not condemn a Muslim for any action.
"As a Muslim, I must support my Muslim brothers and sisters," Choudary said. "I must have hatred to everything that is not Muslim."
This cleric isn't in some Islamic nation. He's in an East London mosque, preaching specifically for the killing and rape of his non-Muslim fellow Brits.
Permitting him to continue isn't permitting freedom of speech - it's permitting a very small subset of freedom of speech, specifically, freedom to incite murder of non-Muslims.
If it's easy to accept the rule against shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, it should be easy to pass a law saying that it's illegal to call for people to kill those who aren't part of one's own organization - in this case, the organization of radical Islamists.
The Pope's secretary, Msgr. Georg Ganswein, recently spoke to Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung Magazine:
MUNICH, Germany (CNS) -- While Christians respect Islam and desire to dialogue with Muslims, they must act to protect the Christian identity of Europe, said Pope Benedict XVI's private secretary, Msgr. Georg Ganswein.
..."Attempts at the 'Islamification' of the West cannot be denied," he said. "And the associated danger for the identity of Europe cannot be ignored out of a wrongly understood sense of respect."
DVDs from the Conference on the Collapse of Europe, which I blogged extensively, are now available for $15 each.
With many Conservatives slamming Bush these days, due to his endorsement of the immigration bill (which I had great concerns about as well), he can use some support.
Yesterday GWB went to a mosque in Washington D.C. LGF reports that this is a Saudi-funded mosque - in other words, it is part of the multi-billion dollar operation run by Saudi Arabia to spread Wahhabism around the world. From Frontpage:
The religious and philosophical justifications for promoting Jihad -which means holy war - around the world, is found in the Quran, says Dr. Hussein Shehata, a professor at al-Azhar University in Cairo. According to Dr. Shehata, the following terms in the Quran combine to justify the spreading of Jihad: in Arabic- Al-Jihad bi-al-Lisan - which means - Jihad of the Tongue, and al-Jihad bi-al-Qalam - Jihad of the Pen. Both combine for preaching and writing to promote Jihad.
This command is complemented by Al-Jihad bi-al-Mal - the Financial Jihad; namely, raising money for needy Muslims and supporting the Jihad warriors - known as the Mujahideen. These are the commands that form the justification to spread the Jihad.
On his website, on March 3, 2004, the same Dr. Shehata explained the uniqueness and the reason for the financial Jihad commandment as being, quote: "a trial of strength of Muslim faith" and "a means to purify the soul from stinginess". It is through the financial Jihad, he says, that Allah gives the wealthy Muslims the opportunity to allocate some of their money for the Da'awa (literally - the call for Islam), which is the Islamic effort to teach or convert people to Islam.
In view of the fact that these commandments are interpreted as an integral part of Jihad, it is not surprising that Saudi Arabia, according to various Saudi official publications, have spent somewhere between $70-87 billion on the spread of Wahhabism around the world since the oil boom began in the mid- 1970's. This money was not only spent in Muslim/Arab countries. Large amounts were and are still being spent in the West, including in the US.
The Saudis have established endowments for American universities, have set up centers for Islamic and Arab studies, and have distributed generous scholarships, which often include visits to Saudi universities in programs similar to the one attended by Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, who was indicted last week for joining Al-Qaeda and for plots to assassinate President Bush and King Abdullah of Jordan. Abu Ali, by the way, graduated from the Saudi Academy in Alexandria, Virginia, in the USA, which is sponsored by the Saudi embassy in Washington, and IN which many other young Americans are being indoctrinated in Wahhabi Islam.
Many have criticized GWB for speaking at this mosque, believing that it legitimizes these Saudi operations on our soil. From an LGF post prior to the event:
Tomorrow President Bush is returning to the Saudi-funded Islamic Center, to address its rededication ceremony-and further legitimize radical Islamic groups masquerading as "moderates," without once asking them to renounce their openly-expressed support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hizballah.
These are good criticisms. I'd rather hear Bush say what the government of Prime Minister John Howard said in Australia:
TONY JONES: Now, over the past 24 hours you've been repeating the notion that migrants, evidently Islamic migrants, who don't like Australia, or Australian values, should think of packing up and moving to another country. Is that a fair assessment?
[Treasurer] PETER COSTELLO: What I've said is that this is a country, which is founded on a democracy. According to our Constitution, we have a secular state. Our laws are made by the Australian Parliament. If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you. This is not the kind of country where you would feel comfortable if you were opposed to democracy, parliamentary law, independent courts and so I would say to people who don't feel comfortable with those values there might be other countries where they'd feel more comfortable with their own values or beliefs.
But let's look at what GWB did say:
This is what freedom offers: societies where people can live and worship as they choose without intimidation, without suspicion, without a knock on the door from the secret police. The freedom of religion is the very first protection offered in America's Bill of Rights. It is a precious freedom. It is a basic compact under which people of faith agree not to impose their spiritual vision on others, and in return to practice their own beliefs as they see fit. This is the promise of our Constitution, and the calling of our conscience, and a source of our strength.
The freedom to worship is so central to America's character that we tend to take it personally when that freedom is denied to others. Our country was a leading voice on behalf of the Jewish refusniks in the Soviet Union. Americans joined in common cause with Catholics and Protestants who prayed in secret behind an Iron Curtain. America has stood with Muslims seeking to freely practice their beliefs in places such as Burma and China.
Many Muslims listening know that it's a central tenet of Islam that other religions are not to be accepted. GWB is telling them that that part of Islam is incompatible with America, and that we'll take any attempt to act on that "personally." GWB specifically named the Jewish religion as one that America joins with "in common cause." GWB continued:
The greatest challenge facing people of conscience is to help the forces of moderation win the great struggle against extremism that is now playing out across the broader Middle East. We've seen the expansion of the concept of religious freedom and individual rights in every region of the world -- except one. In the Middle East, we have seen instead the rise of a group of extremists who seek to use religion as a path to power and a means of domination.
These self-appointed vanguard -- this self-appointed vanguard presumes to speak for Muslims. They do not. They call all Muslims who do not believe in their harsh and hateful ideology "infidels" and "betrayers" of the true Muslim faith. This enemy falsely claims that America is at war with Muslims and the Muslim faith, when in fact it is these radicals who are Islam's true enemy. (Applause.)
They have staged spectacular attacks on Muslim holy sites to divide Muslims and make them fight one another. The majority of the victims of their acts of terror are Muslims. In Afghanistan, they have targeted teachers for beatings and murder. In Iraq, they killed a young boy, and then booby-trapped his body so it would explode when his family came to retrieve him. They put children in the backseat of a car so they could pass a security checkpoint, and then blew up the car with the children still inside. These enemies bombed a wedding reception in Amman, Jordan, a housing complex in Saudi Arabia, a hotel in Jakarta. They claim to undertake these acts of butchery and mayhem in the name of Allah. Yet this enemy is not the true face of Islam, this enemy is the face of hatred.
Men and women of conscience have a duty to speak out and condemn this murderous movement before it finds its path to power. We must help millions of Muslims as they rescue a proud and historic religion from murderers and beheaders who seek to soil the name of Islam.
GWB is saying that American policy is that those who riot and kill in the name of Islam are considered to be acting against Islam and are not protected by freedom of religion.
He's saying that those who oppose the religious freedom of others in the name of Islam are considered to be acting against Islam and are not protected by freedom of religion.
This is of huge significance. GWB has shown great vision and leadership. He's produced a new U.S. policy that shows the way to protecting U.S. freedom of religion, while also protecting the U.S. constitution from Islamists. He's doing it by saying loud and clear to Muslims that those pursuing Islam as a political project which seeks to trample on Western freedoms - as is being done so successfully throughout Europe - will be considered enemies of Islam, and of the U.S.
GWB has acted on the goal identified by Daniel Pipes:
Our goal must be nothing other than the modernizing of Islam. No other enemy is as far reaching [as that of the radical Islamists] - that was the message of 9-11. We must overhaul the Muslim world as we did Germany and Russia - we changed them.
...We must defeat them - that is, convince them that their goal is hopeless - as we did the Fascists in 1945 - as we did the Marxist-Leninists in 1991.
...We have the power. There is no great power that faces us.
I have no doubt that many in that mosque understood GWB's message.
Daniel Pipes.
(This is the third in a series on the international conference on the Collapse of Europe, organized by Avi Davis of the American Freedom Alliance, and the Council for Democracy and Tolerance, at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. The first two articles are here: first article - second article.)
At 3pm there was a second panel in the main auditorium for all attendees. At this panel, Daniel Pipes made what appears to me to have been one of the most profound observations of the Conference. He began with an overview of the history of Europe over the last hundred years:
Europe in the 19th century was a confident continent. It was successful and it knew it - whether in terms of political achievement, cultural achievement, scientific, engineering achievement - power projection - Europe until 1914 - what we call 19th century Europe, was superior to any other part of the world. It's achievements stood out. And indeed had been standing out, for four centuries. Europeans entered into world war I with a great deal of enthusiasm - what's been called a delirium of enthusiasm. It had been a century since there had been a major war - the Napoleonic wars. There had been the buildup of the philosophical base - let me just mention the name of Frederic Nietzsche - that found war to be romantic and attractive. And so Europeans went to war in 1914 in this delirium of enthusiam. And of course, four years later, they came out of it devastated and horrified - and came to the conclusion, never again would they engage in such a war. They would avoid war - they would do whatever it took to avoid such a war. In the 1930s we saw that policy in action, in particular by the british and french governments, as they sought to avoid war - what we call, 'appeasement.'
Well, that didn't work either, did it? And the consensus, the second consensus, was, as we faced, as the Europeans faced the Soviet threat, was that they would not appease. No more Munichs. The lesson had been learned. And that remained in place roughly through the Cold War. And - grant me a lot of generalization here, please - there were a lot of exceptions - but, overall, it was maintained through the 40 years plus of the Cold War.
But with the ending of the Cold War, in about 1990, what I think one sees, is a reversion, to the earlier consensus. In other words, the no more Munichs idea, that held through the Cold War, has evaporated [inaudible], taking 20 years. And instead what one sees is a reversion to that earlier, post-World War I consensus. In other word, we've lived our lives in the post-World War II era, but it is, before our eyes, in Europe, turning into a post-World War I era. As David Galenter of Yale University puts it, it's the 1920s all over again.
Pipes continued:
...France is a particularly interesting case, because France is, like the United States, a country that is - an idea. We're not related to each other, we don't have a history that goes back together, but we, in one fashion or another, found ourselves in this country, and we're in pursuit of happiness here. The French have liberte, equalite and fraternite. But no other countries have, at least in Europe and North America, have an idea. Not Canada - certainly not the other countries of Europe. And what they find, is particular difficulty in explaining who they are. And as their civilizations are now challenged from the inside, by a substantial and growing population, that says, 'we have something better - we have Islamism, which beats what you have' - the European peoples are finding it very difficult to come up with a response and say, 'no no, what we have is good.' And what one finds is rather pathetic. For example, the famous Dutch film, that shows the Dutch values to be shown to potential immigrants, that shows a topless woman in the surf, or two men kissing - is this really what Dutch culture is? Or, less humorous but also somewhat pathetic, is a website put up by the British government, called "Icons - a Portrait of England," which has some hundred or so, very specifically British things. Sherlock Holmes - Westminster Abbey - certain foods and the like. Just this week the incoming Prime Minister has suggested "Britain Day," to celebrate being British. Nobody quite knows what it means. [Amused laughter].
So both for historical reasons, having to do with the 20th century, and historical reasons having to do with the fact that most of Europe is made up of countries that are one large family - that have a certain set of customs, of language, foods, songs, and so forth - but are difficult to turn into an abstraction, and say, 'no - our civilization is something worth preserving.' And for all these reasons I think yes, there is a collapse of confidence. And while I don't think for sure that it's permanent - and there could well be a revival - at this point I think we're seeing a lowpoint - it could go lower - but cerrtainly a lowpoint in European confidence, and something that really is without precedent. I don't know of any historical phenomenon akin to what the Europeans have gone through in the last century.
In other words, in the United States, we have a goal: the pursuit of happiness. And it's a goal we all believe in as a nation. It's a goal worth defending, a way of life worth fighting for. It shows us why what we have is better than what the Islamists offer, because the goal of the Islamists is to destroy freedom, to destroy equality of the sexes, to destroy free speech - and to accomplish nothing more than to require that all others also join their effort to destroy their own freedoms, and the freedoms of others.
As soon as Pipes said it I knew I'd heard something tremendously significant.
The Europeans can benefit from Pipes' insight by considering what their national goals can be.
On the front page of the Calendar section in today's LA Times is an article unlike any I have ever seen that paper - or any MSM newspaper - publish before. It is a passionate, brilliantly-written piece by Tim Rutten in his Regarding Media column. Every sentence of it calls on MSM, and all of us, to defend our freedoms, and our way of life, against the murderers who want to destroy them.
Rutten recounts how 19 years ago, "the Iranian revolution's spiritual leader," Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, called for the assassination of Salmon Rushdie.
Rushdie survived by spending the better part of the next decade in what amounted to an "author's protection program" maintained by the British government. Several of his translators, however, were killed or wounded.
When news of knighthood spread last weekend, the flames of fanaticism rekindled. An Iranian group offered $150,000 to anyone who would murder the novelist. Effigies of the queen and the writer were burned in riots across Pakistan. That country's religious affairs minister initially said that conferring such an honor on Rushdie justified sending suicide bombers to Britain, then - under pressure - he modified his statement to say it would cause suicide bombers to travel there. Pakistan's national assembly unanimously condemned Rushdie's knighthood and said it reflected "contempt" for Islam and Muhammad. Various high-ranking Iranian clerics called for the writers' death and renewed their insistence that Khomeini's fatwa still is in force. Riots spread to India's Muslim communities.
Friday, the Voice of America reported that Pakistani "lawmakers passed a second resolution calling on British Prime Minister Tony Blair to apologize 'to the Muslim world' " and that, "on Thursday, a hard-line Pakistani cleric awarded terrorist leader Osama bin Laden the religious title and honorific 'saifulla,' or sword of Islam, to protest Britain's decision."
If you're wondering why you haven't been able to follow all the columns and editorials in the American press denouncing all this homicidal nonsense, it's because there haven't been any. And, in that great silence, is a great scandal.
It's breathtaking to read this in an MSM paper. The LA Times headline-writers backed him up, with a large-print headline all the way across the top of the inside page the article jumps to, saying, "Silence is unacceptable in face of violent intolerance and bigotry."
As a blogger, and a Pajamas Media blogger, I'm proud to say that Rutten takes inspiration in part from a Pajamas Media post by Flemming Rose, the editor who courageously published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed:
...one analyst who saw that clearly was Flemming Rose...
...In a column posted on the L.A.-based Pajamas Media website late this week, Rose began by reminding readers of legal scholar Ronald Dworkin's admonition that "the only right you don't have in a democracy is the right not to be offended,"...
Rutten continues:
...what is the societal cost of silence among those who have not simply the moral obligation but also the ability to speak - like American commentators and editorial writers?
What masquerades as tolerance and cultural sensitivity among many U.S. journalists is really a kind of soft bigotry, an unspoken assumption that Muslim societies will naturally repress great writers and murder honest journalists, and that to insist otherwise is somehow intolerant or insensitive.
Lost in the self-righteous haze that masks this expedient sentiment is a critical point once made by the late American philosopher Richard Rorty, who was fond of pointing out that "some ideas, like some people, are just no damn good" and that no amount of faux tolerance or misplaced fellow feeling excuses the rest of us from our obligation to oppose such ideas and such people.
If Western and, particularly American, commentators refuse to speak up when their obligations are so clear, the fanatics will win and the terrible silence they so fervently desire will descend over vast stretches of our world - a silence in which the only permissible sounds are the prayers of the killers and the cries of their victims.
Rutten and the LA Times have shown courage, insight, and leadership. It appears likely that other MSM papers will take note - and that those MSM papers that don't, will be left behind, in this great movement of our time to defend our freedoms and our way of life.
These ads were run by the ADL earlier this month in the NY Times. Sample text (to help people using search engines find this post): "700 HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS DETAINED and TORTURED last year in ZIMBABWE. And BRITISH ACADEMICS are boycotting ISRAEL?"
One of the perpetual refrains from the Dems is that GWB hasn't built good relationships with other nations. This statement from Sarkozy, on the occasion of his election, undercuts that criticism:
Sarkozy added that he wanted to tell his "American friends that they can rely on our friendship ... France will always be next to them when they need us."
Sarkozy presented himself to the public in part as a candidate who would address the terrible problems France has with radical Islamists who continue to burn cars nightly:
The former interior minister with a tough line on immigration campaigned on a pledge to change France to face the realities of the 21st century and get the country back to work -- a platform viewed with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation.
French newspapers of the left and right agreed Monday that Sarkozy -- often attacked as a divisive figure -- had won a clear mandate for reform.
"With the strong legitimacy his indisputable electoral performance gives him, the new president of the Republic can now begin his great transformation, but taking care, of course, to reconcile the French," wrote the right-wing Le Figaro.
...Youth gangs burned 360 cars in the high-immigration suburbs of Paris and other cities, where the former interior minister's tough stance on crime made him a hate figure for many.
But police said the number of car-burnings -- a grim ritual in many suburbs -- was similar to an average New Year's Eve and did not amount to "large-scale urban violence".
"Youths," of course, is a euphemism for radical Islamists, as has been noted by many, including the Washington Times:
The rioters who have burned out neighborhoods in cities across France for a fortnight are overwhelmingly of North African and Arab ancestry, overwhelmingly young, overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly cut off culturally and economically from the larger French society -- and overwhelmingly Muslim.
This shows how terribly serious France's situation is: the police have been reduced to accepting a "grim ritual" of nightly car burnings, as a normal part of life in France. They don't even consider 360 car burnings in one night to be "large-scale urban violence."
So not only has France's new leader declared friendship with the U.S. - in electing Sarkozy, France is following GWB's lead in recognizing the danger of radical Islam, and in standing up to fight it. It's a triumph, not only for France, but for GWB's leadership. As Giuliani recently put it:
...President Bush's response to terrorism will ensure his legacy is that of "a great president."
"He will be, I believe, a president who will be viewed by history for this one decision as being a great president," the former New York mayor told about 100 Cedar Rapids-area Republicans during a quick campaign stop in eastern Iowa. "He decided in a flash to put our country on offense against terrorism."
To the Dems, building ties with other nations means doing whatever they want us to do, surrendering our ability to govern our own nation, to the whims of other nations, as per Kerry's famous "global test."
But the election in France has shown that GWB has succeeded in building ties to other nations, through a different method: courage and leadership. In electing Sarkozy, France has been inspired by the course GWB has taken.
From a former member of a terrorist cell in England:
I know how these young men are inspired to wreak death and destruction because I have first-hand experience of being in one such cell. I have since seen the error of my ways.
...In 1995, at college in east London, I was part of the secret cell structure of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist organisation banned in most Muslim countries and rejected by most mosques in Britain. Yet the group had a free rein on university and college campuses, where it advocated that British Muslims were a community whose allegiance lay not with Queen and country, but to a coming caliph in the Middle East.
This caliph would instruct us to act as agents of the caliphate in Britain, and open a "home front" by assisting the expansionist state. We believed that all Arab governments were not sufficiently "Islamic" and were liable to removal; entire populations would submit to the army of the caliph, or face extinction.
I was part of a generation of young British Muslim teenagers who were raised in mono-cultural ghettoes, disconnected from mainstream Britain and receptive to the message of separatism preached by Arab political asylum seekers. I was indoctrinated in my cell meetings as I studied the books written by Islamist ideologues such as Taqiuddin al-Nabhani and Syed Qutb, angry men struggling in a post-colonial Middle East to find meaning in a new world.
...Terrorism begins with a less extreme shade of Islamism, and in many cases Saudi-inspired Wahhabism - unless we understand the root causes of the theology of terror, we will not be able to defeat it.
I recall my Islamist days when my mind was closed to an alternative argument: there was only one way - my group's way. All others, including fellow Muslims, were wrong and heading for hell. To argue that dialogue will win over extremist Islamists is a myth; theirs is a mindset that is not receptive to alternative views, and does not recognise the sacred nature of all human life.
Wahhabism and segments of Islamism are defined by their rejection of mainstream Muslim teachings and age-old spiritual practices, literalist readings of scripture devoid of scholarly guidance, and a hell-bent commitment to confronting the West. Moderate Muslims have common cause with the West to extinguish extremism in our midst.
As long as it remains legal for extremists in Britain to plan and finance Islamist attempts to mobilise the Muslim masses in the Middle East, and prepare an army for "jihad as foreign policy", there will always be a segment of this movement that will take jihad to its logical conclusion and act immediately, without leadership.
Read the whole thing.
Forwarded this site by Mr. David Littman, Representative of the Association for World Education (no link):
Pandering to religious demands is destroying our national identity
Leo McKinstry Daily Express columnist
918 words
22 January 2007
The Daily Express (page 12)
(c) 2007 Express Newspapers
LEADER
DURING the dark days of 1938, as Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, Winston Churchill spoke of his despair at the government's enfeebled response to the threat of Hitler.
"I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf, " he said.
He went on to warn that "if a moral catastrophe should overtake" Britain, then future historians would be baffled as to how a great nation allowed itself to be destroyed so easily.
Thanks to Churchill's magnificent leadership, the end of our civilisation under the German jackboot was averted.
Yet if he were alive today, he would surely be despondent at the collapse of our sense of nationhood in the face of the twin forces of multiculturalism and mass immigration.
Churchill spoke in 1938 of a "terrible transformation" having taken place in the spirit of the political classes, whose patriotic self-confidence evaporated when confronted with the brute force of Nazi ideology.
The same is true today as our rulers dilute their allegiance to our traditions in desperation to accommodate other cultures.
A "terrible transformation" has indeed taken place. A mood of self-loathing hangs over our institutions. Our past is seen as a cause of shame rather than pride. Throughout our public services, diversity is to be celebrated, whereas Britishness must be derided, ignored or mocked.
THIS mood of self-abasement can be seen at its most repellent in the reaction to the endless litany of Muslim so-called grievances.
The official dogma of multiculturalism encourages hardline Muslims to believe that they can refuse to abide by the rules and customs of this country, even where their own superstitious, often oppressive, practices are in direct conflict with Western liberal traditions of democracy and tolerance.
A classic example occurred in the case of a newly recruited Muslim female police officer who refused to shake the hand of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair during her passing-out parade.
Justifying her decision, she said that it was contrary to her religion to touch a man. Well, it is also contrary to the Met's operational efficiency to have such an apparent zealot in its ranks. If she cannot have any physical contact with a man, how on earth is she going to carry out an arrest, given that more than 90 per cent of serious offenders are male?
In its desperation to parade its multicultural credentials, the Met, like many of our state institutions, has lost sight of its duty towards the wider public.
The police exist to protect society. Whilst there is no suggestion this WPC is anything other than a faithful Muslim, it is absurd of the Met to take seriously this nonsense, which, in my view, is no more elevated than ancient paganism.
Apart from anything else, the refusal to return a handshake is the height of bad manners, implying that the other person is so unclean or so dangerous that he cannot even be touched. But in our climate of political correctness, traditional Western manners count for nothing compared to the sensibilities of Muslims.
What is particularly depressing about this saga is that Sir Ian did nothing about it.
According to reports from inside the police, when he was informed of the officer's request to avoid a handshake:
"He was bloody furious. But he agreed to go along with it so as not to cause a scene." Sir Ian's behaviour could be a metaphor for modern Britain.
At every turn, we have surrendered to Muslim protests, whether it be over freedom of speech or the wearing of the veil. Our Christian heritage is being dumped for fear of "giving offence" to radical Muslims, while new religious discrimination laws force employers to bend over backwards to meet Islamic demands.
A PERMANENT soundtrack of Muslim grievance plays in our society, exploding into full volume at the hint of any challenge to Islam. This climate of appeasement is dressed up as religious tolerance but is really just cowardice. Our institutions are terrified of radical Islam because of the threat of violence. The shadow of the bullet and the bomb lurks behind wails about Islamophobia.
The great Trinidadian writer Sir Vidia Naipaul once described Islam as "sanctified rage" and that has been the bitter experience of countries throughout the world over the past 30 years, as the death toll mounts from the atrocities perpetrated by fundamentalists.
Yet, even as their grim catalogue of murder lengthens, radical Muslims present themselves as the victims of Western imperialistic discrimination, oppression or neglect.
Shamefully, too many Westerners and Western governments have colluded in this process.
Instead of confronting the menace of radical Islam, they try to appease it with endless concessions, even compromising basic democratic issues such as women's rights and liberty of expression. They will do anything for a quiet life. But cowardice does not lead to tranquillity. It emboldens those who wish to exploit our weakness.
The late Thirties showed the disastrous consequences of trying to appease a violent, intolerant ideology. Just as today, there was an institutional reluctance to defend British values in the face of this threat.
Opponents of Nazism were often treated as dangerous cranks; Churchill was all but banned by the BBC for being too anti-German. But as he so rightly warned, appeasement is the road to national suicide. We cannot save our civilisation by continually weakening it.
A British TV reporter has gone undercover at a mosque in England and blown the lid off of what is being preached there. This report is a game-changer. Video from it is up on YouTube.
Part 1 of 3
As practiced at the Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham, England, Islam is a religion of hate. Their own preacher, Abu Usamah, says so using precisely that word: "hate." He preaches that Muslims must hate non-Muslims. Here are a few of the things you'll see when you watch the video:
Announcer: Tonight on Dispatches, an ideology of bigotry and intolerance, spreading though Britain, with its roots in Saudi Arabia.
Per Green Lane mosque - Islam as a political ideology dedicated to the destruction of Western government, freedoms and laws:
... Imam: You have to live like a state within a state, until you take over.
.... Imam: The pinnacle, the crest, the summit of Islam - is Jihad.
Announcer: Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham, is a high-profile mosque, and one we'd heard receives theological guidance from Saudi Arabia. Our reporter went undercover last summer, joining thousands of worshipers.
.... Imam: It has come to pass that the Christians and the Jews, America, the UK, France, Germany, they have come against the religion of Islam. Why give up your religion and your long legacy of Islam, to please someone who is an enemy to you?
Announcer: Abu Usamah is an American convert, and a very popular speaker at Green Lane.
Preacher Abu Usamah: We want our Islam and its laws to be practiced. We want to do away with the man-made laws.
Per Green Lane mosque - Islam as a religion of hate:
...Preacher Abu Usamah: No one loves the kuffaar. No one loves the kuffaar! Not a single person here from the Muslims, love the kuffaar. Whether those kuffaar are from the UK, or from the US - We love the peope of Islam, and we hate the people of kufr. We hate the kuffaar.
...Preacher Abu Usamah: Muslims shouldn't be satisfied with living in other than the total Islamic state.
...Preacher Abu Usamah: Whoever changes his religion from Islam to anything else, kill him in the Islamic state. If the imam wants to crucify him he should crucify him. The person is put up on the wood, and he's left there to bleed to death for three days.
Announcer: Our reporter has found these views being regularly preached at the head mosque of a major Muslim organization. Green Lane Mosque, Birmingham, is the headquarters of the Markazzi Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith, a British charity which runs over 40 UK mosques and branches, as well as part-time Islamic schools. It's an influential affiliate of the Muslim council in Britain, which has praised it as a national body, respected for its educational and outreach programs. But our reporter secretly recorded Abu Usamah preaching that a jihad is coming against the unbelievers.
...Preacher Abu Usamah: Verily Allah is going to bring a group of people that he loves and they love him. These people will be soft and kind to the believers. And they will be rough and tough against the kuffaar. They will fight in the cause of Allah. I encourage all of you to be amongst them. To begin to cultivate ourselves for the time that is fastly approaching when the tables are going to turn. And the Muslims are going to be in a position of being uppermost in strength. And when that happens, people won't get killed -- unjustly.
...Preacher Abu Usamah: Now they say that if you discriminate against [homosexuals] you're going to jail. [...] But we'll discriminate in a way where we don't get in trouble. The Muslim is a dentist - one of those people come, and going to take a big, big needle, and stick it in his [indecipherable].
In the Western sense of the word, a religion is something that preaches peace, love, kindness, and understanding among all men towards all other men. That is not what is being preached at the Green Lane mosque in Birmingham, England. As practiced at the Green Lane mosque in Birmingham, England, Islam isn't a religion at all in the Western sense of the word. It's a death cult backing a political ideology that seeks the destruction of the freedoms, laws, and government of England.
The British should shut down the Green Lane mosque - and raze it to the ground.
Everyone who works for it should be put on trial for treason.
Update 1-21-07: The video above is no longer available. It contained clips from the show. The entire show is currently still available on YouTube.
Berlin stands up for free speech:
In September, Deutsche Oper head Kirsten Harms canceled Hans Neuenfels' interpretation of "Idomeneo" that had been scheduled for November following a vague security warning from police that the prop of Muhammad could incite Muslims.
After a storm of criticism over artistic freedom and an all-clear from police, the opera house rescheduled two performances for Dec. 18 and Dec. 29.
"What we can say is that, on the 18th, the work will be performed on stage with all the necessary props," Busche said.
Yesterday I spoke to a local business owner, a man who was born in France, and came to the U.S. in the mid-70's. I haven't yet gotten his permission to identify him here, so I'll call him Curtis.
I asked him what was up with the riots in France. Why don't the French just expel those guys from the country?
I don't yet have corroboration for his statements. Take this as the verbal testimony of one man.
Curtis said that over 80% of the French population would like to expel the radical Islamists, but the government refuses to.
He said that government approval is required to build a house of worship - and that 20 mosques are approved for every 1 non-Muslim temple.
He said that in the airport (he may have been referring to the one that serves Paris), there is a mosque - but there is no non-Islamic house of worship.
He said that Muslims reproduce every 17 years, and that they have over four children for every 1.8 non-Muslim children. (I referred him to Mark Steyn's new book on this subject, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.)
He said that the Muslim population in France is constantly going to the government asking for help. The government - that is, the French taxpayer - gives them free housing.
I asked how the French can tolerate 100+ cars being burned every day all this year. He said police have no power to break up crowds of Muslims who come and "dance" threateningly in front of homes and businesses. The police are only able to act when they see a crime being committed in front of them. It's illegal to hold a teenager in jail for more than 2 days. If a citizen asks for a teenaged Muslim who is attacking his property to be arrested, in two days the same criminal will return to threaten or harm him again. Store owners are afraid to call the police when a crowd of Muslims "dance" (Curtis used the word repeatedly) threateningly in front of their business, because he knows the result will be that his business will be burnt. Such store owners often let the Muslims steal whatever they want.
Curtis said that with the huge difference in birthrates, France was doomed.
I said, I thought Socialism was responsible for the poor birthrate, because it literally makes life unrewarding - it takes away the rewards for living your life well and achieving things for yourself and those around you. Curtis responded with great interest to this suggestion.
He said that many French people live in small houses he compared to a U.S. trailer home. He said that for many Frenchmen, permits are required from the government if they want to move, and that such permits are so difficult to get that people often don't try. He said that visitors to France often see how good the social life is there, with friends often getting together - "I'll bring the bread, you bring the wine, you bring the cheese" - but that what visitors don't see is that government regulations strangle any attempts at work so much that beyond social life, there is nothing else. The social life is so good because nothing else is permitted.
And if all that wasn't enough, here's the real shocker.
He said that for 30 years, Muslims and non-Muslims worked side-by-side in French factories and businesses. Everyone thought the Muslims had assimilated. But when the Islamic riots started in France last year, these Muslims "flipped in a second" -- they immediately supported the riots. Their non-Muslim friends said to them, "We thought we knew you - this is wrong, what they are doing, burning cars and rioting." But the supposedly-assimilated Muslims supported the rioters.
There are fascinating developments in England in the wake of Jack Straw's laudable request for Islamic women to stop wearing the veil that separates Muslims from the rest of society. The message is getting to some in the British Islamic community that they must assimilate or leave:
Senior MPs and peers signalled their alarm at the furore triggered 10 days ago by Jack Straw's call for women to reconsider wearing face veils. They said the Muslim community felt under siege following a succession of recent headlines generated by the Government.
...The Labour peer Baroness Uddin pleaded with the Government to work to help women lead the fight against extremism. She said: "We have attacked those who would be our greatest allies in meeting the current challenges of terrorism and radicalisation." She warned that the row over veils had caused "havoc" in the Muslim community and created "a feeling of vulnerability and demonisation of Muslim women".
Lord Ahmed, another Labour peer, said members of the Muslim community were considering leaving Britain because of the row. "People are asking: 'What is our future here, do you think we should be taking our money and going somewhere else because this country has so much Islamophobia?'"
One Islamic response was to issue a veiled (no pun intended) threat:
But Khalid Mahmood, MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, warned: "There's been a huge hype over a small number of people and the only thing this has led to is Muslim-bashing. The only people this will benefit are the far-right BNP. It will also encourage extremists from the Muslim community who will say: 'We told you so."'
This is the response we see so often from Islamic leaders - 'You are saying you don't want our terrorists to attack you? You'd better not, because that will only encourage our terrorists to attack you even more.' Notice that he's threatening physical attacks ( "it will also encourage extremists from the Muslim community" ) in response to a use of free speech. Here again we see an Islamist using a threat of physical violence to restrict Western free speech. This is the message of the dictator and the oppressor. It's got no place in a free Western society.
Also notable is the cumulative effect of a series of statements from those who defend the free world:
The Labour MP John Denham, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, warned: "I'm worried there has been a series of pronouncements by government ministers, each one of which is individually unexceptional, but put them together it does look like a barrage of general criticism."
This is how we, who insist on protecting our free Western society and culture, gain power from standing together. We all seek to make reasonable statements, and the cumulative effect is very powerful.
A month or two ago a good friend of mine asked, quite reasonably, if I was concerned that we might lose our free speech in America due to Islam. I said, not tomorrow, but in 20-30 years, yes, I was concerned that that might happen.
Who would have thought even 10 years ago that free speech could be lost in France, that most impertinent of nations? And yet, here it is, astoundingly. The French writer, Redeker, said some things about Islam that the Muslims didn't like; a number of Muslims threatened to kill him; he's on the run; and the French establishment, and even Le Monde, acquiesces. The government and people of France are letting it happen, when they should be tracking down those who made the threats and punishing them with years of imprisonment, or expulsion from France.
At this point free speech in France appears to be dead, killed by radical Islam.
Islam, as apparently interpreted currently by most Muslim leaders, says that non-Muslims are second-class citizens who have to "stay within their limits." Islam exploits an odd weakness in the Judeo-Christian tradition that is vulnerable to attack when the attackers claim that they are acting in the name of their own "religion."
Of course, Islam, as interpreted by today's Islamic leaders, isn't a religion at all in the Judeo-Christian sense. It doesn't teach love of one's neighbor, or of one's country - or even of one's family, as is seen when radical Islamists send their own children off to blow themselves up, or when they do so-called "honor killings" of their own children for violating Islamic rules.
It all sounds as strange as science fiction. But here's a report from Nidra Poller, containing the undeniable facts about what's happening in France.
This is what we must stop from happening here.
