May 16 2010

The unkindest cut of all?

Category: government,Group-think,Islam,jihad,politicsharmonicminer @ 9:53 am

I guess I must have missed reading the part of Eric Holder’s resume that discusses his credentials to make judgments about whether or not “radical Islam” is a true part of the Islamic tradition, and supported by the Koran and Hadith.  One wonders if he knows the names Daniel Pipes, or Robert Spencer, or for that matter Bernard Lewis.  I don’t think he has shown any such reticence in attributing (incredibly rare) violence against abortionists to “Christian fundamentalist right-wingers,” nor has Janet Napolitano, who is worried that pro-lifers are nascent terrorists.  I can only wonder why the phrase “radical right” escapes Holder’s lips so much more easily than “radical Islam.”

You see, there isn’t really such a thing as “radical Islam,” because as Attorney General Holder fumblingly explains, if it’s “radical” it isn’t really Islam.  That’s comforting.  Are you less dead because the terrorist who killed you is really a radical non-Muslim who just thinks he is practicing true Islam?

When you’re too tired to write something today, Mark Steyn is a reliable backup, a seemingly never empty well of trenchant observation. This is from National Review Online:

Nicking Our Public Discourse

What with the Fort Hood mass murderer, the Christmas Pantybomber, and now the Times Square bomber, you may have noticed a little uptick in attempted terrorist attacks on the U.S. mainland in the last few months.Rep. Lamar Smith did, and, at the House Judiciary Committee, he was interested to see if the attorney general of the United States thought there might be any factor in common between these perplexingly diverse incidents.

“In the case of all three attempts in the last year, the terrorist attempts, one of which was successful, those individuals have had ties to radical Islam,” said Representative Smith. “Do you feel that these individuals might have been incited to take the actions that they did because of radical Islam?”

“Because of . . . ?”

“Radical Islam,” repeated Smith.

“There are a variety of reasons why I think people have taken these actions,” replied Eric Holder noncommittally. “I think you have to look at each individual case.”

The congressman tried again. “Yes, but radical Islam could have been one of the reasons?”

“There are a variety of reasons why people . . . ”

“But was radical Islam one of them?”

“There are a variety of reasons why people do things,” the attorney general said again. “Some of them are potentially religious . . . ” Stuff happens. Hard to say why.

“Okay,” said Smith. “But all I’m asking is if you think, among those variety of reasons, radical Islam might have been one of the reasons that the individuals took the steps that they did.”

“You see, you say ‘radical Islam,'” objected Holder. “I mean, I think those people who espouse a, a version of Islam that is not . . . ”

“Are you uncomfortable attributing any actions to radical Islam?” asked Smith. “It sounds like it.”

And so on, and so forth. At Ford Hood, Major Hasan jumped on a table and gunned down his comrades while screaming “Allahu Akbar!”, which is Arabic for “Nothing to see here” and an early indicator of pre-post-traumatic stress disorder. The Times Square bomber, we are assured by the Washington Post, CNN, and Newsweek, was upset by foreclosure proceedings on his house. Mortgage-related issues. Nothing to do with months of training at a Taliban camp in Waziristan.

Listening to Attorney General Holder, one is tempted to modify Trotsky: You may not be interested in Islam, but Islam is interested in you. Islam smells weakness at the heart of the West. The post–World War II order is dying: The European Union’s decision to toss a trillion dollars to prop up a Greek economic model that guarantees terminal insolvency is merely the latest manifestation of the chronic combination of fiscal profligacy and demographic decline in the West at twilight. Islam is already the biggest supplier of new Europeans and new Canadians, and the fastest-growing demographic in the Western world. Therefore, it thinks it not unreasonable to shape the character of those societies, not by blowing up buildings and airplanes, but by determining the nature of their relationship to Islam.

For example, the very same day that Eric Holder was doing his “Islam? What Islam?” routine at the Capitol, the Organization of the Islamic Conference was tightening its hold on the U.N. Human Rights Council, actually, make that the U.N. “Human Rights” Council. The OIC is the biggest voting bloc at the U.N., and it succeeded in getting its slate of candidates elected to the so-called “human rights” body, among them the Maldives, Qatar, Malaysia, Mauritania, and Libya. The last, elected to the HRC by 80 percent of the U.N. membership, is, of course, a famous paragon of human rights, but the other, “moderate” Muslim nations share the view that Islam, in both its theological and political components, should be beyond discussion. And they will support the U.N.’s rapid progress toward, in effect, the imposition of a global apostasy law that removes Islam from public discourse.

Attorney General Holder seems to be operating an advance pilot program of his own, but he’s not alone. Also last week, the head of Canada’s intelligence service testified to the House of Commons about hundreds of “second- or third-generation Canadians” who are “relatively well integrated” “economically and socially” but who have become so “very, very disenchanted” with “the way we want to structure our society” that they have developed “strong links to homelands” that are “in distress.” Homelands such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

Hmm. If you’re wondering what those countries might have in common, keep wondering. No words beginning with “I-” and ending with “-slam” passed the director’s lips. If the head of the Crown’s intelligence service has narrowed his concerns about “disenchanted” “second- or third-generation Canadians” to any demographic group in particular, evidently it’s classified information and can’t be disclosed in public.

The U.N. elections are a big victory for the Organization of the Islamic Conference. By the way, to my liberal friends who say, “Hey, what’s the big deal about the Organization of the Islamic Conference? Lighten up, man”: Try rolling around your tongue the words “Organization of the Christian Conference.” Would you be quite so cool with that? Fifty-seven prime ministers and presidents who get together and vote as a bloc in international affairs? Or would that be a theocratic affront to secular sensibilities? The casual acceptance of the phrase “the Muslim world” (“Mr. Obama’s now-famous speech to the Muslim world”, the New York Times) implicitly defers to the political ambitions of Islam. And, if there is a “Muslim world,” what are its boundaries? Forty years ago, the OIC began with mainly Middle Eastern members plus Indonesia and a couple more. By the Nineties, former Soviet Central Asia had signed on, plus Albania, Mozambique, Guyana, and various others. In 2005, Russia was admitted to “observer” membership.

But along with the big headline victories go smaller ones. These days, Islam doesn’t even have to show up. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has quietly pulled representations of Mohammed from its Islamic collection. With the Danish cartoons, violent mobs actually had to kill large numbers of people before Kurt Westegaard was sent into involuntary “retirement.” Even with South Park, the thugs still had to threaten murder. But the Metropolitan Museum caved preemptively, no murders, no threats, but best to crawl into a fetal position anyway.

Last week, the American Association of Pediatricians noted that certain, ahem, “immigrant communities” were shipping their daughters overseas to undergo “female genital mutilation.” So, in a spirit of multicultural compromise, they decided to amend their previous opposition to the practice: They’re not (for the moment) advocating full-scale clitoridectomies, but they are suggesting federal and state laws be changed to permit them to give a “ritual nick” to young girls.

A few years back, I thought even fainthearted Western liberals might draw the line at “FGM.” After all, it’s a key pillar of institutional misogyny in Islam: Its entire purpose is to deny women sexual pleasure. True, many of us hapless Western men find we deny women sexual pleasure without even trying, but we don’t demand genital mutilation to guarantee it. On such slender distinctions does civilization rest.

Der Spiegel, an impeccably liberal magazine, summed up the remorseless Islamization of Europe in a recent headline: “How Much Allah Can the Old Continent Bear?” Well, what’s wrong with a little Allah-lite? The AAP thinks you can hop on the sharia express and only ride a couple of stops. In such ostensibly minor concessions, the “ritual nick” we’re performing is on ourselves. Further cuts will follow.

If morals are all merely cultural, and any other culture is as good as yours, upon what ground do you stand to condemn “FGM”?  The multi-culturalists have no answer, because they have disarmed themselves of any of the benefit of either natural law or revealed truth in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

You can’t beat something with nothing.  The remorseless secularization of Europe has seriously weakened its defenses from Islam’s true believers who continue to pursue the “slow jihad.” (See the video below.)  How far behind is the USA?  Not as far as one might wish, if either the inability to utter the phrase “radical Islam” on the part of Attorney General Holder, or the AAP’s acceptance of “ritual nicks,” is any guide.


Mar 26 2010

Gosh, Pat, I didn’t know you were such an Obama fan

Category: Fatah,Hamas,Israel,jihad,middle east,national security,Obamaharmonicminer @ 8:00 am

Netanyahu’s Hollow Victory? Pat Buchanan’s apparent hatred of Israel continues to masquerade as “conservative” foreign policy prescriptions.

“The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital.”

With this defiant declaration, to a thunderous ovation at AIPAC, Benjamin Netanyahu informed the United States that East Jerusalem, taken from Jordan in the Six Day War, is not occupied land. It is Israeli land and Israel’s forever, and no Palestinian state will share Jerusalem. Israel alone decides what is built, and where, in the Holy City.

With his declaration and refusal to walk back the decision to build 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem, which blew up the Biden mission, “Bibi” goes home a winner over Barack Obama.

But it is a temporary triumph and hollow victory — over Israel’s indispensable ally. For the clash revealed that the perceived vital interests of Israel now collide with vital U.S. interest in the Middle East.

Memo to Mr. Buchanan: land taken in wars of self-defense is legitimately kept. That is the time honored historical fact.  Live with it.  Jordan will certainly have to.  So will the “Palestinians,” who COULD easily have been resettled in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, et. al., after the failure of those nations to destroy Israel in war.  (Of course, those people have been denied the opportunity to live elsewhere, because each of those nations had something to gain from keeping the hatred of Israel alive…  or so they thought.   In any case, none of them wanted the war to be over until Israel was destroyed.)  If Jordan had not attacked Israel, along with many others, Israel would not be building settlements in Jerusalem today. Everyone will have to live with the consequences of their decisions, including those made decades ago by different governments.

But there is nothing illegitimate, nothing at all, about Israel keeping the land it won while defending itself (almost unsuccessfully so) in wars not of its making.

Memo to the rest of Israel’s neighbors: if you want to keep the land you have now, don’t attack again.

Memo to Obama:  Israel’s support in the USA is broad and deep.  You might want to remember that.  The honeymoon is over.  You might want to remember that, too. 


Mar 09 2010

Volunteering to aid the enemy

Category: constitution,government,jihad,justice,Obama,politics,terrorismharmonicminer @ 9:04 am

Andrew McCarthy makes the case that The Gitmo Volunteers are no more noble in volunteering to represent the Guantanamo prisoners than a restaurant owner who gave free food to Al Qaeda. It’s all worth reading, and it’s difficult to refute, I think.  He has some especially pointed observations about how the legal profession sees itself as being above the rest of us, particularly the left-liberal wing of it.  Read it all if you can.  Here’s the ending bit:

America’s enemies are no more entitled to counsel in pursuing legal claims than, say, a pro-life group that chooses to file a lawsuit. If I went out of my way to contribute my services for free to a pro-life group, do you suppose the New York Times would have the slightest hesitation about drawing the inference that I was sympathetic to the pro-life cause? Of course not. The Gray Lady wouldn’t pretend that I was just, in the Gillers lexicon, promoting “the administration of justice.” After all, no one would have forced me to take that case. There are countless causes that a lawyer willing to donate his services can find. When you’re a volunteer, you’re doing what you want to do, not what you have to do.

As the law is currently understood, it is legal for a lawyer to volunteer his services to America’s enemies. It is absurd, however, to suggest that we have to applaud that decision. And it is equally ludicrous to suggest that we are forbidden from drawing the obvious conclusion that a lawyer who makes such a decision is predisposed to condemn the United States and to sympathize with America’s enemies on some level.

Here’s the landscape: The Obama Justice Department is staffed with many lawyers who volunteered their services to America’s enemies. Since those lawyers have been running the department, there has been a detectable shift in favor of due-process rights for terrorists, a bias in favor of civilian trials in which terrorists are vested with all the rights of American citizens, a bias against military tribunals, the extension of Miranda protections to enemy combatants, a concerted effort to publish previously classified information detailing interrogation methods and depicting the alleged abuse of detainees, efforts to subject lawyers who authorized aggressive counterterrorism policies to professional sanction, the reopening of investigations against CIA interrogators even though those cases were previously closed by apolitical law-enforcement professionals, and the continued accusation that officials responsible for designing and carrying out the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies committed war crimes.

You may think this is a coincidence. I don’t. And I’m not going to pretend it is because some lefty lawyer screams “McCarthyism.” This isn’t demagoguery. It is cause and effect. And if it is hurting President Obama politically, that is because he deserves to be hurt for indulging it.


Jan 04 2010

Getting radicalized

Category: Islam,jihadharmonicminer @ 9:15 am

The Christmas Day Bomber invited a prominent ‘jihad’ cleric to address British students

The Christmas Day airline bomber invited a radical cleric who has advocated dying while ‘fighting jihad’ to address British students.

While president of the Islamic Society at University College London, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab helped arrange for Abdur Raheem Green to speak.

The cleric, who converted to Islam from Roman Catholicism, has written that conflict between Islam and the West is ‘ordered in the Koran’, and that Muslims and Westerners ‘ cannot live peaceably together’.

He has also claimed: ‘Dying while fighting jihad is one of the surest ways to paradise and Allah’s good pleasure’.

In 2005, shortly before Abdulmutallab arranged for him to address UCL, Green was barred from entering Australia after opposition leader Kim Beazley accused him of ‘spreading hate’.

The revelation adds weight to the belief that Abdulmutallab was radicalised during his time studying in London, where he read mechanical engineering and business at UCL between 2005 and 2008.

It is simply not supportable that jihad is a response to poverty and oppression, or the rest of the world’s poor would be doing what upper-middle class and wealthy young radicalized Muslims are doing… killing the innocent for Allah, or some other god.

But it doesn’t happen, does it?

The problem is 7th-century Islam in the 21st century.  Of course, 7th-century Islam was a problem all along.

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