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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Howard Rotberg</title>
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		<title>Hillary at Georgetown: Tolerance, Empathy and Submission</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/howard-rotberg/hillary-at-georgetown-tolerance-empathy-and-submission/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hillary-at-georgetown-tolerance-empathy-and-submission</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Dec 2014 05:30:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Howard Rotberg]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[empathy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Georgetown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tolerance]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247690</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What it really means to "empathize" with one's enemies. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/aunnamed.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247691" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/aunnamed.jpg" alt="aunnamed" width="332" height="212" /></a>In my book, <i>Tolerism: The Ideology Revealed (second revised edition, Mantua Books), </i>I quote the great philosopher of the post-World War 2 era, Karl Popper, who formulated the following dilemma about tolerance (which has become known as “the Popper Paradox”):</p>
<blockquote><p>If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. … We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.</p></blockquote>
<p>And so, I write that excessive tolerance of the intolerant illiberals has become a full-blown ideology which I call Tolerism.   Tolerism, in my view, elevates the virtue of tolerance over the fundamental Biblical value of Justice.</p>
<p>Tolerism also includes a type of cultural Stockholm Syndrome, where, as in the case of some hostages or abused women, some begin to identify with their captors or abusers.</p>
<p>It consists often of psychological denial, and it accepts United Nations Human Rights Councils led by Iran, Syria and other leading human rights abusers. Tolerism reflects a moral equivalency between terrorists and victims, and even a seeming masochism where we seek out painful retribution as a kind of catharsis for our supposed misdeeds.  Tolerist “compassion,” especially in the work of Karen Armstrong, assumes that there is equivalency in compassion between the “frequently unkind West” and Islam &#8212; which unfortunately in its present state is not at all compassionate to Coptic Christians, Yzedis, Jews, gays, women who seek freedoms, or even minority Muslim groups like the Ahmadis.</p>
<p>I believe that the ideology I call tolerism is expanding ever more rapidly beyond mere tolerance and unilateral compassion.   It is now becoming an excessive <i>empathy</i> where the quest to share some other group’s feelings is beginning to cause our liberals to accept the false facts and illiberal values of our enemies and in fact sometimes to convert or submit to Islam.  We are seeing some young people convert to Islam and go so far as to join the forces of ISIS.  We are even seeing young Western women convert to Islam and marry men whose attitudes toward women are almost barbaric. Submission indeed.</p>
<p>Ms. Clinton, of course, served as Secretary of State during the Obama administration’s new Middle Eastern doctrine of giving more “respect” to the Muslim world in word and deed.  As President Obama stated in Cairo during his first major overseas appearance:</p>
<blockquote><p>I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.</p></blockquote>
<p>Hillary herself has a close relationship with Huma Abedin, who is connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, as are her parents.  Ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and allowing its operatives into the Obama administration would be seen as treasonous if the country was not so immersed in Tolerism.</p>
<p>Clinton is not apologetic in the least over her relationship with Abedin. Now that Clinton feels that she should be President at a time when Islamist threats all over the world have only increased during the Obama years, she feels that her “feminine” skills give her the special qualification to right the ship she helped to tip over during her tenure as Secretary of State.</p>
<p>So, in her recent speech at Georgetown University, she contended that when women participate in peace processes, “often overlooked issues such as human rights, individual justice, national reconciliation, economic renewal are often brought to the forefront.”</p>
<p>Clinton’s talk (for which she apparently was paid $300,000) was at the launch of the Action Plan Academy, an organization which aims to explore how countries can craft strategies to help women rise into leadership roles on security issues and provide training and workshops.</p>
<p>“Today marks a very important next step,” Clinton told an audience of diplomats and other officials from all over the world, “shifting from saying the right things to doing the right things, putting into action the steps that are necessary not only to protect women and children but to find ways of utilizing women as makers and keepers of peace.”</p>
<p>Of the hundreds of peace treaties signed since the early 1990s, between or within nations, she said, fewer than 10 percent had any female negotiators and fewer than 3 percent had women as signatories.</p>
<p>“Is it any wonder that many of these agreements fail between a few years?” Clinton asked, implying, without any evidence at all, that women produce better peace agreements than men.   If I was paying part of the $300,000 I would really have expected a better discussion of past female leaders like Ms. Bhutto in Pakistan (who transferred nuclear technology to North Korea), Golda Meir in Israel,  and Margaret Thatcher in Britain,  and current leaders Angela Merkel in Germany and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina. America itself has seen women leaders in security matters – former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Condoleeza Rice (and Hillary Clinton), National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and first female Ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick.</p>
<p>Instead of discussing any of them, she raised the idea that two women were involved at a high level in brokering peace in the 40-year struggle between the government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and other Islamic groups in the southern island of Bangsamoro (meaning Muslim land), which has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced more than a million..</p>
<p>Unfortunately, whether these two women were in fact instrumental or not, the issue of the Philippines submitting to Muslim rule over areas of its impoverished, yet potentially oil-rich, south, after 40 years of conflict and the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of over a million people, is factually quite complex.  Some argue that it was external pressure that helped this second peace initiative on the same territory for which the first peace treaty failed; and most recognize that this second one is very much up in the air as to its sustainability.</p>
<p>Under the proposal, Islamic Sharia law would apply to Muslims in the region, but the country&#8217;s justice system would (hopefully) continue to apply to non-Muslims. The Moro group has renounced the terrorist acts of extremist groups, but at least three smaller Muslim rebel groups oppose the autonomy deal and have vowed to continue fighting for a completely separate Muslim homeland.</p>
<p>And one wonders, once the Muslim groups are granted jurisdiction over limited areas of government, whether this is viewed by them as a first step to future demands for full Sharia law.   But Hillary is not interested in waiting to see how it turns out before attributing it to the presence of some women working on the negotiations.</p>
<p>This is a complex problem that Hillary obviously simplifies for partisan political purposes, i.e. the female vote in America.  Some commentators feel that the potential natural resource riches available to foreign business concerns is what eventually pushed the Philippine Government into the deal, rather than any great feminine talents as Hillary contends.  Moreover, some believe that the United States and other Western governments have backed the autonomy deal partly to prevent the insurgency from breeding extremists who could threaten their own countries.</p>
<p>But the topic of feminine talents for security and diplomacy and her preference to cite Muslims as examples rather than American female icons is not the main concern caused by Ms. Clinton’s remarks.   The really scandalous part of the speech is when she cited feminine skills as a component of something she called “Smart Power” as follows (emphasis added):</p>
<p>“This is what we call Smart Power, using every possible tool…leaving no one on the sidelines, <b>showing respect even for one’s enemies</b>, trying to understand, and insofar as is psychologically possible, <b>empathize with their perspective and point of view</b>, helping to define the problems [and] determine a solution, that is what we believe in the 21st century will change the prospect for peace,” she said.</p>
<p>What does it mean for a possible future President to seek to show “respect” for one’s enemies?</p>
<p>Respect, according to the Oxford Dictionary is defined as “a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.”</p>
<p>And here is where we begin to climb down into a terrible ethical hole.   Islamists, with their history of beheadings, other murders, torture, persecution of ethnic and religious minorities, and gays, and their forced genital mutilation of young girls, their abuse of women and their general disregard for individual human rights, do not deserve our “deep admiration” and do not show any great “qualities” or “achievements” &#8211; unless your idea of an achievement is grabbing vast areas of Iraq and Syria from under Obama’s nose, without his bothering to object until it was too late.</p>
<p>Let’s dig a little deeper also into the whole concept of “empathy” for one’s enemy.   The idea of empathizing with the enemy was first popularized by the film, <i>Fog of War, </i>about former Defense Secretary in the Johnson administration, Robert McNamara, who made it one of the eleven lessons he learned. The concept of empathy is also something that has received the study of humanist psychologists, who are well-meaning in their attempts to aid interpersonal relationships and help people understand and therefore overcome misunderstandings in difficult relationships.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Carl Rogers, an important American academic psychologist of the twentieth century promoted the concept of empathy, or being empathetic as a process leading one to perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the &#8220;as if&#8221; condition. Thus it means to sense the hurt or the pleasure of another as he senses it and to perceive the causes thereof as he perceives them, but without ever losing the recognition that it is “as if I were hurt or pleased and so forth.  If this &#8220;as if&#8221; quality is lost, then the state is one of identification.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Rogers reasoned that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>An empathic way of being with another person means entering the private perceptual world of the other and becoming thoroughly at home in it. It involves being sensitive, moment by moment, to the changing felt meanings which flow in this other person, to the fear or rage or tenderness or confusion or whatever that he or she is experiencing. It means temporarily living in the other&#8217;s life, moving about in it delicately without making judgements;  &#8230;It means frequently checking with the person as to the accuracy of your sensings, and being guided by the responses you receive. You are a confident companion to the person in his or her inner world.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>To be with another in this way means that for the time being, you lay aside your own views and values in order to enter another&#8217;s world without prejudice. In some sense it means that you lay aside your self; this can only be done by persons who are secure enough in themselves that they know they will not get lost in what may turn out to be the strange or bizarre world of the other, and that they can comfortably return to their own world when they wish.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">One can only conclude that real “political” empathy is for only the strongest, most intelligent intellectuals and politicians of our time, who are most secure in their liberal values and their constitutional limits and duties.  If the person is not so strong, this journey into what can be “a strange or bizarre world” may result in the person feeling more comfortable in <b>that</b> world or identifying with that world.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Feeling more comfortable in that world may result in something way more than tolerant empathy, and may result in conversion or submission.   This is not a job for postmodernists, but only for those with the clearest and most certain confidence in American values.  Without clear values, and a fixed sense of right and wrong, and good versus evil, postmodernist empathy will make it harder and harder for the empathizer to return to their own world, especially if his President has said that America is no more tolerant than Islam, that American standards of justice are no better than Islam’s and that countries that have banished all Jews and most Christians share the same view of dignity of all persons.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">And so, when the President stated that America and the Muslim world share mutual respect (i.e. admiration); and that they share the same principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings; then one wonders if empathy will more likely lead to submission.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">If Hillary Clinton calls for more respect and empathy for the enemy, she is a poor choice to lead a country as important as America is to the notion of individual freedoms and human rights based on Judeo-Christian values.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Since the election of Obama, we have a very large problem on our hands.   The moral and cultural relativism and postmodernism of our university campuses are now in the White House.  Can the historical America survive another four or eight years of tolerism and empathy before it, too, like some European countries, begins to submit to Islamist values, with acceptance of Sharia law as an alternative to its Constitution, Muslim religious teachings in public schools, and tolerance for “no-go” areas?    America failed its young by failing to properly vet Obama’s background and associations before electing him;   this time, before Americans place Hillary Clinton in the White House they had better study carefully the notions of tolerance, empathy and submission if America is to remain a great country.</p>
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		<title>The British Royal Family and the Islamist Terrorists</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/howard-rotberg/the-british-royal-family-and-the-islamist-terrorists/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-british-royal-family-and-the-islamist-terrorists</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 18 Nov 2014 05:40:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Howard Rotberg]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[british]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[canada]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Extreme]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Prince Charles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Radical]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Royal Family]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245324</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Are British Royals committed to defending the homeland? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/prince-charles.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245325" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/prince-charles.jpg" alt="prince-charles" width="338" height="278" /></a>Four men aged 19-27 were arrested by British police on Thursday, November 6<sup>th</sup>, for allegedly planning a terror attack in London against Queen Elizabeth during the Remembrance Day ceremony that took place on Friday, November 7th.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">The terrorists were seized by the police following months of surveillance and police were said to be interrogating the suspects – who are thought to have hatched a plot to assassinate the Queen with a knife.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">England, of course, under Prime Minister Cameron is a leader in tolerance and respect for Islam and even allows Sharia Law-governed “no-go” areas. After the ISIS beheading of British citizen David Haines, Cameron was quoted as feeling the need once again, just as after every terrorist murder, to emphasize that such terrorism was not done by the “religion of peace”:  <span style="color: #101010;">&#8220;They are killing and slaughtering thousands of people… they boast of their brutality… they claim to do this in the name of Islam, that is nonsense, Islam is a religion of peace. They are not Muslims, they are monsters.&#8221;</span></p>
<p style="color: #101010;">In my book, <i>Tolerism: The Ideology Revealed </i>(Mantua Books, second edition), I discuss how the endless tolerance of the intolerant illiberals endangers us all if these intolerants take power and end all tolerance.  Britain has quite an ambivalent relationship with Islam and especially those who commit violence, or otherwise attack British historic liberties and freedoms, for the purpose of conquest and a jihadist caliphate.</p>
<p><span style="color: #101010;">Britain, of course, had its own version of 9/11, t</span>he July 7, 2005 London bombings (often referred to as 7/7)  which were a series of coordinated <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_attack"><span style="color: #0433ff;">suicide attacks</span></a> in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_London"><span style="color: #0433ff;">central London</span></a>, which targeted civilians using the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_London"><span style="color: #0433ff;">public transport system</span></a> during the morning rush hour.</p>
<p>As well as the four bombers, 52 civilians were killed and over 700 more were injured.</p>
<p>So, when threats were discovered against the Queen, British police and armed forces took the matter seriously and thwarted the proposed attack.    It all brought to mind, however, just how the British have related to radical or militant Islam, or Islamism, however you term it.</p>
<p>In view of the recent thwarted attempt against the Queen, perhaps, we should take a look at the views of Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne. Is there anything that should concern us?    Has he become what I call a “tolerist” – one whose tolerance of evil seems to have been exacerbated by terrorism; that is, do we have another case where we see terrorism being successful in creating <i>more </i>tolerance and more submission to the demands of radical Muslims both inside and outside Britain, with every terrorist attack?</p>
<p>The royal wedding between Prince William and the beautiful Kate Middleton on April 29<sup>th</sup>, 2011, seemed, to many, a turning back in time to when the British monarchy really mattered, and Britain itself mattered.   The Queen herself, resolute in her dedication to duty and country, with a mother who had lived to 101, seemed to be ready to carry on for years to come.</p>
<p>The striking young couple and the 85 year old monarch, brought the monarchy into a perhaps unexpected place of honour and excitement in a Britain, beset by economic problems and social tensions relating to its increasing Islamic population. The very popularity of the young couple and the elderly monarch made the public’s disdain of William’s father and Elizabeth’s son, Charles, all the more apparent. It prompted me to research a bit about Prince Charles and his views.</p>
<p>Charles was the one who was mostly famous for ditching the popular and beautiful Diana for the plain and somewhat unappealing Camilla. An eccentric, seemingly in search of a cause in life, his interest in architecture and the environment was about to come into fashion again, when he made the turn in his career which seems somewhat puzzling:  his interest in promoting the cause of Islam.</p>
<p>In this, he might be seen by his critics as taking after no one so much as his eccentric uncle Edward, the Nazi sympathizer who abdicated the throne to marry the divorced American Wallace Simpson.</p>
<p>In both cases, it did not help that the public was not at all enthralled with the choice of woman.   Neither did the uncle or the nephew appear to be a strong and ideal candidate to lead the British  people (even though the monarchy’s power is symbolic only) in a time of crisis in world affairs – with the Nazis in Edward’s time, and with Radical Islam, terrorism, and attempts to create a new caliphate to include Europe, in Charles’ time.</p>
<p>Charles seemed to latch onto the defence of Islam as his pet project and his standing in the Islamic world increased accordingly, at least until Islamist demands, as they do invariably, start to increase with every step of tolerance.</p>
<p>By the time of William’s engagement, polling showed an overwhelming majority of the British public believed Prince Charles should make way for his eldest son and allow him to be the next king.</p>
<p>The story of Charles’ infatuation with Islam was not followed closely by the press, but here are the basics:</p>
<p>The grand mufti of Cyprus has said: &#8220;Did you know that Prince Charles has converted to Islam. Yes, yes. He is a Muslim. I can&#8217;t say more. But it happened in Turkey. Oh, yes, he converted all right. When you get home check on how often he travels to Turkey. You&#8217;ll find that your future king is a Muslim.”</p>
<p>Assuming that Charles remained a member of the Church of England, however, he made many worrying statements that seemed to go above and beyond wishes for peaceful relations:</p>
<p>1. Charles made several strong public statements endorsing Islam as the solution to the spiritual and cultural ills of Britain and the West. In 1989, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie, a British citizen, for blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad in his novel <i>The Satanic Verses. </i>Charles did not defend Rushdie&#8217;s freedom of speech, but reacted to the death decree by reflecting on the positive features that Islam has to offer the spiritually empty lives of his countrymen.</p>
<p>2. Similarly, in the matter of the riots after the publication of cartoons about Mohammed, Prince Charles again took the Muslim side:   The Times of London reported that in front of an audience of more than 800 Islamic scholars at Cairo&#8217;s Al-Azhar University, Charles made a &#8220;serious, impassioned 30-minute speech&#8221; that &#8220;The recent ghastly strife and anger over the Danish cartoons shows the danger that comes of our failure to listen and to respect what is precious and sacred to others. In my view, the true mark of a civilised society is the respect it pays to minorities and to strangers.&#8221;   He of course made no comments on how minorities are treated in Muslim countries.</p>
<p>3. Back in March 2000, Prince Charles visited the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/743894.stm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Islamia Primary School</span></a> in North-West London. This, Britain&#8217;s first state-funded Muslim school, was founded and is headed by Yusuf Islam (a.k.a. Cat Stevens), an Islamist who threatened Salman Rushdie&#8217;s life during the <i>Satanic Verses</i> controversy and has since been banned from entering the United States. The Prince told the children: &#8220;You are ambassadors for a sometimes much misunderstood faith. I believe that Islam has much to teach increasingly secular societies like ours in Britain.</p>
<p>4. The idea that Christians and Jews must learn from Islam became a recurring theme from Charles:   “Islam can teach us today a way of understanding and living in the world which Christianity itself is poorer for having lost. At the heart of Islam is its preservation of an integral view of the Universe. Islam-like Buddhism and Hinduism refuses to separate man and nature, religion and science, mind and matter, and has preserved a metaphysical and unified view of ourselves and the world around us. . . . But the West gradually lost this integrated vision of the world with Copernicus and Descartes and the coming of the scientific revolution. A comprehensive philosophy of nature is no longer part of our everyday beliefs.”</p>
<p>5. In a speech at the Foreign Office Conference Centre at Wilton Park in Sussex on December 13, 1996, he called on Islamic pedagogy and philosophy to help young Britons develop a healthier view of the world.   Praising Islamic culture in its traditional form for trying to preserve an &#8220;integrated, spiritual view of the world in a way we have not seen fit to do in recent generations in the West,&#8221; he went on to say:  “There is much we can learn from that Islamic world view in this respect. There are many ways in which mutual understanding and appreciation can be built. Perhaps, for instance, we could begin by having more Muslim teachers in British schools, or by encouraging exchanges of teachers. Everywhere in the world people want to learn English. But in the West, in turn, we need to be taught by Islamic teachers how to learn with our hearts, as well as our heads. The results of this study will help Westerners to rethink, and for the better, our practical stewardship of man and his environment-in fields such as health-care, the natural environment and agriculture, as well as in architecture and urban planning.”</p>
<p>6. As noted by Gordon and Stillman, “Prince Charles of Arabia”, <i>The</i> <i>Middle East Quarterly, </i>September, 1997, Charles took steps to give Islam a special status. He set up a panel of twelve &#8220;wise men&#8221; (in fact, eleven men and one woman) to advise him on Islamic religion and culture.  This caused much talk, especially as the group was reported to have met in secret. Some noted that no comparable body exists to inform the crown prince about other faiths practiced in his future realm.</p>
<p>7. To Charles, it was Islam that can best implement his cherished environmentalism: In an hour-long speech on &#8220;<a href="http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/news/latest-news/?view=News&amp;id=22350511"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Islam and the Environment</span></a>&#8221; at Oxford University&#8217;s Sheldonian Theatre on behalf of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, reported Rebecca English of the<i> Daily Mail</i>, &#8220;the heir to the throne argued that man&#8217;s destruction of the world was contrary to the scriptures of all religions &#8211; but particularly those of Islam.&#8221; He &#8220;spoke in depth about his own study of the Koran which, he said, tells its followers that there is &#8216;no separation between man and nature&#8217; and says we must always live within our environment&#8217;s limits.&#8221; He also said:  “The inconvenient truth is that we share this planet with the rest of creation for a very good reason &#8211; and that is, we cannot exist on our own without the intricately balanced web of life around us. Islam has always taught this and to ignore that lesson is to default on our contract with creation.”  He did not comment on the environmental aspects of Islamic harvesting of its vast oil wealth, nor the environmental aspects of suicide bombing and other violent acts of Islam as it implemented Jihad at its every border.</p>
<p>8. In 2007, after watching ten whirling dervishes perform at a cultural centre in Turkey, Charles stated:  &#8220;Whatever it is, it seems to me that Western life has become deconstructed and partial.&#8221; The East, on the other hand, he went on, had given us &#8220;parables of the soul.&#8221; He also cited the Koran and Hadith.</p>
<p>9. Among the many titles borne by the British sovereign is &#8220;Defender of the Faith,&#8221; a reference to the fact that the monarch heads not only the government but also the Church of England. But the prince had reservations about this title. In a June 1994 television documentary he declared his preference to be known as &#8220;Defender of Faith&#8221; rather than &#8220;Defender of the Faith,&#8221; which prompted then Prime Minister John Major to quip, “it would be a little odd if Prince Charles was defender of faiths of which he was not a member.’</p>
<p>10. We note that in 2004, the Sultan of Brunei awarded Charles a $50,000 prize chosen by an international jury set up by the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies for his contribution to understanding Islam in the West, being the first non-Muslim to receive the prize.  Some years earlier, at a private dinner with prince Charles in May 1997, Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia announced a donation by King Fahd of $33 million to Oxford University to construct a new Centre for Islamic Studies at Oxford, a gift designed &#8220;to establish Islamic studies at the heart of the British education system.&#8221;</p>
<p>11. Finally, it appeared that Charles made dozens of trips to Muslim countries (Turkey being a special favourite), but when invited to visit Israel (no member of the Royal Family has made an Official Visit to Israel), Charles’ advisors were quoted in a 2007 story in Israel’s <i>Ha’aretz </i>newspaper as saying that there was &#8220;no chance&#8221; the prince would ever visit Israel &#8211; so as not to boost Israel&#8217;s international image.  One famous trip of Charles was the eight day tour of the U.S. in 2005 where he tried to persuade George W Bush and Americans of the merits of Islam because he thought that the United States had been too intolerant of the religion since September 11. The Prince voiced private concerns over America&#8217;s &#8220;confrontational&#8221; approach to Muslim countries and its failure to appreciate Islam&#8217;s strengths.</p>
<p>However, Charles&#8217; efforts to promote Islam did not do his mother any good in Al-Qaeda&#8217;s eyes. The organization&#8217;s number two, <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1869849,00.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Ayman al- Zawahiri</span></a>, called Queen Elizabeth II &#8220;one of the severest enemies of Islam&#8221; and blamed her for what he called Britain&#8217;s &#8220;crusader laws.&#8221; In addition, he criticized British Muslims who &#8220;work for the pleasure of Elizabeth, the head of the Church of England&#8221; and ridiculed them for saying (his words, not theirs): &#8220;We are British citizens, subject to Britain&#8217;s crusader laws, and we are proud of our submission . . . to Elizabeth, head of the Church of England.&#8221;   Such was the attitude towards a woman Ruler who failed to “submit” to Islam, in contrast to her son who knew how to plead Islam’s case.</p>
<p>Moreover, there was an earlier plot to assassinate his mother, the Queen.   In 2007, Al-Qaeda plotted to kill the Queen during her state visit to Uganda.  Security services foiled the plot, which involved hiding inside two vans belonging to the Ugandan Broadcasting Corporation and setting off bombs, as the Queen came to Kampala on an official visit in November.</p>
<p>Lately, the world has been stunned by the violence and murder and torture of religious minorities by the brutal Islamists of ISIS – beheadings, rapes, mass killings.   And it has finally dawned upon people that Christians, as well as Yzedis, Kurds and Jews, are being targeted by Islamists.</p>
<p>And so, Prince Charles woke up: After the release of a new report which concludes that Christians are the “most persecuted religious minority” in the world and that Muslim countries dominate the list of places where religious freedom is most under threat, Prince Charles was forced to speak out.</p>
<p>Muslim leaders have a duty to warn their own followers about the “indescribable tragedy” of the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11027065/Video-shows-scale-of-Yazidi-suffering-on-Iraqs-Mount-Sinjar.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">persecution of Christians in the Middle East</span></a> and around the world, the Prince of Wales has insisted.</p>
<p>He said that faith leaders must ensure their followers respect believers in other faiths “rather than remaining silent.” But again Charles espoused a supposed role of Defender of (all) Faith(s), rather than the monarchy’s historic role as Defender of the (Christian) Faith.</p>
<p>While emphasizing the importance of his own personal Christian faith, he also signalled that he saw his role as to “defend” followers of other faiths including Islam.</p>
<p>Britain’s “future as a free society” depends on recognizing the “crucial role” played by people of faith, he said.  “First and foremost, rather than remaining silent, faith leaders have, it seems to me, a responsibility to ensure that people within their own tradition respect people from other faith traditions.</p>
<p>Prince Charles is to be praised for noting that:  “Sadly, in many other countries, an absence of freedom to determine one’s own faith is woven into the laws and customs of the nation.”</p>
<p>But even this modest criticism of Islam, in the context of a speech emphasizing that he sees himself as a Defender of all religions, including Islam, was too much for some British Muslim leaders:   Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, said: &#8220;Prince Charles is somebody who is deeply respected in the Muslim community and he is absolutely right about Christians being oppressed &#8211; but the point is when innocent Iraqis were being killed by British bombs Prince Charles was quiet silent.</p>
<p>&#8220;I would like him to have spoken about Muslims being oppressed in a stronger way.&#8221;</p>
<p>And so in the context of the increasing number and influence of Muslims in Britain, we must scrutinize the words of the man next in line for the throne. And we note, that after showing such extreme tolerance, and much advocacy for Islam, Prince Charles is still criticized for making comments about ISIS and the murder of Christians.</p>
<p>For those of us in Britain (or myself in Canada, a member of the British commonwealth), it is apparent that the Queen remains a target for Islamist terrorists even as her son, the heir apparent, leans over backwards to compliment the religion of Islam and seeks to “Defend” it as well as the Monarchy’s (Church of England) Christianity. Whether his actions are naïve and foolish “tolerism” or an example of moderation and peaceful dialogue, only time will tell.</p>
<p><b><i>Howard Rotberg</i></b><i> is a Canadian writer with a special interest in ideologies, values, and cultures.   His latest book is </i>Tolerism:  The Ideology Revealed (Second Revised Edition, 2013).  <i>He is founding president of publishing company Mantua Books.</i></p>
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		<title>Losing Our Heads One Way Or Another</title>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Sep 2014 04:07:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Howard Rotberg]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[beheading]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Convert]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[O.J. Simpson]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Why "losing your head" won't be just a metaphor for us much longer.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/isis-syria.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240446" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/isis-syria-450x252.jpg" alt="isis-syria" width="334" height="187" /></a>The most important story of the day is O.J. Simpson’s supposed <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/08/report-circulates-that-o-j-simpson-has-converted-to-islam-in-prison">conversion to Islam</a> in prison.</p>
<p>Seriously.</p>
<p>If this is true, it teaches us a lot about the profound attraction to Islam for those who repudiate the Ten Commandments or the Seven Noahite laws: Islamist Muslims do not accept the commandment applicable to Jews and Christians not to murder. More widely, this religion (or has it become, or has it always been, an ideology in the guise of a religion, or is it a religion that has been taken over by evil fundamentalists?) now appeals to murderers, wife beaters, pedophiles and racists.</p>
<p>Congratulations O.J. Simpson, you have been redeemed. (And lookout world!) Are there &#8220;moderate Muslims&#8221;? I know many good Muslim people, but they have to be committed to MAJOR reform of Islam and hence have an almost insurmountable task which may take a few hundred years, and I am not sure we have that long if Iran gets the nuclear bomb.  And those who are admitted to our country must first have to repudiate certain views that are at present ascribed to their religion. Big problem.</p>
<p>I fear that some people will choose to suddenly become very angry or upset to go with the latest excuse they can find to do what their baser instincts want, and will be off to the store to buy a machete, as beheading becomes the hippest crime of our times. &#8220;Losing your head&#8221; won&#8217;t just be a metaphor anymore for becoming confused or overly emotional about someone or something, or for suddenly becoming very angry or upset, or not having control of your emotions. &#8220;Losing your head&#8221; will exclusively apply to those who by their beliefs, gender, religion, nationality, or commitment to freedoms have given offense to Islamists who require for symbolic purposes to further Jihad by separating the “offenders’” heads from their bodies with or without displaying same on a fence post or stick or passing it around to children to pose in front of the cameras.</p>
<p>So, I am very concerned about all these jailhouse conversions of thugs, mainly but not exclusively black, to the “religion of peace” which is actually the “religion that appeals to thugs”.  Not only because upon conversion their past sins are forgiven.  (Christianity has a certain appeal to those who want to accept Jesus and get forgiveness of their sins. But the conversions to Christianity tend to be with convicts who want forgiveness so that they can start over and live morally). The conversion to Islam is attractive to those who see (in their eyes, at least) a religion in which they can pursue murder, spousal and child abuse, racism, and loss of their identity within a mass movement where Jihad needs their special skills.     We have a problem.</p>
<p>I have lost my head many times in my anger over what is happening to freedoms in the West and what I perceive as a Muslim-backed anti-Semitism growing in the West. But I am now facing losing my head in a very different way. I used to give lectures, but after being shouted down by Islamists who stopped my lecture by shouting me down with taunts of “f&#8212;ing Jew” without the police or the authors’ rights or civil rights or mainstream Jewish organizations coming to my assistance, I don’t lecture much anymore.  In fact, I don’t travel too much, anymore. According to my doctor it is best for your health to keep your head while others around you are losing theirs.</p>
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		<title>Diversity and Too Much Diversity</title>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Feb 2014 05:20:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Howard Rotberg]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Haneen Zoabi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jerry Seinfeld]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Political Correctness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tolerance]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[From Jerry Seinfeld to Haneen Zoabi.    ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/jerry-seinfeld.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-218417" alt="jerry-seinfeld" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/jerry-seinfeld.jpg" width="280" height="175" /></a>Has “political correctness” now taken us to the point where every area of human endeavor must reflect gender, race and religious diversity?</p>
<p>Two interesting stories caught my eye yesterday about two very different sources blowing back at the enforced diversity that the left-liberal do-gooders are seeking to impose.</p>
<p>One was the great Jewish comedian Jerry Seinfeld.   Melissa Clyne, writing in <i>Newsmax</i>, notes that in an interview with CBS This Morning, Seinfeld responded to a question about whether his new web series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, is stacked with white men like himself.   Seinfeld thought the question was silly. He asked whether “people think it’s the census or something?”  “We represent the actual pie chart of America? Who cares? I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that.”</p>
<p>According to Jerry:  “Everyone else is calculating, is this the exact right mix? To me, it’s anti-comedy. It’s more about PC nonsense then, are you making us laugh?”</p>
<p>But it wasn’t long until the PC Police started to pounce.  Lily Rothman of <i>Time</i> magazine in a column told Seinfeld that he was on the losing side of this issue:</p>
<blockquote><p>“A continued lack of diversity on his show would prove his detractors’ point — and make him look racist and sexist, even if he’s merely failing to actively think about matters of race and sex — while increased diversity would seem to acknowledge that the “nonsense” isn’t so nonsensical at all. There’s no longer a way for a prominent comedian with Seinfeld’s level of influence to be so glib about the issue — especially given that of his 26 guests, only two have been women and another two have been nonwhite. (There have been no minority women guests so far.)”</p></blockquote>
<p>Jews have been traditionally been overrepresented in comedy in America.  In 1979, for example, <i>Time</i> estimated that whereas Jews made up only 3 percent of the American population, fully 80 percent of professional comedians were Jewish.  It probably stems from the Jewish habit of dealing with misery and adverse circumstances by making jokes.   I thought that was a great contribution to American culture;  unfortunately, being funny is no longer the main criterion for being in a comedy, so ethnic groups that have dealt with adversity through violence rather than jokes now have an equal right to be represented in comedy as elsewhere.   Poor Jerry, something has changed and he doesn’t get it.</p>
<p>As a Canadian who must live with so-called Human Rights Commissions adjudicating on diversity issues, I have seen the future that Seinfeld does not understand;  it is not pretty.</p>
<p>Take a look at the second story, which comes from what I have called the “first front” in the Islamist war against Western values – Israel.   With all its security problems in its very hostile neighbourhood where Muslim children are incited in kindergarten against the Jewish State, one would think there would be little interest in the diversity obsession.</p>
<p>However, in the <i>Jerusalem Post, </i>reporter Lahav Harkov writes about a controversy that arose when the Knesset’s Labor, Health, and Welfare Committee was discussing a bill to give Arab Christians separate representation from Arab Muslims on the Advisory Committee for Equal Opportunity in Employment.</p>
<p>Arab Muslim Member of the Knesset Jamal Zahalka took offense and suggested that the bill’s proponent, rather than seeking to promote diverse membership on the Committee was intending to “wickedly divide the Arab public, which is oppressed anyway.”</p>
<p>Christian IDF Officers Forum leader Lt. (res.) Shadi Halul, however, said he is proud to be a Christian and that he wants and deserves to be recognized as such.  Furthermore he called the Arab Muslim objectors “racists”.</p>
<p>This was too much for Arab Muslim member  Haneen Zoabi   This woman, who has a B.A. from Haifa University and an M.A. from Hebrew University (and who worked as a school inspector for the Israeli Ministry of Education), at the Knesset swearing-in ceremony on February 24, 2009, left the room because she objected to the singing of <a title="Hatikva" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatikva" target="_blank">Hatikva</a>, Israel&#8217;s national anthem;  she has voiced support for <a title="Iran" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran" target="_blank">Iranian</a> acquisition of nuclear weapons and participated in the <a title="Gaza flotilla raid" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_flotilla_raid" target="_blank">Gaza flotilla</a>, on board the <i><a title="MV Mavi Marmara" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Mavi_Marmara" target="_blank">MV Mavi Marmara</a>.</i></p>
<p>Zoabi was ejected from the Knesset building by Committee chairman Haim Katz for implying the Christian Halul deserves violence, after she declared to him: <b>“You are a coward! Go to the streets of Nazareth and Kafr Kana, say what you just said, and they’ll give you the response you deserve.”</b></p>
<p>The proposed legislation sought to expand the advisory committee by giving the 160,000 Christians in Israel their own representative and adding another Druze member.   (Druze are an offshoot of <a title="Ismailism" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismailism" target="_blank">Ismailism</a>, a branch of <a title="Shia Islam" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shia_Islam" target="_blank">Shia Islam</a>, whose adherents participate in the Israeli army, and the Israeli Judiciary and Foreign Service.)</p>
<p>The panel would also have representation from the ultra-religious, new immigrants, reservists, older people, and women.</p>
<p>So we see that attempts at diversity, rather than implementing fairness and harmony, will become nothing more than alternate battlefields in the culture war that has befallen us.  The left liberals who think that respect for diversity is the recipe for their tolerant paradise on earth will soon come up against the hard reality of the culture war where the Islamists merely <i>use </i>our tolerance, until they get power -and then will end all diversity representation just like they will end all tolerance.</p>
<p>And as Jerry Seinfeld would say, there is nothing funny about that, and it is, as he puts it, “<i>anti-comedy</i>”.</p>
<p><i>Howard Rotberg is the author of The Second Catastrophe:  A Novel about a Book and its Author and TOLERism:  The Ideology Revealed.  He is president of Mantua Books, an imprint dedicated to fighting cultural relativism and protecting fundamental liberties:  </i><a href="http://www.mantuabooks.com" target="_blank">www.mantuabooks.com.</a></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>What If Islamists Took Control of the White House?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/howard-rotberg/what-if-islamists-took-control-of-the-white-house/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=what-if-islamists-took-control-of-the-white-house</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Nov 2013 05:10:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Howard Rotberg]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[agenda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[take over]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[White House]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[What agenda would an Islamist U.S. president pursue?  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/wh.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-211564" alt="wh" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/wh.jpg" width="275" height="183" /></a>Dear me, I worry so much about the future of our freedoms in the West, as so many begin to “submit” to the values and demands of radical Islam, or what is called “Islamism.”</p>
<p>The other day, I began to worry what would happen if the Islamists took over the American government and placed one of their own in the White House.</p>
<p>I started to think about the agenda that an Islamist president would fulfill.   Here are some of my thoughts:</p>
<p>[1] He would make it clear that the American Constitution and the history of American freedoms were no more exemplary than the history of Islam.   He would argue that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition.   Instead, he would say, they overlap and share common principles.  He would be clear in his moral equivalence between America and the totalitarian Islamic regimes.   He might go so far as to say the “common principles” were justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.   And if he got away with comparing the American justice system and the tolerance of most Americans with the totalitarian justice systems of the Islamic states and with comparing American tolerance to the intolerance of peoples who riot and kill if they think political cartoons are offensive, then he would go further:  He would assure everyone that it is <i>Islam</i> that has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibility of religious tolerance and racial equality.   If the American people were too stupid to know about the persecution of Christians and Jews in Muslim countries (including the often-ignored fact of nearly a million Jews being expelled from Arab countries in the ‘40s and ‘50s), then that would just make his task all the easier.</p>
<p>[2] He would as quickly as possible give out important awards, like the Medal of Freedom, to those complicit with the goals of radical Islam, who head NGOs and United Nations bodies that support the notion that the Israelis are the new Nazis and the Palestinians are the new Jews.   And he would announce such awards on a date of symbolic significance to the Jews – Tisha B’Av, the historic day of mourning for the loss of the Jewish temples and the occurrence of other national tragedies, so that the Jews knew that he was putting them in their place, for the sooner they got the message, the better.</p>
<p>[3] He would make a quick symbolic snub to Eastern Europe so as to emphasize that the quid pro quo for Russian support of Islamists (outside the former U.S.S.R only, of course) would be the removal of defensive missiles from Poland.   He would drive home the point by not informing the Poles very much ahead of the announcement and would make the announcement on September 17, 2009, which everyone in Central Europe knew was the 60th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland, followed by the annexation of eastern Poland to the USSR.   This would be another important symbolic act to show how in the future the world would be divided between radical Islam, Russia and China.</p>
<p>[4] To further the goals of Radical Islam, the U.S. must be dramatically weakened from the inside, including its once strong and proud economy.  He would have to create unheard of budget deficits.  He would make a budget that spends more than any other in history, creates the largest deficits in history and imposes the largest tax increases in history.  He would spend over a trillion dollars more each year than he took in, and would project a cumulative deficit within ten years of $14.29 trillion – more than the country’s GNP.  That way, the U.S. would end up being owned by China and other foreign lenders and the American people would be so preoccupied with their economic woes, and his governments lies about the terms of a socialized medical system, there would be little regard paid to the increasing rate of Islamification of its culture and freedoms.</p>
<p>[5] Any captured terrorists would be given civilian trials, with the same constitutional rights as American citizens, rather than giving them military trials like enemy soldiers receive.   This would show that Islamic terrorists are really the same as American citizens and would make it difficult to secure convictions.  It would also make it difficult to keep anti-terrorist measures secret, because they would be subject to pre-trial discovery of civilian trials.</p>
<p>[6] He would change many of the terms that are meant to suggest American values are superior to Islamic values.  He would downplay any sense that America is at war with radical Islam.  In fact, he would avoid using the term &#8220;Global War on Terror&#8221; [GWOT] and instead use &#8220;Overseas Contingency Operation.”</p>
<p>[7] He would refer to any terrorists that kill dozens of Americans on American soil not as “terrorists” or “murderers” or “agents of Islamism” but as mere “extremists” – making such killers no more evil than, say, right-wing Republicans.   He would not do anything to stop Islamists infiltrating the American military.</p>
<p>[8] He would assure Americans that acts of terrorism that obviously should be caught by American authorities, were in fact business as usual, and if he was on vacation during such incidents, he would not bother to return to work. That would show that not only were the terrorists winning but that was entirely normal.</p>
<p>[9] He would appoint an Iranian-born political associate without any special military, security or nuclear knowledge to be put in charge of secret negotiations with Iran and then pretend to make a deal with Iran to stop its nuclear weapon program (which nuclear weapons Iran has been promising since 1996 would be used against Israel, and even a few days before the deal was made, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who really rules Iran, said that the Jews of Israel “cannot be called humans, they are like animals, some of them” and that Israel was “the rabid dog of the region&#8221;). He would, in an act of appeasement that was Chamberlain-like, make an agreement that allowed Iran to keep all its centrifuges and proceed to make its nukes, with the sanctions that have finally begun to bite being eased in return for nothing at all.    He would allow the Parchin site and other secret military installation to be out of sight of the inspectors, allow for the possibility of “dirty bombs” using nuclear material probably through its terrorist arm, Hezbollah, allow it to keep up its production of centrifuges, and boost its stock of 3.5 percent enriched uranium, thereby accumulating enough material to enhance its capacity for producing enough weapons-grade uranium to break through to a nuclear bomb rapidly enough to defy detection by the IAEA or Western intelligence until it is too late.</p>
<p>[10] He would make it clear that Israel would be on its own (at least up until an Iranian first strike nuclear attack killed an estimated 200,000 Israelis) and he would delay the delivery of “bunker busting” bombs promised to be sold to Israel.  He would also delay delivery of helicopters and other military hardware so as to pressure Israel to do nothing in the face of a threatened nuclear war.</p>
<p>[11] He would have his secretary of state warn Israel that unless it gave into demands from a terrorist entity that teaches its children hatred and violence, Israel would end up with a Third Intifada, which presumably would be Israel’s fault.</p>
<p>[12] He would make Israel the object of his demands, and demand nothing from Arab countries or the Palestinians.  He would try to stop all Israeli settlement even within established cities, if they were on “disputed” lands.    He would thus create a situation where the Palestinians had no interest in compromise, since all demands were only made on the Israelis.</p>
<p>[13] He would befriend radical Islamist professors and Americans with records of terrorist violence against American institutions, so young Americans would know who he deemed worthy of the respect inherent in friendship, and they would understand the way of the future.</p>
<p>[14] He would make it clear that the only “radical” part of Islam is Al Qaeda, and therefore there is no threat to America from any other Muslims, who after all, as pointed out in point one above, are tolerant and followers of justice just like all Americans.</p>
<p>[15] He would court the Muslim Brotherhood, support it in Egypt and elsewhere, and allow its operatives to participate at the highest levels of American government.</p>
<p>Oh, dear.  I think we have a problem.</p>
<p><i>Howard Rotberg is a Canadian writer.  His latest book is TOLERism:  The Ideology Revealed.   He is also President of publisher Mantua Books  (www.mantuabooks.com).</i></p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Josh Brewster&#8217;s</strong> video interview with <strong>Jamie Glazov</strong> about why the Obama administration reaches its hand out in solidarity to America&#8217;s adversaries:</p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/SNJg6w6CB0o" height="315" width="560" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>Fun and Foolishness in a Dangerous Time</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/howard-rotberg/fun-and-foolishness-in-a-dangerous-time/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=fun-and-foolishness-in-a-dangerous-time</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 20 Aug 2013 04:35:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Howard Rotberg]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fun]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[golf]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=200956</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The perils of frivolity in the face of jihad. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/obamag.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-201008" alt="obamag" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/obamag-450x299.jpg" width="315" height="209" /></a>From the Beach Boys&#8217; famous song “Fun, Fun, Fun (till her daddy takes the T-bird away)” to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls just want to have fun” and then to business magazine <i>Inc.</i>’s 2007 cover story, “Fun – It’s the New Core Value” (i.e. the work environment has to be “fun”), we see a growing cultural emphasis on having “fun.” One of the biggest growth industries in Canada and United States in the past decade is the casino industy, designed to give people “fun” while they lose their money.</p>
<p>Recently social networking site Badoo.com conducted a survey among its readers (mostly in their twenties and thirties) on which country was the most “fun.”  The actual question was: “How often would you say that you really have fun and a good time?”</p>
<p>The top two countries were Argentina and Mexico, with reports of days per month spent having fun being 14.8 and 13.7, respectively. The percentage of those having fun “most days” was 41.6 and 36.8, respectively. The U.S. finished sixth, so young people in the U.S. report they are having a lot of fun.</p>
<p>Most of us who follow international affairs know that Argentina and Mexico are highly corrupted countries.  Argentina’s latest example of corruption is the “deal” made with Iran not to prosecute Iranian government officials and politicians found to be behind the Hezbollah terrorist bombing of the Jewish Community Centre in Buenos Aires, in order to preserve trade relations.  Mexico, of course, continues to struggle with drug and crime cartels and a corrupted Justice system.</p>
<p>Given the views of most conservative writers that the West is facing a crisis brought on domestically by over-spending and internationally by the terrorist war by Islamism for Western submission to Islamist values and influence, this cultural emphasis on fun gives us pause.</p>
<p>If “fun” is the new cultural core value of the West, are we happy with that? Firstly, do we even know what the word means? Shouldn’t we discuss it more?</p>
<p>It might be useful to understand its derivation first. According to Dictionary.com, the word derives from between 1300 and 1350 and from the Middle English word &#8220;fond,&#8221; which in turn stemmed from &#8220;fonned&#8221; (the past participle of &#8220;fonnen&#8221; to be foolish, originally, to lose flavor, sour).</p>
<p>It is also suggested that by the 1680s, the word was used as a verb to mean “to cheat or hoax,” which was probably a variant of “fon” or “befool.”   Later, it was used often in the sense of “it is all in fun,” that is playfully or not seriously.</p>
<p>Only later, it seems, did “fun” take on the predominant meaning of “amusement,”  “mirth,” and even “pleasure.”</p>
<p>So, we note that &#8220;fun&#8221; has seemed to pass from a concept of foolishness and playfulness to the serious business of a cultural value.</p>
<p>A Western culture that promotes the fun-ness of video games over the pleasure of reading a good book and the fun of gambling over the hard work of honest toil, may be worshiping at a rather bizarre altar.</p>
<p>When one looks at the tremendous problems of modern society, and in particular the threat to our fundamental freedoms from Islamist terrorism and jihad against liberal values, how do we defend ourselves when we are engaged in “foolishness” in the name of fun?</p>
<p>American presidents have often enjoyed golf (a game I myself like, and would play if I only had the time), but President Obama seems to always be playing golf when national emergencies strike – during the run up to the capture of Osama bin Laden, during the first bout of violence in Egypt in July, and again in the middle of August as the military fight with Muslim Brotherhood protestors took a more deadly turn, and for three days a couple of weeks before the looming March 1<sup>st</sup> deadline with Congress to avert automatic massive spending cuts.</p>
<p>George Bush for the first part of his presidency did the same thing.   Margaret Talev writes for Bloomberg that, after Palestinian terrorists staged attacks in Israel, including the suicide bombing of a bus in August 2002, Bush gave the U.S. reaction from a golf course near his family’s vacation compound in Kennebunkport, <a href="http://topics.bloomberg.com/maine/">Maine</a>.</p>
<p>“I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers,” Bush said, adding, “Thank you. Now watch this drive.”</p>
<p>Bush, however, realized that his “fun” was looking increasingly “foolish”:  In a 2008 interview with Politico, cited by Talev, Bush said he gave up golfing because it sent the “wrong signal” as the U.S. was engaged in a war. “I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said in the interview.</p>
<p>Obama also went golfing during the Gulf oil spill crisis. Of course, good mental health requires some downtime in such an important and stressful job.  Obama however is reported to have gone golfing 6 or 7 times during the 58 days of the Gulf oil spill crisis.</p>
<p>Obama is supposed to have received daily briefings during his last week’s vacation, where he golfed nearly every day, and which culminated in a round with Seinfeld show co-creator Larry David.  David, whose wildly popular show about “nothing” and the fun-filled lives of four underemployed narcissistic New York liberals, has now earned his way into the realm of presidential golf partners.</p>
<p>The big problem is that the Egyptian crisis (along with the Iranian nuclear bomb) has the possibility to define his presidency. Obama has shocked scholars of radical Islam by favoring the Muslim Brotherhood (along with former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, whose advisor and close personal friend Huma Abedin has never hidden her continuing relationship with Muslim Brotherhood officials, including her family members.)</p>
<p>Obama seems unable to interrupt his fun vacation to ask the Brotherhood to stop killing Christians or comment on the burning and looting of 40 churches and the heavy damage of 23 others since Wednesday. His only public comment for the week was to ask the Egyptian government and military to stop <i>their </i>violence. He appears not to reflect upon the serious problem that encouraging “democracy” without constitutional or judicial powers to protect human rights and fundamental liberties is a recipe for more abominations like the Iranian ayatollahs or Hamas in Gaza.   Is he having too much fun to even care about these crucial world issues, which shall surely impact world peace?  Is it more <i>fun </i>to golf with Larry David?</p>
<p>Did Winston Churchill golf his way through World War II six hours at a time?</p>
<p>It is <i>fun</i> to spend money and not so much fun to <i>save</i>.  That is why our politicians like to make their mark by spending on new programs and monuments to themselves.   It is not fun to tell people the truth that spending trillions more than we take in as taxes will result in bankruptcy within two generations.</p>
<p>When my parents grew up in the 1920s, the word “fun” was probably used about 5% of the time it is used today. Today’s children in the West spend half their waking hours engaged in the <i>fun</i> of video games, texting, and watching television and movies, a significant portion of which are action and horror films where the educational benefit to the young viewer is marginal.  How much Internet surfing is spent in acquiring knowledge and how much in mere foolishness, including pornography and gossip and celebrity sites?</p>
<p>What education our children do receive is meant to be <i>fun </i>and is meant to teach them that there can be education without values, respect without being respected and tolerance without being tolerated. It is more fun for the teachers to avoid the whole issue of values and pretend that it is possible to separate values and ideology from informed discussions.</p>
<p>My day job is as a real estate developer of socially just, and culturally just, real estate projects, including affordable rental housing for low-income working people and conversion and restoration of heritage institutional and industrial buildings for new uses.   In the evening, I should be having “fun” but instead I write articles and books and publish books through my publishing house, Mantua Books, for international conservative authors who are being shunned by mainstream left liberal publishing houses.   It is not often <i>fun</i>, but it is <i>necessary</i> if my grandchildren are to grow up with the freedoms we too often take for granted.</p>
<p>Many of us spend our lives in the pursuit of money, fame and pleasure.   The real pleasures are more than momentary fun, more than drug or alcohol or sexually induced highs, and consist of a deep enjoyment of living a good and meaningful life in loving relationships; in doing good for others and promoting liberal freedoms as a constitutional right for every man, woman and child.</p>
<p>Within that context of a meaningful life, and meaningful love, there is lots of room for fun, but fun is not the ultimate goal, although it is nice when it, to some degree, accompanies our other deeper goals.</p>
<p>However, I fear that we are making <i>fun</i> the ultimate measure of our lives.   Moreover, if we appear in the West to be focused only on <i>fun,</i> those Islamists who enjoy <i>jihad</i> more than fun can easily surmise that they have a good chance of winning, and making a world-wide Caliphate when their opposition is too busy having fun to take up arms in defense of their own liberty.</p>
<p>The historical sense of “fun” as “foolishness” should be a warning to us all.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Slave Labor From Auschwitz to Mali</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/howard-rotberg/slave-labor-from-auschwitz-to-mali/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=slave-labor-from-auschwitz-to-mali</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 22 Jan 2013 04:20:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Howard Rotberg]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[auschwitz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Slavery]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SUV]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tuaregs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Volkswagen]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=174273</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why it is time for Volkswagen to do the right thing and change the name of its luxury SUV.
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/howard-rotberg/slave-labor-from-auschwitz-to-mali/sl/" rel="attachment wp-att-174293"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-174293" title="sl" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/sl-450x337.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="202" /></a>There is yet another Islamist-backed war going on, this time in Mali.  While it has a faction seeking to impose Sharia law, and whose leader is a cousin of the head of Al Qaeda in the region, it also is dominated by a long secessionist dispute by the nomadic lighter skinned Tuareg (also spelled Touareg), who have used political instability to push for independence in an area of northern Mali and parts of Niger and other neighbouring countries, they call Azawad.</p>
<p>The Tuaregs have long been the facilitators of trade, including the historical salt trade, through the Sahara desert on their vast herds of camels.  They have a rich culture and while many were nomadic, others settled for the purpose of agriculture and trade.</p>
<p>Ten years ago, Volkswagen, the German auto manufacturer, started production of a high end Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV), which for some bizarre reason it named the “Touareg” after the nomadic Tuaregs centred in Northern Mali and Niger.</p>
<p>The reason for this choice of name, according to the Volkswagen enthusiasts’ website <a href="http://www.vwvortex.com">www.vwvortex.com</a>, writing at the time, is that Touareg translates as “Free Folks” and:   “A proud people of the desert, the Touareg embody the ideal of man’s ability to triumph over the obstacles of a harsh terrain.  To this day, they have maintained their strong character and self reliance.”</p>
<p>There are two major problems arising from this description:</p>
<p>The first is that, like the Germans, this proud people have a society that has made extensive use of slave labour.  And the second, is that this supposedly self-reliant people have, in the recent past, made a serious of potentially disastrous alliances, first with Libya, and now with Islamist-Jihadists.</p>
<p>The Tuareg society has a caste system and a long tradition of using slaves.   Until the mid-eighteenth century, perhaps half the value of Saharan trade, dominated by the Tuaregs, was in slavery, and the attrition rate for the slaves marched across the desert was horrible.</p>
<p>The Tuaregs’ use of slaves is well documented.  Although it gradually had reduced by the time of the government’s abolition of slavery in 1968, a cynic in Timbuktu said in 1998, &#8220;Yes, they freed the slaves in 1968, but not all of them have been told yet.&#8221;</p>
<p>Canadian writers Marq De Villiers and Sheila Hirtle, in their 2002 book, <em>Sahara: A Natural History,</em> state:   “That there are still slaves in the Sahara is not even a secret. The Sudanese government has been using slave labor in its campaign against the pagan south. In Niger and Mali and Mauritania, the Moors and the northern Tuareg have never given up their ways, and while they seldom use the word <em>slave</em> openly, the practice remains.”</p>
<p>They continue:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Tuareg in the desert towns of Agadez or Timbuktu (Mali) will point out the round huts of the slaves as casually as though they were pointing out the mayor&#8217;s house, or the post office. These round huts, usually made of reed mats hung on bent poles, can be found in every vacant space, tucked up against the town walls, lining the road to town rubbish dumps.”</p></blockquote>
<p>From the vantage point of an increasingly isolationist America, the war in Mali seems to hold little interest, but there is a reason why France deployed ground troops and planes in what has increasingly looked like an Islamist war to take over control of the northern part of the country under the cover of Tuareg nationalist concerns.  Islamist gunmen cited the French intervention in Mali as a reason for its attack and hostage taking at the Algerian gas plant last week.</p>
<p>The Tuareg have had a series of rebellions stretching back to 1916, with ones in 1990 and 2007 before the biggest rebellion that started in early 2012.  The problem for the West, and the rest of Africa, is that the main Tuareg-backed organization, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, is composed of many Libyan trained Tuareg fighters using arms taken from Libya after their ally Gaddafi was deposed with Western help.   With their military and territorial goals, it was not long before an Islamist group, Ansar Dine, joined with them, to implement their Islamist goal of an imposition of Sharia law.</p>
<p>The leader of the Ansar Dine is believed to be a cousin of the leader of Al-Qaeda in the region. It is too soon to tell how the alliances between the main Tuareg-backed organization MNLA and their more Islamist and Jihadist friends, who aim for much more than a secular northern independent country, will turn out.  In any event, Volkswagen’s supposed Tuareg attributes of being self-reliant and overcoming the obstacles of a harsh terrain are no longer even the romanticized myth they once were.</p>
<p>Europeans, especially the French and the English, but also Germans, have often manifested a romantic notion of the Arab desert dweller, with his camels racing across the desert terrain.   From Lawrence of Arabia to the Volkswagen Tuareg, and to the notion of “oppressed” Palestinians, whose sole attribute is its genocidal hatred of a Jewish presence in the Middle East, we see a tendency in European to romanticize the noble savage in the guise of Arab marauder.</p>
<p>Does this explain Volkswagen’s decision to so name its new luxury SUV? At any rate, the company is faced with the awful coincidence that an auto company which in its infancy used some 15,000 slaves has named one of its premier products after a slave-owning and slave-trading people of the Sahara.</p>
<p>Volkswagen was far from alone in its immoral use of slaves. By the end of the war, some 35 German companies, including such giants as IG Farben, Siemens, and AEG, had established an industrial zone adjacent to the Auschwitz concentration camp.   Jews and other inmates would work until they were no longer able to, and then would be disposed of in the gas chambers.</p>
<p>For 50 years, the German companies and their banks who helped launder the money resisted the claims for lump sum and pension compensation by their former slave-workers.  For years, Volkswagen vigorously maintain that it had only used slave laborers on government orders;  however, by 1998 Volkswagen joined a number of other companies who decided to settle class action lawsuits by setting up compensation funds.   It is thought that a big push for VW to make the settlement was that the company was 20% owned by the government of the region of Lower Saxony, where German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder had previously served as Governor.  In addition, the company’s reluctance to pay its slave workers looked increasingly immoral when it was seen to pay large sums of money to buy Rolls Royce and Lamborghini.</p>
<p>By February, 1999, the German Government persuaded major German companies to contribute along with the Government to a fund to pay reparations and pensions to former slave laborers.  This was induced by the growing number of class action law suits that were beginning to pose a problem for international commerce, particularly for the merger of German companies with foreign companies.</p>
<p>A five year study by German historians disclosed that 80% of VW’s wartime workforce of 15,000 were slaves.  Professor Hans Mommsen who headed the study, also was the one to disclose that Ferdinand Porsche was in touch with the notorious SS leader Heinrich Himmler to request slaves from Auschwitz.   Altogether, German companies used more than 2 million slave laborers during the Nazi era.</p>
<p>I am appalled that nothwithstanding the passage of 10 years from the manufacture of the first VW Touareg, and notwithstanding the increasing knowledge of the Toureg people as a result of the war in Mali, there is still no serious concern about a company that used slave labour naming a vehicle after a people that still use slave labour.</p>
<p>Why am I so concerned?   There are several reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li>In my book, <em>Tolerism:  The Ideology Revealed </em>(Mantua Books), I have argued that the West is infected with a naive and dangerous tolerance of the intolerants who seek to overthrow our tolerant liberal democracy with its separation of church and state and its constitutional protections.  Tolerating culture symbols that give respect to illiberal and slave-owning peoples is a cultural blunder that helps legitimize those who, at the very least, should be shunned.</li>
<li>The West must understand that there is a world war being waged by radical Islamists, and nothing should be done that helps the morale of the enemy, including naming cars after allies of that enemy.</li>
<li>Most of the Nazis are deceased and so are most of the slave laborers (my father, 92, a former slave laborer at Auschwitz, who lost his parents and sister to the gas chambers there, is thankfully still alive) but I am embarrassed that there are Germans around who see nothing wrong with this choice of vehicle name.   I do not blame current Germans for the sins of their fathers and grandfathers, but the moral issue is clear:   We all have a responsibility to make sure the Holocaust doesn’t happen again, but the Germans have a special responsibility to make sure it doesn’t happen again – because it happened there once.    Accordingly the Germans must lead the way when it comes to cultural symbols that are morally questionable.  And they must lead the way when it comes to actions and words against those, like the Iranians and most Arabs and Palestinians who advocate the destruction of the Jewish homeland and the genocide of the Jews living there.</li>
</ol>
<p>I fully realize that not that many people even know what the name means.  (Car and Driver magazine in January, 2003, thought the name was “something apparently from the legume family”.)   VW produces some 8 million cars per year.  In November, Volkswagen Middle East celebrated in Abu Dhabi its most successful year ever in the Muslim Middle East announcing that its January to October sales were up 22% from the same period in 2011, making VW the fastest growing volume manufacturer in the region.  But that should have nothing to do with the matter.  Volkswagen should do the right thing and change the name.</p>
<p><em>Howard Rotberg is a Canadian author and publisher.  He is the author of The Second Catastrophe:  A Novel about a Book and its Author</em> and <em>Tolerism:  The Ideology Revealed.  He has written for Pajamas Media, Frontpage Magazine, Scragged.com, the Vancouver Sun, the Kitchener Record, and Canada Free Press and is the founding publisher of Mantua Books, publishing works by such authors as Jamie Glazov, David Solway, Salim Mansur, Paul Merkley, Stephen Schecter and Pamela Peled.   From 1995 to 1998 he anonymously wrote and maintained the web site entitled Boycott DaimlerChrysler.com, documenting Daimler’s wartime use of slave labour and Chrysler’s failure to divulge same in its prospectus documents at the time of its merger. </em></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Reflections on Obama&#8217;s Indonesia Odyssey</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/howard-rotberg/reflections-on-obamas-indonesia-odyssey/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=reflections-on-obamas-indonesia-odyssey</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Nov 2010 04:08:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Howard Rotberg]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=76850</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How a president rewrites history and debases tolerance.]]></description>
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<p>Obama is at it again.  <strong> </strong>First,  he awarded America’s highest civilian award – the Medal of Freedom – to  Mary Robinson who presided over the infamous Durban Conference of 2001,  where Islamic countries were allowed to highjack a conference about  racism into a hatefest against the one country in the Middle East  (Israel) that has a functioning justice system protecting minority  rights.</p>
<p>Then he went to Cairo and showed his intentions to appease radical Islam by accepting that tension  between the West and Islam has had nothing to do with Muslim actions  against the West but was “fed by colonialism that denied rights and  opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority  countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own  aspirations.”</p>
<p>And then he uttered  the infamous words, equating the glorious tradition of justice, freedom  and tolerance in America with that of totalitarian countries like  Egypt, Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia:  Obama contended that America and Muslim countries “share common principles &#8211; principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”</p>
<p>As a  lawyer myself, I can tell you that the American justice system is not  perfect, but I would much rather be tried for a crime in America, Israel  or Canada than any of the Muslim countries.   And, as a  Jew, the idea that Muslim countries, most of which have ethnically  cleansed themselves of Jews (and are now doing the same with Christians)  share the same degree of “tolerance” as do we in the West, is, quite  simply, an obscenity.</p>
<p>So, Obama has now visited his boyhood home of Indonesia.   Granted, Indonesia does have some form of democracy, perhaps the most democracy in the Islamic world.  But,  once again, Obama has sought to further western submission to radical  Islam by morally equating America with far lesser lights when it comes  to liberal democracy.  Specifically, he stated in Indonesia that the United States and Indonesia have “shared values” and that “our nations show that hundreds of millions who hold different beliefs can be united in freedom under one flag.”   He  claimed that in Indonesia, under its Muslim majority (87% of the  population is Muslim) “people choose to worship God as they please.  Islam flourishes, but so do other faiths.”</p>
<p>The biggest problem with these words are that they are blatantly false.   The  other problem is why would an American president, sworn to uphold the  Constitution of the United States, travel the Islamic world, with the  message that American is responsible for the Islamic sense of  victimization, and that Islam is correct in the sense that the Islamic  notion of democracy under Sharia law and the dictates of the Koran is  equivalent to the Judeo-Christian notion of liberal democracy, based on  separation of Church and State, and an emphasis on Justice.   All the talk of “tolerance” in the Islamic world obviously refers to something very different to what I see as tolerance.</p>
<p>For let us look at Indonesia.  Although  the Western media does not seem too interested, there is a disturbing  recent history of violence and oppression of minority religions,  especially towards Christians around the time of the East Timor  independence movement, and more recently towards a minority Islamic sect  called Ahmadiyah.</p>
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