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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; secular</title>
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		<title>Why America Is in Jeopardy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dennis-prager/why-america-is-in-jeopardy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-america-is-in-jeopardy</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Jul 2014 04:00:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dennis Prager]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[judaism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[morality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[secular]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236041</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Secularization and its consequences. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/pic_giant_121713_SM_No-Ones-Watching-Prison-Rape-in-America.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236046" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/pic_giant_121713_SM_No-Ones-Watching-Prison-Rape-in-America-450x262.jpg" alt="pic_giant_121713_SM_No-Ones-Watching-Prison-Rape-in-America" width="258" height="150" /></a>On page 563 of his latest biography, &#8220;John Quincy Adams: American Visionary,&#8221; author Fred Kaplan (biographer of Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and Gore Vidal among others) cites this insight of the sixth president:</p>
<p>&#8220;Christianity had, all in all, he believed, been a civilizing force, &#8216;checking and controlling the anti-social passions of man.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
<p>That insight is pretty much all an American needs to know in order to understand why the American Founders considered religion — specifically ethical monotheism rooted in the Hebrew Bible — indispensable to the American experiment, and why the America we have known since 1776 is in jeopardy.</p>
<p>It is easy to respect secular Americans who hold fast to the Constitution and to American values generally. And any one of us who believes in God can understand why some people, given all the unjust suffering in the world, just cannot believe that there is a Providential Being.</p>
<p>But one cannot respect the view that America can survive without the religious beliefs and values that shaped it. The argument that there are moral secularists and moral atheists is a non-sequitur. Of course there are moral Americans devoid of religion. So what? There were moral people who believed in Zeus. But an America governed by Roman religion would not be the America that has been the beacon of freedom and the greatest force for good in the world.</p>
<p>In order to understand why, one only need understand John Quincy Adams&#8217;s insight: How will we go about &#8220;checking and controlling the anti-social passions of man&#8221; without traditional American religious beliefs?</p>
<p>There are two possible responses:</p>
<p>One is that most Americans (or people generally, but we are talking about America here) do not have anti-social passions.</p>
<p>The other is that most Americans (again, like all other human beings) do have anti-social passions, but the vast majority of us can do a fine job checking and controlling them without religion as it has been practiced throughout American history.</p>
<p>These are the views with which virtually every American who attends secular high school or university is explicitly and implicitly indoctrinated.</p>
<p>Both are wrong. And not just wrong, but foolish — and lethal to the American experiment.</p>
<p>To deny that human beings are filled with anti-social passions betrays a denial of reality and a lack of self-awareness.</p>
<p>One has to be taught nonsense for a great many formative years to believe it.</p>
<p>If we weren&#8217;t born with anti-social passions — narcissism, envy, lust, meanness, greed, hunger for power, just to name the more obvious — why the need for so many laws, whether religious or secular, that govern behavior?</p>
<p>The second objection is that even if we do have anti-social passions, we don&#8217;t need a God or religion in order to control them. Only moral primitives, the argument goes, need either a judging God or a religious set of rules. The Enlightened can do fine without them and need only to consult their faculty of reason and conscience to know how to behave.</p>
<p>Our prisons are filled with people whose consciences are quite at peace with their criminal behavior. As for reason, they used it well — to figure out how to get away with everything from murder to white-collar crime.</p>
<p>But our prisons are not filled with religious Jewish and Christian murderers. On the contrary, if all Americans attended church weekly, we would need far fewer prisons, and the ones we needed would have very few murderers in them.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the record of the godless and Christianity-less crowd is awful. I am not simply referring to the godless and secular Communist regimes of the 20th century that committed virtually every genocide of that century. I am referring to those Americans (and Europeans) who use reason to argue, among other foolish things: that good and evil are subjective societal or individual opinions; that gender is purely a social construct and therefore the male and female distinction is of no importance; that marriage isn&#8217;t important — it is just a piece of paper and it was invented by the religious to keep women down; that a human fetus, even when it has a beating heart, a formed human body, and a conscious brain, has less right to life than a cat; and that men, let alone fathers, aren&#8217;t necessary (see, for example, The Atlantic Are Fathers Necessary? and the New York Times Men, Who Needs Them?). And that is a short list.</p>
<p>For proof of the moral and intellectual consequences of the secularization of America, look at what has happened to the least religious institution in America, the university.</p>
<p>Is that the future we want for the whole country?</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>Islamizing Britain’s Schools</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-bawer/islamizing-britains-schools/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=islamizing-britains-schools</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Apr 2014 04:35:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Bawer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islamization]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[UK]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=222369</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The media blows the lid off a scheme by extremists to hijack U.K. schools. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Panorama-British-Schools-Islamic-Rules.WnA_.avi_000083800.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-222370" alt="Panorama - British Schools, Islamic Rules.WnA.avi_000083800" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Panorama-British-Schools-Islamic-Rules.WnA_.avi_000083800-450x322.jpg" width="360" height="258" /></a>“Give me the child until he is seven, and I will show you the man.“ </span></p>
<p>– Jesuit aphorism</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Real Muslims understand the critical importance of teaching the young. The critical importance, that is, of teaching them the “right” things and not teaching them the “wrong” things. The most important single element of stealth Islamization is the effort to convert Western schools from centers of secular education into hubs of Islamic indoctrination. Fortunately, there are plenty of dhimmi teachers and school administrators eager to help out, convinced that they’re serving the interests of multicultural peace and harmony. These days, for some reason, this form of dhimmitude seems to be most prevalent – and to take its acutest form – in England.  </span></p>
<p>Take, for example, Lynn Small, headmistress of a state elementary school in Huntington, England, who last November wrote a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2511841/Children-8-racist-miss-Islam-trip-Schools-threatening-letter-parents-met-outrage.html">letter</a> to parents of fourth- and sixth-grade students warning that if they didn’t let their children attend an “Explore Islam” workshop at Staffordshire University, a “Racial Discrimination” note would be placed in the kids’ permanent records. Fortunately, parents kicked up a fuss, and the media took notice, and Small backtracked – kind of – while still insisting that since some of the school’s “pupils and teachers…belong to the Islam faith,” it was only “right for the children to understand and appreciate their faith as well as their own.”</p>
<p>Obviously, Small realized she’d miscalculated. Slightly. Apparently there were no repercussions for her. She <a href="http://www.littletongreen.staffs.sch.uk/Contact+Us">still</a> has her job, and there’s no indication that school authorities even put a note in her permanent record chiding her for making Stalinist-type threats against parents. No, her heart was plainly in the right place, as far as the British educational establishment is concerned – she just went about things the wrong way, confronting parents directly instead of taking a more crafty approach.</p>
<p>In any event, Small, it turns out, is decidedly small-time. In the last couple of weeks, investigations by the <i>Telegraph </i>and <i>Daily Mail </i>have uncovered something far more serious than Small’s little workshop: namely, a long-term, broad-based conspiracy to Islamize schools in the city of Birmingham. The conspiracy is so widespread, and involves so many high-level people in the school system and the Muslim community, that – well, put it this way: if you were to suggest to a typical European multiculturalist that any such plot were brewing anywhere in the Western world, you’d be mocked and reviled, accused of racism, paranoia, and sheer unadulterated foolishness.</p>
<p>Yet the facts are there. As <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/10700041/Muslim-extremists-and-a-worrying-lesson-for-us-all.html">revealed</a> in a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10716855/Government-intervenes-at-school-taken-over-by-Muslim-radicals.html">series</a> <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10732434/Teachers-assaulted-and-marginalised-in-Islamising-plot.html">of</a> <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2587304/Birmingham-state-school-probed-amid-claims-70-000-spent-playground-speakers-call-pupils-Islamic-prayers.html">articles</a>, there’s “an organised group of Muslim teachers, education consultants, school governors and activists” who are involved in what they themselves call a “Trojan Horse” campaign to further an “Islamising agenda” by “remov[ing] secular head teachers and install[ing] Islamic practices in Birmingham state schools.” The participants’ ongoing discussions of this campaign have taken place on a private online message board, whose contents have been seen by the <i>Telegraph</i>. Among the conspirators’ short-term objectives is to install Muslim worship in the schools; their explicit long-term goal, as they have made clear in postings on the message board, is the total Islamization of Britain.</p>
<p>The key figure in this scheme is Razwan Faraz, a deputy head teacher at a Birmingham school who, in the days before the <i>Telegraph </i>exposé, had made something of a name for himself by vociferously denying that any such effort was underway. Faraz has another claim to fame, as it happens: his brother, Ahmed Faraz, was the owner of a shop in Birmingham, since closed by police, that “distributed extremist literature to many involved in terror plots, including one of the 7/7 bombers.” Ahmed was himself jailed in 2011 “for multiple terror-related offences.” Razwan assailed his brother’s incarceration as “an attack on free speech.”</p>
<p>Among Faraz’s collaborators are a number of Muslims in positions of local power. Many belong to the Muslim Parents Association and/or the al-Hijrah Trust, groups that work actively, and openly, to increase the Islamic influence in British schools. A leading member of the conspiracy, Tahir Alam, is a senior figure at the Muslim Council of Britain and is vice-chair of the Association of Muslim Schools – and that’s not all. If parents’ complaints about the efforts to Islamize their kids’ schools have been ignored repeatedly, it may be at least in part because Alam is also an official school inspector for Ofsted (the government agency responsible for such matters) as well as a<b> </b>“specialist in school governance” for the Birmingham city council (whose leader, a fellow named Sir Albert Bore, has rejected the “Trojan Horse” charges as “defamatory” and insists that Birmingham schools are doing just fine).</p>
<p>The conspirators appear to be a patient lot. About a newly appointed Muslim school head, one participant in the message board wrote: “Please don’t pressurise her to start the Islamising agenda first. That will be a lot easier when she is respected as leader. She has to establish herself with minimum controversy for the first six months, and lead the people to believe in her before they believe in her policies.”</p>
<p>The results of these people’s efforts speak for themselves. At one school, Park View, which has been praised by Prime Minister David Cameron for its purported “educational excellence, a senior teacher who publicly eulogized terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki is now in the running to become head teacher. “Extremist preachers” have addressed school assemblies; girls have been pressured to cover their hair; £70,000 was spent on loudspeakers to summon students to Friday prayer. “It felt like a faith school. Islam permeated everything,” one source “close to the investigation” told the <i>Telegraph</i>. “All the citizenship teaching was about being a good Muslim.” All this, mind you, at a nominally secular state school.</p>
<p>Then there’s Oldknow, a primary school where an excellent, non-Muslim head teacher was driven out “by a concerted campaign to remove her and Islamise her school.” Oldknow now has Muslim prayers every Friday and has organized at least three taxpayer-funded school trips to Mecca. Arabic classes are compulsory for all pupils. The school even has its own madrassah. Teachers engage in “blatant belittling of Christianity.” Sources spoke about teachers who introduce religion into “every lesson” and whose insistence that music is sinful has led some children to refuse to take music classes. Last December, the school’s traditional Christmas tree and pantomime were cancelled because they were adjudged “un-Islamic,” and a teacher gave a talk at which he led students in a chant: “Do we believe in Christmas? No! Do we give out Christmas cards? No! The seven days of Christmas, they [Christians] can’t even count!”</p>
<p>Things aren’t as far along yet at another school, Springfield, where the non-Muslim head teacher, according to his colleagues, is “under ‘non-stop attack’ by radical members of the governing body” and has received anonymous death threats and had his tires slashed. Meanwhile, at a fourth school, Anderton Park, where the governing body recently voted to “Islamize” collective worship, “the lives of successive non-Muslim head teachers have been made a ‘misery’ by radical religious governors and parents determined to stop the teaching of PE and music, regarded as sinful by hardline Muslims.” At Anderdon Park, there were also several “assaults on staff” (no details provided).</p>
<p>In response to the accounts of the “Trojan Horse” conspiracy laid out in the <i>Telegraph</i> and <i>Daily Mail</i>, Alam complained that he was – what else? – the target of an Islamophobic witch hunt. For his part, Michael White, a former teacher at Park View, had blistering words for the British government and for the Birmingham city council, saying that both were so “afraid to upset communities” that they chose “to sweep things under the carpet.” (Note that even White felt a need to avoid spelling out which “communities” the authorities were loath to offend.)</p>
<p>Birmingham, of course, isn’t the only locality in Britain where children are being subjected to Islamic indoctrination in the guise of education. The other day the <i>Daily Mail</i> <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2592441/Fury-fanatic-trained-7-7-bomber-sets-Islamic-PRIMARY-SCHOOL-Britain.html">reported</a> that one Sajeel Shahid, who has trained terrorists – including “the ringleader of the 7/7 terrorist bombings” and four persons who tried to blow up a Kent shopping center and a London nightclub – has for several years been running the Ad-Deen Primary School, a Muslim institution in Essex, whose pupils are between three and eleven years old. Because he ran the school under a pseudonym, inspectors didn’t see anything fishy about the version of Islam being taught to his charges, and accordingly gave the school passing grades. Of course they did: the only difference between the version of Islam taught at approved Islamic schools and the version preached by Islamic terrorists is the terrorism itself.</p>
<p>British parents owe a debt of gratitude to the <i>Telegraph</i> and <i>Daily Mail</i> for uncovering these repulsive stories – and owe no debt at all to their spineless elected officials, both national and local, or to school authorities, who, if it were up to them, would presumably have been content to see Islam overrun the country’s classrooms, all the while ridiculing the very concept of stealth Islamization as hysterical bigotry.</p>
<p>Then there’s the <i>Guardian</i>, the proud flagship of the British left. On March 7, over a week before the <i>Telegraph</i> began to report the results of its investigation, the <i>Guardian</i>, which had come into possession of a letter outlining the Trojan Horse conspirators’ activities, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/07/alleged-plot-birmingham-schools-islamic-principles">summed up</a> the whole business in an article whose headline led with the word “alleged,” whose subhead focused on Alam’s characterization of the charges as “a malicious fabrication and completely untrue,” and whose final sentences were devoted to a condemnation of the “alleged plot” by longtime Islamic activist Inayat Bunglawala, whom the <i>Guardian</i> carefully identified as “chair of Muslims4UK, a group which aims to promote active Muslim engagement in British society.”</p>
<p>Unlike the <i>Telegraph, </i>however, the <i>Guardian </i>apparently didn’t proceed to investigate the charges. Instead, it dutifully noted that the police and school officials were looking into them. And that was that. Perusing the <i>Guardian</i>‘s coverage, one cannot avoid the conclusion that its chief concern was to cast doubt on the allegations and to underscore that, whether they were true or not, mainstream Muslim leaders like Bunglawala are, of course, utterly opposed to such shady subterfuges. There was no mention that Bunglawala, this supposed stalwart of “Muslim engagement in British society,” had in fact called Osama bin Laden a “freedom fighter” and Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman “courageous”; no mention that he’d passionately campaigned to get Yusuf al-Qaradawi a British visa; no mention that, in addition to being head of Muslims4UK, he’s the longtime media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, the same group of which Alam is a leading member. In short, Bungalawala’s brand of “engagement in British society” is not really significantly different from that of the Birmingham conspirators. By pretending that there exists appreciable ideological distance between the likes of Bunglawala and Birmingham’s Trojan Horses, the <i>Guardian</i> isn’t just misleading its readers – it’s participating itself in the whole nefarious ruse to which these creeps are committed. But what else is new?</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>The Diminishing Erdogan</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-puder/the-diminishing-erdogan/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-diminishing-erdogan</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 06 Jan 2014 05:03:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Puder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Erdogan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[turkey]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214621</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A downward spiral.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/erdogan.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214624" alt="erdogan" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/erdogan-450x281.jpg" width="315" height="197" /></a>Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in trouble, and on a downward spiral. The graft scandal that gripped Turkey recently, which involved his government ministers, will have a significant impact on his continued leadership as the head of the AK Party, and his presidential aspirations. Erdogan’s Islamist coalition with the influential Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen and his large movement has fallen apart. Al-Jazeera called it, “the AKP-Gulen <a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/roger-waters-the-professional-liar">power struggle</a>.”</p>
<p>According to Al-Jazeera (December 24, 2013):</p>
<blockquote><p>“There is a consensus in Turkey that the graft <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/12/turkish-probe-marks-akp-gulen-power-struggle-2013122473646994231.html">crackdown</a> is linked to the recent tensions between the United States based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen’s movement and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), that many analysts say, used to be allies in the past in their struggle against Turkey’s politically dominant military.”</p></blockquote>
<p>On December 18, 2013, Turkish police announced that it had found $4.5 million in shoe boxes in the home of detained state-owned Halkbank general manager, Suleyman Aslan.</p>
<p>The sons of three ministers were arrested, and eight days later their fathers resigned from their government posts. Among them was a close friend and ally of PM Erdogan, the Minister of Urban Planning, Erdogan Bayraktar. The latter posited in an interview with a private news channel that PM Erdogan should step down as well. He revealed that the majority of construction plans, at issue in this corruption probe, were approved on PM Erdogan’s orders.</p>
<p>PM Erdogan, being on the defensive, reacted to the probe with vehemence, and called it a “dirty operation” aimed at smearing his administration. He was quick to blame the Gulenists in veiled references such as “those behind the investigations were trying to form a state within a state.” Apparently, the Gulen movement has many supporters among leading members of the judiciary and police. Like many dictatorial figures, Erdogan also blamed what he called “foreign backed elements” for the “dirty plot against Turkey.” He charged that “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/turkey/10545990/Erdogan-blames-foreign-backed-elements-for-dirty-plot-against-Turkey.html">circles</a> uncomfortable with Turkey’s successes, its growing economy, its active foreign policy and its global-scale projects, implemented a new trap set against Turkey.”</p>
<p>The Gulenists, on their part, have been uncomfortable with Erdogan’s authoritarianism.  They are also not in accord with his policies. Gulenists are unhappy with Erdogan’s deliberate upping of tensions with Israel and his unmitigated support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Many in the Gulen movement believe that Erdogan’s problematic foreign policies led Turkey to become internationally isolated, and damaged the Turkish economy. Domestically, they have criticized Erdogan’s handling of the Gezi Park affair.</p>
<p>Erdogan is used to having his way in Turkey as a result of winning three consecutive national elections, and in the process he has undermined the Kemalist legacy of secularism. Together with the Gulen movement, he has managed to eviscerate the leading military brass, which has been the preserver of Turkey’s secularism, established by the father of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kamal Ataturk. Erdogan, likewise, transformed the secularist judiciary.</p>
<p>Although Erdogan’s early political career was not entirely smooth, he managed to survive a ban from office while he completed his term as Mayor of Istanbul (1994-1998). He was arrested and sentenced to 10 months in prison in 1998, but served only four. He was accused of incitement, of reciting an Islamist poem during a public address in 1997. The poem declared: “The <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2270642.stm">mosques</a> are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers…” And, because of his criminal record, he was barred from standing in elections or holding political office (parliament has subsequently changed the law, which enabled Erdogan to run and be elected in 2002).</p>
<p>Erdogan’s Islamist sentiments found expression in the Necmettin Erbakan’s Islamist National Salvation Party (MSP). In 1976, Erdogan headed the local youth branch of the party. When Erbakan later founded the Saadet (Felicity) Party, Erdogan was there.  Following the 1980 coup, Erbakan regrouped to form the Islamist Welfare Party (RP), and Erdogan became one of its stars. He won a seat in Parliament from the RP, but the election board cancelled his election on a technicality.</p>
<p>Becoming Prime Minister (PM) in 2003, Erdogan has gradually implemented Islamic laws, he has placed restrictions on the sale of alcohol, promoted Islamic religious schools, established Muslim-oriented institutions of learning, and has placed Islamists in key positions in the public sector.</p>
<p>Last June, when widespread anti-government demonstrations against plans to redevelop Istanbul’s Gezi Park took place in central Istanbul, Erdogan called it a conspiracy. He blamed (not for the first time) the Jews. In veiled reference to Jews, he called the demonstrators “<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-21/turkey-s-erdogan-a-smart-man-with-jews-on-the-brain.html">interest-rate lobby</a> dual loyalists, and rootless cosmopolitans,” a euphemism for Jews. His deputy, Besir Atalay, was more direct. He blamed the protests on “the Jewish Diaspora.” Erdogan has also accused “the <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/08/20/erdogans-anti-semitic-obsession/">Jews</a>” of the overthrow of Mohammad Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood President, removed by the Egyptian military.</p>
<p>For President Obama, anchoring US policy in the region on Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been at best, a bad gamble. There is little to show for the US investment. Erdogan’s Turkey is clearly not a model of an Islamic democracy, as it is being unraveled politically and economically. Erdogan demonstrated that Islamists are not democrats, and that Turkey is not a rising economic power.</p>
<p>Turkey’s alleged “economic miracle” was a hoax built upon vast credit expansion. It left Turkey with a current account deficit of 7% of its GDP, and an overblown pile of short-term foreign debt. The Gulf States, it appears, financed Erdogan’s import bill in the hope that Sunni-Muslim Turkey will serve as a counterweight to Shiite-Muslim Iran. The Gulf states and Saudi Arabia have grown disillusioned with Erdogan’s double-dealing with Iran. Internally, the Kurds and Alawis in Turkey will amount to more than half of the population, and although conservative in outlook, these minorities will not necessarily tie their future with Erdogan or his AK party.</p>
<p>UniCredit reported in December, 2013 that “Turkey’s economic activity is <a href="http://www.unicreditbulbank.bg/weblayout/groups/bulbankwebsite/documents/bbproductdocument/en_bulgaria_dec_2013.pdf">slowing</a>, as captured by credit growth and import volumes. Fiscal policy may not be able to support activity as it has in the past, though the busy election period ahead poses risk to fiscal performance.” UniCredit forecasted Turkey’s GDP growth of 2.1% for the year 2014, which is considerably below the government’s projection.</p>
<p>Erdogan’s AK Party stands in the local parlance for “pure, clean, and unblemished.” The graft scandal has shown it to be not so pious, certainly not so pure, and with many blemishes. Erdogan’s leadership is now in question as never before, and the AK future is on the line, depending on the outcome of the current political crisis. Municipal elections are scheduled for March, 2014, and later in June, Presidential elections will be held. The results are likely to foster change in Turkey. What is most unsettling for Erdogan, but good for the West, is an alliance between conservative secular elements and the Gulenists. This combination, after more than 10-years in power, might be able to oust the evermore diminishing, and arrogant Erdogan.</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>Why Bother Being Jewish?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/caroline-glick/why-bother-being-jewish/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-bother-being-jewish</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Oct 2013 04:12:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The missing link in the American Jewish community's connection to Judaism. ]]></description>
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<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ShabbatTable.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-206736" alt="ShabbatTable" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ShabbatTable-450x321.jpg" width="270" height="193" /></a></p>
<p><em>Originally published in <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Our-World-Why-bother-being-Jewish-328098">The Jerusalem Post</a>.</em></p>
<p>Why should American Jews bother to be Jewish? According to a new Pew Research Center survey of the American Jewish community, more and more American Jews have reached the conclusion that there is no reason to be Jewish.</p>
<p>Outside of the Orthodox Jewish community, intermarriage rates have reached 71 percent. Thirty-two percent of Jews born since 1980 and 22% of Jews overall do not describe themselves as Jews by religion. They base their Jewish identity on ancestry, ethnicity or culture.</p>
<p>Whereas 73% of Jews say that remembering the Holocaust is an essential part of being Jewish, only 19% said that observing Jewish law is a vital aspect of Jewish identity. Fourteen percent say eating Jewish foods is indispensable for their Jewish identity. Forty-two percent say that having a sense of humor is a critical part of being a Jew.</p>
<p>Gabriel Roth, an intermarried Jewish author, welcomes these numbers. In a column in Slate, Roth claimed that the reason most cultural Jews keep traditions of any kind is a sense of guilt toward their parents and previous generations of Jews. He believes that it&#8217;s time to get over the guilt. Keeping such traditions has &#8220;no intrinsic meaning.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;How much value can &#8216;Jewish heritage&#8217; have if it signifies nothing beyond its own perpetuation?&#8221; he asked sneeringly.</p>
<p>Obviously, the answer is no value. To do something you feel is intrinsically meaningless just because your forefathers did the same meaningless thing is a waste of time. If Judaism has nothing to offer beyond lox and Seinfeld, then there is no reason to remain Jewish.</p>
<p>The findings of the Pew survey, and indeed, sentiments like those that Roth described are no surprise to those who have been following the downward trajectory of the American Jewish community.</p>
<p>Numerous initiatives have been adopted over the past decade or so to try to reverse the trend toward assimilation and loss of Jewish identity. These initiatives, including websites like JDate that help Jewish singles find and marry one another, and Birthright, which has brought tens of thousands of young, largely unaffiliated Jews to Israel, have had a positive impact in slowing down the trend. But the move away from Judaism for non-Orthodox American Jews remains seemingly inexorable.</p>
<p>&#8220;We have tried a lot of different things and created a lot of wonderful programs,&#8221; explains political theorist Yoram Hazony, the founder of the Shalem Center and author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Hebrew-Scripture-Yoram-Hazony/dp/0521176670/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1381241047&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=yoram+hazony"><i>The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture</i></a>, published last year.</p>
<p>Hazony, who now heads the Herzl Institute, continues, &#8220;We&#8217;ve tried everything other than the central thing. Jews need to understand that there is an attractive and compelling idea that makes it valuable to be Jews.&#8221;</p>
<p>That idea, as Hazony explained in his recent book, is found first and foremost in the Bible.</p>
<p>Roth wrote, &#8220;If you believe that Jewish traditions are part of a covenant with God, of course you want your children to continue them.&#8221;</p>
<p>Yes, of course. But if you think that Judaism can be summed up so glibly, then you have no idea what it is that you are abandoning.</p>
<p>So in a sense, you are abandoning nothing. Because you cannot abandon what you never had in the first place.</p>
<p>And what Jews like Roth never had is basic Jewish literacy.</p>
<p>Hazony&#8217;s excellent book explains in easy, approachable language that the wisdom and philosophy imparted by the Hebrew Bible was purposely denied by the anti-Semitic philosophers of the Enlightenment. Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Hegel and other leading philosophers of the Enlightenment were vicious Jew haters. They sought to cleanse modern philosophy of all references to the Bible in a bid to write Jews and Judaism out of the history of ideas and the contemporary intellectual world.</p>
<p>This they accomplished by subsuming the Hebrew scriptures (like the New Testament) under a broader criticism of &#8220;work of revelation.&#8221; As a revealed text, (a divine covenant ordered by a deity with which none of us have direct dealings), the Hebrew scripture was then misrepresented as something that has no relevance for people trying to determine for themselves what it means to live a good, moral and just life. Those concepts, we were told, could only be learned from Greek philosophers, who, in turn, were falsely characterized as atheists.</p>
<p>Hazony does not simply expose the philosophical crime against the Jews undertaken by the Enlightenment philosophers. He demonstrates why the ideas found in the Bible are deeply relevant and important to our lives, and indeed, how they form the basis for man&#8217;s quest to live a good, moral life.</p>
<p>&#8220;The Jewish idea is in the Tanach, the Hebrew Bible and the rabbinical commentaries on the Tanach,&#8221; he explains.</p>
<p>&#8220;To the extent we care and see something worthwhile in these ideas then everything falls into place. When you take it all out, everything turns into a bagel &#8211; it all tastes good but there&#8217;s a big hole in the center where the idea is supposed to be.</p>
<p>&#8220;The Jews were the people who brought the idea that an individual was responsible for discovering truth and right and for bringing it into the world. That is the idea that freed mankind.</p>
<p>&#8220;That is the biblical idea. The Bible is about the expectation that a human being is going to take responsibility for discovering the truth and what&#8217;s right and devote his or her life to bringing what is right to the world.</p>
<p>&#8220;The fact that most Jews no longer study it, no longer remember it, means they stopped being part of the historic Jewish drama. It is being part of that great drama that makes people care whether their children receive a Jewish education and marry Jews, and that makes them support Israel. Without the great drama that we learn from the Bible, then Israel becomes meaningless and intermarriage becomes obvious,&#8221; Hazony concludes.</p>
<p>Orthodox Jews feel that the Holocaust is less essential to their Jewish identity than Conservative and Reform Jews, (66% of Orthodox, versus 78% and 77% of Conservative and Reform Jews, respectively). On the other hand, 69% of Orthodox Jews believe that being part of a Jewish community is essential to their Judaism. Just 40% and 25% of Conservative and Reform Jews, respectively, feel this way. And this makes sense.</p>
<p>The Holocaust was the most recent attempt of an oppressor to annihilate the Jews. In the 4,000-year history of the Jewish people, there have been dozens of attempts to annihilate us. The Jewish story is the story not of others&#8217; attempts to destroy us, nor even of our capacity to withstand and survive these attempts. The Jewish story is the story of the lives we lived, the culture we developed, and the life of the mind that bound us together.</p>
<p>Jews who have learned the Bible know their history did not start in 1933. They know that the Jewish story is the story of a people that believes so strongly in its mission to bring the liberating idea of personal responsibility to choose good and life over evil and death that it refused to surrender to its oppressors.</p>
<p>The Jewish drama, as set out in the Bible, is the story of a nation that from the outset and until the present day chooses freedom over submission, while maintaining allegiance to a sacred trust, and an ancient people and a promised land.</p>
<p>When you understand this, remaining Jewish is a privilege, not a sacrifice.</p>
<p>And, alas, when you fail to understand this, leaving Judaism not a tragedy but simply a natural progression.</p>
</div>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Mass Jailing of Turkish Secularists</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/michael-van-der-galien/the-mass-jailing-of-turkish-secularists/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-mass-jailing-of-turkish-secularists</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 06 Aug 2013 04:30:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael van der Galien]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why protesters fear they are losing the battle against Islamism. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/turkey-protests-3june2013.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-199562" alt="turkey-protests-3june2013" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/turkey-protests-3june2013-450x319.jpg" width="315" height="223" /></a>Monday, August the 4th, was one of the most important days in modern Turkish history. Two hundred seventy-five (275) individuals known to be secularists stood trial for supposedly planning a military coup. In the end, <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/17-sentenced-to-life-in-turkeys-ergenekon-coup-plot-trial-including-ex-military-chief.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nID=52034&amp;NewsCatID=339">some 200</a> of them were convicted, with many receiving <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/17-sentenced-to-life-in-turkeys-ergenekon-coup-plot-trial-including-ex-military-chief.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nID=52034&amp;NewsCatID=339">lifelong sentences</a>.</p>
<p>The government had vilified the suspects from day one. Without further ado, they were thrown in jail, where they received worse treatment than the convicted terrorist and PKK-leader Abdullah Öcalan.</p>
<p>Their crime? According to the prosecutors and AKP officials the suspects planned to wreak so much havoc in Turkey &#8211; by carrying out (fake) terrorist attacks and generally polarizing society &#8211; that the Turkish people would eventually support a military coup just so order could be restored again.</p>
<p>Among the suspects were many officers. One of them was General Ilker Basbug, who served as the army’s chief-of-staff until he retired in 2010. Once enjoying the quiet life of a retiree, Basbug was arrested. According to the charges, he was the &#8220;terrorist&#8221; group’s leader. Yesterday, Basbug was sentenced to life in jail.</p>
<p>Other suspects included journalists and even writers. Apparently, such &#8220;subversive&#8221; individuals pose a significant threat to democracy by writing down their opinions and analyses. Like General Basbug, several of them were convicted on Monday. One of them, Tuncay Özkan, received an aggravated life sentence as well. Journalist Adnan Bulut was sentenced to six years, while former journalist-turned-politician for the main opposition party (the CHP), Mustafa Balbay, was sentenced to 34 years and eight months in prison.</p>
<p>Before the verdict was announced, the latter made clear what he thought of the allegations against him. “A warm autumn is coming,” he said. “They want to take over this case. We will not let it happen. This case is political. They want to hide away the case from the public.”</p>
<p>Yet another journalist who was convicted for being part of this conspiracy is Gülen Kömürcü, who worked for the <em>Aksam</em> (&#8220;Evening&#8221;) newspaper when she was arrested. This &#8220;dangerous terrorist&#8221; was sentenced to seven years and six months. After her conviction Kömürcü received dozens <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/17-sentenced-to-life-in-turkeys-ergenekon-coup-plot-trial-including-ex-military-chief.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nID=52034&amp;NewsCatID=339">of friendly well-wishes</a> from Turks who, like the suspects, believe the case to be political in nature.</p>
<p>And there certainly is something to say for that.  AKP-leaders have for years publicly commented on the case. Even Erdogan himself has made several statements about it, going so far as to accuse his political opposition of defending &#8212; in the words of the Erdogan-friendly <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/17-sentenced-to-life-in-turkeys-ergenekon-coup-plot-trial-including-ex-military-chief.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nID=52034&amp;NewsCatID=339">Today’s Zaman</a> &#8211; the “Ergenekon terrorist organization.” Note that this was before anyone had been convicted of any wrongdoing. In no other country would political leaders have spoken about an ongoing investigation in such a polarizing manner.</p>
<p>Such details do not seem to bother Erdogan. He even made clear that this was a highly personal case to him, since he had received &#8220;<a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/17-sentenced-to-life-in-turkeys-ergenekon-coup-plot-trial-including-ex-military-chief.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nID=52034&amp;NewsCatID=339">personal threats</a>&#8221; from the plotters. He made no secret of his view that the suspects &#8212; all of them &#8212; were clearly guilty and deserving of the most severe possible punishment. Again, he did so before any conviction had been handed out. Worse still, he even had the gall to lambast the Istanbul Bar Association when it criticized the case’s chief prosecutor for using Ergenekon as a means to retaliate against the government’s rivals; a statement that was not exactly controversial, since just about the entire opposition felt the same.</p>
<p>After the announcement of the verdicts, secular Turks responded with disbelief and outrage. On <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/17-sentenced-to-life-in-turkeys-ergenekon-coup-plot-trial-including-ex-military-chief.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nID=52034&amp;NewsCatID=339">Twitter</a> and <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/17-sentenced-to-life-in-turkeys-ergenekon-coup-plot-trial-including-ex-military-chief.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nID=52034&amp;NewsCatID=339">Facebook</a> many have replaced their usual avatars with a solid black image. The reason? They mourn what they consider to be the death of Turkey’s secular system.</p>
<p>Perhaps that requires an explanation: Until a few years ago many people still had faith in the judiciary and in the military, both of which were considered bulwarks of secularism. Whenever a government wanted to mix politics with religion, one of the bulwarks intervened and set matters straight.</p>
<p>Sadly, secularists now conclude, those days are no more. They see the verdicts in the Ergenekon case as the ultimate proof that these &#8220;bulwarks&#8221; of secularism no longer exist. To them, the trial’s outcome is <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/17-sentenced-to-life-in-turkeys-ergenekon-coup-plot-trial-including-ex-military-chief.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nID=52034&amp;NewsCatID=339">the final nail in the coffin</a> of laïcité in Turkey. Not only, they say, has the military become powerless, but the AK Parti now also controls the country’s judges, which is why they are actively cooperating with <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/17-sentenced-to-life-in-turkeys-ergenekon-coup-plot-trial-including-ex-military-chief.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nID=52034&amp;NewsCatID=339">political (show) trials</a>.</p>
<p>One of the most worrying aspects of the case is the fact that not only military officers and (former) politicians have been convicted, but journalists as well. Members of the Turkish opposition understand that this is a very dangerous development since it touches on the very foundation of democracy: No democracy can survive without a free and independent press. Besides, what do the government and the judges in this case believe &#8220;writers and journalists&#8221; will do during a coup? Throw pencils at AKP-officials?</p>
<p>The answer is, critics say, that the government fears journalists’ ability to shape public opinion. Every single one of the arrested and convicted journalists is an ideological secularist, with a long history of criticism aimed at the ruling AK Parti. These professionals now have to pay for their outspokenness by spending many years, if not the rest of their lives, in jail. One of them, the aforementioned Tuncay Özkan, was even sentenced to life in solitary confinement. How were the prosecutors able to do that? Simple: they accused all the suspects of being members (or at least supportive) of a terrorist organization. That way, the judges could carry out higher sentences than would normally be the case. As a result, journalists will be imprisoned for many years, even decades, rather than months (or not at all).</p>
<p>Not only secular Turks, but foreigners too have responded with outrage to such severe punishments. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/17-sentenced-to-life-in-turkeys-ergenekon-coup-plot-trial-including-ex-military-chief.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nID=52034&amp;NewsCatID=339">made clear</a> that locking up journalists is always unacceptable. “I am deeply alarmed by today’s convictions and harsh sentences that are of unprecedented length and severity in the entire OSCE region,” OSCE media freedom representative Dunja Mijatovic said. “Criminal prosecution of those with dissenting views violates the fundamental right to free expression and the country’s OSCE commitments to develop and protect free media.”</p>
<p>She continued: “The damage of today’s verdicts on free expression and media freedom in Turkey is immeasurable. I reiterate my call to the authorities for urgent and fundamental legislative reforms to improve media freedom, as well as the transparent and swift trial of all imprisoned journalists.”</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/17-sentenced-to-life-in-turkeys-ergenekon-coup-plot-trial-including-ex-military-chief.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nID=52034&amp;NewsCatID=339">European Union agrees</a> with that sentiment, saying that it has serious concerns &#8220;over the rights of the defense, the lengthy pre-trial detention and the excessively long and &#8216;catch-all&#8217; indictments&#8221; that are too general.</p>
<p>Be that as it may, for now, the convictions stand. It will take some time for the convicts to appeal to higher courts, especially on a European level. In the meantime, we can only conclude  that the polarization of Turkish society continues unabated <i>and </i>that the freedom of speech finds itself in an increasingly more perilous state. After all, these convictions will cause editors, newspaper owners and journalists to censure themselves even more than they have been doing for the last few years.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/17-sentenced-to-life-in-turkeys-ergenekon-coup-plot-trial-including-ex-military-chief.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nID=52034&amp;NewsCatID=339">I wrote</a> last week: “That’s why the freedom of speech may not only be on trial in Turkey, but may very well have already been sentenced to death. The prosecution and the judge want to end its life, and dissenting jurors, who understand what is at stake, are too afraid to intervene on the defendant’s behalf.”</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Leftists Defend Radical Islam &#8212; Conservatives Befriend Secular Muslims</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/larry-greenfield/leftists-defend-radical-islam-conservatives-befriend-secular-muslims/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=leftists-defend-radical-islam-conservatives-befriend-secular-muslims</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:38:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Larry Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[Daniel Pipes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Moderate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[secular]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turkey]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UC Davis]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=187384</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why do "progressives" give anti-Islamist Muslims short shrift?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/rtr1j5cw.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-187458" alt="rtr1j5cw" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/rtr1j5cw-450x338.jpg" width="270" height="203" /></a>On April 11th, 2013, I participated in a public forum entitled “Islamists Rising in the Middle East: Where Next for America?”</p>
<p>The panel was held at the University of California at Davis, (UCD), as a free event for the community, organized by the student club of the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI).</p>
<p>As an alum of nearby UC Berkeley, I expected some interest in the program, having previously <a href="http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/458/the-rise-of-campus-anti-zionism-in-california">documented</a> campus radicalism in California.</p>
<p>The panel included a leading scholar on the Middle East, Daniel Pipes, known for well-informed and well-traveled insights. His main theme for the evening was that radical Islam is the problem, and moderate Islam is the solution.</p>
<p>Joining Dr. Pipes and myself was Elan Journo, a thoughtful author on international affairs and ARI professional.</p>
<p>Our panel explored fundamentalist Islamic text, law, theory, and practice, the rise of the third Jihad, global Islamic violence and terrorism, the concept of abrogation (later Koranic verses replace earlier, more peaceful ones), martyrdom ideology, UN Bias against Israel, and how the Revolutionary Republic of Iran has long deceived the West about its nuclear proliferation program.</p>
<p>Interestingly, 4 days before the terror attacks in Boston, we also focused on Central Asian radicalism, including Chechen Islamists.</p>
<p>The audience was polite and offered sincere applause at several points. There was a spirit of calm, thoughtful learning, and the organizers and attendees are to be complimented for inviting, allowing, and participating in the event.  We did not hold back from castigating violent Islamist actions and Jihadist ideology.  One self-identified Muslim Student Association leader rose to challenge our views, but he offered not a single rebuttal to our fact-based presentation.</p>
<p>All good, right?  Except for the fact that on the day of the event, the California Aggie, the weekly student newspaper, published a <a href="http://www.theaggie.org/2013/04/11/letter-to-the-editor-regarding-islamists-rising-event/">letter</a> to the UC Davis Chancellor condemning the “hate” speakers as “racist” and “Islamophobic.”</p>
<p>This pre-emptive, censorious, and libelous attack, by an organized group of campus students and faculty leftists, failed to prevent the event, but threats of disruption required campus police and security to be present, at taxpayer expense (the student group received no funding from the University for the program).</p>
<p>However, a week later, it was revealed in a <a href="http://www.theaggie.org/2013/04/18/event-sparks-free-speech-debate-among-campus-community/">letter</a> to the editor at the Aggie that the UC Davis administration had been intimidated into responding to the students with its own letter full of careful language opposing “hate speech.”</p>
<p>Campus officials might do well to note and advise in the future that free speech implies no feelings protection for those who assert “offense” at speakers whose views they detest.  The truth may hurt, but that doesn’t make it hateful.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the radical students had another trick up their sleeve. They proposed Senate Resolution 21, asserting concerns about the event and longstanding upset with author David Horowitz, and UC Santa Cruz teacher Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, frequent critics of abusive bullying of Jewish students on UC campuses.</p>
<p>This resolution follows similar student government resolutions passed at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara condemning &#8220;hate speech.&#8221;</p>
<p>The bottom line is that there is a dedicated political strategy within radical Islam to smear critics of Jihadi violence as “discriminatory,” proclaim offense at “hate speech,” and label scholarship and teaching about human rights abuse and mass murder of Christians, for example, throughout Araby and the Middle East, as “Islamophobic.”</p>
<p>If I needed a further clarification of just how far left the campus environment has become, this was a fresh reminder.  But, what is interesting in my own case is that I truly do distinguish between radical Islamism and pro-West, peaceful Muslims who specifically and forcefully and repeatedly reject extremist, violent Islamism.</p>
<p>It is one thing for soft-hearted, utopian liberals to preach peace and to wax lovingly for all mankind.  They often have no background in military-security affairs, and no standing in the circles of patriotic defense of our country.  Mere sentiments by fools with a poor grasp of reality.</p>
<p>Of course, we know the hate-America crowd cheered the Boston Marathon massacre (that&#8217;s you, UN Rapporteur Richard Falk, and Palestinians on the streets), but they aren&#8217;t liberals; they are enemies of decency.</p>
<p>It is quite another path for conservatives to offer dialogue and connection to Muslim anti-Islamists.  We are rooted in hard-headed knowledge of, and advocacy against, such Islamo-fascist behavior as female genital mutilation and honor killings, and Sharia-based murder, beheadings, fatwas, incitement, and persecutions emanating from Madrassas, mosques, the Arab media, and radical Imams.</p>
<p>It is therefore constructive and credible for severe critics of violent Jihad to note and applaud Muslim critics of anti-Americanism, and of anti-Christianism and anti-Semitism as well.</p>
<p>On April 15th, 2013, the day of the Boston Islamic terrorist attacks, I was on a flight to the Republic of Turkey to participate in a media tour and build relationships with advocates of positive relations between Americans and moderate Muslims.</p>
<p>In a series of televised <a href="http://en.a9.com.tr/watch/161805/World-Leaders-Discuss-Peace-Religion-and-Politics/Larry-Greenfield---Fellow-in-American-Studies-at-the-Claremont-Institude-Executive-Director-of-the-Reagean-Legancy-Foundation">interviews</a> and private meetings with business, political, and cultural leaders, I offered appreciation to Muslims who have repeatedly stood up against radical Islam, violence against the West, terrorism, and the kidnapping of the Koran by extreme voices.</p>
<p>Indeed, there are non-radical Muslim scholars and thinkers who have long <a href="http://www.islamdenouncesterrorism.com/">denounced</a> Jihadi terrorism and reject their violent interpretation of the Koran.</p>
<p>Turkey, a majority-Muslim nation of over 75 million citizens, is an American ally.  A member of NATO, Turkey hosts both Patriot Missile Defense against threats by the Assad regime in Syria, as well as Forward Based X-Band radars that couple with Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries to help protect Europe, Israel, the U.S., and Turkish territory from Iranian ballistic missile threats.</p>
<p>Strategically located between Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, Turkey has its hands full seeking resolution to its own decades-long terror problem in the form of the Marxist-Kurdish PKK, along with regional challenges in Cyprus/Greece, Armenia/Azerbaijan, and the Balkans.</p>
<p>Turkey must also deal with refugees from Syria, fallout from Iraqi sectarian violence, a powerful neighbor in Russia, and the aforementioned Iran.</p>
<p>Turkey is not perfect. The modern Turkish state is less than 100 years old, and has bounced between military rule and democratic progress.</p>
<p>Current Prime Minister Erdogan is credited with economic growth and stable politics, but has been dismissive of concerns about his treatment of his critics. His attitude towards Israel has been unfriendly, though the Turks are now at the table of reconciliation with Israel after a controversial Israeli apology for the Mavi Marmara deaths of a few years ago.</p>
<p>Historically, the Ottoman Empire, which lasted over 600 years, was unlike the bloodthirsty modern Arab wars against Israel and the West. Today, Turkey remains rooted in Kemalist secularism, though it now seeks passive, not aggressive, treatment of religionists (read: more religious schools and dress are allowed).</p>
<p>By most standards, though, Turks model modernity for the entire Muslim world.</p>
<p>Impressive Istanbul offers cultural riches, dynamic economic opportunity, a diverse private sector, and the famous, gracious hospitality of the Turkish people.</p>
<p>The Turks are confident, conspiratorial, and clever.  They are also respectful of religious minorities, and completely opposed to violent Islamists who have declared war against reason and humanity.</p>
<p>Traditions of flexibility and pragmatism, along with growing economic power, political maturity, and diplomatic sophistication have made the Republic of Turkey the key to building bridges between the East and West. Diplomats and investors alike are therefore grabbing onto Turkey’s rising regional star and hanging on for the ride.</p>
<p>This is all lost on un-informed student radicals at UC Davis, who have failed on all fronts.  They failed to take the opportunity to learn from a scholarly panel; they failed to stop the campus community from hearing some truthful free speech about radical Islam; and they are unaware of conservatives with bona fides in confronting the Jihad (Daniel Pearl was my boyhood pal) who engage with and applaud moderate Muslims who regularly speak out against both militant and politically hostile Islamism.</p>
<p>But, of course, radical Islamists and their leftist defenders actually have no interest in secularist Muslims, or the honorable goal of befriending and encouraging them in the battle for the future of both Islam and Western peace, freedom, and security.</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>Azerbaijan Gets Islam and Politics Right</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/azerbaijan-gets-islam-and-politics-right/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=azerbaijan-gets-islam-and-politics-right</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Dec 2012 04:42:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Azerbaijan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[secular]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turkey]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=168649</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A secular Muslim alternative in an increasingly Islamist region. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/azerbaijan-gets-islam-and-politics-right/azerbaijan-israel_flags/" rel="attachment wp-att-168650"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-168650" title="Azerbaijan-Israel_flags" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Azerbaijan-Israel_flags.jpg" alt="" width="293" height="203" /></a>The Republic of Azerbaijan and the Islamic Republic of Iran are both Muslim majority countries with largely Shiite populations. They share a common border and common heritage. However, they represent diametrically opposed approaches to the relationship between religion and government.</p>
<p>Iran is ruled by fanatical anti-Western and anti-Israeli mullahs. It is a theocracy where a fundamentalist Islamic ideology strictly governs all aspects of public and private life.</p>
<p>Azerbaijan &#8211; a majority-Turkic and Muslim country &#8211; is located at a crucial geostrategic crossroads in the South Caucasus between Russia, Iran and Turkey. It is a Western-leaning secular state that separates government and mosque and is religiously tolerant. Although Azerbaijan is 95% Muslim in population, Azerbaijan is not officially a Muslim country governed  by Islamic law.</p>
<p>&#8220;Azerbaijan’s secularism, religious tolerance, economic growth, and Western oriented foreign policy now form a model for the freedom loving people trapped in Iran,&#8221; wrote S.R. Sobhani, CEO, Caspian Group. &#8220;A successfully modernized Muslim state north of its border spells danger for Iran’s theocracy.&#8221;</p>
<p>In fact, Azerbaijan is even supplanting its neighbor Turkey as the best model of  a secular alternative for the Muslim world.  Turkey, under the rule of the religiously conservative Islamist Justice and Development Party and its leader Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has turned its back on the secular vision Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had in mind when he founded the modern nation-state of Turkey on the ashes of the collapsed Ottoman empire. Azerbaijan would be more welcoming to Ataturk today than his own homeland.</p>
<p>This is not to say that Azerbaijan comes anywhere close to resembling a Western-style democracy. Far from it. It was, after all, part of the Soviet Union until it achieved its independence in 1991.  Some bad habits die hard.</p>
<p>In the CIA&#8217;s most recent report on Azerbaijan, it described Azerbaijan&#8217;s political system this way: &#8220;Corruption in the country is ubiquitous, and the government, which eliminated presidential term limits in a 2009 referendum, has been accused of authoritarianism.&#8221;</p>
<p>Azerbaijan&#8217;s record with respect to freedom of speech and assembly is also problematic.</p>
<p>However, within the universe of Muslim majority countries, and certainly in comparison with its neighbor Iran, Azerbaijan is downright modern in its approach to freedom of religion.</p>
<p>In Azerbaijan, religious leaders may not simultaneously serve in public office and in positions of religious leadership. Under the constitution, persons have the right to choose and change religious affiliation and beliefs (including atheism), and to join or establish the religious group of their choice. The Law on Freedom of Religion expressly prohibits the government from interfering in the religious activities of any individual or group, although religious organizations must be registered by the government in order to be able to maintain a bank account, rent property, and generally act as a legal entity. The government is also concerned about ensuring that Iranian style theocracy, Saudi Arabian-style Wahabism or the Muslim Brotherhood&#8217;s method of fusing Islamism and politics are not imported into Azerbaijan.</p>
<p>Religious instruction is not mandatory in Azerbaijan. Article 6 of the Law on Freedom of Religion stipulates that the state educational system is &#8220;separate&#8221; from religion.</p>
<p>&#8220;It is not about Islam, but whether or not to be oppressed because of religion,&#8221; Azerbaijani ambassador to the United States Elin Suleymanov explained. &#8220;It is not a question of the presence of Islam or its absence,&#8221; he added.  What Azerbaijan rejects is the notion that &#8220;religion and ideology must dominate in the government and the political system. Oppression for religious views is unacceptable &#8211; we support freedom of religion.”</p>
<p>The founder of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, saw himself, and the &#8220;supreme&#8221; religious leaders who followed him, as the guardians of Islamic purity, which required a government under their stewardship that is run in strict accordance with sharia law.  Khomeini believed that “non-Muslims of any religion or creed are najess (impure).” Non-Muslims&#8217; impurity relegates them to second class status, if not outright persecution.</p>
<p>All aspects of public and private life in Iran are dictated through the prism of Islamic law and ideology as defined by its supreme religious leader.  Education is a tool to help in the indoctrination of Shiite Islam for future generations. Freedom House concluded that the government of Iran is &#8220;teaching the country’s children to discriminate against women and minorities, to view non-Muslims with suspicion if not contempt, and to perpetuate the regime’s theocratic ideology.&#8221;</p>
<p>The treatment of Baha&#8217;is, who are members of a small nineteenth century religious sect with adherents in both Azerbaijan and Iran, illustrates the sharp contrast between Azerbaijan&#8217;s more religiously tolerant secular model and the rigid, theocratic model practiced by the Iranian regime.</p>
<p>In Azerbaijan, since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the modern Bahá&#8217;í population, centered in Baku (the capital of Azerbaijan), has been revitalized. In 1992, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha&#8217;ís of Azerbaijan was elected, after having been effectively disbanded since 1938. In 1993 the Governing Board of the Ministry of Justice of the Azerbaijan Republic gave official permission for the functioning of the Baha&#8217;í Community of Baku.</p>
<p>By contrast, since the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Baha&#8217;is living in Iran have been subjected to arbitrary arrests, beatings, torture, executions, and discrimination in access to education, employment and government benefits. Members of the Baha&#8217;i community in Iran are the most persecuted religious minority in the Islamic Republic, according to the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Iran, Ahmed Shaheed.</p>
<p>Although Baha&#8217;is actually revere the prophet Mohammed and regard the Koran as a divinely revealed book, the Iranian regime considers them apostates because their religion was established after Islam and they recognize other prophets who came after Mohammed. Moreover, Baha&#8217;is believe in a direct relationship between the individual and God, removing the command and control role of cleric authority in all aspects of public and private life that characterizes the Iranian theocracy. Consequently, Iranian textbooks refer to the Baha’i religion as a “false sect” and accuse Baha’is of being tools of foreign powers.</p>
<p>Jews have had a long thriving history of residence in Iran, dating back to the Babylonian exile in the middle of the first millennium B.C.E.  But since the Islamic revolution in 1979, the Jewish population has declined, according to some estimates, by as much as 75 percent.  While Judaism is officially recognized as a religious minority in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which entitles Jews to certain rights such as parliamentary representation and to celebrate their own religious holidays, Jews are regularly persecuted and discriminated against in their daily lives.  Despite early promises by Ayatollah Khomeini to distinguish between Zionism as a political ideology to be expunged and Judaism as a religion to be acknowledged, that distinction has blurred.  In July 2012, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said: “My dear ones! Islam is a world religion and god has only one religion, that of Islam, he did not send Judaism or Christianity; Abraham was a harbinger of Islam, as were Moses and Jesus!&#8221;</p>
<p>Although Azerbaijan is 95% Muslim, it also is home to one of the most flourishing Jewish communities in the Muslim world.  There are three synagogues in Baku, and an active Jewish community with schools and cultural centers. Moshe Becker, a Jewish leader from Azerbaijan, said that in Azerbaijan &#8220;there has been no anti-Semitism and we live very peacefully, even cooperating with our Muslim and Christian brothers.&#8221;</p>
<p>Iran is particularly irked at Azerbaijan&#8217;s close diplomatic relationship with Israel, which commenced in 1992. &#8220;We share the same view of the world, I guess,&#8221; said Israel&#8217;s ambassador to Azerbaijan, Michael Lotem, in an interview earlier this year with the BBC about the Azerbaijan-Israeli relationship. &#8220;For us Israelis to find a Muslim country which is so open, so friendly, so progressive, is not something the Israelis take for granted.&#8221;</p>
<p>Azerbaijan authorities broke up what they said was an Iranian plot to kill Israeli Ambassador Lotem in January 2012. Within a month or so after that episode, Azerbaijan&#8217;s National Security Ministry announced the foiling of another Iranian plot to attack the Israeli and U.S. embassies in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku.</p>
<p>Shiite and Sunni fundamentalism is triumphing throughout much of the Muslim world today. Even countries that some regard as &#8220;moderate&#8221; such as Turkey and Indonesia are feeling the chill of the spreading Islamist winter.  Indeed, Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan himself said several years ago that &#8220;Turkey is not a country where moderate Islam prevails.&#8221;</p>
<p>Azerbaijan, with all of its imperfections, may be the one green shoot of secularism and moderate Islam in this bleak winter landscape.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Did the Muslim Brotherhood Really Win the Presidency in Egypt?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/raymond-ibrahim/did-the-muslim-brotherhood-really-win-the-presidency-in-egypt/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=did-the-muslim-brotherhood-really-win-the-presidency-in-egypt</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 31 Oct 2012 04:40:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fraud]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Morsi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[opposition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[secular]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Why Morsi's secular opponent may have defeated him by some 30,000 votes. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/raymond-ibrahim/did-the-muslim-brotherhood-really-win-the-presidency-in-egypt/rtr32dw8/" rel="attachment wp-att-163403"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-163403" title="RTR32DW8" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/RTR32DW8.gif" alt="" width="315" height="229" /></a>The one and only positive point that every Western commentator, beginning with Barrack Hussein Obama, has pointed to regarding the victory of an Islamist president in Egypt, is that it was done through democracy—through elections, fair and square.  It was the “will of the people” and so must be respected.</p>
<p>Yet, even that, too, is under question.  In fact, last week Ahmed Shafiq, Morsi’s secular opponent for the presidency, “<a href="http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/shafiq-files-complaint-alleging-election-irregularities">filed a complaint</a> with the public prosecution alleging numerous irregularities and violations during the presidential runoff elections held in June,” citing “specific instances of alleged forgery, such as rigging ballots and importing pens with removable ink to invalidate them.”</p>
<p>I had written about some of these “<a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/3665/muslim-brotherhood-democracy-slapping-stabbing">numerous irregularities</a>,” including how the Muslim Brotherhood bought votes from Egypt’s many poor by <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/muslim-brotherhood-buying-votes-with-food/">bribing them with food</a> and how MB official Khairat al-Shater sent a memo to members ordering them to “<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/the-evils-of-the-muslim-brotherhood/">resort to any method that can change the vote</a>.” Accordingly, in the words of <a href="http://digital.ahram.org.eg/Policy.aspx?Serial=938414">Al Ahram</a>, &#8220;the Muslim Brotherhood blockaded entire streets, prevented Copts from voting at gunpoint, and threatened Christian families not to let their children go out and vote.&#8221;</p>
<p>One of the most formal proofs, however, has been completely overlooked in the West.</p>
<p>Enter Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a longtime political dissent who was imprisoned under Hosni Mubarak’s rule, currently an American University of Cairo professor of political science and head of Egypt’s Ibn Khaldun Center, which closely monitored Egypt’s presidential elections.  According to him, the secular candidate, Shafiq, did, in fact, defeat the Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi in the presidential elections, by some 30,000 votes.  He has stressed this point several times, most recently on this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=2j8CBcbXmI8">Egyptian TV program</a>, a translation of which follows:</p>
<blockquote><p>The elections that brought President Muhammad Morsi to power are of questionable legitimacy. First, the results were withheld for three days. Second, many rumors arose concerning them, about the practice of pressure, threats and attempts of suicide attacks and the bombing of public properties, all of which caused the Military Council—or so it was said or alleged—to favor the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, despite the rather slight margins that necessitated either an election redo or re-tabulation or at least a vote recount.</p></blockquote>
<p>There is, of course, another reason why the military favored Morsi: the Obama administration pressured it.  After all, it was precisely during those three days that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/303878/obama-administration-imperative-egyptian-military-hand-over-power-islamic-supremacist-">Andrew McCarthy</a> put it,  did “her part to help the Muslim Brotherhood,” by pressuring the military to surrender power and portraying its delay to proclaim a winner as “clearly troubling”—words better reserved for the Muslim Brotherhood’s anti-democratic tactics.</p>
<p>Saad Eddin continues:</p>
<blockquote><p>We here at the Ibn Khaldun Center, through 7,000 field monitors, monitored the elections, and, according to our data, Shafiq won these elections, by a margin of 30,000 votes.</p></blockquote>
<p>He further went on to confirm, according to Gate Ahram (translated by <a href="http://www.copticsolidarity.org/cs-releases/817-egyptian-professor-ahmed-shafik-won-elections-by-30-000-votes">Coptic Solidarity</a>) that the “Ibn Khaldun Center had announced the result directly after the end of the voting process, and a report was being issued every 8 hours, pointing out that several other centers had announced the same result [victory of Shafiq], while others had monitored it but were too intimidated to announce it.  [Saad Eddin] Ibrahim added that a delegation from the Muslim Brotherhood traveled to the US right before the second election round. Brotherhood members were expecting the US to formally deny this, but the US ambassador and other sources have confirmed the trip, allowing no room for denial.”</p>
<p>It appears, then, that the one saving grace concerning the victory of an Islamist president—that he was elected through a fair democratic process—is no saving grace at all; and history will record that, through deceit, bribes, violence and threats, the Islamists took control of Egypt, turning it into a hostile Sharia-state, against the will of the majority—and all with the Obama administration’s help.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Hospital Terror In Denmark</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/stephenbrown/hospital-terror-in-denmark/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hospital-terror-in-denmark</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/stephenbrown/hospital-terror-in-denmark/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 24 Aug 2012 04:18:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Stephen Brown]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[70 men]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=141512</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Seventy Muslim men invade emergency area to “finish off’ victim shot during Eid al-Fitr celebration.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/20120821-odense.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-141516" title="20120821-odense" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/20120821-odense.gif" alt="" width="375" height="248" /></a>It is a very dark, but little known, underside to the multicultural nightmare that western European societies are fast becoming. Hospitals, among the most respected institutions in Western societies due to their compassion and care of the sick and vulnerable, are turning more and more into places of immigrant violence.</p>
<p>The latest incident of such inexcusable savagery within the walls of a European public medical facility occurred last week in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. Danish newspapers report that about 70 men, some armed with “cudgels,” <a href="http://politiken.dk/newsinenglish/ECE1726763/odense-hospital-invaded/">invaded</a> the Odense University Hospital emergency ward, looking to further harm, even possibly kill, a man who had just been admitted in critical condition with a gunshot wound. Luckily, no hospital staff member was injured, and it was most likely the heroics of the police officers present that prevented the intruders from reaching the injured patient.</p>
<p>“There were pictures torn down from the walls. There were vases knocked into pieces. It was quite intimidating to both staff and police there, and several officers had to fire their guns to get them to disappear,” <a href="http://www.cphpost.dk/news/national/shooting-leads-chaos-odense-hospital">said</a> one Danish police official in describing the chaos.</p>
<p>Another police official stated: “They poured in with clubs into the emergency room…The staff at the hospital had to jump for their lives, and several police officers had to pull their service weapons to force the group out…”</p>
<p>Frustrated at being unable to reach their target, the vandals then took their anger out on ambulances and police vehicles. In all, the <em>Copenhagen Post</em> <a href="http://www.cphpost.dk/news/national/shooting-leads-chaos-odense-hospital">reported</a> that “one ambulance and four police cars were destroyed in the night’s events.”</p>
<p>The trouble apparently began earlier that evening between rival immigrant groups when two members of one group drove up to the other’s Eid al-Fitr celebration that was being held in a shopping center parking lot. After being identified as an enemy, one report states the 26-year-old victim wound up being shot at least twice in one leg and stabbed several times in the other, but several shots were fired at the car the two were in. It is also at the crime scene that two of the four police cars may have been destroyed, while an ambulance summoned for the injured man was also reportedly attacked.</p>
<p>The hospital invasion was so barbarous and disturbing to the Danish public that a <a href="http://politiken.dk/newsinenglish/ECE1728250/prime-minister-shocked-at-odense-case/">“shocked”</a> Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt was compelled to comment on it, calling it “serious criminal behavior” at a news conference. But noticeably, although the Eid al-Fitr is a Muslim celebration that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, it does not appear she nor any police official, politician or newspaper identified the culprits as such. They limited their identification vocabulary simply to the word “immigrant.”</p>
<p>But there was no need for Thorning-Schmidt to be so “shocked,” if she had been observing the happenings in hospitals in other Western European countries the past decade or more. In Iserlohn, a city in Germany, the death of a Turkish man of heart failure in a hospital there, according to a report in the German newspaper <em>Die Welt</em>, caused the 40 members of his family, “out of rage and grief,” to lay waste to the facility’s Intensive Care ward. The reception area was ransacked, pictures torn from walls, chairs and treatment tables overturned, and medical equipment destroyed by wooden clubs.</p>
<p>The first police to arrive were greeted with “kicks and punches” and had to withdraw, using pepper spray and under “threats and insults,” to await reinforcements. Only a heavier police presence was able to calm the situation, after which charges were made.</p>
<p>Doctors and other hospital personnel are often victims of individual attacks as well. In his book <em>The Spread of Islamikaze Terrorism In Europe: The Third Islamic Invasion</em>, author Raphael Israeli writes: “In 2004, there were 145 attacks in hospitals in France, rising to more than 200 in 2006 in which medical staff had been attacked by Muslims.” A story in <em>Le Figaro</em> this year maintains that French hospital personnel are becoming “more and more victims of violence,” citing a report from the health ministry agency responsible for keeping track of violence in healthcare facilities.</p>
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		<title>Losing Turkey</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/ryan-mauro/losing-turkey/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=losing-turkey</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Jun 2010 04:30:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=62454</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The frightening strategic consequences.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/turkey_islamism.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-62723" title="turkey_islamism" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/turkey_islamism.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="286" /></a></p>
<p>The most significant outcome of the <em>Mavi Marmara</em> incident is that there can no longer be any doubt that Turkey has joined the anti-Western bloc that includes Hamas,  Iran and Syria. The Muslim country was once devotedly secular, an ally of Israel, and remains a member of NATO, but under the direction of Prime Minister Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party (often referred to as the AKP), Turkey has gone in the completely opposite direction with enormous strategic consequences.</p>
<p>“Unfortunately, the AKP government of Mr. Erdogan and the oil-rich regime of Qatar joined the regional bloc opposing the more traditional governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco,” Dr. Walid Phares told FrontPage.</p>
<p>Erdogan’s turn to the other side is not the result of a single incident such as Operation Cast Lead or the Israeli raid on the flotilla, but is the culmination of an agenda long held by Erdogan and the AKP.</p>
<p>“In fact, it is not secular Turkey that we see moving against the U.S., West, Israel and Arab moderates. It is the AKP Islamist cabinet which is uncovering its long-term ideological agenda. The West should have projected this since 2002,” Dr. Phares said, referring to the year in which Erdogan’s party won a majority in the Turkish parliament.</p>
<p>Erdogan was imprisoned in 1998 for his involvement with the banned Welfare Party, which the Turkish government considered Islamist. Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy <a href="http://www.alarabiya.net/views/2009/10/26/89250.html">describes</a> the Welfare Party as the “motherboard of Turkish Islamists since the 1980s,” saying it was inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood. Erdogan was specifically punished for <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2270642.stm">reading</a> a poem at one speech with the lines, “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the faithful our soldiers.”</p>
<p>In 2001, he founded the AKP, which took a more moderate line, portraying itself as committed to separation of mosque and state but “faithful governance,” as Dr. Essam El-Erian, the chief of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political bureau, <a href="http://www.ikhwanweb.net/article.php?id=1035">described</a> the AKP’s “moderate Islamist” ideology. There was no anti-Western rhetoric and the party strongly supported membership in the European Union. The group won a large victory in the 2002 elections, resulting in Erdogan taking the post of Prime Minister.</p>
<p>Dr. El-Erian praised Erdogan’s victory, saying that it was the result of the “exposing of the failure of the secular trend.” El-Erian confirmed that the Muslim Brotherhood had close ties to the AKP, but the West treated Turkey as if nothing had changed. It wasn’t until Turkey steadfastly refused to allow U.S. soldiers to transit their territory to overthrow Saddam Hussein that the West began questioning the allegiance of Erdogan’s government.</p>
<p>The Erdogan government soon began a concerted effort to fuel anti-Israeli and anti-American sentiment, knowing that such feelings help the AKP politically and hurt its opponents in the secular military that have long ties to the West. The Turkish media consistently <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704875604575281392195250402.html">reported</a> alleged U.S. atrocities, fanning the already massive anti-war sentiment. The outrageous claims can only be compared to the anti-Israeli propaganda seen in the Arab world and Iran, echoing similar themes such as the use of chemical weapons against civilians and the harvesting of organs from killed Iraqis.</p>
<p>The AKP won an even larger share of the vote in the July 2007 election and had even more dominance over the government. Since then, the ideology of Erdogan has become more apparent as Turkish opinion has become less hostile to anti-Western Islamism.  Shortly after the victory, Turkey’s moves towards Iran and other enemies of the West became more visible and aggressive.</p>
<p>Turkey began entertaining the prospect of Iran’s natural gas being delivered to European markets through its territory, and the two countries launched joint military attacks against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq. The Party of Free Life for Kurdistan, or PJAK, claimed it actually saw Turkish officers working alongside the Iranian military. Newsmax.com <a href="http://www.aina.org/news/2007101522389.htm">reported</a> that eight Turkish officers were in Iran coordinating the attacks with the Revolutionary Guards.</p>
<p>In the spring of 2009, Moqtada al-Sadr, the Iranian-backed militia leader whose followers killed dozens of American soldiers in Iraq, <a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/05/20095115592374529.html">met</a> with Erdogan and Turkish President Abdullah Gul for “political consultations.” Most recently, Turkey has opposed sanctions on Iran and helped put together a deal with Brazil meant to delay any United Nations measures despite Iran’s lack of cooperation on the nuclear issue.</p>
<p>Erdogan’s government simultaneously became more anti-Israeli, particularly once the Israeli military offensive into Gaza began in response to the rocket attacks of Hamas. Erdogan went so far as to <a href="http://jta.org/news/article/2009/01/12/1002170/turkeys-harsh-criticism-of-israel-raises-questions">predict</a> that Israel’s actions “would bring it to self-destruction,” saying “Allah will sooner or later punish those who transgress the rights of innocents.” He <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2009/01/erdogan-bares-his-fangs">accused</a> Jewish-controlled media outlets of “finding unfounded excuses to justify targeting of schools, mosques and hospitals.”</p>
<p>On January 29, 2009, Erdogan publicly <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUGhomzXdFM">confronted</a> Israeli President Peres at the World Economic Forum over the Israeli offensive. When he was denied extra time to continue his criticism of Israel, he stormed out. Erdogan was a hero overnight in the Muslim world.</p>
<p>Soon after, an exhibit <a href="http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC06.php?CID=1258">opened</a> in a major state-controlled metro in Istanbul that included many viciously anti-Israeli and anti-American cartoons, portraying Israeli soldiers as massacring innocent people with American weapons. The AKP won the March 29 local elections, further cementing their hold and convincing Erdogan that he was politically safe to follow the agenda he held from the beginning. Later that year, Israel had to <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/01/12/turkey.israel/index.html">confront</a> Turkey over anti-Israeli propaganda on prime-time state-controlled television.</p>
<p>In October, Turkey refused to allow Israel to participate in annual military exercises also involving Italy and the U.S. Instead, Turkey and Syria <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/after-snubbing-israel-turkey-to-hold-defense-drills-with-syria-1.6129">announced</a> that they would hold their own joint exercises. The Turkish-Syrian alliance began shortly after Erdogan came to power, with Syrian President Bashar Assad visiting Turkey and a free trade agreement being signed.</p>
<p>Turkey has also moved closer to Sudan, <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/news.aspx/134297">refusing</a> to describe the situation in Darfur as a genocide. Erdogan’s government also opposes the International Criminal Court’s indictment of President Omar al-Bashir for human rights violations. His defense of Bashir is that “no Muslim could perpetrate a genocide.”</p>
<p>Now, Turkey is taking center stage in the wake of the <em>Mavi Marmara</em> incident. Turkey is openly considering cutting off all diplomatic ties with Israel and is saying that its warships will escort future convoys to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. There are reports that Erdogan himself may actually join a convoy. Erdogan now openly <a href="http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=177496">says</a>, “I do not think that Hamas is a terrorist organization…They are Palestinians in resistance, fighting for their own land.”</p>
<p>He was among the first to accept Hamas after it was elected in Gaza, and he is <a href="http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=177512">calling</a> their rule a “democracy” based on elections alone. Democracy is much more than elections, but Erdogan, like the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists, want to equate democracy with elections so as to give themselves legitimacy as they move against the other pillars of democracy. Professor Barry Rubin <a href="http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2010/06/turkish-regime-changes-sides">says</a> that as the AKP won election victories, the Erdogan government “repressed opposition and arrested hundreds of critics, bought up 40 percent of the media, and installed its people in the bureaucracy.”</p>
<p>Today, the government has begun the country’s “largest-ever crackdown” on the military, <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/27/MNQ21C7OKE.DTL&amp;feed=rss.news_world">prosecuting</a> 33 current and former military officers for allegedly planning a coup to overthrow the AKP government in 2003 including the former head of the special forces. Those arrested have been accused of planning to carry out acts of terrorism including the bombing of mosques, which they deny. Given the military’s pride in acting as the guardian of Turkey’s secularism, it isn’t surprising that elements of the military would desire to see the AKP overthrown. However, this could be an Islamist attempt to weaken the military and paint them as dangerous and anti-Muslim.</p>
<p>Erdogan’s defense of the vessel owned by the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7544">IHH,</a> a Turkish Islamist group tied to Hamas and other terrorist activity, is particularly insightful. Any true opponent of terrorism and radical Islamism would ban the group or at least officially investigate them. In 1997, the Turkish authorities raided the IHH’s office in Istanbul and made numerous arrests. IHH operatives were found with weapons-related materials and the French counterterrorism magistrate said that they were planning on supporting jihadists in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya.</p>
<p>“The essential goal of this Association was to illegally arm its membership for overthrowing democratic, secular, and constitutional order present in Turkey and replacing it with an Islamic state founded on the Shariah,” the French magistrate’s report <a href="http://counterterrorismblog.org/2010/06/shooting_the_messenger_a_look.php">said.</a></p>
<p>If the goal of the IHH is to establish Sharia Law in Turkey, and Erdogan’s government is describing them as a “charity,” what does that say about Erdogan’s plans? <em>The Washington Post</em> has raised <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/04/AR2010060404806.html">alarm</a> over this connection, noting the IHH leadership’s praise for Erdogan.</p>
<p>The West’s loss of Turkey has frightening strategic consequences. They are so frightening that the West refused to acknowledge the trend until it became undeniable in recent weeks. Professor Juan Cole, who already was a strident critic of Israel, bluntly <a href="http://www.juancole.com/2010/06/erdogan-israel-in-danger-of-losing-its-best-friend-in-the-region-nato-hq-seething.html">states,</a> “Strategically, if the U.S. had to choose between Turkey and Israel, it would have to choose Turkey.” The pressure on the U.S. to restrain Israel so as to court the stronger bloc has now become greater than ever.</p>
<p>The situation is even more precarious for other countries in the region previously bonding together to oppose Iran. Egypt, Saudi   Arabia, Jordan, and other countries in the Middle East and North  Africa that are hostile to Iran’s ambitions now face an even more threatening bloc that has been enlarged by the defection of Turkey. The temptation for them to surrender the mantle of leadership to the Iranian-Syrian-Turkish bloc in order to save themselves will now reach unprecedented levels, regardless of whether Iran obtains nuclear weapons or not.</p>
<p>To make matters worse, Erdogan’s prestige as the preeminent challenger of Israel will lead to competition with Iran, sparking an escalation where each side tries to establish superior anti-Israeli and anti-Western credentials. Israel is now in its most isolated and dangerous situation since its birth in 1948.</p>
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		<title>The Last Best Hope</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/dennis-prager/the-last-best-hope/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-last-best-hope</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 26 May 2010 04:01:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dennis Prager]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The world is a cruel place -- and if America weakens, it will get crueler.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/american_flag4.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-61138" title="american_flag4" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/american_flag4.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="284" /></a></p>
<p>One of the many beliefs — i.e., non-empirically based doctrines — of the post-Christian West has been that moral progress is the human norm, especially so with the demise of religion. In a secular world, the self-described enlightened thinking goes, superstition is replaced by reason, and reason leads to the moral good.</p>
<p>Of course, it turned out that the post-Christian West produced considerably more evil than the Christian world had. No mass cruelty in the name of Christianity approximated the vastness of the cruelty unleashed by secular doctrines and regimes in the post-Christian world. The argument against religion that more people have been killed in the name of religion than by any other doctrine is false propaganda on behalf of secularism and Leftism.</p>
<p>The amount of evil done by Christians — against, for example, &#8220;heretics&#8221; and Jews — in both the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity — was extensive, as was the failure of most European Christians to see Nazism for the evil that it was. The good news is that Christian evils have been acknowledged and addressed by most Christian leaders and thinkers.</p>
<p>But there were never any Christian Auschwitzes — i.e., systematic genocides of every man, woman and child of a particular race or religion. Nor were there Christian Gulags — the shipping of millions of innocents to conditions so horrific that prolonged suffering leading to death was the almost -inevitable end.</p>
<p>The anti-religious Left offers two responses to these facts: The first is that modern technology made the Nazi and Communist murders of scores of millions possible; had the church been technologically able to do so, it would have made its own Auschwitz and Gulag. The second is that Nazism and Communism were religions and not secular doctrines.</p>
<p>The response to the first is that technology was not necessary for the Communist murders of over a hundred million innocent people in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and elsewhere. In Cambodia, millions were murdered with hammers, in Rwanda with machetes.</p>
<p>The response to the second is that Communism and Nazism were secular movements and to deny that is to tell a gargantuan lie. Even if one argues that Nazism and Communism were religions, they were nevertheless secular religions. That too many Christians morally failed when confronted with Nazism is true, but irrelevant to the fact that Nazism was in no way a Christian movement.</p>
<p>And now the post-Christian world is getting worse.</p>
<p>The moral news about the world in which we live is almost unremittingly negative.</p>
<p>Russia</p>
<p>Russia is devoid of a moral values system. Whatever moral role the Russian Orthodox Church played was largely extinguished during the seven decades of Communist suppression of religion. Today, pockets of religious morality notwithstanding, Russia is essentially a nihilistic state. Under the leadership of a former KGB director, Russia now plays a destructive role in world affairs. Russia today is characterized by major arms shipments to Syria, protecting Iran while it becomes a nuclear power, forcing its will on Ukraine and other neighboring states, and the violent suppression of domestic critics who shed any light on the organized crime syndicate that rules the geographically largest nation in the world.</p>
<p>Turkey</p>
<p>The Ataturk Revolution is being undone. Turkey, the country long regarded as the bridge between the West and Islam, is rapidly moving away from the West and to an increasingly anti-Western Islam.</p>
<p>Iran</p>
<p>Iran is ruled by the heirs of Nazism, if that word still means anything after being cheapened by the Left for decades, most recently by the Left&#8217;s comparison of Arizona to a Nazi state. The rulers of Iran boast of their desire to initiate a second Holocaust against the Jews, all the while denying that the first Holocaust took place. And the country&#8217;s treatment of Iranians who seek elementary human freedoms and of Iranian women is among the worst on earth.</p>
<p>Congo</p>
<p>According to all reports, nearly 6 million people have been killed in the Congo in the last decade. The great secular liberal hope in &#8220;humanity&#8221; and &#8220;world opinion&#8221; has once again been shown to be the false hope it is. World opinion and &#8220;humanity&#8221; have rarely done anything to help the truly persecuted.</p>
<p>But there is more to the Congolese genocide — the absence of reporting about it in the world&#8217;s media and its being a non-issue at the United Nations. If an Israeli soldier kills a rock-throwing Palestinian, or even worse, makes plans to build 1,600 apartments in east Jerusalem, the U.N., world opinion and the world media cover it as if it were the primary evil on earth. But the Congolese deaths are barely worth a mention.</p>
<p>Mexico</p>
<p>Mexico is fighting for its life against narcotics gangs that compete with Islamists in their sadism. Mexico could become the largest narco-state in the world. To be a good person in Mexico today, i.e., to oppose the drug lords in any way, is to put oneself in danger of being slowly tortured to death.</p>
<p>Europe</p>
<p>Europe long ago gave up fighting for or believing in anything other than living a life with as much economic security, as many days off and as young a retirement age as possible. World War I killed off European idealism. And whatever remained was destroyed by World War II. What I have written about the Germans is true for nearly all of Europe: Instead of learning to fight evil, Europe has learned that fighting is evil.</p>
<p>Other consequences of European secularism and the demise of non-materialistic ideals include a low birthrate (children cost money and limit the number of fine restaurants in which one can afford to dine), and appeasement of evil. Thus most European nations are slowly disappearing and nearly every European country has compromised Western liberties in order to appease radical Muslims.</p>
<p>Radical Islam</p>
<p>Polls taken in the Muslim world regularly report that about 10 percent of the world&#8217;s Muslims say they support radical Islam — meaning Islamic totalitarianism as practiced by the Taliban and terror as practiced by Al-Qaida. That means at least one hundred million people. Add to that the unspecified number of Muslims who support the Nazi-level and Nazi-like anti-Semitism promulgated in much of the Middle East and you have an enormous body of people committed to the death of the West.</p>
<p>China</p>
<p>As in Russia, traditional Chinese virtues were largely destroyed by Communism, and China, too, is essentially a nihilistic state whose government spends its vast sums of foreign currency in buying influence in some of the cruelest places on earth (Zimbabwe, for example) and protecting the genocide-advocating regime of Iran.</p>
<p>The United Nations</p>
<p>The net result of the United Nations is an increase in evil on earth. Whatever good is performed by some of its institutions, like the World Health Organization or UNICEF, that good is outweighed by the amount of evil the U.N. either abets or allows. It has supervised genocide in Rwanda, done nothing to stop genocide elsewhere (e.g., Congo and Sudan), gives a respectable forum to tyrannies, and is preoccupied with vilifying one of its relatively few humane states, Israel. Its contributing to human suffering is exemplified by Libya being elected to its Human Rights Commission and Iran&#8217;s election to its Commission on the Status of Women.</p>
<p>The United States</p>
<p>The United States was described by President Abraham Lincoln as The Last Best Hope of Earth. Most Americans agreed then. However, with the ascent of the Left in America — in our educational institutions, news and entertainment media, and arts world — fewer and fewer Americans believe this. On the contrary, the Leftist view of America, which pervades American life, is of a country deeply morally compromised by endemic racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, militarism, imperialism and a rapacious capitalism, leading to immoral levels of economic inequality.</p>
<p>As in Europe, these views are leading America to avoid offending its enemies. The American attorney general recently refused to answer a congressman&#8217;s repeated question about whether he believes that radical Islam might have been one factor motivating recent Muslim terrorists in America.</p>
<p>With America more interested in being like Europe and being liked rather than in fighting its enemies, more and more countries are identifying with America&#8217;s enemies than with America. Last week&#8217;s three-way hug among the leaders of Brazil, Turkey and Iran was a clear example of such.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, America is rapidly accumulating unpayable debts that will render it not very different from Greece. Indeed, California, once the grease of the American economy, has become the Greece of the American economy.</p>
<p>As the Left&#8217;s power increases, America&#8217;s power recedes — and the world further deteriorates. Under Democratic Party rule, the Last Best Hope of Earth has decided that the United Nations and Western Europe deserve that title, not the United States.</p>
<p>Those of us working to remove Democrats from power regard this November&#8217;s election as not only a referendum on the direction of America, but of the world itself.</p>
<p><em>Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show and is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of four books, most recently &#8220;Happiness Is a Serious Problem&#8221; (HarperCollins). His website is www.dennisprager.com.</em></p>
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		<title>Apologist for Gender Apartheid</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/reut-cohen/apologist-for-gender-apartheid/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=apologist-for-gender-apartheid</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 21 May 2010 04:01:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Reut Cohen]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Middle Eastern women want to be subjugated and abused, says Prof. Suad Joseph.
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				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/joseph.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-60774" title="joseph" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/joseph.gif" alt="" width="375" height="245" /></a></p>
<p>On May 7, 2010, UCLA’s <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4420">Center for Near Eastern Studies</a> (CNES) and the <em>Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies</em> co-sponsored the lecture, “<a href="http://www.international.ucla.edu/cnes/events/showevent.asp?eventid=8062">Rethinking Arab Women as ‘Subjects</a>.’” The talk was delivered by <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/search.php?cx=015692155655874064424%3A-cjrsa07xqe&amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=suad+joseph&amp;sa=Search">Suad Joseph</a>, a Lebanese-born professor of anthropology and women’s studies at UC Davis, and president-elect of the <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/survey.php/id/38">Middle East Studies Association</a> (MESA), the principal professional organization for scholars of the region. Joseph, who has <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/3645">co-edited a book</a> with CNES director <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/search.php?cx=015692155655874064424%3A-cjrsa07xqe&amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=slyomovics&amp;sa=Search">Susan Slyomovics</a>, is considered a pioneer in the field of Middle East women’s studies, accolades which—as is, sadly, <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/2442">often the case</a>—translates into <a href="http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_1_why_feminism.html">apologetics</a> for the oppression of Middle Eastern women.</p>
<p>Joseph announced she was perturbed about the title of her lecture; she couldn’t decide whether “Arab” was an appropriate term to use for identification purposes. Yet, she contradicted herself (and followed the Arabist practice of her discipline) by referring to the Middle East exclusively as the “Arab world” and by questioning the identities of Jews, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and other distinctive, regional minorities. She wondered why these groups perceive themselves as separate from Arabs when the answer is readily apparent both in the distinctive histories of theses peoples and in their persecution at the hands of Arab Muslim majorities. The very term “Arab”—often used arbitrarily to describe anything Middle Eastern—is loaded with a perilous and extreme nationalism that has made ethnic minorities such as <a href="http://www.reutrcohen.com/2009/01/1000000-middle-eastern-jews.html">Mizrahi Jews</a> and <a href="http://www.christiansofiraq.com/Lewis.html">Assyrians</a> victims of the majority.</p>
<p>Joseph questioned, and at times denounced, studies examining the status quo of women in the Middle East. She argued that the representation of Arab women as subjects is a “problematic category and necessary one,” and that there is serious fault with characterizations—particularly in Western research and media—of Arab women as the victims of patriarchy, culture, politics, and religion. Instead, Joseph contended, notions of self are changing and malleable.</p>
<p>Predictably for contemporary Middle East studies, Joseph paid tribute to Edward Said’s deeply flawed book <em>Orientalism</em>, which helps explain her rejection of any implied Western superiority regarding women’s rights. In asserting that Westerners shouldn’t assume women in the Middle East wish to imitate secular, Westernized women, she encapsulated the ideology widespread on college campuses: multiculturalism, a form of cultural relativism that denies the ability to judge non-Western cultures on their merits, and which, in practice, judges all non-Western cultures as superior. She made no reference to universal human rights or to the <a href="http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/fiw10/FIW_2010_Tables_and_Graphs.pdf">possible reasons for rising Arab immigration</a> to secular European nations and to North America.</p>
<p>Joseph asserted that Arab women are the “most relationship-driven” of any with which she has worked. She described Americans, in contrast, as less “relationship-driven” and American women as having fewer expectations than their Arab counterparts. Joseph offered no factual evidence for either of these preposterous claims. Given the grave circumstances under which many Arab women live, one would think it is they who are forced to have fewer expectations and not, as Joseph contended, Western women.</p>
<p>Incredibly, Joseph theorized that Arab women want to be claimed by men, and therefore have no objection to being subjects of a patriarchal and theocratic society in which their individual rights are abridged. The audience, which appeared to consist mostly of Center for Near Eastern Studies and Women’s Studies faculty, nodded their heads in agreement with this troubling statement. In fact, those gathered reacted favorably to the lecture overall and asked no challenging questions of the speaker. Overwhelming (if understated) evidence of the systematic and institutionalized abuse of Middle Eastern women didn’t seem to factor into the equation.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/fiw10/FIW_2010_Map_MENA.pdf">In many regions of the Middle East, the basic standing of women and the attitude of men towards them are pre-modern. </a>Were this not so, there would be no honor killings, female genital mutilation, child marriage, or legitimized wife-beating. Moreover, the West should consider the disturbing social implications for its societies as these barbaric customs are imported through Muslim immigration.</p>
<p>If I may end on a personal note: As a woman of Middle Eastern origin, the situation of women in the Middle East has always fascinated and troubled me. Although I come from a very traditional Middle Eastern family—albeit Jewish—the women in my family have always been empowered and independent. Therefore, I find it extremely difficult to come to terms with the theory that Middle Eastern women are a different breed who welcome abuse for some twisted concept of maintaining a “relationship-driven” society.</p>
<p>If one believes, as I do, in fundamental human rights, there are moral principles that define our basic freedoms. Middle Eastern women’s rights activists such as Shirin Ebadi and Ayaan Hirsi Ali do not excuse the misogynistic and theocratic elements in their native countries. Instead, they demand freedom, even in the face of their abusers and of Western apologists.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Joseph’s lecture belongs in the latter category, demonstrating yet again that Middle Eastern women who seek intellectual and moral support from Western professors of Middle East studies will come away disappointed.</p>
<p><em>Reut Cohen is a journalist, researcher, and the publisher of </em><a href="http://www.reutrcohen.com/"><em>ReutRCohen.com</em></a><em>. She wrote this article for </em><a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/"><em>Campus Watch</em></a><em>, a project of the </em><a href="http://www.meforum.org/"><em>Middle East Forum</em></a><em>.</em></p>
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		<title>Israel’s Welfare Threat</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/israel%e2%80%99s-welfare-threat/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israel%25e2%2580%2599s-welfare-threat</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 04:05:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why a growing welfare state burden may be an existential threat.
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				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/cr_mega_284_ultra-orthodox.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-60186" title="cr_mega_284_ultra-orthodox" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/cr_mega_284_ultra-orthodox-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p>Dan Ben-David, an economics professor at Tel Aviv University and executive director of the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Jerusalem, has been stoking fears lately in Israel with a 350-page report that says the country’s economic picture is grim.</p>
<p>The problems, Ben-David says, arise from two sectors: Israeli Arabs and ultra-Orthodox (or haredi) Israeli Jews. Both groups have high unemployment rates and are an increasingly onerous welfare burden on the productive part of the society. Unemployment among Arab men, as Ben-David recently <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/topofthetimes/topstories/la-fg-israel-idle-20100511,0,2113135,full.story">told</a> the <em>Los Angeles Times</em>, now stands at 27%, and for ultra-Orthodox Jewish men at no less than 65%.</p>
<p>Ben-David says the unemployment (or more precisely, nonemployment—referring to those who don’t desire to work) rate for ultra-Orthodox men has tripled since 1970 as more and more of them opt for a state-subsidized life as yeshiva students. Meanwhile the tax burden on ordinary Israelis—already augmented by particularly high defense and immigrant-absorption expenditures—keeps getting worse, and some blame it for Israel’s major “brain drain” problem of young academics going to live abroad.</p>
<p>But the scariest—even in a time of the Iranian threat—aspect of Ben-David’s message is demographic. He notes that, while Arabs and ultra-Orthodox together currently constitute less than 30% of the population, they account for nearly 50% of school-age children. Ben-David earlier <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?ID=172704">told</a> <em>Jerusalem Post</em> editor David Horovitz that according to current projections, by 2040 “78% of primary school enrollment will be haredi and Arab.” Such an entity would no longer be the Jewish-Zionist-democratic state of Israel, not least because the large majority of both Israeli Arabs and ultra-Orthodox are non- or anti-Zionist and don’t serve in the army.</p>
<p>Ben-David’s is not the only voice to sound these warnings of late. Ron Huldai, mayor of Tel Aviv, recently <a href="http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3883809,00.html">said</a> the situation called for “rebellion” by Israel’s “silent civilian majority” and that “today Israel is probably the only country in the world where private education is being funded by the public, without it having to adhere to a minimum of educational demands”—referring particularly to the lack of secular subjects in the ultra-Orthodox schools. Columnist and TV personality Yair Lapid <a href="http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3883019,00.html">wrote</a> in a “Letter to My Haredi Friend” that</p>
<blockquote><p>I can no longer pay. The money is gone. There’s no more left. I don’t have enough to give my children, and I don’t have enough to give yours.</p></blockquote>
<p>Many believe that both Huldai and Lapid have national political aspirations and so are starting to ride a handy issue. But if so, it only underlines the deep concern about the situation.</p>
<p>Indeed, Ben-David told Horovitz that educational reform is crucial and that Israelis—of all kinds—who are aged 29-54 and have a university degree fare far better:</p>
<blockquote><p>Among Arab women in that age range who don’t finish high school, fewer than 10% have work, but among Arab women with a degree, the figure is 70%. And it’s around 90% for Arab men and for non-haredi Jewish men and women.</p></blockquote>
<p>The difficulty is that educational reform in Israel is an intensely political issue. On the one hand, the ultra-Orthodox sector in particular has a deep ideological distrust of secular learning and resists calls to introduce subjects like math, English, and computers in its schools. On the other, in Israel’s fragmented parliamentary system, ultra-Orthodox parties keep wielding pivotal power in coalition governments.</p>
<p>Last year, for instance, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, a free marketeer who as finance minister sharply reduced child allowances to ultra-Orthodox families, nearly doubled some of them as the price for getting two ultra-Orthodox parties into his coalition.</p>
<p>At that time there was talk of the two largest secular parties—Netanyahu’s Likud plus former foreign minister <a href="http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2003/2/Tzipi+Livni.htm">Tzipi Livni</a>’s Kadima—forming the core of a secular government that would bring about both electoral reform <em>and</em> educational reform, overcoming the ultra-Orthodox resistance to the latter. That idea foundered, though, both on Livni’s personal pique at not being premier and her professed belief in an <a href="../2010/05/11/fake-%E2%80%9Cpeace%E2%80%9D-for-israel/">illusory peace process</a>.</p>
<p>Although some say Ben-David’s projections are exaggerated, even if they’re only partially right the problem will need addressing. For that, at least functional unity among secular parties will indeed be the key—requiring, in turn, leaders with both vision and responsibility on the national level.</p>
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		<title>Where Do Jews and Christians on the Left Get Their Values?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/dennis-prager/where-do-jews-and-christians-on-the-left-get-their-values/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=where-do-jews-and-christians-on-the-left-get-their-values</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Apr 2010 04:01:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dennis Prager]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why Leftism, though secular, must be understood as a religion.]]></description>
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<p>Many Americans find it difficult to understand why Jews on the Left &#8212;  including many who would call themselves &#8220;liberal&#8221; rather than &#8220;Left&#8221; &#8212;  continued to enthusiastically support President Obama after the revelations  about the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish views of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the  religious mentor and close friend of Obama. This confusion is all the greater  now that Obama has humiliated the prime minister of Israel and  created the most tense moment in American-Israel relations in  memory.</p>
<p>Likewise, many Americans wonder how Democratic congressmen who claim to  be faithful Catholics and are pro-life could vote for the health care bill that  allows for federal funding of abortions &#8212; after opposing it up to the last  day.</p>
<p>There is an explanation.</p>
<p>Leftism, though secular, must be understood as a religion (which is why I  have begun capitalizing it). The Leftist value system&#8217;s hold on its adherents is  as strong as the hold Christianity, Judaism and Islam have on their adherents.  Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s belief in expanding the government&#8217;s role in American life, and  therefore her passion for the health care bill, is as strong as a pro-life  Christian&#8217;s belief in the sanctity of the life of the  unborn.</p>
<p>Given the religious nature and the emotional power of Leftist values,  Jews and Christians on the Left often derive their values from the Left more  than from their religion.</p>
<p>Now, of course, most Leftist Jews and Christians will counter that  Leftist values cannot trump their religion&#8217;s values because Leftist values are  identical to their religion&#8217;s values. But this argument only reinforces my  argument that Leftism has conquered the Christianity and the Judaism of Leftist  Christians and Jews. If there is no difference between Leftist moral values and  those of Judaism or Christianity, then Christianity is little more than Leftism  with &#8220;Jesus&#8221; rhetoric added, and Judaism is Leftism with Jewish terms &#8212; such as  &#8220;Tikkun Olam&#8221; (&#8220;repairing the world&#8221;) and &#8220;Prophetic values&#8221; &#8212;  added.</p>
<p>But if Christianity is, morally speaking, really Leftism, why didn&#8217;t  Catholics or Protestants assert these values prior to 19th-century European  Leftism? And, if Judaism is essentially a set of Left-wing values, does that  mean that the Torah and the Talmud are Leftist documents? Or are the two pillars  of Judaism generally wrong?</p>
<p>More questions:</p>
<p>Why are almost no Christians and Jews who believe that God is the author  of the Bible (or, in the case of Jews, the Torah) on the  Left?</p>
<p>Why are so few pro-life Catholic and Protestant Christians on the Left?  Do they not care about &#8220;the poor&#8221;?</p>
<p>Of course, that is what people on the Left believe. As former head of the  Democratic Party Howard Dean said, &#8220;Our moral values, in contradistinction to  the Republicans, is, we don&#8217;t think kids ought to go to bed hungry at  night.&#8221;</p>
<p>They believe such things despite the fact that traditional Protestants  and Catholics have created more institutions to take care of the sick and needy  than probably any other groups in the world. And despite the fact that religious  Americans give more charity and volunteer more time than secular Americans  do.</p>
<p>And why have the great majority of Orthodox Jews rejected the Left? For  Jews on the Left, the explanation is simple: Orthodox Jews have primitive  beliefs and therefore primitive values.</p>
<p>The obvious response is that for the Leftist, all opposition to the Left,  secular or religious, is primitive and usually worse (Racist, Sexist,  Homophobic, Xenophobic, Ignorant, Bigoted, Intolerant, Mean-Spirited, etc.). So  this doesn&#8217;t tell us much. What might tell us much is this: With a handful of  exceptions, Orthodox Jews know Judaism far better than non-Orthodox Jews do.  Given how few of them are Leftist, this would suggest that Judaism and Leftism  are indeed in conflict.</p>
<p>But that doesn&#8217;t matter to most Jews on the Left because to be a good  person (and, to those for whom it matters, to be a good Jew), one need not know  Judaism, let alone follow Judaism. One needs only to feel what is right (Leftism  is overwhelmingly based on feeling); and, when in doubt, one can determine what  is right from The New York Times, not from sacred Jewish  texts.</p>
<p>One of the many fundamental differences between Leftism and Judaism  concerns evil. Jews and others on the Left (everywhere, not just in  America) have a real problem  identifying, let alone confronting, evil. Yet, for Judaism, identifying and  confronting evil is as basic a Jewish value as exists. That is why, for example,  there is no pacifist tradition in Judaism.</p>
<p>Regarding evil, the Psalmist writes &#8212; and this is recited in synagogue  every Sabbath &#8212; &#8220;Those who love God &#8212; hate evil.&#8221; And as regards pacifism, one  of the Prophets, Joel (3:10), inverts what became the much more famous quotation  of Isaiah and Micah: &#8220;Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks  into spears.&#8221; And later, the Talmud, almost equivalent in importance to the  Bible, teaches (Berakhot 58a): &#8220;The Torah has said: If a man comes to kill you,  rise early and kill him first.&#8221;</p>
<p>In contrast, Leftists, including Leftist Jews and  Christians:</p>
<p>&#8211; were the loudest in condemning President Ronald Reagan when he labeled  the Soviet Union an &#8220;evil  empire.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8211; devoted much of their lives to opposing the war in Vietnam, which  they labeled immoral even though it was a war against Stalinist  tyranny.</p>
<p>&#8211; opposed deposing the mass murderer Saddam Hussein. Many even opposed  the Gulf War.</p>
<p>&#8211; believe that the moral wasteland known as the United Nations is, or  must be the greatest force for good on earth, not the United  States.</p>
<p>&#8211; oppose allowing the American military to recruit on  campuses.</p>
<p>And the further Left one goes, the more one demonizes free  Israel and supports the  dictatorships that wish to destroy Israel.</p>
<p>Indeed, Israel provides the clearest proof of  how Leftism is stronger than the Jewishness of most Jews on the Left.  Israel is threatened with a  Holocaust by Iran and tens of  millions of Islamic supporters outside of Iran, and  Palestinian society is saturated with the most virulent Jew-hatred since the  Nazis. Yet while today&#8217;s Jew- and Israel-haters call the Left home, Jews on the  Left continue to be proud members of the Left. Such is the power of Leftism, the  most dynamic religion in the world for the last 150 years.</p>
<p>And that explains Bart Stupak&#8217;s vote, too. In his inner conflict between  Catholicism and Leftism, the more dynamic religion won.</p>
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		<title>A Profile in Courage</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-solway/a-profile-in-courage/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-profile-in-courage</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-solway/a-profile-in-courage/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:05:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Solway]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=54465</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An open letter to Geert Wilders.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/geert_wilders.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54466" title="geert_wilders" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/geert_wilders.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="282" /></a></p>
<p>An open letter to Geert Wilders:</p>
<p>Though we have not met, I feel as if I know you well. I have followed your trials—and trial—closely and, like many who are engaged in the same fight against Islamic supremacism and the various forms of jihad that confront us, I endorse your campaign on behalf of the West and its traditional liberties in every way that I can.</p>
<p>Indeed, I wonder if you are aware of the extent of your <em>de facto</em> “support network,” a majority in America who, according to a <a href="http://people-press.org/report/564/islamic-extremism">Pew Research Center survey</a>, are “very concerned” about the rise of Islamic extremism, and certainly a significant minority of the increasingly vocal. The same may now be the case in your own country and in a number of other European nations as well—Switzerland and its <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/11/29/switzerland.minaret.referendum/index.html">minaret affair</a> come immediately to mind—as ordinary people gradually come to realize the threat they are facing.</p>
<p>Of course, we can write off the political and intellectual elites who, through laziness, timidity, adherence to the craven doctrine of political correctness, and no doubt the profiteering impulse, are in bed with the succubus who would guzzle their blood. And this is no blood libel. In addition, you probably strike these presumably more decorous sensibilities as too blunt, aggressive or politically ambitious, which is clearly what prompts their efforts at character assassination against you. But your passionate resistance to the creeping Islamization of Europe prompts me in turn to ask: Does this in Wilders seem ambitious? In any event, pay no attention to these tergiversators. As Andrew Bostom <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/qaddafi-wilders-and-the-jihad-against-switzerland/">writes</a>, “The transparent agenda in characterizations of Wilders is to demonize Western Europe’s most informed and courageous politician resisting the actual jihadism…But the Swiss minaret referendum, and even more emphatically, burgeoning Dutch support for Wilders and his PVV, indicate that ordinary Europeans reject the capitulation to Islamic supremacism their cultural relativist media and political elites deliberately abet.”</p>
<p>In your fine <a href="http://vladtepesblog.com/?p=20195">speech to the British House of Lords</a> on March 5, 2010, you established the principle, as you have many times before, that you and your Freedom Party do not “have a problem with Muslims as such.” You distinguish between law-abiding Muslims and the ideology of Islam based on the Koran. “There are many moderate Muslims,” you declare, “but there is no such thing as a moderate Islam.” The first part of your proposition is a socially appropriate sentiment, but the second part begets a conceptual problem which is decidedly unpleasant to address.</p>
<p>Forgive me for suggesting that you probably had no choice but to make this subtle discrimination between the faithful and the faith, which implies a certain disconnect between the wish and the reality, as you must surely realize. You tread on very delicate ground here, as you are doubtlessly constrained to do in order to avoid alienating both “moderate Muslims” and non-Muslims who regard themselves as unprejudiced.</p>
<p>When you rightly assert that “Islam is not merely a religion [but] a totalitarian ideology,” note that the Koran “commands Muslims to establish shariah law,” claim that “Islam is not compatible with our Western way of life,” and go on to compare the Koran with <em>Mein Kampf</em>, quoting Winston Churchill to reinforce your thesis, the distinction you adduce between individual Muslims and the collective institution of Islam tends to collapse. For what you are really saying is that moderate Muslims cannot be devout Muslims or, in truth, cannot be Muslims at all. What sort of Muslim remains after you have factored out shariah law, effectively compared Muhammed to Hitler, and contended that the Koran should be outlawed, or at least designated as a species of hate literature, as you proposed in your <a href="http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3094">letter</a> to the newspaper <em>De Volkskrant</em> on August 8, 2007?</p>
<p>You now find yourself uncomfortably situated, so to speak, between the devil and the deep Red Sea. Not being a Muslim yourself, you don’t have the option of polemical emphasis that derives from rejecting the faith, becoming an apostate-on-principle or converting to another faith, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan and Nonie Darwish, among others—all of whom took the second part of your logic to its inevitable terminus. They understood that one cannot honestly profess Islam without abiding by the decrees of the religion and its holy book, including the oft-repeated summons to kill or enslave the infidel, the structure of gender apartheid, the imposition of shariah, and a host of other draconian laws.</p>
<p>In other words, a “moderate Muslim” would have to live in a state of contradiction, and perhaps many do—as does, for example, freedom loving Tarek Fatah, Canadian author of <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Mirage-Tragic-lllusion-Islamic/dp/0470841168/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1268418133&amp;sr=1-1">Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State</a></em>, who <a href="http://www.nationalpost.com/related/topics/story.html?id=2673117">calls himself</a> a “hardened secular Muslim.” What exactly is a <em>secular</em> Muslim, whether hardened or soft? Similarly, what could a “secular Christian” conceivably be other than some sort of mythical chimera? (It is different for Jews, of course; a “secular Jew” remains a Jew because the world persists in regarding him as such. But that is another matter.) Fatah is a good man and an important voice in the ongoing debate concerning Islam, but he cannot extricate himself from a legendary infatuation or acknowledge disagreeable historical and theological facts. One cannot cherry pick the Koran or romanticize Islamic history, as so-called “moderate Muslims” are obliged to do, without falling into incoherence. As a character in Hanif Kureishi’s <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Black-Album-Hanif-Kureishi/dp/0684825406/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1268483288&amp;sr=1-1">The Black Album</a></em> says, “our religion isn’t something you can test out, like trying out a suit to see if it fit! You gotta buy the whole outfit!” There is, to put it another way, no such beverage as Islam Lite. One drinks in the real thing or nothing; there is no substitute.</p>
<p>Bangladeshi author and former Muslim Abul Kasem, in a <em><a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=29366">FrontPage Magazine interview</a></em>, defines the majority of Muslims as believers “in name only.” Kasem is shockingly direct: the existence of a “moderate Muslim” is contingent upon a moderate Koran “since the life force of Islam is the Qu’ran.” But the Koran happens to be an extreme and violent document, and even if it is selectively ignored by practitioners of the faith, its fissile core can be activated at any time. For Kasem, as for the dissidents mentioned above, the term “moderate Muslim” or “secular Muslim” is an oxymoron. The use of the term “moderate Muslim,” he argues, is “truly misplaced” and muddles Western thinking in the attempt to defeat Islamic terror. I’m presuming this is an argument you too would candidly advance if the sociopolitical context were not so precarious, and if your place in Dutch society and as leader of a respectable political party permitted you to do so.</p>
<p>Still, you were on the money when, in a <a href="../Application%20Data/Microsoft/Word/speech%20to%20the%20Dutch%20parliament">speech to the Dutch parliament</a>, you compared Islam in Europe to a Trojan Horse. Here you were being perfectly forthright. Your metaphor was both mythologically and historically accurate. In 1529, the armies of Islam were camped before the gates of Vienna. They were beaten back. Today they are camped <em>within</em> the gates of Paris, the gates of Oslo, the gates of Malmo, the gates of Berlin, the gates of London, the gates of Birmingham, the gates of Brussels, the gates of Marseille, the gates of Amsterdam, and counting. In fact, as you and many of the politically aware—Bruce Bawer, Christopher Caldwell, Walter Laqueur, Bernard Lewis, the late Samuel Huntington, Melanie Phillips, Bruce Thornton, Claire Berlinski, Denis MacShane, Bat Ye’or, to name only a few—point out, Islam is now a major demographic force within the gates of Europe <em>in its entirety</em>. Vienna was only a temporary setback, a lost battle in a long and possibly successful war. Our ostensible sophisticates seem to have forgotten that Islamic time is not Western time.</p>
<p>I began this letter by assuring you that you have a far wider community of supporters than you might at times suspect. True, several conservative <em>bien pensants</em> and generally astute observers of the ideological world, such as Bill Kristol, Glenn Beck and Charles Krauthammer, have lately <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/03/11/another-look-at-foxnews-hatchet-job-on-geert-wilders/">taken you to task</a> on Fox News and elsewhere for your supposed intransigence, your explicitness and your “radical” stance vis à vis Islam, that is, your refusal to differentiate between a peaceable Islam and violent Islamism. The critical perspective adopted by these otherwise excellent writers toward the leftist collaboration with, or appeasement of, militant Islam, their awareness of the demographic menace posed by unchecked immigration, and the weaponized prose they habitually flourish would indicate they should be your allies rather than detractors.</p>
<p>So unfortunate a dereliction is highly problematic and, at first blush, inexplicable—unless, as a commenter to an <a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDk2ODI2OGEwMjAzOWFlMzQxMzUxNTE3NmVkOWU3M2U=">article</a> by Mark Steyn <a href="http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/3016/59/">suggests</a>, “perhaps the recent purchase of a substantial portion of <a href="http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100117/D9D9GR0O0.html" target="_blank">News Corp.&#8217;s stock by a wealthy Saudi Arabian</a> might be a factor in Krauthammer&#8217;s and Beck&#8217;s negative statements about Geert Wilders.” Diana West <a href="http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/1307/Fox-News-Best-Investment-Saudi-Prince-Talal-Ever-Made.aspx">concurs</a>: “this anti-Geert pundit solidarity will only delight stakeholder Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.” We have long known that Saudi money has infiltrated the media, the universities, the Hollywood illusion factory and the book publishing industry, with all the predictable consequences. But then, we also know that Kristol, Beck and Krauthammer are honorable men.</p>
<p>Maybe there is another explanation. <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2010/03/10/beck-krauthammer-and-the-geert-wilders-perplex/?singlepage=true">Roger Simon hazards</a> that Beck “is not particularly versed in European affairs”, which are plainly not his forte, and that Krauthammer may be subconsciously afraid that <em>you are right</em>, a likelihood “too depressing” to contemplate. For, Simon continues, “if Wilders is correct, and the line between Islam and Islamism is as blurred as the Dutchman posits, then we in the West are in very deep trouble indeed.” And this is a conclusion all too few of our intellectuals, “peace” constituencies, opinion shapers and power wielders, addicted to the ostrich syndrome and insulated from the mean streets of the real world, are willing to absorb. They have taken another route and are speeding down the highway to dhimmitude like Toyotas with stuck gas pedals. They would rather allow the approaching immiseration of the West at the hands of a resurgent Islam than stiffen their spines and act as they must if Western civilization is to survive. Which is why they do not want you in the game.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, despite such curious defections and betrayals, I think you may rest confident that you enjoy a stalwart following among those who have come to share both your fears and your salient assumptions. We monitor the court prosecution to which you have been subjected by a camarilla of judges who, as you say, “do not want to hear the truth about Islam.” As David Rusin shows in a compendious <a href="http://www.islamist-watch.org/blog/2010/03/objection-your-honor-european-courts-placate">summary</a> of “the growing deference to Islam in Europe’s courtrooms,” citing evidence of a most disturbing, if ludicrous, nature, “in the Netherlands, the bar association is leading the way to mollify Islamists.”</p>
<p>But there is a redeeming irony tunneling its way through these proceedings. You are in a win-win situation. A victory in court means you have been vindicated. A negative verdict also works in your favor, for a jail cell would give you an effective podium, though I doubt you would malinger there for long. It would then become glaringly obvious that your accusers are a pack of <em>soi-disant</em> anti-Dreyfusards, Vichy-type sellouts, cowards and hypocrites, and public demonstrations against your captors would be sure to follow. They are the ones in a self-inflicted bind, not you. Moreover, it is already common knowledge that your judges have substantially curtailed the number of expert witnesses you have called and are deliberating behind closed doors. Oddly enough, a bad day in court may translate into a good day at the polls. Indeed, according to some <a href="http://countercultureconservative.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/prime-minister-geert-wilders/">electoral prognostications</a>, you may shortly find yourself the prime minister of your country.</p>
<p>The cake appears ready for the oven. If all goes well, the next election may actually install you in the seat of power or, failing that, position you as a power broker. You have only to keep on being yourself and, of course, you need to stay alive. You have the courage and outspokenness of your murdered fellow Amsterdammers, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1971462.stm">Pym Fortuyn</a> and <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3974179.stm">Theo van Gogh</a>, but you also have what they did not, 24/7 protection. And, to reiterate, you are not alone. A growing company of the likeminded stand behind you. One way or another, you cannot lose, at least not in the Netherlands.</p>
<p>So in conclusion, as the current idiom enjoins: Go for it!</p>
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		<title>Going Cold Turkey</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-solway/going-cold-turkey/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=going-cold-turkey</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:04:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Solway]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[It's high time to retire our delusions about Turkey being a model for Muslim countries.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/turkey.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-52169" title="turkey" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/turkey.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="446" /></a></p>
<p>One of the major questions confronting Western strategists and politicians today has to do with the political direction in which Turkey, a presumed ally and Western lynchpin in the Middle East, seems to be heading. Is it the beacon nation it has long been assumed to be, a stalwart democracy firmly rooted in Islamic soil? Or is it, on the contrary, a fundamentally Islamic nation now shaking off its Western trappings and faux identity to re-enter the theological orbit of the past? Who are we treating with, the Young Turks or the old Ottomans?</p>
<p>As Dinesh D’Souza writes in <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Enemy-At-Home-Cultural-Responsibility/dp/0767915615/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1267018605&amp;sr=1-1">The Enemy at Home</a></em>, it is time “to retire the tiresome invocation of Turkey as a model for Islamic society. No Muslim country is going the way of Turkey, and even Turkey is no longer going the way of Turkey.” But is not Turkey an electoral democracy and does it not therefore merit our approval and support? We in the West appear to have forgotten that elections in themselves do not constitute democracy. In the Muslim world, elections are only mechanisms for regulating the balance between competing tribal, ethnic and religious blocs intent on political domination, social coercion and economic exploitation—to be suspended the moment it seems opportune to do so. They are pretexts for structures of autocratic or theocratic control. It should come as no surprise that under the auspices of an ostensible democratic apparatus, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_and_Development_Party_%28Turkey%29">Justice and Development Party</a> (AKP) is steering Turkey towards ever closer ties with the totalitarian regimes of Iran, Syria and Sudan and re-introducing Islamic norms of behavior.</p>
<p>The unpleasant fact of the matter is that in an Islamic context, democracy as we understand it does not work very well, if, indeed, it works at all. It is not a reliable or enduring phenomenon. Secular institutions in such a cultural and historical framework can survive only if they are imposed and backed by a strong military determined to check the influence of the clerical establishment and suppress the circulation of Islamic doctrine and extremist sentiment among the laity. Thus the folly of <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/multimedia/publications/publications/annual-reports/2005_en.htm">The European Commission’s 2005 report</a> which declares that the Turkish army should concern itself exclusively with “military, defense and security matters…under the authority of the government,” ignoring the fact that the secular aspects of the state were achieved and protected only by internal military interventions.</p>
<p>The unwillingness of the West to recognize the true state of affairs regarding Turkey is encapsulated in an AP report on the recent arrest by the government of fifty Turkish commanders alleged to have planned a <em>coup d’état</em>. The <a href="http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=169375">article</a> states: “Erdogan also has dramatically curtailed the military&#8217;s power, under EU pressure, and reinforced civilian rule while bolstering democratic institutions.” Apart from the reference to (typically misguided) EU pressure, the reality is very different.</p>
<p>By all reputable accounts, Turkey is inexorably being Islamized, which was already evident when it refused to permit American flyovers and the use of military bases and staging grounds during the second Iraq war. As noted above, political and economic relations with Iran are growing ever more intimate; a $3.5 billion natural gas deal has recently been <a href="http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=206226">confirmed</a>. There has been a rapprochement with Syria and the principal bone of contention between the two countries, the status of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria">Turkish province of Hatay</a> claimed by Syria as the historical Iskandaron, has been quietly buried. Turkey launched a venomous propaganda campaign against Israel over Operation Cast Lead in the terrorist statelet of Gaza and refused to cooperate with Israel in long-planned war games, leading to the U.S. dropping out as well. <a href="http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=169410">Erdogan boasts</a> that Turkey has “opened a new approach to foreign relations…We have a philosophy of strength.”</p>
<p>Domestically, the Turkish parliament has cancelled the ban on the hijab, prompting even the Russian journal <em><a href="http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080214/99215548.html">RiaNovosti</a></em> to speculate on the danger of radical change in the country. As <em>RiaNovosti</em> wryly points out, “the [pro-hijab] bill will burnish Turkey&#8217;s democratic credentials, hastening its accession to the European Union”—a clever move, no doubt, given <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Eurabia-Euro-Arab-Axis-Bat-YeOr/dp/083864077X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1267101561&amp;sr=1-1">Eurabian</a> sympathies. Turkey has recently attempted to pass a law criminalizing adultery in order, according to Erdogan, to <a href="http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc/turkeyadulterylaw2.htm">preserve the family</a>. The law did not carry but the current atmosphere in the country suggests it will be proposed once again. The fact that <em>Mein Kampf</em> has become a bestseller in Turkey is equally worrying.</p>
<p>For a sense of what to expect in the future, Turkey’s premier novelist Orhan Pamuk furnishes a rather disturbing speculum in his novel, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Snow-Orhan-Pamuk/dp/0375706860/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1267019078&amp;sr=1-1">Snow</a></em>, which anyone interested in taking the pulse of the country should consult. The snowstorm which cuts off the town, where the central action occurs, from the secular West is more than meteorology; it is an emblem and parable of the gradually closing mindset that prevails in the country.</p>
<p>We should no longer delude ourselves about Turkey. Barring a successful military insurrection and a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk">Kemalist</a> revival, it is arguably lost to the West, or soon will be. Turkey should be met with forceful economic and diplomatic measures if we wish to prevent or at least defer a deteriorating situation. It would have to be made to realize that joining the Islamist axis is not to its long-term advantage. Significant countervailing pressure needs to be brought to bear and the secular command of the country’s military should be effectively supported.</p>
<p>But the problem, of course, is not only Turkey—or Iran for that matter, or Russia or any other nation against which we refuse to exercise leverage. The problem is us. We are addicted to the drug of appeasement. It is high time we showed a little character and took steps to bring about our long-overdue political and moral detoxification. For the reflex posture the West adopts of conciliation and procrastination, which in the case we are examining entails indifference to or even complicity with Turkey’s current domestic and foreign policies, will only hasten its departure from the fraying nexus of the Western alliance.</p>
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		<title>The “Peace Partners” Who Never Were</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/joe-kaufman/an-attempt-to-unify-palestinian-terror/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=an-attempt-to-unify-palestinian-terror</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:04:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joe Kaufman]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[An attempt to unify Palestinian terror.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/kauf.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-51651" title="kauf" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/kauf.jpg" alt="" width="495" height="378" /></a></p>
<p>On February 14th, all of the major Palestinian terrorist factions met at the offices of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) for peace talks. But this was not about peace with the Israelis. No, this was a meeting to reconcile differences, in order to direct all energies in a violent manner <em>against Israel</em>. While the West has been obsessed with locating a “peace partner” for the Jewish state, none would be found here.</p>
<p>The Palestinian people, for the most part, can be divided into two camps: one, a religious terrorist camp and two, a secular/nationalist terrorist camp. Members of Palestinian society usually side with one or the other, whether it’s through politics, community affairs or violence. There is little grey area, in this respect.</p>
<p>The religious terrorist camp is made up of organizations which spawned from the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, a group created in the 1920s that merged fundamentalist Islam with an extremist political agenda. Palestinian organizations that fit into this category include Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). PIJ, while deriving its existence from the Brotherhood, however, was established in 1979 with a greater attachment to the more violent methods of the Iranian Revolution of the same year.</p>
<p>The secular terrorist camp consists of groups that fall under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The two main groups that make up the PLO are the Palestinian National Liberation Movement or Fatah and the <a href="http://www.americansagainsthate.org/PFLP_website.html">Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine</a> (PFLP). Unlike Fatah, though, which uses some Islamic imagery, the PFLP operates solely as a Marxist-Leninist organization.</p>
<p>All four of these organizations, in addition to nine others, held a joint meeting this month at the PFLP headquarters. The meeting came at the foot of an Egyptian initiative for reconciliation between the parties and what was being termed a “restoration of national unity.”</p>
<p>But according to the PFLP, this was less about restoring unity among the Palestinian groups and more about fighting Israel <em>as a unified force</em>.</p>
<p>As stated by PFLP leader Rabah Muhana, following the meeting, “An atmosphere of placing national interest ahead of factional interest had prevailed. All of the factions agreed on the urgent need to end division in order to confront the occupation.”</p>
<p>To be sure, there is no love lost between many of the groups, primarily Fatah and Hamas. In June 2007, Hamas launched a bloody coup against Fatah, throwing out the PLO group from the Gaza Strip, whilst brutally executing some 400 individuals associated with Fatah. And as this author writes, the homepage of Fatah’s official website contains a graphic of Hamas leaders Khaled Meshaal, Mahmoud al-Zahar and Ismail Haniya with their <a href="http://www.americansagainsthate.org/Fatah_Hamas_Leaders_in_Blood.html">faces covered in drops of blood</a>.</p>
<p>Now, it appears the two are coming together, as it has been reported that all of the Palestinian terror factions have voiced support for the Egyptian plan.</p>
<p>Of course, this does not bode well for those who have been hell-bent on finding a “peace partner” for Israel. Regarding the United States and the European Union (EU), the only one that fits that bill, at least according to them, is Fatah.</p>
<p>The names of three of the four organizations mentioned previously as representing the Palestinian people, Hamas, PIJ and the PFLP, can be found on <a href="http://www.americansagainsthate.org/US_and_EU_Terror_List.html">terrorism lists compiled by both the US and the EU</a>. Fatah appears to be the only one that has been left off the lists – but that appearance is somewhat deceiving.</p>
<p>Toward the top of both lists is found the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade (AMB), the self-described “military wing” of Fatah. It was named to the US list in March 2002 and the EU list in October of the same year. Indeed, the group has a history of targeting civilians via such means as suicide bombings and has, in the past, worked with the likes of Hamas and PIJ.</p>
<p>While government agencies admit to an affiliation between AMB and Fatah, they also act to put distance between the two, in what seems to be an attempt to separate Fatah from the terrorism. But there is no separation between Fatah and AMB, for they are essentially the same organization.</p>
<p>AMB’s website addresses, <a href="http://www.americansagainsthate.org/Al-Aqsa_Martyrs_Brigade_Websites.html">kataebaqsa.org and kataebaqsa.ps</a>, remain active, but the content from them has been entirely removed. That’s not a problem for AMB, because the group shares the official website of Fatah, fateh.org. On any given day, one can see the AMB logo on the Fatah site homepage along with a link to the AMB’s most recent terror communiqué, discussing its latest attack and referring to Israel as the “enemy.”</p>
<p>Atop all of the Fatah website pages, including AMB’s terror communiqués, is a large picture of the head of Fatah and the President of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas. This is the same Mahmoud Abbas who, less than two months ago, <a href="http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&amp;doc_id=1524">honored three fallen AMB murderers</a> of 45-year-old Israeli Rabbi Meir Avshalom Hai as “Shahids” or holy martyrs. Hai, who was gunned down during a December 24th drive-by attack, left a wife and seven children. Abbas visited and offered condolences to the families of the dead perpetrators of the attack.</p>
<p>When the 13 Palestinian terrorist groups met at the PFLP headquarters, they did so with an understanding – that even though they might have personal differences with each other, they are <em>all</em> united by an intense hatred of Israel.</p>
<p>It is this understanding that drives them to choose violence over peace, and it is this understanding that will always foil those who act to downplay terrorist groups and who push Israel into a treaty with entities, like Fatah, that wish for her destruction.</p>
<p><em>Joe Kaufman is the Chairman of </em><a href="http://www.americansagainsthate.org/"><em>Americans Against Hate</em></a><em> and the founder of </em><a href="http://www.youngzionists.org/"><em>Young Zionists</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p><em> </em></p>
<p><em>Beila Rabinowitz, the Director of </em><a href="http://www.militantislammonitor.org/"><em>Militant Islam Monitor</em></a><em>, contributed to this report.</em></p>
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		<title>Hating Valentine’s</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jamie-glazov/hating-valentine%e2%80%99s/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hating-valentine%25e2%2580%2599s</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Feb 2010 05:14:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why jihadists and the radical Left both revile the day of love.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/valentines.gif"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-49991" title="valentine's" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/valentines.gif" alt="" width="450" height="381" /></a></p>
<p>This Sunday, February 14, is Valentine’s Day, the sacred day that intimate companions mark to celebrate their love and affection for one another. If you’re thinking about making a study of how couples celebrate this day, the Muslim world and the milieus of the radical Left are not the places you should be spending most, if any, of your time. Indeed, it’s pretty hard to outdo jihadists and “progressives” when it comes to the hatred of Valentine’s Day. And this hatred is precisely the territory on which <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/United-Hate-Romance-Tyranny-Terror/dp/1935071602">the contemporary romance</a> between the radical Left and Islamic fanaticism is formed.</p>
<p>The train is never late: every time Valentine’s comes around, the Muslim world reacts with ferocious rage, with its leaders doing everything in their power to quash the festivity that comes with the celebration of private romance. Imams around the world thunder against Valentine&#8217;s every year &#8212; and the celebration of the day itself is literally <em>outlawed</em> in Islamist states. The Saudis, for instance, ruthlessly punish the slightest hint of celebrating Valentine’s Day. Just a few days ago, the Kingdom and its religious “morality” police officially issued a stern warning that anyone caught <em>even thinking</em> about Valentine’s Day will suffer some of the most painful penalties of Sharia Law.</p>
<p>This is typical of the Saudis of course. As <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/1563/hating-valentines-day">Daniel Pipes has reported</a>, the Saudi regime takes a firm stand against Valentine’s every year, and the Saudi religious police monitor stores selling roses and other gifts. They have even arrested women for wearing red on that day. This time around, the narrative is no different: the Saudis have announced that, starting the week of Valentine’s and until February 15, it will <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/02/11/saudi-arabia-takes-action-to-safeguard-islams-primacy-in-the-kingdom/#more-31609">be illegal for a merchant to sell any item that is red</a>, or that in any way hints of being connected to Valentine’s Day.</p>
<p>As Claude Cartaginese <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/02/11/saudi-arabia-takes-action-to-safeguard-islams-primacy-in-the-kingdom/#more-31609">reports at Newsreal Blog</a>, any merchant found selling such items as red roses, red clothing of any kind (especially dresses), toys, heart-shaped products, candy, greeting cards or any items wrapped in red, must destroy them or face the wrath of Saudi justice.</p>
<p>Christian overseas workers living in the Kingdom from the Philippines and other countries <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/02/11/saudi-arabia-takes-action-to-safeguard-islams-primacy-in-the-kingdom/#more-31609">are taking extra precautions</a>, heeding the Saudis’ warning to them specifically to avoid greeting anyone with the words “Happy Valentine’s Day” or exchanging any gift that reeks of romance. A spokesman for a Philippine workers group <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/02/11/saudi-arabia-takes-action-to-safeguard-islams-primacy-in-the-kingdom/#more-31609">commented</a>: “We are urging fellow Filipinos in the Middle East, especially lovers, just to celebrate their Valentine’s Day secretly and with utmost care.”</p>
<p>The Iranian despots, meanwhile, are trying to make sure the Saudis don’t outdo them in suffocating Valentine’s Day. Iran’s “morality” police order shops to remove heart-and-flower decorations and images of couples embracing on this day &#8212; and anytime around this day. In Pakistan, the student wing of the fundamentalist Islamic party Jamaat-e-Islami has called for a complete ban on Valentine’s Day celebrations. Khalid Waqas Chamkani, a leader in the party, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2749667.stm">calls it a “shameful day.”</a></p>
<p>Typical of this whole pathology in the Islamic world was a development witnessed back on February 10, 2006, when activists of the radical Kashmiri Islamic group Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Community) <a href="http://www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=62679">went on a rampage</a> in Srinagar, the main city of the Indian portion of Kashmir. Some two dozen black-veiled Muslim women stormed gift and stationery shops, burning Valentine’s Day cards and posters showing couples together.</p>
<p>In the West, meanwhile leftist feminists are not to be outdone by their jihadi allies in reviling &#8212; and trying to kill &#8212; Valentine’s Day. Throughout all Women’s Studies Programs on American campuses, for instance, you will find the demonization of Valentine’s Day, since, as the disciples of Andrea Dworkin angrily explain, the day is a manifestation of how capitalist and homophobic patriarchs brainwash and oppress women and push them into spheres of powerlessness. As a person who spent more than a decade in academia, I was privileged to witness this grotesque attack and “deconstruction” of Valentine’s Day at close range. Feminist icons like Jane Fonda, meanwhile, help lead the attack on Valentine’s Day in society at large. As David Horowitz <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=15430">has documented</a>, Fonda has led the campaign to transform this special day into “V-Day” (“Violence against Women Day”) &#8212; which is, when it all comes down to it, a day of hate, featuring a mass indictment of men.</p>
<p>So what exactly is transpiring here? What explains this hatred of Valentine’s Day by leftist feminists and jihadis? And how and why does it serve as the sacred bond that brings the radical Left and Islam into its current feast of solidarity?</p>
<p>The core issue at the foundation of this phenomenon is that Islam and the radical Left both revile the notion of private love, a non-tangible and divine entity that draws individuals to each other and, therefore, distracts them from submitting themselves to a <em>secular </em>deity.</p>
<p>The highest objective of both Islam and the radical Left is clear: to shatter the sacred intimacy that a man and a woman can share with one another, for such a bond is inaccessible to <em>the order.</em> History, therefore, demonstrates how Islam, like Communism, wages a ferocious war on any kind of private and unregulated love. In the case of Islam, the reality is epitomized in its monstrous structures of gender apartheid and the terror that keeps it in place. Indeed, <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=852">female sexuality and freedom are demonized</a> and, therefore, forced veiling, forced marriage, <a href="../2009/10/02/female-genital-mutilation-islam-and-leftist-silence-by-jamie-glazov/">female genital mutilation</a>, honor killings and other misogynist monstrosities become mandatory parts of the sadistic paradigm.</p>
<p>The puritanical nature of totalist systems (whether Fascist, Communist, or Islamist) is another manifestation of this phenomenon. In Stalinist Russia, sexual pleasure was portrayed as unsocialist and counter-revolutionary. More recent Communist societies have also waged war on sexuality &#8212; a war that Islam, as we know, wages with similar ferocity. These totalist structures cannot survive in environments filled with self-interested, pleasure-seeking individuals who prioritize devotion to other individual human beings <em>over the collective and the state</em>. Because the leftist believer viscerally hates the notion and reality of personal love and “the couple,” he champions the enforcement of totalitarian puritanism by the despotic regimes he worships.</p>
<p>The famous twentieth-century novels of dystopia, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s <em>We</em>, George Orwell’s <em>1984</em>, and Aldous Huxley’s <em>Brave New World</em>,<em> </em>all powerfully depict totalitarian society’s assault on the realm of personal love in its violent attempt to dehumanize human beings and completely subject them to its rule. In Zamyatin’s <em>We</em>, the earliest of the three novels, the despotic regime keeps human beings in line by giving them license for <em>regulated</em> sexual promiscuity, while private love is illegal. The hero breaks the rules with a woman who seduces him &#8212; not only into forbidden love but also into a counterrevolutionary struggle. In the end, the totality forces the hero, like the rest of the world&#8217;s population, to undergo the Great Operation, which annihilates the part of the brain that gives life to passion and imagination, and therefore spawns the potential for love. In Orwell’s <em>1984</em>, the main character ends up being tortured and broken at the Ministry of Truth for having engaged in the outlawed behavior of unregulated love. In Huxley’s <em>Brave New World</em>, promiscuity is encouraged &#8212; everyone has sex with everyone else under regime rules, but no one is allowed to make a deep and independent private connection.</p>
<p>Yet as these novels demonstrate, no tyranny’s attempt to turn human beings into obedient robots can fully succeed. There is always someone who has doubts, who is uncomfortable, and who questions the secular deity &#8212; even though it would be safer for him to conform like everyone else. The desire that thus overcomes the instinct for self-preservation is erotic passion. And that is why love presents such a threat to the totalitarian order: it dares to serve itself. It is a force more powerful than the all-pervading fear that a totalitarian order needs to impose in order to survive. Leftist and Muslim social engineers, therefore, in their twisted and human-hating imaginations, believe that the road toward earthly redemption (under a classless society or Sharia) stands a chance <em>only</em> if private love and affection is purged from the human condition.</p>
<p>This is exactly why, forty years ago, as Peter Collier and David Horowitz document in <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/DESTRUCTIVE-GENERATION-Second-Thoughts-About/dp/0684826410/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1265950493&amp;sr=1-1">Destructive Generation</a>,</em> the Weather Underground not only waged war against American society through violence and mayhem, but also waged war <em>on private love within its own ranks.</em> Bill Ayers, one of the leading terrorists in the group, argued in a speech defending the campaign: “Any notion that people can have responsibility for one person, that they can have that ‘out’ &#8212; we have to destroy that notion in order to build a collective; we have to destroy all ‘outs,’ to destroy the notion that people can lean on one person and not be responsible to the entire collective.”</p>
<p>Thus, the Weather Underground destroyed any signs of monogamy within its ranks and forced couples, some of whom had been together for years, to admit their “political error” and split apart. Like their icon Margaret Mead, they fought the notions of romantic love, jealousy, and other “oppressive” manifestations of one-on-one intimacy and commitment. This was followed by forced group sex and “national orgies,” whose main objective was to crush the spirit of individualism. This constituted an eerie replay of the sexual promiscuity that was encouraged (while private love was forbidden) in <em>We</em>, <em>1984</em>,<em> </em>and <em>Brave New World.</em></p>
<p>Thus, it becomes completely understandable why leftist believers were so inspired by the tyrannies in the Soviet  Union, Communist China, Communist North Vietnam and many other countries. As sociologist Paul Hollander has documented in his classic <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Political-Pilgrims-Western-Intellectuals-Society/dp/1560009543/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1265950825&amp;sr=1-1">Political Pilgrims</a>,</em> fellow travelers were especially enthralled with the desexualized dress that the Maoist regime imposed on its citizens. This at once satisfied the leftist’s desire for enforced sameness and the imperative of erasing attractions between private citizens. The Maoists’ unisex clothing finds its parallel in fundamentalist Islam’s mandate for shapeless coverings to be worn by both males and females. The collective “uniform” symbolizes submission to a higher entity and frustrates individual expression, mutual physical attraction, and private connection and affection. And so, once again, the Western leftist remains not only uncritical, but completely supportive of &#8212; and enthralled in &#8212; this form of totalitarian puritanism.</p>
<p>This is precisely why leftist feminists today do not condemn the forced veiling of women in the Islamic world; <em>because they support all that forced veiling engenders</em>. It should be no surprise, therefore, that Naomi Wolf finds <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36177">the burqa “sexy.”</a> And it should be no surprise that Oslo Professor of Anthropology, Dr. Unni Wikan, found a solution for the high incidence of Muslims raping Norwegian women: the rapists must not be punished, but <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20646">Norwegian women must be veiling themselves.</a></p>
<p>Valentine’s Day is a “shameful day” for the Muslim world and for the radical Left. It is shameful because private love is considered obscene, since it threatens the highest of values: the need for a totalitarian order to attract the complete and undivided attention, allegiance and veneration of every citizen. Love serves as the most lethal threat to the tyrants seeking to build Sharia and a classless utopia on earth, and so these tyrants yearn for the annihilation of every ingredient in man that smacks of anything that it means to be human.</p>
<p>And so perhaps it is precisely on this Valentine’s Day that we are reminded of the hope that we can realistically have in our battle with the ugly and pernicious <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Unholy-Alliance-Radical-Islam-American/dp/089526076X">unholy alliance</a> that seeks to destroy our civilization. On this day, we are reminded that we have a weapon, the most powerful arsenal on the face of the earth, in front of which despots and terrorists quiver and shake, and sprint from in horror into the shadows of darkness, desperately avoiding its piercing light. That arsenal is love. And no Maoist Red Guard or Saudi fascist cop ever stamped it out &#8212; no matter how much they beat and tortured their victims. And no al-Qaeda jihadist in Pakistan or Feminazi on any American campus will ever succeed in suffocating it, no matter how ferociously they lust to disinfect man of who and what he is.</p>
<p>Love will prevail.</p>
<p>Happy Valentine’s Day to all of our Frontpage readers.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><strong>To get the whole story on Islam&#8217;s and the radical Left&#8217;s war on private love, read Jamie Glazov’s new book, <em><a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.amazon.com/United-Hate-Romance-Tyranny-Terror/dp/1935071602');" href="http://www.amazon.com/United-Hate-Romance-Tyranny-Terror/dp/1935071602">United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror.</a></em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/united.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-49993" title="united" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/united.jpg" alt="" width="350" height="515" /></a><br />
</em></strong></p>
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		<title>Iraq’s New Crisis</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/ryan-mauro/iraq%e2%80%99s-new-crisis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iraq%25e2%2580%2599s-new-crisis</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/ryan-mauro/iraq%e2%80%99s-new-crisis/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Jan 2010 05:04:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[accountability]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=47182</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A government ban of 500 election candidates threatens to derail the country’s political progress.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-47184" title="iraqi_prime_minister_nouri_al-maliki" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/iraqi_prime_minister_nouri_al-maliki.jpg" alt="iraqi_prime_minister_nouri_al-maliki" width="450" height="330" /></p>
<p>Iraq has steadily improved since the U.S. launched the “surge” of 2007. Security has increased, the economy has grown, democracy is taking hold, and cross-sectarian reconciliation is underway. All that could change, however, with the Iraqi government’s <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8461275.stm">decision</a>, supported by Prime Minister <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/17/world/la-fg-iraq-politics17-2010jan17">Nouri Maliki</a>, to ban 500 politicians for allegedly having ties to the outlawed Baath Party of the late Saddam Hussein.</p>
<p>On January 14, the Iraqi government’s Independent High Election Commission sided with the Justice and Accountability Commission in its decision to ban over 500 politicians for allegedly having ties to the Baath Party. The earliest reporting said that these were nearly all Sunni politicians, indicating that the Shiite government was trying to minimize the strength of its sectarian rival ahead of the parliamentary elections on March 7, but <em>Reuters</em> <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100120/wl_nm/us_iraq_baath_1">received</a> a copy of the list and found that two-thirds of those banned were Shiites. Many observers forget that, as Prime Minister Maliki has <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100119/wl_mideast_afp/iraqvote_20100119195936">pointed out</a> since the crisis began, 70 percent of the Baath Party membership was Shiite.</p>
<p>However, the effect is the greatest on the Sunnis, as some of their most prominent leaders have been kicked out of the political process without a public hearing. Among those banned are Defense Minister Abdulqadir al-Obeidi and Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni leader who left the Baath Party in 1977 but has opposed the decision to ban the party. Mutlaq is far from a pro-American liberal. He has long demanded a U.S. withdrawal, courts Baath supporters, and has <a href="http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&amp;id=4991">criticized</a> America for branding “honorable national resistance movements” as terrorists. Still, Sunnis will interpret a ban on him as an act of Shiite-orchestrated oppression against them.</p>
<p>Furthermore, there is an obvious double standard here. As the <em>Iraq the Model</em> blog explains:</p>
<blockquote><p>“While major existing partners in the political process are banned over alleged ties to the Ba’ath Party, the government is at the same time making deals with hostage killers like the group known as Asaib Ahl Al-Haq and is trying to persuade them to join the political process.”</p></blockquote>
<p>The ban is not necessarily sectarian in nature, but it is intended more to hurt the coalition of secular and religious Sunnis who have allied with former Prime Minister and secular Shiite Iyad Allawi to create a cross-sectarian, secular and anti-Iran political coalition that can challenge the ruling Shiite government and the more religious, pro-Iran parties. There were unconfirmed reports that this bloc was communicating with the Kurds about an alliance, which would make a decisive difference on election day.</p>
<p>Al-Maliki previously benefited politically when his Dawa Party ran on a non-sectarian, secular platform focused on security, and therefore is threatened by the ascent of a political bloc with similar credentials. Ahmed Chalabi, whose close ally is the head of the Justice and Accountability Commission, has thrown his lot in with the Iraqi National Coalition that includes pro-Iranian elements like the Sadrists and the Supreme Islamic Council. Al-Maliki originally formed his State of Law coalition to compete with this bloc, but has decided to ally with his former competitors following a <a href="http://www.thememriblog.org/blog_personal/en/23509.htm"></a><a href="http://www.thememriblog.org/blog_personal/en/23509.htm"></a><a href="http://www.thememriblog.org/blog_personal/en/23509.htm">meeting</a> with Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani.</p>
<p>To make matters worse, the Najaf province has reacted to a triple bombing by saying they are going to <a href="http://www.thememriblog.org/blog_personal/en/23932.htm">expel</a> all residents with Baath ties and their families with very little notice for them to prepare. Current numbers are not available, but one report said that there were 130,000 Baathists in the province before Operation Iraqi Freedom began. Many Iraqis joined the Baath Party out of necessity, and relatively few fought to defend the overthrow of its rule. This extreme measure will almost certainly result in violence, and is seen in Iraq as an attempt to stifle secular and Sunni votes. Al-Maliki’s Dawa Party surprisingly defeated the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council in Najaf during last year’s provincial elections.</p>
<p>There is open talk of a Sunni boycott off the parliamentary elections, which would create a potentially insurmountable division between the sects. Should secular forces join in, then the division expands into political ideology. One Sunni politician who has been banned, Mustafa Kamal Shibeeb, is openly warning that “If there is no balance, there will be violence.”</p>
<p>Neither violence nor a boycott will help the secularists or the Sunnis &#8212; or indeed anyone in the country wanting stability and progress. The correct approach would be for the banned politicians to turn it into political ammunition and encourage even greater turnout in order to prevent a monopoly on power in the hands of Al-Maliki and the pro-Iranian bloc he has formed an electoral alliance with. Unfortunately, the disenfranchisement of the Sunnis and the secular forces could lead to a disillusion with democracy and provoke strife that could quickly turn out of control.</p>
<p>Kenneth Pollack and Michael E. O’Hanlon <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/opinion/18pollack.html?ref=opinion">warn</a> that this “is just the kind of seemingly small problem that could unravel the entire political fabric of Iraq.” Their statement came prior to the latest developments in Najaf. Iraq is about to face its biggest crisis since the astronomic levels of violence and near-civil war that preceded the surge. How the Iraqis handle it will have a profound impact on the West’s security and the U.S. plan to finally withdraw its forces.</p>
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		<title>Inside the Green Revolution – by Jacob Laksin</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/inside-the-green-revolution-%e2%80%93-by-jacob-laksin/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=inside-the-green-revolution-%25e2%2580%2593-by-jacob-laksin</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/inside-the-green-revolution-%e2%80%93-by-jacob-laksin/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 04 Jan 2010 05:17:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=44523</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Political dissident Amir Fakhravar discusses his brother’s arrest by the Iranian regime and the democratic uprising that threatens its rule. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-44525" title="091228211523IranProtestAPPhoto" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/091228211523IranProtestAPPhoto.jpg" alt="091228211523IranProtestAPPhoto" width="430" height="341" /></p>
<p>As a student dissident in Iran, <a href="http://fakhravar.com/">Amir Fakhravar</a> was jailed and tortured for his pro-democracy political activism. Since moving to the United States in 2006, he has continued to take part in Iran’s opposition movement. He serves as the secretary general of the <a href="http://www.cistudents.com/about/">Confederation of Iranian Students</a> and the president of the Iranian Enterprise Institute. Last week, Fakhravar’s 18-year-old-brother, Arash, was arrested by the Iranian regime. After three days of absence, the Fakhravar family learned that Arash had been arrested, beaten up and taken to the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran, then placed in solitary confinement in an undisclosed location. Amir Fakhravar spoke to <em>Front Page</em> about his brother’s arrest, Iran’s growing “green revolution,” and the best strategy for ending the mullahs’ three-decade rule.</p>
<p><em><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-44528" title="art_amir_fakhravar_cnn" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/art_amir_fakhravar_cnn.jpg" alt="art_amir_fakhravar_cnn" width="292" height="219" /></em></p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Can you tell us what happened with your brother Arash? What do you know of his current whereabouts?</p>
<p><strong>Fakhravar: </strong>Arash is in the very middle of this fight. He became politically active in high school and now he goes to all the anti-government demonstrations. My mother always says, “Please talk to him.” But my response is: This is what he has chosen. We need to pay the price for freedom. The day after the Ashura festival, the intelligence services called my mother in Tehran. They said, “We know all about your son. He’s been involved in protests, making videos. Be careful or they will arrest him.” The day after the phone call, they arrested him. My mother didn’t know anything for three days. She called the police, but they didn’t know anything. So she went to the Revolutionary Court with my sister and they saw him there. He was beaten up and blindfolded, wearing a bloody shirt and handcuffs. They tried to take a picture but could not. Right now, he is still in the hands of the Revolutionary Court.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-44531 aligncenter" title="DSC01294" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/DSC01294.JPG" alt="DSC01294" width="336" height="448" /><em>In the line of fire: Amir Fakhravar’s 18-year-old brother Arash is among the thousands of opposition demonstrators beaten up and arrested by the Iranian government.</em></p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> What are you doing to free Arash and what can those outside of Iran do to help?</p>
<p><strong>Fakhravar: </strong>His best chance of survival is organizing a media campaign for his release. In Iran, my family cannot do anything. But from the outside we can do quite a lot. We created a <a href="http://www.facebook.com/people/Amir-Fakhravar/100000126867757">Facebook page</a> for him that now has 2,000 members. We can also write letters to the news media and human-rights groups to cover his case. This is probably the best thing we can do. We need to put more pressure on the government. They are afraid of free information.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Your brother, like you, is active in the “green revolution” in Iran. How do you see what is happening inside the country right now?</p>
<p><strong>Fakhravar: </strong>What has happened is that something many thought was a small movement has become a revolution. After the summer election, the government tried to strike fear into the people, but millions came out into the streets in Iran’s major cities. After seven months, they are showing that they are not going to give up. The recent death of Ayatollah Montazeri was a good excuse for this new generation to oppose the government because he had fought [Ayatollah] Khomeini for twenty years. The latest demonstrations have taken place during the Ashura festival, which is a symbol of the Islamic Republic and Shiism. This is a sign that they want to get rid of the mullahs and they are not afraid anymore. [Politician and presidential challenger] Mir Hossein Mousavi has said it best: We are not leading these people. They are leading themselves.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> So where does the leadership come from?</p>
<p><strong>Fakhravar: </strong>This movement doesn’t have a leader, but things like Facebook help. We use social media to help organize events inside Iran. For instance, we are planning a demonstration in February to coincide with the 31<sup>st</sup> anniversary of the Iranian revolution. Earlier this year, I was giving a speech before Congress and I said, “Iranians don’t want a war. All we need are cell phones, cameras and computers.” Some of the Senators laughed at that. But it has happened. We are close to a cyber revolution in Iran.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> What are the aims of this revolution? What do the participants hope to achieve?</p>
<p><strong>Fakhravar: </strong>Most of the demonstrators are young – 70 percent are under the age of 35 – and they are not motivated by partisan politics. They are not communists or Marxists or monarchists; they are not involved with political parties and they don’t want to be. Via the internet, they know a lot about American culture – perhaps more than many people here – and they want the things it represents: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. They are secular and they want a country where Islam is kept separate from the government. A free, secular, democratic Iran – that is their dream</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> What do you make of the “<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/30/iran-protests">pro-government” rallies</a> that have been held in recent days? The government has tried to portray them as representing the true voice of the Iranian people.</p>
<p><strong>Fakhravar: </strong>Actually,<strong> </strong>this what my brother was protesting when he was arrested. He was at a counter protest. For thirty years, the Iranian government has used petrodollars to create the illusion of popular support. These protests are designed to show that the government is strong and that it has real legitimacy. But the protests are staged. What happens is that the government will bus in people, usually poorer people from the countryside. They will give them food, and arrange for them to see the sites. For some of those people, it was their chance to see Tehran for the first time. They are being used to create these protests. But it’s not working. They had one of the pro-government protests in a big city near Tehran. Just 150 people showed up.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> How would you rate the Obama administration’s response to the protests in Iran? President Obama, for instance, has condemned the brutality of the regime, but the U.S. <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/31/a-new-way-on-iran-%e2%80%93-by-jacob-laksin/">has not meaningfully supported the opposition</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Fakhravar</strong>: I think Obama just did not have any idea of what to do about Iran. So he decided that the U.S. would not become involved and would watch the situation unfold. This is not a football game, Mr. President. The Iranian government is killing the people, but during the past seven months the United States has done nothing positive to support them. It has done something negative, though. The Obama administration recognized the Ahmadinejad government as legitimately elected, which it is not. It also said it wanted to hold talks with Ahmadinejad. That was the wrong decision. It gave the regime legitimacy and hurt the democratic movement a lot.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>What should the administration do?</p>
<p><strong>Fakhravar:</strong> First, it needs new advisors on Iran. Second, it needs to pass sanctions. By that I mean smart sanctions. The kind of targeted sanctions against the Revolutionary Guard that have been proposed will not be effective and will probably be watered down by China and Russia. Smart sanctions – on oil and gasoline – can help us. Petrodollars are the lifeline of the Iranian regime. If they can’t pay the salaries of the Revolutionary Guard, within two months they will be powerless because most of the Revolutionary Guard don’t believe in the mullahs. They believe in money. Right now, they are killing people for money. Take away the money away and you can collapse the regime.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Some observers have called for a preemptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. Do you think that’s the right strategy?</p>
<p><strong>Fakhravar:</strong> Not right now. At this moment, I believe it would be unhelpful. When you have an army in the streets – like Iran’s new generation – it is a sign that the mullahs’ reign is over. A strike on Iran would allow the regime to play the victim and would give it legitimacy. That is the last thing we need. To those who support a strike, my message is: Give us time. This June, there were four million people on the street in Tehran. It was the biggest anti-government protest in Iran’s history. Even during the 1979 revolution, you did not see that many people in the street. This is the Iranians’ fight against the mullahs, and they believe they can bring them down. If they had a little help from free countries, especially the United States, they could succeed right now.</p>
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