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

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247690</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What it really means to "empathize" with one's enemies. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/aunnamed.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247691" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/aunnamed.jpg" alt="aunnamed" width="332" height="212" /></a>In my book, <i>Tolerism: The Ideology Revealed (second revised edition, Mantua Books), </i>I quote the great philosopher of the post-World War 2 era, Karl Popper, who formulated the following dilemma about tolerance (which has become known as “the Popper Paradox”):</p>
<blockquote><p>If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. … We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.</p></blockquote>
<p>And so, I write that excessive tolerance of the intolerant illiberals has become a full-blown ideology which I call Tolerism.   Tolerism, in my view, elevates the virtue of tolerance over the fundamental Biblical value of Justice.</p>
<p>Tolerism also includes a type of cultural Stockholm Syndrome, where, as in the case of some hostages or abused women, some begin to identify with their captors or abusers.</p>
<p>It consists often of psychological denial, and it accepts United Nations Human Rights Councils led by Iran, Syria and other leading human rights abusers. Tolerism reflects a moral equivalency between terrorists and victims, and even a seeming masochism where we seek out painful retribution as a kind of catharsis for our supposed misdeeds.  Tolerist “compassion,” especially in the work of Karen Armstrong, assumes that there is equivalency in compassion between the “frequently unkind West” and Islam &#8212; which unfortunately in its present state is not at all compassionate to Coptic Christians, Yzedis, Jews, gays, women who seek freedoms, or even minority Muslim groups like the Ahmadis.</p>
<p>I believe that the ideology I call tolerism is expanding ever more rapidly beyond mere tolerance and unilateral compassion.   It is now becoming an excessive <i>empathy</i> where the quest to share some other group’s feelings is beginning to cause our liberals to accept the false facts and illiberal values of our enemies and in fact sometimes to convert or submit to Islam.  We are seeing some young people convert to Islam and go so far as to join the forces of ISIS.  We are even seeing young Western women convert to Islam and marry men whose attitudes toward women are almost barbaric. Submission indeed.</p>
<p>Ms. Clinton, of course, served as Secretary of State during the Obama administration’s new Middle Eastern doctrine of giving more “respect” to the Muslim world in word and deed.  As President Obama stated in Cairo during his first major overseas appearance:</p>
<blockquote><p>I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.</p></blockquote>
<p>Hillary herself has a close relationship with Huma Abedin, who is connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, as are her parents.  Ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and allowing its operatives into the Obama administration would be seen as treasonous if the country was not so immersed in Tolerism.</p>
<p>Clinton is not apologetic in the least over her relationship with Abedin. Now that Clinton feels that she should be President at a time when Islamist threats all over the world have only increased during the Obama years, she feels that her “feminine” skills give her the special qualification to right the ship she helped to tip over during her tenure as Secretary of State.</p>
<p>So, in her recent speech at Georgetown University, she contended that when women participate in peace processes, “often overlooked issues such as human rights, individual justice, national reconciliation, economic renewal are often brought to the forefront.”</p>
<p>Clinton’s talk (for which she apparently was paid $300,000) was at the launch of the Action Plan Academy, an organization which aims to explore how countries can craft strategies to help women rise into leadership roles on security issues and provide training and workshops.</p>
<p>“Today marks a very important next step,” Clinton told an audience of diplomats and other officials from all over the world, “shifting from saying the right things to doing the right things, putting into action the steps that are necessary not only to protect women and children but to find ways of utilizing women as makers and keepers of peace.”</p>
<p>Of the hundreds of peace treaties signed since the early 1990s, between or within nations, she said, fewer than 10 percent had any female negotiators and fewer than 3 percent had women as signatories.</p>
<p>“Is it any wonder that many of these agreements fail between a few years?” Clinton asked, implying, without any evidence at all, that women produce better peace agreements than men.   If I was paying part of the $300,000 I would really have expected a better discussion of past female leaders like Ms. Bhutto in Pakistan (who transferred nuclear technology to North Korea), Golda Meir in Israel,  and Margaret Thatcher in Britain,  and current leaders Angela Merkel in Germany and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina. America itself has seen women leaders in security matters – former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Condoleeza Rice (and Hillary Clinton), National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and first female Ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick.</p>
<p>Instead of discussing any of them, she raised the idea that two women were involved at a high level in brokering peace in the 40-year struggle between the government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and other Islamic groups in the southern island of Bangsamoro (meaning Muslim land), which has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced more than a million..</p>
<p>Unfortunately, whether these two women were in fact instrumental or not, the issue of the Philippines submitting to Muslim rule over areas of its impoverished, yet potentially oil-rich, south, after 40 years of conflict and the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of over a million people, is factually quite complex.  Some argue that it was external pressure that helped this second peace initiative on the same territory for which the first peace treaty failed; and most recognize that this second one is very much up in the air as to its sustainability.</p>
<p>Under the proposal, Islamic Sharia law would apply to Muslims in the region, but the country&#8217;s justice system would (hopefully) continue to apply to non-Muslims. The Moro group has renounced the terrorist acts of extremist groups, but at least three smaller Muslim rebel groups oppose the autonomy deal and have vowed to continue fighting for a completely separate Muslim homeland.</p>
<p>And one wonders, once the Muslim groups are granted jurisdiction over limited areas of government, whether this is viewed by them as a first step to future demands for full Sharia law.   But Hillary is not interested in waiting to see how it turns out before attributing it to the presence of some women working on the negotiations.</p>
<p>This is a complex problem that Hillary obviously simplifies for partisan political purposes, i.e. the female vote in America.  Some commentators feel that the potential natural resource riches available to foreign business concerns is what eventually pushed the Philippine Government into the deal, rather than any great feminine talents as Hillary contends.  Moreover, some believe that the United States and other Western governments have backed the autonomy deal partly to prevent the insurgency from breeding extremists who could threaten their own countries.</p>
<p>But the topic of feminine talents for security and diplomacy and her preference to cite Muslims as examples rather than American female icons is not the main concern caused by Ms. Clinton’s remarks.   The really scandalous part of the speech is when she cited feminine skills as a component of something she called “Smart Power” as follows (emphasis added):</p>
<p>“This is what we call Smart Power, using every possible tool…leaving no one on the sidelines, <b>showing respect even for one’s enemies</b>, trying to understand, and insofar as is psychologically possible, <b>empathize with their perspective and point of view</b>, helping to define the problems [and] determine a solution, that is what we believe in the 21st century will change the prospect for peace,” she said.</p>
<p>What does it mean for a possible future President to seek to show “respect” for one’s enemies?</p>
<p>Respect, according to the Oxford Dictionary is defined as “a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.”</p>
<p>And here is where we begin to climb down into a terrible ethical hole.   Islamists, with their history of beheadings, other murders, torture, persecution of ethnic and religious minorities, and gays, and their forced genital mutilation of young girls, their abuse of women and their general disregard for individual human rights, do not deserve our “deep admiration” and do not show any great “qualities” or “achievements” &#8211; unless your idea of an achievement is grabbing vast areas of Iraq and Syria from under Obama’s nose, without his bothering to object until it was too late.</p>
<p>Let’s dig a little deeper also into the whole concept of “empathy” for one’s enemy.   The idea of empathizing with the enemy was first popularized by the film, <i>Fog of War, </i>about former Defense Secretary in the Johnson administration, Robert McNamara, who made it one of the eleven lessons he learned. The concept of empathy is also something that has received the study of humanist psychologists, who are well-meaning in their attempts to aid interpersonal relationships and help people understand and therefore overcome misunderstandings in difficult relationships.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Carl Rogers, an important American academic psychologist of the twentieth century promoted the concept of empathy, or being empathetic as a process leading one to perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the &#8220;as if&#8221; condition. Thus it means to sense the hurt or the pleasure of another as he senses it and to perceive the causes thereof as he perceives them, but without ever losing the recognition that it is “as if I were hurt or pleased and so forth.  If this &#8220;as if&#8221; quality is lost, then the state is one of identification.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Rogers reasoned that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>An empathic way of being with another person means entering the private perceptual world of the other and becoming thoroughly at home in it. It involves being sensitive, moment by moment, to the changing felt meanings which flow in this other person, to the fear or rage or tenderness or confusion or whatever that he or she is experiencing. It means temporarily living in the other&#8217;s life, moving about in it delicately without making judgements;  &#8230;It means frequently checking with the person as to the accuracy of your sensings, and being guided by the responses you receive. You are a confident companion to the person in his or her inner world.</i></p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>To be with another in this way means that for the time being, you lay aside your own views and values in order to enter another&#8217;s world without prejudice. In some sense it means that you lay aside your self; this can only be done by persons who are secure enough in themselves that they know they will not get lost in what may turn out to be the strange or bizarre world of the other, and that they can comfortably return to their own world when they wish.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">One can only conclude that real “political” empathy is for only the strongest, most intelligent intellectuals and politicians of our time, who are most secure in their liberal values and their constitutional limits and duties.  If the person is not so strong, this journey into what can be “a strange or bizarre world” may result in the person feeling more comfortable in <b>that</b> world or identifying with that world.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Feeling more comfortable in that world may result in something way more than tolerant empathy, and may result in conversion or submission.   This is not a job for postmodernists, but only for those with the clearest and most certain confidence in American values.  Without clear values, and a fixed sense of right and wrong, and good versus evil, postmodernist empathy will make it harder and harder for the empathizer to return to their own world, especially if his President has said that America is no more tolerant than Islam, that American standards of justice are no better than Islam’s and that countries that have banished all Jews and most Christians share the same view of dignity of all persons.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">And so, when the President stated that America and the Muslim world share mutual respect (i.e. admiration); and that they share the same principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings; then one wonders if empathy will more likely lead to submission.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">If Hillary Clinton calls for more respect and empathy for the enemy, she is a poor choice to lead a country as important as America is to the notion of individual freedoms and human rights based on Judeo-Christian values.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Since the election of Obama, we have a very large problem on our hands.   The moral and cultural relativism and postmodernism of our university campuses are now in the White House.  Can the historical America survive another four or eight years of tolerism and empathy before it, too, like some European countries, begins to submit to Islamist values, with acceptance of Sharia law as an alternative to its Constitution, Muslim religious teachings in public schools, and tolerance for “no-go” areas?    America failed its young by failing to properly vet Obama’s background and associations before electing him;   this time, before Americans place Hillary Clinton in the White House they had better study carefully the notions of tolerance, empathy and submission if America is to remain a great country.</p>
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		<title>Did Muhammad Approve of Torture?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/did-muhammad-approve-of-torture/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=did-muhammad-approve-of-torture</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/did-muhammad-approve-of-torture/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Dec 2014 05:30:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mohammad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Qasim Rashid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tolerance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Torture]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247411</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An Ahmadi Muslim whitewashes the Prophet.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247438" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/behead.jpg" alt="behead" width="331" height="251" />Did Muhammad approve of torture? For Ahmadi Muslim leader Qasim Rashid, the answer is “no” – a “no” so unequivocal that Rashid holds up Muhammad as an example for the U.S. – newly sullied, in his view, by the just-released torture report – to follow in its treatment of prisoners of war.</p>
<p>This all sounds like a mainstream media dream: a moderate Muslim invoking Muhammad to rebuke the U.S. for its torture practices. The only problem with this gloriously multicultural scenario is that Qasim Rashid is a relentlessly disingenuous writer. Previously he has whitewashed <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/12/fox-news-publishes-piece-whitewashing-jihad-violence-and-proselytizing-for-ahmadi-islam">the reality of jihad violence</a> and Sharia oppression; dissembled about <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/02/taqiyya-about-taqiyya-in-the-washington-post.html">the Qur’an’s sanction of deception of unbelievers</a>; lied about <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/08/wapo-do-critics-actually-read-the-koran-uh-yeah.html">the presence of violent passages in the Qur’an</a>; lied about <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/03/the-islamic-solution-to-stop.html">the Qur’an’s sanction of beating disobedient women</a>; lied about <a href="http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2012/08/huffington-post-whitewashes-sharia.html">the nature of Sharia</a>; and <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/03/us-muslim-calls-for-restrictions-on-free-speech-at-event-hosted-by-obama-appointee.html">called for limitations on the freedom of speech</a> and expression to outlaw behavior and speech some Muslims may find offensive. When challenged about the “facts” he has presented, he (like virtually all other Islamic supremacists) responds with furious ad hominem contempt, but no substance.</p>
<p>But he tells the mainstream media establishment what it wants to hear and fosters the complacency and ignorance of non-Muslims regarding jihad terror, and so his abject inability to defend his preposterous claims is of no import: he continues to be given a platform all over. Here he takes advantage of the controversy over the just-released torture report to claim that Muhammad rejected torture — while cynically refraining from mentioning all the evidence to the contrary.</p>
<p>In “5 Lessons From Prophet Muhammad to Stop Torture” in the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/qasim-rashid/5-lessons-from-prophet-mu_b_6302084.html">Huffington Post</a> (of course) last Wednesday, Rashid claimed:</p>
<blockquote><p>…Were the world to adopt Muhammad’s example of compassion, tolerance, and civility, such a torture report would not exist, because torture itself would not exist.</p></blockquote>
<p>Yes, because Muhammad would never have approved of harsh interrogation techniques, would he? Well, let’s see: Muhammad’s earliest biographer, Ibn Ishaq, records that when Muhammad was trying to determine whether or not his favorite wife, Aisha, was guilty of adultery, he asked a slave, Burayra: “So the apostle called Burayra to ask her, and Ali got up and gave her a violent beating, saying ‘Tell the Apostle the truth.&#8217;” (Ibn Ishaq 734) Muhammad is not recorded as having rebuked Ali for violently beating this woman.</p>
<p>Nor was that an isolated incident, as we shall see.</p>
<p>Rashid continues:</p>
<blockquote><p>Here are five lessons the CIA, ISIS and humanity at large can learn from Prophet Muhammad on how to stop torture.</p>
<p><strong>1. Stop engaging in pre-emptive war</strong></p>
<p>Prophet Muhammad forbade pre-emptive war, all forms of terrorism, violently revolting against a government no matter how unjust, and even went to the extent of forbidding civil disobedience lest it lead to violence.</p></blockquote>
<p>All forms of terrorism? But Muhammad is reported as having said: “I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest meanings, and I have been made victorious with terror…” (Sahih Bukhari 4.52.220). One may argue that he didn’t mean modern-day terrorism, but given the other incidents that I will recount in this article, the claim that he forbade “all forms of terrorism” is fanciful in the extreme.</p>
<p>While not mentioning that hadith or the Qur’an verse telling Muslims to “strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah” (8:60), Rashid plows on:</p>
<blockquote><p>When Muslims faced incessant and brutal persecution in Mecca from 610-620, Muhammad forbade any violent or incendiary response to the governing authorities. He offered his companions three options — remain and bear the persecution, try to change laws through peaceful argumentation, or leave.</p>
<p>Many Muslims left — some to Abyssinia where they sought and received refuge under the righteous Christian King Neghus. Others left to Medina, where they forged a peaceful alliance with the Jews and soon established a unified secular state governed by the Charter of Medina. Fighting was then only permitted in self-defense once Muslims were pursued and attacked, just as the <a href="http://www.alislam.org/quran/search2/showChapter.php?submitCh=Read+from+verse%3A&amp;ch=22&amp;verse=40">Qur’an 22:40</a> allows: “Permission to fight is given to those against whom war is made, because they have been wronged — and Allah indeed has power to help them.” Once in defensive war, the Qur’an only permits killing active combatants, as elaborated next.</p></blockquote>
<p>Rashid omits all mention of the Qur’an’s teaching on offensive fighting. Ibn Ishaq explains the progression of Qur’anic revelation about warfare. First, he explains, Allah allowed Muslims to wage defensive warfare. But that was not Allah’s last word on the circumstances in which Muslims should fight. Ibn Ishaq explains offensive jihad by invoking a Qur’anic verse: “Then God sent down to him: ‘Fight them so that there be no more seduction,’ i.e. until no believer is seduced from his religion. ‘And the religion is God’s’, i.e. Until God alone is worshipped.” The Qur’an verse Ibn Ishaq quotes here (2:193; cf. also 8:39) commands much more than defensive warfare: Muslims must fight until “the religion is God’s” — that is, until Allah alone is worshipped.</p>
<p>The great medieval scholar Ibn Qayyim (1292-1350) also outlines the stages of the Muhammad’s prophetic career: “For thirteen years after the beginning of his Messengership, he called people to God through preaching, without fighting or Jizyah, and was commanded to restrain himself and to practice patience and forbearance. Then he was commanded to migrate, and later permission was given to fight. Then he was commanded to fight those who fought him, and to restrain himself from those who did not make war with him. Later he was commanded to fight the polytheists until God’s religion was fully established.”</p>
<p>In other words, he initially could fight only defensively — only “those who fought him” — but later he could fight the polytheists until Islam was “fully established.” He could fight them even if they didn’t fight him first, and solely because they were not Muslim.</p>
<p>Nor do all contemporary Islamic thinkers believe that that command is a relic of history. According to a 20th century Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh ‘Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid, “at first ‘the fighting’ was forbidden, then it was permitted and after that it was made obligatory.” He also distinguishes two groups Muslims must fight: “(1) against them who start ‘the fighting’ against you (Muslims) . . . (2) and against all those who worship others along with Allah . . . as mentioned in Surat Al-Baqarah (II), Al-Imran (III) and At-Taubah (IX) . . . and other Surahs (Chapters of the Qur’an).” (The Roman numerals after the names of the chapters of the Qur’an are the numbers of the suras: Sheikh ‘Abdullah is referring to Qur’anic verses such as 2:216, 3:157-158, 9:5, and 9:29.)</p>
<p>As an Ahmadi, Rashid may reject this understanding of the Qur’an and jihad, but it does exist, and he must know it exists. To ignore it entirely and give the impression that it doesn’t exist is cynical and deceptive.</p>
<p>And his cynicism and deceptiveness don’t end there. He continues:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>2. Stop justifying collateral damage</strong></p>
<p>Drone strikes, indiscriminate bombing, and collateral damage have each sadly become part of the American military experience. Prophet Muhammad categorically condemned any act of violence in which civilians, property, or places of worship were harmed.</p>
<p>Following Muhammad’s guidance, <a href="http://www.alislam.org/topics/khilafat/abubakar.html">Abu Bakr the first Khalifa</a> commanded to the Muslim army about to embark on battle,</p>
<p>“O people! I charge you with ten rules; learn them well… for your guidance in the battlefield! Do not commit treachery, or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy’s flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.”</p>
<p>As history’s first major figure to condemn collateral damage in word and in deed, Prophet Muhammad demonstrated a high precedent that even the most advanced nations today cannot match. Today’s leaders can end the war atrocities engulfing our world by following Muhammad’s example of justice and compassion.</p></blockquote>
<p>Collateral damage: “It is reported on the authority of Sa’b b. Jaththama that the Prophet of Allah (may peace be upon him), when asked about the women and children of the polytheists being killed during the night raid, said: They are from them.” (Muslim 4321)</p>
<p>There is still more. Rashid says:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>3. Stop indefinite detention for POWs</strong></p>
<p>The Afghan and Iraq wars are long over. Yet, America continues to maintain numerous POWs in Guantanamo Bay, and likely in other undisclosed locations. Prophet Muhammad categorically condemned this practice. After permitting Muslims to only fight in self-defense, the Qur’an 47:5 next commands Muslims to release POWs immediately as war comes to an end.</p></blockquote>
<p>Actually, Qur’an 47:5 says: “Soon will He guide them and improve their condition.” That is not in any clear sense a command to release POW’s immediately as war comes to an end. Ibn Abbas in his commentary on this verse explains: “He will give them success to perform righteous deeds (and improve their state) and improve their condition and intention; it is also said that this means: He will save them in the Hereafter and improve their state and accept their works on the Day of Judgement.” To whom is Ibn Abbas referring? Not to prisoners of war, but (according to his gloss on 47:4) to “those who are killed in obedience of Allah on the Day of Badr, referring here to the prophetic Companions.” Ibn Kathir interprets the verse in a similar way, without any reference to freeing prisoners of war at the end of the war.</p>
<p>Without mentioning this anomaly, Rashid goes on:</p>
<blockquote><p>Maintaining POWs well after the war has ended creates distrust and animosity among allies and enemies alike, and is beneath the standard of a civilized country. Rather than usurp human rights with indefinite detention, rather than provide propaganda material to extremists, rather than violate its own Constitution and international law, we should all learn from Prophet Muhammad’s example, and justly release POWs.</p>
<p><strong>4. Stop mistreating POWs</strong></p>
<p>POWs, during and after the war must be treated with the dignity all human beings deserve. Historian Sir William Muir well records how Prophet Muhammad commanded his companions to treat POWs:</p>
<p>The Refugees had houses of their own, received the prisoners with kindness and consideration. “Blessings on the men of Medina!” said one of these in later days: “they made us ride, while they themselves walked afoot; they gave us wheaten bread to eat when there was little of it, contenting themselves with dates.” It is not surprising, therefore, that some of the captives, yielding to these influences, declared themselves Believers, and to such their liberty was at once granted. The rest were kept for ransom. Such as had nothing to give were liberated without payment; but a service was required… To each were allotted ten boys, to be taught the art of writing; and the teaching was accepted as a ransom.</p>
<p>Mind you, this was at a time in Arabia when Muslims captured during battle suffered the fate of torture and death. Yet, in response, Muslims demanded the ransom of education, fed POWs with their own food and sheltered them with their own shelter. Once war ended, Muhammad immediately released all POWs. This is how he brought lasting peace to a former Arabian wasteland engulfed in constant war.</p></blockquote>
<p>Mistreating POW’s: “When Muhammad saw Hamzah he said, ‘If Allah gives me victory over the Quraysh at any time, I shall mutilate thirty of their men!’ When the Muslims saw the rage of the Prophet they said, ‘By Allah, if we are victorious over them, we shall mutilate them in a way which no Arab has ever mutilated anybody.” (Al-Tabari, vol. 7, p. 133; cf. Ibn Ishaq 387)</p>
<p>And: “Anas reported: Eight men of the tribe of ‘Ukl came to Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) and swore allegiance to him on Islam, but found the climate of that land uncogenial to their health and thus they became sick, and they made complaint of that to Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him), and he said: Why don’t you go to (the fold) of our camels along with our shepherd, and make use of their milk and urine. They said: Yes. They set out and drank their (camels’) milk and urine and regained their health. They killed the shepherd and drove away the camels. This (news) reached Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) and he sent them on their track and they were caught and brought to him (the Holy Prophet). He commanded about them, and (thus) their hands and feet were cut off and their eyes were gouged and then they were thrown in the sun, until they died.” (Sahih Muslim 4131)</p>
<p>Rashid concludes with a dishonest coup de grace:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>5. Stop justifying torture</strong></p>
<p>Nothing justifies the torture the CIA meted out to those 119 human beings. Indeed, in response to those arguing safety, the report concludes that America was not made any safer as a result of these barbaric practices. This was just one among many reasons Prophet Muhammad categorically forbade torture.</p>
<p>For example, as recorded in Sahih Muslim, “Hisham ibn Hakim passed by some people in Syria who had been made to stand in the sun and had oil poured over their heads. He asked, “What is this?” It was said,</p>
<p>“They are being punished for not paying taxes.” Hisham said: I heard Prophet Muhammad say: “Verily, Allah will torture those who torture people in this world.” Likewise, Jabir ibn Abdullah reported that Prophet Muhammad commanded: “Do not torture the creation of Allah the Exalted.”</p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="http://www.alislam.org/library/books/TheBlessedModelAndCaricatures.pdf">Prophet Muhammad’s compassion extended beyond humans</a> as he also specifically forbade torturing animals, declaring, “A woman was punished because of a cat she had imprisoned until it died; thus, she entered Hellfire because of it. She did not give it food or water while it was imprisoned, neither did she set it free to eat from the vermin of the earth.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Muhammad, according to Islamic tradition, didn’t just justify torture. He ordered it: “Kinana b. al-Rabi`, who had the custody of the treasure of B. al-Nadir, was brought to the apostle who asked him about it. He denied that he knew where it was. A Jew came (T. was brought) to the apostle and said that he had seen Kinana going round a certain ruin every morning early. When the apostle said to Kinana, ‘Do you know that if we find you have it I shall kill you?’ he said Yes. The apostle gave orders that the ruin was to be excavated and some of the treasure was found. When he asked him about the rest he refused to produce it, so the apostle gave orders to al-Zubayr b. al-Awwam, ‘Torture him until you extract what he has,’ so he kindled a fire with flint and steel on his chest until he was nearly dead. Then the apostle delivered him to Muhammad b. Maslama and he struck off his head, in revenge for his brother Mahmud.” (Ibn Ishaq 515).</p>
<p>After his tour de force of disingenuousness, Rashid concludes:</p>
<blockquote><p>It is not a lack of intelligence, but a lack of morality that permitted this barbaric act of torture to occur at all. The CIA, ISIS, and indeed the world at large can learn volumes about compassion, justice, mercy, and morality from Prophet Muhammad, the man who successfully <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw3R8xc1TQ0">brought peace to a warring world</a>.</p></blockquote>
<p>The world is warring all over today because of Muhammad’s teachings. It is a peculiar lack of morality that would create this deceptive piece, with its calculated omissions and frankly false conclusion. If Rashid is asked about this post, he will sneer that it is not peer-reviewed; he will not answer any of its substantive refutations of his dishonest claims. He cannot do so — both because the traditions about Muhammad don’t bear out his claims, and because of his own intellectual and moral dishonesty.</p>
<p>Qasim Rashid apparently doesn’t want the world to know that Muhammad commanded and approved of torture. He wants people to think that he forbade it. The effect of this will be to foster ignorance and complacency about the jihad threat. The blood of the next victims tortured by Islamic jihadists will cry out to Qasim Rashid from the ground on which it is spilled.</p>
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		<title>Obama’s Muslim Easter and Willful Ignorance</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/obamas-muslim-easter-and-willful-ignorance/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-muslim-easter-and-willful-ignorance</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Apr 2014 04:56:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Easter]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Governance by wishful thinking. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/518202451-President-Obama-Offers-Easter-and-Passover-Message.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-224124" alt="518202451-President-Obama-Offers-Easter-and-Passover-Message" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/518202451-President-Obama-Offers-Easter-and-Passover-Message-450x330.jpg" width="315" height="231" /></a>In his Easter message last Saturday, Barack Obama asserted that the “common thread of humanity that connects us all &#8211; not just Christians and Jews, but Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs &#8211; is our shared commitment to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Even though he was registered as a Muslim in primary school in Indonesia and recounts in his first autobiography that he got in trouble there for making faces in Qur’an class, Obama apparently recalls little of the contents of the Qur’an. For if he did, he would know that it tells Muslims “take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors” (5:51), calls them “the most vile of created beings” (98:6), and calls the patriarch Abraham an “excellent example” for telling his unbelieving relatives: “There has arisen between us and you enmity and hatred forever unless you believe in Allah and Him alone” (60:4). It also says: “Muhammad is the apostle of Allah. Those who follow him are merciful to one another, and harsh to the unbelievers” (48:29).</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Enjoining mercy to those who share one’s religious beliefs and harshness to those who do not is hardly tantamount to loving one’s neighbor as oneself, and this sharp dichotomy between believers and unbelievers is not just found in some random Qur’an passages to which no one pays attention. It runs all through Islamic scripture, doctrine and law. It is even an accepted principle in Islam that the life of a non-Muslim is worth less than that of a Muslim: a manual of Islamic law certified by Cairo’s prestigious al-Azhar university (from which Obama addressed the Islamic world in June 2009) as “conforming to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community” declares: “The indemnity for the death or injury of a woman is one-half the indemnity paid for a man. The indemnity paid for a Jew or Christian is one-third the indemnity paid for a Muslim. The indemnity paid for a Zoroastrian is one-fifteenth that of a Muslim.” (</span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">‘Umdat al-Salik</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, o4.9)</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Iranian Sheikh Sultanhussein Tabandeh echoed and amplified that point in his</span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Muslim Commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: </i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">“Since Islam regards non-Muslims as on a lower level of belief and conviction, if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim &#8212; then his punishment must not be the retaliatory death, since the faith and conviction he possesses is loftier than that of the man slain…Islam and its peoples must be above the infidels, and never permit non-Muslims to acquire lordship over them.”  </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">While this devaluing of the non-Muslim’s life is based on teachings of the Qur’an and Sunnah, there is nothing in Islam that teaches that non-Muslims should be accorded the same rights and dignity as Muslims in an Islamic state.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">There is no indication that Obama knows about such Islamic teachings, but even if he did, it is unlikely that he would say anything, since, after all, he has said that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam” – and in Islamic law, “slander” is not telling a falsehood about someone, but telling a truth about someone that he does not want known. And after over five years of Obama’s presidency, it is abundantly clear that one thing he does not want Americans to know is that there are texts and teachings of Islam that Islamic jihadists use to justify violence and supremacism, and that jihadis are still trying to murder Americans in accord with those teachings.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As I detail in my book</span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </i><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1621572048"><i>Arab Winter Comes to America: The Truth About the War We’re In</i></a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, this willful ignorance at the highest levels has endangered Americans more than once, making for murderous attacks that could have and should have been prevented. The most notorious of these are the Boston Marathon bombing and the Fort Hood massacre. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Two years before the Boston bombing, Russian intelligence agents told the FBI that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a “follower of radical Islam” who had tried to join “underground groups” in Dagestan. That is tantamount to saying that Tsarnaev was an Islamic jihadist, which should have been enough for the FBI to keep him under constant or at least regular surveillance. It did not – and not coincidentally, right around the time the Russians gave the feds this information, the Obama administration (under pressure from Muslim groups with links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood) mandated the scrubbing of counter-terror training materials of all mention of Islam and jihad (and the dismissal of FBI trainers who spoke about the motives and goals of jihad terrorists, including me). Agents who still knew how to evaluate the Russian intel were probably afraid that to do so, in the prevailing politically correct climate, would have been career suicide.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In the same way, Fort Hood jihad murderer Nidal Malik Hasan rose through Army ranks even as he justified suicide bombing and spouted hatred for America, and he did so with extraordinarily positive recommendations. In an evaluation dated March 13, 2009, just short of eight months before his jihad attack, Hasan’s superiors said that he should be put into a position “that allows others to learn from his perspectives” and declared that his “unique insights into the dimensions of Islam” and his “moral reasoning” could be of “great potential interest and strategic importance to the U.S. Army.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And indeed, Hasan’s insights into Islam are of great strategic importance to the U.S. Army, but not in a way that Army brass is inclined to accept or admit. To do so would harm “diversity” in the military. And that, apparently, is more important than making sure that there isn’t another jihad massacre.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">A large-scale change in the political and media culture is vitally necessary for the U.S. to deal realistically with the jihad threat. But it is not on the horizon. Instead, the willful ignorance and wishful thinking that Obama manifested yet again in his Easter message rule the day. And that means only that there will be more jihad massacres.</span></p>
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		<title>Arctic Jihad</title>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 18 Mar 2014 04:05:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Fjordman]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Radicalism climbs to Europe's northernmost regions. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/IMG_0921-1024x768.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-221221" alt="IMG_0921-1024x768" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/IMG_0921-1024x768-450x334.jpg" width="315" height="234" /></a>Finnmark is the northernmost county in Norway, as well as the northernmost part of continental Europe. Apart from a few Arctic islands such as the Norwegian-controlled archipelago of Svalbard, the next stop is the North Pole. Even in the near-Arctic region of Lapland in northern Norway, Sweden and Finland, you can now encounter significant numbers of </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.finnmarken.no/nyheter/ost_finnmark/article7131570.ece" target="_blank">Muslim</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> immigrants from as far away as Somalia or Pakistan.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In 2013, it was announced that a specialist abattoir in northern Norway had slaughtered the country’s first ever </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" title="" href="http://www.thelocal.no/20131202/norway-produces-its-first-ever-halal-reindeer-meat" target="_blank">halal reindeer</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> meat, with a view to selling it to top-end restaurants as far afield as Dubai. Mehtab Afsar, the General Secretary of the Islamic Council of Norway and one of those who oversaw the slaughter, was pleased with this.</span></p>
<p>The problem is, halal meat is not the only thing available once Islam enters a given territory.</p>
<p>In <a title="" href="http://www.thelocal.no/20140224/norway-terror-threat-to-rise-in-2014" target="_blank">February 2014</a>, Lieutenant-General Kjell Grandhagen from the Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS) warned that the terror threat against Norway is rising due to the return of battle-hardened militant Muslims who return after participating in Jihadist activities during the civil war in Syria. Benedicte Bjørnland, the head of the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST), in early March 2014 warned that Norway had &#8220;<a title="" href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2014/03/04/nyheter/innenriks/pst/politiets_sikkerhetstjeneste/trusselvurdering/32133101/" target="_blank">failed</a>&#8221; as a society due to the dozens of young people becoming radicalized and going abroad to fight in conflict areas such as Syria.</p>
<p>Tromsø is the largest city in northern Norway, as well as the world’s northernmost university town. There was strong public <a title="" href="http://www.nordlys.no/nyheter/article5351286.ece" target="_blank">resistance</a> a few years ago when the sizable <a title="" href="http://www.alnor.no/en_about_alnor.htm" target="_blank">Muslim community</a> in Tromsø wanted to build a mosque there with financial support from Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>Those who currently travel to Syria from all over Western Europe include Muslim immigrants from many different countries, as well as a few white converts to Islam. In Norway, many of the volunteers come from the Oslo region, where the bulk of the local Muslims live. However, it has been confirmed by the security services that some of the Syria-bound Jihadists come from as far north as <a title="" href="http://www.nordlys.no/nyheter/article7219756.ece" target="_blank">Troms</a> county, far above the Arctic Circle.</p>
<p>Jørn Holme, as the then head of the Police Security Service (PST), stated in 2007 that native Norwegians are “<a title="" href="http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/1.3585847" target="_blank">stupid</a>” and inexperienced concerning diversity and Multiculturalism. This makes them confuse Islam with Islamism. Since native Norwegians are allegedly stupid, Holme feared a lynch mob against Muslims in the event of an Islamic terror attack in the country.</p>
<p>Knut Storberget of the Labour Party agreed with Holme on this issue, fearing that Islamic terrorist attacks might create “stigmatization” of Muslims. Storberget served as the Minister of Justice and the Police in the cabinet of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg from October 2005 until November 2011.</p>
<p>Notice how these two individuals, who were at that time in charge of their country’s security, seemingly feared potential verbal abuse by Muslim immigrants more than the possibility that their own countrymen might get killed by Muslims.</p>
<p>Hugh Fitzgerald, an insightful critic of Islam, in 2007 called for the resignation of PST leader Jørn Holme over his comments and for suggesting that Islam is no more violent than Christianity. In Fitzgerald’s view back then, in order to improve the security situation in Norway Jørn Holme “<a title="" href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2007/09/fitzgerald-the-head-of-norways-security-service-a-bit-stupid-yes-but-not-as-regards-diversity.html" target="_blank">should be</a> immediately fired. He should be replaced by someone with a solid grasp of Islam, and therefore of the permanent threat that Islam represents to the legal and political institutions of Norway, to its social arrangements, to free inquiry and to art, to the physical well-being of Infidels.”</p>
<p>What Jørn Holme and Knut Storberget did not say in 2007 is that an attack carried out by a Muslim man had already taken place in Norway and very nearly succeeded in killing many people. For some reason, this is not always classified as terrorism, even though it had many of the hallmarks of being an Islamic Jihadist terror attack. Moreover, this event did not lead to widespread stigmatization of Muslims in Norway. The writer <a title="" href="http://orjas.blogg.no/" target="_blank">Elin Ørjasæter</a> later <a title="" href="http://www.uriasposten.net/archives/40099" target="_blank">published</a> an insightful reader’s comment about this subject.</p>
<p>On September 29 2004, <a title="" href="http://www.vg.no/nyheter/spesial.php?id=924" target="_blank">Brahim Bouteraa</a>, a rejected Muslim asylum seeker from Algeria, entered the cockpit of an airplane in northern Norway and attempted to crash it. The plane was flying from the town of Narvik to the town of Bodø in Nordland County, north of the Arctic Circle. The lives of all those on board were narrowly saved solely due to the resolute intervention from a couple of male passengers. The plane was literally seconds away from crashing when the pilot finally managed to regain control over it, 30 meters above the ground.</p>
<p>One of those who intervened was Odd Eriksen, a politician from the Labour Party. After this incident, he served briefly as Minister of Trade and Industry in the government of PM Jens Stoltenberg. Eriksen is no coward and deserves full credit for taking action. He physically struggled with the attacker and tried to hold him down, but he didn’t fully succeed in doing so. It was only when another passenger, Trond Frantzen, intervened that they finally managed to get the Muslim attacker under control and gave the pilots enough breathing space to save the plane from crashing.</p>
<p>Afterwards, the two men who attempted to overpower the attacker said very different things about how they had experienced this dramatic episode. Eriksen, who tried but failed to hold the hijacker down, stated that he “felt so sorry” for the Muslim asylum seeker who very nearly killed him. Frantzen, on the other hand, the man who actually succeeded in restraining the attacker with the aid of Eriksen, stated that at that moment he was “<a title="" href="http://www.ranablad.no/nyheter/article1270731.ece" target="_blank">fully intent on</a> killing him.” Frantzen grabbed the man by the throat and shouted “Lie still or I will kill you!” straight to his face. At this moment, Trond Frantzen was thinking about the Islamic terror attacks and airplane hijackings of September 11 in the USA three years earlier. He was also looking at his 15-year-old daughter Marlene at the back of the plane, and desperately trying to save her life.</p>
<p>The interesting thing is that if you ask random Norwegians about this attack, more people will probably remember Odd Eriksen than Trond Frantzen. Odd Eriksen is a good Social Democrat who feels sorry for everybody, even those who try to murder him. He is a man of good intentions, exactly as many educated Scandinavians see themselves or want to see themselves.</p>
<p>Trond Frantzen, on the other hand, is the hero who actually saved the day and ultimately the lives of all those on board the plane. However, he is a man who would use anger, aggression and lethal force to protect his own life and the life of his daughter. He is therefore a man of action who is sadly out of place in the age of “dialogue,” a relic from a past of traditional masculinity.</p>
<p>As one Norwegian reader commented, we have become a society nearly devoid of aggression. We feel sorry for those who try to murder us. This makes us very vulnerable when faced with brutal aggressors. We as a society have to recognize that force and aggression are sometimes needed to protect what matters most to us.</p>
<p>Another point worth emphasizing is that this Muslim man, Brahim Bouteraa, has been partly written off as crazy, even though he was judged sane by psychiatrists and sentenced to <a title="" href="http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/artikkel.php?artid=269821" target="_blank">17 years</a> in prison. He was described as a <a title="" href="http://blog.bearstrong.net/archive/weblog/001434.html" target="_blank">very devout</a> Muslim who wanted to become <a title="" href="http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/artikkel.php?artid=247553" target="_blank">an imam</a> and open a mosque in the town of Narvik. Bouteraa had been member of a <a title="" href="http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/artikkel.php?artid=268808" target="_blank">militant</a> Islamic group in his native Algeria. Before his attack in Norway, the security services (PST) had been warned about his “<a title="" href="http://pub.nettavisen.no/nettavisen/innenriks/article353603.ece" target="_blank">religious excesses</a>.” He cited some texts in Arabic, possibly Koranic verses, immediately before the attempted hijacking, and then screamed “<a title="" href="http://pub.nettavisen.no/nettavisen/english/article284934.ece" target="_blank">I’m going</a> to crash this plane.”</p>
<p>Yet despite all of this, there is a tendency in Norwegian mass media, if they talk about this case at all (they rarely do), to view it as an isolated incident involving a mentally disturbed individual as perpetrator. This trend is, sadly, not unique to Scandinavia. It is endemic all over the Western world today.</p>
<p>In the USA, Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army Major, murdered 13 people and wounded 29 others during an attack at Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5 2009. There is every indication that this pious Muslim man, who shouted “Allahu akhbar!” during his massacre, carried out an Islamic Jihadist attack. Despite this, the Obama Administration labeled the shooting a case of “<a title="" href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/fort_hood_diversity_rules_JYs7ebOl6EQmoxkv6cROCI" target="_blank">workplace violence</a>,” refusing any mention of Islam or Jihad.</p>
<p>After a trial where he was found guilty on all accounts, Nidal Malik Hasan was sentenced <a title="" href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/08/28/jury-set-to-deliberate-fate-fort-hood-gunman/" target="_blank">to death</a> on August 28, 2013. He has openly and repeatedly given a specifically Islamic justification for his mass murder and said he did it on behalf of Islamic militants abroad.</p>
<p>It is easier to pretend that the Jihadist threat does not exist, of course. Yet for how long can we keep up this illusion, while continuing to import en masse Muslims who long for Jihad?</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>Diversity and Too Much Diversity</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/howard-rotberg/diversity-and-too-much-diversity/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=diversity-and-too-much-diversity</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Feb 2014 05:20:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Howard Rotberg]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Haneen Zoabi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jerry Seinfeld]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Political Correctness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tolerance]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=218326</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[From Jerry Seinfeld to Haneen Zoabi.    ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/jerry-seinfeld.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-218417" alt="jerry-seinfeld" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/jerry-seinfeld.jpg" width="280" height="175" /></a>Has “political correctness” now taken us to the point where every area of human endeavor must reflect gender, race and religious diversity?</p>
<p>Two interesting stories caught my eye yesterday about two very different sources blowing back at the enforced diversity that the left-liberal do-gooders are seeking to impose.</p>
<p>One was the great Jewish comedian Jerry Seinfeld.   Melissa Clyne, writing in <i>Newsmax</i>, notes that in an interview with CBS This Morning, Seinfeld responded to a question about whether his new web series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, is stacked with white men like himself.   Seinfeld thought the question was silly. He asked whether “people think it’s the census or something?”  “We represent the actual pie chart of America? Who cares? I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that.”</p>
<p>According to Jerry:  “Everyone else is calculating, is this the exact right mix? To me, it’s anti-comedy. It’s more about PC nonsense then, are you making us laugh?”</p>
<p>But it wasn’t long until the PC Police started to pounce.  Lily Rothman of <i>Time</i> magazine in a column told Seinfeld that he was on the losing side of this issue:</p>
<blockquote><p>“A continued lack of diversity on his show would prove his detractors’ point — and make him look racist and sexist, even if he’s merely failing to actively think about matters of race and sex — while increased diversity would seem to acknowledge that the “nonsense” isn’t so nonsensical at all. There’s no longer a way for a prominent comedian with Seinfeld’s level of influence to be so glib about the issue — especially given that of his 26 guests, only two have been women and another two have been nonwhite. (There have been no minority women guests so far.)”</p></blockquote>
<p>Jews have been traditionally been overrepresented in comedy in America.  In 1979, for example, <i>Time</i> estimated that whereas Jews made up only 3 percent of the American population, fully 80 percent of professional comedians were Jewish.  It probably stems from the Jewish habit of dealing with misery and adverse circumstances by making jokes.   I thought that was a great contribution to American culture;  unfortunately, being funny is no longer the main criterion for being in a comedy, so ethnic groups that have dealt with adversity through violence rather than jokes now have an equal right to be represented in comedy as elsewhere.   Poor Jerry, something has changed and he doesn’t get it.</p>
<p>As a Canadian who must live with so-called Human Rights Commissions adjudicating on diversity issues, I have seen the future that Seinfeld does not understand;  it is not pretty.</p>
<p>Take a look at the second story, which comes from what I have called the “first front” in the Islamist war against Western values – Israel.   With all its security problems in its very hostile neighbourhood where Muslim children are incited in kindergarten against the Jewish State, one would think there would be little interest in the diversity obsession.</p>
<p>However, in the <i>Jerusalem Post, </i>reporter Lahav Harkov writes about a controversy that arose when the Knesset’s Labor, Health, and Welfare Committee was discussing a bill to give Arab Christians separate representation from Arab Muslims on the Advisory Committee for Equal Opportunity in Employment.</p>
<p>Arab Muslim Member of the Knesset Jamal Zahalka took offense and suggested that the bill’s proponent, rather than seeking to promote diverse membership on the Committee was intending to “wickedly divide the Arab public, which is oppressed anyway.”</p>
<p>Christian IDF Officers Forum leader Lt. (res.) Shadi Halul, however, said he is proud to be a Christian and that he wants and deserves to be recognized as such.  Furthermore he called the Arab Muslim objectors “racists”.</p>
<p>This was too much for Arab Muslim member  Haneen Zoabi   This woman, who has a B.A. from Haifa University and an M.A. from Hebrew University (and who worked as a school inspector for the Israeli Ministry of Education), at the Knesset swearing-in ceremony on February 24, 2009, left the room because she objected to the singing of <a title="Hatikva" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatikva" target="_blank">Hatikva</a>, Israel&#8217;s national anthem;  she has voiced support for <a title="Iran" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran" target="_blank">Iranian</a> acquisition of nuclear weapons and participated in the <a title="Gaza flotilla raid" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_flotilla_raid" target="_blank">Gaza flotilla</a>, on board the <i><a title="MV Mavi Marmara" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Mavi_Marmara" target="_blank">MV Mavi Marmara</a>.</i></p>
<p>Zoabi was ejected from the Knesset building by Committee chairman Haim Katz for implying the Christian Halul deserves violence, after she declared to him: <b>“You are a coward! Go to the streets of Nazareth and Kafr Kana, say what you just said, and they’ll give you the response you deserve.”</b></p>
<p>The proposed legislation sought to expand the advisory committee by giving the 160,000 Christians in Israel their own representative and adding another Druze member.   (Druze are an offshoot of <a title="Ismailism" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismailism" target="_blank">Ismailism</a>, a branch of <a title="Shia Islam" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shia_Islam" target="_blank">Shia Islam</a>, whose adherents participate in the Israeli army, and the Israeli Judiciary and Foreign Service.)</p>
<p>The panel would also have representation from the ultra-religious, new immigrants, reservists, older people, and women.</p>
<p>So we see that attempts at diversity, rather than implementing fairness and harmony, will become nothing more than alternate battlefields in the culture war that has befallen us.  The left liberals who think that respect for diversity is the recipe for their tolerant paradise on earth will soon come up against the hard reality of the culture war where the Islamists merely <i>use </i>our tolerance, until they get power -and then will end all diversity representation just like they will end all tolerance.</p>
<p>And as Jerry Seinfeld would say, there is nothing funny about that, and it is, as he puts it, “<i>anti-comedy</i>”.</p>
<p><i>Howard Rotberg is the author of The Second Catastrophe:  A Novel about a Book and its Author and TOLERism:  The Ideology Revealed.  He is president of Mantua Books, an imprint dedicated to fighting cultural relativism and protecting fundamental liberties:  </i><a href="http://www.mantuabooks.com" target="_blank">www.mantuabooks.com.</a></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>Shahina Siddiqui’s Muslim Contribution to Canada</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/janice-fiamengo/shahina-siddiquis-muslim-contribution-to-canada/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=shahina-siddiquis-muslim-contribution-to-canada</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 04 Nov 2013 04:15:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Janice Fiamengo]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islamic History Month Canada]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Shahina Siddiqui]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tolerance]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The Chair of Islamic History Month Canada is no exemplar of tolerance.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/siddiqui.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-209517" alt="siddiqui" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/siddiqui.jpg" width="306" height="172" /></a>Last week I <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/janice-fiamengo/islamic-history-month-comes-to-manitoba-canada/">called</a> Manitoba’s announcement of Islamic History Month “an extraordinary act of dhimmitude.”</p>
<p>Of course, that’s not what the Chairwoman of Islamic History Month Canada, Shahina Siddiqui, calls it. She says that it is an opportunity for Muslims to “<a href="http://news.gov.mb.ca/news/index.html?item=19253">celebrate</a>, inform, educate and share with fellow Canadians the Muslim cultural heritage” in order to “help build a more inclusive, compassionate and multicultural Canada.”</p>
<p>Let’s put aside the fact that for some Canadians, the Muslim cultural heritage, with its appalling record of violence, hatred, bigotry, and barbarity, is something we’d rather not share (for evidence-based  confirmation of this description, consider the work of <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Understanding-Dhimmitude-Bat-Yeor/dp/1618613359/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1383507104&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=understanding+dhimmitude">Bat Ye’or</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Ishmaels-House-History-Muslim-Lands/dp/0771035691/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1383507175&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=in+ishmael%27s+house">Sir Martin Gilbert</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Lust-Knowing-Robert-Irwin/dp/0140289232/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1383507202&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=for+lust+of+knowing">Robert Irwin</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/American-Jihad-Terrorists-Living-Among/dp/0743234359/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1383507239&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=american+jihad">Steven Emerson</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Islamic-Imperialism-ebook/dp/B00EZ22C8M/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1383507267&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=islamic+imperialism">Efraim Karsh</a>, and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Why-I-Am-Not-Muslim/dp/1591020115/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1383505206&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=ibn+warraq+books">Ibn Warraq</a>). Let’s simply consider Ms. Siddiqui’s own record as an advocate for Islam.</p>
<p>In her personal history as a Muslim spokesperson, Siddiqui is a vivid illustration of a certain kind of Muslim contribution to Canada, of which I offer a few highlights.</p>
<p>Ms. Siddiqui is litigious. In 2004, she was responsible for a lengthy human rights complaint against <a href="http://www.vosizneias.com/19879/2008/08/31/winnipeg-canada-muslim-advocates-discrimination-allegations-against-bnai-brith-drags-on/">B’nai Brith Canada</a> for its hosting of an anti-terrorism conference for police, firefighters, and paramedics. Siddiqui lodged the complaint, which was investigated and ultimately dismissed by the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, because she felt the B’nai Brith-sponsored event was biased against Muslims. She had not actually attended the workshop, which was given by an internationally respected counter-terrorism organization, but she had spoken to a couple of people who did attend—and felt that in focusing on <i>Muslim terrorism</i> (gasp!), the event promoted hatred.</p>
<p>Given that in our time, Muslims are a <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2013/04/lessons-from-the-fbi-most-wanted-terrorist-list">majority</a> of those who commit acts of terrorism and that they usually do so specifically in the name of Islam, it is hard to imagine how any legitimate counter-terrorism event could address terrorism without a sustained focus on Islam; nonetheless, Siddiqui took advantage of Canada’s hate speech legislation to hound B’nai Brith into a costly defence, and the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, to its everlasting shame, saw fit to pursue the complaint for <i>five years</i> before finally dismissing it for lack of evidence.</p>
<p>This is a Siddiqui <i>modus operandi</i>, it seems, labeling anti-terror activism as “<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/film-s-screening-sparks-religious-controversy-1.600325">hate propaganda</a>” and seeking to censor it. In 2006, she led the charge against the Canadian premiere of <i>Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West</i>, a sober documentary film detailing, mostly through interviews with Islamists and secret tape recordings in mosques, the “<a href="http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0606/glick060606.php3">indoctrination to jihad</a>” taking place amongst Muslims worldwide. In an attempt to have criminal charges laid against the Jewish sponsors of the film, Siddiqui filed a complaint with the Winnipeg police hate crimes unit, stating that she wanted police “to be aware who the sponsors are and what they are doing.” It is not clear if Siddiqui actually <i>watched</i> the film before calling for the criminal prosecution of its sponsors.</p>
<p>Ms. Siddiqui has also made notable contributions to discussions of Islam. When Aqsa Parvez was killed by her father, Muhammad, and brother, Waqas, in 2007 because she <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2010/robert-spencer/the-lonesome-death-of-aqsa-parvez/">rejected Islamic behavior codes</a>, Siddiqui was distressed by news coverage assuming it was an “Islamic thing” (though Muhammad Parvez himself <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/father-son-plead-guilty-to-aqsa-parvez-murder-1.905089">believed</a> it was). She <a href="http://www.issaservices.com/issa/pressrelease_prd.html">wrote</a> in her capacity as Executive Director of the Islamic Social Services Association that Parvez’s murder was no different from any other case of family violence in Canada, and she castigated an unsympathetic host culture for failing to “support” the Parvez family: “And herein lies the crux of the matter: How do you maintain pride in your roots if your values are demonized, ridiculed, and condemned? What, if any, recourse does a parent have when the values of their family are labeled as un-Canadian and unjust by members of society, from schools to service providers and the justice system?”</p>
<p>The implication that Aqsa’s father killed her because his “values” were “demonized” by non-Muslims does not address why so many Pakistani fathers <i>in Pakistan</i>—where presumably their Muslim values <i>are</i> affirmed—also kill their daughters in alarming numbers, but it does neatly make the case that non-Muslim Canadian society owes Muslim-Canadians (more public funding for Muslim social services, in this case) in order not to be held responsible for future violence.</p>
<p>Ms. Siddiqui also offered clarification on a more recent Muslim-Canadian controversy: the Toronto school cafeteria (Valley Park Middle School) that becomes a mosque-space closed to non-Muslims every Friday, and in which girls and boys are separated and menstruating girls placed at the back of the room. In an opinion <a href="http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/2011/07/12/secular_extremists_ignore_tradition_of_diversity.html">article</a> in the Toronto <i>Star</i>, Siddiqui dismissed objections to the mosque, which began operation in 2011, ascribing the opposition to “secular extremists and gender Nazis,” and claiming that the controversy “reflects to what depths we have sunk when it comes to fear and hatred of Islam and Muslims.” It seems that when it comes to “demonizing” those with different “values,” Ms. Siddiqui can slug it out with the best of them.</p>
<p>Siddiqui’s defensiveness about Islam is understandable, if regrettable. Many people, after all, would be more than willing to outlaw criticism of their own and to have “offensive” people punished by the state. Siddiqui has learned well how to work the Canadian system: file human rights complaints, accuse critics of hate crimes, and claim that her cultural practices have been viciously misrepresented. Her aggressive style of advocacy may, from a Muslim-supremacist point of view, make her the ideal person to head up Islamic History Month Canada.</p>
<p>But an exemplar of tolerance she is definitely not. Siddiqui’s attitude to the non-Muslim majority is suggested in an <a href="http://www.soundvision.com/info/socialservice/shahina.asp">interview</a> she gave to <i>Sound Vision</i>, an Islamic website (a tip of the hat <a href="http://blazingcatfur.blogspot.ca/2009/03/wonders-another-islamist-front.html">to Blazing Cat Fur</a> for alerting me to this source). In discussing why she established the Islamic Social Services Association, she explained the dilemma of many Muslim women in Canada as follows:</p>
<p>“Majority of the abused Muslim women, if you ask them, why didn’t they turn for help, all they needed to do was call 911, they’ll say that ‘I don’t want him to go to jail, I don’t want to end up in a shelter where my children and I will be exposed to an un-Islamic lifestyle.’ So there is a fear that if they go to mainstream social services, they won’t be able to preserve their faith and their children will be lost in mainstream society. So they’ll choose the lesser of two evils.”</p>
<p>It is surely telling that Siddiqui’s account of Muslim revulsion at non-Muslim society contains no hint of disapproval or objection. Is this a woman who advocates the <i>integration</i> of Muslims into Canadian society? On the contrary, Siddiqui seems to sympathize with an attitude that sees beating or even death at the hands of a violent husband as “a lesser evil” to mixing with non-Muslim society, where one’s “children will be lost.”</p>
<p>With such comments and actions as evidence, it’s hard to feel that Shahina Siddiqui models the Canadian qualities of “inclusion” and “compassion” that she identified in her Islamic History Month press release. On the contrary, her comments imply a conviction that Muslim culture is superior to Euro-Canadian culture and that Canadians must adapt to Muslim values and doctrines or be judged guilty of criminal hatred. Thanks for “sharing,” Ms. Siddiqui—but no thanks.</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>EU Unveils Crackdown on Free Speech</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/eu-unveils-planned-crackdown-on-free-speech/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=eu-unveils-planned-crackdown-on-free-speech</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Oct 2013 04:48:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Bawer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[big brother]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[european union]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[intolerance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[thought crime]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tolerance]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=209010</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Threatens monitoring, prosecution and punishment of thought crimes. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/1370580514.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209011" alt="1370580514" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/1370580514-450x300.jpg" width="270" height="180" /></a>The first thing I ever wrote about Islam was an <a href="http://www.bu.edu/partisanreview/archive/2002/3/bawer.html">essay</a> for <i>Partisan Review </i>entitled “Tolerating Intolerance,” which was published a few months after 9/11. My argument, in brief, was that Islam is not just a religion but an ideology that teaches an extreme and violent intolerance – and that Europeans had a right to protect the freedom of their societies by implementing well-informed immigration and integration policies. Now the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation (ECTR), founded in 2008 and consisting largely of former European presidents or prime ministers, has issued a report whose thrust is – and I quote – that there&#8217;s “no need to be tolerant to the intolerant.” But the<br />
argument of the report – which was presented to the European Parliament in late September and takes the form of a “Model Statute for Tolerance” that the ECTR hopes to see enacted by all EU member states, is light-years away from the one I made all those years ago in <i>Partisan Review</i>. The ECTR&#8217;s concern is not with addressing the importation into Europe of Islamic intolerance but, rather, with addressing the purported intolerance of Europeans toward (among other things) imported Islam.</p>
<p>If you want an idea of where the ECTR is coming from, check out a recent <a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/benjamin-ward/divided-we-fall-intolerance-in-europe-puts-rights-at-risk">article</a>, “Divided We Fall: Intolerance in Europe Puts Rights at Risk,” by Benjamin Ward of Human Rights Watch. Here&#8217;s how Ward starts out:</p>
<blockquote><p>An Afghan migrant is stabbed in the heart on the streets of Athens. Black-shirted paramilitaries linked to Hungary’s third-largest political party march through a Roma neighbourhood shouting, “You will die here.” A neo-Nazi gang commits a string of murders of Turkish immigrants in Germany. An ideologue driven by hatred of “multiculturalism” kills 67 mostly young people on a Norwegian Island….It may be comforting to see these incidents as isolated, disconnected or driven by local events. But the truth is more discomforting: hatred and intolerance are moving into the mainstream in Europe.</p></blockquote>
<p>Never mind intolerance <i>by </i>Muslims. Even to speak of <i>that</i> intolerance is to be, well, intolerant. Ward slams Silvio Berlusconi for suggesting in 2010 that reducing immigration into Italy would lower crime rates, and vilifies Angela Merkel for saying that Germans “feel tied to Christian values” and that immigrants “who don’t accept them don’t have a place here.” Ward&#8217;s picture of a continent where the principal threats to life and liberty are nativist bigots who torment innocent gypsies and slaughter peaceable Muslims is a fantasy. But Ward&#8217;s not alone in promulgating it. On the contrary, this funhouse-mirror picture underlies every current attempt by the EU and its affiliates to shut down free speech, including, as Soeren Kern <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4036/eu-intolerant-citizens%20">reports</a>, “the EU&#8217;s ongoing work towards a new &#8216;Equal Treatment Directive,&#8217;” which is the malignant framework within which the ECTR&#8217;s report was presented.</p>
<p>“There is no need to be tolerant to the intolerant.” The sentence is immediately succeeded, in the ECTR&#8217;s “Model Statute,” by the following statement: “This is especially important as far as freedom of expression is concerned: that freedom must not be abused to defame other groups.” The report goes on to prescribe comprehensive guidelines for the surveillance, monitoring, prosecution, and punishment of such “abuses” of “freedom of expression.” As European Dignity Watch, a Brussels-based NGO, <a href="http://www.europeandignitywatch.org/day-to-day/detail/article/double-standards-on-tolerance-promoted-in-european-parliament.html%20">puts it</a> in a blistering commentary, the ECTR&#8217;s “understanding of tolerance” is “highly problematic,” with the term itself being defined “vaguely” (as “respect for and acceptance of the expression, preservation and development of the distinct identity of a group”) and employed in a way that is riddled with “double standards.” Nor could the ECTR&#8217;s recommended edicts be much more sweeping: it proposes that speech be subjected to controls of a sort unheard of in the modern West, that groups be placed above individuals, that European law recognize the concept of “group libel” and punish it as a crime, that the burden of proof be reversed in cases of allegedly “intolerant” speech about groups, that certain “vulnerable and disadvantaged groups” be given “special protection” (“some animals,” wrote Orwell, “are more equal than others”), that juveniles found guilty of speech crimes against groups “be required to undergo a rehabilitation program designed to instill in them a culture of tolerance” (re-education camps, anyone?), that schools and the media be pressured to indoctrinate “tolerance” (as defined, needless to say, by the ECTR), and that an elaborate enforcement and judiciary apparatus in the form of National Tolerance Monitoring Commissions and “special administrative unit[s]” subordinate to European nations&#8217; respective Ministries of Justice.</p>
<p>Many European countries have been prosecuting anti-Islamic hate speech for some time now. But the ECTR&#8217;s report makes it clear that a number of highly placed people on the continent aren&#8217;t satisfied with the degree to which speech has already been stifled. (I&#8217;m not surprised at the participation of former Swedish PM Göran Persson in this perfidious project, but I didn&#8217;t expect to see former Spanish PM José María Aznar, whom I have previously admired, on board.) They&#8217;re determined to utterly eradicate unauthorized ideas from what they still plainly regard – despite the dismal health of several European economies, the floundering of the euro, and widespread doubts about the long-term sustainability of the union itself – as a European utopia in the making. Underlying this breathtakingly mischievous and arrogant enterprise, it would appear, is the conviction that if only you pass enough laws forbidding enough things, you can transform human nature itself: the report describes itself as seeking to “eliminat[e] racism, colour bias, ethnic discrimination, religious intolerance, totalitarian ideologies, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-feminism and homophobia.” Not curb, mind you – <i>eliminate.</i> Of course, the only way to eliminate all those things is to eliminate human beings themselves. It was governmental goals on this screwy scale that steered Europe, in the previous century, into unspeakable totalitarian torment. You&#8217;d think European politicians would&#8217;ve learned – learned some humility, in any event, if not some respect for individual freedom. But no – the same imperial arrogance and blindness persists. Even as they think (or, at least, claim) that they&#8217;re formulating a way to protect Europe from totalitarianism, they&#8217;re trying to lead it on yet another forced march to that selfsame destination.</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>Beware the Dictators of Virtue</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/beware-the-dictators-of-virtue/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=beware-the-dictators-of-virtue</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 09 May 2013 04:50:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[future]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[intolerance]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The future of "tolerance" in America. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/finger-gun-elite-daily.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-188825" alt="finger-gun-elite-daily" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/finger-gun-elite-daily-450x299.jpg" width="270" height="179" /></a>America is becoming a more tolerant nation, we are told. Each new thing that we learn to tolerate makes us more progressive. But tolerance is a relative thing. For every new thing we learn to tolerate, there is a thing that we must stop tolerating. </span></b></p>
<p>Tolerance can only be allocated to so many places. The balance of tolerance and intolerance remains the same no matter how progressive a society becomes. A tolerant society only allocates its intolerance differently.</p>
<p>America today tolerates different things. It tolerates little boys dressing up as little girls at school, but not little boys pointing pencils and making machine gun noises on the playground.</p>
<p>The little boy whose mother dressed him up in girlish clothes once used to be a figure of contempt while the little boy pretending to be a marine was the future of the nation. Now the boy in the dress is the future of the nation having joined an identity group while the aspiring little marine is suspected of one day trading in his sharpened pencil for an assault rifle as soon as the next gun show comes to town.</p>
<p>The Duke of Wellington once said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton. What battles will the boys playing on the playgrounds where dodgeball is banned and finger guns are a crime win and what sort of nation will they be fighting to protect?</p>
<p>The trouble with tolerance is that there is always someone deciding what to tolerate. A free society does not tolerate people; it allows them to live their own values. And a tolerant society is not free. It is a dictatorship of virtue that is intolerant toward established values in order to better tolerate formerly intolerable values.</p>
<p>A free society does not tell people of any religion or no religion what to believe. A tolerant society forces them all to pay for abortions because its dictators of virtue have decided that the time has come to teach this lesson in tolerance.</p>
<p>An open society finds wisdom in its own uncertainty. A tolerant society, like a teenager, is certain that it already knows all the answers and lacks only the means of imposing them on others. It confuses its destruction of the past with progress and its sense of insecurity with righteousness.</p>
<p>To the tolerant, intolerance is the most powerful act possible. They solve problems by refusing to tolerate them. School shootings are carried out with guns and so the administrative denizens of the gun-free zones run campaigns of intolerance toward the physical existence of guns, the owners of guns, the manufacturers of guns, the civil rights groups that defend gun ownership and eventually toward John Puckle, Samuel Colt, John Moses Browning and the 82nd element in the periodic table.</p>
<p>None of this accomplishes a single practical thing, but it is an assertion of values. The paranoid mindset that cracks down on little boys who chew pop tarts into deadly shapes, little boys who point pencils and fingers at each other, is not out to stop school shootings, but is struggling to assert the intolerance of its tolerant value system over the reality of violence.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not about preventing school shootings, but about asserting a value system in which there is no place for the aspiring marine, unless he&#8217;s handing out food to starving children in Africa in a relief operation or serving as a model of gay marriage to rural America.</p>
<p>To understand the NRA&#8217;s argument about the moral value of a gun deriving from the moral value of the wielder would require a worldview that is more willing to accept a continuum of shades, rather than criminalizing pencils and pop tarts for guilt by geometric association. A free society could do that, but a tolerant society, in which everything must be assigned an unchanging value to determine whether it will be tolerated and enforced or not tolerated and outlawed, cannot.</p>
<p>That is as true of Newtown as it is of Boston. The same tolerant liberalism that can see deadly menace in a pencil or a pop tart is blind to the lethal threat of a Chechen Islamist. If a gun is innately evil, then a member of a minority group, especially a persecuted one, is innately good. In the real world, it may take bad guns to stop good Muslims, but the system just doubles down on encouraging students to recite the Islamic declaration of faith while suspending them for chewing their pop tarts the wrong way.</p>
<p>Liberal values are at odds with reality and they are not about to let reality win. In their more tolerant nation, there is more room than ever for little boys who dream of one day setting off pressure cooker bombs at public events in the name of their religion, but very little room for little boys dreaming of being the ones to stop them.</p>
<p>The little boy in a dress has put on the uniform of tolerance while the little boy making rat tat noises with a pencil is showing strong signs of playing for the wrong team. The wrong team is the one that solves problems by shooting people, rather than writing denunciations of them to the tolerance department of diversity.</p>
<p>The complainer is the hero and the doer is the villain. Reporters and lawyers are the heroes because they are the arbiters of tolerance. Soldiers and police officers are the gun-happy villains because they respond to realities, rather than identities. They unthinkingly shoot without understanding the subtext.</p>
<p>A free society is practical. It acts in its own defense. A tolerant society acts to assert its values. The former fights terrorists and murderers, while the latter lets them go to show off its tolerant values.</p>
<p>This is the clash of values that holds true on the playground and on the battlefield of war. On the playground, little boys are suspended for waving around pencils and on the battlefield, soldiers are ordered not to defend themselves so that their country can win the hearts and minds of the locals in the endless Afghan Valentine&#8217;s Day that has stacked up a horrifying toll of bodies.</p>
<p>In their cities, men and women are told to be tolerant, to extend every courtesy and to suspect nothing of the friendly Islamists in their neighborhoods. It is better to be blown up as a tolerant society, they are told, than to point the pop tart of intolerance on the great playground of the nanny state.</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>Still the Least Racist Country in the World</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dennis-prager/still-the-least-racist-country-in-the-world/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=still-the-least-racist-country-in-the-world</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 10 Apr 2012 04:00:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dennis Prager]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Europe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Trayvon Martin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=128296</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Compared to other countries, Americans are xenophiles. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/flag-and-immigrants3.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-128297" title="flag-and-immigrants3" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/flag-and-immigrants3.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>In light of the tragic killing of black teenager Trayvon Martin — and the manufactured hysteria surrounding it — one thing needs to be stated as clearly and as often as possible: The United States is the least racist and least xenophobic country in the world. Foreigners of every race, ethnicity, and religion know this. Most Americans suspect this. Most black Americans and the entire left deny this.</p>
<p>Black Africans know this. That is why so many seek to live in the United States. Decades ago, the number of black Africans who had immigrated to the United States had already surpassed the number of black Africans who were forcibly shipped to America as slaves.</p>
<p>And members of other races and nationalities know this. Even Muslim and Arab writers have noted that nowhere in the Arab or larger Muslim world does an Arab or any other Muslim have the individual rights, liberty, and dignity that a Muslim living in America has. As for Latinos and Asians, vast numbers of them from El Salvador to Korea regard America as the land of opportunity.</p>
<p>And when any of these people come here &#8211; from anywhere, speaking any language, looking like a member of any race — they are accepted as Americans the moment they identify as such. He or she will be regarded as fully American. This is not true elsewhere. A third-generation Turkish-German, whose German is indistinguishable from the German spoken by an indigenous German, will still be regarded by most Germans as a Turk. The same holds true elsewhere in Europe.</p>
<p>On the other hand, a first-generation Turkish American, who speaks English with a heavy Turkish accent, but who identifies as American, will be regarded every bit as American as anyone else.</p>
<p>As is often the case, a foreigner pointed this out most clearly. On a visit to America in February, The president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, said:</p>
<p>&#8220;The other day, I was in a small company — and there were Asians, Koreans, Middle Easterners, some other people.</p>
<p>And they had been in America for, like, two, three, four years. And they talk American. They look American. Body language is American. I&#8217;m sure they already think American. Go to Korea and become Korean in one or two years&#8217; time. Good luck with that. That&#8217;s what&#8217;s so special about this country.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>The Silence of the Lambs</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/william-kilpatrick/the-silence-of-the-lambs/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-silence-of-the-lambs</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Mar 2010 04:06:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[William Kilpatrick]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why are Christians failing to speak out against the evils perpetrated in the name of Islam? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/christians3.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55840" title="christians3" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/christians3.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="285" /></a></p>
<p>In recent years it has become fashionable to condemn Pope Pius XII (and, by implication, the Catholic Church) for his silence regarding Nazi persecution of the Jews.  In fact, Pius confronted and condemned the Nazis on numerous occasions, and the Vatican saved more Jewish lives than any other organization apart from the Allied armies.  The charge of remaining silent in the face of great evil could, however, much more plausibly be leveled against today’s Catholics—and not only Catholics, but Christians in general—for their failure to speak out against the evils perpetrated in the name of Islam.  The reason that we don’t hear such criticism is that just about everyone has elected to remain silent on this topic, including those who usually delight in going after Christians.  In fact, the critics of Pope Pius XII became upset with Pope Benedict XVI for <em>not</em> remaining silent about Islamic violence on the occasion of his speech at Regensburg.  John Cornwell, the author of <em>Hitler’s Pope</em>, and a rabid critic of Pius, condemned Benedict’s speech as “incendiary” and “abrasive.”  Apparently, when confronted with the greatest evil of your own time, silence is golden.</p>
<p>So, there is plenty of silence to go around, but Christian silence is particularly disturbing because Christians are supposed to answer to a higher authority than prevailing opinion.  In addition, Christians can’t very well claim ignorance since much of recent Muslim animosity has been directed toward Christians.  Here are some recent headlines:</p>
<ul>
<li>Iran:  Protestant clergyman tortured for converting Muslims</li>
<li>500 butchered in Nigeria killing fields</li>
<li>Pakistan:  Christian couple gets 25 years in prison for allegedly touching Qur’an with dirty hands</li>
<li>Four churches firebombed in Malaysia for using “Allah” for God</li>
<li>Egypt:  At least six Christians killed in shooting outside church</li>
<li>Christians in Iraq fear extinction</li>
</ul>
<p>The response to all this on the part of Christian leaders has been muted.  In fact, many Christians seem more worried about the dangers of Islamophobia than about the persecution of fellow Christians.  For instance, Protestant and Catholic clergy throughout Europe have strongly condemned the recent Swiss vote to ban construction of new minarets.  Likewise, in France the clergy seem more focused on a possible ban of the burqa than on the precarious situation of Christians in Muslim countries.  In Holland a majority of Dutch clergy have condemned Geert Wilders as un-Christian for speaking out against Islamic violence.  And at a “Christian-Muslim Summit” held at the Washington National Cathedral in early March, the harshest words in the final statement were reserved for the media, which was challenged to live up to its responsibility of “stemming the tide of Islamophobia.”</p>
<p>A few weeks earlier, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue issued his own warning against Islamophobia.  “We must not fear Islam,” he said at a theology congress in Granada, and added, “dialogue alone allows us to overcome fear, because it allows one to experience the discovery of the other…”  So, it seems the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.  Once you get to know the other fellow and his religion—“experience the discovery of the other” and all that—your fears will melt away.  In a January interview with <em>L’ Osservatore Romano</em>, Cardinal Tauran decried the “feeling of fear” associated with the Swiss minaret vote.  “I wonder,” he said, “if these persons [who are afraid] know Muslims, if they have ever opened the Qur’an.”</p>
<p>Just be careful not to open it with dirty hands if you happen to be living in Pakistan.  The point is, a lot of Christians living in the Muslim world <em>are</em> discovering the otherness of the other—often at the business end of a machete.  What many professional dialoguers fail to appreciate is the almost total otherness of the Islamic belief system.  It’s one thing to encounter the “other” in the carpeted rooms of the inter-faith meetings in Washington and Rome; it’s another thing to encounter him in a society where he has complete power to enforce his will and his religion on you.</p>
<p>Christian self-indictment isn’t the worst of it. While some Christians agonize over Islamophobia, others seem to be OK with Judeophobia.  Thus, a number of mainline churches are devoting their energies not to seeking justice for fellow Christians, but to echoing Muslim complaints against Israel.  The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America recently disseminated to its members a statement by 16 Palestinian Christians declaring that “the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is a sin against God and humanity…”  And a report issued by Arab Catholic bishops in January blames the sufferings of Christians in the Arab world not on their Muslim persecutors but on the Israeli presence in the West Bank.  So the next time a Christian Copt in Egypt steps out of his church into a hail of gunfire, blame the Jews.</p>
<p>Were Christians silent during the Nazi era?  Some were, some even collaborated. On the other hand, some resisted, some risked their lives to save Jews.  But the pertinent question for us is how would we react if faced with a similar evil.  Right now we have a situation that is eerily reminiscent of the rise of Nazism:  in this case the rise of a fanatical ideology that seeks world domination while calling, as the Nazis did, for the extermination of the Jews.  Islamists even read the same books.  Hitler’s <em>Mein Kampf</em>, is a bestseller in the Middle-East as well as in the Muslim sections of European cities.  The anti-Semitic tract <em>The Protocols of the Elders of Zion</em>, also sells briskly.  Hitler is a hero in some Muslim countries. Rabid anti-Semitism is an established fact of life on European and American campuses, and Jews are once again fleeing Europe. This is not a matter of history repeating itself in some subtle way that future historians will be able to sort out 50 years hence. This is history grabbing you by the collar, pulling you up close, and snarling, “Remember me?”</p>
<p>After World War II many Germans claimed that they didn’t know the extent of Nazi atrocities.  And since the Nazis did keep some of their activities hidden, there may well have been many Germans who knew nothing about the killing camps.  Nowadays, it’s a little more difficult to claim ignorance, what with the streaming headlines at the bottom of your TV screen itemizing the daily toll taken by Islamic suicide bombers.  After 15,000 Islamic terrorist attacks since 9/11, the picture seems fairly clear.  Why don’t Christians get it?  The answer is that a considerable number of Christians seem to have confused their Christian faith with the more popular religion of tolerance—a religion which is mainly concerned with displays of multicultural respect.</p>
<p>So, in regard to Islam, many Christians are more eager to demonstrate their tolerance than to understand the facts.  As Faith McDonnell of the Institute of Religion and Democracy puts it:</p>
<blockquote><p>Many churches are obsessed with making themselves likeable to Islamists…such churches opt for sessions of feel-good dialogue with the local mosque, gushing about how much Christianity and Islam have in common, and never challenging Muslims to serious debate on those so-called commonalities…</p></blockquote>
<p>Today’s culturally sensitive Christians haven’t grasped the point that if there really were a lot of common ground between Islam and Christianity it would not be wise to advertise it.  It’s a bit like bragging that you have a lot in common with the neighborhood bully who beats his wife.  In short, searching for common ground with a tyrannical religious ideology is a formula for discrediting your own faith.</p>
<p>The religion of tolerance affords many opportunities for self-congratulation, but not for clear thinking. All moral/religious codes are not created equal. And to speak and act as though they are is to engage in a form of lying.  Christians who keep quiet about the crimes of Islam or make excuses for them should stop congratulating themselves on their open mindedness, and should ask, instead, how they differ from all those Europeans who looked the other way when crimes were being committed in the Nazi era.</p>
<p>The record of Pope Pius XII is still being debated, but most of the evidence shows that he spoke out strongly against the Nazis and in defense of Jews.  His efforts were not limited to formal protests, but also included initiatives to protect and shelter Jews throughout Europe.  Historian David Dalin notes that in Rome alone, in response to the Pope’s request, “155 convents and monasteries sheltered some five thousand Jews…  No fewer than three thousand Jews found refuge at Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer residence…Pope Pius himself granted sanctuary within the walls of the Vatican in Rome to hundreds of homeless Jews.”</p>
<p>When the pope and other Catholic bishops did not speak out, it was often at the request of Jewish leaders who feared Nazi retaliation—a justified fear, seeing that the very strong protests by the Dutch bishops in July 1942 against the deportation of the Jews provoked the most savage of Nazi reprisals against the Jews.</p>
<p>But that is not the reason that so many Christians today remain silent about Islamic crimes.  While it’s undoubtedly true that some church officials temper their words for fear of retaliation against their Christian brethren in the Muslim world, the majority of Western Christians are barely aware that they have brethren in places like Egypt, Pakistan, and Malaysia.  Their silence is the silence of those who are blind to the danger—blinded by their faith in multicultural myths about moral equivalence, and blinded in part by the glow of their own self-regard.  Tolerance is fine up to a point, and it does wonders for one’s self-esteem.  But as Thomas Mann said, “Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.”  We’ve reached the point where Christians need to subordinate their search for self-esteem to a search for facts.</p>
<p><strong>William Kilpatrick’s articles on Islam have appeared in <em>Catholic World Report, The National Catholic Register, Jihad Watch, World, </em>and<em> Investor’s Business Daily.</em></strong></p>
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		<title>Tolerance for Terror</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jamie-glazov/tolerance-for-terror/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=tolerance-for-terror</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jamie-glazov/tolerance-for-terror/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Jan 2010 05:08:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=47754</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the Obama administration resists the appropriate response to the threats to our freedoms and lives.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-47758" title="Obama 2008" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/obaman1.jpg" alt="Obama 2008" width="450" height="335" /></p>
<p>Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Howard Rotberg, an author of several books who has just released his latest book, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tolerism-Ideology-Revealed-Howard-Rotberg/dp/0973406526">Tolerism: The Ideology Revealed</a></em> (Mantua Books). He blogs at <a href="http://secondgenerationradical.blogmatrix.com/" target="_blank">secondgenerationradical.blogmatrix.com</a>. He has previously been interviewed by Frontpage (<a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=30923" target="_blank">Fatwa on a Book</a>) about the fate of his 2003 novel about a Jewish professor’s worry about Iran developing nuclear weapons and the professor’s problems with political correctness.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Howard Rotberg, welcome to Frontpage Interview.</p>
<p><strong>Rotberg:</strong> Thank you for having me</p>
<p>What inspired you to write this book?</p>
<p><strong>Rotberg:</strong> Basically, I began to understand that, in a world that was treating Islamist terrorism with tolerance and submission, as opposed to a due recognition of the war declared upon us, much of our “intelligentsia” was prisoner of a certain ideology that inhibited an appropriate response to the threats to our freedoms and lives.</p>
<p>As a result of my novel, <em>The Second Catastrophe,</em> being, essentially, banned in Canada because of the objections of some 18 year old Islamists, I was becoming aware that the very people who proclaimed their tolerance were in fact the least tolerant of all when it came to listening to, and debating, contrary opinions. In other words, political correctness, moral and cultural relativism and moral equivalency were combining to create a certain ideology in the West. I decided it was high time to write about the values and ideologies that have handcuffed much of our media and academic elites from critiquing the fascistic aspects of Radical Islam, and elevating the alleged “right’ not to be offended over the human rights of all victims of Islamist rage, including their own people.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Tell us a bit about your background that has influenced you in your thoughts and outlooks.</p>
<p><strong>Rotberg:</strong> My paternal grandparents and aunt were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and my father barely survived as a slave laborer there. As a member of the “Second Generation,” I was becoming alarmed at how “tolerance” was being called the most important value in the West. My background as a lawyer and as an observant Jew taught me that the most important value is justice, not tolerance. I knew that had the West “tolerated” Hitler, I would not be here. And I wondered why the West was so intent on tolerating Radical Islam and submitting to values inimical to liberal freedoms, feminism, separation of church and state, human rights and all the other great values that so many Americans and Canadians had struggled so hard to attain. As I looked out on political culture in the age of Obama, I sensed a very serious ideological problem.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> What is the difference between tolerance and Tolerism?</p>
<p><strong>Rotberg:</strong> Over the years, such philosophers as Karl Popper and John Rawls had struggled with the idea of toleration and what limits must be placed on the tolerance of the <em>intolerant</em>, who, without such limitations could destroy the tolerant and the ways of tolerance. As the Second World War becomes a distant memory, we have noticed an alarming development: Instead of warnings about appeasement of Evil, we are told by the post-religious that there is no good and evil, only “competing narratives” which in a world of cultural relativism, means that western distinguished historians are given no more respect than mere polemicists, and that liberalism in Israel is given no higher respect than the totalitarian propaganda machines of its neighbours. The causes of Tolerism, then, are political correctness, cultural and moral relativism and moral equivalency.</p>
<p>Tolerism, the ideology, involves not just a tolerance of what should be <em>intolerable</em>, and the failure to set reasonable limits on tolerance, but an <em>in</em>tolerance of opposing viewpoints within liberal democracies, and an element of self-hatred, cultural masochism, and delusions about the difference between social tolerance and political tolerance. Those who seek justice are mocked with the allegation that we are seeking “vengeance,” as Spielberg did with his dastardly re-writing of history in the movie <em>Munich</em><em> </em>to show that Israel, and, impliedly, the Bush administration, were all about retribution and vengeance instead of the supposedly enlightened trait of tolerance. Tolerism, then, is the ideology of those who have attempted to cast off the Judeo-Christian ethics of justice and morality, and the sanctity of human life and fundamental liberties, and instead seek to undermine the great liberal democracies by their unwillingness to accept that tolerance has limits and that justice is far more important.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>How do Tolerists view the United   States and its place in the world?  Is Obama a Tolerist?</p>
<p><strong>Rotberg:</strong> Obama gave the highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, to the horrible Mary Robinson, who presided over the U.N. Durban conference where the illiberals brought into the mainstream the absurd view that the Israelis are the new Nazis and the Palestinians are the new Jews. Obama’s equivalency of American tolerance and justice with that of Muslim countries in his first major foreign policy speech at Cairo was so absurd that it showed that he is not just “tolerant” but a proponent of the new ideology of “Tolerism” – which implies not just a sympathy for opposing views but an “indulgence,” that is a treatment of those views with <em>excessive</em> <em>leniency</em>. The idea that America is comparable to Saudi Arabia is surely laughable, except that if the American President believes that, the Founding Fathers must be turning over in their graves. And therefore one can see the relevance of Obama’s past associations with Reverend Wright, William Ayers, <a title="Bernadine Dohrn" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernadine_Dohrn" target="_blank">Bernadine Dohrn</a>, and Rashid Khalidi.</p>
<p>There is no better proof that Obama is a Tolerist than examining his responses to the Fort Hood Massacre. By continuously referring to the Islamist Major Hasan (whose emails, statements and entire life-view was that of a terrorist Islamist) as an “extremist,” Obama creates a vile moral equivalency. For example, I might be regarded by some an “extremist” because some of my views are extreme relative to the mainstream, but I would not care to share that terminological status with the likes of Hasan. America must wake up; its soldiers must carry guns, and its President must understand who is the enemy, before America descends into a British-like fantasy world of submission and tolerance of a parallel Sharia universe, where universities actively promote radicalization of Muslim students.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>What is the connection between Tolerism and anti-Semitism?</p>
<p><strong>Rotberg:</strong> There are several: Firstly, to the extent that Tolerism contains a large dose of self-hatred, or the hatred of America and Israel standing for all that is good – liberal freedoms and human rights- a large number of Tolerists (think Naomi Klein here) begin to hate America and the Jewish state equally. These haters of all that is good relate well to Radical Islam which is the repository of unbridled hate for all things Jewish and American. While historically, up until the 1940s, Islam accepted Jews as dhimmis, Radical Islam has never accepted Jews in the Middle  East, which is, according to them, Dar-Al-Islam, once and forever Muslim territory, notwithstanding the continual presence of Jews for 3500 years.</p>
<p>Secondly, Tolerism posits a type of moral and cultural relativism that resents states like America and Israel striving for the morality and justice advocated in the Bible. As well, if Islamic totalitarian theocracies or Palestinian death cults are as morally valid as any other position, then the Jewish narrative must by its nature be extremist and hence suspect.  This is why there is such little regard paid in the topic of “refugees” for the nearly one million Jews who were expelled from Arab countries in the 1940s, and were taken in and resettled by Israel. The United Nations then can create a separate organization for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and be utterly silent about the Jewish refugees from Iraq, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Lebanon.</p>
<p>Thirdly, I referred to Spielberg’s travesty of a movie, Munich, which portrays the Jew-nation of Israel as vengeful and intent on retribution, compared to the supposed Christian virtues of tolerance and mercy. This is a theme that is best explored in Shakespeare’s <em>The Merchant of Venice</em>, where a proper reading of this classic shows a man so marginalized and abused by society that he ends up, <em>as a result of this marginalization,</em> vengefully obsessed with retributive justice, which of course is denied to him, because the very Court proceeding has been corrupted by Portia impersonating the Judge.  An improper reading, such as was done by the Englishman Michael Radford in the most recent movie version of <em>The Merchant of Venice</em>, makes the Jew Shylock the archetype for the supposedly vengeful Jews and Americans exacting a negative form of Justice against the poor, oppressed terrorists or the Iraqi terror state. The fact that the worst terrorists have university educations and come from above average income families is irrelevant to the anti-Semitic fantasy that the intolerant Americans and Israelis are the new Nazis and supposedly deserve the terrorism inflicted on them. It is all anti-Semitic in nature.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>How do we find the limits of tolerance?</p>
<p><strong>Rotberg: </strong>Starting with the great philosophers of Toleration, we would have to accept, like Karl Popper that “if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them … We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”</p>
<p>But just as important, we have to begin to discuss how Tolerism and its associated ideologies are behind many of the delusions about the nature of the war that has begun against us, and the nature of the enemy.  We must learn that Terrorism is successful precisely because it creates what I call a “Cultural Stockholm Syndrome” or a cultural response similar to the “Patty Hearst Syndrome” where we begin to indentify with our terrorist oppressors and begin to accept small benefits from them as part of a submission to their will and values.  The idea that the West can defeat terrorism by more tolerance of the evil perpetrators of murder directed at civilians, is, quite frankly, preposterous.</p>
<p>In the book, I explore a variety of ways to find a suitable limitation for tolerance, and I refer to writings of such heroic writers as David Solway, David Horowitz, Charles Krauthammer, Daniel Greenfield, Vijay Kumar, and even moderate Muslims like Tarek Fatah (who has called for a clear statement by Islamic theologians that Jihad must henceforth be only construed as an individual inner struggle for spirituality rather than be construed as an outer-directed violent struggle against Jews, Christians and Hindus). I hope that my book induces further discussion of what are the limits of tolerance.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Howard Rotberg, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.</p>
<p>To order Howard Rotberg’s new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tolerism-Ideology-Revealed-Howard-Rotberg/dp/0973406526">click here</a>.</p>
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		<title>Malaysia and the Myth of Islamic Tolerance</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/malaysia-and-the-myth-of-islamic-tolerance/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=malaysia-and-the-myth-of-islamic-tolerance</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/malaysia-and-the-myth-of-islamic-tolerance/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Jan 2010 05:02:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=47167</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A spate of attacks on Christian churches reveal the dark side of this “moderate” Muslim nation.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-47168" title="539w" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/539w1.jpg" alt="539w" width="431" height="302" /></p>
<p>Malaysia is often held up as the model of what a modern Muslim-majority nation can be. The ruling class, the <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumiputera_(Malaysia)">bumiputra</a></em> (literally “princes of the earth”) are largely, though not entirely, Muslim. But when Malaysia’s High Court <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view/20100113-247038/US-watchdog-worried-over-Malaysia-church-bombings">ruled</a> in late December to lift a government ban on non-Muslims using the word “Allah,” Christian churches became the targets of fire-bombing attacks. This eruption of violence suggests that there is trouble brewing just beneath the surface even in this supposed paradise of Islamic moderation.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122094686">At last count</a>, eleven Christian churches and one Sikh temple have been attacked in Malaysia. That makes twelve attacks against places of worship in half a month’s time. What does it say about Islamic values when the impetus for these attacks was the use of a particular word?</p>
<p>Everyone agrees that the word “Allah” pre-dates the birth of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. In Malaysia, as in most of the Muslim of the world, Allah simply means God, the same God that, according to the Quran itself, both Christians and Jews worship. Nonetheless, use of the word Allah among non-Muslims has long been prohibited by law in Malaysia. A December 31 ruling by a Malaysian court overturned that law, a move that upset many of the nation’s Muslims, who make up about sixty per cent of the populace. They claim that non-Muslims will use the word to corrupt Muslims into accepting infidel beliefs.</p>
<p>Once again, we are presented with evidence of Islamic intolerance and insecurity. To his credit, Malaysian Prime Minister Dato&#8217; Sri Mohd Najib <a href="http://www.1malaysia.com.my/index.php?option=com_myblog&amp;show=statement-on-church-bombings.html&amp;Itemid=54&amp;lang=en#readmore">condemned the attacks</a>, which undermine both his “One Malaysia” policy and his re-election prospects. But no matter how much tolerance the leader of this nation may preach, the actions of his co-religionists speak much louder. Emboldened by an increasingly aggressive, violent, world-wide Islamic resurgence over the last few decades, this episode reveals what expatriates who have lived in Malaysia have long claimed: that the supposed harmony of Malaysia is nothing but a glossy veneer that barely covers up the inequities and prejudices of this society.</p>
<p>The Malaysian constitution <a href="http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Bumiputra/">grants special privileges to the bumiputra</a>, or as they are called in the constitution, Malays. Malays are defined as those citizens who profess the religion of Islam, habitually speak the Malay language and conform to Malay customs. The constitution directs the King of Malaysia (Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy) to safeguard the special position of the Malays and to ensure that a certain percentage of public services and scholarships and other similar educational privileges are reserved by the federal government for the benefit of Malays.</p>
<p>The bumiputra enjoy other advantages as well. A certain percentage of stock in publicly-traded companies is reserved for the bumiputra. Traditionally, they pay less for real estate than other Malaysian citizens. This is clearly a separate and unequal society. Which is not to say that Malaysia is not governed in a more liberal fashion than reactionary Muslim nations like Iran and Saudi Arabia. Western clothing can be found on the streets of Kuala Lampur. Christians, Buddhists and Hindus, if less than equal compared to their Muslim masters, are at least allowed to practice their faith in relative peace.</p>
<p>Or rather they were allowed to worship in relative peace. The government of Malaysia has officially condemned the attacks, even as it tries to have the troublesome court ruling that set off the firestorm reversed. Troops have been dispatched to protect non-Islamic houses of worship, but it seems unlikely that many of the <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/my.html">2.3 million Christians</a> who live in Malaysia feel safe going to church.</p>
<p>Even in this most mainstream of Muslim-ruled nations, supposed Islamic tolerance has been once again shown to be a matter of style, not substance.</p>
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		<title>Former Archbishop of Canterbury Cautions against Islamic Immigration</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/former-archbishop-of-canterbury-cautions-against-islamic-immigration-by-mark-d-tooley/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=former-archbishop-of-canterbury-cautions-against-islamic-immigration-by-mark-d-tooley</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Jan 2010 05:00:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=46183</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Lord Carey challenges creeping Sharia in Great Britain.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-46239" title="Carey" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Carey.gif" alt="Carey" width="450" height="445" /></p>
<p><span lang="EN">Former Archbishop of Canterbury is ruffling British cultural and religious elites by warning against uncontrolled Islamic immigration that threatens Britain’s ”very ethos or DNA.”</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN">“The idea that Britain can continue to welcome with open arms immigrants who immediately establish their own tribunals to apply Sharia, rather than make use of British civil law, is deeply socially divisive,” Lord Carey warned in a January 7 <em>Times</em> <em>of London</em> op-ed. “The last thing any of us want is ghettos. And while we don’t expect groups to assimilate, there must be a willingness on their part to integrate with the rest of British society.”<span style="color: #1f497d;"> </span>Carey was appointed to his former position by Margaret Thatcher and, in retirement, has sometimes offered a corrective to the left-leaning proclivities of his successor, Archbishop Rowan Williams.<span style="color: #1f497d;"> </span></span></p>
<p><span lang="EN">In America, as in Britain, left-leaning religious groups, most recently the U.S. National Association of Evangelicals, are urging more liberalized immigration laws.   In Britain, the stakes are higher, with proportionally much higher levels of Muslim immigration, creating pockets of urban culture where Islamic mores prevail.  Carey has joined a coalition of British parliamentarians urging sharper controls on immigration.  But somewhat unlike the parliamentary group, the former head of the Church of England and the global Anglican Communion is specifically urging that immigrants affirm Britain’s democratic heritage. </span></p>
<p><span lang="EN">Citing the monarchy, Parliament, the judiciary, the Church of England, and a free press, Carey lamented that “some groups of migrants” are “ambivalent about or even hostile to such institutions” because they embody the Britain’s “liberal democratic values.”  He specifically exampled a proposed antiwar Islamist march as evidence of the dangers that “extremists pose to British society.” </span></p>
<p><span lang="EN">As in America, where left-leaning religious elites deride any concerns about immigration as xenophobic, Carey has been widely lambasted in Britain.  And he stands virtually alone as a senior churchman public urging more careful immigration, with an eye to Islam’s potentially dangerous growth. </span></p>
<p><span lang="EN">In a recent BBC radio broadcast, Carey shared his desire for a “country that values its Christian heritage and democratic standards and all that this country has fought over.”  He also asserted that Britain needs a “tougher church” as “Christians are so very often so soft” and “allow other people to walk over us” because “we don’t want to upset other people.”   Britain’s retired senior archbishop declared Christians must be “more outspoken.”   The Christian and Jewish idea to ‘welcome the stranger” must be affirmed, Carey said.  But uncontrolled immigration could allow Britain to be “destabilized” and the creation of “ghettoes.”</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN">“Too often in recent years the call for a rational debate on mass migration has degenerated into name-calling and charges of racism,” Carey bemoaned in his newspaper op-ed.  “Even the campaign for Balanced Migration, which I have supported, representing cross-party politicians, has barely been heeded by party leaders who have run scared of the issue.”  Britain should “welcome the contribution of both economic migrants and asylum seekers to our lively cosmopolitan culture.”  But uncontrolled borders that permit “new communities whose values are sometimes very different, even antithetical, to our own,” will stretch “almost to breaking point the enormous reserves of tolerance and generosity of the British people” and could damage Britain’s “future harmony.” </span></p>
<p><span lang="EN">Carey warned that irresponsible immigration policies policies would facilitate support for the far-right British National Party  and “otherwise decent people supporting modern-day fascism.”  In somewhat veiled critique of the current British government, Carey noted the Prime Minister has emphasized “shared values” such as “tolerance, fair play, pluralism.”   But Carey retorted that those traits are not uniquely British and the nation must also look to “language, institutions and our shared history in valuing what it means to be British and what we could lose if the make-up of our nation changes too rapidly.” </span></p>
<p><span lang="EN">“It is my firm view that our society owes more to our Christian heritage than it realizes and to overlook this inheritance of faith will lead to the watering down of the very values of tolerance, openness, inclusion and democracy that we claim are central to all we stand for,” Carey warned.  In his radio interview, he rejected any specific immigration policy against “</span>non-Christian populations,” which would violate Britain’s “generous spirit.”   But he did urge immigration policies that favored immigrants who affirm British “values.”</p>
<p>Other religious voices have responded negatively to Carey.  <span lang="EN">Bishop of Lincoln <a title="John Saxbee" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.independent.ie/topics/John+Saxbee" target="_blank"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">John Saxbee</span></a>, the Church of England&#8217;s immigration spokesman in the <a title="House of Lords" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.independent.ie/topics/House+of+Lords" target="_blank"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">House of Lords</span></a>, demanded a &#8220;more nuanced&#8221; approach from Carey.  &#8220;Christians across the country work hard to generate a culture of hospitality rather than hostility towards those who come to live, work and worship among us,” Saxbee was quoted as saying in the <em>Independent of Ireland</em>.  &#8220;I am sure Lord Carey would not want to do or say anything which might make our task more difficult in that respect,&#8221; he harrumphed. </span></p>
<p><span lang="EN">United Reformed Church clergy and social justice activist Vaughan Jones was quoted by <em>Ekklesia</em> as more explicitly deriding Carey’s stance. </span>&#8220;Crude, populist and simplistic comments like those of the former Archbishop add nothing new or helpful to the debate,” he sniffed.  “The migrant is not a stranger to the church to be accepted or rejected at our convenience. We are brothers and sisters within a transnational and interdependent global community which transcends the Archbishop&#8217;s narrow and outdated nationalism.”</p>
<p>Traditional Religious Left voices simplistically distill immigration law as simply a question of “hospitality.”   Lord Carey, with more nuance than his ostensibly more sophisticated critics, seems to understand civil law’s supreme obligation to safeguard society.</p>
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		<title>Iranian Endgame &#8211; by P. David Hornik</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/davidhornik/iranian-endgame-by-p-david-hornik/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iranian-endgame-by-p-david-hornik</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/davidhornik/iranian-endgame-by-p-david-hornik/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:10:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=42174</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Is Israel America’s last resort?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p align="center"><strong> </strong></p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-42178" title="iran" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/iran.jpg" alt="iran" width="585" height="350" /></p>
<p>On Tuesday, Danielle Pletka <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/14/AR2009121402713.html">wrote</a> in the <em>Washington Post</em> that “Iran is proceeding with an aggressive nuclear weapons program,” and that apart from “a few dogged holdouts,…much of the Obama administration has come to terms with that reality.”</p>
<p>By “coming to terms” Pletka means that, while recognizing Iran’s aggressive intentions, “official Washington has resigned itself to pursuing a containment policy”—which, as Pletka effectively argues, would be misplaced and unavailing in the case of Iran. But Pletka adds that “privately, Obama administration officials confess that they believe Israeli action will preempt our policy debate, as Israel’s tolerance for an Iranian nuke is significantly lower than our own.”</p>
<p>Also on Tuesday Israel’s chief of Military Intelligence, Amos Yadlin—who last month informed the nation that Gaza-based Hamas had <a href="../2009/11/05/terrorists%E2%80%99-rockets-that-can-reach-tel-aviv-by-p-david-hornik/">obtained rockets</a> that can reach Tel Aviv—addressed the Iranian issue at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. Yadlin <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1135228.html">said</a> Iran was building dispersed, overt and covert nuclear sites, was “simultaneously developing a military capability that would allow a breakthrough when it so decides,” <a href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1260447444399&amp;pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull">has already</a> “enriched 1.7 tons of low enriched uranium at its facility in Natanz, which is enough for a nuclear weapon,” and that it was time for “tough sanctions on the regime” by the international community.</p>
<p>The internal Iranian protest movement? Yadlin <a href="http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3820179,00.html">stated:</a> “This protest does not have a classic leadership which is capable of bringing down regimes, as leaders of the protest movement are still the regime’s own flesh and blood.”</p>
<p>But given the West’s <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/14/ap/world/main5977139.shtml">continued dithering</a> on the sanctions issue and delusive efforts to get Iran’s friends Russia and China to cooperate effectively with the democratic powers, Yadlin’s professed belief in sanctions could merely be a way of upholding Israel’s official line—meant in part to avoid appearing trigger-happy. If Pletka is right that the U.S. administration is resigned either to “containment” or an Israeli strike, then hopes of sanctions stopping Iran’s nukes are indeed misplaced.</p>
<p>Focusing on Israel’s difficult environment, Yadlin <a href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1260447444399&amp;pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull">said</a> “There are places in Iran and Syria where weapons tests are carried out and you can see Iranian and Syrian scientists next to Hizbullah operatives and even representatives from Hamas and sometimes Islamic Jihad who are invited to watch.” He also “warned that any weaponry, no matter how advanced it might be, that is in Syrian and Iranian hands could one day be delivered to Hizbullah in Lebanon.”</p>
<p>That is, Israel could see nukes in radical hands on its doorstep. Or as Yadlin <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3820179,00.html">summed up</a>: “Our enemies are challenging the IDF’s supremacy—in the air, in terms of intelligence and accurate weapons—in a defensive and offensive manner, and are trying to threaten our existence. The enemy’s abilities are still far from the IDF’s abilities, and the challenge is to maintain the gap.”</p>
<p>An Iranian nuclear capacity—and the Middle East-wide nuclear arms race that is universally seen as the inevitable result—would mean not much, if anything, would be left of that gap. In other words, if the administration believes “Israel’s tolerance for an Iranian nuke is significantly lower than our own,” the administration is right—even if, as Pletka asserts, “subcontracting American national security to Israel is an appalling notion, and we cannot assume that an Israeli action would not provoke a wider regional conflict into which the United States would be drawn.”</p>
<p>Some see the picture as less bleak and hope (for instance, <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/324jeods.asp">here</a>) President Obama’s antipacifist statements during his Nobel Prize speech—“There will be times when nations—acting individually or in concert—will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified…. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies….”—signal a greater realism toward Iran. Time will tell. Israel’s only prudent course is to assume the worst and prepare accordingly.</p>
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		<title>Of Churches and Swiss Minarets &#8211; by Mark D. Tooley</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/mark-d-tooley/of-churches-and-swiss-minarets-by-mark-d-tooley/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=of-churches-and-swiss-minarets-by-mark-d-tooley</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 03 Dec 2009 05:02:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=39844</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Did the Swiss suppress religious freedom or send a pointed message to Islamists?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-39850" title="Switzerland Minaret Ban" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/swiss-poster.jpg" alt="Switzerland Minaret Ban" width="399" height="266" /></p>
<p>The startling resolve of Swiss voters to constitutionally ban new Islamic minarets was widely condemned by Swiss church groups, some of which had opposed placing the issue before Swiss voters at all.</p>
<p>&#8220;The Lutheran World Federation [LWF] regrets that some sectors of Swiss society and politics found it necessary to take the issue of the construction of minarets in Switzerland to a referendum, and to force a decision for or against a ban,&#8221; LWF chief Ishmael Noko complained to Ecumenical News International (ENI).  The Swiss-based LWF professes to represent nearly 70 million Lutherans globally, though its slant is always toward left-leaning and imploding European Protestantism.  ENI is the news service of the Swiss-based World Council of Churches (WCC), which has not yet but almost certainly will condemn Swiss voters.</p>
<p>Swiss-based church and ecumenical officials berated the anti-minaret referendum.  Some reluctantly acknowledged that Christians often have difficult building churches in Islamist-ruled nations or, as in Saudi Arabia , face outright bans.  But these protesting church officials insisted Switzerland ’s history of religious tolerance should not react against or replicate religious intolerance elsewhere.</p>
<p>This backhanded admission by some Swiss church officials that Christians and other religious minorities face restrictions, and sometimes lethal prohibitions, under Islamist regimes was at least ironically refreshing.  Groups like the LWF, the WCC, and the Swiss-based World Alliance of Reformed Churches are typically silent about persecution of Christians under Marxism and Islamism.  Instead, they prefer to mouth the leftist, anti-Western, anti-capitalist mantras of United Nations and European Community elites.  For professional ecumenical bureaucrats, promoting Global Warming alarmism, opposing U.S. foreign policy, condemning Israel , and berating free trade are far more important priorities than breathing a public word about persecuted Christians.</p>
<p>But the professional Euro-ecumenists, though largely unconcerned about their fellow religionists who suffer under Marxism and Islam, are often quick to defend Islam’s prerogatives. Lutheranism’s Ngo worried that the Swiss vote “undermines efforts at inter-religious understanding and harmony in Switzerland , and the Swiss reputation and heritage of tolerance and hospitality.&#8221; He also worried that the ban on new minarets was framed in “explicitly sectarian terms vis-a-vis Muslims.”</p>
<p>Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches chief Thomas Wipf also had condemned the very idea of Swiss voting on minarets. “Such questions should be discussed openly but the referendum initiative is counterproductive as it hinders dialogue rather than promoting it,&#8221; he told a news conference earlier this Fall with Swiss government officials and other cultural elites who were adament in their opposition. “This campaign against minarets is dangerous because it assumes that different religions cannot live together, that they have to fight each other. But we have to get closer,” he likewise explained.  “We have to learn to talk to each other. This is the real challenge!”</p>
<p>During the Swiss campaign Wipf defensively referenced Islamist mistreatment of religious minorities.  “Even if some Muslim states deprive their Christian citizens of their religious rights, that does not justify Switzerland persecuting its Muslim citizens because we should never answer one injustice with another injustice.&#8221;  He affirmed: &#8220;We are strongly in favor of enabling Muslims to worship in freedom and dignity, and if minarets are a requirement of their religion we call on them to explain that to Swiss public opinion.”  Motivated perhaps not just by religious freedom concerns but also more banal European multiculturalism, Wipf insisted:  &#8220;Cultural diversity is a characteristic of Swiss identity. It makes <a title="More news, photos about Switzerland" rel="nofollow" href="http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Places,+Geography/Countries/Switzerland" target="_blank">Switzerland</a> strong.&#8221;</p>
<p>Wipf additionally heads the multi-faith Swiss Council of Religions, which similarly opposed the minaret referendum.  &#8220;For the members of a religious community, religious buildings are not only places to gather but also a symbol of their faith and an expression of their reverence for God. For many <a title="More news, photos about Muslims" rel="nofollow" href="http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/People/Cultural,+Ethnic/Muslim" target="_blank">Muslims</a>, therefore, mosques need to have minarets,&#8221; insisted this council, on behalf of Christian, Jewish and Muslim officials in Switzerland .  “The prohibition of minarets would injure these people in their dignity and their basic right to practice their religion,&#8221; further warned the clerics, who evidently were so distressed that their defense of minarets was their first such joint statement about any Swiss national referendum.</p>
<p>Minaret ban advocates asserted that mosque construction and other Islamic expression would be unaffected by the prohibition, which was specifically targeted against what they viewed specifically as the aesthetic and cultural intrusiveness of towering minarets.  But the interfaith council blasted away at the ban with an over 2500 word manifesto called “For Religious Coexistence in Peace and Freedom<strong>.” </strong></p>
<p>“The Swiss Council of Religions supports integration instead of exclusion, as every human being is a divine creation from the point of view of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,” their manifesto opened.   It insisted that “working for religious freedom in Switzerland and against restrictions on religious freedom in other countries [is] closely connected.”  It also surmised that “those who demand religious freedom for their own coreligionists in minority situations must not, when in the majority, deprive other minorities of the same rights. Supporting religious freedom must be a common concern for all religious communities – both here and throughout the entire world.”</p>
<p>What “other countries” did the interfaith council have in mind for concerns about religious freedom?  It did not say.  But intriguingly, the council did directly ask:  “Is Islam more than just a religion? What significance do human rights, democracy and rule of law, and the equality of men and women have from a Muslim point of view? Does Islam seek the status of an exception in Switzerland due to its religious precepts?”  The council offered no answers.  But the questions indicate that at least some Swiss religious officials have sublimated concerns that Islam’s ultimate role in Switzerland may be significantly different from traditional Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism.</p>
<p>The common inability of European secular and religious elites to address the potential threats of Islamist growth almost certainly fueled Swiss fears.  Rather than pointing fingers at Swiss voters, Swiss and ecumenical church officials might better examine their own failures.</p>
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