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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; West</title>
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		<title>Imam Joe Biden Schools an Infidel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/imam-joe-biden-schools-an-infidel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=imam-joe-biden-schools-an-infidel</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Dec 2014 05:53:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ayaan hirsi ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Joe Biden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247266</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[But Ayaan Hirsi Ali declines to argue with the vice president. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/6a00d83451c36069e20168eb9dbef6970c.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-247267" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/6a00d83451c36069e20168eb9dbef6970c.jpg" alt="6a00d83451c36069e20168eb9dbef6970c" width="301" height="271" /></a>The courageous ex-Muslim human rights activist <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-real-war-on-women/article/2556984"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Ayaan Hirsi Ali</span></a> recently recounted that at a speech in Washington not long ago, she met Vice President Joe Biden. Biden seized the opportunity to tell her that “ISIS had nothing to do with Islam.” Hirsi Ali politely disagreed, whereupon Biden began a lesson in the teachings of the Religion of Peace: “Let me tell you one or two things about Islam.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Hirsi Ali didn’t hear much of Imam Joe’s Islamic wisdom: “I politely left the conversation at that. I wasn’t used to arguing with vice presidents.”</p>
<p>This wasn’t just Joe being Joe, saying another foolish thing that, if he were a conservative Republican, would have ended his political career in an avalanche of ridicule long ago. For in confronting Hirsi Ali and assuming he knew more about Islam than she does, Biden was reflecting what virtually every policymaker in Washington believes – on both sides of the aisle.</p>
<p>Even though Ayaan Hirsi Ali was raised a Muslim in a Muslim country, and educated in Islam from an extremely early age, and despite the fact that Joe Biden has almost certainly never opened a Qur’an, Biden was sure that what she said about Islam must be wrong – it just had to be. Why? Because her opinion of the religion was negative, and the possibility that such a view could have any merit whatsoever is inconceivable in Washington circles. Those who hold it <i>must</i> be ignorant.</p>
<p>It’s almost certain that Biden would never have confronted Karen Armstrong in a similar way. If Biden is familiar with what Armstrong says about Islam, such as her world-historically ridiculous claim that “Muhammad eventually abjured violence and pursued a daring, inspired policy of non-violence that was worthy of Gandhi,” he would no doubt warmly approve and even applaud. This would not be because Armstrong has done more formal study of Islam than has Hirsi Ali – she hasn’t. <span style="color: #222222;">Nor would it be because Imam Joe himself made a careful and judicious examination of Islamic texts and teachings, and came to the reasoned conclusion that Armstrong’s representation of Islam was more accurate and true to the </span><i style="color: #222222;">ding an sich</i><span style="color: #222222;"> than Hirsi Ali’s.</span></p>
<p>On the contrary, Biden would favor Armstrong’s Islam over Hirsi Ali’s solely and wholly because the former confirms his view of the world and appears to bear out what he wishes were true, and the latter does not. This is likewise the stance of all of Biden’s colleagues in the Obama Administration. John Kerry, like Biden, confidently takes a stand on what he believes Islam is all about, based not on any study of his own or anyone else, but on what he wishes is true and hopes is true.</p>
<p>Indeed, on these fantasies are based numerous foreign and domestic policies. <span style="color: #222222;">The idea that new Israeli concessions will end the Palestinian jihad against Israel and make possible a two-state solution with Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace is based on a determined refusal to consider the possibility that the Palestinians really mean the jihadist rhetoric that they pump out endlessly on official Palestinian Authority and Hamas airwaves about destroying Israel utterly.</span></p>
<p>The idea that stable, secular, Western-oriented republics could ever have been constructed in Afghanistan or Iraq was based on a refusal to confront what Sharia really is and to study the degree to which the populations in both countries were attached to it. Ultimately, the United States oversaw the adoption of Constitutions in both countries that enshrined Sharia as the highest law of the land – something that would never have been done had not Washington policymakers been listening to smooth apologists who assured them that Sharia was benign and completely compatible with republican government and Western principles of human rights.</p>
<p>Those policymakers are still entrenched, despite their abysmal track record. There is no accountability for them, for those who would hold them accountable believe in the same fantasies that led to the policy errors. Joe Biden’s interaction with Ayaan Hirsi Ali played out with dreary predictability: it was inevitable that Biden would think his fantasies and wishful thinking to be defensible, established fact, and unthinkable that he would regard the judgment of a Somali ex-Muslim woman with unconscious ethnocentric and chauvinistic paternalism: <i>she is just wounded by her anomalous experiences</i>, he might have thought to himself, while Joe Biden – Joe Biden! – man of the world, savvy political thinker, diplomat, statesman, and humorist, would gently and affably set her straight, and introduce her to the pluralistic open-mindedness that are the hallmarks of what make us great in the West.</p>
<p>That open-mindedness, that openness to non-Western cultures and people, the linchpin of the multiculturalist imperative, is what Biden and Kerry treasure so much and are trying to protect when they assure the world that Islam is a religion of peace and that those who commit violence in its name are violating its core principles. But even as they preen about their open-mindedness, Biden and Kerry and the rest are actually quite close-minded. When he heard Ayaan Hirsi Ali speak, Biden had an opportunity to hear truths that existed outside of his habits of thought. A truly open-minded person would have adjusted his thinking to fit reality.</p>
<p>Instead, Biden placed himself in the preposterous position of attempting to lecture an ex-Muslim, someone who had once revered the Qur’an and studied it deeply, about the true tenets of Islam. In this latest exercise in making himself ridiculous, Biden is a symbol of the entire Western world, staking its life and future on fantasy and wishful thinking. In response to his foolish nonsense, Ayaan Hirsi Ali was polite. If they ever encounter Biden face to face, those pious believers in Islam who know that what she says about their religion is accurate, and hate her for revealing it, will be substantially less so.</p>
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		<title>Is a Country Merely Empty Space?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/fjordman/is-a-country-merely-empty-space/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=is-a-country-merely-empty-space</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Dec 2014 05:00:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Fjordman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Fredrik Reinfeldt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Multiculturalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sweden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247103</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Amid immigrant turmoil, Swedish politician reveals what he really thinks of his country. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/article-1351251-053BF13A0000044D-321_634x558.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247229" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/article-1351251-053BF13A0000044D-321_634x558-397x350.jpg" alt="article-1351251-053BF13A0000044D-321_634x558" width="328" height="289" /></a>Fredrik Reinfeldt was Prime Minister of Sweden from 2006 to 2014. His center-right coalition government suffered a defeat in the general elections of September 2014. Allegedly conservative Prime Minister Reinfeldt stated that the native Swedish culture was merely <a href="http://www.dn.se/nyheter/politik/reinfeldt-det-ursvenska-ar-blott-barbari"><span style="color: #0433ff;">barbarism</span></a>; everything good was imported from abroad. He said this in 2006 following a visit to the town of Södertälje, near Stockholm.</p>
<p>In September 2005 a police station in Södertälje was hit by shots from an automatic weapon, following a confrontation between aggressive immigrant youths and the local police. The trouble started after a Swedish girl was called a “whore” and reacted negatively to the epithet.</p>
<p>If a leading politician had said that African, Asian or Islamic culture was “merely barbarism,” there would have been a huge public outcry and calls for his immediate resignation due to “racism.” His career might have been over. Yet disrespecting and mocking the traditions of Europeans is apparently no problem.</p>
<p>Suburbs in Stockholm and other Swedish cities were rocked by major immigrant riots in the spring of 2013. There are fears that similar riots could return at any moment. The underlying problems have not gone away. Despite this, the ruling elites stubbornly reject any suggestion that mass immigration should be curtailed.</p>
<p>Eleven young men and boys were detained in December 2014 after <a href="http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&amp;artikel=6039140"><span style="color: #0433ff;">rioting</span></a> in a Stockholm suburb. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aac8w14cook&amp;feature=player_detailpage">police were attacked</a> with stones and Molotov cocktails, a park was vandalized and several cars were torched. The eleven are suspected of arson, vandalism, violent rioting and attempted severe assault. &#8220;They are still being questioned,&#8221; police spokeswoman Kia Samrell told news agency TT. Police spokeswoman Elisabeth Wernsten told Swedish Radio News: “A witness saw a large gathering of younger individuals who marched towards the center of Rågsved, where the school is. The witness suspected that the youths were going to smash the school up.” When the police gathered to confront them, they started throwing stones and firebombs. Another police spokeswoman, Eva Nilsson, said that the incident appears to have been premeditated. Police still had no explanation as to why they had been attacked. “This gang simply decided to get together to commit crime. There is no good reason for wanting to attack the police in this way. Nothing provoked the incident,” said Wernsten.</p>
<p>The Rågsved school is one of the poorest performing schools in the country. Just 29 percent of pupils received high enough grades to be admitted to senior high school.</p>
<p>In late 2014, former Prime Minister and outgoing Moderate Party leader Fredrik Reinfeldt once again ruled out any cooperation with the Sweden Democrats, who want to restrict mass immigration to Sweden. In a major interview with the left-wing daily <a href="http://politiken.dk/magasinet/interview/ECE2476627/de-aabne-svenske-hjerters-far/"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Politiken</i></span></a> in Denmark, Reinfeldt rejected the notion that Sweden offers a safe haven for more refugees than the country can cope with, saying that there is plenty of room in the Scandinavian and Nordic countries for more human beings fleeing oppression and war. “<a href="http://www.thelocal.se/20141207/no-home-for-swe-dems-on-centre-right-reinfeldt"><span style="color: #0433ff;">What does</span></a> the word ‘enough’ mean? Sweden is full? The Nordic region is full? Are we too many people? We are 25 million people living in the Nordic region. I often fly over the Swedish countryside and I would advise others to do the same. There are endless fields and forests. There&#8217;s more space than you might imagine. Those who claim that the country is full, they should demonstrate where it is full.”</p>
<p><span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://politik.tv2.dk/2014-12-07-df-om-reinfeldt-interview-en-trussel-mod-danmark">Søren Espersen</a></span> from the Danish People&#8217;s Party (DF) warned that the very liberal Swedish immigration policies now constitute a threat to Denmark and other neighboring countries. The declaration by Sweden’s former Prime Minister Reinfeldt that “there is plenty of space for more refugees” in the Nordic countries was slammed by Danish leaders. “<a href="http://www.thelocal.se/20141207/no-home-for-swe-dems-on-centre-right-reinfeldt"><span style="color: #0433ff;">This is</span></a> the first time I’ve heard that a country’s geographic size should determine how many people from distant lands can fit in. That’s a new one for me. But space is not the problem – the problem is that we have huge economic and cultural challenges,” Martin Geertsen, the integration spokesman for the opposition party Venstre, told Danish media. Mette Reissmann of the ruling Social Democrats also dismissed Reinfeldt’s criticism, adding that Denmark doesn’t share Sweden’s goal of being seen as a “humanitarian superpower.”</p>
<p>Sweden is larger than Germany, but has a much smaller population. <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sw.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Sweden</span></a>’s total land area is about 450,000 square kilometers. <a href="http://www.photius.com/rankings/geography/population_density_persons_per_sq_km_2014_0.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Macau</span></a>’s population density is currently 20,674 persons per square kilometers. If you populate Sweden with the same population density as Macau, you have room for 9.3 billion people. Theoretically, you could move the entire planet’s human population to Sweden. Yet there is even more open space in Antarctica.</p>
<p>Is a country simply empty space, waiting to be filled by shopping and human rights? Are all cultures equal? Can you replace Swedes with Somalis and expect to get the same result? That seems to be the view of transnational and globalist Western elites, although this view is rarely articulated as clearly as Mr. Reinfeldt does.</p>
<p>Much to the annoyance of Western ruling elites, many normal Europeans disagree. They see their countries as the homeland of a distinct nation. They do not believe that all cultures are equal and do not celebrate being gradually displaced in their homeland by foreign tribes. Is a nation merely an idea, or is it an organic unit of people with a shared history and heritage? That is the crucial question underlying the rising tensions over mass immigration throughout the Western world.</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>Fighting Jihad with Education</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dr-shmuel-katz/fighting-jihad-with-education/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=fighting-jihad-with-education</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Dec 2014 05:06:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dr. Shmuel Katz]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246483</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A guide for the concerned global citizen.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #000000;"><strong><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/12p_terror600.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246484" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/12p_terror600-450x336.jpg" alt="12p_terror600" width="340" height="254" /></a>Reprinted from <a href="http://www.aish.com/jw/me/Fighting-Jihad-with-Education.html">Aish.com</a>.</strong></p>
<p style="color: #000000;">In this time of great danger – with Iran <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/15339/iran_s_top_leader_spells_out_plan_for_the_elimination_of_israel_" target="_blank">threatening</a> Israel with nuclear annihilation, and jihadists on borders north and south – Israel&#8217;s efforts to tell its story to the world are simply not taking hold. The classic approach of explanatory &#8220;hasbara&#8221; has repeatedly failed to break through the clutter of disinformation.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">It is time for a new approach – one in which the world understands that they also have “skin in the game.”</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">The Middle East conflict is not simply &#8220;Arab versus Jew.&#8221; Rather this is a &#8220;holy war&#8221; being waged by jihadists against all people of good will – Jews, Christians and moderate Muslims.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">The key, I believe, is education. Once good people are informed about the facts, we have a much better chance of standing up to evil and achieving our mission of keeping the world free.</p>
<p><strong>Threat of Jihad to the West</strong></p>
<p style="color: #000000;">It is crucial that we clearly understand the goals and ideals of the budding <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2005/12/the-caliphate" target="_blank">Muslim Caliphate</a>.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Jihad is not merely some force &#8220;across the ocean.&#8221; Muslim leaders have declared their aim of <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmGRshS0PAw" target="_blank">world domination</a>.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Part of the jihadist strategy is to plant cells in every country. Even the United States, with its huge territory and strong military, is part of the <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XUub1no1qw" target="_blank">jihadist plan</a>.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">At particular risk is America&#8217;s long-standing ally, Israel, whose <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths3/MFroots.html" target="_blank">historical roots</a> in Israel date 2,000 years before the advent of Islam. The 20th century <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.mythsandfacts.org/conflict/mandate_for_palestine/mandate_for_palestine.htm" target="_blank">Mandate</a>conferred modern legitimacy on the <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths3/mftoc.html" target="_blank">Jewish state</a>, and Israel&#8217;s <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/dont-confuse-me-with-the-facts-israel-and-international-law/2014/01/05/" target="_blank">legal rights</a> to the land are unassailable.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Yet due to intimidation and threats, many Western leaders support corrupt Arab regimes, thinking that by sacrificing the <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.standwithus.com/booklets/IL101/" target="_blank">State of Israel</a> they will somehow pacify the jihadists and avoid becoming victims themselves.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">In fact the opposite is true. The more we placate and cajole these bullies, the more we embolden them. As we saw with <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement" target="_blank">Hitler and Czechoslovakia</a>, giving in to the wicked led to the invasion of Europe. The U.S. woke up quite late, and defeating the Nazis was no simple matter.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">In many respects – e.g. nuclear weapons – today&#8217;s threat is much greater.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">If we don&#8217;t deal with the jihadist threat now, we will have to deal with it later when they will likely have more land, more resources, and far more devastating weapons.</p>
<p><strong>Extreme Violence</strong></p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Wherever radical Islam takes hold – whether via ISIS, Hezbollah, Iran, Hamas or Boko Haram – horrific abuse is directed against Infidels (e.g. <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beheading_in_Islamism" target="_blank">beheadings</a>) and even their own people.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;"><a style="color: inherit;">Hamas recently executed</a> 21 suspected informers in an extra-judicial action, while al-Qaeda perpetrated a gruesome <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2009/10/al-qaedas-schoolyard-massacre.html" target="_blank">schoolyard massacre</a> (graphic warning).</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Should the wicked prevail, no Christian, Buddhist or even Moderate Muslim will be spared – neither in the Middle East nor elsewhere in the world. Today, thousands of <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msYGb5k6dkQ" target="_blank">Christians are fleeing</a> under death threats from tyrannical jihadists, and <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/07/antisemitism-rise-europe-worst-since-nazis" target="_blank">anti-Semitism across Europe</a> is at its worse since the Nazi era.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">By supporting the villains who willfully distort facts, they ultimately undermine their own future and that of their children.</p>
<p><strong>Corruption of Jihadist Regimes</strong></p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Corrupt leaders across the Muslim world are exploiting their populations, in favor of solidifying their own power and personal financial wealth, leaving their constituency to wallow in despair.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Palestinians have particularly suffered, with their <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-z-chesnoff/gaza-and-palestinian-leadership_b_5589766.html" target="_blank">leadership</a> continuing to <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4022/palestinian-corruption" target="_blank">divert civilian aid</a> to more nefarious ends.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Palestinian refugees have long remained <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/refugees.html" target="_blank">political pawns</a> of Arab regimes. In today&#8217;s terror war, they are even used as <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://christianchat.com/christian-news-forum/97240-hamas-fighters-manual-found-clear-instructions-use-human-shields.html" target="_blank">human shields</a>.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">How can we justify our own indifference to these <a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.aish.com/ci/s/Human-Rights-Human-Shields-Human-Indifference.html">human rights violations</a>?</p>
<p><strong>Armed with Information</strong></p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Today, the media is the primary disseminator of information. To regulate this power, monitoring organizations are documenting the facts:</p>
<ul style="color: #000000;">
<li><a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.camera.org/" target="_blank">Camera</a> – monitoring the Western media</li>
<li><a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.honestreporting.com/" target="_blank">HonestReporting</a> – fast-action global media watch</li>
<li><a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.palwatch.org/" target="_blank">Palestinian Media Watch</a> – translations and monitoring of Palestinian sources</li>
<li><a style="color: #551a8b;" href="http://www.memri.org/middle-east-media-research-institute.html" target="_blank">Memri</a> – exposing the messages that jihadists share with their own people</li>
</ul>
<p style="color: #000000;">What can you do?</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">In disseminating information, each of us plays an important role. We never know when we&#8217;ll be called upon to use our knowledge, and we must have the ability to speak with confidence.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">The more &#8220;truth ambassadors,&#8221; the better the chance of us all living in a peaceful world.</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>Raymond Ibrahim on ISIS&#8217;s Threat to America</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/raymond-ibrahim-on-isiss-threat-to-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=raymond-ibrahim-on-isiss-threat-to-america</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Nov 2014 05:30:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245649</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Freedom Center's Shillman Fellow sheds light on Islam vs. the West throughout history.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #323333;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/02.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-246100 size-full" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/02.jpg" alt="0" width="317" height="266" /></a>Shillman Fellow Raymond Ibrahim was interviewed last month on &#8220;<a href="http://calltorights.com/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">A Call to Rights Radio Show</span></a>&#8221; with Steve Kates. Topics ranged from the dangers of the Islamic State, history and the Crusades, Christian persecution, and the Obama administration’s policies.  To listen to the nearly one-hour long interview, <a href="http://calltorights.com/audio/CTR100414Hour1.mp3"><span style="color: #0433ff;">click here</span></a> (interview starts around the 9-minute mark)</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The Folly of Inviting Iran to Fight ISIS</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/the-folly-of-inviting-iran-to-fight-isis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-folly-of-inviting-iran-to-fight-isis</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Sep 2014 04:47:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alliance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coalition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=241580</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Furthering the Mullahs' quest for regional power. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/69935203_018314168-1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-241583" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/69935203_018314168-1.jpg" alt="_69935203_018314168-1" width="306" height="266" /></a>There has been considerable pressure from the leftists and Democrats to include the Islamic Republic of Iran in the core coalition of Western allies that have joined to fight the Islamic State. The core coalition consists of Britain, France, Australia, Canada, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark. Turkey, which is led by the Islamic Justice and Development Party of Recep Erdogan, has been notably less cooperative than expected.</p>
<p>Some national and international outlets, along with policy analysts, are beating the drum that without the Islamic Republic defeating the Islamic State is impossible. As one pro-Iranian outlet asserted, “If Obama thinks he can fight the Islamic State group without Iran&#8217;s help, he&#8217;s mistaken.”<b> </b></p>
<p>This academic, naïve and immature argument – that the assistance of the Islamic Republic is needed to counteract the rise of an Islamic terrorist group &#8211;  has been resurfacing repeatedly for almost a decade. This view falls right into the hands and interests of the Iranian regime. This argument comes from two camps: the first camp  consist of those who desire to project the Islamic Republic’s power to be more than it actually is. The second camp of individuals present and reflect their minimal understanding and naïveté in comprehending the power structure of the Middle East, the power of the Islamic Republic, and its role in the Middle East.</p>
<p>First of all, Iran’s military power in comparison to that of European countries and the core coalition is minimal. Exaggerating about the military power of the Islamic Republic and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps falls right into the hand of the Iranian regime and the mullahs.</p>
<p>By doing so, the Islamic Republic has managed to project itself as the only option,  regional power, and more fundamentally, partner of the West (specifically the United States) in defeating ISIS in Iraq and Syria.</p>
<p>Secondly, the security threat posed by ISIS has shifted the attention from Iran’s nuclear program, and this is what the Iranian regime is searching for. While Iran’s nuclear defiance used to command more attention in the Obama administration&#8217;s foreign policy agenda (and other members of the P5+1) when it comes to Iran, the geopolitical and security threat of ISIS has shifted priorities.</p>
<p>More fundamentally, the Islamic Republic was the major reason behind the emergence and creation of the terrorist group the Islamic State. Iran’s military, financial, intelligence, advisory, and security support of the Assad government have been instrumental in keeping the Alawites in power. However, the Islamic Republic’s assistance has also caused the uprising to spiral into a full-fledged civil war and sectarian conflict. Iran’s support contributed further to the instability in the country.</p>
<p>The Iranian and Syrian governments&#8217; use of brutal force further radicalized and militarized the conflict. The Islamic Republic&#8217;s (and its proxy Hezbollah’s) involvement in the Syrian conflict ratcheted up the sectarian language as well, pitting the Sunnis, the Shias and Alawites against each other.</p>
<p>This particular milieu provided the platform for Al-Qaeda affiliates and groups such as ISIS to develop, organize, recruit more members, and coordinate more efficiently.</p>
<p>It goes without saying that from the beginning the Islamic Republic’s line for the Syrian uprising has been that Assad has been attacked by terrorists, Takfiris, or radical Sunni Islamist groups. The Syrian regime employed the same argument to legitimize its use of hard power and prevent foreign intervention as well.</p>
<p>The Syrian regime, with the assistance of Iranian advisors,<span style="color: #0433ff;"> released</span> several ISIS members and Salafists from prison in late 2011 and early 2012 in order to strengthen Damascus and Tehran&#8217;s argument that Assad has been a target of radical terrorist groups rather than a popular uprising.  The ISIS recruitment significantly intensified during this time.</p>
<p>At the beginning, the rise of such radical groups fell right into the interests of the Iranian and Syrian regime. The Islamic Republic and Syria were strategically successful at sending the West, and particularly the United States, a robust message that there is no alternative to Assad, and any military or foreign intervention would exacerbate the conflict.</p>
<p>In addition, the elite Quds Forces, a branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, has gained significant power in Iraq and Syria since the rise of ISIS. The Iranian government no longer sees a need to hide their involvement of its troops on the ground in these countries. The growing role of the IRGC and Quds Forces is being justified by Iran’s claim that it is fighting ISIS. In addition, the United States sees no other option other than to turn a blind eye on the increasing role of Iranian forces.</p>
<p>Militarily speaking, there is no need for the Islamic Republic to defeat the Islamic State. Ideologically and religiously speaking, the Iranian regime’s policies are not that different from the Islamic State when it comes to executions, amputations, stoning, suppressing women, persecuting minorities, destabilizing the region, among others. Nevertheless, the Islamic Republic does these acts in a more systematic way, and they are legalized under its Islamist and Shari’a law-based legislative, judiciary and executive systems.</p>
<p>By requesting that the Islamic Republic assist in defeating the Islamic State, we will be playing right into their hands. The Iranian regime will project itself as the sole power in the Middle East and continue more assertively to pursue its regional hegemonic ambitions and nuclear objectives. Secondly, the West would be legitimizing and emboldening the authoritarian and Islamist regime of the mullahs. Third, the Iranian leaders will use the partnership with the West as well as the West’s request to join them as leverage in obtaining more concessions from the United States when it comes to nuclear talks. The Iranian regime will use this as a platform to maneuver more in the nuclear negotiations and paint the picture that it is an indispensable regional power.</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>Islamic State Atrocities the Product of ‘Grievances’?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/islamic-state-atrocities-the-product-of-grievances/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=islamic-state-atrocities-the-product-of-grievances</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Sep 2014 04:33:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[grievances]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Esposito]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saudi Arabia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=241157</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president suggests ISIS's beheadings, massacres and enslavements are our fault. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/BC-US-Obama-Islamic-State-ref2-1000x7272.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-241183" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/BC-US-Obama-Islamic-State-ref2-1000x7272-450x327.jpg" alt="Barack Obama" width="319" height="232" /></a>While many have rightfully criticized U.S. President Obama’s recent assertion that the Islamic State “<a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2014/09/isis-is-not-islamic"><span style="color: #0433ff;">is not Islamic</span></a>,” some of his other equally curious but more subtle comments pronounced in the same speech have been largely ignored.</p>
<p>Consider the president’s invocation of the “grievances” meme to explain the Islamic State’s success: “At this moment the greatest threats come from the Middle East and North Africa, where radical groups exploit grievances for their own gain. And one of those groups is ISIL—which calls itself the Islamic State.”</p>
<p>Obama’s logic, of course, is fortified by an entire apparatus of professional apologists who make the same claim.  Thus Georgetown professor John Esposito—whose <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/islamic-jizya-protection-from-whom/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">apologetics sometimes morph into boldfaced lies</span></a>—also recently <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/13958"><span style="color: #0433ff;">declared</span></a><span style="color: #323333;"> </span>that “The “primary drivers [for the Islamic State’s violence] are to be found elsewhere,” that is, not in Islam but in a “long list of grievances.”</p>
<p>In other words and once again, it’s apparently somehow “our fault” that Islamic State Muslims are behaving savagely—crucifying, beheading, enslaving, and massacring people <i>only on the basis that they are “infidels”</i>:<i> </i> thus when IS <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/graphic-video-islamic-terrorists-executing-civilians/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">herds and slaughters</span></a> “infidel” men (<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/beheading-infidels-how-allah-heals-the-hearts-of-believers/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">citing the example of the prophet</span></a>)—that’s because they’re angry at something America did; when IS captures “infidel” women and children, and <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/syria-captive-women-herded-and-sold-in-slave-markets/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">sells them on the sex-slave market</span></a> (citing Islamic teachings)—that’s because they’re angry at something America did; when IS bombs churches, breaks their crosses, and tells Christians to convert or die (<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/western-ignorance-of-the-conditions-of-omar/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">citing Islamic scriptures</span></a>)—that’s because they’re angry at something America did.</p>
<p>Although the “grievance” meme flies in the face of logic, it became especially popular after the 9/11 al-Qaeda strikes on America. The mainstream media, following the Islamist propaganda network Al Jazeera’s lead, uncritically picked up and disseminated Osama bin Laden’s videotapes to the West where he claimed that al-Qaeda’s terror campaign was motivated by grievances against the West—grievances that ranged from U.S. support for Israel to failure for the U.S. to sign the Kyoto Agreement concerning climate change.</p>
<p>Of course, that was all rubbish, and I <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/an-open-question-to-osama-bin-laden-or-any-other-islamist/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">have</span></a> <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/offensive-jihad/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">written</span></a> <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/an-analysis-of-al-qaidas-worldview/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">more</span></a> <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/debate-with-michael-scheuer/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">times</span></a> <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/peace-to-whoever-follows-guidance/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">than </span></a>I care to remember about how in their internal Arabic-language communiques to fellow Muslims that never get translated to English, Osama, al-Qaeda, and virtually every Islamist organization make it a point to insist that jihad is an <i>Islamic</i> obligation that has nothing to do with grievances.</p>
<p>Consider Osama’s own words in an internal letter to fellow Saudis:</p>
<blockquote><p>Our talks with the infidel West and our conflict with them ultimately revolve around one issue — one that demands our total support, with power and determination, with one voice — and it is: Does Islam, or does it not, force people by the power of the sword to submit to its authority corporeally if not spiritually?</p>
<p>Yes. There are only three choices in Islam: [1] either willing submission [conversion]; [2] or payment of the jizya, through physical, though not spiritual, submission to the authority of Islam; [3] or the sword — for it is not right to let him [an infidel] live. The matter is summed up for every person alive: Either submit, or live under the suzerainty of Islam, or die. (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Qaeda-Reader-Raymond-Ibrahim/dp/B005ZOIL2K"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>The Al Qaeda Reader</i></span></a>, p. 42)</p></blockquote>
<p><span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/western-ignorance-of-the-conditions-of-omar/">Conversion, submission, or the sword</a></span> is, of course, the mission of the Islamic State—not alleviating “grievances.”  Yet it’s worse than that; for unlike al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, from day one of its existence, has made it very clear—in Osama’s words, “with power and determination, with one voice”—that its massacres, enslavements, crucifixions, and beheadings of “infidels” are all based on Islamic law or Sharia—not silly “grievances” against the West. Unlike al-Qaeda, the Islamic State is confident enough to avoid the <a href="http://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war"><span style="color: #0433ff;">grievances/taqiyya</span></a> game and forthrightly asserts its hostility for humans based on their religious identity.</p>
<p>Yet by slipping the word “grievances” to explain the Islamic State’s Sharia-based savageries, Obama apparently hopes America has been thoroughly conditioned like Pavlov’s dog to automatically associate Islamic world violence with “grievances.&#8221;</p>
<p>What Obama fails to understand—or fails to mention—is that, yes, the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and countless angry Muslims around the world are indeed often prompted to acts of violence by “grievances.”  But as <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/how-dare-you-the-supremacist-nature-of-muslim-grievances/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">fully explained here</span></a>, these “grievances” are not predicated on any universal standards of equality or justice, only a supremacist worldview.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Raymond Ibrahim</strong> on <strong>The Glazov Gang</strong> discussing</em><span id="eow-title" class="watch-title long-title " dir="ltr" title="The Glazov Gang-Raymond Ibrahim on ISIS's Islamic Inspirations."><em><strong> ISIS&#8217;s Islamic Inspirations</strong>:</em> </span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/bFkGgNsqQ_4" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The Islamic State Has Nothing to Do With Islam?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/the-islamic-state-has-nothing-to-do-with-islam/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-islamic-state-has-nothing-to-do-with-islam</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Aug 2014 04:57:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cameron]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIL]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239626</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What’s behind the rush to separate the religion from its most notorious exponents.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/An-image-from-the-jihadist-Twitter-account-Al-Baraka-news-on-June-11-2014-allegedly-shows-militants-from-ISIL-hanging-the-Islamic-Jihad-flag-AFP.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239627" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/An-image-from-the-jihadist-Twitter-account-Al-Baraka-news-on-June-11-2014-allegedly-shows-militants-from-ISIL-hanging-the-Islamic-Jihad-flag-AFP.jpg" alt="An-image-from-the-jihadist-Twitter-account-Al-Baraka-news-on-June-11-2014-allegedly-shows-militants-from-ISIL-hanging-the-Islamic-Jihad-flag-AFP" width="305" height="236" /></a>Whatever they may disagree about, Western leaders are in complete agreement about one thing: the new self-styled caliphate, the Islamic State, has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam. It’s a comforting, reassuring vision for Western non-Muslims facing a massive influx of Muslim immigrants and jittery about the prospect of Islamic terrorism, except for just one problem: it’s entirely false.</p>
<p>Barack Obama has <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/transcript-president-obamas-remarks-on-the-execution-of-journalist-james-foley-by-islamic-state/2014/08/20/f5a63802-2884-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">made it clear</span></a>: “ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents.” David Cameron <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11038121/David-Cameron-Isil-poses-a-direct-and-deadly-threat-to-Britain.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">intoned</span></a>: “What we are witnessing is actually a battle between Islam on the one hand and extremists who want to abuse Islam on the other. These extremists, often funded by fanatics living far away from the battlefields, pervert the Islamic faith as a way of justifying their warped and barbaric ideology – and they do so not just in Iraq and Syria but right across the world, from Boko Haram and al-Shabaab to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.”</p>
<p>State Department spokesperson Marie Harf <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/brittany-m-hughes/state-dept-beheading-us-journalist-not-about-united-states"><span style="color: #0433ff;">emphasized</span></a> that Obama meant what he said: “ISIL does not operate in the name of any religion. The president has been very clear about that, and the more we can underscore that, the better.” British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond <a href="http://www.channel4.com/news/iraq-philip-hammond-james-foley-beheading-isis-is-isil"><span style="color: #0433ff;">declared</span></a>: “[ISIL]’s so-called caliphate has no moral legitimacy; it is a regime of torture, arbitrary punishment and murder that goes against the most basic beliefs of Islam.” The British opposition agrees: Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/killing-of-james-foley-an-utter-betrayal-of-britain--foreign-secretary-philip-hammond-9687959.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">said</span></a> that Islamic State “extremists are beheading people and parading their heads on spikes, subjugating women and girls, killing Muslims, Christians and anyone who gets in their way. This is no liberation movement — only a perverted, oppressive ideology that bears no relation to Islam.”</p>
<p>Cooper’s statement was a bit more specific than most others of its kind, and shows up the weakness of all of them. For every Islamic State atrocity she enumerated, there is Qur’anic sanction:</p>
<p>Beheading people: “When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks…” (Qur’an 47:4).</p>
<p>Subjugating women and girls: “Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because Allah has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them” (Qur’an 4:34).</p>
<p>Killing Muslims: “They wish that you reject Faith, as they have rejected (Faith), and thus that you all become equal (like one another). So take not Auliya’ (protectors or friends) from them, till they emigrate in the Way of Allah (to Muhammad SAW). But if they turn back (from Islam), take (hold) of them and kill them wherever you find them, and take neither Auliya’ (protectors or friends) nor helpers from them” (Qur’an 4:89).</p>
<p>Killing Christians: “Fight those who believe not in God nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by God and His Apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (Qur’an 9:29).</p>
<p>Even if the Islamic State is misinterpreting or misunderstanding these verses, it is doing so in a way that accords with their obvious literal meaning. Yet this denial from Western leaders is nothing new. Obama, for his part, excuses and apologizes for Islam every time a jihadist atrocity affects the U.S. in some way. Of course, most would wave away his denial as a political necessity, and ask why it matters anyway &#8212; why does it make any difference whether or not what the Islamic State is doing is in accord with Islamic texts and teachings? Among other reasons, because it will help determine how much support the new caliphate will ultimately get from Muslims worldwide, and will serve as an indicator of how much we can expect to see the actions of the Islamic State replicated by other Muslims elsewhere.</p>
<p>The blizzard of articles and statements from Muslims and non-Muslims, including the leaders of the principal nations of the Western world, assuring us that what the Islamic State is doing has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam are designed to reassure non-Muslims in the West that they need not have any concerns about massive rates of Muslim immigration and the Muslims already living among them: “Not to worry, folks, your friend Ahmad down at the office will never start acting like those nuts in the Islamic State.”</p>
<p>One problem with this is that it prevents authorities from calling upon Muslim communities to teach against the doctrines that the Islamic State acts upon, and to work for genuine reform. And so the door remains open to the possibility that the actions of the Islamic State <i>could</i> be repeated in Western countries. Barack Obama and David Cameron would do far better to confront the Islamic State’s Islamic justifications for its actions and call on Muslims in the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere to teach against these understandings of Islam that they ostensibly reject.</p>
<p>But they never do that, and apparently have no interest in doing it. Instead, they foster complacency among the people of the U.S. and Britain. For doing so, they may never pay a price, but their people will almost certainly have to pay, and pay dearly.</p>
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		<title>Hamas’ Love Letter to ISIS (with Ten Tips)</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/noah-beck/hamas-love-letter-to-isis-with-ten-tips/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hamas-love-letter-to-isis-with-ten-tips</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Aug 2014 04:30:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239119</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How to manipulate the media to support the jihadist cause. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hamas-israel-palestine-6-22-2013-106375-l.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239121" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hamas-israel-palestine-6-22-2013-106375-l.jpg" alt="hamas-israel-palestine-6-22-2013-106375-l" width="316" height="253" /></a>Dear Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS),</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Our leadership felt bad about all of the tough press you’ve been getting lately and – given our talent for ruining Gaza while enjoying endless love from the media – we thought we’d share some pointers with you.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">We’ve been at this Islamist terrorism thing for decades now, so we can offer some helpful tips for your war to establish a Caliphate – <a href="http://www.memri.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4063.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">a goal we LOVE</span></a>. After all, if you overrun Jordan, we could even become allied forces in the West Bank, from which we can jointly conquer Israel.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">So, during one of our tunnel-side chats, our most seasoned jihadists compiled this list of best practices, in the hope that these suggestions can improve your performance:</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">1)      If the U.S. ever insists that you participate in elections when there are no democratic traditions or institutions in place, say YES (we won over half of the legislature in Gaza’s 2006 election).</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">2)      But if power-sharing arrangements eventually cramp your style, try a violent coup. We did that with our 2007 takeover of Gaza, and <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-says-it-foiled-hamas-plan-for-coup-against-pa-in-west-bank/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">were recently planning a second putsch (in the West Bank) and mega-terror attacks until those pesky Israelis foiled our plot</span></a>. But gaining and keeping power through violence and fear is KEY. In 2007, we even <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/palestinian-horror-2-thrown-death-article-1.222464"><span style="color: #1255cc;">threw our political opponents off rooftops for good measure</span></a>. When in doubt, use brutality to quell any inconvenient dissent. Actually, you’re doing just fine on this point – keep it up!</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">3)      If you’re lucky enough to have peace-loving idealists hoping for your success and giving you income-generating resources, destroy their gifts to solidify your poverty credentials. <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9331863/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/looters-strip-gaza-greenhouses/#.U_Lh7_ldXHQ"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Looters ruined more than 3,000 greenhouses that Israel left us in 2005</span></a> and this strengthened our image as economic victims that much sooner. And we attacked Israel so many times (including our tunnel-assisted abduction of Gilad Shalit and <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/19068807/ns/msnbc/t/gaza-summers-lebanon/#.U_Lm6_ldXHQ"><span style="color: #1255cc;">sometimes 30 rocket attacks per day on Sderot</span></a>) that <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1554916/Israel-orders-blockade-of-Gaza-Strip.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Israel had to seal Gaza&#8217;s borders to limit our weapons imports from Iran</span></a>. But Israel’s silly desire to limit how we can kill Israelis did wonders for our victimhood because the media forgot all about the cause of the blockade and focused only on the hardship it causes us. It gets better: when Israel opens the blockade to send us humanitarian aid, <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/terrorist-shell-gaza-crossing-used-to-transfer-supplies/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">we even bomb the crossing</span></a> and NOBODY cares (or wonders if maybe we’re responsible for the blockade or Gazan misery generally). Pretty cool, right?</p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #232323;">4)      We use <a href="http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/teaching-terror-how-hamas-radicalizes-palestinian-society"><span style="color: #1255cc;">clinics, schools, mosques and charities to gain legitimacy</span></a> among our people and <a href="http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=455"><span style="color: #1255cc;">inculcate them with the values of jihadi terror</span></a>. Oh wait, you do that too. Good job!</span></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">5)      But you should definitely use more human shields to protect yourselves from U.S. airstrikes. <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/08/05/hamas-manual-details-civilian-death-plan-israel/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">We LOVE human shields</span></a> – they’re cheap and effective. <a href="http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&amp;doc_id=12117"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Just remember to tell mourners how you fast-tracked the victims to heaven</span></a>.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">6)      You WANT dead babies. This is HUGE. The ever-shortening attention span fueled by social media is awesome because it relieves everyone of intellectual hassles like historical context, nuanced moral judgment, deeper analysis of cause and effect, etc. Just show that the people you’re trying to kill have caused baby deaths while defending themselves, and you win. It’s that simple.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">7)      Another technique that we HIGHLY recommend is offending every rule of decency. That means:</p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #232323;">a)      <a href="http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Terrorism/Pages/Protective-Edge-Hamas-violations-of-ceasefires-chronology.aspx"><span style="color: #1255cc;">requesting cease-fires and then violating them</span></a>,</span></p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #232323;">b)      using <a href="http://www.idfblog.com/blog/2014/07/28/hamas-uses-hospitals-ambulances-military-purposes/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">hospitals and ambulances for military purposes,</span></a></span></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">c)      bombing your own people and then blaming your enemy (we killed nine Gazans and scared the media into faulting Israel; <a href="http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/30/italian-journalist-defies-hamas-out-of-gaza-far-from-hamas-retaliation-misfired-rocket-killed-children-in-shati/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">when an Italian journalist revealed the truth after he was safe from our threats</span></a>, nobody cared),</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">d)      using child labor to build your terror tunnels (<a href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/At-least-160-children-died-digging-tunnels-for-Hamas-369138"><span style="color: #1255cc;">we killed about 160 in the process and nobody cared</span></a>),</p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #232323;">e)      <a href="http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=846"><span style="color: #1255cc;">teaching children to worship death</span></a> and <a href="http://www.thetower.org/hamas-training-tens-of-thousands-of-child-soldiers/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">using child soldiers</span></a> (props on your <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/vice-isis-video-child-indoctrination-2014-8"><span style="color: #1255cc;">great work with kids, ISIS</span></a>!),</span></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">f)       <a href="http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2014/08/how-hamas-diverted-internationally.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">diverting humanitarian resources for terrorist use</span></a> (we could have built at least<a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/180007/concrete-facts-about-hamas"><span style="color: #1255cc;"> seven skyscrapers</span></a> with the concrete expropriated for our terror tunnels) while protesting your poverty <a href="http://www.thetower.org/0707-while-gazans-suffer-in-poverty-leaders-of-hamas-live-in-luxury/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">even as your leadership lives well</span></a>,</p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #232323;">g)      <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-admits-intimidating-foreign-press-who-reported-wrong-message/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">intimidating</span></a> and <a href="http://www.idfblog.com/blog/2014/07/21/hamas-teaches-gazas-facebook-users-secret-spinning-terror/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">deceiving the press</span></a> into promoting your narrative (if they don’t do so on their own, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/07/08/WATCH-BBC-Admits-Gaza-Under-Attack-Images-Fabricated"><span style="color: #1255cc;">like when the BBC disseminated inaccurate photos of Gaza</span></a>)</span></p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #232323;">h)      using cease-fires <a href="http://www.thetower.org/0897-hamas-exploits-ceasefire-to-make-more-rockets/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">to rearm</span></a> (rather than rebuild) <a href="http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/27/report-hamas-used-ceasefire-to-execute-25-gazans-accused-of-treachery-blamed-israel-for-deaths/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">while executing your domestic critics</span></a> and <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-said-to-have-executed-dozens-of-tunnel-diggers/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">your tunnel-diggers</span></a>.</span></p>
<p style="color: #1255cc;"><span style="color: #232323;">8)      </span><span style="color: #000000;">We also have some positive feedback for you, ISIS. You have impressively excelled at championing</span><span style="color: #232323;"> our core values! We&#8217;re all for <a href="http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&amp;doc_id=8091"><span style="color: #1255cc;">hateful incitement against religious minorities</span></a>, treating women as<a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/un-cancels-gaza-marathon-over-hamas-ban-on-women/"><span style="color: #1255cc;"> second-class citizens</span></a>, giving <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/5296.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">homosexuals the death penalty</span></a></span><span style="color: #323333;">, letting <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/24/gaza-theme-park-attack-arson"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Islamic morality police govern</span></a> economic activity, <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/7852.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">teaching war</span></a> rather than human rights, <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/126388#.U_Gb7vldXHQ"><span style="color: #1255cc;">attacking Christians</span></a> (or just <a href="http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/insideisrael/2014/august/gaza-bishop-hamas-used-church-to-fire-rockets-/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">using their church to launch rockets</span></a>), and <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/03/upsurge-palestinian-honour-killings-gaza-201432372831899701.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">endorsing honor killings</span></a>. </span><span style="color: #232323;">You’re awesome!</span></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">9)      <span style="color: #000000;">We <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/world/middleeast/03gaza.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">condemned the assassination of Osama Bin Laden</span></a> as much as you aspire to surpass him. But</span> PLEASE stop trying to involve the West (as you did with your <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/muslims-demand-breakaway-islamic-nation-norway-or-another-9-11-threatened"><span style="color: #1255cc;">threats against Norway</span></a>, <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4616/islamic-state-spain"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Spain</span></a>, and especially <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/18/isis-threatens-america-again-we-will-drown-all-of-you-in-blood/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">the US</span></a> – Obama just <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-us-secretly-agreed-on-gradual-easing-of-gaza-blockade/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">pressured Israel into letting us keep our military capabilities</span></a>, so be nice!). The key here is to complete your domination of the Middle East by first eradicating its only democracy (Israel) and its moderate Arab states. You want to lull Europe and the U.S. into spineless passivity by reinforcing their naïve assumption that we’ll be appeased enough to stop at the Middle East. We need Western “powers” to cower away from our region long enough for Iran to get nuclear weapons. Yes, we know that you, our fellow Sunnis, have a thing against Shiites, but the Iranian regime hates Western infidels as much as we do, so we can all work together in the service of Jihad. Indeed, Iran is our main sponsor (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/hamas-rocket-arsenal-2014-7"><span style="color: #1255cc;">we get our best missiles from them!</span></a>). And once Iran has nukes, THEN we can go after the EU and U.S. But this game takes patience, guys – not that much because Iran (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/iran-nuclear-negotiations-extended-deadline-obama-boxed-in-2014-7"><span style="color: #1255cc;">thanks to Obama’s “strategy”</span></a>) could have <a href="http://www.iranwatch.org/our-publications/articles-reports/irans-nuclear-timetable"><span style="color: #1255cc;">nukes in two months</span></a>. But until that happens (or you somehow help us to destroy Jordan and Israel beforehand), you really need to chill out on the rhetoric against the West.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">10)  If you want to skyrocket your international popularity, you should attack Israel ASAP. You may hear some perfunctory condemnations but you’ll be secretly admired. Better still: compel Israel to defend itself militarily – that’s when you can literally surf a tidal wave of global support. We can’t emphasize enough the importance of having Israel as your opponent — anyone else really won’t do. Why do you think we rarely attack Egypt (which also blockades Gaza)? Because they’d flatten Gaza and nobody would care. Remember Ansar Dine? Our fellow Islamists in Mali were thousands of miles from France, but nobody cared when the French started bombing them in 2013 without any threat against France&#8217;s security. To guarantee world support for your Islamist ways, your enemy must be Israel. But DON’T use donkeys (<a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/21/hamas-sends-bomb-covered-donkey-hit-israeli-troops/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">as we do</span></a>) to blow up Israelis because <a href="http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000239.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">this will upset the animal-rights group PETA</span></a>.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Destroying Western civilization is far easier than building it, but still requires a disciplined strategy, so we hope these pointers come in handy. Feel free to get in touch with any questions.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">With love and support,</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Hamas</p>
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		<title>The Fate of the West</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/enza-ferreri/the-fate-of-the-west/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-fate-of-the-west</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Aug 2014 04:07:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Enza Ferreri]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239157</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Either it will become Christian again or it will become Muslim.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/burqa.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239258" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/burqa-450x281.jpg" alt="burqa" width="264" height="165" /></a>It&#8217;s all very simple. We can&#8217;t fight Islam in the West without fighting the enablers of Islam in the West, namely the Leftists.</p>
<p>And, since the Left has many different and separate aspects, we have to fight against each one of them. Secularism, environmentalism, global warming alarmism, homosexualism, militant feminism, sexual relativism, multiculturalism, anti-Christianity, Islamophilia, post-nationalism, and internationalism are just as important targets to attack as Marxist economics, the expropriation of the capitalist class (or, in its modern reincarnation, redistribution of wealth), and the dictatorship of the proletariat.</p>
<p>Neglecting any of these fronts is like fighting a war leaving a battleground to the enemy, like fighting on the western front and leaving totally undefended the eastern one.</p>
<p>Secularism and atheism are certainly the first lines of important wars.</p>
<p>A secularist West will always lose to Islam, because it will have enough compassion, tolerance and self-restraint from violence that are the remnants of its Christian heritage, but it will have lost the ideals, the passion and certainty of fighting for a just cause that were once part of Christianity and have disappeared with its erosion.</p>
<p>Two quotes here serve as epigrams. Robert Spencer wrote in his great work &#8220;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1596985151/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1596985151&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=villagonlinema00&amp;linkId=VIUQ2BVVVC5BLDYE">Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn&#8217;t</a>&#8220;: “People who are ashamed of their own culture will not defend it.” And Dennis Prager said during one of his radio broadcasts, “Only good religion can counter bad religion.”</p>
<p>Some people claim that there won&#8217;t be a religious revival in Europe because we are past believing in God. That this is not true can be seen by the high &#8211; and increasing – number of Westerners who convert to Islam. Many of them give as a reason for their <a href="http://www.enzaferreri.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/uk-converts-to-islam-on-rise.html">conversion</a> the need for absolutes, boundaries and well-defined status.</p>
<p>A journalist writing for <em>The Spectator</em> on this subject explained why she is Catholic:</p>
<blockquote><p>But above all, I like the moral certainties. I don’t mind the dogma one bit. I would rather dogma and impossible ideals than confusion and compromise. In that sense, I do identify with those who choose Islam over the way of no faith, or a seemingly uncertain faith, like the woolly old C of E.</p></blockquote>
<p>William Kilpatrick, in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/158617696X/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=158617696X&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=villagonlinema00&amp;linkId=IPTTMC4C6AVOIXI3">Christianity, Islam, and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West</a> – a book I thoroughly recommend reading &#8211; writes:</p>
<blockquote><p>Brian Young&#8217;s friends said he was troubled by the decadence of Western society. David Courtrailler&#8217;s lawyer said, “For David, Islam ordered his life.” These are the sorts of reasons ordinary converts to Islam give. A common refrain from converts is that Islam provides a complete plan for life in contrast to the ruleless and clueless life offered by secular society. As Mary Fallot, a young French convert, explains, “Islam demands a closeness to God. Islam is simpler, more rigorous, and it&#8217;s easier because it is explicit. I was looking for a framework; man needs rules and behavior to follow. Christianity did not give me the same reference points.” If you look at the convert testimonials on Muslim websites, they echo this refrain: Islam brings “peace”, “order”, “discipline”, and a way of life that Christianity and other religions fail to offer.</p></blockquote>
<p>Human beings will never be past the need for believing in something bigger than themselves, because that need is part of the human mind.</p>
<p>Today the Christian religion is being replaced by the worship of the Goddess earth, New Age beliefs, the cult of celebrities (not coincidentally sometimes called &#8220;idols&#8221;), a blind faith in science, in chance as the creator and motor of the universe and in the absence of God.</p>
<p>And, last but not least, by Islam, which is increasingly filling the vacuum left by Christianity.</p>
<p>It is not surprising that Western people who feel a spiritual need may embrace Islam more easily than Christianity, when the latter has been the butt of constant attacks, denigrations and ridicule for a very long time, increasing since the 1960s, while the former is continually &#8212; albeit seriously mistakenly &#8212; praised as a religion of peace, tolerance and great wisdom.</p>
<p>Christian clergy is often criticized, sometimes rightly and sometimes not. But we tend to forget that clergymen are human beings, with all their imperfections. They too have been subjected to many decades of Leftist indoctrination and brainwashing. Even they, by the mere fact of living in this society, have been influenced by its insanity.</p>
<p>We can expect guidance from our leaders, yes, but rather than castigating them we should make the first steps.</p>
<p>A clear direction was given by Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, Archbishop of Bologna, Italy.</p>
<p>As early as 30 September 2000, before 9/11, when very few in the West even thought of worrying about Islam, he delivered a very <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/04/enza-ferreri-either-europe-will-become-christian-again-or-it-will-become-muslim">forward-looking speech</a>, which included this premonition:</p>
<blockquote><p>In an interview ten years ago, I was asked with great candor and with enviable optimism: “Are You among those who believe that Europe will either be Christian or cease to exist?” I think my answer then may well serve to conclude my speech today.</p>
<p>I think – I said – that either Europe will become Christian again or it will become Muslim. What I see without future is the “culture of nothing”, of freedom without limits and without content, of skepticism boasted as intellectual achievement, which seems to be the attitude largely dominant among European peoples, all more or less rich of means and poor of truths. This “culture of nothingness” (sustained by hedonism and libertarian insatiability) will not be able to withstand the ideological onslaught of Islam, which will not be missing: only the rediscovery of the Christian event as the only salvation for man – and therefore only a strong resurrection of the ancient soul of Europe – will offer a different outcome to this inevitable confrontation.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, neither “secularists” nor “Catholics” seem to have so far realized the tragedy that is looming. “Secularists”, opposing the Church in every way, do not realize that they are fighting against the strongest inspiration and the most effective defense of Western civilization and its values of rationality and freedom: they might realize it too late.</p></blockquote>
<p>An effect of the decline of Christian faith in Europe has been the strong decrease in birth rates, that are now below the population replacement level (the replacing – and then some &#8212; is done by Muslims). Why have babies when you feel that you don’t have anything valuable to pass on to them?</p>
<p>I remember a time when my friends and contemporaries of child-bearing age (but childless) were saying to me things to the effect that there was no point – indeed it was a crime to engage &#8212; in bringing people into this terrible world. This is the talk of faithless despair, no hope in this or another world, lack of belief.</p>
<p>Militant atheists à la Richard Dawkins have not really given enough thought to the long-term consequences of their ideas, which we are beginning to see.</p>
<p>And of which we are reminded whenever, for example, we read in the news of doctors and missionaries who die of Ebola while assisting affected patients for Christian charities. Not many atheist charities are involved in that work.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><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"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>The West’s Prostration to Islam</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/the-wests-prostration-to-islam/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-wests-prostration-to-islam</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Aug 2014 04:20:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Shillman Fellow Raymond Ibrahim enlightens the Poles about Islam.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><i><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/islam-will-dominate-the-world.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-237933" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/islam-will-dominate-the-world-450x350.jpg" alt="islam-will-dominate-the-world" width="307" height="239" /></a>Raymond Ibrahim, a Shillman Fellow at the Freedom Center, was recently interviewed by Fronda, a leading website in Poland.  The English-language version of the Polish interview, originally titled “</i><a href="http://www.fronda.pl/a/raymond-ibrahim-plaszczenie-sie-przed-islamem,39012.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Raymond Ibrahim: Prostration before Islam</i></span></a><i>,” follows:</i></p>
<p><strong>1. Who is Raymond Ibrahim? A scholar, a writer, an activist? What is his mission and the main goal?</strong></p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim: I am a little of all that and more.  Due to my background, academic and personal, I have had a long interest in the Middle East and Islam, especially the historic and contemporary interaction between Islam and Christianity.  After the strikes of September 11, 2001, I took an interest in the current events of the region vis-à-vis the West, and what immediately struck me was how, on the one hand, the conflict was almost identical to the historic conflict, one of continuity—at least that is how many Muslims were portraying it.</p>
<p>But on the other hand, in the West, the narrative was very different and based on a “new paradigm,” one that saw Islam and Muslims as perpetual victims of all sorts of outside and material pressures, mostly from the West.  Thus the analyses that were being disseminated through media and academia were to my mind immensely flawed and, while making perfect sense to people in the West—for they were articulated through Western, secular, materialistic paradigms—had little to do with reality as I saw and understood it.</p>
<p>That was one of the reasons I left academia and began writing for more popular audiences, to try to offer a corrective to these flawed narratives.  My first book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Qaeda-Reader-Essential-Terrorist-Organization/dp/076792262X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1407175739&amp;sr=1-2"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>The Al Qaeda Reader</i></span></a> (2007), was meant to do precisely this—to compare the words of al-Qaeda as delivered to the West and as delivered to fellow Muslims, and to show how when speaking to the West, al-Qaeda and other Islamists used Western arguments, claiming any number of grievances, political and otherwise, as being the source of their jihad.  Obviously such arguments, widely disseminated by Western mainstream media, made perfect sense to the West.</p>
<p>But al-Qaeda’s Arabic writings that I discovered when I was working at the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., and which I translated for the book, made completely different arguments, basically saying that, irrespective of all grievances, Muslims must hate and wage jihad on all non-Muslim “infidels” until they come under Islamic authority, according to the worldview of Sharia, or Islamic law.</p>
<p>So in a way, you can say my mission since then has been to open Western eyes to the truths and reality of Islam—at least the reality of how it is understood and practiced by many Muslims—for Western eyes have been closed shut in recent times.</p>
<p><strong>2. You have a dual background. You were born and raised in the U.S. by parents who were born and raised in a Coptic community in Egypt. Are you the ‘clash of civilizations’ personified? What kind of advantages and disadvantages does such an identity and upbringing lead do?</strong></p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim: That’s an interesting way of putting it.  Along with obvious benefits—being bilingual (Arabic and English), for example—yes, I do believe my background gives me more subtle advantages.  Growing up cognizant of both worlds and cultures has, I believe, imparted a higher degree of objectivity to my thinking.  Most people’s worldviews are colored by whichever culture they are immersed in—hence exactly why so many Western people tend to project their own values on the Islamic world, convinced that any violence and intolerance that comes from that region must be a product of some sort of socio-political or economic “grievance”—some sort of material, not religious, factor.  While I understand, appreciate and participate in Western values and norms, because of my “dual” background, I also cannot project such values and norms on non-Western peoples (and vice-versa, of course).</p>
<p>This has caused my worldview to be, I believe, more neutral and objective, less colored by cultural values and references.  Conversely, I have, so far, not encountered any notable disadvantages from such a background—other than perhaps being overly objective and not always able to participate in the common.</p>
<p><strong>3. In addition to numerous articles in a variety of media, you are also the author of two books. The last one, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1621570258/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1621570258&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=uhurnetw-20"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians</i></span></a> argues that martyrdom is not a thing from the past. It is not a book with a happy ending, is it?</strong></p>
<p>I prefer to think of it as a dire wake up call to the West.  The topic of Muslim persecution of Christians is a perfect example of what I’m talking about.  In <i>Crucified Again</i>, I look at the history of this phenomenon, the Islamic scriptures that support it, and the modern era.   And what I find and document is unwavering continuity.  According to Islamic teaching, Christians and other non-Muslims are “infidels,” and as such, they are seen as at best third class subjects in Islamic states.  They cannot build or renovate churches, display crosses or Bibles; they have to pay tribute with humility, according to Koran 9:29; they cannot speak well of Christianity or criticize Islam.  They are even required to give up their seats to a Muslim if he demands it, according to strict Islamic teaching (and as found in the “<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/western-ignorance-of-the-conditions-of-omar/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Conditions of Omar</span></a>,” an important text that discusses how Christian minorities are to be treated under Islam).</p>
<p>Now if you look at history—as recorded by early Arabic/Islamic historians—you will see that that is exactly how Christians were treated under Islam for centuries; that is exactly how nations like Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and all of north Africa, went from being Christian majority to Muslim majority over the centuries: most Christians opted to convert to Islam rather than constantly suffer from third-class status as well as sporadic persecution.</p>
<p>And today, what we are seeing is simply the ongoing continuation of history, as Christians continue to be persecuted, continue to dwindle in numbers in lands that were Christian centuries before Western Europe embraced the faith.  Yet, according to Western analysts, etc., all of this is some sort of “misunderstanding” or because Muslims are angry about Israel—anything and everything but codified religious intolerance, even though the latter is so well documented, doctrinally, historically, and in current events.</p>
<p><strong>4. There are many initiatives aimed at bringing the ‘spirit of dialogue’ between the religions. In the Catholic Church we even celebrate a Day of Islam. What is your opinion on this kind of inter-faith outreach? Will it be successful in decreasing the persecution of Christians or helping individuals like Asia Bibi?</strong></p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim: No, it will exacerbate Christian persecution.  From my perspective, the more the West and/or Christianity kowtow to Islam—and that is what modern day “interfaith outreach” often amounts to—the more aggressive that religion becomes.</p>
<p>Here, again, is another example of Westerners projecting their norms onto others, namely, Muslims.  In the Western paradigm, itself an offshoot of Christianity, showing tolerance and forgiveness will supposedly cause some sort of reciprocation from the one being forgiven and tolerated—since everything is always supposedly a “misunderstanding.”  Yet in Islam, might has always made right, and “tolerance” has always been seen as sign of equivocation or weakness—a lack of conviction.  If Christians praise Islam, so many Muslims conclude, that is because they feel it is the truth—not because they are trying to find commonalities, a paradigm that is foreign to classical Islam, which sees the world in terms of right (Islam) and wrong (non-Islam).</p>
<p>Again, history sheds some light on this.  In the medieval era, there were Christians like Francis of Assisi who tried to have dialogue with Muslims—but in order to get to the truth, including by asking hard questions about Islam often in the context of Christian teaching.  Such dialogue is of course admirable because it is sincere.  But trying to have dialogue in order to find and parade some minor “commonalities”—while overlooking and ignoring the fundamental differences, which are much more immense and the true sources of conflict—is simply a game of wasting time.</p>
<p><strong>5. In your writings regarding the Muslim persecutions of Christians, two themes are constantly recurring. Firstly, you claim that it constitutes “an elephant in the room” and secondly you believe that liberal academia and media are biased “whitewashing Islam and blaming the West” for Islamic attacks against non-Muslims. Can you explain the reasons for such arguments?</strong></p>
<p>It’s the “elephant in the room” because few things show such remarkable continuity between the past and the present—while still being thoroughly ignored and treated as an aberration by academia, media, and government—as Muslim persecution of Christians.  If you look at the true history recorded by both Muslims and Christians during the Medieval era—one Muslim historian tells of how one caliph destroyed 30,000 churches—you will see that the persecution and subjugation of Christians is an ironclad fact of history.</p>
<p>Today, not only do we see Christians persecuted from one end of the Islamic world to the other, but we see the same exact patterns of persecution that Christians experienced centuries ago, including hostility for and restrictions on churches, hostility for the crucifix and other Christian symbols and icons, restrictions on Christian worship and freedom.  (I discuss this in more depth <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/western-ignorance-of-the-conditions-of-omar/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">here</span></a> and <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/the-existential-elephant-in-the-christian-persecution-room/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">here</span></a>.)  As for academia and media, they reject modern day persecution of Christians for a plethora of reasons—not least because they tend to be ideologically anti-Christian—but primarily because it contradicts their entire narrative, specifically the notion that, far from being persecuted, Christians themselves are the most intolerant groups, and that Muslims are “misunderstood others” who have been oppressed by the West.</p>
<p>These themes are today so predominant in the West that few can believe they are almost entirely fabricated—but so they are, according to both history and current events, both of which are naturally suppressed or distorted by academia and media in the interest of keeping their ideologically-charged narrative alive.</p>
<p><strong>6. In her book, <i>Tenth Parallel</i>, Eliza Griswold writes that religion becomes means of political emancipation, especially between the equator and the tenth parallel, where Christianity and Islam meet. So perhaps it is not about spirituality but power?</strong></p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim: Again, one need only turn to history, followed by doctrine, to see that mainstream Islam has always been about power.  Its founder and prophet, Muhammad, was a warlord, who went on caravan raids and incited his followers to attack and plunder other tribes that rejected his “prophecy,” seizing their property and women and children—and all in the context of “God told me so.”  After his death, his followers did the same, giving people three choices: be part of their “team” by converting, or else keep their religious beliefs, but pay tribute and live as third class subjects, or else die.  In this context, and over the course of several centuries of jihadi conquest, the Islamic world was forged.</p>
<p>All this is well justified by the Koran and Islamic Sharia.  Compare and contrast this with Christianity’s founder, Jesus Christ: far from a warlord, he preached mercy, peace, and spirituality.  And that’s one of the problems: Westerners are so well acquainted with Christianity that they tend to project its approach to Islam—naively thinking that all religions must be the same, primarily spiritual, not concerned with the temporal.  But Islam is immensely concerned with the temporal—with power.</p>
<p><strong>7. You have written about conceptual failures dominating the Western discourse on Islam. What are the main fallacies and why are they dangerous?</strong></p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim: Along with the aforementioned fallacy of projecting Christian/Western worldviews onto a distinctly different religion/civilization like Islam, secular Westerners almost always try to understand Islam through secular and materialistic paradigms—the only paradigms they themselves are familiar with.  Thus the mainstream interpretation in the West is that “radical Islam” is a byproduct of various sorts of material discontent (economic, political, social) and has little to do with the religion itself.</p>
<p>Westerners apparently think this way because the secular, Western experience has been such that people respond with violence primarily when they feel they are politically, economically, or socially oppressed. While true that many non-Western peoples fit into this paradigm, the fact is, the ideologies of Islam have the intrinsic capacity to prompt Muslims to violence and intolerance vis-à-vis the “other,” irrespective of grievances.</p>
<p>Conceptually, then, it must be first understood that many of the problematic ideologies associated with radical Islam trace directly back to Sharia, Islamic law. Jihad as offensive warfare to subjugate “infidels” (non-Muslims); mandated social discrimination against non-Muslim minorities living in Muslim nations (the regulations governing <i>ahl al-dhimma</i>); the obligation to hate non-Muslims—<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/muslim-husbands-must-hate-non-muslim-wives/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">even if a Muslim is married to one</span></a>—all of these are clearly defined aspects that have historically been part of Islam’s worldview and not “open to interpretation.”</p>
<p>For example, the obligation to wage expansionist jihad is as “open to interpretation” as the obligation to perform the Five Pillars of Islam, including praying and fasting. The same textual sources and methods of jurisprudence that have made it clear that prayer and fasting are obligatory, have also made it clear that jihad is also obligatory; the only difference is that, whereas prayer and fasting is an “individual” duty, jihad is understood to be a “communal” duty (a <i>fard kifaya</i>).  All these intricacies must be understood before Westerners can understand Islam on its own terms.</p>
<p><strong>8. One of the most popular views as to the reasons of Islamic terrorism is that it is based on political and economic grievances. The recipe to achieve the peaceful world would be then to remove the factors contributing to poverty or oppression and this way disarm the ‘relative deprivation’ bomb. Do you think it is feasible?</strong></p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim: Again, as mentioned, political and economic grievances may be a reality; yet it is a distinct fact that, wherever Islam is—including in immensely rich nations like the Gulf nations—violence and intolerance of non-Muslims exist.  For example, Christian persecution around the world today is being committed at the hands of Muslims of all races, languages, cultures, and socio-political circumstances: Muslims from among America’s allies (Saudi Arabia) and its enemies (Iran); Muslims from economically rich nations (Qatar) and from poor nations (Somalia and Yemen); Muslims from “Islamic republic” nations (Afghanistan) and from “moderate” nations (Malaysia and Indonesia); Muslims from nations rescued by America (Kuwait) and Muslims claiming “grievances” against America.  Moreover, much of the underdeveloped world is suffering from economic, political, and social problems—and yet it is the Islamic world where terrorism in the name of God (Allah) is rampant.  One does not hear of, say, disenfranchised Cuban dissidents crashing explosive-laden vehicles into government buildings—while screaming Jesus is great.  Yet sceams of Allah is great in the context of terror attacks are ubiquitous.</p>
<p><strong>9. You have devoted one of your publications to the concept of <i>taqiyya</i>. Can you explain what <i>taqiyya</i> is and why is it important to know it in the West?</strong></p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim: Although Muslims are exhorted to be truthful, <a href="http://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war"><span style="color: #0433ff;">taqiyya</span></a> is an Islamic doctrine that permits them to deceive non-Muslims, who by nature are deemed enemies.  Some Western scholars and apologists for Islam insist that taqiyya is a very arcane teaching developed by Shi’a and to be used only when their lives are in danger.  In reality, however, taqiyya—as well as its sister teaching, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/tawriya-lying/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">tawriya</span></a>—is used by mainstream Islam (Sunnism) and gives Muslims great freedom to deceive infidels if the deception can be rationalized as a way to help empower Islam over non-Muslims.</p>
<p>Normative Islamic teaching is so that, almost anything can be rationalized as permissible—for example “martyrdom operations” (even though suicide is banned by Islam)—as long as they can be perceived as helping empower Islam.  Islamic prophet Muhammad himself permitted deceit, including to one’s wife.  One of the few Arabic language books devoted to the subject, <i>At-Taqiyya fi&#8217;l-Islam</i> (Dissimulation in Islam) makes it clear that <i>taqiyya</i> is hardly limited to Shi‘a dissimulating in fear of persecution. Written by Sami Mukaram, a former Islamic studies professor at the American University of Beirut and author of some twenty-five books on Islam, the opening sentences of the book clearly demonstrate the ubiquity and broad applicability of <i>taqiyya</i>: “<i>Taqiyya</i> is of fundamental importance in Islam. Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it and practices it … We can go so far as to say that the practice of <i>taqiyya </i>is mainstream in Islam, and that those few sects not practicing it diverge from the mainstream … <i>Taqiyya</i> is very prevalent in Islamic politics, especially in the modern era.”</p>
<p><strong>10. Do you have any words of advice to countries like Poland where the influence of Islam is still relatively weak but increasing due to immigration and certain radicalization of indigenous Muslim groups (e.g. Polish Tatars stopped their traditional prayers for Poland which used to be their custom)?</strong></p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim: My advice is to take heed of what I call “<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/islams-rule-of-numbers-and-the-london-beheading/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Islam’s Rule of Numbers</span></a>,” which is basically the unwavering, statistical fact that, the more Muslims grow in numbers (and thus strength), the more aggressive they become.  In the U.S., for example, where Muslims are <a href="http://religions.pewforum.org/reports"><span style="color: #0433ff;">less than 1% of the population</span></a>, acts of Islamic intolerance are relatively uncommon. Islamic assertiveness is limited to political activism dedicated to portraying Islam as a “religion of peace,” the painting of any and all critics as “Islamophobes,” and sporadic, but clandestine, acts of terror.</p>
<p>In some Western European nations, where Muslims make for much larger minorities—for example, the UK and France—open violence and religious intolerance is common. But because they are still a vulnerable minority, Islamic violence is always placed in the context of “grievances,” a word that, as we have seen, pacifies Westerners.</p>
<p>Where Muslim numbers reach 35-50% of a population, the full-blown jihad is often declared, as in Nigeria, which although is half Christian half Muslim is also one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a Christian.   In short, Islamic aggressiveness is very much a product of Islamic strength in numbers.  I discussed this at length <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/islams-rule-of-numbers-and-the-london-beheading/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">here</span></a>.</p>
<p><strong>11. Inevitably one stumbles upon the ‘so what?’ question. Nobody persecutes Christians in France and churches are not burnt in Germany. It is doubtful that Europe will be washed away with the waves of Islam. To the contrary, it looks like Europe wants to leave religions behind. Would you not say so?</strong></p>
<p>Raymond Ibrahim: Much of this view is based on selfishness, of the modern West’s egoistic and highly individualistic worldview.  What such people are really saying is that, by and large, if nothing changes and people remain indifferent, they themselves and their generation will go through life fine without much worry from the Islamic question.  But this position also shows absolute indifference to future generations and the world they will inherit.  In short, yes, most Europeans today may not personally suffer from Islam.  But they are opening the floodgates wide to the potential suffering of their descendants.</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>Inventing Freedom. How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/inventing-freedom-how-the-english-speaking-peoples-made-the-modern-world/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=inventing-freedom-how-the-english-speaking-peoples-made-the-modern-world</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Jul 2014 04:56:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daniel Hannan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Inventing Freedom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Liberty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236417</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Daniel Hannan recovers the forgotten history of the free world. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/9780062231734_p0_v5_s260x420.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236420" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/9780062231734_p0_v5_s260x420-231x350.jpg" alt="9780062231734_p0_v5_s260x420" width="193" height="292" /></a><strong>[Daniel Hannan will be speaking at a Freedom Center event in Los Angeles on July 22, 2014. For more info, </strong><a href="http://www.eventbrite.com/e/evening-event-with-daniel-hannan-tickets-11563925011" target="_blank"><strong>click here.]</strong><br />
</a></p>
<p><strong>Daniel Hannan, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Freedom-English-Speaking-Peoples-Modern/dp/0062231731">Inventing Freedom. How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World</a>.</i></strong></p>
<p>The fundamental incoherence of multiculturalism comes from its cultural relativism that posits no one way of life is better than another, but then singles out the West as a uniquely oppressive global villain. Even more contradictory, at the same time that multiculturalists slander the West for its alleged crimes, they praise and promote political and social ideals––democracy, freedom, equality, and law-based justice–– that flourish only in the West. This cognitive dissonance is made possible by massive historical ignorance of just where such ideas originated and developed. The great value of Daniel Hannan’s <i>Inventing Freedom</i> lies in its recovery of that history, and the role that the “Anglosphere,” the English-speaking countries, played in recognizing and nurturing those ideals for over 1500 years.</p>
<p>Hannan is a writer, blogger, and currently the Conservative representative of Southeast England in the European Parliament, where he vigorously monitors and battles the dirigiste excesses and autocratic impulses of the European Union functionaries. He is also a stalwart friend of the U.S., a throwback to the days when the “special relationship” between Britain and the U.S. was instrumental in turning back the fascist, Nazi, and communist assault on everything that comprises the liberal democratic ideals universally admired and imitated, even by those illiberal regimes who must pay lip-service to democracy and freedom even as they work to subvert them. Readers will find in <i>Inventing Freedom</i> an immensely readable, clearly argued survey of those ideals, the history in which they struggled to survive, and the great heroes whose sacrifice and commitment to them ensured that we enjoy them today.</p>
<p>First Hannan defines the core political ideals and virtues that create the bonds between England and America, the Anglosphere’s most spectacular success story. “Elected parliaments, habeas corpus, free contract, equality before the law, open markets, an unrestricted press, the right to proselytize for any religion, jury trials” all find their modern origins in England, from where they have spread not just to America, but to the whole world, along with the English language and its rich vocabulary that makes for precise, concrete expression. Protestantism is another inheritance from England that shaped the political order and mores of the United States. The notion that individuals can read scripture unmediated by a hierarchical, centralized authority reinforced the bond between religious and civic freedom, both of which are predicated on individual freedom and equality. “Free speech, free conscience, and free parliaments”––Protestantism, Hannan argues, was the guarantor of all of them. Finally, the principles of the American Revolution codified in the Declaration of Independence were seen by the Colonists as theirs by right as Englishmen, for they were grounded in the common law, Magna Carta, and the English Bill of Rights created by the Glorious Revolution of 1689. Hannan reminds us that the Colonists did not understand “revolution” as the destruction of the old and the creation of the new, as would happen in France and later Russia, but rather as a “turn of the wheel” to restore traditional political rights and institutions that had been violated by a tyrant.</p>
<p>Hannan traces the history of these political ideals and beliefs from their origins in the tribal assemblies of the Germanic tribes that settled in England, to their most dominant expression in the United States. Critical in this development is the notion of “common law,” the idea that laws come not from the needs or caprices of rulers, but exist “as a folkright of inherited freedoms that bound the King just as surely as it bound his meanest subject.” Such laws evolve organically through time and become traditions that reflect generations of human experience and collective wisdom. Trial by a jury of peers, the presumption of innocence, property rights, and free contract also are buttressed by common law, and protect individuals and communities from the depredations of the more powerful.</p>
<p>Next, common law holds that “anything not expressly prohibited is legal,” and so citizens do not have to solicit the permission of government agents or authorities for their actions. These and other developments all reinforce the notions of individual self-reliance, responsibility, and agency over one’s own life that have contributed to the incredible success of the Anglosphere in creating free-market economies and unprecedented prosperity. These ideals also lead to the notion that even a king rules only by the consent of the people, who retain the right to petition or question the king about his behavior, a development codified in 1215 in the Magna Carta. “For the first time,” Hannan writes, “the idea that governments were subject to the law took written, contractual form,” and the Magna Carta became “the foundational charter of Anglosphere liberty.”</p>
<p>The story Hannan tells with wit and verve may look in hindsight as if it was preordained to succeed, as it has so spectacularly. But over the centuries these ideals had to battle alternatives borne by alien invaders like the Normans, or arising internally from the sectarian conflicts that followed the wars of religion or the “cousins’ war” between the Colonies and England sparked by George III’s tyranny. Yet through all this disorder and conflict the core ideals, carried in the hearts and minds of the people and transmitted through their common tongue and traditions, survived. And they created the “shared values” of today’s Anglosphere: “parliamentary supremacy, the rule of law, property rights, free trade, religious toleration, open inquiry, meritocratic appointments, representative government, control of the executive by the legislature, individual liberty.”</p>
<p>Moreover, Hannan stresses that all these boons are not tied to race or ethnicity, but can be embraced by any people. His discussion of India and its evolution into the world’s largest democracy illustrates his point that “Anglosphere values had been developed in a multiethnic context, that they had been transmitted through intellectual exchange rather than gene flow.” Here Hannan challenges one of the great lies of multiculturalism, which traffics in the bankrupt Marxist-Leninist smear-terms “colonialism” and “imperialism” in order to tarnish the Anglospheric legacy as a racist, exploitative imposition of alien values on innocent, dark-skinned “others.” On the contrary, the freest and most prosperous places outside the West are those like India, Singapore, and Hong Kong that have been shaped by the ideals of the Anglosphere.</p>
<p>This legacy of freedom and autonomy, however, has been eroding over the last decades, and the forces of destruction have come mostly from within. As Hannan note, “History has become a hierarchy of victimhood.” National and cultural pride in the achievements of the Anglosphere is considered bad form mainly because of its global dominance and success.  Such pride risks “the appearance of complacency or jingoism,” or evokes “supposed cultural imperialism or colonial arrogance.” Also, virtues like tolerance or seeing other peoples’ point of view have degenerated into “if not exactly self-hatred, certainly a form of cultural relativism in which the unique achievements of Anglosphere civilization are devalued.” Trickling down from the intelligentsia into the curricula of schools, such ideas cultivate guilt rather than pride, and a refusal to judge the dysfunctions of other cultures even as we obsess over the alleged crimes of our own. “As we lose sight of what the Anglosphere has achieved,” Hannan warns, “we risk losing the institutions that have served to make it what it is.”</p>
<p>Indeed, this process is well underway. England’s participation in the European Union has subjected it to the heavily regulated, top-down intrusive management of politics, culture, and the economy precisely the opposite of the ideals of individual autonomy and local government that have shaped the Anglosphere. And here in the U.S., the Obama administration and the progressive Democrats have tried to duplicate the E.U. model in everything from the slow-motion debacle of Obamacare, to the foreign policy of guilt, apology, and retreat masked by the magical thinking of “multilateralism” and “diplomatic engagement.” A federal Leviathan managed by a technocratic elite is a repudiation of everything that defines the Anglosphere and has made it the freest, most prosperous, and greatest force for good in history.</p>
<p>Hannan ends with a quote from a young Bostonian doctor named Joseph Warren as in 1775 he rallied his countrymen to defend the freedoms trampled by George III: “You are to decide the question on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions of unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.” We need to heed this advice, and Daniel Hannan’s rich history of our freedom is a good place to discover the unique worthiness of our civilization.</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>Iran’s Path to the Bomb</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/charles-bybelezer/irans-path-to-the-bomb/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=irans-path-to-the-bomb</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Jul 2014 04:30:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Charles Bybelezer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bomb]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Inspections]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[negotiations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=235874</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[And how Washington is enabling it. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/76114095_3c03127b-b8dc-47c0-af9c-66715d0adff4.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235875" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/76114095_3c03127b-b8dc-47c0-af9c-66715d0adff4.jpg" alt="_76114095_3c03127b-b8dc-47c0-af9c-66715d0adff4" width="256" height="193" /></a>As nuclear negotiations resume between Iran and world powers, it is becoming increasingly clear that any deal signed will be considered negatively by Israel as “ill-conceived.”</p>
<p>According to most estimations, the focus of the talks has shifted from dismantling Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, as demanded by Jerusalem, to creating a verification network that would, ideally, grant inspectors unfettered access to Iranian sites to ensure the peaceful nature of its nuclear operations.</p>
<p>In “Inspections: The Weak Link in a Nuclear Agreement with Iran,” Dore Gold, a former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations and currently an advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, questions “the advisability of erecting a comprehensive agreement with Iran that is so highly dependent upon the efficacy of its inspection system and the willingness of Iran to agree to what some analysts call unprecedented levels of transparency.”</p>
<p>The drawbacks should be evident, especially when considering Iran’s ongoing refusal to grant the IAEA access to its Parchin facility, where the UN nuclear watchdog believes Tehran has conducted military research into the development of atomic weapons. That the underground Fordow nuclear plant remained unknown to the West for years casts further doubt on both the Islamic Republic’s trustworthiness and the ability of monitors to keep tabs on the whole of its nuclear activities.</p>
<p>The fact that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recently revealed that Iran’s breakout capacity stands at a mere two months should alone obviate any such deal, as this window is surely too close for comfort.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, it appears as though the prospects of reversing the Islamic Republic’s nuclear progress by significantly reducing the number of its centrifuges is off the table.</p>
<p>In the prescient words of Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, the “talks are not about nuclear capability…they are about Iranian integrity and dignity.”</p>
<p>But the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism is undeserving of respect.</p>
<p>Iran continues to fuel the debauchery in Syria, and now has boots on the ground in Iraq; with the aim there, in conjunction with local Shiite fighters, almost certainly to carve out an Iranian protectorate.</p>
<p>Moreover, the widely held belief that Iran opposes the Sunni terror group ISIS, which is active in both Iraq and Syria, is tenuous at best, with recent reports suggesting the organization may well have been spawn by Tehran.</p>
<p>As the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs’ Pinhas Inbari recently pointed out, “the more time passes, the more this notion of a link between ISIS, Syrian and Iranian intelligence has become fixed in the minds of leading Arab analysts.”</p>
<p>To support this claim, Inbari highlights a February 2012 U.S. Treasury Department document which states that ISIS’ precursor, “al-Qaeda in Iraq,” was provided with money and weapons by Iran. He also raises the intriguing possibility that Iran facilitated ISIS’ advances in Iraq in order to force the U.S. to deepen its coordination with Tehran.</p>
<p>As journalist Melanie Phillips recently noted in the <i>Jerusalem Post</i>, “the Iranian leadership [has] suggested the price of its ‘help’ in ‘stabilizing’ Iraq would be a deal over its nuclear program.”</p>
<p>And this is the key point: The road to an Iranian bomb is paved with instability.</p>
<p>Iran’s carefully crafted plan is two-tiered; first, to foment widespread regional unrest, thereby removing the focus on is illicit nuclear work while, concurrently, convincing the West, which shuns chaos in favor of stability, that the only solution is to engage, rather than defeat, Iran.</p>
<p>And it has worked.</p>
<p>The West has misunderstood, or otherwise turned a blind eye to, Iran’s strategy, devised to buy time while Tehran becomes a nuclear power, which, in turn, will allow it to pursue its ultimate ambition of spreading its Islamic “revolution” throughout the world.</p>
<p>The ramifications of an expansionist, nuclear-armed Iran would be devastating.</p>
<p>Even without the bomb, in the near future Iran will effectively control territory spanning from eastern Iraq to southern Lebanon. The so-called Shi’ite crescent warned of years ago by Jordan&#8217;s King Abdullah is, for all intents and purposes, a <i>fait accompli</i>.</p>
<p>An Iran with atomic bombs can be expected to set its sights on Sunni Gulf states, including Kuwait and Bahrain, where its meddling during the Arab Spring prompted Saudi Arabia to deploy troops to the country.</p>
<p>In fact, Tehran appears to be on a collision course with Riyadh (which, parenthetically, is alleged to have pre-paid atomic weapons waiting for it in Pakistan).</p>
<p>Were tensions to explode between the Mullahs and the House of Saud, the entire region could be drawn into a bloody conflict; not unlike the Sunni-Shiite proxy war currently being waged in Syria, although the effects of a direct clash between the leading purveyors of these competing forms of Islam would, almost inconceivably, be much worse.</p>
<p>Like it or not, such a prospect would force the hand of the United States, which could not sit idly by as its allies, as well as the global oil economy, became endangered.</p>
<p>It is possible that an emboldened Russia would likewise become involved, at the very least as an arms supplier, and perhaps even ascendant China if to protect its growing interests in the region.</p>
<p>Israel, undoubtedly, would be targeted by its enemies and thus dragged into the fighting.</p>
<p>This is but a snapshot of the bleak picture facing the Middle East if Iran goes nuclear, and the Obama administration in particular is seemingly oblivious.</p>
<p>While the U.S. president reiterated last month—this time to his outgoing Israeli counterpart—that he remains committed to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, Obama’s words are no longer trusted by many in Jerusalem given his willingness (eagerness) to treat a rogue regime, ideologically committed to the West’s destruction, as a friend.</p>
<p>Hence the recent dispatch to Washington of Israeli National Security Adviser Yossi Cohen and Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, in order to spell out the Jewish state’s positions perhaps for the last time.</p>
<p>Speaking to prior to his departure, Steinitz made clear that a good deal “will not allow the Iranians to remain a nuclear threshold state&#8230;. Our position is that an agreement needs to be based not only on supervision and verification, but on dismantling infrastructure,” he affirmed.</p>
<p>Netanyahu likewise weighed in last week, granting interviews to major television networks in each of the P5+1 countries.</p>
<p>“Inspectors can be deceived,” he warned, before advocating for an agreement along the lines of the Syrian one, which “remove[s] what’s not destroyed.”</p>
<p>But given Obama’s ongoing rapprochement with Iran, Israel&#8217;s expectations are surely being tempered. In fact, it would be surprising if the government was not already intensifying covert preparations for “plan-B.”</p>
<p>What this entails could be revealed as early as July 21st, the day after the deadline for a nuclear agreement is set to expire.</p>
<p>Only then will it become known whether Netanyahu is serious about preventing an Iranian bomb—and the lengths to which he is willing to go in order to do so.</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>Islamic Values vs. Judeo-Christian Values</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/nonie-darwish/islamic-values-vs-judeo-christian-values/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=islamic-values-vs-judeo-christian-values</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 26 Jun 2014 04:40:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Nonie Darwish]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[civilization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Judeo-Christian Values]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234842</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Is Western civilization really successful because of Islam?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Burqa.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-234848" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Burqa-255x350.jpg" alt="FRANCE BURQA" width="255" height="350" /></a>My dear friend Ali Sina mentioned in his most recent article that a Muslim professor, Hossein Askari, believes that Western nations lead the World in &#8220;Islamic values&#8221; and that most Muslim nations practice the least Islamic values. I have heard such nonsense before from some Muslims, some of whom were my relatives. I will never forget the strange look on my Christian American husband&#8217;s face when an elderly Muslim man visiting from Egypt told him: &#8220;You are such a fine young man, you have the character of a true Muslim.&#8221;</p>
<p>It is not unusual for Muslims to describe non-Muslims whom they perceive as good as having &#8220;Islamic values.&#8221; Many Christians in Egypt have to suffer hearing comments by Muslims such as: &#8220;You are so good, you must convert to Islam, you have the character of a true Muslim.&#8221;</p>
<p>How can educated Muslims professors make ridiculous claims like that Ireland “leads the world in Islamic values as Muslim states lag”? Islamic logic, in that case, says, if Irish people have noses, eyes, arms and legs like Muslims then they must be Muslim. This twisted logic wants to hide the truth: that many Muslims no longer want to live under Islamic values, but since that is considered apostasy in Islam, the only way out is to claim life in the land of the Great Satan is really equal to living the true Islamic life.</p>
<p>Muslims are trained to adjust reality to Islamic propaganda; thus everything good must come from Islam and everything bad comes from the Kafir non-believer. So it is Islamic logic to believe that if Christians are good then they must be Muslim, but they just don&#8217;t know it yet.</p>
<p>The Muslim dilemma about the West gets more complicated when over 70% of Muslim youth are desperately trying to leave the Muslim world to immigrate to Western nations. Many Muslims are stunned, disappointing and filled with envy when they compare infidel and Islamic nations and discover that infidels have achieved what Muslims could only dream of. Such an awakening by Muslims flies against the Islamic propaganda that has indoctrinated generations into believing that Islam is the solution.</p>
<p>So if Islam is the solution, how come Muslims are happier in the West? Simple: Muslims discovered what the West failed to understand about their own values; According to Muslims, it is Islamic values &#8212; so &#8220;Allahu Akbar&#8221; anyway.</p>
<p>Islam has trained the Islamic mind to solve any contradictions with the goal of making sure that Islam looks good at any cost. In other words, reality has to adjust to Islamic teachings. Muslims must never admit that Western success is attributed to the Judeo-Christian value system. That is why Muslim professors on American college campuses claim that Western cultural success is due to Islamic and not Biblical values, and that the US Constitution is Sharia compliant.</p>
<p>This is nothing new for Islam, Mohammed himself claimed that Christianity and Judaism, which preceded Islam by thousands of years, are in fact Islam, but have just been corrupted. Mohammed started by linking himself to the Abrahamic line in order to get legitimacy and after that he discredited the Jews and Christians as apes, pigs and enemies of Allah. Mohammed taught his followers that Abraham, Jesus, Moses etc., all are in fact Muslims and have Islamic values.</p>
<p>Because of Islamic Sharia&#8217;s severe and humiliating punishments, Muslims had to mold their thinking to never venture outside the Islamic mental box. Muslims who are brave enough to think critically for themselves will easily find Islamic values, summed up in Sharia, to be the antithesis of Biblical values.</p>
<p>Mr. Askari, like many devout Muslims, refuses to judge Islam by its fruits that are exploding all around the world. Instead of graciously giving credit where it is due &#8212; to the fruits of the Bible &#8212; he chose to slap Western culture in the face by shamelessly teaching that Western nations&#8217; success is due to Islamic values. Amazing, that sounds exactly like Mohammed.</p>
<p>This line of thought fits perfectly with the jihadists who are hell bent on violently converting the West to Islam. But the smart stealth jihadist Muslims choose to leave violent jihad to others, and would rather tell the American people that everything good is Islamic and that the corrupted values of the Bible could not have resulted in the fruits of Western success.</p>
<p>Askari probably feels that the poor Western citizens just don&#8217;t know what Islam already knows, but are unaware that the West is practicing Islamic values more than Muslims themselves.</p>
<p>Most Muslims are unaware that it is Muslim culture that heavily borrowed from the Bible. Muslims often say &#8220;don&#8217;t go to bed angry&#8221; but are unaware that this is a Biblical value and not a Quranic value. They say &#8220;Salamu Alaykum&#8221; and respond by saying &#8220;Alaykum El Salam&#8221; but are unaware that they have borrowed this from Jews&#8217; &#8220;Shalom Aleikhem&#8221; and the response &#8220;Aleikhem Shalom.&#8221; They say that Islam is a religion of peace when in fact Islam advocates war and relentlessly urges its followers to die in war while killing the enemies of their Allah.</p>
<p>The so called &#8220;moderate Muslims&#8221; who advocate that the US Constitution is Sharia compliant, are dangerous because they are stealth jihadists who have no loyalty to the US Constitution and what America is all about. Their loyalty is to the Islamic agenda of the establishment of the Khalifate. The religion of Mohammed has produced millions of people who think like Askari who are constantly struggling with a severe case of ethnocentrism.</p>
<p>Western nations so far have based their way of life on Judeo-Christian values of the Bible; a book outlawed by Islam under penalty of death. It is time for American college campuses to get rid of Muslim teachers who under the guise of research are advocating Islam 101.</p>
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		<title>Muslim Prof: West Leads the World in &#8216;Islamic Values&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ali-sina/muslim-prof-west-leads-the-world-in-islamic-values/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=muslim-prof-west-leads-the-world-in-islamic-values</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 20 Jun 2014 04:25:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ali Sina]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hossein Askari]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim values]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Hossein Askari's intriguing analysis on why no Muslim countries represent Muslim values. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/rtr1j5cw.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234440" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/rtr1j5cw-450x346.jpg" alt="rtr1j5cw" width="277" height="213" /></a>Are non-Muslim countries more Islamic than Muslim countries? That is what Hossein Askari, an Iranian-born professor of International Business and International Affairs at George Washington University, believes. Askari says Ireland “leads the world in Islamic values as Muslim states lag.” After studying 208 countries and territories he found that the top countries in both economic achievement and social values are Ireland, Demark, Luxembourg and New Zealand. Britain also ranks in the top ten.  The first Muslim-majority nation is Malaysia ranking at 33, while the only other state in the top 50 is Kuwait at 48.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Askari then concluded that the Quran’s teachings are better represented in non-Muslim societies than in Islamic countries, which, he believes, have failed to embrace the values of their own faith in politics, business, law and society.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Askari said Muslim countries use religion as an instrument of state control.  “We must emphasize that many countries that profess Islam and are called Islamic are unjust, corrupt, and underdeveloped and are in fact not ‘Islamic’ by any stretch of the imagination,” Askari asserted.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">“Looking at an index of Economic Islamicity, or how closely the policies and achievements of countries reflect Islamic economic teachings &#8211; Ireland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Sweden, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Singapore, Finland, Norway, and Belgium round up the first 10.”  Askari added.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Askari said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">If a country, society, or community displays characteristics such as unelected, corrupt, oppressive, and unjust rulers, inequality before the law, unequal opportunities for human development, absence of freedom of choice (including that of religion), opulence alongside poverty, force, and aggression as the instruments of conflict resolution as opposed to dialogue and reconciliation, and, above all, the prevalence of injustice of any kind, it is prima facie evidence that it is not an Islamic community.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">If Askari were right the solution would be simple. To get rid of corruption, oppression injustice and inequality in Islamic countries, which according to Askari are not Islamic values, we could encourage Muslims to leave Islam and follow the lead of non-Muslim countries.  It appears that the more a country is Islamic the more it lacks “Islamic values.” Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan that are more Islamic are also more oppressive.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">But of course Askari is wrong. In Islam the unbelievers are not equal to believers.  “<i>Is he, then, who is a believer like one who is disobedient? They are not equal</i>.” <sub>(Q. 32:18) </sub>In Islam men excel over women. <sub>(Q. </sub>4:34<sub>)</sub></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Also Islam honors the institution of slavery.<sup> (Q 33:50, 23:5) </sup> Dawud reports a hadith <sup>(14:2692) </sup>of a slave of Ibn Umar who ran away to the enemy and when Muslims overpowered them Muhammad returned him to Ibn Umar. Dawud says that this slave was not distributed (as a part of booty) among the rest of the captives who were also reduced to slaves.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">As for freedom of religion, the Quran says “No religion other than Islam will be accepted from anyone.” <sup>(Q. 3:85)</sup> The argument that Islam is tolerant because the verse 2:256 says there is no compulsion in religion is a fallacy. This verse has nothing to do with tolerance. According to Islamic sources, the Jews of Medina had adopted and raised the orphaned children of Arabs and these children had embraced Judaism. When Muhammad expelled the Jews from their city the relatives of these children (now adults) wanted to prevent them leaving but in loyalty to their adopted parents they preferred to go. The matter was brought to Muhammad who said, if they want to go let them go, “there is no compulsion in religion.” Of course if they wanted to stay they had to convert to Islam.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Askari’s argument that the prevalence of corruption, oppression and injustice in a society is prima facie evidence that it is not Islamic is absurd.  Governments are either democratic or dictatorial. Corruption and oppression are more likely in dictatorships.  In democracies, people have the power to remove corrupt governments, unless they are so ignorant that they are easily deceived, which is not the fault of democracy. In democracy, laws are made by people. Islam does not recognize the laws made by people.  The laws are made by God and the ruler, as the executioner of divine law, is not accountable to the people. And as long as he adhered to the Islamic law no one is allowed to criticize or oppose him, even if he is unjust.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Muhammad said, “If Allah has on Earth a caliph who flays your back and takes your property, obey him; otherwise die holding onto the stump of a tree.” <sub>[Dawud 35: 4232]</sub> So much for freedom and justice!</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The 18<sup>th</sup> century Muslim scholar Shah Waliullah on the Obediene of the Caliph wrote,</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Prophet has said: “Hearing and obeying is an obligation of every Muslim, whether he likes the command or dislikes it, as long as he is not commanded to commit a sin. If he is commanded to commit a sin, then he absolved of the obligation to hear and obey.” [Sahih Muslim.]</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">(I say): Since an <i>imam</i> is installed for two kinds of public weal, by which religious and political affairs are regulated, and since the Prophet was sent for their sake, and the <i>imam </i>is the Prophet’s deputy and an executor of his mission, therefore, obedience to the <i>imam</i> is indeed obedience to the Prophet. And disobedience to him would be tantamount to disobedience of the Prophet except when he commands to commit a sin. For then it would be evident that obedience to him is no longer in obedience to God, and in that event, he would cease to be a deputy of God’s Prophet. This is why the Prophet said: “Whoever follows an <i>amir</i>, he indeed follows me, and whoever disobeys an <i>amir</i>, he indeed disobeys me” [Sahih Muslim].  <sub>[Shah Wali Allah, </sub><i>Selection from Hujjat Allah al-Balighah</i><sub>, English Translation, 2006, pp. 116-117]</sub></p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">As for economics, something Khomeini said, “is for the donkey,” Islam has very little to offer. Bukahri <sub>(3:39:541)</sub> reports Muhammad saying, “There is no house in which these (agricultural) equipment enters except that Allah will cause humiliation to enter it.” The reason Muhammad disparaged agriculture is because he wanted to encourage his companions to earn their living through jihad. He said that is the best bargain and he who strives hard for Allah’s cause with their wealth and in persons will reap the rewards. <sub>(Q. </sub>6:11<sub>)</sub></p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The irony is that Muslims can see something is wrong with their societies, but can’t see its cause. Western countries are not prospering because they have embraced Islamic values. How delusional is this thinking? They are prospering because they drew a clear line between religion and state, and have embraced secularism. Muslims can’t do such a thing.  Islam is more than a religion. It is primarily a political system.  It is totalitarian as it controls all aspects of the life of the believer. Muhammad was not just a prophet but also a dictator.  His successors also ruled with undisputed authority.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">If Islamic countries are dictatorial, unjust, oppressive and backwards we should look for the cause of it in the values that they espouse. Their failure is evident even to them. But instead of acknowledging the problem they keep digging their heads deeper in the sands of denial. Isn’t it time to wake up?</p>
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		<title>How Modernity ‘Radicalizes’ Western Muslims</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/how-modernity-radicalizes-western-muslims/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-modernity-radicalizes-western-muslims</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Apr 2014 04:25:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why second generation Muslims are more susceptible to jihad than their parents. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/sharia.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-223533" alt="sharia" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/sharia-450x277.jpg" width="315" height="194" /></a>A new </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/04/denmark-muslims-218-percent-more-criminal-in-2nd-generation-than-first">Danish statistical study</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> finds that “Muslims [are] 218 percent more criminal in second generation than first.”  While some of these crimes are clearly related to Islam—such as </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/04/denmark-muslim-attacks-apostate-from-islam-at-asylum-center">attacks</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> on Muslim apostates to Christianity—others, such as </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/04/copenhagen-police-muslim-youth-rob-still-more-their-preferred-victims-are-non-muslims">rampant theft of non-Muslims</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, would appear banal, until one realizes that even robbery and plunder is </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/coptic-abductions-and-the-jizya-rationale/">justified by</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/milking-egypts-christian-copts-dry/">Islamic doctrine</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">—as one UK Muslim cleric once </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://enzaferreri.blogspot.com/2013/02/jihad-seekers-allowance-new-form-of.html">clearly said</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The interesting question here is why are second generation Muslims, who are presumably more Westernized than their Muslim parents, also more “radical”?  Lest one dismiss this phenomenon as a product of economics or some other “grievance” against European host nations, the fact is, even in America, where Muslims are much better assimilated than in Europe, they too are turning to “radicalism.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">For example, some time back, Attorney General Eric Holder </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/attorney-general-eric-holders-blunt-warning-terror-attacks/story?id=12444727">said</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that “the threat [of terrorism] has changed … to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens—raised here, born here, and who for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Around the same time, Sue Myrick, then a member of Congress, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8225586/US-home-grown-terrorists-a-global-threat-warns-congresswoman.html">wrote</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> a particularly candid letter on “radicalization” to President Obama:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">For many years we lulled ourselves with the idea that radicalization was not happening inside the United Sates. We believed American Muslims were immune to radicalization because, unlike the European counterparts, they are socially and economically well-integrated into society. There had been warnings that these assumptions were false but we paid them no mind. Today there is no doubt that radicalization is taking place inside America. The strikingly accelerated rate of American Muslims arrested for involvement in terrorist activities since May 2009 makes this fact self-evident.</span></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Myrick named several American Muslims as examples of those who, while “embodying the American dream, at least socio-economically,” were still “radicalized,” astutely adding, “The truth is that if grievances were the sole cause of terrorism, we would see daily acts by Americans who have lost their jobs and homes in this economic downturn.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Quite so. Yet, though Myrick’s observations were limited to the domestic scene, they beg the following, more cosmic, question: If American Muslims, who enjoy Western benefits—including democracy, liberty, prosperity, and freedom of expression—are </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">still</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> being radicalized, why then do we insist that the importation of these same Western benefits to the Muslim world will eliminate its even more indigenous or authentic form of “radicalization”?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">After all, the mainstream position evoked by most politicians maintains that all U.S. sacrifices in the Muslim world (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) will pay off once Muslims discover how wonderful Western ways are, and happily slough off their “Islamist” veneer, which, as the theory goes, is a product of—you guessed it—a lack of democracy, liberty, prosperity, and freedom of expression. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yet here are American and European Muslims, immersed in the bounties of the West, and </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">still</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> do they turn to violent jihad. Why think their counterparts, who are born and raised in the Muslim world, where Islam permeates every aspect of life, will respond differently?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In fact, far from eliminating “radicalization,” Western values can actually exacerbate Islamic tendencies—hence why second generation, “Westernized” Muslims are also becoming more “radicalized” than their parents.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Some already known that Western concessions to Islam—in the guise of multiculturalism, “cultural sensitivity,” political correctness, and self-censorship—only bring out the worst of Islam’s “</span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/the-islamic-schoolyard-bully-and-obamas-america/">schoolyard bully</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.” Yet even some of the most prized aspects of Western civilization—personal freedom, rule of law, human dignity—when articulated through an Islamic framework, have the capacity to “radicalize” Muslims.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Consider: the West’s commitment to the law as supreme arbitrator, for the Westernized Muslim becomes a commitment to establish and enforce Islamic law, Sharia; the West’s commitment to democracy, for the Westernized Muslim becomes a commitment to theocracy, including an anxious impulse to resurrect the caliphate; Western notions of human dignity and pride, when articulated through an Islamic paradigm (which sees only fellow Muslims as equals) </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/how-dare-you-the-supremacist-nature-of-muslim-grievances/">induces rage</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> when Muslims—Palestinians, Afghanis, Iraqis, etc.—are seen under Western, infidel dominion; Western notions of autonomy and personal freedom have even helped “Westernize” the notion of jihad into an individual duty, though it has traditionally been held by Sharia as a communal duty.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In short, a set of noble principles articulated through a foreign paradigm can lead to abominations. In this case, the better principles of Western civilization are being devoured, absorbed, and regurgitated into something equally potent, though from the other end of the spectrum.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Put differently, just as a stress on human freedom, human dignity, and universal justice produces good humans, rearticulating these same concepts through an Islamic framework that qualifies them with the word “Muslim”—</span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Muslim</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> freedom, </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Muslim</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> dignity, and </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Muslim</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> justice—leads to what is being called “radicalization.” </span></p>
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		<title>Western Arrogance and Decline</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/western-arrogance-and-decline/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=western-arrogance-and-decline</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Mar 2014 04:58:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[decline]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The West may have changed, but the world outside its borders is as brutal as ever. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/AmericansWeAreYourDeath.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-221190" alt="AmericansWeAreYourDeath" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/AmericansWeAreYourDeath-450x309.jpg" width="315" height="216" /></a>For three centuries the West built up enormous economic, cultural, and military capital that dwarfs and dominates that of the rest of the world. Other countries may hate and resent Europe and the United States, but they still have to imitate, adapt, or steal the technology, financial systems, and even popular culture of the West. Yet this dominance has come at a price for Westerners, one that contains the seeds of our decline.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">One baleful effect of this achievement has been the erosion of the virtues and ideals that created Western dominance in the first place, a phenomenon long recognized as the cost of national success. Two thousand years ago the Roman historian Livy, surveying the wreckage of the Roman Republic, invited his reader to contemplate the “life and manners” of his ancestors that led to their dominance, and “then, as discipline gradually declined, let him follow in his thoughts their morals, at first as slightly giving way, next how they sunk more and more, then began to fall headlong, until he reaches the present times, when we can neither endure our vices, nor their remedies.” Livy specifically linked this decline to the vast increase of wealth that followed the success of Rome, and that “introduced avarice, and a longing for excessive pleasures, amidst luxury and a passion for ruining ourselves and destroying every thing else.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Clichés, one might say, but no less true for that. The astonishing wealth of the West, more widely distributed than in any other civilization, the abandonment of religion as the foundation of morals and virtues, the transformation of political freedom into self-centered license, and the commodification of hedonism that makes available to everyman luxuries and behaviors once reserved for a tiny elite, have made self-indulgence and the present more important than self-sacrifice and the future. Declining birthrates, a preference for spending on social welfare transfers rather than on defense, and a willingness to beggar our children and grandchildren with debt in order to finance these entitlements– all bespeak a people whose wealth deludes them into thinking that they can imprudently ignore the future and indefinitely afford these luxuries that in fact insidiously weaken the foundations of our social and political order. This process is more advanced in Europe than in the U.S., but we in America have been steadily moving towards the same mentality.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yet we Westerners have a vice peculiar to ourselves–thinking the rest of the world is just like us and wants what we want because we are the destination towards which historical progress is inexorably moving. Because the rest of the world does imitate us in certain respects, desires our technologies, even enjoys our popular culture, we think that they have the same attitudes we have toward religion, or social relations, or violence, or the supremacy of ideals like peace, tolerance, cooperation, openness, equality and the like. This arrogant assumption lies behind the whole edifice of international law, and the diplomatic processes and institutions that administer it, that we think can provide global order, peace, and prosperity.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But any law must rest on a consensus about what behaviors are acceptable, or what ideals are more important than others. Given the great global variety of belief about these issues, such a consensus that accepts Western notions as the norm is difficult, if not impossible to genuinely achieve. Lip service is indeed paid to the Western consensus, particularly by the global elites with whom our own elites are familiar, but that is a result of Western economic and military dominance. Behind the soothing talk of human rights, peace, and the diplomatic resolution of conflict, across the globe very different aims and beliefs continue to drive behavior that clashes with our own aims and beliefs. Yet blinded by our arrogant assumption that we are the vanguard of the future, we ignore those values and beliefs that contradict our own, or patronizingly explain them away as the consequence of ignorance, superstition, poverty, or the machinations of malignant elites and psychopathic dictators.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Survey foreign policy just in the years after 9/11, and we see the dangerous consequences of our narcissism. The whole “war on terror” has, under both parties, been compromised by the failure to understand historical Islam in its own terms, particularly its doctrine of violent jihad against the infidel. Numerous passages from the Koran, Hadith, and Islamic jurisprudence for 14 centuries have made explicit this religious imperative. During that same time, Europeans victimized by the invasions, raiding, occupations, and slaving justified by this doctrine understood that these depredations expressed the violent intolerance at the heart of Islam. Alexis de Tocqueville in 1838 wrote, “Jihad, Holy war, is an obligation for all believers … The state of war is the natural state with regard to infidels … The violent tendencies of the Koran are so striking that I cannot understand how any man with good sense could miss them.” Sixty years later Winston Churchill wrote of the Taliban’s ancestors, “But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness.” Surveying the global conflicts waged by Muslims, Churchill concluded, “The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This consensus about Islam, the bitter fruit of 14 centuries of aggression and listening to what Islamic doctrine clearly says, today arrogant Westerners dismiss as the fruit of racism, intolerance, and imperialism. Assured of our superior knowledge and morality, we presume to explain to millions of Muslims that they don’t understand their own religion. Just recently CIA chief John Brennan, as Raymond Ibrahim </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/cia-chief-jihad-a-product-of-injustices-economics-and-ignorance/">reported</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, told the Council of Foreign Relations that al-Qaeda’s ideology is “a perverse and very corrupt interpretation of the Qur’an,” and that “al-Qaeda has hijacked” Islam and “really distorted the teachings of Muhammad.” But mysteriously, Brennan continues, despite this presumed heretical misreading of Islam, “that ideology, that agenda of al-Qaeda has gained resonance and following in many parts of the world.” Whether it is the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the misunderstanding of the “Arab Spring,” the Palestinian Arab genocidal hatred of Israel, or the danger of Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, this distortion of Islam has hampered our response to aggression and indulged our delusion that a majority of Muslims want peace, prosperity, and freedom more than they want to obey Allah and live by Islamic precepts. Having reduced our faith to a life-style choice and comforting holiday traditions, we Westerners cannot imagine a religion whose believers take its commands seriously, and see the world as the arena of a long spiritual struggle they are destined to win.</span></p>
<p>Then there’s the fatuous response to Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine and the Crimea. Since many of us fancy ourselves internationalists and cosmopolitans too sophisticated for passionate national loyalty, we discount the powerful pull of ethnic and national identity. Believing in the international order as a sign of the human race’s progress and improvement, we sneer at Putin’s pursuit of national interests by violence as “19<sup>th</sup> century” and contrary to Russia’s true interests, as though we know those better than the Russians do. Meanwhile what we should be doing is calculating whether Putin is going to achieve his aims at the expense of our own interests and security. With similar arrogance, since we are hostile to the power of faith in people’s lives, we brush away Putin’s analysis of a hedonistic, heathenish West as insincere propaganda, forgetting that many Russians have not followed us in our disregard for religion as an archaic superstition. No doubt, those ethnic and religious motives are intermingled with more mercenary and chauvinistic ones, but that messy complexity of human behavior, the ability of people simultaneously to pursue two conflicting or mutually exclusive goods, is precisely what our Western consensus about the progress of human nature ignores. Hence we are vulnerable to the ruthless and the fanatic, since in every conflict we prefer to bring a diplomat to a gunfight.</p>
<p>So here we are, still living off that enormous capital amassed by our ancestors, and doing nothing to restore it. But those cultural and moral resources are dwindling by the day, and outside the West brutal rivals are watching and waiting, exploiting our arrogant delusions and manipulating our bankrupt ideals like “diplomatic engagement” in order to achieve their aims. Meanwhile, like Livy’s Romans, we “can neither endure our vices, nor their remedies.”</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Daniel Greenfield </strong>on <strong>The</strong> <strong>Glazov Gang </strong>discussing <em>Obama&#8217;s Helplessness Over the Ukraine</em>:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/6Se7vaS-INo" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
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<p><b>Make sure to </b><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
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		<title>The Muslim Suicide Convert</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-muslim-suicide-convert/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-muslim-suicide-convert</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 02 Jan 2014 05:46:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Convert]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lee Rigby]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why new followers gravitate toward jihad with such frequency. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/article-2531254-1A58FDE900000578-258_634x361.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214365" alt="article-2531254-1A58FDE900000578-258_634x361" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/article-2531254-1A58FDE900000578-258_634x361-430x350.jpg" width="301" height="245" /></a>Both of the suicide bombers who struck in Russia were Muslim converts. They follow a long string of Muslim terrorist converts, including the murderers of British soldier Lee Rigby, who were sentenced last month, and Terry Lee Loewen, who plotted to car bomb the Wichita Mid-Continent Airport that same month.</p>
<p>Muslim converts engage in terrorism at a higher rate than Muslims. It&#8217;s gotten so bad that converting to Islam is almost a form of suicide.</p>
<p>The popular theory is that Muslim terrorist groups use converts because they blend in better. But in most Western countries, screening by race is nearly illegal and even in targeted countries where it isn’t, there are usually many members of Muslim ethnic groups in most major cities.</p>
<p>There are four reasons for the rise of the Muslim Suicide Convert. Muslim converts are gullible, fanatical, suicidal and expendable.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s start with the last one. Muslims usually come from tribal cultures with extended family groups. Despite its claims of transnationalism and multiculturalism, Islam is an ethnic religion with the descendants of Mohammed elevated over everyone else, the families in the region of his first conquests elevated over other Arabs, Arabs elevated over non-Arabs, Asian Muslims over African Muslims and African Muslims over Western converts to Islam.</p>
<p>A convert to Islam is lowest on the totem pole because he has no family group. In a tribal society, not having a family connection makes you an outsider. A Muslim who Jihads himself to death creates a hole in the network of arranged cousin marriages, illegal business arrangements and other extended family support structures. A Muslim convert was never part of the network unless he married into it. And even then he can easily be unplugged because he shares no common ancestry with them.</p>
<p>In a Muslim country, he can be killed without having to pay blood price. In a Western country, he can be sent off to die without the &#8220;tribe&#8221; of Pakistanis or Egyptians who built the mosques and hired the Imams who converted him and convinced him to kill non-Muslims being affected by his death.</p>
<p>He is expendable.</p>
<p>Converts are not part of the family networks of the Muslim settlers in their Western diasporas. That makes them useful cannon fodder. If they are captured, the mosque denies all responsibility and blames the Internet even though most mosques and Muslim student groups host those same speakers who &#8220;radicalize&#8221; converts over the Internet at their own facilities and events.</p>
<p>Muslim converts are also suicidal. The act of conversion destroys the entire cultural and faith background of the individual. It cuts him off from his family, his people and his way of life. Converts to Islam often discuss feeling empty. They expect Islam to fill the void within them and when it does not, they are told that the failure is theirs.</p>
<p>The Muslim convert finds Islam in a search for fulfillment and still feeling unfulfilled, seeks out its &#8220;purer&#8221; forms whose commitment to Jihadist violence is more overt. The violence of their rhetoric and the force of their commitment briefly feel like fulfillment, but then dissatisfaction sets in again. Told to blame himself for this final failure, the Muslim Suicide Convert makes his final kamikaze run hoping to find the meaning and fulfillment in the afterlife that evaded him in this life.</p>
<p>Muslim converts have personal problems that they try to treat with Islam the way that sufferers from conventional diseases try to treat their illnesses with phony cures. Muslim clerics promise that Islam will solve the personal problems of non-Muslims and non-Muslim societies, but like so many criminal gurus, they are peddling phony cures that kill the patient.</p>
<p>That is one reason why Muslim converts are fanatical. Another reason is that they have no baseline. Converts plunge into another religion and culture as into deep water.</p>
<p>Muslims have learned to make the necessary compromises with their fanatical religion that make their lives livable. That is why most of them do not go out and blow themselves up; instead they undermine Western societies in slower and steadier ways through demographics, disinformation and political influence.</p>
<p>The Muslim Suicide Convert seeks an uncompromising purity. He rejects the compromises that Muslims have learned to make over the centuries. Seeking the core revelation in a religion of death; he finds that revelation only in death. The truth of Islam is in its killing fields. It preaches war for power and paradise. The Muslim convert who searches for its essence finds a grinning skull in the desert sands and hurries to emulate its terrible example.</p>
<p>Finally, Muslim converts are gullible. The natives of every land have games that they play with tourists, relying on their unfamiliarity with another culture to mislead them and trick them. Muslim converts are strangers in a strange land, slowly learning a foreign way of life and pathetically eager to be accepted by another culture. It is all too easy for Muslim clerics to lead them down the garden path to the suicide bomber’s paradise by offering and withholding affection until they are willing to do anything to belong.</p>
<p>Muslim Suicide Converts are enlisted in a war the way that men have been enlisted in wars throughout the ages with appeals to patriotism, tales of outrageous atrocities and myths of incredible heroism. The Muslim clerics tailor their pitch to the disposable people who are the least likely to be missed.</p>
<p>Muslim recruiters thrive on campus for the same reasons as cult recruiters and leftist academics.</p>
<p>The modern university is the place to find insecure young people questioning everything that they believe in and unsure of what to do when their impulse to tear down everything does not fulfill their need for something to believe in.</p>
<p>Into this universe of doubt, the Muslim cleric intrudes with his false offer of certainty, with the air of the victim, the badge of the underdog, the mysticism of the east and the romance of the grass that, like the terrorist flags that wave among it, always grows greener on the other side of the world.</p>
<p>Westernized Muslims are urged to purge themselves of Western culture, embrace the black flags and atone for their beers they drank, the girls they kissed and the songs they sang with the death screams of sirens and the blood of their non-Muslim friends and neighbors.</p>
<p>The seduction of the non-Muslim aims for the dissatisfied and unhappy who were trained by a liberal culture contemptuous of its own values and traditions to instinctively value non-Western spirituality over their own &#8220;materialistic&#8221; and &#8220;imperialistic&#8221; faiths.</p>
<p>The children of an intellectual tradition that taught them to reject absolutes; embrace with fervor an absolutism that calls for their deaths and the death of the world.</p>
<p>The Muslim Suicide Convert embraces his role as the vanguard of a spiritual world order, destroying the oppressive materialism of the world to make way for the superior rule of Islamic law, believing that he can only overcome his own materialism by destroying his material substance and the material substance of the society that nurtured someone as unworthy as him in the ultimate act of submission for the death drive of the Islamic religion of submission.</p>
<p>His suicide is the extension of the national suicide that brought the Muslim preachers who worked on his mind into the country and into its universities.</p>
<p>The Muslim Suicide Convert, like his Islam-friendly liberal society, kills himself and his society to atone for its materialism, reaching instead for a material paradise of virgin demon women, young boys serving wine and rivers and hills made of the bounties of seventh century Arabia, drowning his guilt in death and his hope for eternity in the innocent blood of his victims.</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>Permanent Putsch in Romania</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/vladimir-tismaneanu/permanent-putsch-in-romania/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=permanent-putsch-in-romania</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 13 Dec 2013 05:30:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Vladimir Tismaneanu]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Basescu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Parliament]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A day of shame for the Romanian Parliament. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/rom.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-213075" alt="rom" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/rom.jpg" width="301" height="226" /></a>Leon Trotsky glorified the permanent revolution. The main expertise of the ruling coalition in Romania is the permanent putsch. More precisely, it wages an insidiously perverse onslaught on the country&#8217;s democracy. On December 10, the Parliament, controlled by the Left, voted to essentially modify the Penal Code. Parliamentarians and other officials will enjoy what can be called super-immunity, i. e., impunity. In other words, they will be able steal as much as they want with no fear of legal retribution.</p>
<p>The embassies of the European Union (Romania joined it in 2007) are flabbergasted. Civil society organizations have issued staunch condemnations. One journalist called that day &#8220;Black Tuesday.&#8221; Democratic forces are in shock. It was a day of shame for the Romanian Parliament. Romania runs the risk of becoming the pariah state of the European Union. <strong></strong></p>
<p>In July 2012, the socialist-liberal coalition unleashed a coup against the country&#8217;s pro-Western, pro-NATO, staunchly pro-US president, Traian Basescu. Putin&#8217;s loudspeaker, the radio station &#8220;Russia&#8217;s  Voice,&#8221; acclaimed the pseudo-constitutional putsch. <strong></strong></p>
<p>Western pressures, including staunch reactions from Germany and US officials, forced the putschists to step back. A referendum followed, and the beleaguered Basescu returned to the presidential palace in Bucharest. The real stake was not just the president&#8217;s personal fate, but rather the interruption and radical reversal of his reforms. Among those were the new Penal Code, extremely severe with corruption, and the creation of dynamic anti-corruption agencies. <strong></strong></p>
<p>The socialist party (it calls itself social democratic), whose honorary leader is the former communist apparatchik Ion Iliescu (Nicolae Ceausescu&#8217;s successor and the main usurper of the bloody December 1989 revolution) resents the rule of law, accountability, and transparency. The octogenarian Iliescu remains attached to the Bolshevik passion of his Stalinist youth.<strong></strong></p>
<p>Together with the liberals and a mini-party run by a former secret police collaborator turned into a post-communist tycoon, the socialists want to perpetuate (if possible, forever) an authoritarian kleptocratic regime with strong pro-Moscow and pro-Beijing inclinations. The party&#8217;s leader, a 40-year-old lawyer named Victor Ponta, was exposed as a plagiarist in the pages of the highly-respected &#8220;Nature&#8221; magazine. Large sections of his PhD dissertation were literally copied from books written by other authors. In Germany, a Defense Minister resigned following a similar scandal. In Romania, Victor Ponta has thrived, in spite of protests issued by his own alma mater, the University of Bucharest. Add to this Ponta&#8217;s unabashed admiration for Che Guevara and Mao and you get the image of a histrionic prevaricator in love with Leninist murderous fanatics.</p>
<p>The Social-Liberal Union won the parliamentary elections in December 2012 and has enjoyed a comfortable majority that has allowed it to foster its grip on economic resources. It bombarded the country with emergency decrees. Any criticism of the ruling team is immediately vilified as &#8220;anti-patriotic.&#8221; Both Ponta and his main ally, the leader of the Liberal Party and chair of the Senate, the higher chamber of the Romanian Parliament, Crin Antonescu, have decisively contributed to what I identify as an alarming de-democratization process. The opposition is, unfortunately, divided and demoralized. President Basescu&#8217;s second term comes to an end in December 2014. One can foresee a very turbulent electoral year.</p>
<p>It is hard to predict when and whether Romanians will take to the streets massively like their Bulgarian and Ukrainian neighbors. It is, however, clear that, sooner rather than later,  this state of affairs will result in an explosion of outrage. The left coalition is widely perceived as an alliance of crooks, thieves, and political gangsters. Super-immunity means, in this case, super-lawlessness.</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>Top Muslim Authority Unwittingly Equates Jihad with Terrorism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/top-muslim-authority-unwittingly-equates-jihad-with-terrorism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=top-muslim-authority-unwittingly-equates-jihad-with-terrorism</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Oct 2013 04:07:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[cleric]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=207535</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[From the horse's mouth. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Koran-book.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-207536" alt="Koran-book" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Koran-book.jpg" width="264" height="185" /></a>A recent Arabic article appearing in Egypt’s <a href="http://www.ahram.org.eg/News/932/4/230167/%D9%82%D8%B6%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A7-%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A1/%D9%87%D9%84-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D8%B1%D9%87%D9%80%D8%A7%D8%A8-%D8%AC%D9%80%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%AF-%D8%9F.aspx"><i>Al Ahram</i></a> newspaper titled “Is Terrorism Jihad?” written by Islamic law expert Dr. Abdul Fatah Idris offers important lessons—from the fact that jihad <i>does</i> involve subjugating non-Muslims to why the Western mentality is still incapable of acknowledging it.</span></b></p>
<p>Idris, professor and chairman of Al Azhar University’s Department of Comparative Jurisprudence at the Faculty of Sharia Law, is a well-reputed legal scholar.  He begins his article by defining terrorism and quoting several international bodies that, in his words</p>
<blockquote><p>define terrorism as an act of violence or threat of violence coming from an individual either on his own volition or in participation with other individuals.  It targets people or organizations or places or means of transportation or the general public in order to threaten or cause injuries or deaths of the people or simply to cripple the effectiveness of international organizations or to cause the loss or damage of those places or properties or to tamper with transportation to interfere in the friendly relations between countries or between the inhabitants of several countries or to extort concessions from some countries.</p>
<p>The conspiracy to commit or to intend to commit or to participate in the committing or to incite the general public to commit the aforementioned crimes constitutes the crime of international terrorism.  The first clause of the Geneva Convention which was adopted by Suppression of Terrorism Conference held in Geneva in 1937 defines terrorism as a criminal act directed against a specific nation with the aims of creating a state of terror in the minds of specific people or a group of people or the general public.</p></blockquote>
<p>Idris also mentions how “the Islamic Research Academy, in its report issued on November 4<sup>th</sup>, 2001, defines terrorism as terrorizing <i>innocent</i> people and the destruction of their properties and their essential elements of living and attacking their finances and their persons and their liberties and their human dignity <i>without right</i> and spreading corruption throughout the land” [emphasis added].</p>
<p>Note that, although he quotes from several international bodies, it is only the “Islamic Research Academy” that includes words like “innocent” and “without right,” both of which clearly leave much wiggle room to exonerate terrorist acts committed against those perceived as <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/islam-and-innocence/">not being “innocent”</a> or who it <i>is</i> a right to terrorize, which according to many Muslims, includes the West.</p>
<p>At any rate, in the context of the Muslim Brotherhood’s recent terrorist attacks throughout Egypt—including the destruction of over 80 Christian churches—Idris goes on to agree that</p>
<blockquote><p>It is therefore correct to define what happened recently [in Egypt] as terrorism and it cannot be called, as some have done, a jihad or <i>ribat</i> in the path of Allah, for the difference between them is vast.  Terrorism is a crime, both according to Sharia and the law; and all international conventions consider it a crime and call on all people to fight against it through all means.</p></blockquote>
<p>Up until this point, Idris defines and agrees with the international definition of terrorism, and portrays the actions of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (whom he never names) as terrorism.</p>
<p>So far so good.</p>
<p>However, Idris immediately makes a complete reversal in his follow-up sentences:</p>
<blockquote><p>But jihad in the path of Allah, <i>to make his word supreme, spread his religion</i>, defend the honor of the Islamic nation [umma], and respond to the aggression against Muslims all around the earth—this is jihad: <i>when a Muslim fights an infidel without treaty to make the word of Allah Most High supreme, forcing him to fight or invading his land, this is a permissible matter according to the consensus of the jurists.  Indeed, it is an obligation for all Muslims</i>.  Now if the deeds of the jihad—<i>including fighting the infidels and breaking their spine through all possible means</i>—are permissible according to Sharia, then it is impossible to define those acts as terrorism, which Sharia-based evidence has made illegitimate. A large gap exists between them [jihad and terrorism].  And there is no connection between what is obligatory [jihad] and what is forbidden [terrorism]. [italics added for emphasis]</p></blockquote>
<p>At this point, the befuddled Western reader may be at a loss to understand how, exactly, jihad—“according to the consensus of the jurists,” no less—is different from the aforementioned definitions of terrorism.</p>
<p>What’s needed here is for the non-Muslim to try to transcend his epistemology and think, for a moment, like an observant Muslim, especially in the context of two points:</p>
<p>1. According to Islamic doctrine, jihad, as Idris asserts, <i>is</i> an obligation for Muslims (offensive being communal, defensive being individual).  As this expert of Islamic jurisprudence states:  “But jihad in the path of Allah, <i>to make his word supreme, spread his religion</i>…  this is jihad: <i>when a Muslim fights an infidel without treaty [e.g. dhimma pact] to make the word of Allah Most High supreme, forcing him to fight or invading his land…</i>”</p>
<p>2. In Islamic thinking, even offensive jihad—including “breaking [the infidels’] spine through all possible means”—is seen as something of an altruistic affair, for the good of the world.  More to the point, the ends justify the means.</p>
<p>Taking these two points together—(1) Allah commands Muslims to wage jihad and (2) it is good for all concerned, a means to a glorious end, i.e., “making Allah’s word supreme”—how can Muslims classify jihad as “terrorism,” even when, from a non-Muslim perspective, it seems identical to the international definitions of terrorism that Idris himself delineated and agreed with?</p>
<p>In short, jihad is not terrorism simply because Allah<i> says so</i>—even if the two, back in the real world, are identical.  In the words of Idris: “Now if the deeds of the jihad—including fighting the infidels and breaking their spine through all possible means—are permissible according to Sharia, then it is impossible to define those acts as terrorism.”</p>
<p>Three final thoughts:</p>
<p>1. Next time you wonder why “moderate” Muslims rarely if ever condemn the terrorism habitually committed in the name of their religion, you’d do well to remember Idris’ article and rationale.</p>
<p>2. Regarding what jihad <i>really</i> is, who do you think is more authoritative—a Sharia law instructor at the Islamic world’s most prestigious university, writing in Arabic to fellow Muslims, or, say, a Karen Armstrong writing best-selling fluff pieces about a benign and “misunderstood” Islam to a naïve Western public?</p>
<p>3. Why was Idris’ article left unreported?  Imagine the international outrage that would spark if a Christian theologian wrote in the <i>New York Times</i>—which is what <i>Al Ahram</i> is equivalent to in Egypt—that “it is an obligation” for Christians to wage “holy war” on non-Christians and “fight or invade his [non-Christian] land” to “make Jesus’ word supreme”?</p>
<p>And so we come back full circle to the lamentable fact that, while Islam’s commands are black and white, so easily ascertained and visible to all, the West still cannot accept reality—thanks in great part to its own endless assortment of liars, fools, and traitors.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Jamie Glazov&#8217;s</strong> video interview with <strong>Raymond Ibrahim</strong> about Islam&#8217;s new war on Christians:</em></p>
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<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>Today in History: West Saved from Islam at Battle of Tours</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/today-in-history-western-civilization-saved-from-islam-at-battle-of-tours/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=today-in-history-western-civilization-saved-from-islam-at-battle-of-tours</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Oct 2013 04:40:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[732]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Battle of Tours]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[survival]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[One of the most decisive battles that ensured Western civilization's survival.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/tours.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-206939" alt="tours" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/tours.jpg" width="248" height="204" /></a>Precisely 100 years after the death of Islam’s prophet Muhammad in 632, his Arab followers, after having conquered thousands of miles of lands from Arabia to Spain, found themselves in Gaul, modern day France, facing a hitherto little known people, the Christian Franks.</p>
<p>There, on October 10 or 11, in the year 732, one of history’s most decisive battles took place, demarcating the extent of Islam’s western conquests and ensuring the survival of the West.</p>
<p>Prior to this, the Islamic conquerors had for one century been subjugating all peoples and territories standing in their western march—including Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. In 711, the Muslims made their fateful crossing of the straits of Gibraltar, landing on European soil. Upon disembarkation, the leader of the Muslims, Tariq bin Zayid, ordered the Islamic fleet burned, explaining that “We have not come here to return. Either we conquer and establish ourselves here, or we perish.”</p>
<p>This famous Tariq anecdote—often reminisced by modern day jihadis—highlights the jihadi nature of the Umayyad caliphate (661-750), the superpower of its day. Indeed, as most historians have acknowledged, the Umayyad caliphate was the “Jihadi-State” par excellence. Its very existence was coterminous with its conquests.  Its legitimacy as “viceroy” of Allah was based on subjugating lands in the name of Allah.</p>
<p>Once on European ground, the depredations continued unabated. Writes one Arab chronicler regarding the Muslim northern advance past the Pyrenees: “Full of wrath and pride” the Muslims “went through all places like a desolating storm. Prosperity made those warriors insatiable… everything gave way to their scimitars, the robbers of lives.” Even far off English anchorite, the contemporary, the venerable, Bede, wrote, “A plague of Saracens wrought wretched devastation and slaughter upon Gaul.”</p>
<p>Strange anecdotes also find their way in the chroniclers’ accounts during this time. Muslim historian Abd al-Hakem reports that, after landing on an island off Iberia, one of Tariq’s squadrons discovered that the only inhabitants were vinedressers. “They made them prisoners. After that, they took one of the vinedressers, slaughtered him, cut him into pieces, and boiled him, while the rest of the companions looked on.”  This incident resulted in a rumor that Muslims feast on human flesh.  (Nearly 1300 years later, in the year 2013, a Muslim jihadi <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_5P5xwAPw8">ate the organs of his slain enemy</a> to surrounding cries of “Allahu Akbar”.)</p>
<p>At any rate, this must have been the picture the men to the north had of the invaders from the south—wild and insatiable madmen, possibly cannibals, mounted on swift steeds, not unlike, in this manner, the Huns of old, who, under the “anti-Christ” figure of Attila, came ravaging through Europe, only to be defeated, in part by the Franks, in the year 451 at the Battle of Chalons, also in modern day France, 150 miles east of Tours.</p>
<p>“Alas,” exclaimed the Franks, “what a misfortune! What an indignity! We have long heard of the name and conquests of the Arabs; we were apprehensive of their attack from the East [see <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/355824/siege-byzantium-raymond-ibrahim">Siege of Byzantium</a>, 717-718]: they have now conquered Spain, and invade our country on the side of the West.”</p>
<p>Conversely, the Muslims, flushed with a century’s worth of victories, seem to have had an ambivalent view, at best, regarding Frankish mettle. When asked about the Franks, some years before the Battle of Tours, the then emir of Spain, Musa, replied: “They are a folk right numerous, and full of might: brave and impetuous in the attack, but cowardly and craven in the event of defeat. Never has a company from my army been beaten.”</p>
<p>If this view betrayed overconfidence, Musa’s successor, Abd al-Rahman (“Slave to the Merciful”) exhibited even greater haughtiness regarding those whom he was about to give battle. At the head of some 80,000 Muslims, primarily mounted moors, Rahman’s destructive northward march into the heart of France was greatly motivated by rumors of more riches for the taking, particularly at the Basilica of St. Martin of Tours. Rahman initially separated his army into several divisions to better ensure the plunder of Gaul. Writes Isidore, author of the Chronicle of 754: “[Rahman] destroyed palaces, burned churches, and imagined he could pillage the basilica of St. Martin of Tours. It is then that he found himself face to face with the lord of Austrasia, Charles, a mighty warrior from his youth, and trained in all the occasions of arms.”</p>
<p>Indeed, unbeknownst to the Muslims, the battle-hardened Frankish king Charles, aware of their purport, had begun rallying his liegemen to his standard in an effort to ward off the Islamic drive. Having risen to power in France in 717—the same year a mammoth Muslim army was laying siege to Byzantium—Charles appreciated the significance of the Islamic threat. Accordingly, he intercepted the invaders somewhere between Poitiers and Tours, the latter being the immediate aim of the Muslims. The chroniclers give amazing numbers concerning the Muslims, as many as 300,000. Suffice to say, the Franks were greatly outnumbered, and most historians are content with the figures of 80,000 Muslims against 30,000 Franks.</p>
<p>The Muslim force consisted mainly of cavalry, and was geared for offensive warfare. The vast majority being of Berber extraction, they wore little armor, though their elitist Arab overlords were at least chain-mailed. For arms, they relied on the sword and lance; arrows were little used.</p>
<p>Conversely, the Franks were primarily an infantry force (except for mounted nobles such as Charles). Relying on deep phalanx-formations and heavy armor—reportedly 70 pounds for each man—the Franks were as immovable as the Muslims were mobile. They also appear to have had a greater variety of weaponry: the shield was ubiquitous, and arms consisted of swords, daggers, javelins, and two kinds of axes, one for wielding and the other for throwing—the <i>francisca</i>. This notorious latter weapon was so symbolic of the Franks that either it was named after them or, quite possibly, they were named after it.</p>
<p>The chroniclers state that the two contending armies faced each other for 6-7 days, neither wanting to make the first move. The Franks made much use of the familiar terrain: they appear to have held the high ground; and the dense European woods served not only to provide better shelter but to impede the anticipated Muslim cavalry charge.</p>
<p>Winter approaching, supplies and foraging areas dwindling, and an Islamic sense of superiority all compelled Rahman to commence battle, which “consisted entirely of wild headlong charges, wasteful of men.”</p>
<p>Writes an anonymous Arab chronicler: “Near the river Owar [Loire], the two great hosts of the two languages and the two creeds [Islam and Christianity] were set in array against each other. The hearts of Abd al-Rahman, his captains and his men were filled with wrath and pride, and they were the first to begin to fight. The Muslim horsemen dashed fierce and frequent forward against the battalions of the Franks, who resisted manfully, and many fell dead on either side, until the going down of the sun.”</p>
<p>According to the Chronicle of 754, much of which was composed from eye-witness accounts, “The men of the north stood as motionless as a wall, they were like a belt of ice frozen together, and not to be dissolved, as they slew the Arab with the sword. The Austrasians [Franks], vast of limb, and iron of hand, hewed on bravely in the thick of the fight; it was they who found and cut down the Saracen’s king [Rahman].”</p>
<p>Military historian Victor Davis Hanson writes: “When the sources speak of ‘a wall,’ ‘a mass of ice,’ and ‘immovable lines’ of infantrymen, we should imagine a literal human rampart, nearly invulnerable, with locked shields in front of armored bodies, weapons extended to catch the underbellies of any Islamic horsemen foolish enough to hit the Franks at a gallop.”</p>
<p>As night fell, the Muslims and Christians disengaged and withdrew to their tents. With the coming of dawn, the Franks discovered that the Muslims, perhaps seized with panic that their emir was dead, had fled south during the night—still looting, burning, and plundering all and sundry as they went. Hanson offers a realistic picture of the aftermath: “Poitiers [or Tours] was, as all cavalry battles, a gory mess, strewn with thousands of wounded or dying horses, abandoned plunder, and dead and wounded Arabs. Few of the wounded were taken prisoner—given their previous record of murder and pillage at Poitiers.”</p>
<p>In the coming years, Charles, henceforth known as Martel—the “Hammer,” due to his decisive stroke—would continue waging war on the Muslim remnants north of the Pyrenees till they retreated south. Frankish sovereignty and consolidation were naturally established in Gaul, leading to the creation of the Holy Roman Empire—beginning with Charles’ own grandson, Charlemagne, often described by historians as the “Father of Europe.” As historian Henri Pirenne put it: “Without Islam the Frankish Empire would probably never have existed and Charlemagne, without Mahomet, would be inconceivable.”</p>
<p>Aside from the fact that this battle ushered in an end to the first massive wave of Islamic conquests, there are some indications that it also precipitated the fall of the Umayyad caliphate, which, as mentioned earlier, owed its very existence to jihad, victory, plunder and slavery (<i>ghanima</i>). In 718, the Umayyads, after investing a considerable amount of manpower and resources trying to conquer Byzantium, the eastern doorway to Europe, lost horribly. Less than fifteen years later, their western attempt was, as seen, also rebuffed at Tours. In the context of these two pivotal defeats, a mere 18 years after Tours, the Umayyad caliphate was overthrown by the Abbasids, and the age of Islam’s great conquests came to an end (until the rise of the Ottoman empire which, like the Umayyads, was also a jihadi state built on territorial conquests, and which did finally conquer Constantinople).</p>
<p>Thus any number of historians, such as Godefroid Kurth, would go on to say that the Battle of Tours “must ever remain one of the great events in the history of the world, as upon its issue depended whether Christian Civilization should continue or Islam prevail throughout Europe.”</p>
<p>Despite the obvious significance of this battle, cynical modern day historians often point to Edward Gibbon and others as embellishing and aggrandizing this battle. In fact, from the very start, the earliest writers contemporaneous to the battle portrayed it as a war between Islam and Christendom. Gibbon further, and famously, argued that, had the Muslims won, “Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mohammed.” (Writing in the 18th century, clearly Gibbon was unaware that his predictions would still come true, though not by way of active conquest but passive resignation, as the Koran is now taught in Oxford, accorded the same worth of the Bible—equal literature or equal revelation—and Islamic Sharia law is functioning in Britain.)</p>
<p>Still, some modern armchair historians insist that the Battle of Tours was naught but a “minor skirmish” dedicated to plunder, not conquest. As evidence, they point to the fact that, while early Christian chroniclers highlighted this battle, their Muslim counterparts, (except for the very earliest writers, who did acknowledge it as a disastrous defeat) tended to overlook or minimize its significance—as if that is not to be expected from the defeated, especially their posterity.</p>
<p>Other historians insist that plunder was the only objective of the Muslims—a wholly materialistic thesis to be expected from modern-day historians incapable of transcending their own 21st century epistemology. Thus they anachronize, particularly since the texts make clear that conquest and consolidation were always on the mind of the invading Muslims, Rahman’s army no exception: Reinaud tells us that in the emir’s head lurked the possibility of “uniting Italy, Germany, and the empire of the Greeks to the already vast domains of the champions of the Koran.”</p>
<p>In fact, when placed in context, the Muslims’ lust for booty only further validates the expansionist jihad thesis (see Majid Khadurri’s <i>Law of War and Peace in Islam</i> which contains an entire chapter on spoils, <i>ghanima</i>, and their central role in the jihad). From the start, the jihadi was guaranteed one of two rewards for his war-efforts: martyrdom if he dies, plunder if he lives. The one an eternal, the other temporal, reward—a win-win situation that, at least according to early Christian and Muslim chroniclers, played a major role in the success of the Muslim conquests. In other words, that the sources indicate the Muslims were booty-hungry, does not in the least negate the fact that, as with all of the initial Muslim conquests, starting with Prophet Muhammad at the Battle of Badr, territorial conquests and the acquisition of booty went hand-in-hand and were the natural culmination of the jihad.</p>
<p>As for general destruction, Michael Bonner author of <em>Jihad in Islamic History</em>, writes, “The raids are a constant element [of the jihad], always considered praiseworthy and even necessary. This is a feature of pre-modern Islamic states that we cannot ignore. In addition to conquest, we have depredation; in addition to political projects and state-building, we have destruction and waste.”</p>
<p>At any rate, the facts speak for themselves: after the Battle of Tours, no other massive Muslim invasion would be attempted north of the Pyrenees—until very recently and through very different means.</p>
<p>But that is another story.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Jamie Glazov&#8217;s video interview with Raymond Ibrahim about Islam&#8217;s new war on Christians:</em></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/i-UBjuUOBHw" height="315" width="420" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Raymond Ibrahim, a Hoover Institution Media Fellow, 2013, is author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1621570258/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1621570258&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=uhurnetw-20"><i>Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians</i></a>, which deals with both history and current events.<br />
</strong></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><strong><br />
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