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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; western civilization</title>
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		<title>Turn Down for What?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ben-shapiro/turn-down-for-what/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=turn-down-for-what</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ben-shapiro/turn-down-for-what/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 30 Oct 2014 04:49:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Lil Jon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[suicide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Top 40]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tove Lo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[western civilization]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244016</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the freedom from consequences promised by the Left isn't everything it's cracked up to be. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/971827692.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244017" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/971827692.jpg" alt="971827692" width="355" height="267" /></a>On the way to the airport the other day, my Uber driver, an elderly Russian chap, turned on a Top 40 radio station. Not being one to complain, I actually sat and listened to the lyrics. The song blasting through the speakers of the late-model Honda Civic was titled &#8220;Habits.&#8221; The singer, a young, presumably wealthy Swede named Tove Lo (actual name: Tove Nilsson), warbles about her need to visit sex clubs, do drugs, &#8220;binge on all my Twinkies, throw up in the tub.&#8221; She laments that she &#8220;drank up all my money.&#8221;</p>
<p>Why? Well, she explains, &#8220;You&#8217;re gone and I gotta stay high all the time.&#8221;</p>
<p>The next song featured a rapper named Lil Jon screaming loudly at the listener that it is &#8220;Fire up that loud, another round of shots. &#8230; TURN DOWN FOR WHAT!&#8221; Translation: We&#8217;re drunk and crazed, and we won&#8217;t stop being drunk and crazed. The music video, as described by creator Daniel Kwan explores, &#8220;this other universe where dudes are so pumped up on their own d***s — and they&#8217;re so into their testosterone — that the way that the show that is by breaking s*** with their d***s.&#8221; The video, which shows a young man crashing through ceilings and into furniture as his erect penis swivels wildly in his pants, currently has nearly 130 million views on YouTube.</p>
<p>No wonder Tove Lo needs to stay high all the time.</p>
<p>The end of Western civilization, it turns out, comes with both a bang and a whimper. The bang: endless sex, animalistic, primal, without strings. As Adam Levine whines, &#8220;Baby, I&#8217;m preying on you tonight, hunt you down, eat you alive, just like animals, animals, like animals.&#8221; In 1971, according to the National Survey of Young Women, 30.4 percent of young women aged 15-19 living in metropolitan areas reported having premarital sex. By 1979, that number was 49.8 percent. Today, 62 percent of young women overall have had premarital sex according to the Centers for Disease Control.</p>
<p>In 1950, men&#8217;s median age of first marriage stood at 22.8; today, it stands at 28.2. More people having sex younger, and without commitment is not a recipe for societal happiness.</p>
<p>Thus the whimper. In a culture in which emotional connections are degraded to the level of bovine rutting, is it any wonder that 9.2 percent of Americans — some 23.9 million people — have used an illicit drug in the past month, and that nearly a quarter of those aged 18-20 have done so? Or that nearly a third of men over the age of 12 and 16 percent of women have participated in binge drinking in the last month?</p>
<p>From what are these people running? Drugs and alcohol are an escape — but we are the most prosperous society on the planet. We are wealthier and healthier than any nation in history. So why the angst?</p>
<p>That question sticks in the craw of the materialists of the secular left, who insist that endless supplies of Soma and government-sponsored sex, complete with Malthusian belt — to borrow terms from Huxley — should bring happiness. Obviously, it doesn&#8217;t. America&#8217;s suicide rate recently hit a 25-year high. Suicide has surged among the middle-aged, those aged 35-64, jumping 30 percent from 1999 to 2010.</p>
<p>Turn down for what? For survival. Or we could just keep going to sex clubs, throwing up in the bathtub and drinking up all our money. After all, isn&#8217;t that what freedom from consequences — our God-given pursuit of happiness, according to the left — is all about?</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 Uniqueness of Western Civilization</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/fjordman/the-uniqueness-of-western-civilization/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-uniqueness-of-western-civilization</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/fjordman/the-uniqueness-of-western-civilization/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 May 2013 04:15:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Fjordman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Europe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Greece]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hegel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ricardo Duchesne]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[western civilization]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=188140</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Uncovering the secrets of the West's success.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><i><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/images.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-188176" alt="images" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/images.jpg" width="178" height="282" /></a>The Uniqueness of Western Civilization</i> by Professor Ricardo Duchesne is a refreshing and original book that breaks with the current Multicultural consensus to argue that Western civilization is indeed unique and has been so for a very long time, probably far longer than most people realize.</span></b></p>
<p>It is a daring text. Few other books have tried to cover such a vast canvass of thousands of years of history, and many of those who have attempted to do so were less successful than this one. In fact, it’s so full of information about many different societies, cultures and epochs that it’s rather challenging to do it justice in a few words.</p>
<p>This is a serious historical volume, filled with information on every page. It clearly wasn’t written as a “history for dummies,” but refers to a wide variety of important historical works dealing with the Industrial Revolution, Tang Dynasty China, ancient Egypt and Bronze Age Europe. I have read quite a few of the books mentioned here myself, but by no means all of them. I doubt whether most professional historians have read all of the works cited here.</p>
<p><i>The Uniqueness of Western Civilization</i> is packed with footnotes, to the extent that on certain pages these take up more space than the main text. This is both the book’s greatest strength as well as potentially one of its flaws. It is a dense, scholarly work which clearly was the result of many years of careful research. On the other hand, it’s not always light reading. I liked it personally, but I have an academic background and read extensively from all forms of history books. It is not absolutely necessary to have read many of the books mentioned in it in order to appreciate Professor Duchesne’s fine work, but this would undoubtedly constitute an advantage.</p>
<p>If I were to criticize anything of the contents, it might be that the references to Hegel and his ideas take up slightly too much space in certain sections. Overall, however, this is a very well-researched volume that largely succeeds in what it set out to do: To establish that what we call Western civilization — or more accurately, European civilization — is different from other civilizations, and has been for a very long time.</p>
<p>Ricardo Duchesne demolishes the arguments of historians such as Kenneth Pomeranz, Bin Wong, John Hobson, Jack Goldstone and others who suggest that China was on the same level as Europe at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and that it was more or less accidental that the IR started in Britain and Western Europe. In fact, European civilization exhibited unique characteristics not just during the Scientific Revolution, the Age of Exploration or the Christian Middle Ages, but perhaps even before the Roman Empire and Classical Greece.</p>
<p>The <i>Iliad</i> and the <i>Odyssey</i>, traditionally attributed to the shadowy figure of Homer, may have achieved their present form after 800 BC; some scholars say after 700 BC. Yet they also partially reflect events and cultural patterns that are centuries older, perhaps dating back to the Greek Dark Ages or even all the way back to the Mycenaean Greeks of the second millennium BC, the oldest literate European culture, whose texts we can now read (the Minoan script remains undeciphered). This was long before Socrates, Plato or Aristotle walked the streets of ancient Athens, when Rome was still a swamp.</p>
<p>Duchesne shows that European culture was in certain ways unusual already at the time of the Mycenaean Greeks, ca. 1600-1200 BC. This was reflected in the earliest documented Germanic and Celtic peoples as well. The author’s thesis is that this uniqueness of European/Western civilization dates back at least to the Bronze Age of late prehistory, to the Indo-European expansion that most likely began in the steppes north of the Black Sea in the centuries before and after 3000 BC.</p>
<p>A number of modern scholars have suggested that Greece’s Homeric epics – the <i>Iliad</i> and the <i>Odyssey</i> – borrowed extensively from Near Eastern tales such as the Sumerian <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i> in Mesopotamia. Ricardo Duchesne argues persuasively that although this is conceivable, the extent of such borrowing has often been exaggerated. Furthermore, the European stories diverge from such Eastern tales on a number of crucial points.</p>
<p>It is uncontroversial that the ancient Greeks borrowed from other cultures, as everybody else did before them and after. For instance, if you today visit the fine National Archaeological Museum of Athens, Greece, you can easily follow the way the Greeks studied ancient Egyptian art and were deeply inspired by it. Yet you can also clearly see how they moved steadily away from this towards unparalleled artistic realism in Classical times, and how even during the Archaic Period they displayed creative originality that departed from Egyptian models.</p>
<p>In the famous Babylonian law code known as <i>Code of Hammurabi</i> in Mesopotamia around 1750 BC, the king is presented as the only “I,” the only fully realized individual. This is comparable to the despotic god-kings of other Near Eastern or Oriental societies, such as the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. Yet in the <i>Iliad</i>, one of the most memorable characters of the Trojan War is Achilles, who was not a king. The early Greeks displayed a range of prominent personalities besides the ruler who were actual individuals capable of making their own choices. Duchesne believes that this aristocratic warrior culture exemplifies a distinct and long-lasting Indo-European legacy of encouraging the bold display of individual bravery and originality.</p>
<p>The author hardly mentions the word “IQ” throughout these 500 pages. In contrast, Michael H. Hart in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Human-History-Michael-Hart/dp/1593680260/"><i>Understanding Human History</i></a><i> </i>views the flow of human history primarily through the prism of IQ differences among various ethnic groups. This does indeed explain many things, although it has become politically sensitive to say as much in the Western world today, but it does not explain everything. No single factor ever does.</p>
<p>The most important thing that genetic intelligence measured in IQ does not predict is why Europeans have historically outperformed East Asians, despite the latter having at least a comparable mean IQ. Ricardo Duchesne for his part draws a pattern where Europeans have for a very long time – in fact thousands of years – shown a greater tolerance for individuals standing out from the crowd. He traces this characteristic all the way back to the Indo-European aristocratic warrior ethos of the Bronze Age steppes.</p>
<p>Thanks to this legacy, Europeans have displayed a unique culture encouraging individual bravery, not just for conquest (although that, too) but for exploration and all forms of daring that seek to achieve individual glory beyond physical death. It is this restless individualism, in which bold men display curiosity and daring to make their mark on history, that sets European culture apart from other civilizations throughout historical times.</p>
<p>While Ricardo Duchesne himself does not explicitly say so in <i>The Uniqueness of Western Civilization</i>, his presentation leaves the reader wondering whether it was this European restless spirit, individual curiosity and innate desire to seek out new horizons and boldly go where no man has gone before that eventually led humanity from donkeys to space travel. If any civilization or groups of people on this planet were destined to leave Earth behind and begin exploring the vastness of space, it was the Europeans. Evidence indicates that no non-European nation or culture, not even the most sophisticated of these, ever came close to making a similar breakthrough on their own. Pointing out this indisputable fact may annoy certain revisionist Multicultural world historians — but that doesn’t make it any less true.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Universities Abandon Western Civilization</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/tait-trussell/universities-abandon-western-civilization/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=universities-abandon-western-civilization</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/tait-trussell/universities-abandon-western-civilization/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jan 2012 04:00:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tait Trussell]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[courses]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaga]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[western civilization]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=120063</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Lady Gaga replaces Plato and Aristotle on academic curricula.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/gaga.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-120065" title="gaga" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/gaga.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="280" /></a></p>
<p>Most students no longer are taught their nation’s triumphs that would equip them to be knowledgeable citizens.</p>
<p>Major universities have turned from instruction in the significance of Western Civilization to the “profound” influence of <a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2011/12/09/the-lady-gaga-fication-of-higher-ed/">Lady Gaga</a>, (real name: Stephanie Germanotta), the bizarre recording artist whose commercial success has somehow topped charts around the world. In some colleges today even history majors don’t have to delve into our nation’s influences and beginings.</p>
<p>The national Association of Scholars, in a <a href="http://www.nas.org/polImage.cfm?Doc_Id=1983&amp;size_code=Doc">new analysis</a>, “The Vanishing West: 1964-2010,” describes the tragic near disappearance of the study of Western Civilization from the American undergraduate curriculum.</p>
<p>Four top-tier universities now offer Lady Gaga’s influence in music, the arts, fashion and the LGBT lifestyle. At the same time, shockingly, none of the schools&#8212;University of Virginia, University of South Carolina, Wake Forest, and Arizona State require their students to study history to get their diploma.</p>
<p>Western civilization courses have been scratched from the general education requirements. They have been replaced in large part by courses that either undermine traditions in the West or &#8220;Balkanize&#8221; the curriculum. For example, black studies emphasize the plight of blacks. Women&#8217;s studies enthuse over the rising role of women. Yet American history, when it is available and required, emphasizes conflict, exploitation and imperial goals. Third World studies typically relate supposed abuse and unfair dominance by the West.</p>
<p>Polls indicate that students are alienated from their own culture.  Witness the <a href="http://occupywallst.org/article/who_we_are/">Occupy Wall Street</a> Movement., so warmly embraced by Obama forces. Young people who will vote this year and some of whom will eventually be the nation’s leaders are no longer learning about their civilization&#8217;s triumphs and its role in transforming the human condition.</p>
<p>“[F]or much of the twentieth century the Western history survey course was the standard means by which colleges and universities provided American undergraduates with a coherent nature of their civilization’s rise,” the National Association of Scholars (NAS) said. The studies told of the exceptionalism of the United States, a national characteristic which Barack Obama disparages.</p>
<p>“Western Civilization courses had deep symbolic importance for those who were seeking to refocus the undergraduate curriculum on multiculturalism and diversity,” the NAS declared. “When in 1987 Jesse Jackson led Stanford protestors in a chant of ‘Hey hey, ho ho, Western Culture’s got to go,’ the object was not to displace mathematics or English literature, but eliminate a course that focused on Western Civilization,” the analysis recalled. Getting rid of Western Civilization courses reflected an ideological hostility. “Western Civilization” had come to be seen by radicals as a form of apologetics for racism, imperialism, sexism, and colonialism.</p>
<p>The first, comprehensive, <a href="http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/library/books/one-party-classroom-how-radical-professors-americas-top-colleges-indoctrinate-students-and-undermine?library_node=67198">multi-year investigation</a> of subjects being taught in colleges across the country was “One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America’s Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy,” by David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin in 2009. They cited more than 150 courses revealing the left-wing politics infused in liberal arts curriculum, including attempts to convince students that America is imperialistic and racist. An earlier book (2006) by Horowitz, “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America,” exposed those with terrorist or non-democratic goals.</p>
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		<title>A Muslim Apostate&#8217;s Defense of the West</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-bawer/a-muslim-apostates-defense-of-the-west/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-muslim-apostates-defense-of-the-west</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Jan 2012 04:20:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Bawer]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[Why the West Is Best]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Ibn Warraq reminds us of the magnificence of a Western metropolis that we may take for granted.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Why-the-West-Is-Best.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-117911" title="Why-the-West-Is-Best" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Why-the-West-Is-Best.gif" alt="" width="300" height="408" /></a></p>
<p>Ibn Warraq is the pseudonymous, Pakistani-born author of the modern classic <em>Why I Am Not a Muslim </em>and the writer or editor of several other estimable books about Muhammed, the Koran, Islamic culture, Muslim apostates, and Western civilization.  Surely few people know as much as he does about both the West and Islam.  Therefore I was more than eager to read his new book, <em>Why the West Is Best: A Muslim Apostate&#8217;s Defense of Liberal Democracy.</em></p>
<p>Naturally, I expected something wise and incisive and steeped in learning – and I wasn&#8217;t disappointed.  But what I hadn&#8217;t counted on was how fresh, original, delightfully inspired, and emotionally stirring Warraq&#8217;s approach to his topic would be.  Take his first chapter, which is about New York, a city he views as “a testament to the robustness of Western culture and to its welcoming catholicity.” Warraq&#8217;s goal here is to help us to see a Western metropolis through the eyes of a person from, say, the Islamic world, and thus recognize the magnificence of things so familiar to us that we may take them for granted.</p>
<p>Let it be said at once that he is highly successful at this.  He tells a surprisingly touching story about an Iraqi colleague who, at age forty-five, left his country for the first time on a visit to New York and was so overwhelmed by “the number and variety of magazines available” at the Barnes &amp; Noble in Warraq&#8217;s neighborhood that he started taking pictures of them.  Warraq quotes a paean to the New York Public Library by none other than Lenin, who, at some point between that institution&#8217;s founding in 1911 and the Russian Revolution, took time to marvel at the number of people who used the library, at the number of books they took out, at the then-expanding system of branch libraries, and at the resources the library made available to children.  “Such is the way things are done in New York,” Lenin wrote.  “And in Russia?”</p>
<p>Warraq devotes several pages to a celebration of Tin Pan Alley, noting perceptively that the Great American Songbook is not just a collection of pretty tunes and clever lyrics but a life-affirming cultural inheritance that “lend[s] dignity to the lives and struggles of ordinary people” and “cross[es] all the boundaries of race, class, and religion.” He pays tribute to American humor, noting that the abundance of comedy clubs in a city like New York “is a sure sign of a healthy society.” And he expresses admiration for “[t]he civilized pleasure of alcohol,” citing the philosopher Roger Scruton&#8217;s thumbs-up for American cocktail parties, which “immediately break the ice between strangers and set every large gathering in motion.”</p>
<p>In praising all these things about New York, of course, Warraq is not only extolling the core values of the West itself but, implicitly or explicitly, rebuking non-Western – and especially Muslim – culture.  Islam, after all, abhors a library or magazine rack which has not been cleansed of “offensive” items, and it frowns on music, humor, and the consumption of alcohol.  These, Warraq wants us to realize, are not minor issues – they are the kinds of things that make the difference between a happy life and a miserable one.  For him the Declaration of Independence&#8217;s foregrounding of the right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is no mere rhetorical flourish – it sums up the rich possibilities and promise of life in the West as opposed to life in the less happy regions of the world.</p>
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		<title>When Secularism Is Not Enough</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/william-kilpatrick/when-secularism-is-not-enough/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=when-secularism-is-not-enough</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Jun 2010 04:02:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[William Kilpatrick]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Are we sure Islamic jihad can be resisted by reliance on Western secular values alone?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/chrsit.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-62360" title="chrsit" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/chrsit.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>Can Islamic jihad be resisted simply on the basis of Western secular values? Some readers of my posts on the role of Christianity in resisting Islam have objected that bringing Christianity into the debate only muddies the water. As one reader wrote, “the anti-jihad movement can better be served if blatant theocons stay away.”</p>
<p>A number of important individuals in what might loosely be called the resistance movement do seem to believe that secular values are sufficient to rally citizens to a defense of Western civilization. A good example of this belief is the 2006 manifesto, “Together, facing the new totalitarianism,” which was signed by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Salman Rushdie, and others. The manifesto calls for “resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity, and secular values for all.” The document also speaks of “universal values,” “universal rights,” and “Enlightenment” with a capital “E.”</p>
<p>But how sturdy are Enlightenment values once they are cut off from their Christian roots? Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s own experience provides some perspective. In her autobiography, <em>Infidel, </em>she tells how, after escaping Somalia to the Netherlands, she fell in love with the thinkers of the Enlightenment. At the same time she became an atheist—rejecting not just Islam, but all religions (although she willingly admits that Jews and Christians have a more humane concept of God). Of Holland she wrote, “Society worked without reference to God, and it seemed to function perfectly.”</p>
<p>But the problem with substituting Enlightenment humanism for religion jumps out, if not from every page of <em>Infidel</em>, at least from many pages. On the one hand, Holland is “the peak of civilization,” and “no nation in the world is more deeply attached to freedom of expression than the Dutch.” On the other hand, her colleagues keep warning her to keep her thoughts to herself, and in the end, enlightened Holland forces her out of the Netherlands precisely for freely expressing her opinions about Muslim treatment of women. Ironically, Hirsi Ali’s next port of refuge was the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank which numbers quite a few traditionalist Christians among its scholars.</p>
<p>Others, such as Oriana Fallaci, Geert Wilders, and Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff have discovered that “enlightened” but post-Christian Europe is not nearly as friendly to freedom of expression as one might expect to be the case in the birthplace of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was an important civilizational advance, but of late it seems to have gone a bit wobbly. Why is that?</p>
<p>One possible answer is that the core Enlightenment values are inextricably tied to Christian values. This view has been put forward most forcefully on the Continent in recent years by Marcello Pera (former President of the Italian Senate, and an agnostic) and by Benedict XVI (not an agnostic). They have argued that the Enlightenment grew out of Christianity organically, as a tree grows from its roots. Cut off from its roots the tree dies.</p>
<p>In this view the rights of man are based on a belief in the importance of man. The belief that ordinary individuals have a value and dignity of their own apart from their membership in a tribe or a society has its origin in the Judeo-Christian declaration that man is made in the image of God. Thus, if you take away God, you take away the foundation of human importance. As Thomas Jefferson undoubtedly discovered while composing the <em>Declaration</em> <em>of</em> <em>Independence</em>, it’s a bit difficult to establish the case for human rights without reference to the Creator.  Purely secular societies can only assume human dignity and human rights as a given. We tend to forget that these concepts are now a given because they were given to the world by Christians. Before Christianity, the idea that all human beings are endowed with intrinsic value was not considered “self-evident,” it was considered ludicrous. Espousing human equality was a good way to get yourself laughed out of polite pagan society. Human dignity may seem self-evident to us now, but that is because the Christian moral view became internalized over the centuries. Gladiatorial combats and slavery didn’t go out of fashion because societies evolved but because people began to see one another in the light of the Christian revelation.</p>
<p>Of course, not everyone sees it that way. Some seem to think that Enlightenment humanism came out of nowhere, thanks to spontaneous advances in science, reason, and ethics. In this view, Enlightenment values can get along fine on their own without reference to God. But then you’re still faced with explaining how it is that these values have fallen on hard times precisely in those places that might legitimately be called post-Christian. Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion are defended much more vigorously in still-Christian America than in post-Christian France or Holland. For that matter, there’s more freedom of speech in Bible-belt America than in your average American university. With their speech codes and “hate speech” rules and their habit of disinviting “controversial” speakers, universities are among the least free institutions in society. And it’s no coincidence that most of them can be described as post-Christian, and in some cases, anti-Christian. There is also, of course, an increasingly anti-Semitic climate on American campuses.</p>
<p>What happened in the universities is essentially what happened in Europe. Both suffered a loss of faith (recall that many prestigious universities began as seminaries or denominational colleges), and in the process of losing their religion both became increasingly uninterested in cultivating or protecting genuine freedoms. Moreover, like post-Christian Europe, the post-Christian university has shown little ability to resist Islamization. Thanks to Saudi money and well-organized Muslim student associations, many universities are beginning to act like apologists for the Wahabbi faith.</p>
<p>Judging by the sorry records of the highly secularized European state and the highly secularized American university, it might not be a good idea to place all your bets on “secular values for all” as the main point of resistance to totalitarian Islam. Ayaan Hirsi Ali deserves the gratitude of all for calling attention to the abuse of Muslim women, but she’s wrong to think that a rootless Enlightenment is going to bring them liberation. Likewise, we owe a lot to Ibn Warraq for his penetrating critique of Islam, but he’s mistaken to think that the universal values enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights would survive in the thoroughly secularized type of society he seems to favor. If these values are universal and self-evident, why is it that half the world doesn’t subscribe to them? Warraq seems not to have noticed that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was composed for the most part by individuals who had grown up in Christian cultures, and had inherited a social conscience that had been formed by the Judeo-Christian tradition.</p>
<p>Two of the chief framers, Rene Cassin and Dr. Charles Malik, made no secret of the influence Christian and Jewish beliefs had on their thinking.  In a 1969 speech to the Decalogue Lawyer’s Society, Cassin, a Jew, outlined in detail how Jewish and Christian thought had paved the way for the Declaration.  It’s also telling that while drafting the final version of the Declaration he received advice and encouragement from Cardinal Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII), then the Apostolic Nuncio in Paris. Malik, who later served as President of the UN General Assembly, was a Greek Orthodox philosopher and theologian from Lebanon and the author of numerous commentaries on the Bible and on the early Church Fathers. While making his arguments to the drafting committee he was in the habit of quoting from Thomas Aquinas, the medieval theologian. Jacques Maritain, the eminent Catholic philosopher was also actively involved in the work of the committee, as well as the UNESCO committee which laid the groundwork for the Declaration. Eleanor Roosevelt, the Chairperson of the drafting committee later observed that the Declaration reflected “the true spirit of Christianity.” In short, although the Declaration of Human Rights makes no mention of God, the fingerprints of a certain religious tradition are all over it.</p>
<p>Western culture—indeed the whole world—owes a lot to the Enlightenment, but it’s important to remember that at crucial historical junctures it was Christian activists working on Christian principles who did most of the heavy lifting. Christian Evangelicals were at the forefront of the movement to abolish the slave trade; the Civil Rights movement was galvanized by the Reverend Martin Luther King and other Christian leaders; the end of Communism in Eastern Europe was brought about in large part by the work of the Catholic Solidarity Movement, of Pope John Paul II, and of numerous priests and pastors in Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and other countries who kept alive the spirit of resistance.</p>
<p>At the risk of oversimplifying things, it might be useful to think in terms of two Enlightenments: the Enlightenment which remained nourished by the Judeo-Christian tradition, and the Enlightenment which cut itself off from God. The former led to the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, the abolition of slavery, and the Civil Rights movement. The latter led to the French Revolution, to the Reign of Terror, to the suppression of church by state, to Marx and Nietzsche, to Socialism, and Communism, and more recently to the Alice-in-Wonderland world of cultural relativism where human rights are looked upon as relative rather than universal.</p>
<p>It’s unlikely that a pure secularism—even a humanistic, enlightened secularism—can be the foundation for resisting an aggressive Islam. It’s precisely “enlightened” secularism that produced the spiritual and population vacuum in Europe which is now being filled by Islam. John Lennon invited us to imagine “no religion”… “nothing to kill or die for.” In Europe they don’t have to imagine anymore. Having lost their religion, many are discovering that post-Christian values may not, after all, be worth fighting and dying for—all the more so for those who are getting on in years, and are hoping the really bad things won’t happen in their lifetimes. The new motto for many middle –aged Europeans seems to be “Apres moi le dhimmitude.”</p>
<p>Which culture is more likely to protect human rights and freedoms against totalitarian movements? A thoroughly secular culture which has cut itself off from a transcendent reference point? Or a culture imbued with the Judeo-Christian belief that human beings possess an inalienable, God-given dignity? It’s one of those non-academic questions to which the wrong answer might prove fatal. And final exam time is fast approaching.</p>
<p><em>William Kilpatrick’s articles have appeared in </em><em>Front Page Magazine</em>, <em>First Things, Catholic World Report, the National Catholic Register, Jihad Watch, World</em>, and <em>Investor’s Business Daily.</em></p>
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		<title>Endless War</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jamie-glazov/endless-war-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=endless-war-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 16 Apr 2010 05:03:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Ralph Peters reflects on how we can effectively combat an enemy that we're afraid to name.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/peters2.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-58246" title="peters2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/peters2.jpg" alt="" width="316" height="474" /></a></p>
<p>Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Ralph Peters, a retired Army officer and the author of 25 books, including best-selling, prize-winning novels and influential works on strategy. He is also an opinion columnist for the New York Post and a regular contributor to Armchair General Magazine. A popular media guest, he became Fox News&#8217; first strategic analyst in 2009. He is the author of the new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0811705501/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&amp;n=283155&amp;s=books" target="_blank">Endless War: Middle-Eastern Islam vs. Western Civilization.</a></p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Ralph Peters, welcome to Frontpage Interview.</p>
<p>Tell us about your new book.</p>
<p><strong>Peters:</strong> Thanks Jamie.</p>
<p>My new book focuses on cutting through the ideological nonsense perverting our national discussion of war, peace, terrorism and justice.  My fight is to force people to deal with facts, rather than allowing them to make up cozy myths about humanity&#8211;or the inhuman creatures we call &#8220;terrorists.&#8221;  Really, the key to the entire book lies in the introduction, which lays out the terrible price we&#8217;re paying for allowing the left to take over our education system and destroy (and virtually eliminate) the teaching of history.  That means we get legislators who vote in an intellectual vacuum, journalists who can&#8217;t put the things they witness into context, and voters susceptible to wild lies.  As the book says, those who do not know history will die of myth.  And nowhere in the current yelling contest that passes for a national debate is myth more powerful than in the refusal to accept that Islamist terrorists really do exist and really do believe that they&#8217;re doing their god&#8217;s will.  So I try to base my judgements and make my cases on historical facts&#8211;the sort that are not subject to dispute (except by the left&#8217;s myth-makers, of course).</p>
<p>Beyond that, the book&#8217;s a world tour of our problems&#8211;not merely recounting them, but trying to understand why the problems have emerged and why it&#8217;s so difficult for us to combat them.  It may sound self-contradictory, but I&#8217;d describe the book as a work of &#8220;impassioned rationality.&#8221;  And by the way: I don&#8217;t toe anybody&#8217;s line.  I want to challenge independents and conservatives to think for themselves, too, since we&#8217;re so terribly susceptible, as a species, to group-think.  The herd mentality is an even greater enemy than al-Qaeda.  So I&#8217;m willing to risk unhappy readers&#8211;as long as I can spur them to think for themselves.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Why your subtitle?</p>
<p><strong>Peters: </strong>(He said with a laugh) Every non-fiction book has to have a sub-title these days, doesn&#8217;t it?  For example, Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s forthcoming autobiography, NANCY!  How I Turned a Bad Date With America into an Awful Marriage While Turning Men Into Mice on Capitol Hill&#8230;</p>
<p>Seriously, it&#8217;s an interesting question, since, in a sense, this book could have been written at any point since the seventh century, when Islam began its endless jihad.  Of course, the details would have been different, but not the overall theme: That you have to fight Islamist fanatics to the death, there&#8217;s no alternative.  That said, had the book been published at any time prior to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the sub-title would have been different, it would have been &#8220;Middle-Eastern Islam vs. Christian Civilization,&#8221; rather than &#8220;Western Civilization.&#8221;  But the West, overall, is no longer Judeo-Christian, except in heritage.  The USA excepted, we&#8217;re a secular civilization, with all the good and ill that brings along.  So that&#8217;s one more asymmetry in the current struggle: We fight for values, our enemies fight for faith.</p>
<p>The first third of the book recounts the high points (and low points) of the long military struggle with Islam, as I try to arm the reader with facts to refute the utter nonsense that &#8220;Islam&#8217;s a religion of peace.&#8221;  I document some of the most-important battles and campaigns&#8211;exciting to read about, but often grim in their results&#8211;over the centuries, looking at Islam&#8217;s centuries of military triumphs that almost destroyed our civilization, then the recent centuries in which the tide turned as Islam failed to compete as a civilization.  Those tales from history are fun to read (God knows, the left hates the thought that history might offer interesting stories that teach us something), but they&#8217;re also essential to understanding the deep roots of today&#8217;s wars.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>What is wrong with the U.S. approach toward our enemy? How must we change it?</p>
<p><strong>Peters: </strong>We refuse to recognize our enemy or call him by his name (I think, always, of Goethe&#8217;s line from Faust, &#8220;Wer darf das Kind beim rechten Namen nennen?  &#8220;Who dares to call the child by its true name?&#8221;).  Recently, President Obama promised a Muslim audience that he&#8217;d eliminate any reference to Islamist terrorists or the like from our national security documents.  Good Lord!  It&#8217;s as if, in World War II, we decided we couldn&#8217;t utter the word &#8220;Nazi,&#8221; since it might hurt our enemy&#8217;s feelings.  Our mortal enemies are jumping up and down, screaming that they&#8217;re terrorists in the name of Islam.  Our response?  &#8220;Oh, they don&#8217;t really mean it&#8230;&#8221;  Yeah, well, they do mean it.  Not every Muslim is a problem, but some Muslims certainly are.</p>
<p>How can we effectively combat an enemy when we&#8217;re even afraid of the enemy&#8217;s name?  This is political correctness beyond the bounds of sanity.  So another thing the book does is to dissect the twisted language our government and even our military now uses to avoid acknowledging that fanatical religion is the crucial factor in our current struggles.  It&#8217;s astonishing: We have generals who insist that Islam isn&#8217;t involved in any of this, and doctrinal manuals that ignore religion.  We refuse to apply common sense: If you could subtract Islam from the problem, you just wouldn&#8217;t have al Qaeda or the Taliban.  They&#8217;re fighting for other factors, too, of course.  But Islam is the primary motivator, the primary sustainer, and the primary objective.  Pretending otherwise just kills our troops for nothing&#8230;although, sadly, both political parties are fine with that, as long as we don&#8217;t offend anybody.  (And this is a key point: While the Democrats are the worst offenders, plenty of Republicans in Washington are outright cowards on this issue.)</p>
<p>The book makes it clear that Islam was born by the sword, spread by the sword, and still reverts to the sword when under stress.  And it makes the case using historical facts, not rhetoric.</p>
<p>All that said, I do want to make it perfectly clear: I don&#8217;t believe that each and every Muslim spends each and every day dreaming up ways to kill us.  The problem lies among those who find their faith a spur to violence, the fanatics, the true believers who want to return the world to a &#8220;pure Islam&#8221; that never really existed (Wahhabism is an eighteenth century Bedouin heresy posing as the one true Islam).  But we don&#8217;t understand them, either.  For example, the book dissects our idiotic counterinsurgency doctrine&#8211;our guidebook for Afghanistan&#8211;which not only doesn&#8217;t mention Islam, but can&#8217;t tell the difference between ideological revolutionaries and religious reactionaries.  In Afghanistan&#8211;which is discussed at length&#8211;we&#8217;re the revolutionaries, the ones trying to bring change.  Our enemies are fighting for traditions, myths and darkness.  We&#8217;re muddled, befuddled and failing.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Obama appears to be bullying and abandoning Israel. Meanwhile, we have the horror of a nuclear Iran on our hands, and their first target will be Israel. What must Israel do, now that, it appears, it is alone?</p>
<p><strong>Peters: </strong>On a recent Fox broadcast, I made the point that I don&#8217;t believe the Obama administration would respond militarily even if Iran popped a nuke on Israel.  The situation&#8217;s hateful to me, but this administration will not defend Israel.  Obama is already resigned to the advent of an Iranian nuclear-weapons capability.  The sanctions nonsense is just window dressing, at this point.  So what does that mean?  At some point, Israel will feel compelled to act pre-emptively&#8230;but Israel only has the capability to set back, not to destroy, Iran&#8217;s nuke program (which is widely dispersed, buried deep and/or located in heavily populated areas).</p>
<p>The Israeli strike will be a bloody mess, the Iranians will respond asymmetrically by closing the Straits of Hormuz and hitting Gulf oil fields and infrastructure, and we&#8217;ll be stuck defending Arab autocracies&#8211;while avoiding resolute military action against Iran.  At best, the situation would be catastrophic.  Obama&#8217;s just hoping it doesn&#8217;t happen on his watch&#8211;and he&#8217;ll do all he can to discourage Israel from defending itself as long as he&#8217;s in the White House.  At this point, it&#8217;s clear that Obama finds Israel distasteful and that his sympathies lie with the Arabs.  The US now has a president with a Third-World outlook locked in the 1970s campus prejudices of his youth.  But, then, at no time in his past has Obama had a pro-Israel friend I can identify.  Throughout his lifetime, his public associates have been pro-Palestinian.  He is who he is.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Your thoughts on the Obama administration and how it is or isn’t dealing with the terror war and protecting U.S. national security.</p>
<p><strong>Peters:</strong> I do give the Obama administration credit for continuing and even expanding the Bush administration&#8217;s use of drones and other means to target terrorists on foreign soil.  Obama knows he can&#8217;t afford&#8211;politically speaking&#8211;a major terrorist attack on the US during his presidency.  He&#8217;s not protecting America, he&#8217;s protecting his career and the historical legacy his acolytes are already engraving in marble.  Beyond that, Obama&#8217;s actions across the board amount to a negative for our national security.  He&#8217;s a leftwing ideologue who prefers developing-world thugs to our traditional allies.  And he&#8217;s a narcissistic fool.  Obama&#8217;s most dangerous quality is his unbounded faith in his own charisma.</p>
<p>The next few years will be interesting.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>You&#8217;re a hardworking writer, every five seconds or so you have some new piece of work out. What&#8217;s your next book?</p>
<p><strong>Peters: </strong>This one will be very different.  I recently finished another novel, The Officers&#8217; Club, set on an Army post in the early 1980s.  It&#8217;s scheduled for publication next January.  It&#8217;s R-rated, and it could as readily have been called Lieutenants Behaving Very, Very Badly.  It&#8217;s set at a time when the Army was still recovering from Vietnam, our society was still reeling from the excesses of the 1970s, and Reagan had just taken the helm.  That was the battered Army in which I grew up&#8230;strait-laced on duty, but wild after hours&#8230;  On one level, the novel&#8217;s a murder mystery&#8211;it begins with the murder of a female lieutenant&#8211;but, really, it&#8217;s my memorial to a bygone Army, the good, the bad and the ugly.  Today&#8217;s military is much, much better (and certainly better-behaved).  But I&#8217;ve just never seen a well-written book about &#8220;my&#8221; Army.  The book will surprise those who know me only through my writing on strategy and security&#8211;but, fair warning, the next book after that will be even more surprising.  Writing&#8217;s an adventure.  Just like life.  When you become predictable, it&#8217;s time to pack it in.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Well, I’m very much looking forward to reading this book for sure!</p>
<p>Ralph Peters, thank you for joining us.</p>
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		<title>Anti-Semitic Symbiosis</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/baron-bodissey/anti-semitic-symbiosis-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=anti-semitic-symbiosis-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Mar 2010 04:02:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Baron Bodissey]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Nazis' dream ended in a Berlin bunker in 1945, but the Muslim Brotherhood dream never died.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/muftinazi1.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-56038" title="muftinazi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/muftinazi1.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="336" /></a></p>
<p><strong>This article is reprinted from<a href="http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/"> Gates of Vienna</a>. </strong></p>
<p>The following article is behind the subscription  wall at this month’s <em>New Criterion</em>. The text is an appropriate companion  to the subtitled video of the documentary <a href="http://vimeo.com/9807926" target="_blank"><em>Turban and Swastika</em></a>, so I have taken the liberty of  excerpting some of the key paragraphs here.</p>
<p>National Socialism and the Muslim Brotherhood appeared at about the same time — in the 1920s — and shared a central ideological imperative: the extermination of the world’s Jews. The National Socialist dream ended in a Berlin bunker in 1945, but the Muslim Brotherhood dream never died.</p>
<p>It is alive and well today, and is gaining ground on all fronts in ways that Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, and Haj Amin el-Husseini could never have imagined, thanks to a worldwide petroleum-based economy and the self-immolation of Western Civilization.</p>
<p>The excerpts  below are taken from “Anti-Semitic symbiosis” by Sol Stern, which reviews the  book <em>Nazi Propaganda in the Arab World</em> by Jeffrey Herf:</p>
<blockquote><p><img src="http://chromatism.net/current/images/albanna.jpg" border="0" alt="Hassan al-Banna" hspace="8" vspace="5" align="right" />After the military defeat of Nazi Germany the center of radical Jew-hatred shifted from Europe to the Arab Middle East. The foundation for an Islamic version of Nazi eliminationist anti-Semitism had, in fact, already been created in Egypt and Palestine, right under the noses of the British colonial administration. The Muslim Brotherhood emerged from the war as the largest mass movement in the Arab world, with over one million followers and an armed paramilitary cadre of 40,000. The charismatic preacher Hassan Al-Banna launched the Brotherhood in 1928 as a vehicle for a religious awakening, calling on all Muslims to return to the purity of early Islam by rejecting the corrupting influence of Western political ideas and social customs.</p>
<p>By the 1930s, Al-Banna had found much to emulate in the western totalitarian movements in Germany and Italy. Like the Fascists and Nazis, the Brotherhood claimed to speak for the oppressed working class and the unemployed against predatory Jewish capitalism and British imperialism. To the Koranic narrative depicting the Jews as treacherous enemies, Al-Banna appended the modern Nazi doctrine that “international Jewry” was the spearhead of a worldwide conspiracy to enslave the German <em>Volk</em> as well as the Muslim <em>Umma</em>. Al-Banna arranged for the  translation and distribution of Hitler’s <em>Mein Kampf</em> and <em>The Protocols  of the Elders of Zion</em>, while elements of the Brotherhood’s paramilitary wing  volunteered for active duty with the nascent Nazi war machine.</p>
<p>Hitler’s most effective Islamic messenger to the Arabs, however, was the Palestinian Haj Amin el-Husseini. In 1921, the British appointed Husseini as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (charged with overseeing the Islamic holy places). He soon became the preeminent Arab leader opposing the British mandatory administration. Some Arab nationalists were drawn to an alliance with Nazi Germany based on the political calculus that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” But, for Husseini, it was a matter of deep ideological affinity. Even before Hitler came to power the Mufti expressed his admiration for the Nazis and their solution for the “Jewish problem”—at the time, expulsion from Germany—and sent delegations of young Islamists to Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies. Eventually the Mufti took up residence in Berlin, where he played an active role in the wartime extermination of European Jewry.</p></blockquote>
<p>- &#8211; - <a name="readfurther">-</a> &#8211; - &#8211; - -</p>
<blockquote><p><img src="http://chromatism.net/current/images/mufti.jpg" border="0" alt="Haj Amin el-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem" hspace="8" vspace="5" align="right" />By all rights Husseini should have been tried and executed as a war criminal. In June 1946, however, the postwar French government allowed him to escape to Egypt, where he was given asylum by King Farouk. Al-Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood and other nationalist groups welcomed him as a returning hero. Al-Banna called Husseini a hero who “challenged an empire and fought Zionism with the help of Hitler and Germany. Germany and Hitler are gone but Amin Al-Husseini will continue the struggle.”</p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>We owe it primarily to the German political scientist and journalist Matthias Kuntzel and to the American historian of modern Germany Jeffrey Herf for connecting the historical dots and showing that the concept of “Islamofascism” cannot be dismissed as a glib political epithet. In his path-breaking 2007 book, <em>Jihad and Jew-Hatred:  Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11</em>, Kuntzel argued persuasively that revolutionary anti-Semitism is at the core of twentieth-century Islamism and jihad, that this is no mere coincidence, and that there is a direct line from the Nazi-influenced Muslim Brotherhood and the Grand Mufti to Hamas, al-Qaeda, and the present government of Iran. Herf wrote the forward to Kuntzel’s book, calling attention to the fact that this connection had so far been ignored by most scholars:</p>
<blockquote><p>Unmistakable echoes of Nazism’s violent, paranoid conspiracy theories about the evil nature and vast destructive power of the Jews have been evident in the ideological tracts and political purposes of radical Islam since it’s crystallization during and after World War II in Egypt. Yet despite the obviousness of these lineages and echoes, many of the fine works of scholarship and government commissions on the subject mention this connection briefly and, in some cases, ignore it completely.</p></blockquote>
<p>Herf has now written his  own study, <em>Nazi Propaganda in the Arab World</em>, that will hopefully make it more difficult for commentators and government officials to ignore the affinities between radical Islam and Nazi eliminationist anti-Semitism. During the war, the Nazi regime distributed millions of copies of printed works and, through short-wave radio, broadcast thousands of hours of ideological propaganda to the Arab world. Herf has gained access to this previously classified record and analyzes the content of the propaganda offensive. He also adds to the existing scholarship on the activities of Husseini and other Arab exiles in Germany during the war years. Herf concludes that although the Nazis expected to win allies among the Arabs based on mutual opposition to the British Empire, they also sought to “extend Nazism’s genocide of the Jews.” The Nazis were aware of the radical Islamist tendencies represented by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Grand Mufti and this collaboration represented the “diffusion of ideology and of a meeting of hearts and minds that began from very different civilizational starting points.”</p></blockquote>
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		<title>Fox Turns On Wilders</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/fox-turns-on-wilders/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=fox-turns-on-wilders</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Mar 2010 04:06:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why is the network joining the attack against the Dutch politician?
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/20080128GeertWildersFox.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55702" title="20080128GeertWildersFox" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/20080128GeertWildersFox.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>If there is one major news outlet that would be expected to leap to the defense of free speech when that vital linchpin of liberty is under attack, one would expect that Fox News would be the one organization to do so. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that the Obama administration tried to cut Fox out of access to the White House. To their credit, Fox’s competitors leapt to defend – not Fox, whom the rest of the mainstream networks despise – but free speech. That episode makes the way that all the networks, and Fox in particular, are ignoring the Geert Wilders trial so troubling and, in the case of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., rather mystifying, at least until one scratches the surface a bit.</p>
<p>Nobody expects CNN, ABC, NBC, etc. to cover the Wilders trial because those networks have established beyond any reasonable doubt that they are not going to cover issues related to Islam if the story in question doesn’t fit neatly within their “Islam isn’t the problem, it’s just a few explosive bad apples” narrative. Journalists who bend over backward to disconnect Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan from his jihadist inspirations aren’t likely to care about a political leader living across the pond who is <em>obviously</em> nothing more than a fringe, right-wing Islamophobe. But Fox? We’ve come to expect more from Fox. Perhaps it’s time to start expecting less, at least when issues involving Islam are involved.</p>
<p>What’s ironic about <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/search-results/search?&amp;q=geert%20wilders&amp;sort=docdatetime">Fox ignoring the Wilders’ story</a> is that the most important part of the attack on this Dutch politician doesn’t involve Islam at all, not really. If Fox editors and pundits honestly believe that Wilders is a fringe politician, spouting paranoid nonsense, fine. They’re wrong, but their opinion of Wilders and his ideas are irrelevant. What’s at stake here is a principle that is vital to western civilization: the basic right of free peoples to formulate and express their ideas, even when one finds those ideas abhorrent.</p>
<p>In addition to ignoring the fact that free speech is on trial in the Netherlands, some Fox commentators have recently attacked Wilders and his ideas, the implication being that even if a viewer is astute enough to realize that this Dutch politician is on trial for what he has said, Wilders is merely a nut job who’s not worth worrying about anyway. On <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/03/11/another-look-at-foxnews-hatchet-job-on-geert-wilders/">March 9 Glenn Beck</a> characterized Wilders as a “far right” politician, then when on to ominously observe that “the left – in Europe – is communism; the right is fascism – <em>in Europe.</em>” A first grader could connect those particular dots, as Beck intended. This is the same Glenn Beck who, a year ago, welcomed Wilders on his show and was downright sympathetic to the attacks on Wilders’ right to free speech that the leader of the Dutch Freedom Party had endured. Wilders experience, Beck declared, was a warning to America: “If you want to see what our future looks like, all you need to is look to Europe.”</p>
<p>Beck has apparently forgotten what he said, or has decided that free speech isn’t really that important a principle after all. Ironically, Wilders is hardly “far right” in his political views. Rather, his politics defy any sort of easy categorization. What Wilders understands is that an Islamic state has no use for the kind of healthy debate that makes democracy work. When Sharia Law is implemented, it’s the Quran’s way or the highway. Wilders’ political goal is to put measures in place that will ensure that the Netherlands remains a free, democratic nation. Wilders’ legal fight is about the freedom to work toward that goal.</p>
<p>Wilders criticizes Islam, not Muslims, because he believes that Islam is ultimately employed as a totalitarian system of governance, whatever it’s attributes or flaws as a religion. Otherwise sensible conservatives, like Charles Krauthammer, <a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTA0YWU2NjQzZTM3YjRmNDA4ZDk2NWNjNzQyYjlmYTY=">dismissed Wilders’ concerns out of hand</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>“What he (Wilders) says is extreme, radical, and wrong. He basically is arguing that Islam is the same as Islamism. Islamism is an ideology of a small minority which holds that the essence of Islam is jihad, conquest, forcing people into accepting a certain very narrow interpretation [of Islam]. The untruth of that is obvious. If you look at the United  States, the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the U.S. are not Islamists. So, it&#8217;s <a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTA0YWU2NjQzZTM3YjRmNDA4ZDk2NWNjNzQyYjlmYTY=" target="_blank">simply</a> incorrect. Now, in Europe, there is probably a slightly larger minority but, nonetheless, the overwhelming majority are not.”</p></blockquote>
<p>But what Wilders is saying and what pundits like Krauthammer <em>think</em> Wilders is saying are two different things. Of course most Muslims living in the United States are not Islamists. Of course the majority of the Muslims living in Europe are not Islamists. It’s safe to wager that the majority of Muslims living in Iran are not Islamists either. That’s not the point. Wilders, and any rational thinker, can’t help but observe that Muslim nations are overwhelmingly ruled by governments that are, in effect if not in name, theocracies. Sometimes those theocracies are dangerous, hostile tyrannies, as in the case of Iran, and sometimes they are indifferent, if occasionally useful, friends of the west like Saudi Arabia. At either end of the spectrum, no Muslim-ruled nation respects western traditions and values like freedom of speech, the equality of peoples and the right of dissent. Wilders hasn’t been trying to demonize individual Muslims, he’s been trying to keep the Netherlands from turning into an Islamic state. One may disagree with his methods, but to say that he doesn’t have the right to employ those methods because the theocratic system he opposes is so violently hyper-sensitive is patently ridiculous and downright cowardly.</p>
<p>So, why is Fox following its brethren in the media by ignoring the Wilders trial, a story that is full of so many themes that might otherwise attract Fox’s attention? Could it have anything to with Saudi Arabian prince Prince Alwaleed bin Talal&#8217;s <a href="http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/1261/Should-Fox-News-Register-as-a-Saudi-Agent.aspx">stake in News Corp</a>.? Might Murdoch’s increasingly <a href="http://www.wtop.com/?nid=111&amp;sid=1895261">cozy relationship</a> with Arabic media giant Rotana Group have something to do with it? Murdoch’s maverick news organization appears to playing a subtle, yet dangerous game.</p>
<p>Unlike its fellow networks, Fox is ready and willing to denounce radical jihadists who threaten not only the west, but who – if left unchecked – will upset delicate power structures in Muslim theocracies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that lean toward the west. But, for Fox, calling out the religious system of governance that empowers and enriches the princes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE seems to be out of bounds. Free speech, it would appear, has it limits – even at Fox News.</p>
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		<title>The Professor’s Islamist Call to Battle</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/cinnamon-stillwell/the-professor%e2%80%99s-islamist-call-to-battle/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-professor%25e2%2580%2599s-islamist-call-to-battle</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Mar 2010 04:06:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cinnamon Stillwell]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why University of Michigan’s Abdal Hakim Jackson wants the end of liberty in the United States.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/D_Jackson.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55350" title="D_Jackson" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/D_Jackson.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="413" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.manrilla.net/shermanjackson/">Sherman Jackson</a>, also known as Abdal Hakim Jackson, is <a href="http://www.umich.edu/%7Eneareast/faculty/jackson.htm">a professor</a> of Arabic and Islamic studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan.</p>
<p>Jackson specializes in Islamic law and has written and spoken extensively on the subject. Soon after the</p>
<p>September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorist attacks, Jackson took the line popular among apologists, stating at a September 2001 University of Michigan <a href="http://www.michigandaily.com/content/teach-takes-muslim-profiling">Teach-in</a> titled, “Terrorism: A Perversion of Islam,” that “the killing of innocent peoples is forbidden by the law of Islam and it has been from the beginning of Islam.”</p>
<p>But it turns out that not only is Jackson an apologist, he an outspoken proponent of the Islamist subversion of Western civilization.</p>
<p>Jackson made this abundantly clear at the <a href="http://www.convention.revivingtheislamicspirit.com/">Reviving the Islamic Spirit – 8th Convention</a> in Toronto, Canada in December 2009, as a participant in the panel, “The New We: Muslims in Future of Western Society.” Jonathan Usher, who attended and <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/9101">wrote about the conference for Campus Watch</a>, described Jackson’s speech as nothing less than “a call to battle.” As he put it, “It had little to do with peaceful co-existence with the West, but was an exhortation for Islam to dominate the West.” According to Usher, Jackson</p>
<blockquote><p>…believes that the Muslim and Western worlds are in conflict and competition, and that only one can end up dominant. Put simply, he wants to replace Western culture with Muslim culture.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>&#8230;Jackson expressed a desire to be included in American society—but not if any sort of cultural sacrifice were required. He said that adapting to Western culture would lead to being a Muslim in name only and advocated defining America by Muslim standards and imposing cultural and intellectual supremacy. He urged Muslims not to follow Western cultural authority, but rather to achieve their own cultural authority from the inside, as part of the system.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>…Lastly, to cheers, he said that his primary commitment was to Allah, not to America.</p></blockquote>
<p>Moreover, Jackson has a history of making such radical statements.</p>
<p>He co-authored a 2000 online book titled, <em><a href="http://www.ispi-usa.org/policy/policy.html">American Public Policy and American-Muslim Politics</a></em> and published by the Chicago-based <a href="http://www.ispi-usa.org/index.html">International Strategy and Policy Institute</a>, whose mission is to “promote the correct understanding of Islam and Muslims in the United   States.” Jackson’s coauthors were DePaul University Director of Islamic World Studies <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=8627">Aminah Beverly McCloud</a> and State University of New York at Binghamton professor and director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies Ali Mazrui. McCloud  is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/arts/an-islamic-scholar-with-the-dual-role-of-activist.html">a former board member</a> of the Chicago branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/arts/an-islamic-scholar-with-the-dual-role-of-activist.html?pagewanted=2">a follower</a> of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, while Mazrui’s <a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/ali-mazrui">bio</a> notes that he is “one of the first to try and link the treatment of Palestinians with South Africa’s apartheid” and has also “argued that sharia law is not incompatible with democracy and supported its introduction in some parts of northern Nigeria.”</p>
<p>In the chapter, “<a href="http://www.ispi-usa.org/policy/policy4.html">Muslims, Islamic Law and Public Policy in the United States</a>,” Jackson cites the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci’s influential theories about altering societies not through politics, but through cultural and educational institutions. Jackson proposes that American Muslims approach the “difficult task of penetrating, appropriating and redirecting American culture” in order to “influence the legal order in America.” As he puts it:</p>
<blockquote><p>…it should be understood that once this is done, there are no Constitutional impediments to having these laws applied in the public domain. Muslims must be vocal and confident in articulating the public utility underlying the rules on things like <em>riba </em>[usury], adultery, theft, drinking, contracts, pre-marital sex, child-custody and even polygyny. This should all be done, however, in the context of an open acceptance of American custom (<em>urf</em>) as a legally valid source in areas where the shari’ah admits the reliance upon custom.</p></blockquote>
<p>As for the gradual acceptance of the more horrifying aspects of Sharia law, Jackson notes that “it would be foolish to deny that the prospects for American acceptance of such institutions as stoning, or flogging or amputation are virtually nil, at least for the foreseeable future.” But he concludes on a note only an Islamist could find comforting:</p>
<blockquote><p>…notions of what is cruel and unusual, of what is barbaric, of what is draconian (which is the real basis upon which America rejects these punishments) are a function of culture, not law. It is only through changes in American culture that American attitudes towards such things are likely to change. Thus, in the end, as in the beginning, we are brought face to face with the inextricable connection between American culture and Muslim self-determination. May God grant us the courage and the vision to rise to the task before us.</p></blockquote>
<p>This call to gradually replace the liberties enshrined in the U.S. Constitution with seventh century notions of justice is both frightening and morally repugnant.</p>
<p>Despite a record of expressing such extreme views, Jackson has made a name for himself as a moderate and a reformer. His success in this charade stems in part from his willingness to break from his peers and  publicly discuss Islamic terrorism, its theological underpinnings, and the need for related reform. An <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4426">article</a> in the <em>Wesleyan Argus</em> quoted a November 2007 Jackson speech on “Jihad, Terrorism, and Modern Violence” at Wesleyan University:</p>
<blockquote><p>‘Muslims in the West must be active and vocal in their condemnation of current violations of <em>hirabah</em>,’ he insisted, referring to the Sharia law that outlaws any act of publicly directed violence that spreads fear and helplessness. According to Jackson, <em>hirabah</em> more than covers today’s conception of terrorism. He discussed the moderate Muslim unwillingness to publicly decry acts of terrorism and attributed it to the desire to not be seen as ‘Uncle Toms.’</p></blockquote>
<p>But Patrick Poole, <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/09/whats_in_a_name_jihad_vs_hirab.html">writing for the <em>American Thinker</em></a> in September 2007, calls Jackson’s reasoning and motives into question. He describes Jackson as one of the <a href="http://users.tpg.com.au/dezhen/jackson_terrorism.html">earliest proponents</a> of the “Islamic lexicon” and, in particular, an advocate for replacing the term <em>jihad</em> with <em>hirabah</em> in discussing Islamic terrorism. Poole and other skeptics allege that, in practice, this is nothing more than a semantic sleight of hand that serves to obscure the legitimization of terrorism within Islam and to further the Muslim Brotherhood’s <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/columnists/rdreher/stories/DN-dreher_09edi.ART.State.Edition1.4235f88.html">civilization-jihadist process</a>.</p>
<p>Poole notes that Jim Guirard of the Truespeak Institute is the “foremost advocate for this approach,” and that Sherman Jackson is among the scholars he relies upon for his findings. Poole points to an unclassified memo from Pentagon Joint Staff analyst Stephen Coughlin in which Jackson is cited as one of Guirard’s contributors, along with fellow Middle  East studies professors <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2007/07/georgetowns-john-esposito-a.html">John Esposito</a> of Georgetown University and <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4788">Muqtedar Khan</a> of the University of Delaware. Summarizing Coughlin’s findings, Poole concludes that,</p>
<blockquote><p>…as Walid Phares and Stephen Coughlin have already revealed, many of the Western Muslim advocates of this new approach are directly tied to known Muslim Brotherhood front groups operating in the US. As Coughlin itemizes, Sherman Jackson is a “trustee” to the North American Islamic Trust, and affiliated with the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim Student Association, the first two of which were named as unindicted co-conspirators in the current Holy Land Foundation terror financing federal trial underway in Dallas, and the last was the original organizational wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. The hiraba-jihad terminology has also been endorsed by the Wahhabist Council for Islamic Education and the extremist mouthpiece Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), also named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial. That is telling in and of itself.</p></blockquote>
<p>Jackson is also considered an expert on the intersection of Islam and African-Americans (he is himself an African-American convert to Islam). His 2005 book on the subject, <em>Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Towards the Third Resurrection</em>, was <a href="http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ReligionTheology/Islam/%7E%7E/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5NTE4MDgxNw==">reviewed favorably</a> by <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2007/10/john-esposito-shills-for-another">radical Islam apologist</a> John Esposito, James H. Cone (the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Black-Theology-Liberation-Ethics-Society/dp/0883446855/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1239212793&amp;sr=1-2">originator</a> of black liberation theology and stated <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/knowing_obama_by_the_company_h_1.html">inspiration</a> for controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright, President Obama’s former “spiritual mentor” in Chicago), and DePaul professor <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2007/10/depaul-prof-aminah-beverly-mccloud">Aminah Beverly McCloud</a>. Beyond McCloud’s aforementioned affiliation with CAIR and the Nation of Islam, she played a <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2007/04/depaul-university-director-of.html">pivotal role</a> in influencing Washington, D.C. PBS station WETA’s decision to cancel its airing of the laudable documentary on moderate Muslims, <em>Islam vs. Islamists,</em> in early 2007.</p>
<p>Jackson’s career may be peppered with associations and endorsements from some of the worst apologists and radicals from the field of Middle East studies—and his involvement in the obfuscating “truespeak” movement points to even more troublesome ties with Muslim Brotherhood front groups—but, ultimately, it is his own words that prove the most damning. His stated agenda clearly has nothing to do with moderation or reform; it is quite simply that of an Islamist.</p>
<p><em>Cinnamon Stillwell is the West Coast Representative for <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/">Campus Watch</a>, a project of the <a href="http://www.meforum.org/">Middle East Forum</a>. She can be reached at <a href="mailto:stillwell@meforum.org">stillwell@meforum.org</a>.</em></p>
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		<title>Wilders’ Best Witness</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/john-c-zimmerman/wilders%e2%80%99-best-witness/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=wilders%25e2%2580%2599-best-witness</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/john-c-zimmerman/wilders%e2%80%99-best-witness/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:04:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[John C. Zimmerman]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=52530</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why Islamist scholar Muhammad Taqi Usmani may be the key to Geert Wilders’ defense against charges of anti-Muslim discrimination. 
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/mufti-taqi.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-52531" title="mufti-taqi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/mufti-taqi-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p>As the trial of Geert Wilders for insulting Islam moves forward in the Netherlands, the one witness that could clear him of these charges will not be called.</p>
<p>Muhammad Taqi Usmani is a highly respected and well-known expert on Islamic law who served for 20 years as a Sharia judge on Pakistan’s Supreme Court. He is quite possibly the world&#8217;s most influential Islamist thinker and writer outside of the Middle East. Usmani is a frequent visitor to Britain, where his monograph<em> Islam and Modernism </em>caused a great deal of controversy.</p>
<p>Why is Usmani so important for the purposes of Wilders&#8217; trial? Simply put, Usmani&#8217;s interpretation of Islamic doctrine as it concerns  non-believers is the same as Wilders&#8217;. Indeed, the critical lesson to be gleaned from Usmani’s work bolsters the very argument that Wilders is on trial for making – namely, that the doctrine of jihad, as expounded in Islamic texts, inherently poses a threat to Western civilization. In fact, Osama Bin Laden made the exact same point in a lengthy essay entitled &#8220;Moderate Islam is a Prostration to the West&#8221; (reproduced in Raymond Ibrahinm&#8217;s <em>The al Qaeda Reader</em>).</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t know if Wilders is familiar with <em>Islam and Modernism. </em>However, the reader of this work will be struck by the similarities between it and <em>Fitna</em>, the short film that has played a significant role in landing Wilders in court. The critical difference between the two is that no one – especially no Muslim thinker, writer or the Organization of Islamic Countries – has ever accused Usmani of hate speech or of insulting Islam. And yet, consistency of treatment would mandate that if Wilders must go to trial, so should Usmani. At the very least, Usmani should be publicly condemned and ridiculed by prominent Muslim thinkers in Muslim countries.</p>
<p>Consider the nature of his work. <em>Islam and Modernism</em> is broadside attack against modernist Muslim thinking and Western civilization. Usmani is critical of modern practices such as charging interest, women and men working together, birth control, and science that it is not used to further religious thinking. Even America&#8217;s moon landing in 1969 is described as an &#8220;international crime.&#8221;</p>
<p>However, it is his chapter on offensive <em>jihad</em>, which he calls aggressive <em>jihad</em>, that is most significant for purposes of Wilders&#8217; trial. Offensive jihad is the Islamic doctrine that requires Muslims to subjugate unbelievers to Islamic rule by imposing a number of restrictions, including paying a special tax known as the <em>jizya</em>. Usmani categorically rejects the idea, stated by some modern Muslim thinkers, that offensive <em>jihad</em> can be abandoned if Muslims are freely allowed to proselytize among non-Muslims (though non-Muslims can never freely proselytize in Muslim countries). He states that “in my humble knowledge there has not been a single incident in the entire history of Islam where Muslims had shown their willingness to stop jihad just for one condition that they be allowed to preach Islam freely.” He cites the Quran to the effect that “killing is to continue until the unbelievers pay <em>jizyah </em>after they are humbled and overpowered.”</p>
<p>The <em>jizya </em>is important in Usmani&#8217;s eyes because it is the necessary precondition for non- Muslims to convert to Islam. He asks:</p>
<blockquote><p>“How can the efforts of Muslim missionaries be effective in an atmosphere where anti-Islamic doctrines [are] being spread on the strength of political power with full vigor, and their propagation carried out with means not possessed by Muslims?&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Essentially, Usmani is arguing that Islam cannot compete on an equal footing with non-Islamic doctrines and that it is the subjugation of the non-believers to Islamic rule that is needed before they will convert. Hence, Islamic rule must precede conversion efforts. He approvingly cites the view that “[b]y  commanding jihad Allah does not mean that the unbelievers be killed outright, but the aim is that the religion of Allah should dominate the world…”</p>
<p>Usmani is a &#8220;moderate&#8221; in that he does not favor waging offensive jihad until Muslims are strong enough. Thus, peace agreements “along with all efforts to accumulate the sources of power [by the Muslims] are indeed lawful…If Muslims do not possess the capability of ‘Jehad with power’ agreement may be made till the power is attained.” However, once that strength is attained, offensive jihad must be launched. Though he does not mention it, Usmani appears to be basing this tactic on Muhammad&#8217;s temporary treaty with the Quraysh tribe known as &#8220;The Treaty of Hudabiyyah&#8221;. He made this treaty at a time when Muslims were too weak to fight the Quraysh.</p>
<p>Whether one agrees or disagrees with Wilders&#8217; and Usmani&#8217;s interpretation of Islam is beside the point. The real question is: How can Wilders be prosecuted for agreeing with the interpretation of a world-renowned Islamic thinker and scholar – a scholar who has never been accused of hate speech or insulting Islam? At the very least, <em>Islam and Modernism </em>should be submitted as a defense exhibit at Wilders&#8217; trial.</p>
<p><em>John C. Zimmerman is author of </em><em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Denial-Demographics-Testimonies-Ideologies/dp/0761818227">Holocaust Denial: Demographics, Testimonies and Ideologies</a>, </em><em>and has also published on jihad and Islamism.<br />
</em></p>
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		<title>The Crooked Judges of Amsterdam</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/frontpagemag-com/the-crooked-judges-of-amsterdam/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-crooked-judges-of-amsterdam</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/frontpagemag-com/the-crooked-judges-of-amsterdam/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Feb 2010 05:14:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=49422</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Dutch authorities are making sure Geert Wilders won't get a fair defense. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/wilders.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-49426" title="wilders" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/wilders-300x189.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="189" /></a></p>
<p>Geert Wilders&#8217;s &#8220;hate speech&#8221; trial in the Netherlands began just a few weeks ago, but the outcome already seems determined. As Robert Spencer discusses in <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/?p=49295&amp;preview=true">our lead story today</a>, the Amsterdam District Court has refused to allow Wilders to call fifteen of the eighteen witnesses he had hoped to bring forward in his defense. It is also highly unlikely that the three remaining witnesses will be able to defend Wilders in the manner he desired, because the court has decided that the three witnesses will only be heard behind closed doors. With Wilders denied the opportunity to mount a forceful defense against charges that he has incited discrimination against Muslims, the Dutch court’s proceedings increasingly resemble the kind of justice-mocking show trials one has come to expect from third-world dictatorships. Political and social commentator Pat Condell has produced a powerful video in which he comments on these dire circumstances surrounding the Wilders trial and their implications for free speech – and Western civilization as we know it.</p>
<p><strong>To watch the video, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96ZUZ9CPZII&amp;feature=player_embedded ">click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Religious “Truth” Commission to Examine U.S. War “Atrocities”</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/religious-%e2%80%9ctruth%e2%80%9d-commission-to-examine-u-s-war-%e2%80%9catrocities%e2%80%9d/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=religious-%25e2%2580%259ctruth%25e2%2580%259d-commission-to-examine-u-s-war-%25e2%2580%259catrocities%25e2%2580%259d</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:02:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=48704</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Far-left Christian activists host committee to slander the military.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/antiwar_effigy_burning.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-48796" title="antiwar_effigy_burning" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/antiwar_effigy_burning.jpg" alt="" width="374" height="250" /></a></p>
<p>In a 40 year flashback to the glories of 1960’s anti-war outrage, infamously left-wing Riverside Church in New York City is hosting a “Truth Commission on Conscience in War” next month.   This special hearing, in the spirit of “truth commissions,” will evidently “explore and investigate systemic injustices, political violence, and mass atrocities” by the U.S., presumably in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  It will “receive testimony, process their findings, and recommend strategies for change, healing, and reconciliation,” while lifting “up the silenced and invisible voices of victims, offering survivors a public forum to testify to their experiences.”</p>
<p>The “commissioners” of this “truth commission” includes a who’s who of far-left religious activism.  The testifiers are mostly a small circle of embittered veterans and conspiracy theorists, including former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who’s still pondering possible U.S. involvement in contriving 9-11.</p>
<p>So the March 21-22 spectacle at dramatically gothic Riverside Church on New York’s upper West Side will be an absurd theater of macabre conspiracy speculations, sanctimonious guilt trips about supposed U.S. crimes, and indignant condemnations of everyone not on the far-left who has failed to advocate full surrender to jihadist Islam.  In short, it might be wonderful entertainment, if not treated too seriously.  The ghost of the late William Sloane Coffin, former Riverside pastor, may even haunt the commission’s somber hearing, ghoulishly chanting old protest slogans from the Vietnam War era.</p>
<p>Among the testifiers will be Iraq War Veteran Logan Latuiri, who evidently left the military when he was not permitted to redeploy to Iraq without a gun. Recently active with Christian Peacemaking Teams [in Israel and “Palestine”] and his own anti-war group, Centurion’s Guild, Latuiri announced on Jim Wallis’ Sojourners blog that he is ”overjoyed” to join in the Riverside Church “truth commission” extravaganza.   The former soldier pronounced himself a “strict pacifist”  and opined hopefully that the Riverside hearing will “build bridges” between pacifism and Just War believers.</p>
<p>Given the locale and organizers, the “truth commission” is far likelier to become a Stalinist-style denunciation of and trial without jury of America’s supposed crimes against humanity. The project director oddly is radical feminist theologian Rita Nakashima Brock, who is more experienced in challenging the patriarchy and heterosexism than in exposing American militarism.   Other commissioners include Princeton University’s George Hunsinger of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture [by the U.S.], former Riverside Church pastor James Forbes, former Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) President Richard Hamm, left-wing Rabbi Arthur Waskow of The Shalom Center, United Methodism’s Drew University Theological School President Maxine Beach, and New York’s Union Seminary President Serene Jones.</p>
<p>Sponsors of the hearing include the Catholic Peace Fellowship, Yale Divinity School, Iraq Veterans Against the War, the United Church of Christ’s Justice &amp; Witness Ministries, the Mennonite Central Committee, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship and the World Christian Student Federation, among many others.   The nearly same caste could easily have been assembled 25 years ago for a church rally in Manhattan for Sandinista chief Daniel Ortega.  Perhaps the causes change slightly with time, but the groups remain largely the same, seamlessly moving from one bash America cause to the next.</p>
<p>Defending the Riverside Church hearing over which she will preside, Rita Nakashima Brock recently denounced President Obama’s surge in Afghanistan as the “strongest evidence of his failure both as Commander-in-Chief and as a peacemaker.”  After all, Afghanistan is just “another quagmire like Vietnam,” an equally “endless, poorly planned, losing war begun by one president and continued by his successors.”  But Religious Left activists like Brock, who portray all of Western Civilization as a dark and patriarchal, oppressive manacle on suffering humanity, cannot imagine any war in defense of America with moral merit.</p>
<p>Supposedly the Riverside hearing, as Brock described it in an op-ed, will thoughtfully articulate how individual military personnel should, as a religious freedom, have the “right to object to a particular war.”  After all, they “ undertake tremendous risks and hardship to protect the nation,” should not have to “sacrifice their consciences to serve,” and instead should be able to “continue serving, in good conscience, the country they love.”  Those careful words sound nice.    But in actuality, Brock and most of the others would like an emasculated military full of Christian Peacemaking Team activists, never willing to carry arms, but more than willing to perform as pacifist neutralists who obstruct all “violence.”</p>
<p>In his Sojourners blog, <a title="Posts by Logan Laituri" rel="nofollow" href="http://blog.sojo.net/author/logan_laituri/" target="_blank">Logan Laituri</a> gave a foretaste about the “truth commission’s” bent by bemoaning how in “our representative form of government, it is hard to escape even a fraction of complicity for the damage we are causing across the world.”  Indeed, he knows that the “military as it exists today is a system that makes it difficult to do good and <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/opinion/04sun1.html" target="_blank">very easy to do evil</a>.”  Evidently, the guilt-laden spectacle next month at Riverside Church will help to ease his conscience about serving in Iraq.  Even more importantly, it will help Religious left activists like Rita Brock smugly feign moral superiority not only over military personnel but most Americans, including most Christians, who are not intrinsically ashamed of their country.</p>
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		<title>Delegitimizing “Exclusivist” Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/delegitimizing-%e2%80%9cexclusivist%e2%80%9d-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=delegitimizing-%25e2%2580%259cexclusivist%25e2%2580%259d-israel</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Feb 2010 05:02:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=48330</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann turns on Israel.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-48342" title="BrueggemannW300" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/BrueggemannW300.jpg" alt="BrueggemannW300" width="450" height="518" /></p>
<p>Well-known Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann is identifying Jewish “exceptionalism” as the “root problem” of Middle-East strife in a new book by anti-Israel activist Mark Braverman.</p>
<p>“The claim for exceptionalism – held commonly by Israel&#8217;s most one-dimensional advocates and by Israel’s most urbane Jewish critics – makes serious, realistic political thinking impossible and gives warrant for brutalizing policies carried out by the Israeli government that are destructive, self-destructive, and finally irresponsible,” Brueggemann explains in his forward to <em>Fatal Embrace: Christians, Jews and  the Search for Peace in the Holy Land.</em></p>
<p>Brueggemann, ordained in the far-left controlled United Church of Christ and professor emeritus at Presbyterian Church (USA) affiliated Columbia Theological Seminary – is oddly and widely admired by left-leaning evangelicals for his statist and pacifist social justice themes.  Braverman is a clinical psychologist of Jewish background who was radicalized against Israel after a 2006 trip to the West Bank alerted him to the crimes of the “occupation.”  An officer with the  <a rel="nofollow" href="http://icahdusa.org/" target="_blank">“sraeli Committee Against House Demolitions-USA</a>” and “Friends of Sabeel North America,” Braverman has joined with the old Religious Left to organize against pro-Israel U.S. policies.</p>
<p>It’s Brueggemann’s forward that is the most notable part of Braverman’s anti-Israel polemic.   A prolific author and speaker featured on a Bill Moyers PBS series in the 1990’s, Brueggemann remains even in his late 70’s as one of America’s most influential left-leaning theologians.  As he observes in his <em>Fatal Embrace</em> forward, he originally affirmed Jewish self-identity with historic Israel in his 1977 book, <em>The Land:  Place as Gifts, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith</em>.   But he recanted upon republication in 2002, deriding Israel for having “merged old traditions of land entitlement” with the “most vigorous military capacity” into an “intolerable commitment to violence that is justified by reason of state.”</p>
<p>Brueggemann admits in <em>Fatal Embrace</em> that his awareness of Israel’s exploitation of “ancient promises” into “toxic ideology” has been “slow in coming,” but he more than atones for his supposed sins by fully endorsing the Israel-as-main-culprit themes of Braverman and the wider Religious Left.    He hails Braverman for exposing Israel’s “elemental conviction about being God’s one chosen people” as the “root cause of the conflict,” which has resulted in so much “antihuman brutality” and has denied “dignity and human rights to Palestinians.</p>
<p>Significantly, but certainly not surprisingly, Brueggemann’s somewhat newly born hostility to Israel joins his long-time hostility to the United States and to the West in general.  As he warned in his 2002 book, “the same ideology of entitlement [from Israel] has served derivatively the Western powers that are grounded in that same ideological claim and that have used that claim as a rationale for colonization [and]…an intolerable commitment to violence.”  In his 2010 <em>Fatal Embrace</em> forward, Brueggemann asserts that his critique of Israel’s “exceptionalism” may apply to “religious-ideological support for American expansionist imperialism.”  He wonders if any idea of “chosen people,” whether of Israel or the church or the United States, inevitably results in “absolutism” and the “seeds of violence.”</p>
<p>Theologians of the left do not usually like orthodox Judaism or Christianity, so they often assail their exclusivist claims, deny the plain meanings of their Scriptures, and attempt to reinterpret religion into merely a platform for materialistic state-imposed egalitarianism.  That Judiasm and Christianity have produced Western Civilization, with its fruits of transcendent authority, intrinsic human rights, and limited government, make them all the more reprehensible to the Religious Left.  For this reason, among others, defaming the “chosen” role of the Jews in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures is often central to the Religious Left’s attack on the West’s understanding of freedom.</p>
<p>In his <em>Fatal Embrace</em> forward, Brueggemann laments that neither a “two-state” or “one state” solution for Middle East peace will become viable until “Jewish exceptionalism yields” to Palestinian claims to the land that “stand alongside those of Jews, in equal passion and legitimacy.”  Almost amusingly, he likens Braverman’s book to the work of the Bible’s long-suffering Job, who supposedly similarly challenged a “closed ideology that knows all of the answers ahead of time, that assumes high moral ground, and that permits ideology to screen out human data.”</p>
<p>Presumably patient Job would be surprised to learn that he is Brueggemann’s icon for delegitimizing Israel, with its “unbridled military policy,” supported by “radical and violent spokespersons for Zionism.”  Seeking to deflect critique of himself and Braverman, Brueggemann preemptively warns that “strong advocates of Israeli militarism and territorial entitlement” are quick to resort to accusations of anti-Semitism.  Apparently it’s unreasonable to fear that exclusively faulting Jewish Israel and its 3,000 year old self-understanding for nearly all Middle East strife is veering in the direction of anti-Semitism.</p>
<p>Besides featuring Bruggemann’s introduction and devoting a whole chapter to the Old Testament scholar’s insights, Braverman acclaims and cites as sources the usual cavalcade of anti-Israel Religious Left voices:  Jim Wallis, the World Council of Churches, Presbyterian (USA), Evangelical Lutheran and United Methodist officials, Churches for Middle East Peace, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Sabeel, radical Catholic eco-feminist Rosemary Radford Ruether, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter and even quaky 9-11 conspiracy theorist Ray McGovern.</p>
<p><em>Fatal Embrace </em>preaches its dogmatically anti-Israel message only to the hard-core converted and will add nothing to Braverman’s or Brueggeman’s reputations.  As a once distinguished theologian admired outside Religious Left circles, Brueggeman’s reputation has the most to lose.</p>
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		<title>Code Pink’s Support for the Enemy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/ryan-mauro/code-pink%e2%80%99s-support-of-the-enemy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=code-pink%25e2%2580%2599s-support-of-the-enemy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/ryan-mauro/code-pink%e2%80%99s-support-of-the-enemy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:04:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=46595</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There’s no tyrant the female “peace” group won’t coddle.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-46596" title="ADDITION Rice US Middle East" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/code-pink.jpg" alt="ADDITION Rice US Middle East" width="450" height="323" /></p>
<p>Code Pink members became known during the Bush Administration as confrontational anti-war protestors, but the group is actually worse than that. Code Pink’s leadership has aligned with almost every tyrannical force opposing the U.S., from Chavez to Ahmadinejad to Hamas to Iraq insurgents. Code Pink is acting more like the ambassador for enemies of the free world than an advocate for peace.</p>
<p>Kristinn Taylor and Andrea Shea King over at <a href="http://biggovernment.com/" target="_blank">BigGovernment.com</a> are doing an excellent job chronicling the outrageous activities of Code Pink and its leadership over the years. Most recently, Code Pink has organized a <a href="http://www.gazafreedommarch.org/" target="_blank">“Gaza Freedom March”</a> to call for an end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip, currently controlled by Hamas. The organization boasts that they have provided humanitarian aid to the territory, and has done so under the <a href="http://www.thereminder.com/localnews/greaterspringfield/massachusettswomen/" target="_blank">protection</a> of Hamas. The terrorist group often diverts such aid for its own purposes, and it should be suspected that this is no different. Hamas also builds support by providing social services, so if such aid didn’t directly go to supporting the group’s violent operations, it certainly did go to support its recruiting efforts.</p>
<p>Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic organization whose goal is to wage “a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” In other words, it wants to create a worldwide Islamic state. Code Pink has also teamed up with this extremist organization, placing ads on its website <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/01/11/code-pink-to-muslims-help-us-cleanse-our-country/" target="_blank">asking</a> them to “join us in cleansing our country.”</p>
<p>Code Pink has been embraced by the Iranian government as well. <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1628" target="_blank">Jodie Evans</a>, one of the group’s leaders, <a href="http://forpeace.net/news/2008/09/24/convenes-meeting-peace-activists-and-president-ahmadinejad" target="_blank">met</a> with Ahmadinejad in New York in September 2008, resulting in a trip to the country two months later. The group met with high-level government officials, and <a href="http://codepink4peace.org/blog/2008/09/official-release-leading-codepink-activists-and-other-peace-organizations-meet-with-iranian-president-in-new-york/" target="_blank">offered</a> to help fund a “peace park” and environmentally-friendly businesses in Tehran. Co-founder of Code Pink Medea Benjamin praised the prices of public transportation in Iran and <a href="http://codepinkdc.blogspot.com/2008/11/medeas-blog-day-1-iran-citizen.html" target="_blank">said</a> she was “struck by how much more open Iran is than I had thought.”</p>
<p>To their credit, Code Pink did <a href="http://www.opposingviews.com/articles/opinion-code-pink-supports-peaceful-protests-in-iran" target="_blank">express sympathy</a> for the protestors confronting the regime this summer, but called on the U.S. to lift sanctions and end threatening language and supported President Obama’s initial silence. In other words, Code Pink said they supported the Iranian people, but did not want do anything to support the Iranian people.</p>
<p>In January 2006, Evans and other colleagues including Cindy Sheehan met with Venezuela’s President Chavez. Benjamin had previously <a href="http://www.codepinkalert.org/article.php?id=767" target="_blank">described</a> Chavez as a “doll,” and <a href="http://www.codepinkalert.org/article.php?id=117" target="_blank">said</a> “George Bush—and John Kerry for that matter—could learn a thing or two from Hugo Chavez about winning the hearts and minds of the people.”</p>
<p>Jodie Evans’ reaction to the 9/11 attacks shows a complete ignorance of the ideological element of the terrorists, instead linking the disaster to Middle Eastern anger over U.S. foreign policy. She agreed in an <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O758gyZqxlw" target="_blank">interview</a> that Bin Laden had a valid argument against the U.S., and said, “Why do we have bases in the Middle East? We totally violated the rights of that country,” referring to Saudi Arabia. Apparently, Evans is unaware that those bases were constructed with the permission of the Saudi government and are meant to protect the country from the very people she defends, like Saddam Hussein.</p>
<p>In 2003, Saddam hosted Evans and other Code Pink members in Iraq, aware that their anti-war activism had crossed the line into propaganda efforts on his behalf. As long as a regime redistributes wealth and is socialistic in how it governs, the country is praised by Code Pink, who seems to have little passion for promoting democracy, free markets or the human rights of oppressed citizens overseas. This type of thinking was apparent when she <a href="http://www.troopshomefast.org/article.php?id=1158" target="_blank">praised</a> Saddam Hussein’s social services, saying “there was a good education and health care system, food for everyone. That system didn’t belong to Saddam, it belonged to the Iraqis, it belonged to year of creating what a civilization needed. If your parents didn’t send you to school, they could be put in jail.”</p>
<p>After Saddam’s toppling, Evans supported the insurgents fighting American soldiers, ignoring the fact that many of these were foreign jihadists affiliated with Al-Qaeda-type groups, and were former members of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards, Fedayeen militia, and intelligence service. To Code Pink, these forces of oppression and evil were the representatives of the Iraqi people fighting for liberation. They are completely unaware that the insurgents fight not only against American forces, but target Iraqi civilians and want to overthrow Iraq’s elected democratic government.</p>
<p>“We must begin by really standing with the Iraqi people and defending their right to resist. I can remain myself against all forms of violence, and yet I cannot judge what someone has to do when pushed to the wall to protect all they love. The Iraqi people are fighting for their country, to protect their families and to preserve all they love. They are fighting for their lives, and we are fighting for lies,” Evans <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/22308/?page=entire%22" target="_blank">wrote</a> on June 26, 2005.</p>
<p>When Coalition forces began an offensive into Fallujah when it was the primary safe harbor of the insurgents, Code Pink reacted by <a href="http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?id=261" target="_blank">delivering</a> tens of thousands of dollars in humanitarian aid to its residents. This act sounds noble on the surface, but when you consider the group’s sympathy for the insurgents, it is quite possible that this aid was given to the enemy side. Furthermore, Evans and her delegation <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=30624" target="_blank">met</a> with Iraqi politicians connected to the extremist Iranian-backed militia leader, Moqtada al-Sadr, and other supporters of killing American soldiers.</p>
<p>Evans has even, <a href="http://janefonda.com/armand-hammer-museum" target="_blank">according to her friend, Jane Fonda,</a> met with members of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Benjamin has tried to paint them as being motivated by lack of employment.</p>
<p>“Everybody we talked to said that most of the Taliban are poor rural people, $10-a-day Taliban, who are doing this for economic reasons. If you want to encourage people to stop fighting, encourage them to work,” Benjamin <a href="http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/code-pink-in-kabul/" target="_blank">said</a>.</p>
<p>According to an account posted on the Free Republic forum, a group of counter-protestors were confronted by Evans on August 30, 2004. During the exchange, Evans reportedly <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1204883/posts" target="_blank">said</a>, “We have nothing against communism.” This shouldn’t be surprising considering Medea Benjamin’s <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=21112" target="_blank">ties</a> to the Workers World Party and described her life in Cuba as feeling like she had “died and went to heaven.”</p>
<p>Today, Code Pink is <a href="http://www.womensaynotowar.org/article.php?list=type&amp;type=400" target="_blank">campaigning</a> against President Obama’s decision to send 30,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan and against the use of drones in Pakistan. Politics seems to pull more weight than principle though, as Code Pink is <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2009/1006/p06s10-wosc.html" target="_blank">against</a> an immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan for the exact same reasons as such a move would be wrong in Iraq. President Obama can pursue a similar type of policy that Code Pink lambasted under the previous administration, but they aren’t calling for <a href="http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?id=4722" target="_blank">citizens&#8217; arrests</a> of him and his officials like they are doing for members of the Bush Administration.</p>
<p>Code Pink’s embracing of anti-American actors is part of a calculated strategy. Medea <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030421/benjamin" target="_blank">wrote</a> in 2003 that members of the movement she belonged to needed to “link up with appropriate local and regional groups” overseas to “channel the bursting anti-American sentiment overseas.” Forces supporting America are left out as part of the equation.</p>
<p>Code Pink is not a group genuinely promoting peace and human rights. The organization links up and supports virtually any anti-American actor, ignoring their oppression of their citizens that can hardly qualify as “peace” and the threat that they pose. In choosing its friends, Code Pink’s leadership has decided that the sole standard is that they must be an enemy of the United States.</p>
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		<title>Burka Barbie</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/burka-barbie/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=burka-barbie</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/burka-barbie/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:10:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=46517</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Welcome to Islam’s self-esteem issues.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-46822" title="BARBIE_1543490c" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/BARBIE_1543490c.jpg" alt="BARBIE_1543490c" width="450" height="282" /></p>
<p>Any American who believes that radical Islam does not represent a clear and present danger to western civilization should be required to spend a month living under Sharia Law in a Muslim country. It would ultimately be a less expensive, and more lasting, means of energizing the nation than waiting for a terrorist to successfully complete the kind of mission of destruction that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab came so close to executing on Christmas day.</p>
<p>My first experience with Sharia Law occurred more than a decade ago, shortly after I had deplaned from the British Airways 777 that deposited me in Jiddah,  Saudi Arabia, in the course of a consulting project involving the Kingdom’s oil industry. Waiting to pass through customs, I observed a Saudi soldier swinging a machete, casually decapitating a score of Kewpie dolls that an unsuspecting westerner had tried to bring into the country. The torsos were returned to the traveler and the heads were dumped in the trash, all in accordance with Sharia Law. As a “how do you do?” there are better ways to make a first impression.</p>
<p>But Sharia Law prohibits any representation of the human form, and it is quite strict about depicting Allah’s other creations among the animal kingdom as well. Fish seem to be exempt from this prohibition, for reasons that I still do not completely understand. In any case, Islam also assumes that portraying mythical creatures, from golden idols to Kewpie people, might tempt gullible believers away from the true path. Thus it is entirely logical – under Sharia Law – to separate the head of a Kewpie doll from its shoulders with extreme prejudice.</p>
<p>That fact made the recent appearance of Burka Barbie all the more amusing to those westerners in the know. If Mattel were to ship a case of these dolls to a nation living under Sharia Law, Muslim girls would be allowed to play with them, or at least part of them, but only after Barbie’s cranium was separated from her shoulders.</p>
<p>Religious police prowl the streets of Saudi Arabia, as they do in most Muslim nations, looking for those who dare to resist the will of Allah, as that will was recorded by his prophet/stenographer Muhammad. The religious police in the Kingdom come in both the official and unofficial variety, the latter mostly composed of elderly male busybodies who revel in the opportunity to harass a western woman daring to wear a dress whose sleeves leave a portion of her forearms shamelessly exposed. These amateur versions of Bharney bin Fife are, not surprisingly, even more fanatic about their mission than their professional counterparts.</p>
<p>During one of my stints in Saudi Arabia, an American woman was arrested by the religious police while walking her dog, a Scotch Terrier. The Scotch Terrier is distinctive in its appearance, with a face that features a long chin beard. Long chin beards are also a requirement for Muslim males living under Sharia Law. Put these two facts together and the unavoidable Sharia legal conclusion is that the Terrier’s beard must go, lest it serve to mock the sacred traditions of Islam. Thus this unfortunate American woman was compelled to bring her pooch in for an appointment with one of Allah’s barbers.</p>
<p>It’s patently obvious that any religion concerned about the threats to it posed by dolls and dogs has some serious self-esteem issues. These sorts of amusing examples of Islamic insecurity, of which we have merely scratched the surface, get virtually no play in western media circles. Surely that would not be the case if – say – a Christian or Jewish sect found it necessary to take barber shears to Rover in order to preserve religious purity. But, as we have learned, diversity has its limits.</p>
<p>Critics of Islam focus on the more horrifying aspects of the religion, and justifiably so. Honor killings and suicide bombings are far more troubling issues than toy mutilation and offensive canine whiskers. Still, there is a lesson to be learned here. Even if one discounts the murderous, fanatic elements of Islam that apologists assure us merely represent a disenfranchised minority motivated by the need to defend themselves against western bullying (aka: “Bush’s fault”), that which remains – so called mainstream Islam – doesn’t provide much comfort.</p>
<p>At its questionable best, “mainstream Islam” has no room for western traditions and values. That fact has been made painfully clear to any American who has spent any significant amount of time living in the nations subject to rule of Islamic governments. Back in the days when I was commuting to Saudi   Arabia, I learned of the quiet joke that many Americans regularly repeated when their flight was on final approach to an airport in the kingdom. The joke privately replaced the usual before-landing announcement issued by the flight crew. It went something like this: “Ladies and gentlemen, we will be landing in Jiddah shortly. Please set your clocks back one thousand years.”</p>
<p>Recent events clearly demonstrate that this jest, with all of its ominous implications, still applies.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Understanding Islam: The Saudi Way</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/understanding-islam-the-saudi-way-by-rich-trzupek/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=understanding-islam-the-saudi-way-by-rich-trzupek</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/understanding-islam-the-saudi-way-by-rich-trzupek/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 14 Jan 2010 05:06:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=46046</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[To grasp the Islamic threat, see it in its element. 

]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-46047" title="3-veiled-women" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/3-veiled-women.jpg" alt="3-veiled-women" width="413" height="310" /></p>
<p>Any American who believes that radical Islam does not represent a clear and present danger to western civilization should be required to spend a month living under Sharia Law in a Muslim country. It would ultimately be a less expensive, and more lasting, means of energizing the nation than waiting for a terrorist to successfully complete the kind of mission of destruction that <a href="../2010/01/11/why-the-rich-muslim-boy-became-a-terrorist-by-jamie-glazov/">Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab</a> came so close to executing on Christmas day.</p>
<p>My first experience with Sharia Law occurred more than a decade ago, shortly after I had deplaned from the British Airways 777 that deposited me in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in the course of a consulting project involving the Kingdom’s oil industry. Waiting to pass through customs, I observed a Saudi soldier swinging a machete, casually decapitating a score of Kewpie dolls that an unsuspecting westerner had tried to bring into the country. The torsos were returned to the traveler and the heads were dumped in the trash, all in accordance with Sharia Law. As a “how do you do?” there are better ways to make a first impression.</p>
<p>But Sharia Law prohibits any representation of the human form, and it is quite strict about depicting Allah’s other creations among the animal kingdom, as well. Fish seem to be exempt from this prohibition, for reasons that I still do not completely understand. In any case, Islam also assumes that portraying mythical creatures, from golden idols to Kewpie people, might tempt gullible believers away from the true path. Thus it is entirely logical – under Sharia Law – to separate the head of a Kewpie doll from its shoulders with extreme prejudice.</p>
<p>That fact made the recent appearance of <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1229760/Its-Barbie-burka-World-famous-doll-gets-makeover-hammer-50th-anniversary.html">Burka Barbie</a> all the more amusing to those westerners in the know. If Mattel were to ship a case of these dolls to a nation living under Sharia Law, Muslim girls would be allowed to play with them, or at least part of them, but only after Barbie’s cranium was separated from her shoulders.</p>
<p>Religious police prowl the streets of Saudi   Arabia, as they do in most Muslim nations, looking for those who dare to resist the will of Allah, as that will was recorded by his prophet/stenographer Muhammad. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutaween">religious police</a> in the Kingdom come in both the official and unofficial variety, the latter mostly composed of elderly male busybodies who revel in the opportunity to harass a western woman daring to wear a dress whose sleeves leave a portion of her forearms shamelessly exposed. These amateur cops are even more fanatical about their mission than their professional counterparts.</p>
<p>During one of my stints in Saudi Arabia, an American woman was arrested by the religious police while walking her dog, a Scotch Terrier. The Scotch Terrier is distinctive in its appearance, with a face that features a long chin beard. Long chin beards are also a requirement for Muslim males living under Sharia Law. Put these two facts together and the unavoidable Sharia legal conclusion is that the Terrier’s beard must go, lest it serve to mock the sacred traditions of Islam. Thus this unfortunate American woman was compelled to bring her pooch in for an appointment with one of Allah’s barbers.</p>
<p>It’s patently obvious that any religion concerned about the threats to it posed by dolls and dogs has some serious self-esteem issues. These sorts of amusing examples of Islamic insecurity, of which we have merely scratched the surface, get virtually no play in western media circles. Surely that would not be the case if – say – a Christian or Jewish sect found it necessary to take barber shears to Rover in order to preserve religious purity. But, as we have learned, diversity has its limits.</p>
<p>Critics of Islam focus on the more horrifying aspects of the religion, and justifiably so. Honor killings and suicide bombings are far more troubling issues than toy mutilation and offensive canine whiskers. Still, there is a lesson to be learned here. Even if one discounts the murderous, fanatic elements of Islam that apologists assure us merely represent a disenfranchised minority motivated by the need to defend themselves against western bullying (aka: “Bush’s fault”), that which remains – so called mainstream Islam – doesn’t provide much comfort.</p>
<p>At its questionable best, “mainstream Islam” has no room for western traditions and values. That fact has been made painfully clear to any American who has spent any significant amount of time living in the nations subject to rule of Islamic governments. Back in the days when I was commuting to Saudi Arabia, I learned of the quiet joke that many Americans regularly repeated when their flight was on final approach to an airport in the kingdom. The joke privately replaced the usual before-landing announcement issued by the flight crew. It went something like this: “Ladies and gentlemen, we will be landing in Jeddah shortly. Please set your clocks back one thousand years.”</p>
<p>Recent events clearly demonstrate that this jest, with all of its ominous implications, still applies.</p>
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		<title>One Day in the Life of an Ex-Leftie</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jamie-glazov/one-day-in-the-life-of-an-ex-leftie-by-jamie-glazov/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=one-day-in-the-life-of-an-ex-leftie-by-jamie-glazov</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 14 Jan 2010 05:01:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=45927</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Award-winning author and poet David Solway discusses his thought crimes -- and banishment from the Canadian literary community.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-45929" title="solway" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/solway.gif" alt="solway" width="450" height="300" /></p>
<p>Frontpage Interview’s guest today is David Solway, the award-winning author of over twenty-five books of poetry, criticism, educational theory, and travel. He is a contributor to magazines as varied as <em>The Atlantic,</em> the<em> Sewanee Review</em>, <em>Books in Canada</em>, and the <em>Partisan Review</em>. His book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Big-Lie-Terror-Antisemitism-Identity/dp/0978176502/ref=sr_1_1/104-8236430-6806347?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1178089852&amp;sr=1-1">The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and Identity</a>, was a Canadian bestseller. A former leftist, he abandoned the political faith after 9/11. He is the author of the new book, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hear-O-Israel-David-Solway/dp/0973406534/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1256122893&amp;sr=1-1">Hear, O Israel!</a></em></p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> David Solway, welcome to Frontpage Interview.</p>
<p>Congratulations on your new book.</p>
<p>I would like to talk to you today about some of the difficulties you have suffered as an ex-leftie in our literary culture. Tell us a bit about how you are being treated as an author and poet and the challenges you are facing with your new book.</p>
<p><strong>Solway</strong>: Let me begin by distinguishing between the person and the writer. As a person, I’ve experienced my share of problems, like any conservative in today’s liberal-left culture. Long-standing friendships have gone by the board. Discussions become quarrels. The attempt to articulate one’s conservative principles meet with incomprehension, disbelief or outright ridicule—and even ostracism.</p>
<p>A few examples. When I expressed my skepticism of John Kerry during the 2004 American election, one of my very close friends started calling me “Bushy” and after the publication of The Big Lie, broke off contact altogether. A fifteen-year friendship bit the dust. Another longtime literary colleague took exception to my characterization of Islam as a mortal threat to Western civilization and we ceased all communication. I’ve since heard on the grapevine that he now celebrates Ramadan and may have converted to Islam. One of my most intimate friends and I parted ways over a disagreement about Barack Obama, whom I regarded at the time as a disaster in the making. I had considerable difficulty coming to terms with this unexpected rupture and tried to soften the exchange by facetiously challenging him to a duel with pearl-handled pistols and appropriate seconds, a lefty for him and a righty for me, but he wasn’t interested. There went another twenty years.</p>
<p>When I voted for the Conservative Party and Stephen Harper during the last two Canadian elections, I effectively put myself outside the Canadian literary community which has embraced either the Greens, the socialist NDP or the quasi-socialist Liberal Party. I withdrew from all our writer’s organizations, including PEN Canada, and am pretty well a lone wolf now.</p>
<p>Professionally speaking, doors began slamming wherever I turned. I had enormous trouble finding a publisher for the two sequels I’d completed to The Big Lie—namely, Living in the Valley of Shmoon and Hear, O Israel!, and this despite the fact that TBL was listed as a nonfiction bestseller and hit the #13 ranking on Amazon.ca. This—shall I say, reluctance—was no doubt due to the hijinks of our Human Rights Commissions, accessed pro bono by disgruntled Muslims and lefty apparatchiks in their campaign to suppress the publications of conservative writers and thinkers. A guilty verdict entails stiff penalties, including a proscription against one’s right to speak freely. Even an acquittal before these Commissions is almost tantamount to a guilty verdict: the financial cost to the defendant is prohibitive, in some cases leading to bankruptcy or near-bankruptcy, and the court’s summation in such cases inevitably stigmatizes the defendant. These Commissions agreed to hear complaints by offended Muslims against outspoken writers like Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn, and magazines like <em>Macleans</em> for printing excerpts from their work. For many of us, this seems like a coordinated attack on the principle of free speech.</p>
<p>One sympathetic editor of a major Canadian publishing house informed me that I should, so to speak, “go south, young man,” since I would stand a better chance of finding a publisher in the U.S. than in Canada. This didn’t turn out to be the case. Another told me in confidence that both the tone and content of the new work would expose the publisher either to being firebombed or hauled before the HRC. Still another advised me to try and find a “niche publisher,” since the mainstream firms in this country would be chary of tempting the HRC. Similar warnings were echoed by several others in the business of writing and publishing—and in no uncertain terms. Fortunately, I eventually found one House, the small press Mantua Books, whose publisher Howard Rotberg was willing to take a chance on me, damn the consequences, and accepted <em>Hear, O Israel!</em>, which appeared just two months ago. But I sometimes wonder if the new book will be the last one I will be able to steer toward its conclusions without glancing into the rear-view mirror, looking for those flashing cherries.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s time I got my act together and filed a complaint with our Human Rights Commissions citing invidious discrimination and the willful hurting of my feelings on the part of our publishing consortiums. That should do it. But seriously, I have no doubt that in speaking and writing as bluntly and, I hope, as candidly as I try to do, I have offended others. So be it. I too have been offended by many of the <em>ad hominem</em> denunciations that have been flung my way, especially on the Net, some of which are quite frankly unprintable here. But what of it? This is the way the game is played: one speaks one’s mind, others speak theirs, occasionally one steps out of bounds which is inevitable in any free and uncensored exchange.</p>
<p><strong>FP</strong>: Why do you think the liberal Left is so totalitarian?</p>
<p><strong>Solway</strong>: Well, let’s start by considering the fate of the Italian performance artist Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo, affectionately known as Pippa Bacca, who, wearing a wedding dress, set out in March 2008 on a “Brides on Tour” pilgrimage through southern Europe and the Middle  East. Her intention was to promote peace and harmony by demonstrating her faith in the potential for good of her fellow man. A month later, she was raped and killed in Turkey. We are also on the road to becoming casualties of a predatory and alien culture or, at best, dhimmis, second-class citizens living on the sufferance of their new overlords. Pippa Bacca represents a lesson we should heed, an emblematic child bride of the West voluntarily entering into an abusive relationship from which one should not expect to emerge intact.</p>
<p>The chief hazard of Western intellectuals, government officials, NGOs and, generally speaking, of a left-oriented culture is a resident utopianism no amount of brute fact can evict. They are plainly susceptible to what Eric Voegelin in <em>The New Science of Politics</em> has called “theoretical illiteracy,” which shows itself in “the form of various social idealisms” or an “axiological dream world” where the accent falls “on the state of perfection without clarity about the means that are required for its realization.” The absence of a practical blueprint is no obstacle to the current neo-leftist romantic idealist whose energy goes into the projection of a civil Shangri-la without contour and substance to be constructed upon the ruins of the democratic society which has provided him or her with life and livelihood. The world they live in is a dream world because it meets the dangers that surround it, says Voegelin, not “by appropriate actions in the world of reality” but rather by magic incantations “such as disapproval, moral condemnation, declarations of intention, resolutions, appeals to the opinion of mankind…outlawing of war, propaganda for world peace and world government, etc.,” so that in the course of time an entire society comes to be pervaded “with the weird, ghostly light of a lunatic asylum.”</p>
<p>I addressed this issue at length in <em>The Big Lie</em>. Such a program, I argued, bespeaks the resurgence of a political romanticism wedded to motives rather than consequences, unachievable ideals rather than practical values. It consists largely of the cryogenized remnants of an antique quest for unperturbed happiness and tranquility, actuated by a child-like desire for transcendence that is the curse of liberal political civilization, and that, in various spiritual and revolutionary forms, has caused untold harm and suffering in the past. As William Pfaff wrote in <em>The Bullet’s Song</em>, the effort to deny the tragic but inescapable limitations of human life, the “flight from the reality of the human predicament” and the search “for a revenge on life as it is” is also “among the fundamental factors responsible for what happened in the twentieth century. Utopianism defies tragedy—and fails.”</p>
<p>In <em>Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left</em>, David Horowitz explains that such Cinderella sentiments express “the anti-American voice of an ‘internationalism’ that goes back more than a century to Marx’s idea that radicals should have no country, that their only loyalty should be to the revolutionary future and the forces presumed to embody it. The secessionists are heirs of Marxism and Communism who believe they are ‘citizens of the world’ rather than of the nation that guarantees their survivals and freedoms.” Under the rubric of “social justice,” the Left is busy trying to dismantle the bulwark of what we know as civilization, in order to pursue a universalist program of salvation on earth that was discredited, once and for all, with the collapse of the Soviet empire. Similarly, as Melanie Phillips writes in <em>Londonistan</em>, for today’s intellectual orthodoxy, “The nation and its values are despised; moral legitimacy resides instead in a vision of universal progressivism,” which has created a society “so badly confused that even now it cannot grasp the danger that it is in.” The censure of our nation, culture and civilization and the unstructured longing for an all-embracing brotherhood and sisterhood have effectively short-circuited our intelligence and our commitment to the common ground of our political existence. This is the result of what I’ve called the utopian prepossession of the modern mind, which is exemplified in the dreams, assumptions, policies and actions of the juggernaut Left.</p>
<p>Certainly, in an eschatological time, we can ill afford to avert our eyes from the unsparing conflict in which we are embroiled or labor to minimize the impact of contemporary events. Otherwise, the flaccid dispensations of political correctness, academic propriety, multicultural imbecilities, nihilistic relativism and the standard leftist bromides of the day will be the end of us.</p>
<p><strong>FP</strong>: Tell us about your new book.</p>
<p><strong>Solway</strong>: One of the greatest enigmas of Jewish life and history is the vast number of apostates, turncoats, self-haters, traitors, antisemitic collaborators, Court Jews and kapos-in-good-standing who have brought and continue to bring shame, misery, disgrace and ignominy upon a people who have always struggled to survive the world’s implacable enmity. Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Naomi Klein, Richard Goldstone and the rest of that contemptible crew who proliferate like viral strains among us may be freaks of history but they are not mere sporadic exceptions. They are part of a long line of tergiversators going back at least to Korah, Dathan and Abiram who, as the Hebrew Scripture tells us, “rose up against Moses, with certain of the children of Israel.” These <em>apikorsim</em> (or “wicked sons” ) would have put paid to the chronicle of the Jewish people almost before it had begun.</p>
<p>The great Jewish theologian and philosopher Maimonides had their number long ago, dismissing them in his <em>Mishneh Torah</em> as “deniers” of their heritage. They are the early cohort that would have preferred captivity over the dignity and independence of the Jewish nation. Their descendents are with us to this very day, whether among the “common people” or as the modern version of the “two hundred and fifty princes” who accompanied Korah in his ancient campaign of delegitimation. They were willing to violate what was then understood as a divine mandate and which today may be described as the imperative of survival and the drive toward cultural and intellectual accomplishment. These “princes” now serve in the United Nations, the NGOs, the current American administration, the so-called “peace movement” and the left-wing establishment both in the West and in Israel itself.</p>
<p>They are the “thirteenth tribe”—not Arthur Koestler’s Khazars but the swelling cadre of Isaac Deutscher’s “non-Jewish Jews,” whose treachery I attempt to analyze and understand in <em>Hear, O </em><em>Israel</em><em>!</em>. These are the Jews who aspire to a place of honor in the sun of secularism or religious pluralism and choose, in the words of Emanuele Ottolenghi, “to live in the light, stopping only to burnish their qualifications by noisily joining the chorus that has consigned their fellow Jews to the dark,” thus “renouncing a core component of their identity&#8230;finding favor and reward by exerting every effort to assimilate themselves to whatever is required of them.”</p>
<p>But I also focus on those whom I call the “good Jews” (Ezra Levant prefers the term “Official Jews”), the high-minded, compassionate, serenely meditative Jewish humanists, mired in bland ineffability, who are in effect the intellectual descendents of Sir Herbert Samuel, Martin Buber and Shimon Peres. Among them one finds as well the cowering, timid, frightened Jews who cry “Don’t rock the boat” when the boat is riddled with leaks and in danger of sinking. The “good Jews” may remember their festivals but they forget their history. I recall poet A. M. Klein’s response to the famous Jewish critics of his day who ignored or downplayed his epic <em>Hitleriad</em>: “Fadiman, Untermeyer, Cerf, Kreymborg…you may think of this junta as the composite of their initials.” The temptation to appease, soothe and tranquillize is one that too many Jews find irresistible. This is my central subject in <em>Hear, O </em><em>Israel</em><em>!</em>.</p>
<p><strong>FP</strong>: Your thoughts on the recent terror attempt on Northwest Flight 253 and the Obama administration’s handling of it?</p>
<p><strong>Solway</strong>: I am doing some work on the “failed” Christmas Day terrorist attempt over Detroit and others that have preceded it—as well as those that are sure to come. The point I’m making is that, no matter what the outcome, terrorism is a win-win situation. In other words, there is no such thing as a failed terrorist act. Even if the bomb does not go off, the aspiring terrorist is subdued and apprehended, and everyone emerges safely from the ordeal, the attack has been a resounding success. Its effect is powerful and ubiquitous. People are more on edge than before. New anti-terrorist measures are introduced causing ever more civil inconvenience and disruption, expenditures continue to rise, tensions increase across the board, ordinary life slows down and begins to feel more precarious, intrusions into private life become the order of the day. And even then there is no guarantee that we will achieve our ends. Which is why the security measures that have been adopted are doomed to fail, that is, it is we who have failed, not the terrorist. And that is also why we need a far more energetic and militant response to the spectre of terrorism, starting with calling the phenomenon by its real name—not “man-caused disasters”—, going after the jihadists in their home bases, and shutting down the mosques and the various Islamic organizations like CAIR and ISNA where domestic jihad is preached and encouraged. Otherwise, expect more Flight 253s and more Fort  Hoods.</p>
<p><strong>FP</strong>: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about our ability as a civilization to protect ourselves from radical Islam?</p>
<p><strong>Solway</strong>:  Thinking about the “clash of civilizations” the other day—Samuel Huntington was right, you know—I recalled an episode from my childhood. I was six years old when I was in my first automobile accident, sitting in the back seat of my father’s car which was stuck in thick snow at the bottom of a steep road in the Quebec Laurentians. My father played with the gears and tried rocking us out of the ever-deepening rut but it soon became obvious that we’d have to wait for a passing tow truck to extricate ourselves. Only it wasn’t a tow truck that appeared, but another car that had lost control on the icy surface and was careening down the hill, heading straight for us. I can still see that projectile-like vehicle looming larger and larger through the windshield as it approached at gathering speed. It struck us bang-on and demolished the front half of our car. Miraculously none of us were hurt, but that was the moment my writing career might easily have been cut short.</p>
<p>I believe the analogy is pretty well apt, except that the missile which is coming our way is not accidental or uncontrolled. We are being deliberately targeted by an uncompromising enemy as we sit here uselessly spinning our wheels, talking about “man-caused disasters” and “overseas contingency operations,” blaming our own actions for the violence inflicted upon us, reluctant to mobilize our resources to confront what is nothing less than the gravest threat to our open culture and democratic way of life in the history of the West, paralyzed—as I’ve written elsewhere—by a “mindset governed by fear of offending, the dictates of political correctness, abject cowardice, the rituals of bureaucratic stupidity and failed strategies of appeasement.”</p>
<p><strong>FP</strong>: What are some of your future plans?</p>
<p><strong>Solway</strong>: Well, I’ll keep on doing what I’ve been doing since 9/11 changed my way of looking at the world, posting articles, writing my books, and losing friends with incremental regularity. For me this means less lyrical poetry, more polemical prose. And of course, like any writer of a conservative bent who tries to tell the truth as he or she sees it, I will give offence and inevitably find myself accused of hate speech, as if the two were in any way equivalent. After all, merely giving offence cannot be equated with hate speech. One gives and receives offence a dozen times a day, often inadvertently. What is hate speech? Calling for the extermination of a people is hate speech. Denying provable historical facts in an effort to malign a race or ethnic group is hate speech. Using incontestably slanderous epithets or lying outright, with malice aforethought, to impugn the integrity of a person or a group may be qualified as hate speech. But saying what one believes, based on accessible and defensible evidence, is not. Speech is common currency and should not be regarded as Mafia money that needs to be laundered. Giving offence is the occupational hazard of thinking, speaking and writing and should be accepted as such in any country that purports to be free. Intellectual debate and unfettered artistic or literary production is impossible without the risk of hurting people’s feelings by taking issue with their presuppositions and beliefs. And one must expect the same treatment in return. Nothing prevents an offended group from responding in kind or, since many have the means and resources, from launching their own magazines or websites.</p>
<p>One gives and one gets. Only in this way can we arrive at something like truth, or at least what I have called credible verisimilitude. Otherwise, out of an exaggerated deference to the tender feelings of others, or out of timidity and dread, or out of a slavish adherence to the orthodoxies of the day, we are tempted to self-suppression. Even worse, we may eventually find ourselves reduced to silence and immobility, closed in upon ourselves. We become coquillage. And no noise annoys an oyster.</p>
<p>So I intend to give and to get. And I don’t intend to be oysterish about it.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> David Solway, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.</p>
<p>To order David Solway&#8217;s new book,<em> Hear O </em><em>Israel</em><em>!, , <strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hear-O-Israel-David-Solway/dp/0973406534/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1263330966&amp;sr=8-1-catcorr">click here</a></strong>.</em></p>
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		<title>A God Who Hates &#8211; by Fern Sidman</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/fern-sidman/a-god-who-hates-by-fern-sidman/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-god-who-hates-by-fern-sidman</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:02:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Fern Sidman]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Freedom fighter Wafa Sultan delivers a powerful new book. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-45669" title="Wafa-Cover1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Wafa-Cover1.jpg" alt="Wafa-Cover1" width="450" height="536" /></p>
<p>In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States, it became abundantly clear to the Western world that there was a new and pernicious nemesis in town. Radical Islamic suicide bombers had jolted us out of our torpor as we confronted the stark and frightening realization that our cherished democratic values, principles, code of ethics and very lifestyle were in existential danger. In order to eradicate the visceral feelings of resentment of Muslims that were ruminating in the psyches of  Americans and other westerners; the media, along with those in academic and &#8220;politically correct&#8221; circles initiated a campaign of &#8220;re-education&#8221;. Extolling the virtues of the religion called Islam, they put forth the notion that Islam is a genuine religion of peace; a religion that places a sacred value on the sanctity of life. We were told that only a few extreme &#8220;radical Jihadists&#8221; belonging to an obscure organization called Al Qaeda were responsible for tainting and maligning the purity of Islam.</p>
<p>Wafa Sultan, an ex-Muslim dissident from Syria, offers a wholly different take on this sophistical premise in her new book, &#8220;A God Who Hates&#8221; (St. Martin&#8217;s Press &#8211; 2009) as she portrays a searing portrait of Muslim culture. The subtitle of the book describes Sultan as &#8220;the courageous woman who inflamed the Muslim world&#8221; as she &#8220;speaks out against the evils of Islam.&#8221; The reader is left with no doubt that Sultan is way more than a doughty and intrepid advocate of the truth, but a woman who is willing to place her life in mortal danger in order to preserve, protect and defend Western civilization as we know it.</p>
<p>The author raises the narrative to a highly profound level as she essentially reveals that, contrary to popular opinion, it is not a few &#8220;radical Jihadists&#8221; who are guilty of distorting otherwise warm and fuzzy Islamic precepts, but rather the culprit in engendering this kind of vitriolic hatred and bloodlust is none other than the Koran itself, along with the paradigm of the prophet Muhammad and the &#8220;god&#8221; known as Allah. She refers to Islam, as &#8220;the ogre&#8221; as she explores the psychological roots of a nomadic people who invented this religion in order to assuage their own paralyzing fears and overwhelming feelings of desperation and helplessness.</p>
<p>Wafa Sultan knows from whence she speaks. Having grown up in a devoutly Muslim home in Syria, she recalls her very personal stories of the barbarism of Islam and how it impacted on her and her family. Being born female in a Muslim culture that enforces a male hegemony, Sultan recalls the humiliating degradation imposed on her grandmother, mother and sisters who were virtual slaves to their husbands and their fathers. Contempt and loathing for women as inherently inferior beings permeates the Muslim world as is evidenced in today&#8217;s alarming escalation of &#8220;honor murders&#8221; in which Muslim men brazenly murder their womenfolk for alleged transgressions of Sharia law.</p>
<p>Women&#8217;s inhumanity to other women is also discussed here as Sultan tells us of the abusive treatment of daughter-in-laws by their own mother-in-laws who punish them in the same way that they themselves were tormented as young brides. Education for girls and women in Islamic society was sorely lacking and discouraged in order to keep them locked in a permanent state of servility.  Their treatment of children is also spotlighted as abusive as the Koran mandates that they mete out corporal punishment to their children who do not pray or adhere to the tenets of Islam.</p>
<p>Sultan herself was fortunate in a sense. She was educated as a physician in Syria and her headstrong, independent nature compelled her to extricate herself from the draconian dictates of an oppressive religion. Moreover, as a physician in Syria she takes note of the glaring inequities of medical care as it pertains to gender. Dr. Sultan viewed Muslim men as anathema but as luck would have it, she met an educated man who respected her. After their marriage they made their way to the United States where she now raises her children and practices medicine in the Los Angeles area.</p>
<p>Citing a gamut of Koranic verses and providing concrete historical evidence dating back to the 7th century,  Sultan proves that the predicate for Islam is unadulterated fear, violence, hatred of the other, theft and murder. From the genesis of the Islamic movement, the author informs us of Arab nomadic tribes raiding one another in bloodthirsty rampages that left sheer devastation in their wake.  Describing the terror and desolation that the Arab peoples felt so acutely during centuries of desert dwelling, Sultan tells us that the fear of dying in the arid and harsh desert from hunger, thirst, illness and the always imminent attack by another tribe created an anxious and violent nation whose sole objective was daily survival at all costs. Says the author, &#8220;Arabs who lived in the environment that gave birth to Islam were powerless in the face of the challenges presented by this environment, which threatened their lives and their welfare. Because they felt so helpless they felt a need for forcefulness and created a god who would fulfill this need. When the Arab male lost his power he felt the need for a forceful god. And so he created a forceful god in the image of his need &#8211; but this god was not powerful.&#8221;</p>
<p>Thus, the religion of Islam instills a hatred of the infidel, &#8220;the other&#8221; and anyone who does not subscribe to the tenets of their bellicose belief system. History has recorded that scores of heinous murders of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs were perpetrated by the hands of Allah&#8217;s followers. Because their god is described in the Koran as &#8220;The Harmer:, &#8220;The Avenger&#8221;, &#8220;The Compeller&#8221; and &#8220;The Imperious&#8221;, it is Sultan&#8217;s view that the Islamic people have internalized such labels and have sought to emulate the rudimentary character of their deity. Brutal savagery towards anyone they perceive to be a threat and even against one another is one of the modalities through which Muslims actualized these &#8220;godly&#8221; traits. She describes the prophet Muhammad as a man bereft of moral authority; a pedophile and a purveyor or violence and falsehood; He gives his tacit approval to his followers to continue on the trajectory of &#8220;holiness&#8221; by engaging in hostile acts of religious zealotry, without regard for human life.</p>
<p>Offering eclectic insights into Muslim culture, Sultan tells us that because Islam is so riddled with strife, negativism and banal hatred it&#8217;s language readily reflects this all encompassing disposition. As such, Muslims do not speak in a calm and reasoned manner but rather are vocally strident; resorting to constant shrieking, yelling, bellowing and shouting while engaging in acrimonious, ad hominem attacks against those who they are purportedly conversing with.</p>
<p>And that, of course, segues into a chapter called, &#8220;Who is that woman on Al Jazeera?&#8221;. As a world renowned essayist, Dr. Sultan&#8217;s opinions were well known through the Arab and Muslim countries. For that reason, the Al Jazeera television network invited her to debate a domineering Islamic cleric on the topic of &#8220;the connection between Islamic teachings and terrorism.&#8221; It was in this venue that Dr. Sultan, having been denied the right to express herself or given enough time to state her case by the male moderator, did so anyway in an erudite and eloquent fashion without raising the volume of her voice; in contrast to her adversary who engaged in ear popping dialogue.</p>
<p>Given the last few seconds of the show to conclude her thoughts, Dr. Sultan was once again interrupted by the clergyman but this time told him in no uncertain terms to &#8220;Be quiet! It&#8217;s my turn!&#8221;. This kind of rejoinder is considered common parlance to us Westerners who enjoy watching television debates but these few words sent shock waves throughout the Muslim world. &#8220;I uttered this sentence without realizing it would open a new chapter in Arab and Muslim history. Never in the history of Islam has a woman clearly and forcefully asked a Muslim man to be quiet because it was her turn to speak&#8221;, says Dr. Sultan.</p>
<p>Throughout this engrossing and compelling book, Sultan generously heaps praise on her adopted country. She acknowledges her appreciation for the plethora of rights, individual freedoms and liberties that she has enjoyed in the United States for the last 21 years. She urges America to stand strong in the face of the proliferation of global radical Islam and suggests that it confront the burgeoning threat to our civilization that &#8220;the ogre&#8221; represents in a pro-active fashion. &#8220;I love America as few people do&#8221; says Sultan, and &#8220;my love for it makes me feel concern for it. I do not want any danger to threaten the safety or beauty of this country that rescued me from my fears and fed me when I was hungry. America, to put it very briefly indeed, is my freedom.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>Sayyid Qutb and the Virginia Five &#8211; by Robert Spencer</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/robert-spencer/sayyid-qutb-and-the-virginia-five-by-robert-spencer/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=sayyid-qutb-and-the-virginia-five-by-robert-spencer</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Dec 2009 05:08:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=42293</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Clues to their radicalization lie close at hand.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-42296" title="JIHAD" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/JIHAD.jpg" alt="JIHAD" width="450" height="396" /></p>
<p>When five young Muslims from northern Virginia were arrested in Pakistan for trying to join jihadist groups, the local Muslim community professed to be puzzled as to how it could have happened. Ashraf Nubani, an attorney for the mosque the five attended, said of their relatives and fellow worshippers: “There’s shock and disbelief in these families and in this mosque.” Mahdi Bray of the Falls Church-based Muslim American Society, sounded a plaintive note: “We want to know: What did we miss? We saw these kids every day. In hindsight, what could we have done?”</p>
<p>If Mahdi Bray saw these young men daily, that might have been a clue right there as to what went wrong. For the Muslim American Society (MAS) is the American arm of the international Islamic supremacist organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood, the forefather of Al-Qaeda and Hamas. A captured internal Brotherhood document says that the Brotherhood’s mission in the U.S. is “a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”</p>
<p>And according to a 2004 Chicago Tribune expose of Brotherhood activity in the U.S., “to be an ‘active’ member” of the Muslim American Society, “&#8211;the highest membership class&#8211;one must complete five years of Muslim community service and education, which includes studying writings by Brotherhood ideologues al-Banna and Qutb.” These are the Muslim Brotherhood’s two great theorists, its founder Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb, “the father of modern [Islamic] fundamentalism.”</p>
<p>Of these, Qutb is the more influential today. His writings can be found easily in Islamic bookstores in the U.S. And Americans, particularly law enforcement officials, should know what’s in them.</p>
<p>Sayyid Qutb actually lived in the United States from November 1948 to August 1950, and wrote about his experiences in revealing ways. While hospitalized for a respiratory ailment in Washington,  D.C., in February 1949, he heard of the assassination of al-Banna, an event which, he later claimed implausibly, set the hospital staff to open rejoicing.</p>
<p>His disgust with the gaudy materialism of postwar America was intense. He wrote to an Egyptian friend of his loneliness: “How much do I need someone to talk to about topics other than money, movie stars and car models.” Moving to Greeley, Colorado, he was impressed by the number of churches in the city, but not with the piety they engendered: “Nobody goes to church as often as Americans do. . . . Yet no one is as distant as they are from the spiritual aspect of religion.” He was thoroughly scandalized by a dance after an evening service at a local church: “The dancing intensified. . . . The hall swarmed with legs . . . Arms circled arms, lips met lips, chests met chests, and the atmosphere was full of love.” The pastor further scandalized Qutb by dimming the lights, creating “a romantic, dreamy effect,” and playing a popular record of the day: “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” He regarded American popular music in general with a gimlet eye: “Jazz is the favorite music [of America]. It is a type of music invented by [American] Blacks to please their primitive tendencies and desire for noise.”</p>
<p>Ultimately he concluded: “I fear that when the wheel of life has turned and the file on history has closed, America will not have contributed anything.” He didn’t find American prosperity to be matched by a corresponding wealth of spirit. “I am afraid that there is no correlation between the greatness of the American material civilization and the men who created it. . . . In both feeling and conduct the American is primitive (bida’a).”</p>
<p>When he returned to Egypt, he characterized the influence of the West in the Muslim world as an unmitigated evil. He derided “American Islam,” a counterfeit of the religion that was designed only to combat Communism in Egypt. (In this he may have been referring to the Egyptian dictator Nasser’s 1964 overtures to the Muslim Brotherhood, which he hoped would join an anticommunist alliance.) Even before his stay in the United States he cautioned that “Islam is a comprehensive philosophy and an homogeneous unity, and to introduce into it any foreign element would mean ruining it. It is like a delicate and perfect piece of machinery that may be completely ruined by the presence of an alien component.”</p>
<p>This chief alien component was secularism. Qutb regarded Western secularism not as the solution to the problems of the Islamic world (as many have proposed) but as the chief source of the problem: it destroyed the fundamental unity of Islam by separating the religious sphere from that of daily life.</p>
<p>Qutb saw the West’s two dominant political and social philosophies, capitalism and Communism, as bankrupt and valueless. With notable and often moving passion and vigor, Qutb’s influential book Milestones explicitly positions Islam as the true source of societal and personal order, as opposed to both capitalism and Communism. “Mankind today is on the brink of a precipice,” he asserted in this Cold War-era manifesto, “not because of the danger of complete annihilation which is hanging over its head &#8212; this being just a symptom and not the real disease &#8212; but because humanity is devoid of those vital values which are necessary not only for its healthy development but also for its real progress.” Perhaps with his time in America in mind, he went on: “Even the Western world realizes that Western civilization is unable to present any healthy values for the guidance of mankind. It knows that it does not possess anything which will satisfy its own conscience and justify its existence.”</p>
<p>To Qutb, both capitalism and Communism were spent forces: “Democracy in the West has become infertile to such an extent that it is borrowing from the systems of the Eastern bloc, especially in the economic system, under the name of socialism. It is the same with the Eastern bloc. Its social theories, foremost among which is Marxism, in the beginning attracted not only a large number of people from the East but also from the West, as it was a way of life based on a creed.”</p>
<p>With admirable prescience for a man writing in 1964, when Marxism looked to many observers to be still positioned at the vanguard of history, Qutb proclaimed that “now Marxism is defeated on the plane of thought, and if it is stated that not a single nation in the world is truly Marxist, it will not be an exaggeration.” He asserted that Marxism was doomed to fail because “on the whole this theory conflicts with man’s nature and its needs. This ideology prospers only in a degenerate society or in a society which has become cowed as a result of some form of prolonged dictatorship.” A quarter-century before the fall of the Soviet Union, he described “the failure of the system of collective farming” as just part of “the failure of a system which is against human nature.” Qutb concludes: “It is essential for mankind to have new leadership!”</p>
<p>That new leadership would come from Islam. To Qutb, what the Muslim umma needed was a restoration of Islam in its fullness and purity, including all the rules of the Sharia for regulating society. “If we look at the sources and foundations of modern ways of living, it becomes clear that the whole world is steeped in Jahiliyyah [Ignorance of the Divine guidance], and all the marvelous material comforts and high-level inventions do not diminish this ignorance. This Jahiliyyah is based on rebellion against God’s sovereignty on earth. It transfers to man one of the greatest attributes of God, namely sovereignty, and makes some men lords over others.”</p>
<p>True freedom could come to man only by restoring the divine sovereignty &#8212; that is, the Sharia. To further this end he formally joined the Muslim Brotherhood shortly after his return to Egypt from the United States.</p>
<p>In articulating his vision for a resurgent Islam that would lead the way to a restoration of civilization and true values in the world, he made one great departure from the thought of other Muslim intellectuals of his day: he classified not only non-Muslim lands but also large portions of the Muslim world as lands of jahiliyyah, the Muslim term for the pre-Islamic period of unbelief, ignorance, and darkness. He based this assessment on the fact that most Muslim lands did not follow the Sharia either in whole or part, writing in Milestones that “it is necessary to revive that Muslim community which is buried under the debris of the man-made traditions of several generations, and which is crushed under the weight of those false laws and customs which are not even remotely related to the Islamic teachings, and which, in spite of all this, calls itself the ‘world of Islam.’“</p>
<p>He advances Islam as “a challenge to all kinds and forms of systems which are based on the concept of the sovereignty of man; in other words, where man has usurped the Divine attribute. Any system in which the final decisions are referred to human beings, and in which the sources of all authority are human, deifies human beings by designating others than God as lords over men.”</p>
<p>Islam, says Qutb, in response to this wrongful deification of human beings, must “proclaim the authority and sovereignty of God” and thereby “eliminate all human kingship and to announce the rule of the Sustainer of the universe over the entire earth. In the words of the Qur’an: ‘He alone is God in the heavens and in the earth.’ (43:84) ‘The command belongs to God alone. He commands you not to worship anyone except Him. This is the right way of life.’ (12: 40)”</p>
<p>In practice, this meant implementation of the Sharia. Qutb therefore despised democracy for subjecting society to manmade laws that were the product of deliberation by the electorate or the legislature. The laws of Allah were not a matter for majority vote. He advocated active and all-encompassing resistance to governments in Muslim lands that did not implement the Sharia. He insisted: “We must also free ourselves from the clutches of jahili society” &#8212; that is, society ordered according to human laws (literally, those of ignorance) rather than divine ones &#8212; “jahili concepts, jahili traditions and jahili leadership. Our mission is not to compromise with the practices of jahili society, nor can we be loyal to it. Jahili society, because of its jahili characteristics, is not worthy to be compromised with. Our aim is first to change ourselves so that we may later change the society.”</p>
<p>This resistance must be international, in accord with the traditional Islamic view that religion transcends nationality: “A Muslim has no country except that part of the earth where the Shari’ah of God is established and human relationships are based on the foundation of relationship with God; a Muslim has no nationality except his belief, which makes him a member of the Muslim community in Dar-ul-Islam; a Muslim has no relatives except those who share the belief in God, and thus a bond is established between him and other Believers through their relationship with God.”</p>
<p>The idea that Muslim governments lose their legitimacy if they don’t enforce the Sharia has recurred throughout Islamic history. The famous medieval scholar Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) “declared that a ruler who fails to enforce the shari’a rigorously in all aspects, including the conduct of jihad (and is therefore insufficiently Muslim), forfeits his right to rule.” Nevertheless, such a view was relatively unheard-of among the secularized, Western-influenced Muslims of Qutb’s day; thus it has led numerous analysts of Islamic radicalism to label him an innovator and contrast his views with those of “traditional Islam.”</p>
<p>But Qutb’s views of the Sharia were not innovative at all. And he argued that they were not extremist, but simply the rule of Islamic law. “The way to establish God’s rule on earth is not that some consecrated people &#8212; the priests &#8212; be given the authority to rule, as was the case with the rule of the Church, nor that some spokesmen of God become rulers, as is the case in a ‘theocracy’. To establish God’s rule means that His laws be enforced and that the final decision in all affairs be according to these laws.”</p>
<p>Of course, the distinction between the rule of the Sharia and that of a theocratic ruling elite is exceedingly fine, as one can see in Iran today. Egypt’s Arab Socialist ruler, Gamel Abdel Nasser, was well aware of the theocratic implications of Qutb’s writings and had him subjected to ten years of imprisonment and torture, and finally ordered him executed in 1966. A year before that Qutb wrote from his prison cell: “The whole of Egypt is imprisoned. . . . I was arrested despite my immunity as a judge, without an order of arrest . . . my sole crime being my critique of the non-application of the Sharia.”</p>
<p>Nasser might have been most concerned with Qutb’s exhortations to jihad. These were predicated on the idea that the establishment of Allah’s rule would not be without obstacles. “Since this movement [that is, Islam] comes into conflict with the Jahiliyyah which prevails over ideas and beliefs, and which has a practical system of life and a political and material authority behind it, the Islamic movement had to produce parallel resources to confront this Jahiliyyah.”</p>
<p>Chief among those resources was jihad. “This movement uses the methods of preaching and persuasion for reforming ideas and beliefs and it uses physical power and Jihaad for abolishing the organizations and authorities of the Jahili system which prevents people from reforming their ideas and beliefs but forces them to obey their erroneous ways and make them serve human lords instead of the Almighty Lord.”</p>
<p>Armed struggle, jihad, was a necessity. “The establishing of the dominion of God on earth, the abolishing of the dominion of man, the taking away of sovereignty from the usurper to revert it to God, and the bringing about of the enforcement of the Divine Law (Shari’ah) and the abolition of man-made laws cannot be achieved only through preaching. Those who have usurped the authority of God and are oppressing God’s creatures are not going to give up their power merely through preaching; if it had been so, the task of establishing God’s religion in the world would have been very easy for the Prophets of God! This is contrary to the evidence from the history of the Prophets and the story of the struggle of the true religion, spread over generations.”</p>
<p>Muslims, Qutb says, must not only preach, but also “strike hard at all those political powers which force people to bow before them and which rule over them, unmindful of the commandments of God, and which prevent people from listening to the preaching and accepting the belief if they wish to do so. After annihilating the tyrannical force, whether it be in a political or a racial form, or in the form of class distinctions within the same race, Islam establishes a new social, economic and political system, in which the concept of the freedom of man is applied in practice.”</p>
<p>Qutb’s reference to the history of the prophets is one indication of how firmly his view of jihad is based on a close and careful reading of the Qur’an and study of the example of the Prophet Muhammad. In <em>Milestones</em> he quotes at length from the great medieval scholar Ibn Qayyim (1292-1350), who, says Qutb, “has summed up the nature of Islamic Jihaad.” Ibn Qayyim outlines the stages of the Muhammad’s prophetic career: “For thirteen years after the beginning of his Messengership, he called people to God through preaching, without fighting or Jizyah, and was commanded to restrain himself and to practice patience and forbearance. Then he was commanded to migrate, and later permission was given to fight. Then he was commanded to fight those who fought him, and to restrain himself from those who did not make war with him. Later he was commanded to fight the polytheists until God’s religion was fully established.”</p>
<p>Qutb summarizes the stages: “Thus, according to the explanation by Imam Ibn Qayyim, the Muslims were first restrained from fighting; then they were permitted to fight; then they were commanded to fight against the aggressors; and finally they were commanded to fight against all the polytheists.”</p>
<p>That these stages of jihad can be found in Qutb, as well as in the writings of the contemporary jihadis and medieval Muslim scholars, underscores the traditional character of today’s jihad. Modern mujahedin are not “hijacking” Islam; they are &#8212; at least in their own view &#8212; restoring it. Ibn Qayyim, as quoted by Qutb, goes on to outline the conditions of post-jihad society, i.e., dhimmitude: “After the command for Jihaad came, the non-believers were divided into three categories: one, those with whom there was peace; two, the people with whom the Muslims were at war; and three, the Dhimmies. . . . It was also explained that war should be declared against those from among the ‘People of the Book’ who declare open enmity, until they agree to pay Jizyah or accept Islam. Concerning the polytheists and the hypocrites, it was commanded in this chapter that Jihaad be declared against them and that they be treated harshly.”</p>
<p>Ultimately, he explains, those with whom the Muslims were at peace or had treaties became Muslims themselves, “so there were only two kinds left: people at war and Dhimmies. The people at war were always afraid of [Muhammad]. Now the people of the whole world were of three kinds: One, the Muslims who believed in him; two, those with whom he had peace and three, the opponents who kept fighting him.” In line with this, Qutb says that if someone rejects Islam, “then it is the duty of Islam to fight him until either he is killed or until he declares his submission.”</p>
<p>Qutb speaks harshly of modernist and moderate Muslims who would recast jihad as a struggle for self-defense. Even while they “talk about Jihaad in Islam and quote Qur’anic verses,” he says, they “do not . . . understand the nature of the various stages through which this movement develops, or the relationship of the verses revealed at various occasions with each stage.” In other words, they don’t understand that Allah gradually revealed the Muslim’s responsibility to wage jihad, as outlined above by Ibn Qayyim.</p>
<p>This leads to further errors: “Thus, when they speak about Jihaad, they speak clumsily and mix up the various stages, distorting the whole concept of Jihaad and deriving from the Qur’anic verses final principles and generalities for which there is no justification. This is because they regard every verse of the Qur’an as if it were the final principle of this religion.” This is probably something like what Qutb would say to contemporary Muslim spokesmen who quote the Qur’an’s “tolerance verses” without making any mention of the stages of development in the holy book’s teachings about jihad.</p>
<p>Qutb ascribes the growth of the idea that jihad is only a struggle for self-defense to a defeatist attitude. “This group of thinkers, who are a product of the sorry state of the present Muslim generation, have nothing but the label of Islam and have laid down their spiritual and rational arms in defeat. They say, ‘Islam has prescribed only defensive war’! and think that they have done some good for their religion by depriving it of its method, which is to abolish all injustice from the earth, to bring people to the worship of God alone, and to bring them out of servitude to others into the servants of the Lord.”</p>
<p>He inveighs against attempts by “these defeatist-type people [who] try to mix the two aspects,” that is, forced conversion and the struggle to establish the sovereignty of Allah alone, and who try to “confine Jihaad to what today is called ‘defensive war.’ The Islamic Jihaad has no relationship to modern warfare, either in its causes or in the way in which it is conducted.” Anyone who understands that jihad is actually a struggle to establish Allah’s sovereignty “will also understand the place of Jihaad bis saif (striving through fighting), which is to clear the way for striving through preaching in the application of the Islamic movement. He will understand that Islam is not a ‘defensive movement’ in the narrow sense which today is technically called a ‘defensive war.’“</p>
<p>Who is ultimately responsible for this misrepresentation of jihad? Qutb blames “orientalists,” Western interpreters of Islam. (Ironically, this is the very same camp blamed by Edward Said&#8211;the famous Princeton professor, Palestinian activist, and author of Orientalism&#8211;for caricaturing jihad as a struggle on the battlefield.) “This narrow meaning,” says Qutb, “is ascribed to it by those who are under the pressure of circumstances and are defeated by the wily attacks of the orientalists, who distort the concept of Islamic Jihaad. It was a movement to wipe out tyranny and to introduce true freedom to mankind, using resources according to the actual human situation, and it had definite stages, for each of which it utilized new methods. If we insist on calling Islamic Jihaad a defensive movement, then we must change the meaning of the word ‘defense’ and mean by it ‘the defense of man’ against all those elements which limit his freedom. These elements take the form of beliefs and concepts, as well as of political systems, based on economic, racial or class distinctions.”</p>
<p>In other words, Qutb will allow for a “defensive jihad” if that means defending mankind from democracy, capitalism, Communism, racism, and so on. His views on offensive and defensive jihad are not innovative: he follows the Shafi’i school of Sunni jurisprudence, which mandates that “jihad had for its intent the waging of war on unbelievers for their disbelief and not merely when they entered into conflict with Islam.” This Shafi’i school still holds sway at Cairo’s prestigious al-Azhar  University.</p>
<p>Orientalists, says Qutb, have distorted the idea of jihad by confusing it with forced conversion; but Muslim scholars have not responded properly. “The orientalists have painted a picture of Islam as a violent movement which imposed its belief upon people by the sword. These vicious orientalists know very well that this is not true, but by this method they try to distort the true motives of Islamic Jihaad. But our Muslim scholars, these defeated people, search for reasons of defensive [war] with which to negate this accusation. They are ignorant of the nature of Islam and of its function, and that it has a right to take the initiative for human freedom.”</p>
<p>To support his contention that jihad is not solely for the defense of Muslim lands, Qutb again invokes the early Islamic period. “As to persons who attempt to defend the concept of Islamic Jihaad by interpreting it in the narrow sense of the current concept of defensive war, and who do research to prove that the battles fought in Islamic Jihaad were all for the defense of the homeland of Islam &#8212; some of them considering the homeland of Islam to be just the Arabian peninsula &#8212; against the aggression of neighboring powers, they lack understanding of the nature of Islam and its primary aim. Such an attempt is nothing but a product of a mind defeated by the present difficult conditions and by the attacks of the treacherous orientalists on the Islamic Jihaad. Can anyone say that if [the first three Caliphs] Abu Bakr, ‘Umar or ‘Othman had been satisfied that the Roman and Persian powers were not going to attack the Arabian peninsula, they would not have striven to spread the message of Islam throughout the world? How could the message of Islam have spread when it faced such material obstacles as the political system of the state, the socio-economic system based on races and classes, and behind all these, the military power of the government?”</p>
<p>After quoting a number of Qur’anic verses on jihad, Qutb adds: “With these verses from the Qur’an and with many Traditions of the Prophet &#8212; peace be on him &#8212; in praise of Jihaad, and with the entire history of Islam, which is full of Jihaad, the heart of every Muslim rejects that explanation of Jihaad invented by those people whose minds have accepted defeat under unfavorable conditions and under the attacks on Islamic Jihaad by the shrewd orientalists.”</p>
<p>Those who fall for such ideas are (at best) too soft and (at worst) traitors to Islam: “What kind of a man is it who, after listening to the commandment of God and the Traditions of the Prophet &#8212; peace be on him &#8212; and after reading about the events which occurred during the Islamic Jihaad, still thinks that it is a temporary injunction related to transient conditions and that it is concerned only with the defense of the borders?”</p>
<p>Qutb’s disgust for this point of view shows through in many passages of <em>Milestones</em>. He contrasts it with the internationalist outlook that Muslims should have. “Those who would say that Islamic Jihaad was merely for the defense of the ‘homeland of Islam,’“ Qutb asserts, “diminish the greatness of the Islamic way of life and consider it less important than their ‘homeland.’ This is not the Islamic point of view, and their view is a creation of the modern age and is completely alien to Islamic consciousness. What is acceptable to Islamic consciousness is its belief, the way of life which this belief prescribes, and the society which lives according to this way of life. The soil of the homeland has in itself no value or weight. From the Islamic point of view, the only value which the soil can achieve is because on that soil God’s authority is established and God’s guidance is followed; and thus it becomes a fortress for the belief, a place for its way of life to be entitled the ‘homeland of Islam,’ a center for the movement for the total freedom of man.”</p>
<p>Perhaps with the pan-Arab movements of Nasser and others in mind, Qutb emphasized Islam’s universal character and call: “This religion is not merely a declaration of the freedom of the Arabs, nor is its message confined to the Arabs. It addresses itself to the whole of mankind, and its sphere of work is the whole earth. . . . This religion wants to bring back the whole world to its Sustainer and free it from servitude to anyone other than God.”</p>
<p>But what about the Qur’an’s command to Muslims not to “begin hostilities”? In his monumental, multi-volume commentary on the Qur’an, <em>In the Shade of the Qur’an</em>, completed in Nasser’s prison, Qutb explains Sura 2:190 (“begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not aggressors”) not as a command to Muslims to avoid attacking their opponents, as it was interpreted by many who taught that jihad was only defensive. “‘Aggression,’“ says Qutb, “implies attacks on non-combatants and peaceful, unarmed civilians who pose no threat to Muslims or to their community as a whole. This includes women, children, the elderly, and those devoted to religious activity, such as priests and monks, of all religious and ideological persuasions. Aggression would also entail exceeding the moral and ethical limits set by Islam for fighting a just war.” He pointedly avoids saying that this verse limits jihad to self-defense.</p>
<p>In fact, according to Qutb the very nature of the call to Islam rules out the idea that jihad could only be for self-defense. “Since the objective of the message of Islam is a decisive declaration of man’s freedom, not merely on the philosophical plane but also in the actual conditions of life, it must employ Jihaad. It is immaterial whether the homeland of Islam &#8212; in the true Islamic sense, Dar ul-Islam &#8212; is in a condition of peace or whether it is threatened by its neighbors.”</p>
<p>What then of non-Muslim countries that do not attack the Muslims? Can they be left alone? Only if they pay the non-Muslim poll-tax (jizya), the crowning symbol of dhimmitude and submission: “It may happen that the enemies of Islam may consider it expedient not to take any action against Islam, if Islam leaves them alone in their geographical boundaries to continue the lordship of some men over others and does not extend its message and its declaration of universal freedom within their domain. But Islam cannot agree to this unless they submit to its authority by paying Jizyah, which will be a guarantee that they have opened their doors for the preaching of Islam and will not put any obstacle in its way through the power of the state.”</p>
<p>Indeed, it is “a basic human right to be addressed with the message of Islam. No authority should deny mankind that right and under no circumstances should any obstacles be allowed to prevent that Divine Message from being delivered.” Commenting on Sura 2:191 (“persecution is worse than slaughter”), Qutb says: “Islam considers religious persecution and any threat to religion more dangerous for the future stability and existence of Islam than actual war. According to this great Islamic principle, the survival and prosperity of the faith take precedence over the preservation of human life itself.” Christianity and other faiths, of course, would say the same thing, but none except Islam enjoin in response not the sacrifice of one’s own life, but the killing of others.</p>
<p>For Qutb, violent jihad is a necessary part of establishing true peace, which equals the supremacy of the Sharia: “When Islam strives for peace, its objective is not that superficial peace which requires that only that part of the earth where the followers of Islam are residing remain secure. The peace which Islam desires is that the religion (i.e. the Law of the society) be purified for God, that the obedience of all people be for God alone, and that some people should not be lords over others. After the period of the Prophet &#8212; peace be on him &#8212; only the final stages of the movement of Jihaad are to be followed; the initial or middle stages are not applicable.”</p>
<p>That is, as Ibn Qayyim put it, there are now only two kinds of non-Muslims: those at war with Islam and those who have submitted to it. In a report on “the roots of jihad,” BBC Middle East analyst Fiona Symon implied that Qutb was breaking with tradition by classifying “all non-Muslims [as] infidels &#8212; even the so-called ‘people of the book,’ the Christians and Jews.” But Ibn Qayyim (and other authorities I’ve quoted throughout this book) make it clear that in this Qutb was in full agreement with Islamic tradition.<br />
Not only is the call to Islam universal; it is eternal. “This struggle,” says Qutb, “is not a temporary phase but an eternal state &#8212; an eternal state, as truth and falsehood cannot co-exist on this earth.”</p>
<p>While he insists that jihad is not solely for self-defense, Qutb doesn’t deny that defense of Islam is a part of the Muslim’s duty &#8212; especially given the contemporary state of world affairs: “Today, Muslims continue to be the target of religious persecution under a host of Christian, Zionist and secular regimes in many parts of the world. This situation makes jihad an incumbent duty on Muslims.” But the goal of this jihad, as he makes clear in Milestones and elsewhere, is not simply the ending of persecution, but the establishment of the Sharia everywhere.</p>
<p>This absolutist perspective is the view of jihadis today. Qutb is a widely revered figure and his books are easily available in Islamic bookstores even in the United States. <em>Milestones</em> is offered for sale by most online Muslim bookstores. The Muslim Brotherhood counts Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb as its two leading lights. The Brotherhood, as well as Muslims around the world today, hail al-Banna, assassinated under mysterious circumstances, and Qutb, executed by Nasser, as shahids, martyrs. Some Muslims even consider Qutb the leading Sunni thinker of the twentieth century. Zafar Bangash, Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought in London, calls Qutb “a man of impeccable Islamic credentials [who] made an immense contribution to Muslim political thought at a time when the Muslim world was still mesmerised by such western notions as nationalism, the nation-State and fathers of nations.” Qutb’s biographer claims that his subject is “the most famous personality of the Muslim world in the second half of the 20th century.”</p>
<p>The Brotherhood, meanwhile, was banned by the Egyptian government in 1948 for its participation in terrorist activities, but al-Banna reacted to the ban by declaring, “when words are banned, hands make their move.” In the ensuing years the Brothers were reinstated and banned again, tried to assassinate Nasser several times, and were promised by Anwar Sadat in 1970 that Sharia would be implemented in Egypt. On October 6, 1981, with the Sharia still not Egypt’s sole source of public order, Sadat was assassinated by four Muslim Brothers. The Brotherhood is still a presence in Egypt, continuing a wary give-and-take with the Mubarak government and spreading far and wide the message of Qutb.</p>
<p>Today the Brotherhood proudly takes credit for “liberating Muslim lands from colonialist powers in almost every Muslim country. The ikhwan [Brothers] were active amongst Muslims in Central Asian Muslim republics since the ‘70s, and their involvement can be seen recently in such republics as Tajikistan. More recently they had a major role in the struggle for Afghanistan and Kashmir.” They proclaim: “Allah is our objective. The messenger [Muhammad] is our leader. Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”</p>
<p>And in America, we should remember that when spokesmen for American Muslim groups talk about peace and jihad as purely defensive war, they are likely to have read Qutb or at least be conversant with his ideas. Thus: Peace means a society under Sharia law. Jihad is war in defense of Allah’s law. The imposition of Sharia is the liberation of mankind. Those who currently live under what Qutb would have regarded as the tyranny of the Bill of Rights should take careful note of this.</p>
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