Muslim Invasion
The Mosque Controversy
AMEN!
The Mosque Controversy
By Thomas Sowell
The proposed mosque near where the World Trade Center was attacked and destroyed, along with thousands of American lives, would be a 15-story middle finger to America.
It takes a high IQ to evade the obvious, so it is not surprising that the intelligentsia are out in force, decrying those who criticize this calculated insult.
What may surprise some people is that the American taxpayer is currently financing a trip to the Middle East by the imam who is pushing this project, so that he can raise the money to build it. The State Department is subsidizing his travel.
The big talking point is that this is an issue about “religious freedom” and that Muslims have a “right” to build a mosque where they choose. But those who oppose this project are not claiming that there is no legal right to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center.
If anybody did, it would be a matter for the courts to decide — and they would undoubtedly say that it is not illegal to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center attack.
The intelligentsia and others who are wrapping themselves in the Constitution are fighting a phony war against a straw man. Why create a false issue, except to evade the real issue?
Our betters are telling us that we need to be more “tolerant” and more “sensitive” to the feelings of Muslims. But if we are supposed to be sensitive to Muslims, why are Muslims not supposed to be sensitive to the feelings of millions of Americans, for whom 9/11 was the biggest national trauma since Pearl Harbor?
It would not be illegal for Japanese Americans to build a massive shinto shrine next to Pearl Harbor. But, in all these years, they have never sought to do it.
When Catholic authorities in Poland were planning to build an institution for nuns, years ago, and someone pointed out that it would be near the site of a concentration camp that carried out genocide, the Pope intervened to stop it.
He didn’t say that the Catholic Church had a legal right to build there, as it undoubtedly did. Instead, he respected the painful feelings of other people. And he certainly did not denounce those who called attention to the concentration camp.
There is no question that Muslims have a right to build a mosque where they chose to. The real question is why they chose that particular location, in a country that covers more than 3 million square miles.
If we all did everything that we have a legal right to do, we could not even survive as individuals, much less as a society. So the question is whether those who are planning a Ground Zero mosque want to be part of American society or just to see how much they can get away with in American society?
Can anyone in his right mind believe that this was intended to show solidarity with Americans, rather than solidarity with those who attacked America? Does anyone imagine that the Middle East nations, including Iran, from whom financial contributions will be solicited, want to promote reconciliation between Americans and Muslims?
That the President of the United States has joined the chorus of those calling the Ground Zero mosque a religious freedom issue tells us a lot about the moral dry rot that is undermining this country from within.
In this, as in other things, Barack Obama is not so much the cause of our decline but the culmination of it. He had many predecessors and many contemporaries who represent the same mindset and the same malaise.
There are people for whom moral preening has become a way of life. They are out in force denouncing critics of the Ground Zero mosque.
There are others for whom a citizen of the world affectation puts them one-up on those of us who are grateful to be Americans, and to enjoy a freedom that is all too rare in other countries around the world, even at this late date in human history.
They think the United States is somehow on trial, and needs to prove itself to others by bending over backwards. But bending over backwards does not win friends. It loses respect, including self-respect.
LINK: http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell083110.php3
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )A True Moderate Muslim and Why Obama Sides Against Him
Obama is NOT a friend of moderate muslims, he only supports the extreme ones!!!
A True Moderate Muslim And Why Obama Sides Against Him
Ben Shapiro
On July 7, 2010, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, publisher of the anti-Islamist newspaper the Weekly Blitz, strode into court in Bangladesh. He was there to argue his case; this was his 150th appearance in court. He is charged with blasphemy, treason, and sedition for attempting to fly from the Zia International Airport in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, to Tel Aviv, Israel, to attend a peace conference in 2003. Choudhury is a self-proclaimed Muslim Zionist and is ardently pro-American. He is a true Muslim moderate. For his courage, he has been beaten by a Muslim mob, including Bangladeshi police officers, robbed, imprisoned and prosecuted.
The government threw Choudhury into jail for 17 months, deprived him of medical treatment, and tortured him. Only after the United States House of Representatives passed a near-unanimous resolution calling on Bangladesh to drop all charges against Choudhury did the government release Choudhury — without dropping the charges.
Dr. Richard Benkin, an American Jewish international rights activist who helped secure the House resolution, approached countless congressmen and senators about Choudhury’s plight. He encountered only one representative who was utterly apathetic about the situation. “Who was the one lawmaker that took a pass on saving the life of an imprisoned U.S. ally and opponent of Islamic extremism?” Benkin later wrote. “That’s right, my own Illinois Senator Barack Hussein Obama.”
There’s a reason President Obama is uninterested in the Choudhury case: Choudhury represents the true face of moderate Islam. He doesn’t shilly-shally on terrorism — he condemns it. He doesn’t waver on Sharia law — he opposes it. He doesn’t support the jihad against Israel — he stands with Israel. That isn’t the kind of Muslim Barack Obama likes. He’s more fond of the two-faced Muslims who pretend to oppose terror while secretly aiding and abetting it. He likes Muslims who seek Israel’s destruction while babbling about apartheid. Choudhury is an unpleasant inconvenience for Obama: He tells the truth about the nature of political Islam and offers a realistic way forward. Obama prefers to live in Cloud Cuckoo Land where radicals are moderates and moderates are outcasts.
I had the opportunity to speak with Choudhury this week from his offices in Bangladesh. “Only a small segment of the Muslim population is inclined to political Islam,” he reassured me. “Unfortunately,” he continued, “they are those in power and policymaking positions.” What’s worse, he said, “those supporters or preachers of political Islam are extremely loud. They have the media and they use them as tools in brainwashing people.”
The biggest problem for the West, Choudhury stated, was that we have “failed to identify and support the moderate Muslims. You will see, in most cases, true moderate Muslims are either ignored or abandoned both by Western policymakers and the so-called mainstream media.” By refusing to acknowledge true moderate Muslims, the West ends up catering to political Islamists. “You cannot, for example, speak against jihad and terrorism on one hand, and send secret envoys to terror outfits like Hamas with the hope of establishing hidden relations,” Choudhury told me. “Western nations should … handle Muslim nations, which are under the leadership of political Islamists, in a tougher manner. None of the Muslim nations giving refuge or shelter to jihad or Islamist militancy deserve any right to gain economic benefit from the West from export trade.”
Choudhury goes even further. As a practicing Muslim, he recognizes the conflict between the Koranic text and the modern world. Unlike President Obama, he refuses to gloss over that conflict. “Political Islam should definitely be rejected by the Muslims,” Choudhury explained. “The Koran should not be a guiding book for any Muslim nation. This is the best way to put aside the Koran, which is a highly political text. Islamic political parties and Islamist politics should be banned in every Muslim nation.”
Choudhury even puts the lie to Obama’s pathetic belief that Islam requires hatred of Israel “Religious Islam surely can accept the existence of the State of Israel,” Choudhury said. “The obstacle in relations between Muslim nations and Israel is again political Islam. Israel is the land for the Jews. No good Muslim will ever ignore this.”
Ironically enough, by being a true moderate Muslim, Choudhury makes multicultural liberals like President Obama uncomfortable. He presents them with a stark reality: that the leadership with which he would prefer to deal is in fact immoderate and radical. Choudhury sets a standard for Muslims that Obama would prefer did not exist.
Obama will not support Choudhury in any real way. That shows how important Choudhury is. We must identify and support the true moderate Muslims like Choudhury — and that entails rejecting false suggestions that anti-Israel, pro-Sharia Muslims are moderate. They are not. We can never make peace with them. Only if Islam embraces the ideas and ideology and religious philosophy of Choudhury will the West ever be able to live in peace.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )For Obama It’s Only About the Muslims: Obama’s new mission for NASA – Reach out to the Muslim World
I am so sick of Obama pandering to the Muslims. All he thinks about is kissing up to them and it’s getting more and more disgusting. Obama is no friend of this country and unfortunately he’s in charge. It’s like having the fox guard the hen house.
Obama’s new mission for NASA: Reach out to Muslim world
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
07/05/10 2:50
In a far-reaching restatement of goals for the nation’s space agency, NASA administrator Charles Bolden says President Obama has ordered him to pursue three new objectives: to “re-inspire children” to study science and math, to “expand our international relationships,” and to “reach out to the Muslim world.” Of those three goals, Bolden said in a recent interview with al-Jazeera, the mission to reach out to Muslims is “perhaps foremost,” because it will help Islamic nations “feel good” about their scientific accomplishments.
In the same interview, Bolden also said the United States, which first sent men to the moon in 1969, is no longer capable of reaching beyond low earth orbit without help from other nations.
Bolden made the statements during a recent trip to the Middle East. He told al-Jazeera that in the wake of the president’s speech in Cairo last year, the American space agency is now pursuing “a new beginning of the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world.” Then:
When I became the NASA Administrator — before I became the NASA Administrator — [Obama] charged me with three things: One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.
Later in the interview, Bolden discussed NASA’s goal of greater international cooperation in space exploration. He said the United States, more than 40 years after the first moon mission, cannot reach beyond earth’s orbit today without assistance from abroad:
In his message in Cairo, [Obama] talked about expanding our international outreach, expanding our international involvement. We’re not going to go anywhere beyond low earth orbit as a single entity. The United States can’t do it, China can’t do it — no single nation is going to go to a place like Mars alone.
Bolden’s trip included a June 15 speech at the American University in Cairo. In that speech, he said in the past NASA worked mostly with countries that are capable of space exploration. But that, too, has changed in light of Obama’s Cairo initiative. “He asked NASA to change…by reaching out to ‘non-traditional’ partners and strengthening our cooperation in the Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia and in particular in Muslim-majority nations,” Bolden said. “NASA has embraced this charge.”
“NASA is not only a space exploration agency,” Bolden concluded, “but also an earth improvement agency.”
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Muslim Extremist Up for Human-Rights Post
Unfreakingbelievable! Rush Limbaugh can’t even own a small percentage of an NFL team but this man can have a human rights post???? WHAT??? He is part
Muslim extremist up for human-rights post
Ex–CAIR leader’s ties to wife-beheader, Saudi Arabia questioned
Posted: April 20, 2010
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
After nearly two weeks of raucous debate, the Jacksonville City Council rules committee this week voted 4-1 to recommend University of North Florida professor Parvez Ahmed for a seat on the city’s Human Rights Commission.
Ahmed is the former national chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based Muslim-rights group recently identified by FBI agents in federal court as a “front” for the terrorist group Hamas and its radical parent the Muslim Brotherhood.
Federal prosecutors say CAIR conspired in a multimillion-dollar scheme to underwrite Hamas terrorists, who have murdered 17 Americans and injured more than 100 U.S. citizens. As a result, the government blacklisted CAIR as an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator in the case.
The group remains under criminal investigation by the FBI, which has cut off all formal ties to it despite its high political profile. A federal grand jury in Washington is actively hearing evidence against CAIR.
Ahmed’s nomination now goes to the full council for approval.
Only Councilman Clay Yarborough voted against Ahmed.
“I have too much of a reasonable doubt based on the research I’ve done over the last week and a half,” Yarborough said
Voting in favor of his nomination were council members Art Shad, John Crescimbeni, Denise Lee and Bill Bishop.
The meeting was interrupted by shouting, and police had to escort at least two members of the public out of the building.
Ahmed’s nod to the human-rights panel is opposed by ACT! for America, an anti-Islamist group.
Parvez Ahmed (WOKV-TV, Jacksonville, Fla.)
Randy McDaniel, head of the group’s Jacksonville chapter, observed, “It is surprising that so many people are pushing this individual, and I would ask why.”
McDaniel, who sent a 20-page letter to Jacksonville council members opposing Ahmed’s nomination, asserted that Ahmed has “a checkered past.”
Most recently, Ahmed was criticized for a 2008 speech in which he argued the U.S. government should treat federally designated terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah as part of the political process towards peace.
According to the bestselling new book, “Muslim Mafia,” which exposes CAIR and other terrorist front groups, Ahmed huddled with CAIR’s in-house lawyers to consider suing the U.S. and Israel on behalf of Hezbollah, following Israel’s military counterstrikes against Hezbollah terrorist positions in Lebanon in 2006.
Also, during a $50-a-plate CAIR fundraising dinner in 2007, Ahmed presented an award to the founder of Bridges TV – Muzzammil Hassan – who recently confessed to murdering his wife by decapitation, in what authorities believe was an honor killing based on Islamic law, or Shariah. The Islamic legal code is enforced by religious police in Saudi Arabia and by the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
At the April 7, 2007, fundraiser held at the Hilton Philadelphia, Ahmed personally handed a plaque to Hassan for his work at Bridges, a Muslim TV network. Hassan had approached Ahmed with “a business plan” to make CAIR a partner in the venture, according to “Muslim Mafia.”
Police last year found the decapitated body of his wife, Aasiya Hassan, lying in a hallway of his TV studio in Buffalo, N.Y. Hassan later confessed to sawing off her head with a knife after she sought divorce in the wake of domestic-battery complaints.
According to the book, Ahmed now insists he didn’t know he would be giving out an award to Hassan until the last minute.
“I found out about the awardees the same time when the audience did,” he claims in a Feb. 21, 2009, message posted on Muslim feminist Zerqa Abid’s blog.
He also says CAIR can’t be expected to fully vet those it honors.
“No organization or business can pry into the private lives of those they associate with,” Ahmed says in his post. “So how can Muslim organizations be held accountable for Muzzammil’s private failings?”
-snip-
CAIR is closely aligned with Saudi Arabia, a religious police state which the State Department has cited as one of the world’s worst abusers of human rights. And the group has received millions of dollars in funding from the kingdom.
In fact, Ahmed has personally solicited money from Saudi officials during fundraising trips to the kingdom, according to “Muslim Mafia,” which cites sensitive State Department cables.
One 2006 communique written by U.S. Embassy staff in Saudi Arabia reported the following after meeting with a CAIR delegation:
“One admitted reason for the group’s current visit to the (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) was to solicit $50 million in governmental and nongovernmental contributions.”
The core delegation, according to the cable, was led by Ahmed, who at the time was CAIR’s chairman.
-snip-
Dismissing the idea that CAIR or its leaders have had anything to do with Hamas, the then–CAIR chairman claimed: “That’s one of those urban legends about CAIR. It’s fed by the right-wing, pro-Israeli blogosphere.”
However, a letter circulating on Capitol Hill affirms federal law enforcement’s belief that CAIR is a leading front for Hamas inside the United States.
Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich sent the letter last month to four members of Congress who asked for details last fall on how CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the terror-finance trial against the Holy Land Foundation – Hamas’s fundraising arm in America – and its former officials.
Weich included trial transcripts and exhibits “which demonstrated a relationship among CAIR, individual CAIR founders, and the Palestine Committee.” “Evidence was also introduced that demonstrated a relationship between the Palestine Committee and Hamas, which was designated as a terrorist organization in 1995,” the senior Justice Department official said.
The Weich letter indicates the Justice Department has not wavered in its conclusion that the internal records it possesses prove a connection between CAIR and Hamas.
Weich’s letter was requested by U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina, a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, and her colleagues in direct response to explosive charges against CAIR leveled in the book “Muslim Mafia.”
“We are very concerned about this relationship in light of claims made in the recently published book ‘Muslim Mafia,'” the lawmakers wrote in their original request to the Justice Department for additional information.
Weich’s letter echoes a letter last spring from an FBI congressional liaison explaining why bureau policy bars outreach activities or any communication with CAIR outside of a criminal investigation.
In that letter, assistant FBI director Richard C. Powers said evidence “demonstrated a relationship among CAIR, individual CAIR founders (including its current president emeritus and its executive director) and the Palestine Committee.” Other exhibits showed that the Palestine Committee was a fundraising and propaganda arm in the United States for Hamas, which has been a U.S.-designated terrorist organization since 1995.
“[U]ntil we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas,” Powers wrote in his 2009 letter to the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner.”
Democrat Sen. Charles Schumer of New York has asked that the FBI’s ban on CAIR be expanded “government-wide.”
LINK: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=143545
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Team Obama Bans ‘Islamic Radicalism’ & ‘Jihad’ From National Security Documents
And the bozo we have for a president continues to appease the terrorists…
Team Obama Bans “Islamic Radicalism” & “Jihad” From National Security Documents
Wednesday, April 7, 2010, 4:49 AM
Jim Hoft
Yesterday, he removed nukes from the equation – Today he removed “Islamic radicalism” and “jihad.”
The Obama Administration will remove the terms such as “Islamic radicalism” from national security documents in a new effort to win over Islamic countries.
FOX News reported:
President Barack Obama’s advisers plan to remove terms such as “Islamic radicalism” from a document outlining national security strategy and will use the new version to emphasize that the U.S. does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terrorism, counterterrorism officials say.
The change would be a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. It currently states, “The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.”
The officials described the changes on condition of anonymity because the document is still being written and is unlikely to be released for weeks, and the White House would not discuss it. But rewriting the strategy document is the latest example of Obama putting his stamp on U.S. foreign policy, as with his promises to dismantle nuclear weapons and limit the situations in which they can be used.
The revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the U.S. talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Attny General Holder Hires Former Al-Qaeda Lawyers for our Justice Department
I am so sick of the corruption and secrecy in the Obama administration. Why did it take so long for Holder to admit that many of the lawyers he hired in the Justic Dept were Al-Qaeda lawyers?? How is it right that these lawyers who were fighting AGAINST us and on the side of our enemies (by defending terrorists) now get to make policy decisions regarding these same things?? It’s disgusting!
The ‘al-Qaeda Seven’ And Selective McCarthyism
Washington Post
By Marc A. Thiessen
Monday, March 8, 2010; 11:22 AM
Excerpt:
Would most Americans want to know if the Justice Department had hired a bunch of mob lawyers and put them in charge of mob cases? Or a group of drug cartel lawyers and put them in charge of drug cases? Would they want their elected representatives to find out who these lawyers were, which mob bosses and drug lords they had worked for, and what roles they were now playing at the Justice Department? Of course they would — and rightly so.
Yet Attorney General Eric Holder hired former al-Qaeda lawyers to serve in the Justice Department and resisted providing Congress this basic information. In November, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Holder a letter requesting that he identify officials who represented terrorists or worked for organizations advocating on their behalf, the cases and projects they worked on before coming to the Justice Department, the cases and projects they’ve worked on since joining the administration, and a list of officials who have recused themselves because of prior work on behalf of terrorist detainees.
Holder stonewalled for nearly three months. Finally, two weeks ago, he admitted that nine political appointees in the Justice Department had represented or advocated for terrorist detainees, but he failed to identify seven whose names were not publicly known or to directly answer other questions the senators posed. So Keep America Safe, a group headed by Liz Cheney, posted a Web ad demanding that Holder identify the “al-Qaeda seven,” and a subsequent Fox News investigation unearthed the names. Only under this public pressure did the Justice Department confirm their identities — but Holder still refuses to disclose their roles in detention policy.
Americans have a right to this information.One lawyer in the National Security Division of Holder’s Justice Department, Jennifer Daskal, has written that any terrorist not charged with a crime “should be released from Guantanamo’s system of indefinite detention” even though “at least some of these men may … join the battlefield to fight U.S. soldiers and our allies another day.” Should a lawyer who advocates setting terrorists free, knowing they may go on to kill Americans, have any role in setting U.S. detention policy? My hunch is that most Americans would say no.
Do other lawyers in question hold similarly radical and dangerous views? Without the information Holder is withholding, we cannot know if such lawyers are affecting detainee policy.
Yet for raising questions, Cheney and the Republican senators have been vilified. Former Clinton Justice Department official Walter Dellinger decried the “shameful” personal attacks on “these fine lawyers,” while numerous commentators leveled charges of “McCarthyism.”
Where was the moral outrage when fine lawyers like John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Jim Haynes, Steve Bradbury and others came under vicious personal attack? Their critics did not demand simple transparency; they demanded heads. They called these individuals “war criminals” and sought to have them fired, disbarred, impeached and even jailed. Where were the defenders of the “al-Qaeda seven” when a Spanish judge tried to indict the “Bush six”? Philippe Sands, author of the “Torture Team,” crowed: “This is the end of these people’s professional reputations!” I don’t recall anyone accusing him of “shameful” personal attacks.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )The U.S. Needs to Learn from Europe – Don’t let the Islamic Radicals Take Over!
We have GOT to learn from other countries who have dealt with the Islamization of their countries. We can learn lessons from their mistakes as well as their good ideas.The article below is very interesting and shows us very well where we are headed if we keep being ‘politically correct’ and continue to ‘tolerate’ radical Islams’ demands!! Be afraid, be very afraid!!!! This article also reminds us that it is ridiculous to think that if you ban headscarves for Muslims you should also ban crosses for Christians or yarmulkes for Jews. These are very different issues and the article explains it well.
Anti-Islamization Proponents Should Take Cues from Europe
by Diana West
When the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders recently addressed voters in Almere, a Dutch city of 200,000 where his party handily won elections this week, he told them what to expect as his once-tiny, anti-Islamization party started flexing its new political muscle. Aside from lower taxes and other political staples, his plans for this city not far from Amsterdam include a ban on Muslim headscarves.
Wilders’ ban would apply to “headscarves in municipal bodies and all other institutions (that) receive even one penny of subsidy from the municipality.” He continued: “And for all clarity: This (ban) is not meant for crosses or yarmulkes because those are symbols of religions that belong to our own culture and are not — as is the case with headscarves — a sign of an oppressive totalitarian ideology.”
Here, Wilders is distinguishing between the religions of Christianity and Judaism, and the religio-political ideology of Islam, noting not only the near-indigenous nature of the former, but also the encroaching totalitarianism of the latter. This is the crucial cultural argument to make if a cultural Reconquista of Europe from Islamization is to be successful.
Certainly, we have seen glimmers. Last year, Filip Dewinter of the Vlaams Belang party of Belgium led a winning campaign to ban the hijab – what he calls “the propaganda weapon of choice for the establishment of Islamic society in Europe” — in the Flemish schools of his country, making the same vital judgment call that Wilders did.
“(He) who defends the headscarf out of reasons of tolerance and pluralism has little or no understanding of Islam,” Dewinter said. “The hidden agenda behind the veil leads to segregation,” a veritable apartheid-regime, he explained, with which Islam seeks to control and dominate the West. Equating the Muslim head scarf with the Christian cross or the Jewish yamulke is “therefore incorrect,” Dewinter continued, identifying the headscarf as “the flag of a political ideology” in which it is not the individual religious experience that is central, but rather “the realization of a theocratic society based on sharia, or Islamic law.”
Maybe that’s a lot for Americans to take in, but they haven’t lived through the Islamization Decades that their European cousins have. As Europe’s neighborhoods, banlieues and cities have repeatedly seen, headscarf-friendly zones yield to other Muslim demands, from single-sex recreation and medicine, to a refusal to tolerate certain Western texts or foods, to the institution of Islamic banking, to the acceptance of jihadist treason in the mosques, to the entrenchment of Islamic marriage (forced and polygamous), to the ultimate recognition of Islamic courtrooms run according to sharia.
But take the French approach. After determining that the Muslim headscarf inserted religion into state-run secular schools, the French government in 2003 banned the headscarf in the public schools along with the Star of David, the yamulke, “large” crucifixes and the turban of the Sikhs. This decision made it appear as though the hijab hadn’t been singled out as a symbol of a specifically Muslim way of life that seeks to extend sharia. Thus, in the name of tolerance, all religious symbols were deemed provocative. In the name of inclusion, all were banned. This is precisely how the traditional (pre-Islamic) society dismantles itself, symbol by symbol, law by law.
And this is precisely why acknowledging and affirming the differences — “discriminating” — between Western religions and Islamic religio-political ideology is so important. Alas, it is also unthinkable for the average post-modern, multicultural Westerner. Rather than reject the symbols of imperial Islam, he capitulates, further stripping his civilization of its own identity, further enabling the Islamization process.
Now, the French government seeks to ban the full veil, or burka, in public buildings, a measure, as a recent Harris Poll tells us, that garners support from a whopping 70 percent of French respondents. Large majorities also support a ban in Italy (65 percent), Spain (63 percent), and the United Kingdom (57 percent). (A burka ban draws 33 percent support in the United States.)
Notably, that support plummets when other religious symbols are included in the burka ban. French support drops to 22 percent. Italian (10 percent), Spanish (9 percent) and British (4 percent) support follows. (American support drops to about 1 percent.)
Defiance of the multicultural orthodoxy is more popular in Europe than anyone imagined.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Obama’s Terrorist-Shielding Envoy to the Muslim World
How much more proof do we need that Obama is sympathetic to our enemies, to the people who want to overthrow us and who want us dead? On Feb. 14, 2010, President Barack Obama appointed Rashad Hussain to his Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Conference.This is a man who publicly defended a terrorist.The terrorist being the Univ of South Florida professor who pled guilty to conspiracy to help Islamic Jihad and led the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a designated terrorist organization. He has also made several other pro-Islam statements. Read below for more details.
Obama has put more radicals in high gov’t positions than any other president and we are ignoring it. Let me rephrase that, the MSM and the liberals are ignoring it. What can we do about it????
Obama’s Terrorist-Shielding Envoy to the Muslim World
by Ben Shapiro
On Feb. 20, 2003, Professor Sami Al-Arian of the University of South Florida was arrested by the Department of Justice for his leadership of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a designated terrorist organization. Al-Arian was a radical supporter of Islamic terrorism, a man who announced at rallies that he sought “victory to Islam” and “death to Israel.” He created the organization in America, designed, at least in part, to bring terrorists to U.S. soil.
On Sept. 5, 2004, law student Rashad Hussain spoke at a Muslim Student Association (MSA) conference. The MSA is in and of itself a troublesome organization, which has been repeatedly linked to terror — but that wasn’t the main problem. The main problem was Hussain’s speech, in which he explicitly defended Al-Arian, calling his prosecution “a sad commentary on our legal system … a travesty of justice … [one incident in a] common pattern … of politically-motivated prosecutions.”
On Feb. 28, 2006, Sami Al-Arian pled guilty to conspiracy to help Islamic Jihad.
And on Feb. 14, 2010, President Barack Obama appointed Rashad Hussain to his Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Conference.
When news broke of Hussain’s 2004 statements, Hussain immediately called reports mistaken, explaining that he had not uttered those words. Unfortunately for Hussain, Politico.com quickly recovered a tape of the MSA conference. Hussain then backtracked, stating, “I made clear at the time that I was not commenting on the allegations themselves. The judicial process has now concluded, and I have full faith in its outcome.” Very reassuring.
Unsurprisingly, the Obama administration is standing by its man, the same way they originally stood by communism-friendly Green Czar Van Jones. This is troubling not only because Obama consistently elevates those who champion anti-American causes, including Jones and Hussain, but also because of his original selection of these people for powerful posts.
The simple fact is that Hussain is not a problem merely because of his 2004 comments. He is a problem because of what he believes about the Muslim world in general.
His views are laid out in a report he did for the Brookings Institution, entitled “Reformulating the Battle of Ideas: Understanding the Role of Islam in Counterterrorism Policy.” First, he states that those in the United States ought to drop the term “Islamic terrorism.” “The terms ‘Islamic terrorism’ and ‘Islamic extremism’ validate the terrorist claim that their ideology is, in fact, rooted in Islam,” Hussain writes. For the same reason, he wants to end the use of the terms “jihadist” and “Islamofascist.” This is pure bunkum, implying as it does that the Muslim world takes its cues on how to interpret Islam from Christians in the United States. But Hussain knows that. His intent isn’t to protect the United States — it’s to protect Muslims globally (including radical Muslims) from having to face additional scrutiny at the airports or in the press.
Hussain’s argument quickly becomes more pernicious. He argues that Americans should quit asking the Muslim world to value freedom and democracy, and instead focus on working with non-terrorist imams to convert Muslims to a non-terrorist version of Islam. In practice, this means that the U.S. should “work with Muslim governments, religious leaders … on the ground in the Muslim world.” In short, cash and public relations help for governments like the Saudis, and imams sponsored by those governments. Again, this is ludicrous on its face — the idea that Muslims around the world will accept American non-Muslims or Christian-backed Muslims preaching about the true meaning of Islam is laughable. We don’t have the legitimacy to preach about Islam. We do have the legitimacy to preach about freedom and democracy.
Putting the most benign spin on Hussain’s writings, he is a Muslim who hopes to convert terrorist-leaning Muslims to non-terrorist Islam. But it is not enough to convert them to non-terrorist Islam if that version of Islam is also antidemocratic and fascistic. It is far too easy for non-terrorist, freedom-and-democracy-rejecting Muslims to slip over into terrorist Islam. Hussain provides the best example of that — after all, he himself slipped over that line in 2004 by endorsing the terrorist Al-Arian and ripping the U.S. justice system.
President Obama clearly agrees with Hussain’s plans for the Muslim world. But we in the real world do not have the luxury of pretending that such plans are either realistic or morally righteous. They are neither. They justify continued repression and evil in the Muslim world, and they leave us wide open to attack in the Western world by failing to properly recognize the enemy.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )The Bloody Cost of “Diversity”: The Fort Hood Massacre
The more I hear about this incident at Fort Hood, the angrier it makes me. They KNEW this man was a radical and they did nothing about it!! That’s when ‘diversity’ and ‘political correctness’ gets us killed. It really disgusts me that this kind of thinking has seeped into the upper levels of our military. It needs to be stopped. Read below for more details on how much the army really knew about this terrorist, Major Nidal Malik Hasan. Numerous lives could have been saved if they had done the RIGHT thing instead of the POLITICALLY CORRECT thing!!!
The Bloody Cost of “Diversity”
Posted by Calvin Freiburger
Feb 24th, 2010
frontpagemag.com
We’ve known from the start that there were warning signs of Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s Islamic fanaticism well before the Fort Hood shootings, signs we suspected were ignored due to political correctness. But the other night, Sean Hannity called attention to a recent Boston Globe report confirming our worst fears. The report claims that Army officials knew Hasan was a radical, but “did not act in part because they valued the rare diversity of having a Muslim psychiatrist.”
Examples of Hasan’s radical behavior have previously been disclosed in press accounts based on interviews with unnamed Army officials […] But the Pentagon’s careful documentation of individual episodes dating back to 2005 and the subsequent inaction of his superiors have not been made public before. The Globe was permitted to review the Army’s more complete findings on the condition that it not name supervisory officers who did not act, some of whom are facing possible disciplinary action.
In searching for explanations for why superiors did not move to revoke Hasan’s security clearances or expel him from the Army, the report portrays colleagues and superiors as possibly reluctant to lose one of the Army’s few Muslim mental health specialists. The report concludes that because the Army had attracted only one Muslim psychiatrist in addition to Hasan since 2001, “it is possible some were afraid” of losing such diversity “and thus were willing to overlook Hasan’s deficiencies as an officer.”
[…]
In one classroom incident not previously described by the Army – which parallels another episode around the same time that has received press attention – Hasan gave a presentation in August 2007 titled “Is the War on Terrorism a War on Islam: An Islamic Perspective.” But the presentation was “shut down” by the instructor because Hasan appeared to be defending terrorism. Witnesses told investigators that Hasan became visibly upset as a result. “The students reported his statements to superior officers, who took no action on the basis that Major Hasan’s statements were protected by the First Amendment,” the investigation found. “They did not counsel Hasan and consider administrative action, even though not all protected speech is compatible with continued military service.’’
Words are almost insufficient to convey the contemptible sickness of this situation. Thirteen American heroes are dead because of certain minds that held “diversity” to be of more worth than human lives. They wanted someone with the “potential to inform our understanding of Islamic culture and how it relates to the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The question must then be asked: If you want to be informed, why not do the research yourself? Study the messages of extreme and moderate Muslims alike. Consult with experts on the subject from within and without the faith, like Irshad Manji, Brigitte Gabriel, Robert Spencer, and others. To suggest that these peoples’ only option in learning about Islamic culture was from one unstable soldier with known jihadist tendencies is beyond absurd. How useful did these people expect Hasan’s lessons to be anyway?
It’s hard to imagine a clearer, more damning indictment of leftist thought than the tragedy that we find at Fort Hood. The current commander-in-chief deserves serious blame for not doing something about this twisted dogma that has infected military officials. But the hard truth is that it didn’t start on his watch. For years, many people, like Lieutenant Colonel Robert “Buzz” Patterson (keeper of the “nuclear football” during the 1990s) have been sounding the alarm on the sorry state that President Bill Clinton left our armed forces in, and how, in many ways, military effectiveness has taken a backseat to political correctness. And for all the good President George W. Bush did in the War on Terror, this particular crisis evidently wasn’t on his radar screen.
In the wake of 9/11, President Bush and many of his conservative supporters rightfully said we could not succumb to a pre-9/11 mindset, that we had to wrap our heads around the reality that our nation was at war. But, nine years later, with a jihadist killing spree on one of our own military bases and the Army’s top man worried not about how it happened but about “a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers,” it seems we have to ask ourselves if we really meant it.
LINK: http://frontpagemag.com/2010/02/24/the-bloody-cost-of-%E2%80%9Cdiversity%E2%80%9D-2/
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )How to Stifle Speech
When will we realize that the terrorists are using our own laws against us? They speak up and promote hate towards us and we call it ‘free speech’, meanwhile WE can’t say speak out against them and their radical views or it’s called hate speech. Somebody in power needs to have the guts to call them out on this and put a stop to it. Unfortunately our president is more on their side than ours.
How to Stifle Speech
by Cliff May
There’s an old Soviet joke in which an American tells a Russian: “In my country we have freedom of speech. I can stand in front of the White House and yell, ‘Nixon is an idiot!’ and nothing will happen to me. The Russian replies: “In my country, we have the same freedom. I can stand in front of the Kremlin and yell, ‘Nixon is an idiot!’ and nothing will happen to me either.
Updated for the 21st century, the joke might go like this: A Christian tells a Muslim: “In the West, we have freedom of speech. I can go to the Vatican and yell ‘Christianity is a crock!’ and nothing will happen to me.” The Muslim replies: “We have just as much freedom in the Muslim world. I can go to Mecca and yell: ‘Christianity is a crock!’ and nothing will happen to me either.
The fact is very few Muslim-majority countries are free countries. A Muslim who wants to speak his mind without fear, practice his religion as he chooses, and vote for or against politicians in fair elections is better off living in the West than in any of the more than four dozen nations that hold membership in the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
But even in the West, freedom is an endowment, not an entitlement. Generation after generation must have the courage to defend what we used to call, without embarrassment, “the blessings of liberty.”
That means recognizing that a war is being waged against what we used to call, also without embarrassment, the Free World. This war is being waged by an enemy many are reluctant to name: Islamists. They are fighting not only with AK-47s and I.E.D.s in such places as Afghanistan and Somalia. They also are fighting with actions, ideas and laws in such places as Europe and America. They are fighting a pitched battle against freedom of speech — the right without which other rights cannot be protected.
And, at this moment, the West is putting up a feeble defense. We are accepting government prohibitions on the thoughts we may express, we are allowing extremists to shout us down and shut us up, and we are self-censoring out of fear or faux-sensitivity. A few examples?
Start with the Dutch government’s prosecution of Geert Wilders, a Member of Parliament who has expressed unfavorable opinions of the Islamic faith and the Koran. Such views may cause offense. But they cannot be criminalized in any country that values freedom.
Would anyone consider prosecuting a Muslim or an atheist for making hostile comments about Christianity or Jesus or the Bible? In 1987, Andres Serrano offended many people with “Piss Christ,” his photograph of a crucifix submerged in a container of urine. Not only was he not prosecuted – he was awarded a prize in a contest sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts (which speaks volumes not only about American freedom but also about the tastes of the “arts community”).
And when Louis Farrakhan, after a visit to Libya, called Judaism a “gutter religion” was there anyone – no matter how outraged – who proposed sending the Nation of Islam leader to prison?
Those who defend the prosecution of Wilders contend that his statements amount to “hate speech.” And that, they assert, is dangerous and therefore must be outlawed. They point to the existence of “hate crimes” in the United States and say it’s more or less the same thing.
But it’s not. The idea behind “hate crimes” is that the law should differentiate between someone who hits you on the head because he wants your wallet, and someone who hits you on the head because you’re black, or Jewish, or Muslim or homosexual. The latter, it is argued, is worse than the former and so merits additional punishment. I have always been doubtful about that proposition. But more to the point: There has been from the start the concern that hate crimes would lead where they have led in the Netherlands and elsewhere: to justifying the criminalization of thought and expression — even in the absence of any act of violence.
Meanwhile, as Mark Steyn notes, a film titled “The Assassination of Geert Wilders” has been produced and promoted – by a Dutch government-funded radio station. No one is being prosecuted for hate speech as a result of that.
Another battle against free speech was called to my attention by Ali H. Alyami, Executive Director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia. He sent me a video of Michael Oren, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., at the University of California, Irvine. Alyami suggested I watch it because, he said, it represents a “threat to our freedom of expression.”
It shows a lecture hall in which Oren is to give a talk. A group of students, many but not all foreign and Muslim, have taken seats around the hall. Every few seconds one rises and begins to shout at Oren. Guards lead that individual out. Oren begins again – and another individual stands up, shouts and is led out. The goal is to prevent Oren from completing a single thought – and prevent the audience from hearing what he has to say.
University officials insist such behavior is intolerable – but do you think they’ll actually take the tough measures necessary to prevent such brown-shirt tactics in the future? And what do such episodes say about the values the students are learning from their professors? Is there any reason to believe they – the students or their professors – understand anything about the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights?
One more battle to consider before I let you go: Last year, Yale University Press published The Cartoons that Shook the World, a book about the controversy over the 12 drawings ridiculing Islamist terrorism which were published in a Danish newspaper, the Jyllands-Posten, in 2005.
Soon after, the OIC demanded that the United Nations impose international sanctions on Denmark and it circulated a dossier that contained not just the cartoons but examples of other European insults – most of which were fabricated. Especially memorable was a picture of a man wearing a pig mask, captioned: “Here is the real image of Mohammed.”It was eventually revealed that this was a photo of a Frenchman at a pig-squealing contest; nothing to do with Mohammed. Nevertheless, coupled with the cartoons, it enraged Muslims in many countries, some of whom took to the streets, rioting, setting fires, assaulting anyone who looked European. More than 100 people were killed.
With this as backdrop, Yale decided to exclude the cartoons from the book on the cartoons, and to omit, as well, any images of Mohammed, including those by the 19th century French artist Paul Gustave Doré and the 20th century Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. Was that because Yale’s executives feared violence? Or, as Roger Kimball has suggested, was it out of deference to Saudi Arabian donors? Either way, it’s hard not to view Yale’s decision as an act of pre-emptive surrender.
The OIC, in its 1990 “Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam,” declares that “Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely — but then adds: “in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Sharia,” which is to say Islamic law as interpreted by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya and other despotic members of this international religious/political alliance.
Theirs is not a different view of freedom of speech: It is a death sentence for freedom of speech. And it is what they intend not only for the lands they now rule but globally. What does it tell us that they are finding so many people in the West willing – indeed, eager — to assist them?
LINK: http://townhall.com/columnists/CliffMay/2010/02/25/how_to_stifle_speech
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