Just how evil are the tabloid media in the UK?
WHAT THE BRITISH ARE READING ABOUT US THIS TODAY
[Kathryn Jean Lopez]
From a friend in London:
this is from The Sun, the UK's largest newspaper, on saturday, Sept 10 2005, in a column by Jeremy Clarkson. I quote this verbatim (it's not up on their website, so i'm typing it in)
"Hollywood has taught America that the military can solve anything. It's full of chisel-jawed heroes who never leave a man on the field and never fail to get the job done. So they'd have New Orleans sorted out in a jiffy. OTOH, we are not so ignorant that we cannot recognize a series of bigoted generalizations and strawmen for what they are, something that would seem to be beyond the British reading public, at least in Clarkson's estimation.
Unfortunately, on the street you've got some poor, starving sould helping themselves to a packet of food from a ruined, deserted supermarket. And as a result, finding themselves being blown to pieces by a helicopter gunship. I have challenged Jeremy to provide video of these helicopter assaults. We will post the video as soon as it comes in, but don't hold your breath.
With the none-too-bright soldiers urged on by their illiterate political masters, the poor and needy never stood a chance. These are the self-same soldiers who are working 18 hours a day to rescue and comfort the victims in New Orleans.
It's easier and much more fun to shoot someone than make them a cup of tea. Especially if they're black." Wasn't that a line from Escape from L.A>?
I've been watching a lot of the Katrina coverage. Somehow I missed the military gunships killing poor, hungry civilians.
The understandable emotion of good people aside, New Orleans is not Mogadishu. But I suspect we can expect to read such things for a looong time. And many will believe, especially if it fits conveniently into their worldview. These terror-inciting lies and characterizations are especially sad because The Sun was on our side until recently. Perhaps the allure of Arab venture capital has finally reached even their editorial staff. I fired off an e-mail to The Sun, calling them liars and bigots and threatening Clarkson himself with the Julius Streicher chair at a future war-crimes tribunal.
This pig is a calculating liar and an enemy propagandist, directly and conciously inciting violence and hatred against Americans.
The British public have sunk to an abysmal level of sub-human bigotry and ignorance when they provide the likes of Clarkson, Charlotte Raven, and Robert Fisk with an eager and profitable audience.
These polemicists are the true heirs of Streicher and Goebbels. They are leeches, parasites, and vermin; having placed themselves beneath any attempt at rational discourse. They should be dealt with accordingly.
Write to The Sun and let them know that they have not quite managed to conceal this filth from its intended targets.
#3
No offense, but who gives a flying f*ck about what some asshole in the UK says?
Why wallow in the sewer with turds? I own a business and we do considerable business in the UK, go there often. The many folks I come in contact with don't buy this jibe.
Posted by: Captain America ||
09/11/2005 2:33 Comments ||
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#4
Hey folks. Jeremy Clarkson is a guy who hosts a shows about automobiles in the UK. He styles himself as an anti-PC guy who likes beer and cigarettes and driving fast cars. Americans are a pet hate of his because (i) he thinks you invented political correctness (ii) he thinks you are obsessed about appearance and diet (as if you are all from LA), while priding himself on being a slob. He knows fuck all about politics and likes to shoot off his mouth to get attention. To demonstrate how seriously you should take his article, he once did a show where he got a USAF pilot to take him up in an F-15 and let him fly it for about 30 seconds. He was totally drooling about the raw power and speed of the machine and boasted that he only threw up twice. His article in the Sun was pure toilet paper.
Posted by: Homer from London ||
09/11/2005 3:13 Comments ||
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#5
Homer has it spot on regarding Clarkson - I saw that episode where he went up in an F-15. He was virtually coming in his pants before he got in the thing, babbling on about how powerful it was. Afterwards, he collapsed on the tarmac and looked like a lettuce.
They didn't show the USAF pilot - perhaps because he was pissing himself laughing at Clarkson.
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
09/11/2005 4:28 Comments ||
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#6
He is the unfunny dick head from Top Gear. He doesnt even know much about cars.
As for the Sun, as Fletch said to Lenny in Porridge, "Get me The Sun. And get me something to read."
Chill out. There's many more things in this world to be riled about before you reach Jeremy Clarkson.
Posted by: John French, London, UK ||
09/11/2005 9:29 Comments ||
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#10
I thought the only reason people read the Sun was for Page Three.
Posted by: john ||
09/11/2005 9:34 Comments ||
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#11
Excuse me, people. "Chill out, it's nothing to worry about" doesn't wash. If this slob didn't have a following, and some kind of influence, he would not be a public personality and the Sun would not print his idiocy.
One of the reasons I am glad I left the UK is the unfortunate tendency of British people to dismiss or minimize scurrilous abuse that would provoke violence if it were directed at them personally. You know this is true, Brits. Excuse us if we can't be persuaded to reward the bullies of the world by just smiling, dismissing it as insignificant and passively taking it.
#12
Next response: "thin-skinned" "can't take joke" blah, blah, the usual response when verbal bullies find themselves confronted, as though failing to tolerate their abuse were a weakness, rather than the other way 'round.
#14
Darrell, Michael Moore and Jeremy Clarkson are cut from the same broad cloth and have largely the same view of Americans, though specifics vary and Clarkson is probably more honest about his bigotry.
Not many of us would advise foreigners to simply ignore or dismiss Moore if he suddenly started directing his poison toward them, unlikely as it might be that he would do so.
#15
It might actually be funny to write a satire in which Michael Moore starts heaping his scorn on a foreign country; say Mexico or the UK. This would highlight the double-standard with which anti-American bigotry is met all over the world.
#17
AC good points but I don't get riled by the LLL British press ot the LLL U.S. press any more. There are damn few that can honestly be called objective. OTH I LOVE that bitch slap website! Too bad they don't have Nancy Polosi, Hillary, or Howard Dean.
#18
I love your idea about a spoof movie on Michael Moore, AC.
And I'm with you in your concern over the aniti-American message being lapped up over there. What I see and hear from England makes me realize that even our closest ally in the world is developing a bit of a coliseum appetite-only seeing Americans pay a price for something and suffer for something-real or imagined-quenches their thirst.
#19
I love your idea about a spoof movie on Michael Moore, AC.
And I'm with you in your concern over the aniti-American message being lapped up over there. What I see and hear from England makes me realize that even our closest ally in the world is developing a bit of a coliseum appetite-only seeing Americans pay a price for something and suffer for something-real or imagined-quenches their thirst.
#20
Jules 2 - whilst I agree that there is some anti-Americanism in this country, I don't think it's as bad as you're making out.
As this is an anniversary of an event that we're all united on - I'll take the opportunity to say something I've noticed over the last four years. It's perhaps something that should be obvious, but it wasn't to me, at least not until I had a chance to look at things from a different perspective.
There are people that are Anti-American *wherever* they happen to be living on the planet. Micheal Moore, George Galloway, that sick Frenchman who said 9/11 was a total hoax, numerous people in the middle-east, Europe and Asia. Point is, that when Chirac said "we are all Americans now", perhaps he was being trite, certainly he was being politic, but whether he meant to or not, he was saying something that was resonates with people.
To me, it's the *concept* of America - freedom, liberty, the constitution, bill of rights and yes, capitalism, that is the core. These things turn a lot of people off - because it means they need to take responsibilty for their own actions. It also means they're not happy when others take responsibility when it's needed - as America has done many times.
Since 9/11 I've interacted with dozens, maybe hundreds of people on boards like this, and have come to some conclusions; basically folks that live in the US *do* have an advantage - the US system of government is alien to many many places around the world, and it is designed to limit the amount of power that central government has. But many people want that American ideal, even if they're not in the US.
And so, basically you're going to find people that hate America, or the *concept* of America, in *every* country in the world - *including* the US. So, bear that in mind the next time you read a story about the British, Italians, French, Ozzys and Canucks that hate America - it won't be the whole country, it most likely will be a small percentage from a selected audience.
Sorry all, a bit woffly - but just trying to put a point across..
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
09/11/2005 15:45 Comments ||
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#21
Hi, Tony.
Respectfully, I disagree with the opinion you expressed. That's just not how it appears from over here. Since 9/11, we have heard from ordinary people speaking as members of the infamous "international community", speaking against 9/11, but most of the time, immediately following that public denunciation of a terrorist act of war with the inveitable "buts": "but with your foreign policy, you asked for it", "but with your being more powerful or richer than country X, it is understandable how Americans are killed" or "we are justified in seeing you get attacked or be aggressed". To listen to BBC radio or any of the other eagerly and gullibly swallowed international broadcasts, Americans weren't supposed to be shocked or outraged by the attacks on
9/11-the idea's essence is that we deserved the attacks because apparently, 'malicious and imperialist America' has done equally heinous acts and somehow this horrific act brings justice.
If I get your argument right, Tony, is it basically "you've got to understand-people are envious"?
#22
Postnote-
After 7/7, seemingly for the first time since 9/11, we began to hear the utterance "there is never justification for terror" coming from the mouths of Brits. And we are thankful that some Brits have begun to see things that way.
#23
This is very mild in comparisopn to much of what is out there. The hurricane allows him a moment to feel superior. So what. I will save my bile for something and someone more substantial. The only part I take offense is where Jeremy says the military is strafing people with helicopter gunships. He's been watched "The Running Man" too many times and has problems sorting fact from fiction. The final thing I have to say is "Wanker." and walk on.
Posted by: ed ||
09/11/2005 16:58 Comments ||
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#24
Jules - couple of things. *Please* take what the BBC says with a grain of salt, it is quite simply, *not* the institution it used to be. Example A: I met with some people from the BBC that were interested in some software/systems we had - we got to chatting, and I mentioned in passing about the bias I saw in the BBC, the woman straight out said "well, there aren't that many people who you would call right-wingers in the BBC". Example B: talking head babbling on about the price of fuel (I paraphrase) "the fuel price increases, first brought in by the conservative government [that was at least 8 years ago], and continued by labour to support the environment". It's continuous, insidious and blatent. The BBC is a constant source of embarrasment to me, and many other people in this country - particularly as its bias is so obvious and we *have* to pay 120 pounds a year to it if we have a TV. As for the Sun, it's truly a law unto itself (and Rupert Murdoch), I haven't bought a copy in maybe 20 years.
As to your second point: "you've got to understand-people are envious" - I guess my comment can be read that way, but only broadly. That is, you're going to find people *in every country, including the US* that are envious of America, but you're also going to find a lot of people who are very glad America is there, who think that the ideal of America is worthwhile and are great friends of America.
As for having to understand people who are envious of the US, I'd not go that far - I pity them and try to ignore them (not always successfully).
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
09/11/2005 17:49 Comments ||
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#25
John French, London, UK
Gee, I thought London was in England!
/silliness
Oddly enough, I've noticed that people who are anti-American and/or antisemitic also tend to be loudmouthed bombasts. Generally not nearly as intelligent or educated as they fancy themselves, as well. Those who are pro-American and pro-Israel/Jews are generally softer spoken and a great deal wiser, as we've seen with our beloved Rantburg cousins. Just as so many of us in America, they got tired of pointlessly trying to pursuade idiots who are incapable of understanding.
#26
To follow up on that thought, the fight against the "anti's" musn't be conceded or the fascists will win by default, but it's impossible and pointless to waste limited resources by going full force for every little thing.
Intelligence interests may thwart the July bombings investigation
Michael Meacher
Saturday September 10, 2005
The Guardian
The videotape of the suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan has switched the focus of the London bombings away from the establishment view of brainwashed, murderous individuals and highlighted a starker political reality. While there can be no justification for horrific killings of this kind, they need to be understood against the ferment of the last decade radicalising Muslim youth of Pakistani origin living in Europe.
During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the US funded large numbers of jihadists through Pakistan's secret intelligence service, the ISI. Later the US wanted to raise another jihadi corps, again using proxies, to help Bosnian Muslims fight to weaken the Serb government's hold on Yugoslavia. Those they turned to included Pakistanis in Britain.
According to a recent report by the Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, a contingent was also sent by the Pakistani government, then led by Benazir Bhutto, at the request of the Clinton administration. This contingent was formed from the Harkat-ul- Ansar (HUA) terrorist group and trained by the ISI. The report estimates that about 200 Pakistani Muslims living in the UK went to Pakistan, trained in HUA camps and joined the HUA's contingent in Bosnia. Most significantly, this was "with the full knowledge and complicity of the British and American intelligence agencies".
As the 2002 Dutch government report on Bosnia makes clear, the US provided a green light to groups on the state department list of terrorist organisations, including the Lebanese-based Hizbullah, to operate in Bosnia - an episode that calls into question the credibility of the subsequent "war on terror".
For nearly a decade the US helped Islamist insurgents linked to Chechnya, Iran and Saudi Arabia destabilise the former Yugoslavia. The insurgents were also allowed to move further east to Kosovo. By the end of the fighting in Bosnia there were tens of thousands of Islamist insurgents in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo; many then moved west to Austria, Germany and Switzerland.
Less well known is evidence of the British government's relationship with a wider Islamist terrorist network. During an interview on Fox TV this summer, the former US federal prosecutor John Loftus reported that British intelligence had used the al-Muhajiroun group in London to recruit Islamist militants with British passports for the war against the Serbs in Kosovo. Since July Scotland Yard has been interested in an alleged member of al-Muhajiroun, Haroon Rashid Aswat, who some sources have suggested could have been behind the London bombings.
According to Loftus, Aswat was detained in Pakistan after leaving Britain, but was released after 24 hours. He was subsequently returned to Britain from Zambia, but has been detained solely for extradition to the US, not for questioning about the London bombings. Loftus claimed that Aswat is a British-backed double agent, pursued by the police but protected by MI6.
One British Muslim of Pakistani origin radicalised by the civil war in Yugoslavia was LSE-educated Omar Saeed Sheikh. He is now in jail in Pakistan under sentence of death for the killing of the US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 - although many (including Pearl's widow and the US authorities) doubt that he committed the murder. However, reports from Pakistan suggest that Sheikh continues to be active from jail, keeping in touch with friends and followers in Britain.
Sheikh was recruited as a student by Jaish-e-Muhammad (Army of Muhammad), which operates a network in Britain. It has actively recruited Britons from universities and colleges since the early 1990s, and has boasted of its numerous British Muslim volunteers. Investigations in Pakistan have suggested that on his visits there Shehzad Tanweer, one of the London suicide bombers, contacted members of two outlawed local groups and trained at two camps in Karachi and near Lahore. Indeed the network of groups now being uncovered in Pakistan may point to senior al-Qaida operatives having played a part in selecting members of the bombers' cell. The Observer Research Foundation has argued that there are even "grounds to suspect that the [London] blasts were orchestrated by Omar Sheikh from his jail in Pakistan".
Why then is Omar Sheikh not being dealt with when he is already under sentence of death? Astonishingly his appeal to a higher court against the sentence was adjourned in July for the 32nd time and has since been adjourned indefinitely. This is all the more remarkable when this is the same Omar Sheikh who, at the behest of General Mahmood Ahmed, head of the ISI, wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leading 9/11 hijacker, before the New York attacks, as confirmed by Dennis Lormel, director of FBI's financial crimes unit.
Yet neither Ahmed nor Omar appears to have been sought for questioning by the US about 9/11. Indeed, the official 9/11 Commission Report of July 2004 sought to downplay the role of Pakistan with the comment: "To date, the US government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance" - a statement of breathtaking disingenuousness.
All this highlights the resistance to getting at the truth about the 9/11 attacks and to an effective crackdown on the forces fomenting terrorist bombings in the west, including Britain. The extraordinary US forbearance towards Omar Sheikh, its restraint towards the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, Dr AQ Khan, selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, the huge US military assistance to Pakistan and the US decision last year to designate Pakistan as a major non-Nato ally in south Asia all betoken a deeper strategic set of goals as the real priority in its relationship with Pakistan. These might be surmised as Pakistan providing sizeable military contingents for Iraq to replace US troops, or Pakistani troops replacing Nato forces in Afghanistan. Or it could involve the use of Pakistani military bases for US intervention in Iran, or strengthening Pakistan as a base in relation to India and China.
Whether the hunt for those behind the London bombers can prevail against these powerful political forces remains to be seen. Indeed it may depend on whether Scotland Yard, in its attempts to uncover the truth, can prevail over MI6, which is trying to cover its tracks and in practice has every opportunity to operate beyond the law under the cover of national security.
Michael Meacher is the Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton; he was environment minister from 1997 to 2003.
Posted by: john ||
09/11/2005 06:55 ||
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#1
Even Labor MPs (and enviro-nuts) are getting the message about islamists and pakistan.
Doesn't the Oldham area have a large muslim population?
Times are a changing.
Posted by: john ||
09/11/2005 10:26 Comments ||
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#2
The "blowback" is the reult of our multilateral approach to combatting the Soviets in the Cold War.
Gotta love the cognitive dissonance that mewls about "blowback" in one breath and demands that we "reach out" to the French/Palis/Iranians/whoever in the next.
Who's to say there wouldn't be "blowback" from such efforts as well?
Anybody knows anything about the following: If there was a fateful report this week, it did not come either from Gaza or from New Orleans, where Katrina seemed to threaten to become George Bush's Monica. The report from the Persian Gulf about the collision of the U.S. nuclear submarine Philadelphia with a Turkish freighter north of Bahrain, with Tehran within range of the sub's Tomahawk missiles, showed that the Americans are preparing seriously for the next confrontation, to which Israel will.
The USS Philadelphia is an attack sub - doesn't carry ballistic missiles. These subs are often given the duty of escorting other ships and/or clearing / patrolling maritime lanes to keep them open for shipping.
A lot of countries are within range of Tomahawks from the gulf, given how long and narrow it is. The presence of the Philadelphia isn't necessarily tied to a specific confrontation with Iran, although insofar as Iran has threatened (implicitly) Iraqi oil going out and supplies coming in, the sub counters that.
A Review of The Legacy of Jihad. Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims edited by Andrew G. Bostom.
Bruce Thornton
Private Papers
Four years after 9/11 the postmortem of that disaster continues to focus on the institutional failures of our intelligence agencies and government bureaucracies. Yet the larger intellectual and cultural corruption that in part made possible many of those misjudgments and mistakes does not receive the public attention it deserves. The politicizing of the academy, for example, that accelerated in the sixties had compromised the study of Islam and the Middle East long before Islamic terrorism appeared on our cultural radar. Because of this ideological distortion, centuries of consensus about the aggressive, intolerant, and expansionist nature of Islam ââ an agreement reflecting both the facts of the historical record and the words themselves of the Koran and Muslim theologians and jurists ââ were discarded in the service of an anti-Western political and ideological agenda.
In this politicized narrative, the West is the arch-villain of history, and its primal sins of colonialism and imperialism are the engines of oppression responsible for all the worldâs ills. With regard to Islam and the Middle East, the Westâs scholars are accused of creating âorientalism,â a collection of degrading myths and stereotypes that masqueraded as scholarship and provided the intellectual grease for the wheels and gears of colonial and imperial exploitation. With some few notable exceptions, the myth of orientalism has corrupted many of the scholars studying Islam in American and European universities. The result has been a reduction of history to a melodrama in which a noble, tolerant, cultured Islamic world had been unjustly attacked by an intolerant, greedy West addled by Christian bigotry and racist stereotypes of blood-thirsty jihadist warriors. All the problems in the Middle East today, in this Orwellian rewriting of history, thus derive not from anything dysfunctional in Islam or Arab regimes but rather in the sins of the West and its Middle Eastern minion, Israel.
Among the brave scholars who have worked to correct these distortions ââ Bernard Lewis, Martin Kramer, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, Bat Yeâor, Ibn Warraq, to name just a fewââDr. Andrew G. Bostom has recently been one of the most tireless. In his columns at American Thinker, Dr. Bostom has exposed the politicized interpretations, half-truths, and outright lies that our enemies and their Western enablers have used to obscure the truth about the struggle we are in. Now Dr. Bostom has compiled an invaluable collection of primary documents and scholarly commentary concerning jihad. This compendium shows that Islamic jihad has for fourteen centuries meant exactly what bin Laden, Zaraqawi, and every other so-called âIslamic fundamentalistâ says it means: a war to compel the whole world to embrace Islam, die, or live under intolerant, humiliating restrictions designed to force the unbeliever every day to acknowledge his own inferiority and the superiority of his Islamic overlords.
Given the ideological and political corruption of the academy mentioned above, itâs not surprising that a physician has stepped up and played the role of the child who announces that the academic emperor is strutting down the street buck-naked. From Sir Thomas Browne in the 17th century to Raymond Tallis today, there is a long tradition of medical doctors examining and exposing the follies of academics and scholars. After all, unlike the inhabitants of the ivory tower ââ who rarely have to be accountable for their ideas and so have the luxury of abstract speculation no matter how fantastic or dangerous ââ doctors are grounded in the very real world of suffering and sickness, where concrete evidence and practical application have value, and where accountability is literally a life and death matter. And that is the important point about the issue of Islamâs true nature: understanding it is not rocket science. One has only to read the historical record, read the words of the Koran and the hadiths (sayings attributed to the Prophet), and read the centuries of interpretations in Muslim theology and jurisprudence, to know that todayâs jihadists have not âhighjackedâ or âdistortedâ Islam but are simply traditionalists, squarely in line with Islamâs historical identity.
The Legacy of Jihad is organized precisely to show that continuity. Bostom starts with some examples of the sort of propaganda that has made his book necessary in the first place. For example, Georgetown professor John Esposito has called the five centuries before the Crusades an era of âpeaceful coexistenceâ between Islam and Christendom, one ruined by the European greed and power-hunger that drove the Crusades. So much, as Bostom quotes Bat Yeâor, for the ââpillage, enslavement, deportation, massacres, and so onââ that accompanied the Islamic rampage throughout the Mediterranean, the Near East, and southern Asia. Or listen to UCLA law professor Khaled Abou El Fadl saying ââIslamic tradition does not have a notion of holy war. Jihad simply means to strive hard or struggle in pursuit of a just cause.ââ Bostom exposes such sophistries simply by quoting Islamic scholars like Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406): ââIn the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the [Muslim] mission and [the obligation to] convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.ââ Or listen to Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328): ââSince lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is Godâs entirely and Godâs word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.â
Complementary to the phenomenon of jihad was the dismal fate of those conquered peoples, Jews and Christians mostly, who refused to convert to Islam. Called âdhimmi,â they were (and still are in some places) subjected to a whole host of restrictions and limitations of their lives whose purpose was to force them to proclaim publicly their humiliation and their inferiority to their Muslim conquerors. As documented in many of the excerpts in Bostomâs book, the historical details of the lives of Jewish and Christian minorities living in Muslim lands, the Islamic legal documents and opinions regarding their status, and the hardships suffered by dhimmi peoples well into the 20th century and continuing even today, should explode the widely circulated myth of Islamic tolerance of non-Muslims.
Bostom continues his own introductory essay with a survey of Islamic conquest and the accompanying massacres, raids, kidnapping, ethnic cleansing, devastation, and enslavement that marked the advance of Islam from Spain to Southeast Asia. Given how obsessive we are over the European enslavement of Africans, itâs eye-opening to read about the extent of Islamic slave-trading: an estimated 17 million Africans, over one-and-a-half times the estimated 10 million purchased by Europeans, were acquired and then forced-march across the Sahara to their mastersâ territories, thousands dying along the way, their bones littering the desert sands. This trade continued for centuries after Europe and America had ended the slave trade: slavery wasnât formally abolished in Saudi Arabia until 1962, and continues in Sudan and Mauritania today. And letâs not forget the millions of Europeans kidnapped and sold into slavery by Muslim pirates in the Mediterranean, or the African men cruelly castrated to provide eunuchs for harems and government service, or the Balkan Christian boys, perhaps as many as one million, taken from their parents, forcibly converted, and made to serve the Ottoman regime.
Finally, Bostom concludes his overview with a series of excerpts from European and Muslim historians on the nature of jihad, and with the proclamations of modern jihadists and terrorists from around the globe whose interpretations of jihad are consistent with those of the historians. Particularly significant, given the distortions surrounding the Arab worldâs assaults on Israel, are the comments arising out of a conference of Muslim scholars and jurists held in 1968 after the humiliating Arab defeat in the Six Day War: âRepeated declarations,â Bostom summarizes, âexpounded the classical Islamic doctrine of jihad war, focusing its bellicose energy on the destruction of Israel.â Lest you distrust Bostomâs interpretation, he quotes liberally from the proceedings. Here is Abdullah Ghoshah, Chief Judge in Jordan: ââJihad is legislated in order to be one of the means of propagating Islam. Consequently Non-Muslims ought to embrace Islam either willingly . . . or unwillingly through fight and Jihad. . . . War is the basis of the relationship between Muslims and their opponents.ââ Likewise the Mufti of Lebanon specifically characterized the struggle to destroy Israel as a jihad: ââWe do not think this decree [Allahâs regarding Palestine] absolves any Muslim or Arab from Jihad (Holy War) which has now become a duty incumbent upon the Arabs and Muslims to liberate the land, preserve honor, retaliate for [lost] dignity, [and] restore the Aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem] . . . from the hands of Zionism.ââ Notice that not a word is said about the frustrated nationalist aspirations of the Palestinian people.
Having laid out the general theoretical and historical overview of jihad, Bostom goes on to provide both primary and secondary sources that support his analysis. After listing the verses from the Koran and hadiths regarding jihad, Bostom gives excerpts from fourteen centuries of Islamic commentary that quite explicitly detail how imperialistic conquest is justified and mandated by the Islamic faith. What is striking about this compilation is the agreement among these commentators concerning the necessity of jihad, the justice of enslaving and plundering the conquered, and the humiliating treatment to which dhimmi should be subjected. And this continuity extends to 20th century commentators who provide a justification for terrorism. The comments of Ayatollah Khomeini, for example, explicitly define jihad as violent conflict divinely mandated to ensure the worldâs salvation: âBut those who study jihad,â he wrote in 1942, âwill understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world. All the countries conquered by Islam or to be conquered in the future will be marked for everlasting salvation.â Or as the Ayatollah later said in 1979, âIslam grew with blood.â
Khomeiniâs traditional assessment of jihad as a divine mandate to use force to bring the world into the House of Islam is also consistent with the writings of Islamic fundamentalismâs most important theorist, Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966). Quoting from the eighth-century writer Ibn Qayyim, Qutb says, âThis legal formulation [regarding the relationship of Muslims to other groups] is based on the principle that Islam ââ that is, submission to God ââ is a universal message which the whole of mankind should accept or make peace with. No political system or material power should put hindrances in the way of preaching Islam.â And if such âhindrancesâ do exist, Islam then âhas no recourse but to remove them by force.â Hence this struggle between Islam and the non-Islamic world âis not a temporary phase but an eternal state.â The only way for non-Islamic societies to co-exist with Islam is if the former âsubmit to its [Islamâs] authority by paying Jizyah [the poll tax], which will 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.â
This continuity over the centuries in the understanding of jihad is evident as well in Bostomâs next section, a series of excerpts and essays reprinted from the work of modern scholars; the essay by Bassam Tibi, âWar and Peace in Islam,â is particularly valuable. His comments on the possibility of Islamâs adaptation to the modern model of interstate relations based on international law are sobering: âThough the Islamic states acknowledge the authority of international law regulating relations among states, Islamic doctrine governing war and peace continues to be based on a division of the world into dar al-Islam [the House of Islam] and dar al-Harb [the House of War]. The divine law of Islam, which defines a partial community in international society, still ranks above the laws upon which modern international society rests.â
Equally informative are the accounts of Muslim conquests that restore for us the horrendous costs borne by those unfortunate enough to be in the path of Allahâs armies. Bostom provides both modern historical descriptions and excerpts from accounts contemporary with the events, as well as a chart and color maps detailing Islamic conquests. This material is extremely important, for we moderns, incessantly scolded about the presumed sins of Crusaders and colonialists, need to be reminded how bloody and devastating was the process by which lands that had been Greco-Roman, Judaic, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist for centuries became something else.
All of these studies are illuminating, but a few are worth particular mention. The great French historian C. E. Dufourcqâs description of the razzia ââ the preliminary raids by Islamic warriors to acquire slaves and plunder and to test a regionâs suitability for full-scale conquest ââ should be read by anybody tired of hearing about Western depredations against the âreligion of peace.â For centuries, town after town in southern France, Spain, and Italy was plundered, sacked, and looted for slaves; churches were particularly targeted for the precious articles of worship they contained. One purpose of such raids was to instill terror in the inhabitants so that they either would not resist and thus be softened up for later conquest, or would pay ransom to avoid this devastation. The 17th-century Muslim historian al-Maqqari is quite explicit about the intended effect of this terror: âAllah thus instilled such fear among the infidels that they did not dare to go and fight the conquerors; they only approached them as suppliants, to beg for peace.â One canât help but think of the modern Europeans who have appeased todayâs jihadists because they fear terrorists whose victims add up to a tiny fraction of the number killed and enslaved in earlier centuries.
For us Westerners who may be ignorant of Indian history, K. S. Lalâs work on the impact of 1000 years of Muslim invasions of India will provide an important background to current problems such as the status of Kashmir. Similar to Islamic invasions everywhere, the incursions were accompanied by massacres, pillaging, depopulation, enslavement of women and children, and the destruction of temples and idols. Such exploits are celebrated in the pages of Muslim historians, as in this description of the attack on Thanesar: âThe blood of the infidels flowed so copiously that the stream was discolored, and people were unable to drink it.â This aggression continued under the Turks. And like the earlier invaders, these brutal wars were justified as part of the divinely sanctioned jihad: in the memoirs of Babur, founder of the Mughal dynasty, the ânarrative of Jihad is laced with quotations from the Quran in dozens which shows that he was . . . a scholar of Quran and Hadis [hadiths] and no simple secular warrior.â
As excerpt after excerpt in The Legacy of Jihad makes clear, Islamâs expansion was accompanied by the fate Dimitar Angelov describes for Asia Minor and the Balkans under Turkish attack: âThe ruination of entire cities, the massacre, deportation, and enslavement of thousands of inhabitants ââ in a word, a general and lasting decline in the productivity of the country.â This history, moreover, is constantly ignored in analyses of current conflicts involving Islamic states, which endlessly catalogue the Western crimes that presumably explain and often rationalize Islamic terrorist aggression. For example, we constantly hear about the âoccupied West Bankâ as the obstacle to peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors. Yet the ancient Jewish lands of Judea and Samaria were conquered and occupied by Islamic armies, their Jewish and Christian peoples compelled to live as humiliated oppressed subjects. I fail to see how it is just that lands taken in a defensive war by the peoples whose ancestors occupied them for centuries, are now to be restored to the peoples who initiated the conflict and whose ancestors occupied those lands as conquerors.
This valuable book raises an important question: can Islam reform itself and discard the ideology of jihad? Can jihad be redefined to mean an inner spiritual struggle, or defensive war, or the effort to propagate Islam through peaceful means, as many apologists claim today? Attempts to reformulate the doctrine of jihad have been going on for a century, but with scant success, for such redefinitions fly in the face of centuries of orthodoxy. On this issue, the words of Clement Huart, though written in 1907, are still pertinent today: âThe reformers of Islam may be right [that jihad is not holy war]. The intention of Mohammed, in what he said of jihad, may have been misunderstood and misrepresented. But into this question we do not desire to go. For what we are considering is, what Mohammedanism is and has been ââ that is, what orthodox Mohammedanism teaches concerning jihad, founding its doctrine of a certain definite interpretation of those passages in the Koran which speak of jihad. Until the newer conceptions, as to what the Koran teaches as to the duty of the believer towards non-believers, have spread further and have more generally leavened the mass of Moslem belief and opinion, it is the older and orthodox standpoint on this question which must be regarded by non-Moslems as representing Mohammedan teaching and as guiding Mohammedan action.â The widespread support among Islamic peoples everywhere for terrorist jihad shows that Huartâs comments are as true today as they were in 1907. The Islamists are not âdistortingâ Islam, but rather the reformers and so-called âmoderatesâ are.
Given that the academic study of Islam is so politicized, we are dependent on those like Andrew Bostom who make available for us the truths necessary for understanding the nature of the conflict with Islamic terrorism. Even fiction can on occasion be more useful than corrupted scholarship: Arabel, by Alexandra Paris, is a gripping tale of just how bio-terrorism could come to America, one that takes seriously the traditional spiritual motives of the jihadists; it very well could be to the so-called war on terror what Raspailâs Camp of the Saints is to the problem of Europeâs suicide-by-immigration.
If we are to prevail in the war against Islamic jihad, we need to know the facts of history and understand the motives of our adversaries and not reduce them to our own materialist prejudices. Andrew Bostomâs The Legacy of Jihad does precisely that.
Daily Times Editorial. Typical Pakistani attitude - a bizarre and fanciful sense of equality with India and the tactic of negotiating with a gun to its head - "Sale of dangerous nuclear weapons technology is possible at all times when a state is under an economic crunch"
EDITORIAL: Give Pakistan civilian nuclear technology!
Pakistanâs ambassador to the United States, General (retd) Jehangir Karamat, said in Washington that Pakistan âshould have the same access to US civilian nuclear technology that President Bush has proposed for Indiaâ. He then went on to take exception to the Indo-US defence pact that will tilt the balance of power in Indiaâs favour, which might compel Pakistan âto start taking extraordinary measures to ensure a capability for deterrence and defence.â This immediately brought a repartee from the audience that India and Pakistan were poised to get into a nuclear arms race, producing more nuclear weapons than they needed, thus acquiring more nuclear warheads than possessed by France and the United Kingdom.
President George Bush is going ahead with legislation that would allow the US to export nuclear technology to India despite the fact that India is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The Pakistani ambassador is of the opinion that the forthcoming legislation should not be country-specific but should similarly exempt other non-signatory states (Pakistan, Israel) âprovided they meet the same criteria as Indiaâ. The answer from the other side is that India is different from Pakistan in that it has democracy and has not indulged in the smuggling of lethal nuclear parts like Pakistanâs ânational heroâ scientist, Dr AQ Khan.
Once India is exempted from the technology-export ban, it will open its civilian nuclear programme to full inspections by the IAEA. Pakistan can also submit itself to the same regime if it too is exempted from the ban. It may have a bad record with regard to its pledge not to export nuclear weapons technology, but it has come a long way from the period when people like AQ Khan operated without any let or hindrance. In fact, its policy of normalisation with India â more crucial than perhaps the world realises â will serve to strike at the very root of why Pakistan needed to have the bomb in the first place.
Indiaâs record on democracy may be impressive but Pakistanâs turnaround after 2001 is in many ways more important. It has put itself squarely in the middle of a global effort to stamp out terrorism and has rolled back those policies that had propelled it towards international isolation and dangerous internal trends. At the present moment it stands on the verge of an economic revival that should serve to take the Pakistani mind away from military insecurity. It is planning together with India and Iran to provide against future energy shortages that South Asia will face if the regional economies take off. Because of the nuclear ban, both India and Pakistan have not been able to keep abreast of their demand for electricity. Both deserve to be encouraged to go down the economic road that will bring relief to their hungry masses. It would be dangerous to leave Pakistan out of the civilian nuclear deal, and unwise to let it feel once again that âbalance of powerâ in the region can be maintained through economic sacrifice.
Another reason why the US must think of giving Pakistan civilian nuclear technology is Pakistanâs failure to develop an internal consensus on the management of its water resources to produce cheap electricity. Unfortunately India may not be persuaded under the Indus Water Treaty to divert waters belonging to it. This leaves Pakistan only the nuclear option in the field of energy. This means that as long as the ban is in place it has to make even nuclear electricity stealthily. But if nuclear technology for energy is made available in return for full-scope safeguards on civilian nuclear plants, this will help Pakistan come out of the closet. Sale of dangerous nuclear weapons technology is possible at all times when a state is under an economic crunch.
As it is, the US is thinking of giving Pakistan a lot of military equipment including some 100 F-16 warplanes to maintain the âbalance of powerâ in the region. All this will come to naught if India is exempted from the ban and civilian nuclear technology is made available to it and not to Pakistan. More complications will be introduced into the international nuclear control regime if other nuclear powers start reconsidering the ban. For instance, it would be natural for China to reconsider its decision to exercise restraint with regard to nuclear technology export to Pakistan. A lot of positive developments are taking place in Pakistan to transform it into a ânormalâ cooperative state in the world community. A fair and even-handed approach by the US at this stage would help it along that road. *
Posted by: john ||
09/11/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
This means that as long as the ban is in place it has to make even nuclear electricity stealthily
Nonsense of course. As Burns testified to the Congress this week, Pakistan's civil nuclear programme is a joke. The nuke reactors in Pakistan were never intended for power generation.
Posted by: john ||
09/11/2005 7:11 Comments ||
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#2
On one hand, it would seem the sensible approach is to do what China has done: pebble bed reactors.
That type of reactor is far less expensive to build, produces a goodly amount of electricity, is clean, and cannot be directly used to make enriched fuel for nuclear weapons. It is indeed a sensible solution for civilian nuclear power. It is not as powerful as a US reactor, but most uses don't require that much juice.
However, the electrical power it produces *itself* is a problem. Enriching nuclear material needs an egregious amount of electricity. And, of course, these birds would use the entire output *not* to provide electricity for civilian use, but to process nuclear material for nuclear weapons.
That is, though their economy needs more electricity, it doesn't need *that* much more electricity, as least as far as its governmental priorities go. The people can do without, as long as it helps them make their bombs.
#3
Besides the pebble bed (South African technology) the Chinese are importing light water reactors from America and heavy water reactors from Canada.
Posted by: john ||
09/11/2005 14:20 Comments ||
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#4
The Pakistani ambassador needs to be told that there will be no equality of relations relative to India until such time as the Islamic people of Pakistan accept that western civilization has a right to exist and view the United States as a long-term friend and ally. Based on what I have read about Pakistan on Rantburg over the last few years, I would say it's not going to happen in his lifetime -- or his grandchildren's lifetime. If you embrace the 7th century, be happy living in the 7th century.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
