Excerpts below:
"Islam is a religion of peace." That is what every Western leader says every time a Muslim sets something off.
Subway bombs? "Peace." Airline plots? "Peace." Car bombs? "Peace." It must be hard these days being a violent jihadi. No one in power believes what you say. It's just impossible to get your message across.
The U.S. authorities are making the same mistakes, and in exactly the same order, as those that the British government has made. Violent Islam is the problem and therefore some other form of yet to be decided upon peaceful Islam is the solution. Either way, win for Islam. Whatever the question, the answer is "Islam."
In my experience this is a terrible mistake. The answer to violent Islam is not Islam. And contra every liberal pundit practicing their religion of peace and acceptance speech, building a mosque by ground zero is not a counter-argument to violent Islam. It is an apology, and an offering, to it.
The answer to radical Islam is liberal, pluralistic, democracy. There's a reason for that. Islam itself is screwed. No major Islamic leader in the world today preaches a message even remotely close to what most of the new American "let's build the mosque" crew would find even barely tolerable.
When the pope comes to London next month, he is going to be greeted by substantial numbers of protests organized by people calling for his arrest and accusing him of the wildest hatreds. Yet we do not hear that critics of the pope are bigoted, "Christianophobic." Nor even if they were should it cause any alarm. But Islam is different.
Why? It goes back to the "phobia" business. Arachnophobia is an irrational fear of spiders and claustrophobia is an irrational fear of small places. They are irrational because most small spiders and most small spaces do not kill you. There are, however, very sensible reasons to be fearful of many forms of Islam. Commuters in London and Madrid know why. As do Dutch filmmakers. And so do the numerous Muslim-born writers, artists, and musicians who spend their lives in hiding for fear of murder from their erstwhile co-religionists for "crimes" like "apostasy" and literary criticism.
But the cowardice in identifying this and cringing stupidity of what passes for intellectuals and commentators in America, like the U.K., today is staggering.
I regard myself as pretty much color blind and religion blind. And I expect the favor to be returned. When I go into a mosque, I take my shoes off. When I go to Muslim countries, I behave in the manner they expect. But religious toleration is a two-way street. America is not a Muslim country.
Islam however has never been historically very good at understanding this. For all leading Islamic scholars the whole world belongs to Islam. Non-Muslims don't have a say in it.
Instead of protecting civil liberties, the Justice Department is wasting money coddling prison inmates, including convicted terrorists. A report released by the department's inspector general last week examined implementation of a section of the USA Patriot Act that requires the evaluation and, if necessary, investigation of claims of civil rights or civil liberties violations allegedly committed by Justice employees. This part of the act was meant to serve as a safeguard against abuse of the law's newly granted anti-terrorism powers. One might imagine, for example, a complaint about the FBI using wiretapping authority to spy on nonviolent domestic political groups.
Instead of serving as a reasonable limitation on a sweeping law, the provision in practice has become a magnet for trivial and often unfounded complaints. From January through June, there were 1,997 Patriot Act complaints under Section 1001. Of these, 1,815 "did not fall within the OIG's jurisdiction or did not warrant further investigation." Of the remaining 182 complaints, just six merited a closer look. Those cases illustrate the problem.
One investigation involved a convicted domestic terrorist who was asked by a corrections officer about his country of origin and what crime he had committed. The convict replied that he was originally from Lebanon and he had been locked up for offering material support to a designated terrorist organization. According to the complaint, the corrections officer responded, "I don't believe anything you guys say." He then allegedly said to one of two other inmates, "What are we going to do with your terrorist friends?" Disciplinary action against the corrections officer is pending. Score one for the terrorists.
Another complaint alleged that Bureau of Prisons chaplains sought to regulate the size of prayer groups, as well as where, when and how long they could meet. The complaint objected to prison staff monitoring their "religious services and classes in a restrictive manner." Given that radical Islam is the principal organizing concept of Muslim terrorist groups, it makes sense to keep an eye on activities of this sort. What they call religious classes could as easily be indoctrination sessions. There is no question of the right of prison officials to monitor and regulate ideologically motivated prison gangs engaging in such behavior. One can imagine the response to a criminal skinhead complaining about restrictions on white-power study groups. We should not fool ourselves that all Muslim inmates are simply exercising their First Amendment rights freely to exercise the rites of the "religion of peace." To those inclined to violent extremism, prison is simply another battlefront in their personal jihad.
That inmates would file such complaints makes sense; it is a way they can use the system against itself. Those convicted of terrorism charges in particular would be expected to do so, and the al Qaeda training manual instructs terrorists to make spurious charges whenever possible. Given the triviality of the six charges the Justice Department felt were the most serious, one can imagine the insignificance of the hundreds of allegations that were deemed as unworthy of a follow-up.
The system remains an institutional means for the bad guys to intimidate the good guys.For a corrections officer to say he doesn't trust terrorists is not a civil rights offense, especially when he had specifically ascertained that the person in question really had been convicted of terror-related crimes. Indulging inmates with too much free time on their hands hardly advances the cause of identifying abuse of Patriot Act powers.
The problem is identified - as my Granny used to say 'Idle hands are the Devil's workshop.' Surely we must have some prisons where the cotton needs weeding or something.
If the latest reports are correct, within the next few weeks the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague will reveal the names of nine members of the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah for alleged participation in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Sources close to the ICC tell us that the list of those likely to be indicted includes the names of at least two senior members of Hezbollah.
Once the list is published, the question would be how to detain those indicted and bring them to trial in The Hague?
Since Lebanon is not a signatory of the ICC treaty, it is unlikely that it will order any arrests. The accused may also decide to run to Iran as soon as they get wind of their indictment. As Iran is not an ICC member either, there would be little chance of any arrests on its soil. Over the past 30 years several pro-Iranian Lebanese militants have fled to Iran after being indicted by courts in a number of European countries.
Thus, some might wonder what is point of issuing warrants that cannot be enforced.
The answer is that arrest warrants issued by the ICC or similar international tribunals carry a political, and some might say even a moral, weight that cannot be ignored.
Right now some 30 such warrants still remain pending, among them Ratko Mladic, the Serbian general who organised the massacre of Muslims in Srebrenica. However, many arrest warrants are enforced after many years. Mladic's partner in crime Radovan Karadic was picked up after 12 years of successful hiding.
Although the ICC is focusing on a number of individuals, it would be hard to pretend that Hezbollah as a whole will not be affected by such grave accusations. The Lebanese branch of Hezbollah, like all other branches of the pan-Shiite radical movement, is known for its iron discipline and highly centralized decision-making. It also has a seasoned intelligence service of is own which trained and supported by Iranian services.
No one would believe that individual members could organize a sophisticated operation to carry out a high profile assassination in the heart of Beirut without anyone in their party knowing what was going one.
And, if someone high-level in the Lebanese branch knew of the plot, is it possible that Tehran was not informed? Would a branch of the movement go for such a high risk operation without obtaining at least a nod from the 'mother country'?
Judging by a series of recent statements from senior Iranian figures, the answer must be no.
Here is Major-General Hassan Firuzabadi:' Those who criticize our support for Hezbollah and Hamas do not understand what is at stake. We support {those movements} because they represent the firs line of our own defense. They are fighting for our safety and security and he triumph of our revolution.'
General Friuzabadi is Chief of Staff of the Islamic Republic's armed forces and member of the High Council of National Security that ultimately sets the strategy for foreign radical groups supported by Iran.
And here is Awaz Heydarpour, a member of the Islamic Consultative Assembly's security commission in Tehran: ' Wherever there is Hezbollah there is Iran. Our revolutionary movement is not limited by borders.'
And here is Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary-General of the Lebanese branch of the movement: I am proud of being a soldier of the Supreme Guide and a fighter for Walyat al-Faqih (Rule by the Clergy).'
There is an abundant literature on Hezbollah's Iranian connection. Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Mohtshami-pour has published memoirs narrating how founded the party during his tenure as Khomeini's ambassador to Damascus.
Hezbollah was originally founded by a group of mullahs, led by Ayatollah Hadi Ghaffari, while they were in the Shah's prisons in Iran in 1975.
In 1980, the government, headed by the then Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, approved a budget of $60 million to help create branches of Hezbollah in s many Arab countries as possible. The idea was that these groups would help switch Arab public opinion in favor of the Islamic Republic during its bloody war with Saddam Hussein.
The model taken was that of the Communist International which helped create more than 60 pro-Soviet parties across the globe during the 1920s and 1930s.
Over the eight years that followed the Tehran decision, 10 foreign branches of Hezbollah were created abroad.
The Lebanese branch became the best known because of its involvement in a series of dramatic operations, including the taking of over 100 foreign hostages.
That Hezbollah is, at least in part, a foreign body, is clearly indicated by the new slogan launched in Lebanon.
The slogan is: People, Army and Resistance. (Al-Shaab, al-Jaish, al-Muqawimah).
The slogan splits the assumed unity of Lebanon as a nation-state by dividing it into three distinct elements. It assumes that people is something separate from the army and the resistance.
Because the term 'resistance' is supposed to identify Hezbollah, the slogan also assumes that the Lebanese people and their army are not willing or able to resist foreign threats against their security and national sovereignty. That assumption implicitly puts the Lebanese people and their army in the position of tutelage vis-à-vis Hezbollah.
The slogan could be seen as a cover to legitimize the creation of a Hezbollah stat within the Lebanese one with Tehran's financial and political support.
But let us return to the impending indictments.
Even if the foot soldiers of h crime are brought to justice, those who sent them into the killing field will remain immune.
The immediate question would be whether a party that is accused of being involved, even remotely, in so heinous a crime could remain part of a country's legislature and government.
Dislodging Hezbollah from positions of power would not easy. The party has the capacity and, certainly the will, to use force even if that meant pushing the country towards another civil war that few Lebanese want.
Thus the real question is the dire political choice that all those involved must face: the choice between justice and peace.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/14/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Just another nail in the Iranian Islamic Republic, if we had a president that had any inkling of what a hammer was for.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
08/14/2010 16:16 Comments ||
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#2
We no longer have a president, have not had one in over eighteen months. What we have is an Islamic apologist.
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