A nicely done editorial from what is otherwise the dhimmitown of Toronto
National Post
Published: Wednesday, February 15, 2006
As reported on the National Post's front page yesterday, Iran's best-selling newspaper, Hamshahri, is staging a competition to find the best cartoons mocking the Holocaust. Presumably, the editors think this is a clever move to pay back the Western world for a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. In fact, the stunt will only reinforce the revulsion many Westerners feel toward the medieval intolerance and backwardness exhibited by Islamist extremists.
The story of the Danish cartoons is well-known: They were not published as an expression of hatred against Muslims, but rather as a blow against censorship. And while some of the images were provocative -- depicting Muhammad with a bomb on his head, for instance -- the object of the satire was fair game: the divergence between the prophet's honourable teachings and their perverse interpretation by terrorists.
Most Western media outlets -- including this one -- elected not to republish the images. Though we respect those magazines and newspapers that decided otherwise, we judged it would be needlessly provocative to publish images that had already led to violence in many parts of the world. But we do not see the cartoons as hate speech, as some Canadian Muslim leaders are alleging. Rather, they lie within the modern Western tradition of subjecting all icons -- religious or otherwise -- to irreverent treatment. As numerous commentators have noted, we live in a society where a urine-soaked crucifix is lauded as high art. By this standard, the Danish cartoons are mild fare.
Cartoons mocking the Holocaust are different. They intentionally belittle a genocide that killed six-million Jews. In so doing, they communicate the message that anti-Semitism and further Jewish slaughter are acceptable.
Of course, we doubt such fine points are of interest to the editors of Hamshahri. After all, they work in a country whose President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a Holocaust denier who rhapsodizes about the immolation of Israel.
But even if Hamshahri embraces Mr. Ahmadinejad's agenda of hate, the newspaper should shut down its perverse cartoon competition for the simple reason that it casts Islam in disrepute. On this score, it is worth quoting a fine column by The New York Times's David Brooks, published last week:
"You want us to know how you feel. You in the Arab European League published a cartoon of Hitler in bed with Anne Frank so we in the West would understand how offended you were by those Danish cartoons. You at [Hamshahri] are holding a Holocaust cartoon contest so we'll also know how you feel. Well, I saw the Hitler-Anne Frank cartoon: the two have just had sex and Hitler says to her, 'Write this one in your diary, Anne.' But I still don't know how you feel. I still don't feel as if I should burn embassies or behead people ... I still don't feel your rage. I don't feel threatened by a sophomoric cartoon, even one as tasteless as that one."
Muslims responding to the publication of the Danish cartoons have rioted, issued death threats, killed people, burned embassies. Yet when Iran puts forward its filthy cartoon contest glorifying the killing of Jews, there will be no violence. Jews and other civilized people will respond as civilized people always do -- with letters to the editor, diplomatic gestures and articles like this one.
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana --- Willy Wonka announced today that he will run for mayor of New Orleans after Mayor Nagin rebuilds the city out of chocolate. The announcement comes after Nagin announced he will make New Orleans a "chocolate" city. "This is a chance of a lifetime," said Wonka. "I can put the Oompa Loompas on my staff, change the water fountains to chocolate, make it rain jelly beans, and hire Kojak and his lolly pop to protect the fine city. It sounds like a magical place. I'm so happy Mr. Nagin is doing this." There will be significant controversy over rebuilding the city in chocolate though. Infamous Louisiana Klansman, David Duke, insists that the city be built out of white chocolate. And gay advocates representing the city's large gay and lesbian population insist the city have a large area built out of Skittles, the candy with a rainbow of fruit flavors. The first major shipment of chocolate arrived yesterday, but it was looted before construction crews could get started rebuilding.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
02/15/2006 08:02 ||
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MY interest in demography dates back to September 11, 2001, when a demographic group I hadn't hitherto given much thought managed to get my attention. I don't mean the, ah, unfortunate business with the planes and buildings and so forth, but the open cheering of the attacks by their co-religionists in Montreal, Yorkshire, Copenhagen and elsewhere. How many people knew there were fast-growing and culturally confident Muslim populations in Scandinavia?
Demography doesn't explain everything but it accounts for a good 90 per cent. The "who" is the best indicator of the what-where-when-and-why. Go on, pick a subject. Will Japan's economy return to the heady days of the 1980s when US businesses cowered in terror? Answer: No. Japan is exactly the same as it was in its heyday except for one fact: it stopped breeding and its population aged. Will China be the hyperpower of the 21st century? Answer: No. Its population will get old before it gets rich.
Check back with me in a century and we'll see who's right on that one. But here's one we know the answer to: Why is this newspaper published in the language of a tiny island on the other side of the earth? Why does Australia have an English Queen, English common law, English institutions? Because England was the first nation to conquer infant mortality.
By 1820 medical progress had so transformed British life that half the population was under the age of 15. Britain had the manpower to take, hold, settle and administer huge chunks of real estate around the planet. Had, say, China or Russia been first to overcome childhood mortality, the modern world would be very different.
What country today has half of its population under the age of 15? Italy has 14 per cent, the UK 18 per cent, Australia 20 per cent - and Saudi Arabia has 39 per cent, Pakistan 40 per cent and Yemen 47 per cent. Little Yemen, like little Britain 200 years ago, will send its surplus youth around the world - one way or another.
So, whether or not her remarks were "outrageous" (the Democrats' Lyn Allison), "insensitive" (the Greens' Rachel Siewert), "offensively discriminatory" (Sydney's Daily Telegraph) and "bigoted" (this newspaper), I salute Danna Vale. You don't have to agree with her argument that Australia's aborting itself out of recognition and that therefore Islam will inherit by default to think it's worth asking a couple of questions:
* Is abortion in society's interest?
* Can a society become more Muslim in its demographic character without also becoming more Muslim in its political and civil character?
The first one's easy: One can understand that 17-year-old Glenys working the late shift at Burger King and knocked up by some bloke who scrammed 10 minutes after conception may believe it's in her interest to exercise "a woman's right to choose", but the state has absolutely no interest in encouraging women in general to exercise that choice.
Quite the opposite: given that today's wee bairns are tomorrow's funders of otherwise unsustainable social programs, all responsible governments should be seriously natalist. The reason Europe, Russia and Japan are doomed boils down to a big lack of babies. Abortion isn't solely responsible for that but it's certainly part of the problem.
In attempting to refute Vale's argument, this newspaper praised the nation's maidenhood for lying back and thinking of Australia and getting the national fertility rate up from 1.73 births per woman in 2001 to 1.77, "well above rates in developed nations such as Italy, Spain, Japan, Germany and South Korea".
Well, pop the champagne corks! That's like saying Mark Latham's political prospects are better than Harold Holt's. The countries cited are going out of business. Seventeen European nations are now at what demographers call "lowest-low" fertility - 1.3 births per woman, the point at which you're so far down the death spiral you can't pull out.
In theory, those countries will find their population halving every 40 years or so. In practice, it will be quicker than that, as the savvier youngsters figure there's no point sticking around a country that's turned into one big undertaker's waiting room: not every pimply burger flipper is going to want to work himself into the ground to pay for new shuffleboard courts at the old folks' home.
In 2005, some 137 million babies were born around the globe. That 137 million is the maximum number of 20-year-olds who'll be around in 2025. There are no more, no other sources; that's it, barring the introduction of mass accelerated cloning (which is by no means an impossibility). Who that 137 million are will determine the character of our world.
The shape's already becoming clear. Take those Danish cartoons. Every internet blogger wants to take a stand on principle alongside plucky little Denmark. But there's only five million of them. Whereas there are 20 million Muslims in Europe - officially. That's the equivalent of the Danes plus the Irish plus the Belgians plus the Estonians.
You do the mathematics. If you want the reality of Europe in a nutshell, walk into a supermarket belonging to the French chain Carrefour. You'll be greeted by a notice in Arabic: "Dear Clients, We express solidarity with the Islamic and Egyptian community. Carrefour doesn't carry Danish products." It's strictly business: they have three Danish customers and a gazillion Muslim ones. Retail sales-wise, they know which way their bread's buttered and it isn't with Lurpak.
That's Vale's second point. If a society chooses to outsource its breeding, who your suppliers are is not unimportant. "I've heard those very silly remarks made about immigrants to this country since I was a child," says Allison.
"If it wasn't the Greeks, it was the Italians or it was the Vietnamese."
Those are races or nationalities. But Islam is a religion, and an explicitly political one - unlike the birthplace of your grandfather it's not something you leave behind in the old country. Indeed, for its adherents in the West, it becomes their principal expression - a Pan-Islamic identity that transcends borders.
Instead of a melting pot, there's conversion: A Scot can marry a Greek or a Botswanan, but when a Scot marries a Yemeni it's because the former has become a Muslim. In defiance of normal immigration patterns, the host country winds up assimilating with Islam: French municipal swimming baths introduce non-mixed bathing sessions; a Canadian Government report recommends the legalisation of polygamy; Seville removes King Ferdinand III as patron of the annual fiesta because he played too, um, prominent a role in taking back Spain from the Moors.
When the fastest-breeding demographic group on the planet is also the one most resistant to the pieties of the social-democratic state that's a profound challenge. Yes, yes, I know Islam is very varied, and Riyadh has a vibrant gay scene, and the Khartoum Feminist Publishing Collective now has so many members they've rented lavish new offices above the clitorectomy clinic. I don't claim to have all the answers, except when I'm being interviewed live on TV. But that's better than claiming, as most of Vale's disparagers do, that there aren't even any questions.
Where she goes wrong is in consigning the Lucky Country to the same trash can of history as Old Europe. For Australia, this is not hail and farewell - or, as the Romans put it, ave atque (Danna) vale. Japan is unicultural: a native population ageing and dying. Europe is bicultural: a fading elderly population yielding to a young surging Islam.
But Australia, like the US, is genuinely multicultural, at least in the sense that its immigration is not from a single overwhelming source. The remorseless transformation of Eutopia into Eurabia is already prompting the Dutch to abandon their country in record numbers, for Canada and New Zealand.
In the years ahead, North America and Australia will have the pick of European talent and a chance to learn the lessons of its self-extinction, as they apply to abortion and much else.
In the '70s and '80, Muslims had children - those self-detonating Islamists in London and Gaza and Bali are a literal baby boom - while westerners took all those silly books about overpopulation seriously. A people that won't multiply can't go forth or go anywhere. Those who do will shape the world we live in.
Posted by: ed ||
02/15/2006 02:09 ||
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#1
On other threads today, there are discussions about how the Germans are reacting to their economic woes by striking in response to suggestions that they perform 90 more minutes of work per week. If this attitude can be writ large across Euroland, I think it's legitimate to ask. . . .
. . . how can a nation that will stubbornly and selfishly disrupt its own troubled economy even further as an expression of recoiling in horror from the notion of working incrementally harder ever be expected to muster the national will to defend itself from the Islamicist horde?
Please Europe - surprise me and (re)discover your Western roots.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
02/15/2006 6:53 Comments ||
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IT IS NOW ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that the recent murderous protests over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper last September were anything but spontaneous. The actions of Islamist agitators and financiers have deliberately drummed up rage among far-flung extremists otherwise ignorant of the Danish press. The usual suspects--the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran--have profited from the spread of the disorders, and even the likes of tiny Kuwait has reportedly offered funds to spur demonstrations throughout France. More important, however, and perhaps less widely understood, the cartoon jihad is tailor-made to advance the Muslim Brotherhood's long-term worldwide strategy for establishing Islamic supremacy in the West. Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
02/15/2006 12:20 ||
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BY JAMES LILEKS Why do American politicians of the Democratic flavor take such solemn pleasure in trashing their country before foreign audiences? Is there some upcoming election for Global Emperor, with all the primaries in Arab nations?
Never mind Jimmy Carter, who can be counted on to bad-mouth the United States regardless of the venue. No, it's guys like Bill Clinton and Al Gore who truly mystify. The speaker's fees can't be that great.
Most ex-presidents or ex-veeps keep a respectful silence after leaving office, but these redoubtable Citizens of the World appear keenly needful of back pats from the Davos clique. Perhaps they're so gosh-darn patriotic that they feel compelled to protest the dark night of fascism descending on America, a land so steeped in secrecy that Dick Cheney can drop a guy on a hunting trip and call the ambulance before he rings up the Washington press corps. They have to speak out! It's tough love!
But it takes a certain sort of person to believe that the Arab world is impressed and seduced when a luminary of the West apologizes. It takes a cotton-candy-headed progressive who believes that a weak America will be more loved than a strong one, and hence more successful. The composition of the applauding audience doesn't matter; they're all just another manifestation of the brilliant chap he sees in the mirror every morning.
Clinton was in full weather-vane mode in Qatar last month, denouncing the infamous Danish cartoons. "So now what are we going to do?" he asked. "Replace the anti-Semitic prejudice with anti-Islamic prejudice?"
Well, if history is a guide, the Europeans can probably multitask and handle both. But if there's any anti-Islamic prejudice waxing in the Old World, it may be a response to the throngs with placards demanding a Holocaust for Havarti vendors.
Still, that was nothing compared to the utterances at the Jeddah Economic Forum of Clinton's former No. 2, Gore. Whatever wax they use on the Saudis' marble floors, Gore's forehead was shiny with it by the time he was finished.
As an Associated Press account of the speech put it, Gore said Arabs had been "indiscriminately rounded up" and held in "unforgivable" conditions. Yes, indeed: The infamous internment of September 2001, when the government indiscriminately shoveled millions into camps ringed with flaming trenches. Or "FDR-villes," as they were known, in deference to the strategy's founding father.
Gore noted that some of these fellows had been picked up on "minor charges of overstaying a visa." "The former vice president," the dispatch noted, "said the Bush administration was playing into al-Qaida's hands by routinely blocking Saudi visa applications."
Of course! The best way to atone for our baseless paranoia is to let Saudi citizens waltz into the country with no more than a wink at the passport inspector. That's how Gore distinguishes himself from George W. Bush's approach: He wants to be nicer to the paymasters of madhouse madrassas.
Bulletin: According to a Center for Immigration Studies report, 48 foreign-born al-Qaida members were involved in domestic terrorism in the last 10 years, and 25 percent were illegal aliens. Mohamed Atta at one point violated the terms of his visa.
Good thing we didn't "indiscriminately round him up." Thank the stars he wasn't held in "unforgivable conditions."
In the subsequent Q&A, Gore declined to discuss the Israeli problem, lest he rile his hosts. Telling the Saudis to drop all the Jew-hatred cartoons while a guest on their soil? Not done, old chap.
It would be nice if any of these fellows had the spine to stand straight instead of crumpling in a posture of supplication -- a position now common to the erstwhile defenders of tolerance and free speech when they hear the ever-aggrieved "Death to Everything" mobs chanting in the streets below their tony offices.
It would be wrong, of course, to suggest that they're just fond of the 40 pieces of silver they get for showing up.
In a new Carnegie Policy Brief, Pakistan: The Myth of an Islamist Peril, Visiting Scholar Frederic Grare argues that the risk of an Islamist takeover in Pakistan is a myth invented by the Pakistani military to consolidate its hold on power. In fact, religious political parties and militant organizations are manipulated by the Pakistani Army to achieve its own objectives, domestically and abroad. The army, not the Islamists, is the real source of insecurity on the subcontinent. Sustainable security and stability in the region will be achieved only through the restoration of democracy in Pakistan.
"No Islamic organisation has ever been in a position to politically or militarily challenge the role of the one and only centre of power in Pakistan - the army,"
Grare suggests that the West should actively promote the demilitarization of Pakistans political life through a mix of political pressure and capacity building. Enlarging the pool of elites and creating alternative centers of power will be essential for developing a working democracy in Pakistan.
Posted by: john ||
02/15/2006 19:11 ||
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Starts from shaky premise, soon changes subject, then loons out. Islamic thought at its finest.
It is a sad time for Muslims. Europeans have declared open season on Islam with blasphemy and abuse deliberately going unpunished by states.
What a pity they don't have blaspehmy laws in Europe like they do in Pakland...
The unprecedented scale of protest from Muslim civil societies is also being misread as something happening at the behest of extremists and/or Syria and Iran.
It's just coincidence that in places where the Islamists aren't strong enough to throw their weight around nobody gives a rat's patou...
Some recognised European experts on Islam, like Olivier Roy, have declared that the protests go beyond the issue of the cartoons. Some have even tried to link the protest to the lack of freedoms in some Muslim polities! Well all this may comfort those who refuse to accept the extent of hurt and anger caused to all Muslims by the unpunished acts of blasphemy against Islam and its Prophet (PTUI peace be upon him), but it is absolutely incorrect.
"Yup. Wrong as wrain. Couldn't be wronger. Here's why..."
The fact of the matter is that all shades of Muslims are angry and want to see the guilty brought to book and the issue is very much of the cartoons themselves. No one has to push the protest forward. We are all protesting because we are angry and hurt by the injustice of the countries allowing their own laws to be broken because the targets are Islam and Muslims.
Denmark as a free press and it doesn't have blasphemy laws. So piss off.
Contrast this with the action taken against historian David Irving who denied the Holocaust and has been in prison in Austria, since 2005, under a warrant issued in 1989, for this denial.
Austria's part of the scene of the crime. Their peculiar laws have a similarly peculiar genesis.
Denmark, too, has seen the same Jyllands-Posten editor, who was supposedly taking a stand for "freedom of expression" when he commissioned and printed the blasphemous cartoons suddenly being sent on holiday when he felt he must also print anti-holocaust cartoons!
When the Jews were being carted away for slaughter the Danes stuck up for them. The king of Denmark was the first to sew the yellow star on his coat.No Muslims have been carted away in Denmark, and if someone were to suggest it the royals would probably take the Muslim side. But since such suggestions are actually originating with Muslims, I guess that won't happen.
So, it becomes increasingly clear that Islam and Muslims are now acceptable targets for abuse in Europe and other parts of the Christian world.
Muslims fare pretty well in Europe, especially compared to the condition of Christians and even worse Jews in Muslim countries. Blasphemy laws are only one of the mechanisms of oppression...
So much so that we are now seeing revelations of yet more physical and mental abuse being heaped on Muslims in Iraq by the occupying forces -- this time the victims being mere teenagers.
He's probably referring to the video of the Brit troops beating the crap out of the rock-throwing kiddies...
As if Guantanamo Bay and Abu Gharaib were not enough of abuse against Muslim prisoners, British forces seem to have developed a perverse joy in the physical abuse of Iraqi teenagers.
No one's had his head chopped off at Guantanamo. Can you say the same for Lahore? Abu Ghraib was a stench and a pestilence long before we got there, and it's not a patch on the way things were under Sammy. We don't flog people, we don't toss them off buildings, we don't cut their tongues out but we did keep the videos of Sammy's people doing the same things. You should watch them sometime.
A few sentiments of regret by Blair and a news item stating that one of the guilty soldiers has been arrested is all that one has gotten in response from the British Government.
Sentiments of regret and the arrest of the perps is appropriate. Groveling isn't.
Even here, the name of the offending soldier has been kept out. Why? After all, the teenagers were abused in public with one clearly deranged soldier giving vent to his thrill in witnessing this abuse. Once again, even guilty Europeans must be protected while Muslims remain fair game.
Two words, bub: Nick Berg. I agree that Euros and Americans are expected to adhere to higher standards, but it'd be nice to see Muslims do the same. But their savagery is always excused by one thing or another, even if it's the loss of Andalusia...
And now we are hearing of yet another invasion of a Muslim state in the offing -- this time Iran.
We can only hope...
And the pretext? Its nuclear programme. Consider the following: North Korea opts out of the NPT, declares it has nuclear weapons and intends to continue down this path. So what does the US do? Get involved in the Six Party talks while keeping the North Korean issue at the UNSC on ice. Then we have Iran, reiterating its intent of staying in the NPT, stating it simply wants to pursue its right to enrich uranium as allowed for under the NPT, makes a clean confession of its past omissions, allows inspections, disavows any intent to produce nuclear weapons, so what do we get? The US threatening the possibility of military action against Iran.
At the same time we've had the president of Iran demonstating that he's a psychoceramic, calls for the destruction of Israel, threats against Europe and the usual scimitar-rattling. Wehn we do finally take out North Korea, you'll bitch about that, too.
Ironically, no one is allowed to cast any aspersions at all or seek any limits on Israel's nuclear programme and weapons' stockpiles.
As far as I know, they haven't even admitted they have nuclear weapons. Maybe they don't. But nobody's called their bluff, have they?
This threat of military action comes alongside the British Foreign Secretary's statement to a parliamentary committee, on 8 February, that there was no proof that Iran was developing nuclear weapons. But then the US has never waited for proof when it seeks military action against a Muslim state.
There's no proof they aren't, either. It'd be fairly easy to demonstrate that they aren't, but they refuse to do that.
This is not to say that Iran has not been guilty of violations of the NPT, but if it really wanted to go the nuclear weapon route it would have left the NPT and not held its nuclear programme up for inspections and negotiations. As for producing fissile material, no non-nuclear party to the NPT has a larger and more threatening programme than Japan. Japan has a massive fast breeder programme and is in the process of building the Rokkasho-mura reprocessing plant. Already, in Japan's pilot Tokai reprocessing plant, 206 kg of plutonium have gone unaccounted for. But we have not heard anyone refer to this, even at the IAEA.
Japan's been inoculated against a desire for nuclear weapons.
Of course, sending the Iran issue to the UNSC will only up the ante and politicise the issue even further, leaving little flexibility for negotiations - that is, if the US is prepared to have negotiations.
Iran's been "negotiating" for three years, with no results. One would almost suspect they don't intend for the negotiations to go anywhere. One would almost suspect that they're playing for time.
After all, the US still suffers from an Iran trauma since the Islamic Revolution and the hostage crisis that followed.
There is that, isn't there? We do owe them. And we haven't forgotten. I hope we never do.
But for other members of the UN, some pertinent questions need to be answered if one is to assess the value of moving the issue out of the IAEA, which has a technical rather than a political focus, to the UNSC.
* First, what will be the next step, once Iran has been reported to the UNSC? Is there a cohesive strategy that exists on this?
I think the strategy to date has been for Iran to line up support from the Russers and the Chinee, in hope of forestalling any action. Apparently they're also lined up support in some quarters of Pakland, too...
* Second, now that Iran has decided to voluntarily implement the Additional Protocol and has also taken some transparency measures, that go beyond the IAEA safeguards and Additional Protocol, is the international community better off? The suspension on the enrichment was voluntary and non-legally binding so how can this be made legally-binding now just to try and find some rationalisation for taking Iran to the UNSC. After all, Iran continues to observe the regular NPT safeguards.
... since they're playing for time. If they cease at this point, that shortens the timetable for tromping them, without shortening their timetable for achieving nuclear weapons.
* If Iran refuses to cooperate with an UNSC resolution, what will be the response of the international community?
My guess is dithering, until the U.S. takes the lead in one direction or the other...
In the case of Iraq, non-cooperation impeded verification. As for sanctions - will they be enforceable effectively?
Iraq's were, though only somewhat. We'll have to listen to Medea Benjamin bitching and moaning about the starving Iranian children, but we've put up with that before. This time maybe we'll keep an eye on Kofi and his family and friends and prevent that little bit of rakeoff.
Will there be military action a la Iraq-invasion style by the US and a coalition of the willing with a post-event UNSC resolution to give it legal cover?
I'd guess an air war like nothing you've ever seen.
Will that help stabilise the region or enable an effective response to the situation in terms of non-proliferation, which the US itself seems to have reneged upon in the wake of its nuclear deal with India?
"Stabilizing the region" at this point involves another hack at the Gordian knot. Ridding Iran of its mad mullahs will go far to introducing actual stability, rather than stagnation. That will leave only Soddy Arabia and Pakland with significant pockets of Islamist nutbaggery. That's why both parties will be against the idea of Iran going down.
Clearly, the US approach has only put the international community, including Iran, on a lose-lose path and any military action against Iran will end what is left of stability in this region.
Exporting Islamic revolution doesn't make for stability.
It seems the US will target the oil installations of Iran, which are clustered together, with cruise missiles and then try to take physical control of them. The oil resource factor in play again!
No blood for oil, baby! But why would we target the oil installations, when we could target the nuclear installations? Maybe that should be "no blood for neutrons"?
For Pakistan, the danger lies not simply in the fallout
... so to speak...
on the domestic polity of any military action against Iran. With the US delinking India's nuclear status from that of Pakistan, a far greater danger lies in the possibility of a similar threat being given to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan's nuclear programme -- which still sits uncomfortably with the US. Otherwise why should the US deny Pakistan the same nuclear recognition it is offering to India?
Because India's a somewhat freer country than Pakland? Because the lunatics are several steps removed from leadership positions in India, while in Pakland they sit in the senate and scheme for the big turban?
The writer is director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad.
In that case, I don't think we have much to fear from Islamabad's attempts at strategizing.
Posted by: john ||
02/15/2006 00:00 ||
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"Starts from shaky premise, soon changes subject, then loons out. Islamic thought at its finest."
#4
Dr Mazari BTW is very close the head honchos of the ISI.
Anyone recall the disgraced British attache to Pakistan, the Brigadier who was caught in a sexual relationship with a sweet young pak researcher who was also an ISI agent?
Well, she, allegedly Miss Maria Kiani, worked for the Pakistan Insitute of Strategic Studies.
Dr Mazri it seems is really a 'madam' in more ways than one.
Posted by: john ||
02/15/2006 17:14 Comments ||
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#4
A Hellfire missile with a pink ribbon? That, m'lady, is style! "We're going to snuff out your worthless existence with an advanced wire-guided missile--and look good doing it!"
Posted by: Mike ||
02/15/2006 9:48 Comments ||
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Jews are the sons of pigs.
Jewish blood is pig blood.
Hamas vows to drink this blood.
Drinking or advocating the drinking of pigs blood is an act of apostacy.
The penalty for apostacy is death.
Therefore it is the duty of all Muslims to kill the offenders.
#7
Here's hoping the outside world pays close attention to this sordid little pronouncement. Looks like Hamas is taking elocution lessons from Ahmadinejad. Israel needs to blow away every single sitting of the new Hamas "government."
#9
"My message to the loathed Jews is that there is no god but Allah, we will chase you everywhere! We are a nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of Jews. We will not leave you alone until we have quenched our thirst with your blood, and our children's thirst with your blood. We will not leave until you leave the Muslim countries."
#11
Israel drew fire when they recently turned over $80 million in custom fees to al=Fatah. However, Israeli sources reveal a 10 to 1 arms ratio, Fatah over Hamas. Civil war is inevitable in the PA; time to roast the popcorn.
#14
perhaps our Jewish friends need to make the mark upon the door again....would certainly freak out the non-jews heh heh
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/15/2006 20:12 Comments ||
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#15
I would like to say that we may be all wrong about these Hamas guys. It just so happens that the house cocktail at the Trader Vic's in Damascus is "The Blood of the Jews". I know that Smirnoff vodka and grenadine are two things in it. I don't know the rest.
How do we know this gentleman wasn't just looking forward to splicing the main brace with his fellow jihadis?
#16
The proposed Pals. State violates the UNO Charter, ala MadMoud and Iran ags Israel, as its first pre-State = State? act. The PA is innocent becuz its NOT a State yet, ergo the world must treat the PA as a State despite its anti-Israel whines.
Little wonder that the moderate, influential Muslim Council of Britain refers to Qaradawi as "a voice of reason, understanding and wisdom." Indeed, with moderates like these abounding, how surprised should we be to find Secretary Rice herself while very publicly hosting an Iftaar dinner to mark the end of the "holy month" of Ramadan bestowing a federal promotion on the Muslim Umma, whose creed, she announced, is now the "religion of love" as well as the firmly entrenched "religion of peace." (The ACLU was evidently unavailable for comment.) "We in America," Rice effused, "know the benevolence that is at the heart of Islam."
A MIRAGE
At least we say we do. And we repeat it with all the sincerest, heel-clicking fervor of Dorothy's chanting "There's no place like home" while she hopes against hope that all will be well when she opens her eyes. We all want to believe there is a vibrant "moderate Islam." Not just the State Department, the CIA, the Bush administration, the European Union, and the West, but all people of good will.
Nonetheless, the contemporary vision of "moderate Islam" as a meaningful force for good is a mirage. Certainly there are moderate Muslim individuals. Large pockets of them, there and there, who have assimilated to the modern world and want only to live in ecumenical peace. But many of the people we call "moderates" are flat-out phonies, the bag-men who rise on the shoulders of the leg-breakers.
The authentic moderates, meanwhile, tarry in muted resistance to the domineering strain of their faith. The strain we like to tell ourselves is a mere fringe. The strain that has just managed, yet again, to unleash untold thousands (not handfuls of militants, but transcontinental thousands) to maraud over a trifling affront. The moderates must carry on by pretending, much like the State Department pretends, that the commands of their scriptures toward brutality, beheading, conquest, death to unbelievers, eternal damnation to apostates, the subjugation of women, the dehumanizing of non-Muslims, and so on either do not exist or have somehow been superseded (even though the Koran is said to reflect the words of Allah Himself, and even though much in it of a threatening nature actually comes later in time than the passages bespeaking moderation and tolerance).
RTWT
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/15/2006 10:02 ||
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#1
Sorry. This should prob. be p4.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/15/2006 10:05 Comments ||
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#2
Secretary Rice herself while very publicly hosting an Iftaar dinner to mark the end of the "holy month" of Ramadan bestowing a federal promotion on the Muslim Umma, whose creed, she announced, is now the "religion of love" as well as the firmly entrenched "religion of peace."
#5
Diplomacy should not be just saying nice things - it is advancing the nation's business without the big stick.
Appeasing the Muslims about foundational freedoms does not advance the nation's business, and it makes "continuing diplomacy by other means" more likey.
#6
I'm starting to agree with you re: lawmakers or politicians, SR, since the Muslims have responded to our soothing, non-escalating, religion of peace offerings by shoving Mohammed's sword in our faces. But State's job is to paint the poops.
#10
The Labor participation rates of Muslims generally hovers around 50% of the population, globally. In the West they are over dependent on welfare. And Muslims can't legitimately point the finger at discrimination, because the low participation figure applies even in Islamic tyrannies. In prominently Muslim, Indonesia and Malaysia, ethnic Chinese participation is 10% higher than that of the lazy ass, carpet humpers.
Most Western democracies prohibit data gathering based on race, hence little hard data is available on Muslim sloth and parasitism. Check out your local halal shops at 10AM, and I guarantee you will see innumerable Abdullahs doing the lazy dog act, at the expense of hardworking "kafirs." I wish they would do that back in their cess-pool homelands. Islam is a sandbag on Modernism. Muslims are the cockroaches of humanity. And their umma is a stagnation factory. Brotherhood sucks! Everybody: GET MEAN!
The past couple of weeks have shown the intense anger of Muslims around the globe over a cartoon of Mohammed posted in newspapers around Europe. With Palestinians vowing to avenge their prophet with their own blood, and embassies being burned in Syria, it is obvious that the potential for violence is of the hair trigger variety when it comes to Muslims.
All it takes is a columnist like Van Gogh, a cartoon, or even an accidental death of a Muslim and rioting begins somewhere, and at times like this; everywhere. The fact that even clerics in Baghdad are burning Danish flags in the street shows that condoning these acts is not limited to the lower ranks of Islam, but to those who teach its principles and know its writings well.
Iran has resumed nuclear proliferation after the watchdogs have been properly notified much as Saddam did after numerous U.N. resolutions banning him from doing so. Europe has unsuccessfully tried to appease them through negotiation as well as China and Russia. The U.N. lost its teeth so many years ago we would have better results from the Boy Scouts dealing with terror.
When things do not go their way they want vengeance. They burn flags, they bomb transport, they kidnap and behead. Like spoiled brats they stomp their feet, hold their breath and make threats. They obviously believe Allah is too weak to defend himself, and that Mohammed is in need of their guns. Otherwise the violence and temper tantrums would not be there. Unlike other religions that pray for the unbelievers to have their eyes opened, and figure whatever god they serve can defend his own honor, while Islam has to do Allah's dirty work for him. Well, fine to believe that personally, but to try and enforce it with death and mayhem shows the contempt Islam has of other religions and cultures, as well as the propensity for violence as instilled into them by the writings of Islam.
The hypocrisy is so evident here there can be no missing it. So why do we in the West, not take these wonderful examples of Islamic peace and plaster them all over the newspapers and televisions when these riots break out? We can easily show how the Palestinians used a holy church in Jerusalem as a place of terror and violence, while using bibles for toilet paper. Or show a mosque that sits atop a Hindu holy site that was torn down after slaughtering the worshippers in cold blood. Or show where the Taliban defaced a huge Buddhist stature simply because Islam believes that NO images of gods should be allowed. But we do not do this. First, we know it does no good because if it has no value to Islam itself, there is no respect. Secondly, they honestly believe they have this right given to them by the Koran.
To a Muslim there is no other way. If they truly held respect for Moses and Jesus, they could never hate the followers of those prophets with such intensity. So we see yet another Islamic smoke screen showing us that what they say is not how they truly believe.
Where are the Muslims who claim they do not believe like this? They are silent as usual, with exception of a small press release here and about claiming different. They are not vowing death to Muslims who have defiled the name of Mohammed, or waging jihad against those who take the name of Allah in vain while cutting someones head off or torching their property. Which tells me that no matter what they tell me about Islam, their intention is no different than the others, just not as obvious.
So how do we as a global entity deal with this Problem Child? In my mind Islam MUST be confined to a particular area in the world, sort of like putting a dunce cap on a kid and having him stand in a corner. Europe did this with Christianity after the Protestants and Catholics went to war. They decreed that there would be no more religious wars and any offending nation would be dealt with severely. Why would it be unacceptable to do this with Islam? With the US, China, Russia, Canada, Australia, and Europe united in this single cause it could be done. History has shown it worked once before, so we should give it a try. Place Mecca and Medina as the first strike targets, as well as outlawing anyone to practice Islam in the West. This way, if they decide to continue Jihad, they can go at it amongst themselves. By removing the physical threat of Muslims from Western society we can live more peacefully and deal with our own issues.
I am at the point where if Shiites and Sunnis want to kill each other, why should we spend time, money and lives to save them? Remove them all from Israel and keep building those walls. Maybe when they get hungry enough they will immigrate to non-Islamic nations and convert to religions where these antics are not tolerated. Like a spoiled brat, lock them in their room until they get hungry enough to come to the dinner table and sit like civilized people. Maybe the cartoon of Mohammed was simply like the dunce cap for a brat in class that disrupts the education of the other kids. That is how I look at it.
Perhaps the world needs to step up very soon and begin taking action, by calling Islam what it really is to most of our nations. A treasonous organization bent on violence. By using the Koran itself it is easily shown that Islam has an agenda that is dangerous to Western society. It actually goes against our own laws, so why are we standing here allowing the schoolyard bully to throw rocks at us?
Simply remove the bad element as we do any other criminal, and go on with our way of life. Lawsuits from the ACLU and CAIR be damned, we can list them as aiding and abetting international criminals and ship them off as well.
Use a huge alliance of nations to shove this brat in a room until they can play nice with other kids, even a kindergartner knows this principle.
#1
The path around the bush is well beaten, but he just falls short of getting it. You won't get the sort of cooperation talked about - the threats are episodic, assymetrical, opportunistic. It's not a problem child or criminal - it's an implacable ideology of global dominion. Yeah, it's a big step. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, it's for all the marbles. Almost there, but no joy.
Like spoiled brats they stomp their feet, hold their breath and make threats. They obviously believe Allah is too weak to defend himself, and that Mohammed is in need of their guns. Otherwise the violence and temper tantrums would not be there. Unlike other religions that pray for the unbelievers to have their eyes opened, and figure whatever god they serve can defend his own honor, while Islam has to do Allah's dirty work for him. Well, fine to believe that personally, but to try and enforce it with death and mayhem shows the contempt Islam has of other religions and cultures, as well as the propensity for violence as instilled into them by the writings of Islam.
But I agree he's not spot on:
To a Muslim there is no other way. If they truly held respect for Moses and Jesus, they could never hate the followers of those prophets with such intensity. So we see yet another Islamic smoke screen showing us that what they say is not how they truly believe.
They claim Moses and Jesus as Muslims, and declare that their followers have perverted "their true message", with the corrections given in the Koran. Not hypocrisy, just an accusation of apostasy to further justify their hate.
Where are the Muslims who claim they do not believe like this? They are silent as usual, with exception of a small press release here and about claiming different. They are not vowing death to Muslims who have defiled the name of Mohammed, or waging jihad against those who take the name of Allah in vain while cutting someones head off or torching their property. Which tells me that no matter what they tell me about Islam, their intention is no different than the others, just not as obvious.
And then this:
Europe did this with Christianity after the Protestants and Catholics went to war. They decreed that there would be no more religious wars and any offending nation would be dealt with severely. Why would it be unacceptable to do this with Islam?
Europe did no such thing. Instead, at Westphalia, all the kings agreed not to go to war with each other over religion. The Catholics had already won in South Europe and had lost in Northern Europe and England.
Finally, it can't be done given Oil dependence, which leads us to Dr. .com's 40x10 prescription.
#4
Place Mecca and Medina as the first strike targets, as well as outlawing anyone to practice Islam in the West.
Garsh, place Islam's shrines at risk over further terrorist attacks? What a novel concept!
Perhaps the world needs to step up very soon and begin taking action, by calling Islam what it really is to most of our nations. A treasonous organization bent on violence.
Though I would call it a much needed separation.
by Daniel Pipes
What are the long-term consequences of the Muhammad cartoon furor? I predict it is helping bring on not a clash of civilizations but their mutual pulling apart. This separation, which has been building for years, has dreadful implications. Signs of disengagement are all around. Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
02/15/2006 12:36 ||
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"Financial investments: As a result of freezes on funds and the designation of terrorist entities, Muslims have moved large amounts of capital out of the West and invested these either in their own countries or in other places around the world, such as East Asia."
Where we also invest heavily, BTW. I think East Asia is opening up as an interesting front. For East Asians, I worry; they are going to come under increasing pressures from Islamists in their midst.
#2
If by "east asians" you mean Chinese (et al), think again. Just look at what they do to relatively innocuous religions in Mao's Paradise. Islam's mad mullahs will get a short, sharp shock in China if they get too uppity. Bet on it.
#4
sorta like how the paleo election cinches the fact that Israel needs to unilaterally set the boundaries, build the wall, cut off infrastructure ties and say "eff you" to the paleos.
#5
When our children misbehave, they are sent to the stairs to sit alone, contemplate their transgression and compose themselves. Islam wants some stair time. Give it to them. And tell them not to come back until they are prepared to act in a civil fashion.
#6
Islam needs to be locked in the basement - the one where the lightbulbs don't work, spiders and such are everywhere, there's strange noises and whispers in the deep shadows, and Allah ain't there to help you...
oops...I was channelling my childhood...damn
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/15/2006 20:48 Comments ||
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#7
"For everyone's sake, it is important that Muslims begin more successfully to negotiate their path to modernity, not to isolation."
Why? So they can learn to build weapons as good as ours?
I was talking with an Iranian friend of mine the other day. He is an enlightened Middle Easterner and rues the day Khomeini ascended to power in Iran. Unlike many of his fellow countrymen, I have never had trouble discussing many of even the most sensitive issues surrounding Irans recent actions. He displays a clear understanding of exactly why Iran must not obtain nuclear weapons and also knows that a popular uprising to topple the mullahs is less than likely.
Here at Rantburg, I often talk about the Global Cultural Genocide that awaits our world should fundamentalist or Salafist Islam come to power. The re-established of a Caliphate could easily be followed by an abandonment of many modern advances such as equal rights for women, coeducational universities, many aspects of modern medicine and other technological advances like camera cell phones. The political ramifications and potential for curtailment of religious freedom, free speech and the right to self-expression all stand at risk. Denmarks recent publication of cartoons brought this into a very glaring light.
More than anything, it is the reversion of centuries of medical and technical progress that poses one of the greatest threats to modern culture. Should these advances be abandoned, it would spell the doom of millions, if not, billions of innocent people. As a thought experiment, I asked my Iranian friend how many people would perish in the establishment of a global Caliphate. His immediate offhand estimate was half of the worlds population.
I concur with his estimate and had already reached such a conclusion several days ago. This is the tipping point referred to in the title. If Islam continues to press for global domination then the remaining world must clearly understand the consequences that await us. When placed upon the scales, the lives of some 1.25 billion Muslims do not compare, even remotely, to this planets six or seven billion inhabitants. This realization is what finally tipped the scales for myself. The potential deaths of some three billion people quite simply outweigh the outright extermination of 1.25 billion Muslims. Added to that is the fact that our world would continue to proceed apace in its pursuit of modernization, untrammeled by restrictive and outrightly oppressive Islamist constraints.
This is what we are confronted with. Losing a huge fraction of this worlds entire population and regressing several centuries or simply eliminating a violent and pathological portion of our globes people who insist upon domination through violent religious conversion and imposition of backwards and archaic theocratic dictum. This is the tipping point I have finally had to recognize. I now advocate direct and unmistakable policy which puts the Islamic world on notice that their quest for imposition of global sharia law is no longer acceptable and that any continuation of violent jihaddist pursuit thereof will eventually result in a global Muslim holocaust.
I welcome other points of view and would like this discussion to examine alternate approaches to containing the threat of Islamist domination. Terrorism has already taken a devastating toll upon our modern world and I seek an immediate end to this constant drain of manpower and resources. Each day another 9-11 happens. Another 3,000 people perish of starvation, disease and deprivation. The massive diversion of wealth and effort required to combat Islamist terrorism is no longer acceptable. Too many other people are perishing on a daily basis because a minuscule fraction of an intolerant and violent religion seeks to impose their worldview on an unwilling planet. The vast treasure and Herculean labor currently being expended on securing our world against Islamist terrorism must be redirected back towards addressing this worlds more pressing needs.
If Islam is incapable of or unwilling to reign in its own fanatics, then it must pay the price for disrupting so much of our worlds progress towards global peace and international cooperation. Too much is at stake to permit this sort of murderous and repressive culture to abound any further. We have already seen enough of what Islamism intends to imagine that anything less than Global Cultural Genocide awaits us.
#1
I don't know if I should be relieved or horrified that individuals more rational than I are starting to draw the same conclusion. Gonna be a looong time before the West gets to that tipping point.
#2
I suspect that the death of Islam will come as a spiritual, not physical thing. That is, a little-known fact that has Imams and Mullahs shaking in their boots around the world, is that Moslems are leaving their religion in droves, and holding their noses.
It is not good enough for these apostates to just quit, however. They are so repelled by Islam and other Moslems that for the most part they are becoming Christians. Being called "non-practicing" is not good enough for them; unless they are "something else", they just aren't far enough away from what they despise.
The only people "becoming" Moslems are poor teenagers from families that were already Moslem. But they are not becoming *real* Moslems, they are just embracing the parts they like, such as violence, misogeny, and the lack of responsibility for their actions. In other words, they are just thugs, using Islam as their excuse.
This "holocaust" is not loud, nor is it all happening in one place. It is everywhere. And only the statisticians and collection plates tell the real story.
Islam is hardening its stance, becoming more fundamentalist and strict, not out of strength, but because it is starving, withering.
#3
But they are not becoming *real* Moslems, they are just embracing the parts they like, such as violence, misogeny, and the lack of responsibility for their actions. In other words, they are just thugs, using Islam as their excuse.
Dunno. That sounds like Mohammed to me.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/15/2006 13:36 Comments ||
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#4
Zenster:
I can't stand you, but you are right about the genocidal nature of a Muslim Craptopia.
When final-jihad leaves a single khaliph, the moon-god worshippers will turn on each other, according to the self-appointed "prophet" of camel herders. But first, remaining religions - Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc - would be laid waste of billions of members. Seculars and Atheists would enter oblivion as well. If the Shiite-Sunni divide (15-85%) held until then, that would leave more billions of corpses. Then there is the divisions among Sunnis: Wahabis v Ikhwan v Alawites v Nadlatals v Jamaatis v Tablighis v Hizbhis, ad nauseum. Very bloody.
So let's pre-empt the genocide scenario by dictating terms of surrender to the Muslim enemy. The time is opportune for an American, Russian, Chinese, Indian, Euro alliance against the most vulgar mob of savages ever to pollute humanity. We know the way; let's develop the will.
#6
I would have no qualms whatsoever about moving large numbers of Muslims out of the West. The people on the 'Freedom Go To Hell' march, the prisoners at Belmarsh, CAIR, the MCB, the MAB, anyone who habitually uses the words 'Caliphate', 'jihad', 'sharia', or 'Zionist', anyone connected with Bakri or Hamza or others of that ilk, anyone who expressed approval of the Rushdie fatwah or the van Gogh murder, anyone found to be forcing women in their community to wear the veil, any Muslim involved in any kind of criminal activity etc. It would certainly run into the millions, and 99% of them would be male. I reached this conclusion several years ago.
#7
Anonymoose, I haven't heard that before. The refrain of fastest growing religion is almost as loud as Religion of Peace. I've always said you can grow faster percentage wise when your numbers are smaller to begin with but I never actually questions the premise.
What you say rings true. I'd really love to see a link if you've got one. Not so much proof but further reading.
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.
Why do American politicians of the Democratic flavor take such solemn pleasure in trashing their country before foreign audiences? Is there some upcoming election for Global Emperor, with all the primaries in Arab nations?
It is a sad time for Muslims. Europeans have declared open season on Islam with blasphemy and abuse deliberately going unpunished by states. 
