In an interview with Manfred Gerstenfeld for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Ayaan Hirsi Ali warned that
almost nobody in the West wants to understand that Islams problems are structural. Contemporary Islam hardly exists. Islam stopped thinking in the year 900 and has stood still for more than a thousand years. Western Muslims, however, live in an environment where you can think independently without your head being chopped off by somebody.
Hirsi Ali knows better than anyone else, of course, how precarious that freedom of thought can beeven in her former Dutch homeland, whence she was eventually forced to flee to the United States. Things may be bad in the Netherlands, but the threat there comes from a militant Muslim minority. How much more precarious must free speech be in Turkey, where the secular consensus instituted nearly a century ago by Kemal Atatürk is now being eroded by an Islamist government that enjoys majority support?
In a recent article in Die Welt, Hirsi Ali analyzes the efforts of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül to Islamicize Turkey. Rather than mount a direct attack on Atatürks secular legacy, which the Turkish military has defended by repeated military coups, they and other leaders of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) work in subtler ways, presenting themselves as moderate Islamists while appealing to the need for direct democracy in Turkey.
This dissonance notwithstanding, these means are working. The AKP is undeniably popular: some 70 percent of the electorate say they would vote for Gül if the constitution were amended to allow direct elections for the influential post of president, as Prime Minister Erdogan demands. This popularity may well be the result of Turkeys economic stabilization under Erdogan, as well as creeping Islamicization in state education and in the media. Recent mass demonstrations by Turkish secularists aside, it was only the warning of the military that persuaded Turkeys constitutional court to rule against Güls nomination for the presidency.
While such direct military interference in the political and constitutional process runs counter to the letter and the spirit of the European Union (membership in which Erdogan has made the central plank of his foreign policy), Hirsi Ali condemns as naïve the demands of EU leaders for civilian control over the Turkish military as a condition of entry. The Europeans are, in her opinion, thereby unwittingly advancing the cause of transforming Turkey into an Islamic republic. She calls on Western liberals to recognize the unique role of the army in protecting Turkish democracy from Islam.
There is no doubt that Hirsi Ali is correct to identify this Turkish paradoxthat liberty and democracy are only guaranteed by the threat of martial law. But she is also right that the liberal mindset finds such a paradox not only uncongenial, but intolerable. Most Europeans do not want Turkey to join the EU, where it would soon constitute by far the largest and youngest population. Even those who do favor Turkish entryincluding the United States and Britaininsist on stripping away the political role of the army.
Seen from this perspective, the medium-term outlook for Turkey is grim. For Europe, however, the long-term outlook is even worse. As demographic trends in Europe cause Muslims to make up an ever larger proportion of the continental population, it will become impossible to resist pressure to accept an Islamist Turkey on its own terms.
Ancient Troy was sited on what is today Turkish soil. It is hard not to see Erdogans moderate Islamism as a potential Trojan horse in the heart of Western civilization.
#2
The New Testament is a collection; the unholy Koran is a consolidation. The concept of "finality of prophethood" fixes that piece of fiction - although partly inclusive of historical fact - as the final word of the Mohammedan deity until the "end of days." Although there are sects in the cult, none doubt the universal-historical applicablity of the unholy koran.
It is essential that Western governments ensure that accurate assessments of the import of Muslim dogma, are not only attempted, but an understanding must be settled. When that is done, the 72% of Americans (etc) who still respect Islam, will join with those who properly recognize that Islam is the worst form of slavery ever imposed on human beings. BS? You don't respect liars; study the unholy Koran and see why it is the biggest lie ever concocted.
Nowhere in the op-ed does he even raise the possibility that it is something in Palestinian and Arab culture that accounts for this seemingly perverse, stubborn, maddening behavior. Indeed, nowhere in the article do the words Muslim or Islam so much as make an appearance.
Instead, Avineri draws an even more embittered contrast, referring to the Palestinians customary comparison between the Nakba and the Holocaust as
outrageous. Did the Jews of Germany and Europe declare war on Germany? Were the worlds Jews offered a compromise that they rejected? Europes Jews were murdered by the Nazis because they were Jews. What does that have to do with the Palestinians decision to refuse the UNs compromise proposal and go to war?
What, indeedand why would people still be drawing such an obscene equivalency over six decades after World War II ended when the facts of the industrial-scale mass murder of entirely innocent, helpless civilians in Auschwitz, Treblinka, and the rest are well known?
If he never mentions the Islamic dimension of the problem, it is not because Avineri, a sophisticated writer, does not know about it but more likely becauseas an Israeli still clinging to the hopes, equivalencies, and pieties of the Leftits implications are still too grim for him. If the ongoing Palestinian and Arab self-righteousness, rejection of compromise, and viciousness toward Israel stem ultimately from deep-lying cultural factors of Islamic supremacism, then the siege on Israel is likely to continue and dialogue is likely to be fruitless.
This is not something about which just Israelis must see the light. It is imperative that the entire Western world finally come to understand the abject refusal of Muslim minds to accept or understand how coexistence is the final measure of their own survival. Islam's adamant rejection of all other cultures and religions must eventually become the ultimate reason for its destruction. The parallels between the IsraeliPalestinian crisis and the ongoing war against global jihad have exceptional relevancy. The are instructional in the extreme and yet consistently ignored by nearly everyone.
#1
Stuff like this drives me crazy. At the end of a long discussion of what Islam may or may not be, and how it depends on this that and the next thing. All the problems in Iraq are due to stupid Americans that don't understand.
BUT THEN HE SAYS NOTHING ABOUT WHAT THE POLICIES SHOULD BE TO DEAL WITH THE SITUATION AS HE SEES IT!!!! IF THIS TWERP IS SO DAMN SMART WHY CAN'T HE DETAIL HIS SOLUTIONS????
#3
I don't agree with Spengler that Muslim sacrament is dying for Allan.
Example. Ever since the Oslo accords Paleos were educating their youth to be suicide boomers, yet managed to produce approx 200 out of 3 million + (and of these 200 a substantial fraction did not go through with it).
I think Muslim sacrament is killing for Allan. The suicide is just when no other way is available e.g. in Muzzi majority countries they don't boom Christians, they just kill them.
TV, radio and newspapers from all over the world often linger on the costs of terrorism, but what is not so often mentioned are the costs of the fight to terrorism. While dealing with such costs, we do not refer to how much money were spent to set up proper countermeasures against terrorist attacks, but to the consequences of a sort of Hysteria that affected whole western society from September 11th on.
Terrorism is undoubtedly a threat that must be fought with all means, but we should take care to avoid that this state of alert will turn us into witch hunters, and we should prevent the fear of terrorism from damaging us much more than terrorism itself.
Need some examples? Earlier this year, specifically on January 4th, the CNN apologized after mistakenly putting the name of US Senator Barack Obama as a caption on a story about Osama Bin Laden.
Senator Obama did not make objection about the fact that it had been just an innocent slip and the whole issue should have been soon forgotten. But it has not, and an rumor spread out in streets and on-line forums: Barack Obama is a secret Muslim and eventually a jihad sympathizer .
Obviously, theres nothing wrong in being a Muslim but, for a candidate to US presidential elections a similar rumour, worsened by Jihadist suspicions, could mean a political collapse.The most common hysteria among people, anyway, is linked to terrorists detection. As any form of witch hunt, it is based on the principle that anyone could potentially be a terrorist until he or she proves his or her innocence.
The situation is definitely worth noticing in the USA, where citizens are particularly vulnerable to similar problems and authorities are very effective in putting regulations on anything that can be regulated. For instance, some years ago the FBI distributed a brochure to local enforcement agencies in Phoenix, Arizona (page 1 and page 2 ). The brochure includes a list of suspicious activities , but actually, things such as request authorities for a stop, make numerous references to the US Constitution, defend the US Constitution, drive without driving licence and even claim that driving is a right and not a privilege, seem to be very far from a terrorist behaviour.
Moreover, States such as Alabama and Arizona published a series of tips and advices to better recognize terrorist activities, in order to report them to authorities. According to such vade-mecum, if you say that the Constitution has been subverted , if you advocate for property rights or if you believe in Marxist philosophy then you might be a domestic terrorist and your name could be soon added to the Terrorist Screening Database .
Maybe, what the brochure and governmental websites are referring to, is just a list of general behaviours that, if associated to violence or specific activities, could characterize a potential terrorist. But people is not so wise, and the risk to be transformed into a horde of bounty-hunters is verisimilar, because according to the lists we quoted above, there are few people who could say they are not terrorists.
For incredulous readers: we found a quiz that could help you in making up your mind. It is just a joke and theres nothing institutional in it, but it is based on the characteristics listed as terrorists behaviours by US authorities.. Enjoy it and let us know your personal score!
You are not much of a terrorist. In fact, you really like the state. You probably dislike personal responsibility and have a strong distrust of other people to do the right thing. You think freedom should only be given by the state to people who agree with the state.
Three of the twenty questions were about whether I think it's OK for the state to license cars and drivers.
I conclude that this site is for the kind of pallid geeks who think they're 1337. They'd be terrorists except it conflicts with their wargaming schedules.
#3
I took the quiz and got 25%. Smells like bull$hit to me. You are not a terrorist. In fact, it is highly likely that you are a socialist, communist, or Democrat. You strongly support the state over, well, everything. You likely do not believe in any individual rights. You scare me.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
05/15/2007 15:09 Comments ||
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#4
After I wrote the above I found that the timezone on my computer clock had been set to "Moscow". This does not require root privileges.
So after a couple of reboots and a cookie clearing I went back and tried the quiz again. I answered no to every question and there were no smart-ass remarks. Then I put in my original answer, but so far my time zone has stayed where it is.
This happens occasionally, where I change a setting without meaning to, but it's still kinda weird.
...if you believe in Marxist philosophy...then you might be a domestic terrorist...
Yes? And?
Note, by the way, that this was not written by a native English speaker. Another sign of terrorism!
#7
Your score is 35%
You are not much of a terrorist. In fact, you really like the state. You probably dislike personal responsibility and have a strong distrust of other people to do the right thing. You think freedom should only be given by the state to people who agree with the state.
All that for never needing to drive with a fake license or use one?
This test is written by some kid who isn't old enough to drink.
Hell when I was an underage kid (back when the drinking age was 18) I got my booze the old fashion way... making friends of kids whose parents owned taverns or liquor stores. Then it was drive down the back alley and load the car up with free booze and the friend. And make sure one of your friends had a farming driving license that let him drive the car at 14 years old....
Sheesh... where are these kids with imagination....
Another good technique was to asked the old man who bought a pint of peppermint schnapps and an icecream cone everyday. Hell for buying the icecream cone he would buy what you wanted with the schnapps - and this when you were just 14.
Congratulations, you are a domestic terrorist. Well, at least you are according to the US government. Consider turning yourself in to your local authorities. There are FBI offices all around they country and they would like to talk to you. Pack your bags for Gitmo because the government doesn't like you.
#11
You are not a terrorist. In fact, it is highly likely that you are a socialist, communist, or Democrat. You strongly support the state over, well, everything. You likely do not believe in any individual rights. You scare me.
It was the driving without a licesnse and the ownership of WMD that put me in the hole.
#12
we should prevent the fear of terrorism from damaging us much more than terrorism itself.
Wrong. Disregarding even one iota of Islamic terrorisms threat is far more dangerous.
Obviously, theres nothing wrong in being a Muslim
Wrong again. Muslims are proponents of the worlds most intolerant creed and must be called on it at all times. Their support for a violent political ideology makes them the enemy of all free people.
A word about the French: After Sarkozys election, hundreds of university students in Paris went on strike. What does it mean to go on strike, if youre a student? To refuse to attend class? Isnt that called hooky? And who cares, really, if these students go on strike? Whom are they injuring, other than themselves? (Actually, the less Parisian education they have, the better off they may be.)
But this is not so amusing: Student and other demonstrators shouted, Sarko, fascist! The people will have your hide! That, I submit, is the authentic voice of Leninism. Note the reference to the people, the presumption of speaking for the people and this was after a free and fair election, in which the people really and truly spoke! It was the kind of election that these demonstrators would never permit, in their ideal society.
And The people will have your hide. Yes, behind these shouters is Leninism, or Jacobinism, or whatever we choose to call it. We are reminded that it never dies; that civilization must be always on guard against it.
And then there is fascist: Sarko, fascist! All of us who are conservative, or classically liberal, have had to be called fascist. It goes with the territory. And yet its no fun. I have been called fascist since I was in college. And those who do it are either malicious or ignorant sometimes, I guess, they are both (and what a brutal combination: malice and ignorance).
Ordinarily, it does no good to try to reason with people: Fascists are centralizers of power; we are decentralizers. Fascists are nationalizers of industry; we are free-marketeers. Fascists are collectivists; we are anti-collectivists. It is no use to say any of this: Fascist is an epithet used by mean or stupid people against those they dislike who are perceived to be on the right. One result is that, when a real fascist comes along, there is no word left for him.
How odd that we who want to fight tirelessly against jihadists, or Islamofascists, are called fascists! How perverse that we liberal democrats, who wave the flag of universal human values, are called fascists! If you follow Jefferson and Locke and Lincoln and Churchill and Reagan why, you are a fascist, at least according to some (to many).
But one must not whine. The other day, I brought up the fascist business with Roger Kimball, the conservative writer and editor. I said, Are you ever called a fascist? Brightly for he is a bright kind of guy he said, Early and often! In the past, I knew of Reagan-supporting Jews who had tattoos on their arms who were denounced as fascists. (And when I say tattoos, Im not talking about the biker kind.)
Anyway . . . an old, old story. But annoying all the same.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/15/2007 08:51 ||
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#1
After Sarkozys election, hundreds of university students in Paris went on strike. Someone's on strike most of the time in Paris about something.
#2
Like the man said: if you're anywhere to the right of center you're a fascist. Explaining that "fascist" is a word with a technical meaning that has nothing to do with your philosophy is pointless. "Fascist" is the "so's you old man!" of the braindead left. You shake your head and move along.
Posted by: Jonathan ||
05/15/2007 10:22 Comments ||
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#3
It is decades and decades of shaking the head and moving along instead of challenging them, highlighting their crimes (Khmer Rouge Fonda) and hypocrisy (eg ever noticed how much fuss for Paleos and how little for Darfur?) who had led us to the left having won the battle for academy, MSM and finally for public opinion to a large extent in America and completely worldwide.
#5
The foundation of mental hygiene is calling things what they are. Is it any wonder the left is so obviously unhinged?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/15/2007 15:24 Comments ||
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#6
Note the reference to the people, the presumption of speaking for the people and this was after a free and fair election, in which the people really and truly spoke!
Never in history has there been a liberal component so willing to ignore reality. It must be made into their ultimate undoing. The left's flexible semantics and ethics automatically refute its claim to any moral authority. It is time to make them pay for the damage they have done to generations of young minds.
#7
AH, I fear that the Internet has only had the effect of putting cracks in the monolith - the monolith is still there and a force. Witness the 2006 elections. Some day, perhaps, the monolith will crumble, but not for a decade at least.
Zenster, it is long past time to make them pay. Their infinitely mutable ethics and semantics do in fact make them incapable of holding the moral high ground but a) they don't care and never have cared about that, since they are at heart cultural Marxists and are motivated by defeating the "oppressors" by any means possible instead of doing what's fair, and b) being so changeable means they are always moving around, philosophically speaking, which makes them a difficult target.
The ideas of the center/right and of small-l libertarians are the ones that are superior by any logical empirical yardstick but, as I've pointed out in the past here, in an era when humanity doesn't quite have a grip on mass media an excellent spokesperson is required as well. The good ideas are, as my high school math teachers used to say, necessary but not sufficient. We need an "it" guy like Reagan. I wish that weren't the case, but events of our times show that it is.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
05/15/2007 19:19 Comments ||
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#8
Somebody has their SOCIALIST -isms mixed up. Reminds me of POST-2000 ELEX CORRECTNESS IN THE USA > US DEMOCRATS WERE STILL DEMOCRATS, US REPUBS WERE NOW DEMOCRAT/DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICANS, until Bill Clinton began admitting the US economy was expanding long before he became POTUS + being POTUS by elex fraud agz Bush 1 + Dole. Post 9-11 > FASCISTS > ARE BOTH DESPICABLE NAZIS + WELL-MEANING BUT ERRORFUL LIMITED COMMUNISTS=GOVTISTS-ABSOLUTISTS, etc. WOT > so-called WAR AGZ "FASCISM [forms of] > WAR AGZ LIMITED COMMUNISM, ETC. = WAR FOR FULL/TOTAL COMMUNISM, ETC. WAR AGZ ULTRA-RIGHT SOCS = WAR FOR ULTRA-LEFT SOCS.
ANTI-SARKOZY FRENCHIES > iff one believes that SARKOZY represents REFORMS, ergo are fighting for anti-reform > are fighting for the KNOWINGLY FAILED = FAILING, KNOWINGLY UN-AFFORDABLE OR COSTS-PROHIBITIVE FRENCH "STATUS QUO", IFF NOT MORE SOCIALISM-GOVTISM, IN FRANCE. IOW, ANTI SARKOZY-ITES > "D *** ng IT, WE DEMAND FRANCE TO BE BANKRUPT. WHY FRANCE + PARIS IS NOT AS BANKRUPT AS IT SHOULD BE"???
The new minister of education for Kuwait is a brave woman now famous across the Islamic world for a landmark moment: The day she walked up to the podium of Parliament, despite the catcalls from Islamist lawmakers, and took her oath of office without wearing a veil to cover her hair or face.
Her April 2 act of defiance placed Dr. Nouriya Al-Subeeh on the front line of the growing ranks of Muslim women leaders who are denouncing the veil as a symbol of female oppression. But on the following day, April 3, America's Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the very first woman to hold that position, meekly donned a veil during a visit to a popular market in downtown Damascus, sending the exact opposite message to tens of millions of Arab women.
After her precedent-setting episode, Dr. Subeeh explained her stand in an interview with the Egyptian weekly Rose El Yousuf: "A woman who wears the veil out of belief, which must be respected just as the belief of a woman who does not want to wear a veil must be respected. The essence of democracy," she said, "is to respect and accept the opinions of others."
Ms. Pelosi made a similar choice but in the opposite direction. Anxious to curry favor with the male rulers of the Middle East, she failed to comprehend that as an American woman, a symbol of Western democracy and secularism as well as a guardian of women's rights, her agenda should have rested elsewhere.
I have no doubt Ms. Pelosi, a liberal San Francisco Democrat, is a progressive feminist. But her decision to visit Damascus has proved counterproductive on many levels. Aside from giving the appearance of legitimacy to a rogue regime, photos of the unveiled and defiant Dr. Subeeh juxtaposed with a visibly diffident, veiled Ms. Pelosi are circling the Internet, an image that is taking a toll at a time when jihadist Islamists rely on the imposition of the veil as a weapon in their cultural war to the same degree as they utilize suicide bombers in their terrorist campaigns.
In putting on a veil when it was not required, Ms. Pelosi has done a huge disservice both to modernization and to her brave but beleaguered Muslim sisters trying to decouple the veil from Islam. The issue is not about a bit of fabric but about Arab and Muslim women fighting to emerge from under its symbolism of male domination, as Dr. Subeeh did, to speak up and be counted.
The next time America's highest ranking female office holder, Ms. Pelosi, wants to make a splash, she should opt for championing Muslim women in the line of fire.
Among those she might want to invite to appear before Congress is a brave Somali immigrant to the Netherlands, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who came to the attention of the world in 2004 when a Muslim fanatic killed director Theo van Gogh for making a film based on her accounts of the oppression of women under Islam. After fleeing her adopted nation under threats of death, the 37-year-old politician and activist's best-selling 2006 memoir "Infidel" has finally been published to great success in America it contains plenty of useful information about the veil to enlighten Ms. Pelosi.
The House speaker could also honor an amazing Syrian-American psychiatrist who resides in Los Angeles, Dr. Wafa Sultan, who also receives constant death threats since denouncing Islamists on Al Jazeera and CNN, and scolding Muslims for persecuting non-Muslims and treating their women as "cattle" and "indentured servants."
Another possibility might be an Egyptian sociologist, medical doctor, and militant writer on the problems of Arab women, Dr. Nawal El Saadawi, who is now a refugee forced to shuttle between Belgium and the Netherlands in order to escape the death warrant placed on her by several sheiks of the Saudi funded Al Azhar School of Theology in Egypt.
The author of more than 30 books, Dr. Saadawi is the most widely translated contemporary Egyptian writer. Her works include an important novel, "Woman at Point Zero," that deals with the plight of Muslim women, and a groundbreaking nonfiction book, "The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World."
#2
Speaker Pelosi: In putting on a veil when it was not required, Ms. Pelosi has done a huge disservice both to modernization and to her brave but beleaguered Muslim sisters trying to decouple the veil from Islam. The issue is not about a bit of fabric but about Arab and Muslim women fighting to emerge from under its symbolism of male domination, as Dr. Subeeh did, to speak up and be counted.
Jihadist Islamists rely on the imposition of the veil as a weapon in their cultural war to the same degree as they utilize suicide bombers in their terrorist campaigns.
Ms. Al-Subeeh: "The essence of democracy," she said, "is to respect and accept the opinions of others."
Definitely a step in the right direction and a very brave women indeed.
"Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle of liberty is freedom of choice, which saying many have on their lips but few in their minds."
- Dante Alighieri
#5
I didn't realize Pelosi did this. If she did, she is truly a dumb bitch. She claims to be a liberal and progressive. These actions are truly retrogressive as a bassackwards example to submissive Muslim burka bags.
#6
In putting on a veil when it was not required, Ms. Pelosi has done a huge disservice both to modernization and to her brave but beleaguered Muslim sisters trying to decouple the veil from Islam.
Ohferchrisesakes! She wore a veil out of respect for local customs. It didnt have any effect on uhemmm womens rights one way or the other. The real offense was that NancyPantsuits more then likely violated the Logan Act with her trip to visit the Chinless Regime. Sans veil or not.
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
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Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
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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.
