* Actually, it’s Islam that is waging war against us, ever since its inception. Yet there are too many among us who still don’t understand the nature of the beast and that this war is different from any other war ever fought. This enemy is patient and persistent, this is an enemy that knows us while we chose to ignore it at our peril. An enemy that exploits our weakness and our humanity, our political system and our multiculturalism.
Last Tuesday at nightfall, as the servants of democracy fled SW1, a young Somali woman stood spotlit on a stage in Westminster. Behind her was the illuminated logo for the Centre for Social Cohesion: a white hand reaching down across England to help a brown one up; in front, an audience of some of Britain’s biggest brains — politicians, editors, academics. She drew her shawl a little closer round her shoulders, looked up and said: ‘We are not at war with “terror”, that would make no sense.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said a voice at the back. ‘Terror is just a tactic used by Islam,’ she continued. ‘We are actually at war, not just with Islamism, but with Islam itself.’
Out in the dark began a great wobbling of heads. Neocons nodded, Muslims shook their heads; others, uncertain, waggled theirs anxiously from side to side: at war with all Islam, even here in the UK? What does that mean?
It would be easier in some ways to ignore Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to label her as bonkers — but it would also be irresponsible. She’s not just another hawkish hack, anxious to occupy the top tough-guy media slot — she has the authority of experience, the authenticity of suffering.
In the spring of 2004 she wrote a film called Submission (an artsy 11-minute protest against Islamic cruelty to women) which was shown on Dutch TV. In November 2004 the film’s director, Theo van Gogh, was assassinated and the killer left a long letter to Hirsi Ali knifed into his corpse which said, in short: you’re next. But Hirsi Ali couldn’t be silenced. She has since written an autobiography (Infidel) about growing up a Muslim (in Somalia, then Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia), describing her circumcision, the beatings she received, her arranged marriage, her flight to Holland. She risks her life daily, speaking out against what she calls the ‘fairytale’ that Islam is in essence a religion of peace.
The other reason to take her seriously is that Hirsi Ali’s ideas about Islam (that it is unamenable to reform, and intrinsically opposed to Western values) are attracting attention worldwide.
* Actually, its not about ‘her ideas about Islam’- she simply tells the truth about Islam.
In Holland where, until 2006, she was an MP for the People’s Party for Freedom and Independence (VVD), the famous ‘pillarisation’ approach to immigration — where each new culture becomes a pillar upon which the state rests — has given way to a ‘new realism’, much more in tune with Hirsi Ali’s way of thinking, and in part because of her. In Britain and in America, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has become a sort of popstar for neocons, and she now lives in Washington, and works as a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute.
But is she right? And what does ‘war with Islam’ mean? I went to find out; to meet Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the House of Lords on a bitter and blustery afternoon last week, bustling past the police, down the corridors of partial power, to the visitors’ room where she was waiting. We haven’t got much time, so can we dive straight into Islam? I ask. ‘Yes, absolutely, go ahead,’ she smiles. Up close she is disconcertingly beautiful, and fragile-looking. OK then, right. Well, you say that Islam is a violent religion, because the Prophet advocated violence. But isn’t that open to interpretation? I ask. Karen Armstrong, (a non-Muslim biographer of Mohammed) has said the Prophet was a loving man who’d have been horrified at 9/11.
‘Karen Armstrong is ridiculous,’ says Hirsi Ali in her quick, light voice — Africa still audible in the clipped consonants. ‘The Prophet would have not have disapproved of 9/11, because it was carried out in his example. When he came to Medina, the Prophet had a revelation, of jihad. After that, it became an obligation for Muslims to convert others, and to establish an Islamic state, by the sword if necessary.’
But there is such a thing as moderate Islam, I say. Muslims aren’t all terrorists. There are some like Ed Husain (author of The Islamist) who argue that there are many peaceful traditions of Koranic scholarship to choose from. Isn’t it a mistake to dismiss this gentler, acceptable branch of Islam?
‘I find the word “moderate” very misleading.’ There’s a touch of steel in Hirsi Ali’s voice. ‘I don’t believe there is such a thing as “moderate Islam”. I think it’s better to talk about degrees of belief and degrees of practice. The Koran is quite clear that it should control every area of life. If a Muslim chooses to obey only some of the Prophet’s commandments, he is only a partial Muslim. If he is a good Muslim, he will wish to establish Sharia law.’
* There you go. Nearly 70% of British Muslims would prefer the sharia to the Westminster system. You go figure…
Read it all, its a blast!
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Islam, immigration, civil liberties, and the fate of the West.
“There is no moderate Islam. There are Muslims who are passive, who don’t all follow the rules of Islam, but there’s really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God. There’s nothing moderate about it.
“Say No To Muslim Schools !”
All Muslim schools. Close them down. Yeah, that sounds absolutist. I think 10 years ago things were different, but now the jihadi genie is out of the bottle. I’ve been saying this in Australia and in the U.K. and so on, and I get exactly the same arguments: The Constitution doesn’t allow it. But we need to ask where these constitutions came from to start with—what’s the history of Article 23 in the Netherlands, for instance? There were no Muslim schools when the constitution was written. There were no jihadists. They had no idea.
Read it all
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Washingtonpost.com
Never ‘Rice-ing’ to the occassion, or better: stuck on stupid way back when in Alabama…
Rice compares Israelis and Palestinians to blacks in segregated South: “Affirmative Action” in Palistan
Witless Moral Equivalence Update: the Secretary of State feels their pain. Let’s tease out her analogy: the Israelis are at once white segregationists and the victims of racist bombers, and the Palestinians are simultaneously white racist bombers and poor black victims of segregation.
All right.
Does she realize that the checkpoints from which the Palestinians suffer are a result of the bombings? Does she understand that there would be no checkpoints if there were not so many Palestinians determined to murder Israelis and destroy Israel? Does she understand that the checkpoints exist not “because they are Palestinian,” but because they approve of and abet murderous jihadism?
Israeli officials take this incredibly shallow,
stupid, dangerous, etc. remark silently:
Rice, for her part, brought the meeting to close with highly personal and reflective comments that connected her childhood in the segregated South with the challenges facing Israelis and Palestinians.
Both Timmermans and a U.S. official in the room said the gathering became deadly silent as Rice spoke, every eye riveted on her. Rice spoke without notes or script, and no transcript was made, but the two officials provided similar accounts of her remarks. The U.S. official asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss Rice’s remarks.
Rice began by saying she did not want to draw historical parallels or be too self-reflective, but as a young girl she grew up in Birmingham, Ala., “at a time of separation and tension.”
She noted that a local church was bombed by white separatists, killing four girls, including a classmate of hers.
“Like the Israelis, I know what it is like to go to sleep at night, not knowing if you will be bombed, of being afraid to be in your own neighborhood, of being afraid to go to your church,” she said.
But, she added, as a black child in the South, being told she could not use certain water fountains or eat in certain restaurants, she also understood the feelings and emotions of the Palestinians.
“I know what it is like to hear to that you cannot go on a road or through a checkpoint because you are Palestinian,” she said. “I understand the feeling of humiliation and powerlessness.”
“There is pain on both sides,” Rice concluded. “This has gone on too long.”
* Yeah. Give them Pal’s a state, Condi. Because you ‘understand’…
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Condi Rice is a quintessence of leftism. She’s a patently lame scholar (and yes, I’ve read her essays) whose theories border on scam. In her essay on nuclear weapons, she repeatedly cites the Soviet WWII encyclopedia in fifty-something volumes, which even the native Russian speakers find impossible to read through; she obviously relies on secondary sources without citing them. Rice succeeded through the affirmative action, a semi-official quota for Black professors of lamentable credentials.
Rice alone is responsible for the US standoff with Russia. The purported “expert” on Russia’s military, Rice has not a clue about Russian politics or mentality. She engineered the entirely unnecessary conflicts on the Russian periphery, notably the putsches in Ukraine and Georgia. What has America to do with an ex-Soviet republic of Georgia, a Christian kingdom for centuries in the Russian sphere of influence whose population absolutely depends on Russia for everything? Xenophobic Russians were predictably agitated to the point of withdrawing from the major military treaties, resuming the effective nuclear alert, and patrolling the outskirts of Europe with strategic bombers. Appeasement is not a policy, but neither is provoking one’s enemy a containment.
Read it all/link to Shiva
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Read it and learn, Condi. This one goes out to you…
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* The murderous, fanatical savages want to kill this poor woman, over a cute, cuddly Teddy Bear whom the children named ‘Mohammed’.
Latest:
British teacher appears in court as Islamic fanatics demand execution
A major security operation was under way today as a British teacher charged with inciting hatred for letting her pupils call a teddy bear Mohammed was brought before a court in Sudan. Gillian Gibbons looked tired and distressed but was not handcuffed has she appeared at a court in Khartoum
Mrs Gibbons faces 40 lashes and a year in jail after after being charged with insulting Islam.
Full story here
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Quote of the day:
In the words of Hyman Rickover:
“I believe it is the duty of each of us to act as if the fate of the world depended on him. Admittedly, one man by himself cannot do the job. However, one man can make a difference. Each of us is obligated to bring his individual and independent capacities to bear upon a wide range of human concerns. It is with this conviction that we squarely confront our duty to posterity. We must live for the future of the human race, and not of our own comfort or success.”
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