Category Archives: Freedom of Religion

Democracy In Egypt = Dar al-Islam

Christianity, Conflict, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Freedom of Religion, Middle East, Military

Remember how members of the American chattering class, libertarians too, practically tripped over one another to show-off their solidarity with the popular uprising in Egypt?

Many of the same slobbering sorts failed to mention that, when he was not ordering rendition and torture in the service of the US, Mubarak’s dictatorial powers were directed, unjustly indubitably, against the Islamic fundamentalists of the Muslim brotherhood. He kept them in check. All in all, Mubarak protected the endangered Coptic Christians of Egypt, who form “one-tenth of the 80 million people.”

So many neocons and liberals came down on Obama, his VP, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when they responded with “old-school diplomacy” to the developments on Israel’s southern border. The opposition wanted BHO to be less low key about the lovely rebels. BHO eventually complied.

PBS refuses to identify the 26 “protesters” who were killed in yesterday’s “sectarian” clashes in Egypt between Muslim and Christians. I wager that the Christian Coptic community stands less of a chance now that Mubarak is gone.

RAY SUAREZ: Some 1,000 Christians gathered last night to protest the slow response of the military government to Muslim attacks on Coptic churches, but the peaceful protest quickly grew into a melee, as Christians, Muslims and security forces battled in the streets.

DAVID KIRKPATRICK of the New York Times attests to the fact that what started as “a demonstration, a peaceful march that began in the neighborhood of Shoubra—Copts demonstrating over the attack on a church in the southern part of Egypt—“ended with “the security forces… driving a trucks into the Coptic Christian protesters and firing ammunition also at the protesters. So, today, we had bodies that were badly mangled by those vehicles and others that had those bullet wounds.”

“The Christian minority [lost] a protector in Hosni Mubarak,” admitted KIRKPATRICK.

But no. “Yesterday wasn’t a clash between Muslim and Christians, but it was led by thugs who want to stab the revolution and the political process,” said one of Egypt’s new “son of 60 dogs” (an Egyptian expression for political master).

Nice try.

Egypt, like Iraq (where Saddam kept Muslim fanaticism in check), is destined to become Dar al-Islam (House of Islam)

The heyday for Iraq’s Christian community was under Saddam Hussein, when “Catholics made up 2.89 percent of Iraq’s population in 1980. By 2008,” thanks to the Bush pig, “they were merely 0.89 percent.” Iraq’s “dwindling Christian community,” “whose numbers have plummeted since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion as the community has fled to other countries,” has suffered a terrible loss today.

UPDATE III: On The Mosque Monsters

Freedom of Religion, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Private Property, Religion

Provocative to say the least: Dr. Fleming (to mimic the “Dr. Johnson” sobriquet) of Chronicles magazine makes mincemeat of the popular argument that the Ground Zero Mosque monsters cannot be “denied a permit because that would infringe their religious freedom.”

I, of course, argued from private property rights, recommending immigration policies as the broader remedy to an incompatible culture. Construction boycotts would work as a local solution.

“Religious freedom,” writes Dr. Fleming, “is a gift of a society or commonwealth, not a natural right. This is partly because religion is not faith–what one believes or feels–but an organized public action. Thus the public or republic has the right and duty to protect itself from alien or malignant cults. In a diverse Christian society, naturally, the various churches have had to learn to tolerate each other, though in practice toleration is generally a sign of indifference. Church becomes that thing you do or don’t do on one day a week. It is like the beautiful jewel you take out of the box every once in a while to admire and feel good about yourself for owning. But religion is more like a wedding ring, a visible symbol of an enduring commitment.”

“The idea of Christians according religious freedom to Muslims who define themselves in part by their hatred of Christianity and who have oppressed Christians whenever they have had the power to do so, is preposterous. It is worse than preposterous, because the point of the exercise is not to liberate Muslims but to enslave Christians.”

As provocative is Dr. Fleming’s taxonomy of the political spectrum:

“The Hard Left—whether Marxists, Libertarians, or Multi-Culturalists—take their stand on freedom of religion, while the Soft Left (otherwise known as Conservatives) say that while there is a freedom of religion, it does not quite extend to Satanists or Muslims wanting to build a mosque at Ground Zero, though a mosque anywhere else is just fine and dandy.”

Nothing if not original is our friend at Chronicles.

UPDATE I (Sept. 8): “International Burn a Koran Day” is set to take place in a decidedly provincial setting in Florida, America. It would be a tourist curiosity if not for the media having so hyped up Terry Loony Tunes Jones’ act. Ron Paul has it right:

UPDATE II (Sept. 19): Pat Buchanan is even righter that Ron:

“This episode reveals the gulf between us and the Islamic world. Despite all our talk of universal values, tens of millions of Muslims, in countries not only hostile but friendly, believe that a sacrilege against their faith, like the burning of theQuran by a single American oddball, justifies the killing of Americans. What kind of compatibility can there be between us?

What do we have in common with people who believe that evangelism by other faiths in their societies merits the death penalty, as do conversions to Christianity, while promiscuity and adultery justify stonings, lashings and beheadings.

And what does it say about our ability to fight and win a ‘long war’ in the Islamic world if our war effort can be crippled by a solitary pastor with 50 families in his church who decides to have a book burning?”

UPDATE III: Julia Goren wants to know, “Why is there so much more tolerance of extremism in the name of tyranny than in the name of liberty? Why is tyranny more politically correct than liberty?”

UPDATED: Wild About Wilders

Freedom of Religion, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Multiculturalism, Neoconservatism, The West

HERE are some astute observations by Larry Auster (along the lines made a while back in “Dhimmis At Ground Zero?”) prompted by decent (and thus rare) journalism practiced by the Australian media with respect to Geert Wilders. He is the Dutch politician (more like statesman), who speaks clearly (as opposed to our incoherent activists) and honestly about Islam, its religionists and their compatibility with life in the West:

“An Australian TV news program has a long (about 20 minutes) segment on Geert Wilders. Despite the host’s open hostility to Wilders, the program–utterly unlike what would happen on U.S. television–gives a fair view of him and his positions. It is the fullest media presentation of Wilders, and of his place in Dutch politics, that I’ve seen. To be watching a mainstream television news show and see Wilders say, in his reasonable yet firm and determined manner, that Islam is a threat to the West and that its ingress into the Netherlands must be stopped, period, is thrilling. Among other things, he is light years beyond the American conservative anti-jihadists, who to this very moment, and despite their support for Wilders, are unable to state that Islam is the problem, that Islam must be stopped, that Islam doesn’t belong in the West. The anti-jihadists–with their attacks on ‘Islamism,’ not Islam, with their ‘I love Muslims, I just don’t want the mosque to be so close to Ground Zero,’ are frightened and uncertain children who stick their toe into the water of the Islam problem and then run back to mommy. Wilders is an adult who has grasped the simple truth about Islam and states it without equivocation.”

“When the West has acquired more adults like Wilders, it will proceed to save itself. And–who knows?–maybe some of the currently still frightened Islamism critics will be among them.”

MORE.

UPDATE: Quote of the Day on LauraIngraham.com:

“In a true peace, Israel will, in our lifetimes, become one more Arab country, with a Jewish minority.”
– Ground Zero mosque Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, in a 1977 letter to the editor.

The One-State Solution is promoted by many left-liberals, paleo-cons and libertarians; that is true. But not if Geert has anything to do with it.

UPDAED: Wahhabi Mosque At Ground Zero

BAB's A List, Fascism, Foreign Policy, Freedom of Religion, History, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Jihad, Religion, The West, War

My guest today on BAB is Jihad scholar Andrew G. Bostom, MD, MS. Dr. Bostom is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University Medical School, and a contributor to many publications.

The NYP piece informs about the background of the Muslims involved in erecting the Mega-Mosque at ground zero. Although I am not an historian, I do, however, believe Andrew’s Sharia-Shintoism analogy is utterly erroneous. I am unaware that the Japanese wished to enforce their faith on the world; or that they have the pedigree of bloody conquest in the name of the faith to match Islam’s. Of course, that depends how you view America’s incinerating antipathy toward the Japanese. (Most Americans love this particular mass murder.)

Be mindful too that, as I wrote in “Dhimmis At Ground Zero?,” “restricting acquisitive property rights in a free society should never be entertained, as much as I approve of actions wishing to peacefully prevent this religious monstrosity from replacing a statist one.” It is, moreover, worse than futile to “request kindness and consideration from those they regard as conquistadors.” That’s plain dhimmi.

As I see it, fans of the heroic Geert Wilders refuse to adopt his immigration restrictionism, and prefer to concentrate on tiresome, futile talk against the evils of honor killings and genital infibulation, which no one sanctions.

BEHIND THE MOSQUE
By ANDREW G. BOSTOM
New York Post

Imam Feisal Rauf, the central figure in the coterie planning a huge mosque just off Ground Zero, is a full-throated champion of the very same Muslim theologians and jurists identified in a landmark NYPD report as central to promoting the Islamic religious bigotry that fuels modern jihad terrorism. This fact alone should compel Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg to withdraw their support for the proposed mosque.

In August 2007, the NYPD released “Radicalization in the West — The Homegrown Threat.” This landmark 90-page report looked at the threat that had become apparent since 9/11, analyzing the roots of recent terror plots in the United States, from Lackawanna, NY, to Portland, Ore., to Fort Dix, NJ. The report noted that Saudi “Wahhabi” scholars feed the jihadist ideology, legitimizing an “extreme intolerance” toward non-Muslims, especially Jews, Christians and Hindus. In particular, the analysts noted that the “journey” of radicalization that produces homegrown jihadis often begins in a Wahhabi mosque.

The term “Wahhabi” refers to the 18th century founder of this austere Islamic tradition, Muhammad bin Abdul al-Wahhab, who claimed inspiration from 14th century jurist Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyyah. At least two of Imam Rauf’s books, a 2000 treatise on Islamic law and his 2004 “What’s Right with Islam,” laud the implementation of sharia — including within America — and the “rejuvenating” Islamic religious spirit of Ibn Taymiyyah and al-Wahhab.

He also lionizes as two ostensible “modernists” Jamal al-Dinal-Afghani (d. 1897), and his student Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905). In fact, both defended the Wahhabis, praised the salutary influence of Ibn Taymiyyah and promoted the pretense that sharia — despite its permanent advocacy of jihad and dehumanizing injunctions against non-Muslims and women — was somehow compatible with Western concepts of human rights, as in our own Bill of Rights.

In short, Feisal Rauf’s public image as a devotee of the “contemplative” Sufi school of Islam cannot change the fact that his writings directed at Muslims are full of praise for the most noxious and dangerous Muslim thinkers.

Indeed, even the classical Sufi master that Rauf extols, the 12th-century jurist Abu Hamed Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali, issued opinions on jihad and the imposition of Islamic law on the vanquished non-Muslim populations that were as bellicose and bigoted as those of Ibn Taymiyyah.

Also relevant is the Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow program run by the American Society for Muslim Advancement, an organization founded by Rauf and now run by his wife. Among the future leaders it has recognized are one of the co-authors of a “denunciation” of the NYPD report, a counter-report endorsed by all major Wahhabi-front organizations in America. Another “future leader” of interest to New Yorkers: Debbie Almontaser, the onetime head of the city’s Khalil Gibran Academy.

More revealing is the fact that Rauf himself has refused to sign a straightforward pledge to “repudiate the threat from authoritative sharia to the religious freedom and safety of former Muslims,” a pledge issued nine months ago by ex-Muslims under threat for their “apostasy.” That refusal is a tacit admission that Rauf believes that sharia trumps such fundamental Western principles as freedom of conscience.

Wahhabism — whether in the form promoted by Saudi money around the globe, or in the more openly nihilist brand embraced by terrorists — is a totalitarian ideology comparable to Nazism or, closer still, the “state Shintoism” of imperial Japan. We would never have allowed a Shinto shrine at the site of the Pearl Harbor carnage — especially one to serve as a recruiting station for Tokyo’s militarists while World War II was still on.

For the same reasons, we must say no to a Wahhabi mosque at Ground Zero.

Andrew G. Bostom is the author of “The Legacy of Jihad” and “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.”

UPDATE: In “Who’s paying for the ground zero Islamic center?” Rick Lazio raises similar concerns. Lazio, a super statist, has found a cause he can run on. I like the idea I’ve heard floated of “landmarking” the targeted “historic 150-year-old building that was seriously damaged by the landing gear of one of the hijacked jetliners that flew into the World Trade Center.”