Category Archives: Islam

Updated: The Death of A Devil (No, Michael Berg is Alive & Well)

Islam, Israel, Terrorism, War

Al Zarqawi was scum. Even Ayman al-Zawahiri, another bottom feeder, sent him a letter, asking that he reconsider the wisdom of culling so many Iraqi Shia.
Al-Zawahiri had broached the topic by telling his murderous mate that, although it is necessary to bring “the Muslim masses to the mujahed movement,” killing so many of them is probably not conducive to recruitment. Yes, the Shia are a handful, Zawahiri conceded. They aren’t kosher theologically, have cooperated with the Americans against Saddam and the Taliban, and, all together, have a history of “connivance with the Crusaders.”
If it were possible for the mujahedeen to kill all Iraq’s Shia, Zawahiri’d be game, but it wasn’t.
So, Zawahiri is no fan of the Shia. But logistics being what they are, he thinks they ought to be forgiven—not slaughtered for—their “ignorance.”
Al Zarqawi, as we know, disagreed. And now he’s dead. I say good riddance. Many jihadists are grieving. So is Michael Berg, whose son Nicholas al-Zarqawi beheaded.
Berg said the following: “I’m sorry whenever any human being dies. Zarqawi is a human being. He has a family who are reacting just as my family reacted when Nick was killed, and I feel bad for that… I have never indicated anything but forgiveness and peace [toward Zarqawi].”

In some ways Berg is more evil than was Zarqawi: The latter had his own idiosyncratic notion of right and wrong and he’d, at least, fight for those he considered his clan. The former has no moral preferences, and no loyalties, not even to his poor son.

**
Civil libertarian Alan Dershowitz offers an interesting observation:

“As the civilized world justly celebrates the long overdue killing of Abu M al-Zarqawi, it must recall that his death was brought about by what has come to be known as ‘targeted assassination’ or ‘targeted killings.’ This is the same technique that has been repeatedly condemned by the international community when Israel has employed it against terrorists who have murdered innocent Jews,” writes Alan Dershowitz on the Huffington Post.

“When Israel targeted the two previous heads of Hamas, the British foreign secretary said: ‘targeted killings of this kind are unlawful and unjustified.’ The same views expressed at the United Nations and by several European heads of state. It was also expressed by various Human Rights organizations.

Now Great Britain is applauding the targeted killing of a terrorist who endangered its soldiers and citizens. What is the difference, except that Israel can do no right in the eyes of many in the international community?”

The rest of the post is here.

Updated: The Death of A Devil (No, Michael Berg is Alive & Well)

Islam, Israel, Terrorism, War

Al Zarqawi was scum. Even Ayman al-Zawahiri, another bottom feeder, sent him a letter, asking that he reconsider the wisdom of culling so many Iraqi Shia.
Al-Zawahiri had broached the topic by telling his murderous mate that, although it is necessary to bring “the Muslim masses to the mujahed movement,” killing so many of them is probably not conducive to recruitment. Yes, the Shia are a handful, Zawahiri conceded. They aren’t kosher theologically, have cooperated with the Americans against Saddam and the Taliban, and, all together, have a history of “connivance with the Crusaders.”
If it were possible for the mujahedeen to kill all Iraq’s Shia, Zawahiri’d be game, but it wasn’t.
So, Zawahiri is no fan of the Shia. But logistics being what they are, he thinks they ought to be forgiven—not slaughtered for—their “ignorance.”
Al Zarqawi, as we know, disagreed. And now he’s dead. I say good riddance. Many jihadists are grieving. So is Michael Berg, whose son Nicholas al-Zarqawi beheaded.
Berg said the following: “I’m sorry whenever any human being dies. Zarqawi is a human being. He has a family who are reacting just as my family reacted when Nick was killed, and I feel bad for that… I have never indicated anything but forgiveness and peace [toward Zarqawi].”

In some ways Berg is more evil than was Zarqawi: The latter had his own idiosyncratic notion of right and wrong and he’d, at least, fight for those he considered his clan. The former has no moral preferences, and no loyalties, not even to his poor son.

**
Civil libertarian Alan Dershowitz offers an interesting observation:

“As the civilized world justly celebrates the long overdue killing of Abu M al-Zarqawi, it must recall that his death was brought about by what has come to be known as ‘targeted assassination’ or ‘targeted killings.’ This is the same technique that has been repeatedly condemned by the international community when Israel has employed it against terrorists who have murdered innocent Jews,” writes Alan Dershowitz on the Huffington Post.

“When Israel targeted the two previous heads of Hamas, the British foreign secretary said: ‘targeted killings of this kind are unlawful and unjustified.’ The same views expressed at the United Nations and by several European heads of state. It was also expressed by various Human Rights organizations.

Now Great Britain is applauding the targeted killing of a terrorist who endangered its soldiers and citizens. What is the difference, except that Israel can do no right in the eyes of many in the international community?”

The rest of the post is here.

Default Diplomacy

America, Iran, Iraq, Islam, WMD

Diplomacy, not bribery à la Bush, is a good thing, for sure, all the more so if it averts violent confrontation. The goal with Iran ought to be to get IAEA inspectors in there, and have them criss-cross the place—and keep doing so—as they did Iraq before Bush banished them (to wage war, in violation of international and every other law, including natural). Treat Iran’s nuclear facilities like CSI would a crime scene.

But let’s be perfectly clear on who is offering whom a way out. The package of incentives (and disincentives) made to Iran, a pivotal member of Bush’s “axis of evil,” contradicts the Bush Doctrine in every possible way, not least in ignoring the poisonous drip-drip of dissident groups urging action (and that’s a good thing: think Mr. liar-liar-pants-on-fire Chalabi).

By allowing them to front the Iran “deal,” the Europeans have lifted Bush and Rice from the blood-soaked Iraqi soil, dusted them off, and let them save what they lost in “Mess-opotamia”: face.

A way out for Iran? More like a way back in for America.

Updated: Did the Mohammedans Invent Profiling (and Ghettos)?

Anti-Semitism, Islam

Just so you know, the Nazis were not the originators of the yellow cloth with which they tagged Jews. The odious tagging rag has its origins in the laws of the Charter of Omar—a set of vicious anti-infidel rules that were applied to Jews with extra vim. These laws were introduced by the caliph who succeeded the prophet Mohammed.

Prior to the prophet, Jews and Arabs did indeed live in relative harmony, but when Mohammed failed to convert the Jews to Islam, the proselytizing prophet of peace exterminated at least one Jewish tribe, etched the Koran with anti-Jewish vitriol, and launched centuries of brutality against Jews. Arabs also preceded the Nazis by centuries with the Jewish ghetto—they pioneered a dwelling designated specifically for Jews and known in Arabic as the hara or mellah.*

Why is this currently relevant?

Over to Andy Bostom, reporting for The American Thinker: “Controversy still swirls over allegations that Iran’s government plans to require non-Muslims to wear identifying clothing. The Canadian National Post has retracted its May 19, 2006 report about a putative Iranian Law requiring non-Muslim minorities—Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians—to wear color-coded strips of cloth attached to their garments, to distinguish them from Muslims. Mr. Amir Taheri, author of the article, is standing by his report.”

Dependably ignorant, Jewish leadership, such as The American Jewish Committee, has done as it invariably—and perennially—does: invoke the Nazi experience as the proper historical context for the alleged reinstitution of the badge in Iran. This is how Dr. Stephen M. Steinlight distilled their ignorance vis-a -vis the nature and source of the existential threat facing the community:

“There is a sad if also somewhat comic irony to the fact that legions of employees at organizations like ADL, the American Jewish Committee, and the Presidents’ Conference must pass through a gauntlet of concrete barriers, armed guards, metal detectors, and double bulletproof anterooms as they come to work each morning to protect them from radical Islamic terrorists, in order to spend their days studying and then disseminating reports on the ‘threat’ posed by Evangelical Christians or the non-issue of Mormon conversion of dead Jews or the imaginary anti-Semitism that ‘The Passion of the Christ’ did not produce. Meanwhile, the legislative affairs staffs of these same organizations are directed to lobby against the very immigration reforms that could minimize the danger.”

Bostom, for his part, has patiently explained to an official at The Wiesenthal Center that, “While memories of the Holocaust are fresher and more widely held than memories of traditional Islamic oppression of Jews, such comparisons should be avoided. To invoke the Holocaust blinds us to the far longer and much more deeply-rooted traditions in the Islamic world which predate the rise of Nazism by well over a millennium.”

To no avail…

* From Andy Bostom more on the meaning of “mellah”: “‘salted, cursed grounds,’ which were in fact the Jewish ghettoes of the Maghrib (North African) cities under Muslim rule. This derives from the fact that Jews were forced to salt the decapitated heads of those the Muslims decapitated (for whatever reason), thus preserving the heads for public display. Jews alone were designated to do this dehumanizing work by their Muslim overlords.”