Category Archives: Islam

'Geert Wilders Must Prevail'

Free Speech, Islam, Terrorism, The West

So says Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer:

“Free speech goes on trial in the Netherlands on January 20, when Dutch politician Geert Wilders appears before the Amsterdam District Court on charges of having ‘intentionally offended a group of people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion,’ as well as having incited to hatred and discrimination.

What did Wilders do to warrant such charges? He told the truth about the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, and their roots in Islamic texts and teachings, in his film Fitna and elsewhere. But nowadays truth-telling is at such a premium that those who still dare to engage in it are threatened, harassed and prosecuted.

“But Wilders is defiant: ‘On the 20th of January 2010, a political trial will start. I am being prosecuted for my political convictions. The freedom of speech is on the verge of collapsing. If a politician is not allowed to criticise an ideology anymore, this means that we are lost, and it will lead to the end of our freedom. However I remain combative: I am convinced that I will be acquitted.’

The very idea of trying someone for offending someone else is absurd – especially when the offended group is known to traffic in the PC multiculturalist coin of wounded feelings, so as to gain the political power that comes from victim status. That the Amsterdam District Court would aid and abet this absurdity and obvious manipulation unmasks the Wilders trial – even before it starts – as what it really is: an attempt by the nation’s political elites to silence one of their most formidable critics.”

Reading the complete column, Free Speech on Trial by Robert Spencer, is compulsory. You need to know that “In October the Obama Administration actually co-sponsored an anti-free speech resolution at the United Nations. Approved by the U.N. Human Rights Council, the resolution, cosponsored by the U.S. and Egypt, calls on states to condemn and criminalize ‘any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.'”

‘Geert Wilders Must Prevail’

Free Speech, Islam, Terrorism, The West

So says Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer:

“Free speech goes on trial in the Netherlands on January 20, when Dutch politician Geert Wilders appears before the Amsterdam District Court on charges of having ‘intentionally offended a group of people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion,’ as well as having incited to hatred and discrimination.

What did Wilders do to warrant such charges? He told the truth about the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, and their roots in Islamic texts and teachings, in his film Fitna and elsewhere. But nowadays truth-telling is at such a premium that those who still dare to engage in it are threatened, harassed and prosecuted.

“But Wilders is defiant: ‘On the 20th of January 2010, a political trial will start. I am being prosecuted for my political convictions. The freedom of speech is on the verge of collapsing. If a politician is not allowed to criticise an ideology anymore, this means that we are lost, and it will lead to the end of our freedom. However I remain combative: I am convinced that I will be acquitted.’

The very idea of trying someone for offending someone else is absurd – especially when the offended group is known to traffic in the PC multiculturalist coin of wounded feelings, so as to gain the political power that comes from victim status. That the Amsterdam District Court would aid and abet this absurdity and obvious manipulation unmasks the Wilders trial – even before it starts – as what it really is: an attempt by the nation’s political elites to silence one of their most formidable critics.”

Reading the complete column, Free Speech on Trial by Robert Spencer, is compulsory. You need to know that “In October the Obama Administration actually co-sponsored an anti-free speech resolution at the United Nations. Approved by the U.N. Human Rights Council, the resolution, cosponsored by the U.S. and Egypt, calls on states to condemn and criminalize ‘any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.'”

Update II: Minarets No More

EU, Freedom of Religion, Islam, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, The West

The minaret is the quintessential symbol of Islam’s power. Not only is this structural spire an imposing eyesore, towering over 200 meters above, but it emits—by virtue of the muezzin’s ululations—noise pollution five times a day.

The Swiss have not rejected freedom of religion—Muslims can worship as they wish. What the Swiss have decided is to reject the architectural, auditory and cultural imposition that the minaret signifies and retain the western flare of their cities. Naturally, CNN has framed the plebiscite as the work of the far right:

Swiss voters on Sunday adopted a referendum banning the construction of minarets, seen by some on the far right as a sign of encroaching Islamism.

“The Federal Council respects this decision,” said a statement from Switzerland’s government. “Consequently the construction of new minarets in Switzerland is no longer permitted. The four existing minarets will remain.

MORE.

Update I (Nov. 30): On the meaning of the minaret, Islam scholar Andy Bostom quotes “the official Brill Encyclopedia of Islam”:

“It seems on the whole unrelated to its function of the adh?n [q.v.] calling the faithful to prayer, which can be made quite adequately from the roof of the mosque or even from the house-top. During the lifetime of the Prophet, his Abyssinian slave Bil?l [q.v.], was responsible for making the call to prayer in this way. The practice continued for another generation, a fact which demonstrates that the minaret is not an essential part of Islamic ritual. To this day, certain Islamic communities, especially the most orthodox ones like the Wahh?b?s in Arabia, avoid building minarets on the grounds that they are ostentatious and unnecessary. … It must be remembered, however, that throughout the mediaeval period, the role of the minaret oscillated between two polarities: as a sign of power and as an instrument for the adh?n.”

AND:

“The venerable Brill Encyclopedia of Islam (EOI) entry on minarets makes plain that minarets are a political statement of Islamic supremacism. Interestingly, given current Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s provocative statement while mayor of Istanbul (the full statement was quoted in a NY Times story http://www.kurdistan.org/Washington/nyt.html by Stephen Kinzer from 2/16/1998: ‘The mosques are our barracks, the domes are our helmets, the minarets are our swords, and the faithful are our army’), cited by opponents of minaret construction in Switzerland—the observations from the Brill EOI about the Ottoman perspective on minarets are of particular note.”

MORE.

Update II: Diana West has rounded up responses from across Europe to the Swiss’s anti-Islamization declaration.

Update II: Make Me Thankful: Don't Enlist!

Criminal Injustice, Government, Homeland Security, Iraq, Islam, Jihad, Military, Political Correctness, Terrorism

The excerpt is from my new WND.COM column, “Make Me Thankful: Don’t Enlist!”:

“Instead of tough, immediate action against every cog in the military machine that promoted, pampered and palliated the mass murderer Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, victims got a commission of inquiry.

Or in Pentagon speak, ‘a broad 45-day review.’

The state’s response to the slaughter at Fort Hood of 13 of its own by a Muslim Army psychiatrist, who also wounded more than 30 in the shootings at the Texas military post on Nov. 5, will be met, first, with more bureaucracy – more salaries for more slackers – and, thereafter, with a brick-thick report! …

Thinking of enlisting? You’ll be fighting not for country and countrymen; but will be granting a banal bureaucrat a lien on your life.

As for the inquiry cobbled together to stop future Hasans:

Permanent Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby, a fictitious, but oh-so-real character in the brilliant British satires ‘Yes Minister’ and ‘Yes Prime Minister,’ would agree with me when I say that government commissions are where accountability goes to die.”

The complete column, now on WND.COM, is “Make Me Thankful: Don’t Enlist!”

Update I (Nov. 27): A correction to our friends over at the Libertarian Republican’s blog post: I’ve made it abundantly clear that it is not merely the military under Obama that suffers the afflictions highlighted in “Make Me Thankful: Don’t Enlist!”, and in “Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program”—but the military, period.

Hozanas to the generic Hasan were the norm during Bush’s reign over the Army.

Patriotic Americans, as highlighted in “Take this, Mr. President, For Ramos and Compean,” were prosecuted and persecuted with equal zeal under Genghis Bush.

In the waning years of Bush’s G-d-awful term, I offered a flip-side argument: “Support The Draft … for politicians and bureaucrats”:

Having expatiated against the illegal, immoral and unconstitutional Iraq war from its inception, I’d recommend a different course of action in furtherance of freedom. For one, crying for the carping consular staff is a bad idea. They seem to want to enjoy the favors of office without bearing the burdens—to pick and choose those policies they are prepared to promote.

Creating a risk-free workplace for the already privileged government employee will do nothing to curb the State’s endless exploits. Coddling its recruits won’t place a dampener on government’s callous, confiscatory practices. The riskier the stakes faced by the political class, the better. Let as many of them as possible shoulder the consequences of the Iraq policy. Force more of the state’s pen-pushing laptop bombardiers to the empire’s fronts. Then, perhaps, will we witness policy changes that percolate down to The People.

Update II: The response to this column, public and personal, has been better than I had hoped. To think of the filthy hate mail I used to get when I wrote against the Iraq war for all those years!

If in writing this column, I’ve helped to save one life — then that is more of a reward than I could have hoped for. As is written in the Talmud (and plagiarized by Islam), “Whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.” [Jerusalem Talmud Sanhedrin 4:1 (22a)]