Category Archives: Media

Al-Sisi Is No Sissy

History, Islam, Media, Middle East, Neoconservatism

Being neoconservatives for the most, American pundits are without a concept of history. This was manifestly obvious during the democracy spreading mission to Iraq, a mission the British had tried a century ago and failed.

In this context, I am unsure whether Jonah Goldberg’s likening of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to “Atatürk — the Turkish strongman who modernized and secularized Turkey a century ago,” is warranted.

Addressing the assemblage of imams in the room, al-Sisi called for a “religious revolution” in which Muslim clerics take the lead in rethinking the direction Islam has taken recently. An excerpt (as translated by Raymon Ibrahim’s website):

Goldberg quotes al-Sisi as saying this, at Al-Azhar University:

“I am referring here to the religious clerics. … It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma (Islamic world) to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible!
“That thinking — I am not saying ‘religion’ but ‘thinking’ — that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the centuries, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the entire world! … All this that I am telling you, you cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You need to step outside of yourselves to be able to observe it and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.
“I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move … because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost — and it is being lost by our own hands.”

The Egyptian leaders that came before President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi—the unseating of the last, Husni Mubarak, was cheered by the West—governed in a secular manner. Their influences ranged from Egyptian nationalism and Pan-Arabism to socialism and anticolonialism, but not Islamism. They all fought ruthlessly against the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots. Anwar Sadat was assassinated by this faction for making peace with Israel. But repeated attempts were made by the Islamists on the lives of the other two, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Hosni Mubarak. Perhaps Al-Sisi is simply an Egyptian in the mold of Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak.

One thing is true: Al-Sisi is no sissy

In Paris, A Parade Of Parasites; Charade Of Charlatans

Barack Obama, Europe, Free Speech, Media, Politics, Propaganda, Terrorism

President Barack Obama was a no-show at the showy and meaningless parade of parasites in Paris, where world leaders united against murder, an insight that was already well within the ken of leaders of the ancient world (Ten Commandments?). NYT:

More than a million people joined over 40 presidents and prime ministers on the streets of Paris on Sunday in the most striking show of solidarity in the West against the threat of Islamic extremism since the Sept. 11 attacks.

“A storm in a D.C. tea cup” is how CNN has chosen to depict the absence of their favorite onan from the parade. David Gergen of the Obama Channel commented on how “refreshing” it was for this administration to “admit [he] messed up.

To paraphrase the Paul Simon lyrics about an old lover: Still crazy about him after all these years.

Myself, I don’t give a tinker’s toss about the march of our tormentors in Paris. The only thought that crossed my mind at the charade of charlatans had to do with al Qaeda’s incompetence. Why do they only ever hit on innocents? … But since unfettered speech is no longer a natural right in the West, because of legislation passed throughout the free world—I shall remain mum.

The Dance Of Dunces

Crime, Islam, Media, Terrorism

So it’s not only our country’s media (in recent days Wolf Blitzer and this woman from Slate) and constabulary that do the dance of dunces when it comes to Islam and the proclivities of its practitioners. Police in Hamburg, north Germany, have told the citizenry that the motive of an attack on the Hamburger Morgenpost, a newspaper that published the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, “is still under investigation.” The paper was “firebombed overnight Sunday.”

I don’t want to insult the ostrich community …

We’re winning.

I Said ‘Sentimentality’; Steyn Says ‘Screw Your Hashtag Solidarity’

Ilana Mercer, Islam, Jihad, Media, Terrorism

It doesn’t happen often, but just this time it feels good to be able to say, for once, that my “Show Of Solidarity Or Sentimentality? Winning À La The West” (01.07.15)—a post pertaining to the pens-up “defiance” in the wake of the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo—is considerably milder than Mark Steyn’s version of the same sickened sentiment (Jan 9, 2015):

MARK STEYN: These men were exceptionally brave. Most of the people expressing solidarity with them are not that brave. … And to be honest, it makes me vomit to see people holding these Princess Dianafied candlelit vigils, and using the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie – I am Charlie -and in effect appropriating these guys’ sacrifice for this bogus solidarity. It makes me sick to see all these ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ cartoons that have appeared in newspapers all over the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Australia, everywhere, from other cartoonists, again expressing solidarity with these very brave men – but not doing what they did…

These guys are dead because back in 2005, these Danish cartoons were published in an obscure Jutland newspaper, and a bunch of fanatics went bananas and started killing people over them. So a couple of publications on the planet, including mine in Canada, and Charlie Hebdo in Paris, published these cartoons… Le Monde didn’t, and the Times of London didn’t, and the New York Times didn’t, and nobody else did. And as a result, these fellows in Charlie Hebdo became the focus of murderous rage. If we’d all just published them on the front page and said “If you want to kill us, you go to hell, you can’t just kill a couple of obscure Danes, you’re going to have to kill us all”, we wouldn’t have this problem. But because nobody did that, these Parisian guys are dead. They’re dead. And I’ve been on enough, I’ve been on enough events in Europe with less famous cartoonists than these who live under death threats, live under armed guard, have had their family restaurant firebombed – it’s happened to a Norwegian comedienne I know – have come home and found their home burned, as a Swedish artist I know happened to. And all these people doing the phony hashtag solidarity, screw your phony hashtag solidarity. Let’s have some real solidarity – or if not, at least have the good taste to stay the hell out of it.

(A somewhat related critique of Steyn is here.)