Category Archives: The West

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.

UPDATE II: Hamasnik Joins hands With B. Hussein (No Faith In Islam)

Barack Obama, Islam, Palestinian Authority, Private Property, Terrorism, The West

“With the president’s intervention,” writes Pat Buchanan, “the issue [of the mega-mosque at Ground Zero] has metastasized into a major clash in America’s religious and culture war. It has gone global, as Hamas has now weighed in on the side of building the mosque near Ground Zero.” Dah.

“We have to build everywhere,” said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the organization’s chief on the Gaza Strip.
“In every area we have, [as] Muslim[s], we have to pray, and this mosque is the only site of prayer,” he said on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on WABC. “We have to build the mosque, as you are allowed to build the church and Israelis are building their holy places.”

B. Hussein is seconded by Hamas. The mega-mosque affairs has gone from farce to burlesque. What next in the theater of the absurd?

UPDATE I: SHALOM SHARIA. Writes Diana West:

“Since 2006, Rauf [“of the ground zero mosque”] has coordinated a series of international meetings with Shariah experts ranging from Muslim Brotherhood associates to Iran’s Mohammad Javad Larijani, ‘who,’ as Brim reports, ‘has justified torture of Iranian dissidents as legal punishments under Shariah law.'”

“That’s not all Larijani, who heads Iran’s Human Rights Council (for real), has justified. He has also justified Shariah-sanctioned stoning. As Anne Bayefsky recently reported, Rauf’s picture with Larijani (and former U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of the Islamic Conference Sada Cumber) disappeared from the Cordoba Initiative Web site, too.”

“So much to hide – but the Shariah is out of the bag.

What would expanding Shariah mean here? More halal-butchered livestock leading, as in Europe, to halal-only menus?

More midnight football practice during Ramadan? More sex-segregated swimming pools?

More incitement to jihad in ‘radical’ mosques? More ‘apostates’ living in fear? More self-censorship, I mean ‘respect,’ when it comes to discussing Islam?

An excellent benchmark of Shariah’s remarkable and, think of it, post-9/11 progress is that none of the above manifestations of Islamic law – all designed to synchronize society with Islamic practice – are shocking to us.” …

UPDATE II (Aug. 23): No Faith In Islam. Another community, this time in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, does not wish to see a mosque rise up in its midst.

“The Murfreesboro mosque is hundreds of miles from New York City and the national furor about whether an Islamic community center should be built near Ground Zero. But the intense feelings driving that debate have surfaced in communities from California to Florida,” writes WaPo correspondent, Ann Gowen.

“So many things about Islam are disconcerting,” [another resident] said. “As they get bigger, there will be concerns about the ideology, what they preach and what they believe.”

And it is as I said in “Dhimmis At Ground Zero?” “It’s in the faith of Islam and its adherents that Americans have no faith.”

If Christians raised a cathedral at Liberty St. and Church St., most Americans would not mind. If the Hari Krishna set up a place of worship in the vicinity, and bobbed up and down the exact complex in Lower Manhattan, Americans would smile benignly. Ditto if a Jewish tabernacle were to be erected around the corner; this reaction would not have occurred.

I’ve had it with the incoherent, emotional, asinine refrains I keep hearing from Ground-Zero activists: “I love Muslims; it’s just this one mosque I hate.” Come out with what you mean, already.

UPDATED: Hillary: ‘Terror Has No Religion’ (Quranic verse 5:32)

Christianity, Crime, Islam, Jihad, Religion, Terrorism, The West

REALLY? I vehemently disagree with Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who uttered this fatuity in her tribute to the “10 medical aid workers who were killed in the northern Badakhshan Province,” among whom were six Americans.

TERROR, THY NAME IS ISLAM.

The deceased were members of the International Assistance Mission. According to Dirk Frans, the organization’s director, “The team had trekked about 100 miles into the mountains of one of the poorest and most remote areas of Afghanistan. The Americans were identified as Cheryl Beckett, 32; Brian Carderelli, 25; Dr. Thomas Grams, no age given; Glen Lapp, 40; Tom Little, 61; and Dan Terry, 63.”

CHARITY IS EUROPEAN AND PREDOMINANTLY CHRISTIAN.

“Also killed were Mahram Ali, 50, and man identified only as Jawed, 24, both of Afghanistan; Daniela Beyer, 35, of Germany; and Dr. Karen Woo, 36, of Britain.”

HILLARY: “Before their deaths, they had spent several days treating cataracts and other eye conditions in Nuristan Province. At their next stop, they planned to run a dental clinic and offer maternal and infant health care. They were unarmed. They were not being paid for their services. They had traveled to this part of Afghanistan because they wanted to help people in need. They were guests of the Afghan people.

CLEARLY NOT VERY WELCOME GUESTS.

As columnist Krauthammer said on FoxNews, this act was about destroying The Other, by which Chuckie meant the non-Muslim, the Christian.

And I would add that the “despicable act of wanton violence,” which sundered such gifted lives was about destroying goodness and nobility—qualities that are thin-on-the ground in that blighted part of the world.

An irony: I am quite positive that these good people were also extreme liberals who believed that the societies to which they took their good works were better than the ones from which they came.

Being someone who, contrary to what Glenn Beck preaches, does not believe in giving up her life so easily—or perhpas it is part of the extreme value we Jews place on life—I think it’s a sin not to protect your Mission with zeal. It’s a sin to be cavalier with the life of The Other, all the more so with your own life.

Let’s say these saintly Christians cared less about those who depended on them back home, as compared to their Christian love for The Other. What good are you to those you serve if you don’t guard your invaluable life and scarce skills and abilities with the zeal with which you serve G-d and The Other?

Beats me.

UPDATE (Aug. 10): Myron, did Hilary say that “the Quran teaches that taking one innocent life is like killing all humanity, and saving one innocent life is like saving all humanity”?

That Quranic verse (5:32) “once piqued my curiosity because of a similar sounding Talmudic saying.” As its official version has it, this ayah declares that, ‘Whoever kills a person [unjustly]…it is as though he has killed all mankind. And whoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved all mankind.'”

Prompted by Dr. Daniel Pipes, I examined (and wrote about) the context of the passage in The Meaning of the Qur’an by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, only to find that the” likes of Hillary, and other fans of Islam, routinely ‘”decontextualized” it. The Qur’an actually says the following:

“On that account: We ordained

For the Children of Israel

That if anyone slew

A person—unless it be

For murder or for spreading

Mischief in the land—

It would be as if

He slew the whole people:

And if anyone saved a life,

It would be as if he saved

The life of the whole people.

Then although there came

To them Our Messenger

With Clear Signs, yet,

Even after that, many

Of them continued to commit

Excess in the land.”

The verse apparently concerns the dread-Jew. At the very least it’s fair to say this Quranic ayah is considerably less humanistic and universal than depicted by Madam Secretary, as “The Whole People” refers to the Ummah only.

“Devoid of the killing component, the Talmudic version simply and unequivocally states that, ‘To save one life is like saving the world.’ Contrary to the Quranic Ayah, it doesn’t whittle down humanity.” There is no ambiguity about the Talmudists’ use of “the world.” They meant humanity. Islam reserves the ruling for its own.

The column quoted here is “More Fatwa Fibs.”

UPDATED: Hillary: 'Terror Has No Religion' (Quranic verse 5:32)

Christianity, Crime, Islam, Jihad, Religion, Terrorism, The West

REALLY? I vehemently disagree with Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who uttered this fatuity in her tribute to the “10 medical aid workers who were killed in the northern Badakhshan Province,” among whom were six Americans.

TERROR, THY NAME IS ISLAM.

The deceased were members of the International Assistance Mission. According to Dirk Frans, the organization’s director, “The team had trekked about 100 miles into the mountains of one of the poorest and most remote areas of Afghanistan. The Americans were identified as Cheryl Beckett, 32; Brian Carderelli, 25; Dr. Thomas Grams, no age given; Glen Lapp, 40; Tom Little, 61; and Dan Terry, 63.”

CHARITY IS EUROPEAN AND PREDOMINANTLY CHRISTIAN.

“Also killed were Mahram Ali, 50, and man identified only as Jawed, 24, both of Afghanistan; Daniela Beyer, 35, of Germany; and Dr. Karen Woo, 36, of Britain.”

HILLARY: “Before their deaths, they had spent several days treating cataracts and other eye conditions in Nuristan Province. At their next stop, they planned to run a dental clinic and offer maternal and infant health care. They were unarmed. They were not being paid for their services. They had traveled to this part of Afghanistan because they wanted to help people in need. They were guests of the Afghan people.

CLEARLY NOT VERY WELCOME GUESTS.

As columnist Krauthammer said on FoxNews, this act was about destroying The Other, by which Chuckie meant the non-Muslim, the Christian.

And I would add that the “despicable act of wanton violence,” which sundered such gifted lives was about destroying goodness and nobility—qualities that are thin-on-the ground in that blighted part of the world.

An irony: I am quite positive that these good people were also extreme liberals who believed that the societies to which they took their good works were better than the ones from which they came.

Being someone who, contrary to what Glenn Beck preaches, does not believe in giving up her life so easily—or perhpas it is part of the extreme value we Jews place on life—I think it’s a sin not to protect your Mission with zeal. It’s a sin to be cavalier with the life of The Other, all the more so with your own life.

Let’s say these saintly Christians cared less about those who depended on them back home, as compared to their Christian love for The Other. What good are you to those you serve if you don’t guard your invaluable life and scarce skills and abilities with the zeal with which you serve G-d and The Other?

Beats me.

UPDATE (Aug. 10): Myron, did Hilary say that “the Quran teaches that taking one innocent life is like killing all humanity, and saving one innocent life is like saving all humanity”?

That Quranic verse (5:32) “once piqued my curiosity because of a similar sounding Talmudic saying.” As its official version has it, this ayah declares that, ‘Whoever kills a person [unjustly]…it is as though he has killed all mankind. And whoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved all mankind.'”

Prompted by Dr. Daniel Pipes, I examined (and wrote about) the context of the passage in The Meaning of the Qur’an by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, only to find that the” likes of Hillary, and other fans of Islam, routinely ‘”decontextualized” it. The Qur’an actually says the following:

“On that account: We ordained

For the Children of Israel

That if anyone slew

A person—unless it be

For murder or for spreading

Mischief in the land—

It would be as if

He slew the whole people:

And if anyone saved a life,

It would be as if he saved

The life of the whole people.

Then although there came

To them Our Messenger

With Clear Signs, yet,

Even after that, many

Of them continued to commit

Excess in the land.”

The verse apparently concerns the dread-Jew. At the very least it’s fair to say this Quranic ayah is considerably less humanistic and universal than depicted by Madam Secretary, as “The Whole People” refers to the Ummah only.

“Devoid of the killing component, the Talmudic version simply and unequivocally states that, ‘To save one life is like saving the world.’ Contrary to the Quranic Ayah, it doesn’t whittle down humanity.” There is no ambiguity about the Talmudists’ use of “the world.” They meant humanity. Islam reserves the ruling for its own.

The column quoted here is “More Fatwa Fibs.”