MAS, CAIR & Minnesota - the Epicenter of Radical Islamic Activism?

Compliments of Powerline, this is from the Wall Street Journal looking at the unusual confluence of Islamic activisim in Minnesota:

What's going on? It appears that both local circumstances and activists with a big-picture agenda play a role. Take the taxi drivers. Minnesota is home to tens of thousands of Somalis, most recent immigrants. Behind the scenes, moderate local Somali leaders are engaged in a power struggle with national Muslim organizations that seek to exploit this vulnerable population. Islam prohibits the consumption of alcohol but not its transportation, say Somalis who reject the taxi drivers' stance. Yet in June 2006, the Muslim American Society's (MAS) Minnesota chapter issued a "fatwa" forbidding drivers here from carrying alcohol to avoid "cooperating in sin."

Hassan Mohamud, one of the fatwa signers, praised the two top-light proposal as a national model for accommodating Islam in areas ranging from housing to the workplace. But according to Omar Jamal of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul, MAS is "trying to hijack and radicalize the Somali community for their Middle East agenda."

Ahmed Samatar, a recognized expert on Somali society at Macalester College in St. Paul notes that "There is a general Islamic prohibition against drinking, but carrying alcohol for people in commercial enterprise has never been forbidden." Similarly, Islam prohibits consuming pork, but not touching or scanning it, according to Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the American Society for Muslim Advancement in New York. It is, or should be, "a nonissue."

In Washington, the Democratic leadership is likely to seek passage of the End Racial Profiling Act, of which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called herself, in 2004, a "proud" cosponsor. Both MAS and CAIR are stumping for the bill, which would bar airport security personnel from disproportionately questioning Muslims or people of Middle Eastern descent. Minnesota's Keith Ellison, the nation's first Muslim Congressman, told me that the imams' situation reflects a misunderstanding of Muslim prayer and will be sorted out in court, while the other matters stem from the normal process of immigrant adjustment.

The events here suggest a larger strategy: By piggy-backing on our civil rights laws, Islamist activists aim to equate airport security with racial bigotry and to move slowly toward a two-tier legal system. Intimidation is a crucial tool. The "flying imams" lawsuit ups the ante by indicating that passengers who alerted airport authorities will be included as defendants. Activists are also perfecting their skills at manipulating the media. After a "pray-in" at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., one credulous MSNBC anchor likened the flying imams to civil rights icon Rosa Parks.

The comparison is misplaced: Omar Shahin, leader of the detained imams, has helped raise money for at least two charities later shut down for supporting terrorism. From 2000 to 2003, he headed the Islamic Center of Tucson, which terrorism expert Rita Katz described in the Washington Post as holding "basically the first cell of al Qaeda in the United States." CAIR has long been controversial for alleged terrorist ties, while the Chicago Tribune has described MAS as the American arm of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, which "preaches that religion and politics cannot be separated and that governments eventually should be Islamic."

For background on the Muslim Brotherhood and its arm in America, the Muslim American Society, please see here, here, here and here. They need to be watched and challenged every bit as much as CAIR. You might want to also check out their website here.

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Let The CAIR-Flying Imam P.R. Campaign Begin

CAIR’s national legal director, Arsalan Iftikhar, is busy writing opinion pieces about the Flying Imams and racial profiling from the radical Wahhabists point of view, and at least one "useful idiot" newspaper has seen fit to give him a podium.

Many watching the Flying Imams case strongly suspect that this whole farce was stage managed by CAIR to provide grist to justify the passage of a truly atrocious piece of legislation that CAIR has been promoting for years – The End Racial Profiling Act. Iftikhar’s opinion piece does nothing to dispel that belief. The entire piece is devoted to playing up the Flying Imams and discussing how evil law enforcement are engaging in unlawful racial profiling against muslims in the wake of 9-11.

You have to love this guy’s arguments. One, all of the evidence about what the Flying Imams did to get tossed from the plane are all lies. As Iftikhar puts it:

. . . [F]alse media reports after the incident stated some of the following false claims: The imams were praying inside the plane, they were chanting pro-Saddam statements, and other silly accusations.

Lies- all lies I say. Hmmm, you can review the lies here and decide for yourself.

Two, paying attention to Muslims acting strange on a flight has no reasonable basis:

. . . The case of the imams’ ejection from an airliner highlights the growing politics of fear and how this hysteria is manifesting itself in our American social fabric.

Its that damned Islamaphobia again. We should be paying attention to fundamentalist Christians and those radical Jews. Let's leave the peace loving Wahhabists alone. By the way, to see Wahhabi Islam in its true form, check out here.

This is nothing more then CAIR trying to change the fabric of America to make it safe for Wahhabi Islam. The remainder of Iftikhar’s arguments go to the evils of racial profiling and playing up the End Racial Profiling Act.

Just so you know, the End Racial Profiling Act would drastically change how our law enforcement would do its work. It would let Muslims sue individual security personnel for racial profiling based on a pure numbers game. If, out of every 100 people searched by a guard, four are Muslim, that guard is deemed to have committed unlawful racial profiling if the population density of Muslims in the local area is less then 4 per 100. The burden of proof shifts to the guard to prove that he did not racially profile. And who could not imagine that the day after this legislation is enacted, CAIR starts filing class action suits against the FBI, etc. If this ever gets put into law, America as a nation can hang it up.

I truly hope that the Airways – or the John Does sued in the Flying Imam lawsuit – fashion their discovery to expose CAIR’s involvement in stage managing the Flying Imam incident. And that they then sue CAIR for every Wahhabi penny supplied by CAIR’s Saudi benefactors. The bottom line, CAIR needs to watched and challenged at every turn.

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A Response to America on HR 1591, the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill

I made the mistake of listening to the House debate on HR 1591 the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill. I was horrified listening to both the arguments of Murtha and Pelosi, as well as the largely ineffectual response of Republicans, who largely responded with no emotion or animation, and who failed to attack Murtha and Peleosi on any of the reasonable grounds afforded by this horrendous legislation. What follows is the Republican Response to Murtha and Pelosi that I wish I had heard.


To Congressman Murtha and Speaker Pelosi, let me begin by saying I question your patriotism. This unconscionable charade in which you have engaged to buy votes and to twist arms establishes two facts. One, you have no interest in an open debate about Iraq focused upon what is best for America. Two, your motivation is to achieve a partisan political victory over George Bush now and over the Republicans in 2008. You are not patriots, Congressman Mutha and Speaker Pelosi, you are craven, partisan political animals of the most vile stripe.

You both have presented many arguments on the floor today, and I will look at them one by one. But let me ask you a critical question first. General David Petraeus was sent to Iraq with a mandate to engage in a new strategy – the surge. Prior to General Petraeus, our commanders in the field sought to “minimize our footprint” in Iraq. We can all agree that strategy was unsuccessful. That strategy resulted in a rise in violence, and the animation of Shia violence in response to the horrid attacks by Al Qaeda in Iraq and others.

But General Petraeus’s strategy of the surge is a 180 degree change from our prior strategy. Now, our soldiers are being sent into small posts throughout Baghdad, supporting or supported by Iraqi troops in each instance. That strategy began over a month ago, and without even half the U.S. troops yet in place, by every measure, it is having a significant impact in quelling the violence.

Why then would you refuse to allow General Petraeus to give testimony to the House prior to this vote? I do not understand why we were denied his critical inuput – unless of course it is that you do not wish to confuse the ground truth in Iraq with your own lies - and I choose that word with great care - to the American people on the floor of this House about the effects of the surge on violence in Iraq.

The same can be said of a briefing on the political situation in Iraq at this point in time. Prime Minister Maliki’s nascent government, only near one year old today, is making incredibly significant strides while under tremendous pressure. You would not allow the State Department to brief the House on advances by the Maliki government in the days leading up to this vote. Again, there can be only one reason. You do not wish to allow reality to throw its light upon your own lies to the American people on the floor of this House.

And one last over-arching question. General Petraeus has said, time and again, that we will know by the end of the summer the effect of his strategy, the surge. Why are you in such a rush to place constraints on our Commander in Chief that will insure that troops are not reinforced and the full effect of the surge will not be felt? The truth of course is that you do not want it to succeed. If it did, your entire partisan political future would be destroyed. You have gone beyond rooting for defeat, and now seek to legislate it. I will say again, Congressman Murtha and Speaker Pelosi, you are not patriots, you are partisan political vermin.

Congress of course has the absolute right to propose legislation to remove the authorization for the use of force in Iraq. You also have the right to cut off all funding for the war in Iraq. That is where the powers of Congress end. But you lack the political courage of any convictions to take those acts. Indeed, I think it clear you have no convictions, only naked ambition. You play games that can only endanger our troops in combat and give aid and comfort to radical Islamists world wide.

And in that regard, Congressman Murtha, you sir are a disingenuous son of a bitch. Rarely have I seen an act so cynical in its inception as your plan to prevent units inside the USA from deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan unless they are rated as fully mission capable.

Sir, while that certainly sounds reasonable on its face, please tell the American people the truth about how the military readiness rating system works. Please tell the American people, sir that your constraints have absolutely nothing to do with the reality of whether our soldiers are actually sent into Iraq or Afghanistan fully combat ready, but everything to do with your gaming the system.

Sir, please tell the American people that the readiness system is based on three factors, people, training and equipment, and that to be C-1 ready, units have to be at 90% or above in all three areas. Please tell the American people that our troops will almost never be C-1 on the date of deployment overseas because they do not take their heavy equipment, but rather fall in on that equipment when they arrive in Kuwait. And further, once in Kuwait, our troops not only pick up their equipment, but are given a few weeks to acclimate and conduct all necessary training not otherwise conducted in the U.S. Most importantly, Sir, as you explain this to the American people, please identify for them the number of units that, in the past four years, we have sent from Kuwait into combat areas in Iraq or Afghanistan that have been rated less then C-1, fully mission capable. Do be honest sir. That number is precisely 0. You truly are one disingenuous son of a bitch, sir.

Congressman Murtha and Speaker Pelosi, I heard you argue today that we have to bring our forces home because they are stretched too thin to be able to respond to other wholly theoretical threats – ones that you do not name - at places in the world likewise unnamed. To take that argument to its logical conclusion, we should never commit troops anywhere in the world because, in such an event, they might be needed elsewhere at some time during the deployment. Two, tell me anywhere in the world where Democrats, at least those led by you, Congressman Murtha and Speaker Pelosi, will ever engage a threat. Do we need to pull out of Iraq to be ready to wage war on Iran? What horse manure. The only logical answer to this straw man of an arugment you posit is to expand the size of our Armed Forces. And surprise, an expansion of our Armed Forces has already been approved by Congress. Why is it that you fail to mention that in your argument.

You also complain loudly of a supposed inability of our troops to train on their equipment because of shortfalls inside the United States. That is an easy one to solve. I know where, today, there is an extra 21 billion dollars just waiting to be spent on solving military equipment shortfalls. That would certainly be patriotic. Hmmm, sorry, I forgot for a moment, those funds are earmarked by you for combat peanut storage and the stategic spinach reserve.

Mr. Murtha, you wish to take from the Commander and Chief, as well as the generals on the ground, the decision to leave troops in combat areas beyond one year, or to deploy them without a year of rest in the United States. Those sir, are command decisions to be made by our military and our Commander in Chief based on multiple factors. You sir, would restrict the ability of our commanders to make those decisions simply to insure that we are unable to reinforce our forces in Iraq, and further that our troops are continuously drawn down, regardless of the ground truth or necessity. I would ask, Sir, who died and left you Commander in Chief, since those powers you are legislating seem clearly to be plenary powers of the President as Commander and Chief under Article 2 of the Constitution. If you are unfamiliar with that document, we can provide you a copy.

Speaker Pelosi, you and Congressman Murtha claim that the real fight against terrorism is in Agfhanistan. I believe, Speaker Pelosi, you said today, and I quote, “The War in Iraq is separate from the war on terror.” Just how incredibly stupid do you think we are. Whatever validity that argument had in 2003, it stands every piece of intelligence we have had since directly on its head. How many times do bin Laden and al Zawahiri have to say explicitly that the fight in Iraq is the most important fight for al Qaeda and radical Islam world wide before you credit them with honesty. Your denial of this fact clearly shows that you are willing to say anything, no matter how outrageous, in order to achieve your partisan political victory at whatever the cost to the country.

And Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha, the one point I did not here from you today was any discussion of the ramifications of our retreat you our legislating from Iraq. What effect will that have on our national security? What effect will that have on the world wide growth of radical Islam and there already preexisting belief that America has no resolve? What effect will that have far into the future for countries who consider whether to ally with us? And, more immediately, what will be the effect in Iraq, where the CIA recently stated in a brief that, following a retreat, the situation in Iraq would degenerate into true chaos? Please note that when I say true chaos, I am not referring your partisan description of Iraq today as being in chaos, but the real thing, with al Qaeda, Iran, and a host of others vying for control. Those are by far the most important questions that need to be asked and answered for the benefit of our country. But then again, the benefit of our country is not your most important concern, is it?

I could go on and on with each specific point that you raised, but it would be simply more of the same. In the end, I watched you, Speaker Pelosi, appear in a press briefing after the vote, all smiles, and claiming with pride that you have taken a giant leap towards ending the war. Yes you have. And the manner in which you have done so says everything we as Americans need to know about you and your compatriot, Jack Murtha. You are not patriotic Americans. You are cynical, disingenuous political vermin, no more.

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In the Netherlands, a Professor Calls for a Violent Counter-response to Islam

Professor Jansen, a tutor of Theo Van Gogh on the subject of Islam, has strong words of advice for his fellow countrymen:

Dutch politicians and media are downplaying excesses of multicultural society and thereby increasing these, in the view of Islam expert Hans Janssen. "The Netherlands should resist, using non-peaceful means", he argues in weekly magazine Opinio.

Jansen, Professor of Modern Islamic Ideology at Utrecht University, characterizes the Dutch as inhabitants of "a peaceful enclave" who have, however, "forgotten that peace sometimes needs to be defended through violence". A peaceful society that wishes to remain existent and stay peaceful "will have to find a way to defend itself through non-peaceful means from people who are not peaceful", as the Arabist writes. "It will be hard to explaining this convincingly to all those respectable and friendly people in the (Christian coalition parties) CDA and ChristenUnie. And to the rest."

As Jansen sees it, the Netherlands is too indulgent to violence of fundamentalist Muslims. But he also suggests that moderate Muslims, too, strive after an Islamic society in the Netherlands. They intentionally make use of the radicals to enforce their wishes, according to the Arabist.

Read the rest of the article here.

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A Day of National Shame - the Passage of H.R. 1591

The House of Representatives, led by Nancy Pelosi, has succeeded in passing House Resolution 1591, the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill for Iraq, and for peanut farmers, and for spinach growers, and for a power plant in D.C., etc., and, most importantly, to insure failure in Iraq. The Resolution required 218 votes to pass. The Resolution received precisely the 218 votes necessary, with the help of two Republicans who voted for it, Congressman Gilchrest, 1st District, Maryland, and Congressman Jones, 3rd District, North Carolina.

I watched the speeches in the lead up to the vote - though the speeches were mere political theater. The buying of votes and the threats for voting against the bill all went on in private. Nonetheless, the speeches were illuminating for what they told of the motivations of the two crafters of this legislation, Nancy Pelosi and Jack Murtha. I will post the points of their speeches and a response as time permits this day. For the Republicans, Jerry Lewis was horrid, and only two of the other speakers were reasonably effective. Rep. Johnson of Texas was by far the most moving and eloquent of all the speakers, and I will post his speech later.

The roll call for the vote is here.

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Iranian Navy Kidnaps 15 British Sailors

MSNBC is reporting that Iranians are playing some very dangerous games in the waters near the Iran-Iraq border:

Iranian naval vessels seized 15 British Navy personnel in Iraqi waters on Friday, the Ministry of Defense said.

The British personnel were "engaged in routine boarding operations of merchant shipping in Iraqi territorial waters," and had completed their inspection of a merchant ship when they were accosted by Iranian vessels, the ministry said in a statement.

"We are urgently pursuing this matter with the Iranian authorities at the highest level and ... the Iranian ambassador has been summoned to the Foreign Office," the ministry said.

"The British government is demanding the immediate and safe return of our people and equipment."

Read the story here.

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Ask But Don't Sway?

I am reminded of the scene from The Birdcage where Robin Williams attempts to teach Nathan Lane to pass for straight.

Gay police officers in the Philippines have been warned not to sway their hips while on duty – or risk losing their jobs.

Chief Supt Samuel Pagdilao said the force did not discriminate against homosexuals but would fire those who misbehaved.

'If they sway their hips while marching, or if they engage in lustful conduct, I think that will be a ground for separation. If they behave within the norm, I don't think we'll have a problem,' he added.

See the story here.

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Multiculturalism & the Crime of Religious Harassment

The far left have had the UK firmly in their control for years - and they have been busy turning out legislation to make their leftist philosophy of multiculturalism the law of the land. So, to ask a Muslim woman simply to remove her veil is considered an act of religious harassment. And for such an act of religious harassment, a native of Britain, the father of a child, was ordered to jail today for a nine month sentence.

A DRUNK who asked a Muslim woman to raise her veil in public has been jailed for nine months for his troubles.

John Gallacher was the worst for drink, but did not touch Kadiza Begum.

Yet she insisted he was charged with religious harassment after the incident at a bus-stop in London's East End.

. . . Gallacher told the court he had recently been beaten up by Asians and was speaking to the woman at the bus stop and just wanted to know who he was talking to. He admitted religiously aggravated harassment.

His lawyer Edward Ferner said: "There was, of course, no physical contact."

But Judge Martin Reynolds said Parliament has made it clear any form of racial or religious insult is "not to be tolerated."

He told Gallacher: "I accept there was no physical touching. Nevertheless, it is a serious matter."

Read the whole story here. The only reason he is being punished is for asking a Muslim woman to remove, specifically, her veil.

Wahhabi islamists in Britain, rather then integrate into British society and culture, have made a successful effort to convince the U.K.'s multiculturalists to grant Islam special status - even criminal protection from criticism of Islam, in fact. And CAIR is seeking to see the same special treatment in the U.S. One small step for radical islam, one giant leap for the West towards dhimmitude.

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Bob Baer on the Defection of General Asgari

Former CIA agent Bob Baer weighs in on the importance of the defection of Iran's IRGC General Asgari. Baer highlights the importance and breadth of the information Asgari knows, and suggests that Asgari alone could become a PR tool to justify open war with Iran.

Normally, vanished intelligence officers barely merit one short paragraph on page eight. Asgari is different, though. As the IRGC commander in Lebanon in the late '80s and early '90s, he knows dirty secrets, secrets that could be used to justify going to war with Iran. Asgari was in the IRGC's chain of command when it was kidnapping and assassinating Westerners in Lebanon in the '80s. Asgari knows a lot about other IRGC-ordered, Lebanon-based terrorist attacks, including the October 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut and the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.

As IRGC commander in Lebanon, Asgari was also one of Hizballah's stepfathers. In the late '80s and early '90s, he was Hizballah Secretary General's Hasan Nasrallah's primary Iranian contact, and certainly in a position now to provide evidence of Nasrallah's involvement in terrorism. Asgari was the primary Iranian contact for one of the world's most lethal and capable terrorists, 'Imad Fa'iz Mughniyah. Mughniyah is indicted in the U.S. for the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 and the murder of a Navy diver.

The bad news for Hizballah and Iran doesn't end there. Asgari would be able to tell us about Hizballah's secret military commanders, its overseas networks, and possibly its cells in the U.S. A friend close to Hizballah's leadership tells me Hizballah has gone to battle quarters, concluding Asgari's "kidnapping" is a prelude for its next round with Israel.

The more important question is what Asgari's possible defection would mean for this Administration's plans for Iran. Nothing is certain when it comes to Iran, but here's what I think we should look for: If Asgari resurfaces in the next couple months with a detailed, convincing bill of indictment against Iran and Hizballah (unlike Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's supposed confession), we should expect a confrontation. For instance, in the late '80s Hizballah, under IRGC orders, sent plastic explosives to secret cells around the world. Only one shipment was intercepted. The others are presumably still in place. If Asgari helps us dig one up, the Administration has a propaganda weapon it never had going into the Iraq war.

Read the entire post here. I do not agree with Baer that trotting out Asgari for pr at some point necessarilly presages open war with Iran. I would thing that the U.S. would use Asgari's informaton for as long as possible to direct and expand its covert operations to neuter Iran. Following that, I would see the U.S. using Asgari as a p.r. tool for any number of reasons short of open war, such as to justify why Europe needs to stop dealing with Iran and join in harsher sanctions. At any rate, it is clear that Iran is in a very uncomfortable spot at the moment.

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Al Qaeda's Shrinking Base In Iraq

This from Omar at Iraq the Model:

The "Islamic State in Iraq" a branch of al-Qaeda has been dealt several good blows recently in the same city they were planning to announce as the first capital of their state.

For four years since the liberation of Iraq Anbar remained distant from the rest of the country, defiant to the central government and a dangerous place for everyone including its own sons…this is slowly, yet clearly, changing now.

For a few months after more than two dozens of tribes formed the "Anbar Awakening Council" not much success was reported but recently there's been a constant stream of reports on battles between the tribes and al-Qaeda in several towns and villages across the vast western province; in most cases the tribes came out triumphant but sacrifices were also made.

The restive province is finally coming back into the arms of the state.

While I wouldn't take any poll results to be accurate assessment of the public attitude, they are useful in determining the general direction of changes in attitude among the population.

Recently there were two separately conducted polls in the news, and the results were contradictory to each other in more than one point which is not surprising at all but one item of the poll conducted for the BBC and ABC that caught my attention.
The poll shows that only about 4% of the Sunni are in favor of an Islamic rule. This is interesting and worth noting even if the error margin for this one was three times what the pollsters claimed, which is somewhat unlikely for an error margin. This extremely low approval rate is understandable given all what the Sunni had suffered under the extremists who touted the idea of Islamic rule in the Sunni areas for four years.

The city that at some point was about to become the new Talibanistan is now working hand in hand with the government in Baghdad and the coalition forces to defeat al-Qaeda. Maliki's and Petraeus's visit to the province were not only of symbolic value. The visit and the meeting with the heads of tribes marked the beginning of the return of the once stray province to where it belongs.

The clash between the tribe and the mosque was inevitable. For centuries and since the early days of Islam the two institutions squabbled for power and dominance and while tribe sheiks are diplomats by nature and always seek to resole conflicts and find compromises between the two sides of a conflict, clerics, especially extreme ones, do not recognize the idea of compromise; to them there is halal and haram (or allowed and forbidden) with absolutely no gray area in between whatsoever.
Iraq and the western part in particular is a very tribal community and so the increased influence and interference of clerics became a serious threat to the position of sheiks.
Sheiks are more businessmen than ideological leaders, like my tribe's sheik put it once "the hell with them [clerics] we want to live like normal people and all they care about is death".

By no means I'm trying to say that al-Qaeda is defeated. This is still far away but we can say that the in order for al-Qaeda to continue its plan to establish a safe haven in Iraq it will have to search for alternatives to Anbar. Their primary alternative is Diyala where demographics are already not as favorable for al-Qaeda as Anbar was.

There are signs that the tribes in Diyala too are changing their attitude and there are signs that they are slowly following the steps of their peers in Anbar. If this change is encouraged and supported al-Qaeda will not have many, if any, good alternative plans.

Read the entire post here.

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Prof. Lewis Speaks on Islam, the Mid East, & Conflict with the West, Part 1

Professor Benard Lewis, now ninety years old, is the West's preeminent scholar on Middle East. His writings foretold 9-11, and he is able to put the myriad of nuances regarding Islam, the Middle East, and Muslim interactions with the West into understandable framework. In this text of his most recent speech, Professor Lewis touches upon almost all of the major issues surrounding the Middle East and its relations with the West. I include his speech here in its entirety.

Thank you, Vice President and Mrs. Cheney, ladies and gentlemen. As you have been told, I have studied a number of languages, but I cannot find words in any of them adequate to express my feeling of gratitude for the honor and appreciation which I have been shown this evening. All I can say is thank you.

My topic this evening is Europe and Islam. But let me begin with a word of personal explanation. You are accustomed for the most part to hearing from people with direct practical involvement in military and intelligence matters. I cannot offer you that. My direct involvement with military and intelligence matters ended quite a long time ago--to be precise, on 31 August 1945, when I left His Majesty's Service and returned to the university to join with colleagues in trying to cope with a six-year backlog of battle-scarred undergraduates.

What I would like to try and offer you this evening is something of the lessons of history. Here I must begin with a second disavowal. It is sometimes forgotten that the content of history, the business of the historian, is the past, not the future. I remember being at an international meeting of historians in Rome during which a group of us were sitting and discussing the question: should historians attempt to predict the future? We batted this back and forth. This was in the days when the Soviet Union was still alive and well. One of our Soviet colleagues finally intervened and said, "In the Soviet Union, the most difficult task of the historian is to predict the past."

I do not intend to offer any predictions of the future in Europe or the Middle East, but one thing can legitimately be expected of the historian, and that is to identify trends and processes - to look at the trends in the past, at what is continuing in the present, and therefore to see the possibilities and choices which will face us in the future.

One other introductory word. A favorite theme of the historian, as I am sure you know, is periodization--dividing history into periods. Periodization is mostly a convenience of the historian for purposes of writing or teaching. Nevertheless, there are times in the long history of the human adventure when we have a real turning point, a major change--the end of an era, the beginning of a new era. I am becoming more and more convinced that we are in such an age at the present time--a change in history comparable with such events as the fall of Rome, the discovery of America, and the like. I will try to explain that.

Conventionally, the modern history of the Middle East begins at the end of the 18th century, when a small French expeditionary force commanded by a young general called Napoleon Bonaparte was able to conquer Egypt and rule it with impunity. It was a terrible shock that one of the heartlands of Islam could be invaded, occupied, and ruled with virtually no effective resistance.

The second shock came a few years later with the departure of the French, which was brought about not by the Egyptians nor by their suzerains, the Turks, but by a small squadron of the Royal Navy commanded by a young admiral called Horatio Nelson, who drove the French out and back to France.

This is of symbolic importance. That was, as I said, at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. From then onward, the heartlands of Islam were no longer wholly controlled by the rulers of Islam. They were under direct or indirect influence or control from outside.

The dominating forces in the Islamic world were now outside forces. What shaped their lives was Western influence. What gave them choices was Western rivalries. The political game that they could play--the only one that was open to them--was to try and profit from the rivalries between the outside powers, to try to use them against one another. We see that again and again in the course of the 19th and 20th and even into the beginning of the 21st century. We see, for example, in the First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War, how Middle Eastern governments or leaders tried to play this game with varying degrees of success.

That game is now over. The era that was inaugurated by Napoleon and Nelson was terminated by Reagan and Gorbachev. The Middle East is no longer ruled or dominated by outside powers. These nations are having some difficulty adjusting to this new situation, to taking responsibility for their own actions and their consequences, and so on. But they are beginning to do so, and this change has been expressed with his usual clarity and eloquence by Osama bin Laden.

We see with the ending of the era of outside domination, the reemergence of certain older trends and deeper currents in Middle Eastern history, which had been submerged or at least obscured during the centuries of Western domination. Now they are coming back again. One of them I would call the internal struggles--ethnic, sectarian, regional--between different forces within the Middle East. These have of course continued, but were of less importance in the imperialist era. They are coming out again now and gaining force, as we see for example from the current clash between Sunni and Shia Islam--something without precedent for centuries.

The other thing more directly relevant to my theme this evening is the signs of a return among Muslims to what they perceive as the cosmic struggle for world domination between the two main faiths--Christianity and Islam. There are many religions in the world, but as far as I know there are only two that have claimed that their truths are not only universal--all religions claim that--but also exclusive; that they--the Christians in the one case, the Muslims in the other--are the fortunate recipients of God's final message to humanity, which it is their duty not to keep selfishly to themselves--like the Jews or the Hindus--but to bring to the rest of humanity, removing whatever obstacles there may be on the way. This self-perception, shared between Christendom and Islam, led to the long struggle that has been going on for more than fourteen centuries and which is now entering a new phase.

In the Christian world, now at the beginning of the 21st century of its era, this triumphalist attitude no longer prevails, and is confined to a few minority groups. In the world of Islam, now in its early 15th century, triumphalism is still a significant force, and has found expression in new militant movements.

It is interesting that both sides for quite a long time refused to recognize this struggle. For example, both sides named each other by non-religious terms. The Christian world called the Muslims Moors, Saracens, Tartars, and Turks. Even a convert was said to have turned Turk. The Muslims for their part called the Christian world Romans, Franks, Slavs, and the like. It was only slowly and reluctantly that they began to give each other religious designations and then these were for the most part demeaning and inaccurate. In the West, it was customary to call Muslims Mohammadans, which they never called themselves, based on the totally false assumption that Muslims worship Muhammad in the way that Christians worship Christ. The Muslim term for Christians was Nazarene--nasrani--implying the local cult of a place called Nazareth.

The declaration of war begins at the very beginning of Islam. There are certain letters purported to have been written by the Prophet Muhammad to the Christian Byzantine emperor, the emperor of Persia, and various other rulers, saying, "I have now brought God's final message. Your time has passed. Your beliefs are superseded. Accept my mission and my faith or resign or submit--you are finished." The authenticity of these prophetic letters is doubted, but the message is clear and authentic in the sense that it does represent the long dominant view of the Islamic world.

A little later we have hard evidence--and I mean hard in the most literal sense--inscriptions. Many of you, I should think, have been to Jerusalem. You have probably visited that remarkable building, the Dome of the Rock. It is very significant. It is built on a place sacred to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Its architectural style is that of the earliest Christian churches. It dates from the end of the 7th century and was built by one of the early caliphs, the oldest Muslim religious building outside Arabia. What is significant is the message in the inscriptions inside the Dome: "He is God, He is one, He has no companion, He does not beget, He is not begotten." (cf. Qur'an, IX, 31-3; CXII, 1-3) This is clearly a direct challenge to certain central principles of the Christian faith.

Interestingly, they put the same thing on a new gold coinage. Until then, striking gold coins had been an exclusive Roman privilege. The Islamic caliph for the first time struck gold coins, breaching the immemorial privilege of Rome, and putting the same inscription on them. As I said, a challenge.

The Muslim attack on Christendom and the resulting conflict, which arose more from their resemblances than from their differences, has gone through three phases. The first dates from the very beginning of Islam, when the new faith spilled out of the Arabian Peninsula, where it was born, into the Middle East and beyond. It was then that they conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa--all at that time part of the Christian world--and went beyond into Europe, conquering a sizable part of southwestern Europe, including Spain, Portugal, and southern Italy, all of which became part of the Islamic world, and even crossing the Pyrenees into France and occupying for a while parts of France.

After a long and bitter struggle, the Christians managed to retake part but not all of the territory they had lost. They succeeded in Europe, and in a sense Europe was defined by the limits of that success. They failed to retake North Africa or the Middle East, which were lost to Christendom. Notably, they failed to recapture the Holy Land, in the series of campaigns known as the Crusades.

That was not the end of the matter. In the meantime the Islamic world, having failed the first time, was bracing for the second attack, this time conducted not by Arabs and Moors but by Turks and Tartars. In the mid-thirteenth century the Mongol conquerors of Russia were converted to Islam. The Turks, who had already conquered Anatolia, advanced into Europe and in 1453 they captured the ancient Christian citadel of Constantinople. They conquered a large part of the Balkans, and for a while ruled half of Hungary. Twice they reached as far as Vienna, to which they laid siege in 1529 and again in 1683. Barbary corsairs from North Africa--well-known to historians of the United States--were raiding Western Europe. They went to Iceland--the uttermost limit--and to several places in Western Europe, including notably a raid on Baltimore (the original one, in Ireland) in 1631. In a contemporary document, we have a list of 107 captives who were taken from Baltimore to Algiers, including a man called Cheney.

Again, Europe counterattacked, this time more successfully and more rapidly. They succeeded in recovering Russia and the Balkan Peninsula, and in advancing further into the Islamic lands, chasing their former rulers whence they had come. For this phase of European counterattack, a new term was invented: imperialism. When the peoples of Asia and Africa invaded Europe, this was not imperialism. When Europe attacked Asia and Africa, it was.

This European counterattack began a new phase which brought the European attack into the very heart of the Middle East. In our own time, we have seen the end of the resulting domination.

Osama bin Laden, in some very interesting proclamations and declarations, has this to say about the war in Afghanistan which, you will remember, led to the defeat and retreat of the Red Army and the collapse of the Soviet Union. We tend to see that as a Western victory, more specifically an American victory, in the Cold War against the Soviets. For Osama bin Laden, it was nothing of the kind. It is a Muslim victory in a jihad. If one looks at what happened in Afghanistan and what followed, this is, I think one must say, a not implausible interpretation.

As Osama bin Laden saw it, Islam had reached the ultimate humiliation in this long struggle after World War I, when the last of the great Muslim empires--the Ottoman Empire--was broken up and most of its territories divided between the victorious allies; when the caliphate was suppressed and abolished, and the last caliph driven into exile. This seemed to be the lowest point in Muslim history. From there they went upwards.

In his perception, the millennial struggle between the true believers and the unbelievers had gone through successive phases, in which the latter were led by the various imperial European powers that had succeeded the Romans in the leadership of the world of the infidels--the Christian Byzantine Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the British and French and Russian empires. In this final phase, he says, the world of the infidels was divided and disputed between two rival superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. In his perception, the Muslims have met, defeated, and destroyed the more dangerous and the more deadly of the two infidel superpowers. Dealing with the soft, pampered and effeminate Americans would be an easy matter.

This belief was confirmed in the 1990s when we saw one attack after another on American bases and installations with virtually no effective response of any kind--only angry words and expensive missiles dispatched to remote and uninhabited places.

The lessons of Vietnam and Beirut were confirmed by Mogadishu. "Hit them, and they'll run." This was the perceived sequence leading up to 9/11. That attack was clearly intended to be the completion of the first sequence and the beginning of the new one, taking the war into the heart of the enemy camp.

In the eyes of a fanatical and resolute minority of Muslims, the third wave of attack on Europe has clearly begun. We should not delude ourselves as to what it is and what it means. This time it is taking different forms and two in particular: terror and migration.

The subject of terror has been frequently discussed and in great detail, and I do not need to say very much about that now. What I do want to talk about is the other aspect of more particular relevance to Europe, and that is the question of migration.
In earlier times, it was inconceivable that a Muslim would voluntarily move to a non-Muslim country. The jurists discuss this subject at great length in the textbooks and manuals of shari`a, but in a different form: is it permissible for a Muslim to live in or even visit a non-Muslim country? And if so, if he does, what must he do?

Generally speaking, this was considered under certain specific headings. A captive or a prisoner of war obviously has no choice, but he must preserve his faith and get home as soon as possible.

The second case is that of an unbeliever in the land of the unbelievers who sees the light and embraces the true faith--in other words, becomes a Muslim. He must leave as soon as possible and go to a Muslim country.

The third case is that of a visitor. For long, the only purpose that was considered legitimate was to ransom captives. This was later expanded into diplomatic and commercial missions. With the advance of the European counterattack, there was a new issue in this ongoing debate. What is the position of a Muslim if his country is conquered by infidels? May he stay or must he leave?

We have some interesting documents from the late 15th century, when the reconquest of Spain was completed and Moroccan jurists were discussing this question. They asked if Muslims could stay. The general answer was no, it is not permissible. The question was asked: May they stay if the Christian government that takes over is tolerant? This proved to be a purely hypothetical question, of course. The answer was no; even then they may not stay, because the temptation to apostasy would be even greater. They must leave and hope that in God's good time they will be able to reconquer their homelands and restore the true faith.

The speech is continued here at Part 2.

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Prof. Lewis Speaks on Islam, the Mid East, & Conflict with the West - Part II

Part 1 of Professor Lewis's speech is here. His speech is continued in the following:

This was the line taken by most jurists. There were some, at first a minority, later a more important group, who said it is permissible for Muslims to stay provided that certain conditions are met, mainly that they are allowed to practice their faith. This raises another question which I will come back to in a moment: what is meant by practicing their faith? Here I would remind you that we are dealing not only with a different religion but also with a different concept of what religion is about, referring especially to what Muslims call the shari`a, the holy law of Islam, covering a wide range of matters regarded as secular in the Christian world even during the medieval period, but certainly in what some call the post-Christian era of the Western world.

There are obviously now many attractions which draw Muslims to Europe including the opportunities offered, particularly in view of the growing economic impoverishment of much of the Muslim world, and the attractions of European welfare as well as employment. They also have freedom of expression and education which they lack at home. This is a great incentive to the terrorists who migrate. Terrorists have far greater freedom of preparation and operation in Europe--and to a degree also in America--than they do in most Islamic lands.

I would like to draw your attention to some other factors of importance in the situation at this moment. One is the new radicalism in the Islamic world, which comes in several kinds: Sunni, especially Wahhabi, and Iranian Shiite, dating from the Iranian revolution. Both of these are becoming enormously important factors. We have the strange paradox that the danger of Islamic radicalism or of radical terrorism is far greater in Europe and America than it is in the Middle East and North Africa, where they are much better at controlling their extremists than we are.

The Sunni kind is mainly Wahhabi and has benefited from the prestige and influence and power of the House of Saud as controllers of the holy places of Islam and of the annual pilgrimage, and the enormous oil wealth at their disposal. The Iranian revolution is something different. The term revolution is much used in the Middle East. It is virtually the only generally accepted title of legitimacy. But the Iranian revolution is a real revolution in the sense in which we use that term of the French or Russian revolutions. Like the French and Russian revolutions in their day, it has had an enormous impact in the whole area with which the Iranians share a common universe of discourse--that is to say, the Islamic world.

Let me turn to the question of assimilation, which is much discussed nowadays. How far is it possible for Muslim migrants who have settled in Europe, in North America, and elsewhere, to become part of those countries in which they settle, in the way that so many other waves of immigrants have done? I think there are several points which need to be made.

One of them is the basic differences in what precisely is meant by assimilation and acceptance. Here there is an immediate and obvious difference between the European and the American situations. For an immigrant to become an American means a change of political allegiance. For an immigrant to become a Frenchman or a German means a change of ethnic identity. Changing political allegiance is certainly very much easier and more practical than changing ethnic identity, either in one's own feelings or in one's measure of acceptance. England had it both ways. If you were naturalized, you became British but you did not become English.

I mentioned earlier the important difference in what one means by religion. For Muslims, it covers a whole range of different things--marriage, divorce, and inheritance are the most obvious examples. Since antiquity in the Western world, the Christian world, these have been secular matters. The distinction of church and state, spiritual and temporal, lay and ecclesiastical is a Christian distinction which has no place in Islamic history and therefore is difficult to explain to Muslims, even in the present day. Until very recently they did not even have a vocabulary to express it. They have one now.

What are the European responses to this situation? In Europe, as in the United States, a frequent response is what is variously known as multiculturalism and political correctness. In the Muslim world there are no such inhibitions. They are very conscious of their identity. They know who they are and what they are and what they want, a quality which we seem to have lost to a very large extent. This is a source of strength in the one, of weakness in the other.

A term sometimes used is constructive engagement. Let's talk to them, let's get together and see what we can do. Constructive engagement has a long tradition. When Saladin re-conquered Jerusalem and other places in the holy land, he allowed the Christian merchants from Europe to stay in the seaports. He apparently felt the need to justify this, and he wrote a letter to the caliph in Baghdad explaining his action. I would like to quote it to you. The merchants were useful since "there is not one among them that does not bring and sell us weapons of war, to their detriment and to our advantage." This continued during the Crusades. It continued after. It continued during the Ottoman advance into Europe, when they could always find European merchants willing to sell them weapons they needed and European bankers willing to finance their purchases. Constructive engagement has a long history.

One also finds a rather startling modern version of it. We have seen in our own day the extraordinary spectacle of a pope apologizing to the Muslims for the Crusades. I would not wish to defend the behavior of the Crusaders, which was in many respects atrocious. But let us have a little sense of proportion. We are now expected to believe that the Crusades were an unwarranted act of aggression against a peaceful Muslim world. Hardly. The first papal call for a crusade occurred in 846 C.E., when an Arab expedition from Sicily sailed up the Tiber and sacked St. Peter's Rome. A synod in France issued an appeal to Christian sovereigns to rally against "the enemies of Christ," and the Pope, Leo IV, offered a heavenly reward to those who died fighting the Muslims. A century and a half and many battles later, in 1096, the Crusaders actually arrived in the Middle East. The Crusades were a late, limited, and unsuccessful imitation of the jihad--an attempt to recover by holy war what had been lost by holy war. It failed, and it was not followed up.

Here is another more recent example of multiculturalism. On October 8, 2002--I insist on giving the date because you may want to look it up--the then French prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who I am told is a staunch Roman Catholic, was making a speech in the French National Assembly and talking about the situation in Iraq. Speaking of Saddam Hussein, he remarked that one of Saddam Hussein's heroes was his compatriot Saladin, who came from the same Iraqi town of Tikrit. In case the members of the Assembly were not aware of Saladin's identity, M. Raffarin explained to them that it was he who was able "to defeat the Crusaders and liberate Jerusalem." Yes. When a French prime minister describes Saladin's capture of Jerusalem from the largely French Crusaders as an act of liberation, this would seem to indicate a rather extreme case of realignment of loyalties.

I was told this, and I didn't believe it. So I checked it in the parliamentary record. When M. Raffarin used the word "liberate," a member--the name was not given--called out, "Libérer?" He just went straight on. That was the only interruption, and as far as I was aware there was no comment afterwards.

The Islamic radicals have even been able to find some allies in Europe. In describing them I shall have to use the terms left and right, terms which are becoming increasingly misleading. The seating arrangements in the first French National Assembly after the revolution are not the laws of nature, but we have become accustomed to using them. They are difficult when applied to the West nowadays. They are utter nonsense when applied to different brands of Islam. But as I say, they are what people use, so let us put it this way.

They have a left-wing appeal to the anti-U.S. elements in Europe, for whom they have so-to-speak replaced the Soviets. They have a right-wing appeal to the anti-Jewish elements in Europe, replacing the Axis. They have been able to win considerable support under both headings. For some in Europe, their hatreds apparently outweigh their loyalties.

There is an interesting exception to that in Germany, where the Muslims are mostly Turkish. There they have often tended to equate themselves with the Jews, to see themselves as having succeeded the Jews as the victims of German racism and persecution. I remember a meeting in Berlin convened to discuss the new Muslim minorities in Europe. In the evening I was asked by a Muslim group of Turks to join them and hear what they had to say about it, which was very interesting. The phrase which sticks most vividly in my mind from one of them was, "In a thousand years they (the Germans) were unable to accept 400,000 Jews. What hope is there that they will accept two million Turks?" They used this very skillfully in playing on German feelings of guilt in order to inhibit any effective German measures to protect German identity, which I would say like others in Europe is becoming endangered.
My time is running out so I think I'll leave other points that I wanted to make.

[Shouts to go on.] You don't mind a bit more?

I want to say something about the question of tolerance. You will recall that at the end of the first phase of the Christian reconquest, after Spain and Portugal and Sicily, Muslims--who by that time were very numerous in the reconquered lands--were given a choice: baptism, exile, or death. In the former Ottoman lands in southeastern Europe, the leaders of what you might call the reconquest were somewhat more tolerant but not a great deal more. Some Muslim minorities remained in some Balkan countries, with troubles still going on at the present day. If I say names like Kosovo or Bosnia, you will know what I am talking about.

Nevertheless, I mention this point because of the very sharp contrast with the treatment of Christians and other non-Muslims in the Islamic lands at that time. When Muslims came to Europe they had a certain expectation of tolerance, feeling that they were entitled to at least the degree of tolerance which they had accorded to non-Muslims in the great Muslim empires of the past. Both their expectations and their experience were very different.

Coming to European countries, they got both more and less than they had expected: More in the sense that they got in theory and often in practice equal political rights, equal access to the professions, all the benefits of the welfare state, freedom of expression, and so on and so forth.

But they also got significantly less than they had given in traditional Islamic states. In the Ottoman Empire and other states before that--I mention the Ottoman Empire as the most recent--the non-Muslim communities had separate organizations and ran their own affairs. They collected their own taxes and enforced their own laws. There were several Christian communities, each living under its own leadership, recognized by the state. These communities were running their own schools, their own education systems, administering their own laws in such matters as marriage, divorce, inheritance, and the like. The Jews did the same.

So you had a situation in which three men living in the same street could die and their estates would be distributed under three different legal systems if one happened to be Jewish, one Christian, and one Muslim. A Jew could be punished by a rabbinical court and jailed for violating the Sabbath or eating on Yom Kippur. A Christian could be arrested and imprisoned for taking a second wife. Bigamy is a Christian offense; it was not an Islamic or an Ottoman offense.

They do not have that degree of independence in their own social and legal life in the modern state. It is quite unrealistic for them to expect it, given the nature of the modern state, but that is not how they see it. They feel that they are entitled to receive what they gave. As one Muslim friend of mine in Europe put it, "We allowed you to practice monogamy, why should you not allow us to practice polygamy?"
Such questions--polygamy, in particular--raise important issues of a more practical nature. Isn't an immigrant who is permitted to come to France or Germany entitled to bring his family with him? But what exactly does his family consist of? They are increasingly demanding and getting permission to bring plural wives. The same is also applying more and more to welfare payments and so on. On the other hand, the enforcement of shari`a is a little more difficult. This has become an extremely sensitive issue.

Another extremely sensitive issue, closely related to this, is the position of women, which is of course very different between Christendom and Islam. This has indeed been one of the major differences between the two societies.

Where do we stand now? Is it third time lucky? It is not impossible. They have certain clear advantages. They have fervor and conviction, which in most Western countries are either weak or lacking. They are self-assured of the rightness of their cause, whereas we spend most of our time in self-denigration and self-abasement. They have loyalty and discipline, and perhaps most important of all, they have demography, the combination of natural increase and migration producing major population changes, which could lead within the foreseeable future to significant majorities in at least some European cities or even countries.

But we also have some advantages, the most important of which are knowledge and freedom. The appeal of genuine modern knowledge in a society which, in the more distant past, had a long record of scientific and scholarly achievement is obvious. They are keenly and painfully aware of their relative backwardness and welcome the opportunity to rectify it.

Less obvious but also powerful is the appeal of freedom. In the past, in the Islamic world the word freedom was not used in a political sense. Freedom was a legal concept. You were free if you were not a slave. The institution of slavery existed. Free meant not slave. Unlike the West, they did not use freedom and slavery as a metaphor for good and bad government, as we have done for a long time in the Western world. The terms they used to denote good and bad government are justice and injustice. A good government is a just government, one in which the Holy Law, including its limitations on sovereign authority, is strictly enforced. The Islamic tradition, in theory and, until the onset of modernization, to a large degree in practice, emphatically rejects despotic and arbitrary government. Living under justice is the nearest approach to what we would call freedom.

But the idea of freedom in its Western interpretation is making headway. It is becoming more and more understood, more and more appreciated and more and more desired. It is perhaps in the long run our best hope, perhaps even our only hope, of surviving this developing struggle. Thank you.

I thank AEI for providing the full text of this speech. Below is a list of books authored by Professor Lewis, spanning a period of 67 years. After 9-11, I turned to those books authored by Professor Lewis since 1993 to learn as much as possible about the Middle East. It turned out to be the best possible choice I could have made. I recommend his works:

The Origins of Ismailism (1940)
The Arabs in History (1950)
The Emergence of Modern Turkey (1961)
Istanbul and the Civilizations of the Ottoman Empire (1963)
The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (1967)
The Cambridge History of Islam (2 vols. 1970, revised 4 vols. 1978, editor with Peter Malcolm Holt and Ann K.S. Lambton)
Islam: From the Prophet Muhammad to the capture of Constantinople (1974, editor)
Race and Color in Islam (1979)
Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society (1982, editor with Benjamin Braude)
The Muslim Discovery of Europe (1982)
The Jews of Islam (1984)
Semites and Anti-Semites (1986)
History — Remembered, Recovered, Invented (1987)
Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople (1987)
The Political Language of Islam (1988)
Race and Slavery in the Middle East: an Historical Enquiry (1990)
Islam and the West (1993)
Islam in History (1993)
The Shaping of the Modern Middle East (1994)
Cultures in Conflict (1994)
The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years (1995)
The Future of the Middle East (1997)
The Multiple Identities of the Middle East (1998)
A Middle East Mosaic: Fragments of Life, Letters and History (2000)
Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew Poems (2001)
The Muslim Discovery of Europe (2001)
What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East (2002)
The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (2003)
From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East (2004)

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Red Ken Goes Mutlicultural on Slavery

Ken Livingstone, or as he is more commonly known, Red Ken, the Mayor of London, has authored a commentary in today’s Guardian wherein he, in his capacity as Mayor, has apologized for “London’s role in [the] monstrous crime” of slavery – and more specifically - transatlantic slavery. The tranatlantic slavery that Britain ended 200 years ago. It is just Britain’s most visible far left multiculturalist doing what comes natural. No need to applaud. Its all in a days work for a good leftist like Red Ken.

There are obvious disconnects in what Red Ken is doing in his apology. The most glaringly obvious of which is that there is no one alive in Britain today who took part in the transatlantic slave trade. So why is Red Ken apologizing?

To understand the answer is to understand the guiding philosophy of the left in Britain today – multiculturalism. (see my post here). The dogma of that philosophy is that Britain’s past is sinful – indeed, it is stained with an original sin that cannot be wiped clean. But by acknowledging the sinful past, and never forgiving his country – or western civilization as a whole, depending on the particular sin - the multiculturalist is at least able to absolve him or herself personally of the sin and assume the moral high ground. Ahhhh, it must be such a wonderful holier then thou feeling for Red Ken.

The next question is, to whom is Red Ken apologizing. He does not even name the recipients of the apology in his piece – which I think is quite telling. While superficially, one might assume that this apology for the slave trade is aimed at the slaves so transported (or at least their progeny), I think the failure to direct the apology is likely much more Freudian in aspect. The apology, to the extent ostensibly directed to the deceased slaves and their progeny is equally directed to the evil occidentals of London and the U.K., It is to remind them that their culture is inherently evil and stained with sin.

The third question if one of historical interpretation. Red Ken argues that the British involvement in slavery was ended by “black resistance and economic development . . ., not white philanthropy.” That is more then just a bit of revisionist history - it is actually the prototypical multiculturalist approach to history. All history is taken out of context and then viewed through a modern moral prism, ultimately to be redefined to either fit the belief system of the multiculturalist, or to be demonized. In this instance, it is clear that Red Ken simply does not wish to interpret any event by the British in abolishing slavery as being an act that would remove their sin. As an aside, I would add that, as to slavery in America, which Red Ken also touches on, the number of American’s who died to see slavery’s end in the States constitutes a bit more then mere philanthropy on the part of occidentals.

And lastly is the question most flummoxing. I do not know why Red Ken does not take this golden opportunity, two centuries after Britain succumbed to slave revolts and were forced thereby to stop engaging in slavery, ahem, to denounce slavery throughout the world today. That would be much more meaningful then this ridiculous act of meaningless self-castigation.

There are many countries today - several of them championed by Red Ken in running his own foreign policy - who still practice both sexual and economic slavery. Both forms are not uncommon in the Middle East, portions of Pakistan and India. And in Africa, UNICEF estimates that 200,000 children are sold into slavery each year.
"Many of these children are from Benin and Togo, and are sold into the domestic, agricultural, and sex industries of wealthier, neighboring countries such as Nigeria and Gabon" And human trafficking in children for the sex trade is a problem in several Asian countries today. See here.

Ahhh, but therein lies the rub. That would mean making a value judgment about other cultures - an act abhorrent to a multiculturalist such as Red Ken. To Red Ken, it is capitalism, democracy, and western culture that are the evils in this world. All other cultures are given a non-judgmental free pass. And you wonder why Britain has such a problem with radical Islamists in their midst? You need look no further then the poster boy for the suicidal philosophy of multiculturalism, Red Ken.

To the Londoner alive to day, you owe no apology to anyone for acts that you had no part in two centuries ago, and I would urge you to view them in the true historical context of the time. And also to the Londoners alive today, you do own an apology to the world for voting Ken Livingstone to be Mayor of your great city. Are you completely insane?

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The 301

Victor David Hansen engages with revisionist historians attacking the 300. As Mr. Hansen reminds us:

True, 2,500 years ago, almost every society in the ancient Mediterranean world had slaves. And all relegated women to a relatively inferior position. Sparta turned the entire region of Messenia into a dependent serf state.

But in the Greek polis alone, there were elected governments, ranging from the constitutional oligarchy at Sparta to much broader-based voting in states like Athens and Thespiae.

Most importantly, only in Greece was there a constant tradition of unfettered expression and self-criticism. Aristophanes, Sophocles and Plato questioned the subordinate position of women. Alcidamas lamented the notion of slavery.

Such openness was found nowhere else in the ancient Mediterranean world. That freedom of expression explains why we rightly consider the ancient Greeks as the founders of our present Western civilization - and, as millions of moviegoers seem to sense, far more like us than the enemy who ultimately failed to conquer them.

It is always good to read an eloquent defense of Western Civilization made against the bleatings of the multicultural avant garde among us who have no sense of their own history. Read Mr. Hansen's article here.

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Iran's Theocracy Driving Younger Generation to Secularism

Given time, many expect the Iranian theocracy to crumble. There are too many faultlines in the society - the economy, jobs, and indeed, there is a signficant waning in religiosity as Iranians, particularly younger Iranians, become cynical of their government. Indeed, it is the faultlines in Iranian society that augur most against attakcing Iran over the nuclear issue unless there is no other choice.

This is from an article today in the Boston Review:

Modern Iran has consistently wobbled between the dual and sometimes conflicting pillars that define it: Islam, and what is now euphemistically called Iran’s “pre-Islamic heritage.” As Iran struggles to emerge from the oppressive failures of its Islamic revolution, it has grown increasingly conscious of its roots.

Despite Iran’s reputation as the harbinger of Islamic revolution, the simple fact is that Iranians never wanted an Islamic state in the way Ayatollahs Ruhollah Khomeini and Ali Khamenei have forged it. Many Iranians welcomed the re-emergence of religion in Iran after the Shah’s relentless modernism, but few wanted or expected the clerics to grab control over people’s daily lives and government.

While in most Sunni Arab countries matters of religion and state have always been inextricable, Iran’s Shi‘ite society sought to separate them. Shi‘ite clerics traditionally belonged to three schools of political thought—“loyalists” who believed in cooperation with the state, “opposers” who exercised moral suasion on the political process from the outside, and “quietists” who advocated outright withdrawal from politics. Before Khomeini, the latter were the largest group.

Khomeini introduced a radically new principle into Shi‘ite Islam: velayat-e faqih (or direct rule by the most senior cleric, i.e., himself). This novel doctrine progressively alienated Iranians and created deep divisions within the clergy, as in the current rift between the hard-line clerics led by Iran’s current Supreme Leader Khamenei (the new beneficiary of velayat-e faqih) and the reformers led by President Hojjatoleslam (the rank just below Ayatollah) Mohammad Khatami.

It is this Shi‘ite tradition of interpretive Islam and political freedom that is causing Iranians to chafe under Khamenei’s velayat-e faqih and giving rise to political changes that could produce the first and most sustainable democracy in the Middle East.

“A loss of faith with the mullahs [in government] has led to a loss of faith in the religion,” says Azar Bharami, a lawyer and women’s rights activist in Tehran. “When the government does not respect the [line] between religion and state how can people?” Numerous surveys, including one by the magazine Asr-e Ma (“Our Era”), have shown that most Iranians under the age of 25—who make up 50 percent of the overall population—consider themselves agnostic. Many young Iranians are cynical, even derisive, about their religion. Epithets like “mad mullahs” and “this thing Islam” are not uncommon.

I do truly hope that the "mad mullahs" do not force the hand of the West before Iran's experiment in theocracy can crash of its own corrupt weight.

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But Will It Get Out All The Wrinkles?

No further comment. See here.

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Islam Threatens in Australia

There is a clear divide between those who would see Islam integrate into western society, and those who would see it conquer. Unfortunately for the world, while the latter category may be fewer in number, they more then make up for it with a willingness to use or threaten to use brutal force to advance their cause and silence any opposition, be it internal or external.

We are seeing this latter scenario play out today in this story from Australia.

One of Australia's most important Muslim leaders has sought police protection after criticising controversial cleric Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali.

Tom Zreika, president of the Lebanese Muslim Association - and Sheikh Hilali's employer - said he received non-stop phone threats yesterday after he released a document urging greater integration and for Muslims to "mend their ways".

The report, prepared for a national meeting of imams in Sydney this weekend, says some Muslims are "ruining it" for all and that Australians have "had enough" of Muslims. His report also recommends that imams become involved in community activities such as voluntary firefighting and surf lifesaving.

Mr Zreika said he was threatened recently after saying, "I can't tolerate this freak show", following recent remarks by Sheikh Hilali.

But yesterday, after the contents of his paper were publicised, the threats, from Muslims, came non-stop.

"They just say, 'Mate if you don't shut your mouth we are going to come and fix you up'," Mr Zreika said. "I know they are Muslims because they quote Muslim prayers."

In his paper, Mr Zreika, a barrister, says the vast majority of non-Muslims understood and empathised with Islamic issues in Australia, but a small group of Muslims were inciting anti-Islamic feelings.

"Only when we mend our ways and we respect our fellow country people can we demand tolerance and forbearance."

Among Mr Zreika's suggestions for the new board of imams, which will be responsible for accrediting prospective clerics, are that imams should be citizens or permanent residents and not have been members of suspicious groups. He says they must do everything possible to prevent radicalism or fanaticism.

I wish Mr. Zreika the best in his efforts.

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The March of Islamaphobia in Canada

In the West, our motto has long been, when in Rome, do as the Romans. So why is it that Muslims who come to the West expect a host of special accomodations? And, apparently, at least one useful occidental idiot seems to feel that a failure to accomodate constitutes the dreaded "Islamaphobia."

Based on interviews with nearly 1,000 Muslim students at 17 on-campus hearings across Ontario, [a] report concludes that universities and colleges are not doing enough to accommodate Muslim students.

"It's clear that every day Muslim students face both overt and subtle forms of Islamophobic discrimination on Ontario campuses," said Jesse Greener, Ontario Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students, which released the report of its Task Force on the Needs of Muslim Students today.

The most frequent problem identified by Muslim students was a failure to accommodate. These include a lack of appropriate food choices, inadequate prayer space and academic policies that often run counter to religious obligations such as exams on key days and classes unwilling to accept students' beliefs.

Another problem cited was the loan-based student financial aid system, which is particularly problematic for Muslim students because Islam forbids interest-bearing loans.

"Ontario's Muslim students often face a fundamentally different learning environment that other students," said Ausma Malik, a task force member and student at the University of Toronto.

Actually, it sounds as if the problem is not that Muslim students are being treated differently, its that they are being treated the same. You can read the entire story here.

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Muslim Pupils Lynch Christian Teacher

The West is very non-reactive. Iran has been in a state of low-intensity war against the United States since 1979 - and it was not until very recently that we finally decided to join the event. Likewise, radical Islam is at war with the secular West, as well as anyone of a religion other then Wahhabi Islam. It will be long in coming, I am sure, but we are on a course where the religion of intolerance that is Wahhabi Islam will, itself, not be tolerated by the rest of the world. At any rate, todays latest atrocity from the world of Wahhabi Islam, courtesy of Reuters:

Muslim pupils at a secondary school in northeastern Nigeria beat a teacher to death on Wednesday after accusing her of desecrating the Koran, police and witnesses said.

Oluwatoyin Olusase, a Christian, was invigilating an Islamic Religious Knowledge exam at the school in Gombe state when the incident occurred. The students attacked her outside the school compound after the exam and killed her, witnesses said.

It was not clear exactly what Olusase had done that angered the students.

Police confirmed the killing and said their intervention had prevented the incident from turning into a riot.

"We have received information that a female teacher has been lynched by her students. We are investigating the report," Gombe state police commissioner Joseph Ibi said.

At least five people were killed and several churches burned down in February 2006 in the neighbouring state of Bauchi by Muslims infuriated that a Christian teacher in a secondary school had tried to confiscate a Koran from a student who was reading it during class.

Word got out into the streets that the teacher had desecrated the Koran, infuriating Muslims who went on the rampage.

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More Sharia Law - Stonings of Women Ordered in the Sudan

And more Islamic justice, this one not from Germany, but from the Sudan, where the Islamic government imposes Sharia law upon all. In this particular instance, two women, non-Arabs, non-Arabic speaking, not provided with an interpreter, and not represented by a lawyer, where sentenced to death by stoning following a trial conducted in Arabic by a Sharia Court for the crime of adultery. If that were not appalling enough, in one of the cases, the male also accused of adultery was released for lack of evidence. Read the story from Gulf news here.

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German Court Cites Koran to Allow Domestic Violence in Muslim Marriages

A German court, in adjudicating a divorce case between a young muslim couple, applied the concepts of Sharia law that allow for a husband to strike his wife in deciding that the woman's basis for seeking a divorce, that her husband had battered her and made repeated threats to kill her, was not justified. Citing to the Koran, the judge wrote in his decision denying a speedy divorce:

"The exercise of the right to castigate does not fulfill the hardship criteria as defined by Paragraph 1565 (of German federal law)," the daily Frankfurter Rundschau quoted the judge's letter as saying. It must be taken into account, the judge argued, that both man and wife have Moroccan backgrounds.

"The right to castigate means for me: the husband can beat his wife," Becker-Rojczyk said, interpreting the judge's verdict.

Read the story here. I am near speechless. While my knee-jerk reaction is to be hyper-critical of the Germans, accusing them of quickening the pace of their march towards dhimmi status, I have to be fair and note that most Germans seem appalled by this decision and are seeking discipline of the judge.

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George Orwell & The Employee Free Choice Act

George Orwell, in his novel 1984, gave to us the cynical concept of doublespeak, where things were named and attributed with properties the opposite of their true nature. Since he penned the novel almost 60 years ago, his forsight has proved prescient indeed. Doublespeak is practiced by many regimes the world over. For but one example, The People's Democratic Republic of North Korea is the official name for the most anti-democratic regime on this earth.

And Orwellian doublespeak is alive and well in the U.S.A., where the concept is oft put to use by members of our own Congress in the naming of their bills. The most glaring example of late is the Employee Free Choice Act, penned by the Democrats in Congress as pure political payback for supportive Labor Unions. And in the best traditions of doublespeak, the Free Choice Act would have an effect diametrically opposed to what its name suggests. The Act would take away that most basic of free and democratic concepts - an employee's right to cast a secret ballot on whether to unionize. The Employee Free Choice Act would make the decision whether to unionize subject to overt coercion and intimidation. It is truly an atrocious and incredibly cynical piece of legislation that I have previously posted upon here.

I raise it again today because the bill, passed by Democrats in the House, is now winding its way towards the Senate, championed by no less then Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama. The Union Free Employer has posted a short primer on the bill, which I would urge you to read. And as always, let your voice be heard.

Your Senator

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The Coalition of the Bribed - And Beaten

Nancy Pelosi, unable to win an up or down vote for the craven schemes she has dreamed up with Jack Murtha to scuttle the American mission in Iraq, and refusing to acknowledge the success of the surge to this point, has, as pointed out in earlier posts, loaded up the supplemental appropriations bill with an obscene amount of pork in order to buy votes. But even that is not assured of working, so Ms. Pelosi has now taken to threats of loss of committee seats and loss of funding for projects in order to put the finishing touches on her coalition. Evidently, nothing is beyond this women in her goal to insure that the surge is stopped in its tracks and then, forced into that ever euphamistic, "new direction." What is almost more disgusting then the acts of Ms. Pelosi are that her bribes and threats may actually sway members of the House. Read the story here.

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