Brits Getting a Bit Less Multicultural?

It seems the rank and file of our cousins across the pond are losing patience with Islamic women who think it appropriate to wear the Niqab, covering themselves head to toe. Actually, rather then take issue with the women, greater issue should be taken with the poisonous Wahhabi clerics who strongly call for this as just one more means of insuring that Muslims do not integrate into the West. In either event, the UK is not Saudi Arabia. Dressing in such garb is a clear sign of a refusal to integrate into British secular society, and as such, it is wholly inappropriate inside the UK. The UK should outlaw such garb in all government buildings, as do France and Turkey.

Increasingly, Muslim women in Britain take their children to school and run errands covered head to toe in flowing black gowns that allow only a slit for their eyes. On a Sunday afternoon in Hyde Park, groups of black-clad Muslim women relaxed on the green baize lawn among the in-line skaters and badminton players.

Their appearance, like little else, has unnerved other Britons, testing the limits of tolerance here and fueling the debate over the role of Muslims in British life.

Many veiled women say they are targets of abuse. Meanwhile, there are growing efforts to place legal curbs on the full-face Muslim veil, known as the niqab.

There have been numerous examples in the past year. A lawyer dressed in a niqab was told by an immigration judge that she could not represent a client because, he said, he could not hear her. A teacher wearing a niqab was dismissed from her school. A student who was barred from wearing a niqab took her case to the courts, and lost. In reaction, the British educational authorities are proposing a ban on the niqab in schools altogether.

A leading Labor Party politician, Jack Straw, scolded women last year for coming to see him in his district office in the niqab. Prime Minister Tony Blair has called the niqab a “mark of separation.”

David Sexton, a columnist for The Evening Standard, wrote recently that the niqab was an affront and that Britain had been “too deferential.”

“It says that all men are such brutes that if exposed to any more normally clothed women, they cannot be trusted to behave — and that all women who dress any more scantily like that are indecent,” Mr. Sexton wrote. “It’s abusive, a walking rejection of all our freedoms.”

. . . Some who wear the niqab, particularly younger women who have taken it up recently, concede that it is a frontal expression of Islamic identity, which they have embraced since Sept. 11, 2001, as a form of rebellion against the policies of the Blair government in Iraq, and at home.

. . . Other Muslims find the practice objectionable, a step backward for a group that is under pressure after the terrorist attack on London’s transit system in July 2005.

“After the July 7 attacks, this is not the time to be antagonizing Britain by presenting Muslims as something sinister,” said Imran Ahmad, the author of “Unimagined,” an autobiography about growing up Muslim in Britain, and the leader of British Muslims for Secular Democracy. “The veil is so steeped in subjugation, I find it so offensive someone would want to create such barriers. It’s retrograde.”

Since South Asians started coming to Britain in large numbers in the 1960s, a small group of usually older, undereducated women have worn the niqab. It was most often seen as a sign of subjugation.

Many more Muslim women wear the head scarf, called the hijab, covering all or some of their hair. Unlike in France, Turkey and Tunisia, where students in state schools and civil servants are banned from covering their hair, in Britain, Muslim women can wear the head scarf, and indeed the niqab, almost anywhere, for now.

But that tolerance is slowly eroding. Even some who wear the niqab, like Faatema Mayata, a 24-year-old psychology and religious studies teacher, agreed there were limits.

“How can you teach when you are covering your face?” she said, sitting with a cup of tea in her living room in Blackburn, a northern English town, her niqab tucked away because she was within the confines of her home.

She has worn the niqab since she was 12, when she was sent by her parents to an all-girl boarding school. The niqab was not, as many Britons seemed to think, a sign of extremism, she said.

She condemned Britain’s involvement in Iraq, and she described the departure of Mr. Blair at the end of this month as “good riddance of bad rubbish.” But, she added, “there are many Muslims like this sitting at home having tea, and not taking any interest in jihad.”

The niqab, to her, is about identity. “If I dressed in a Western way I could be a Hindu, I could be anything,” she said. “This way I feel comfortable in my identity as a Muslim woman.”

No one else in her family wears the niqab. Her husband, Ibrahim Boodi, a social worker, was indifferent, she said. “If I took it off today, he wouldn’t care.”

. . . At the East London Mosque, one of the largest mosques in the capital, the chief imam, Abdul Qayyum, studied in Saudi Arabia and is trained in the Wahhabi school of Islam. The community relations officer at the mosque, Ehsan Abdullah Hannan, said the imam’s daughter wore the niqab.

At Friday Prayer recently, the women were crowded into a small windowless room upstairs, away from the main hall for the men.

A handful of young women wore the niqab, and they spoke effusively about their reasons. “Wearing the niqab means you will get a good grade and go to paradise,” said Hodo Muse, 19, a Somali woman. “Every day people are giving me dirty looks for wearing it, but when you wear something for God you get a boost.” . . .

Read the entire story here.

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The BBC Biased? Could It Be?

I grew up loving the BBC from across the pond. It always had the best programming as far as I was concerned. Thus it came as an utter shock to me when, later in life, it became apparent just how insidiously and dangerously biased the BBC's news division was - and had been for generations. It has become particulalry toxic to the functioning of a Western democracy since 9-11. I am reminded of the period prior to WWII when the BBC carried water for the world's most infamous appeaser, Neville Chamberlin, while refusing to give any coverage to Winston Churchill. Churchill would later label the BBC a "communist organization."

To be fair, the BBC does still on occaision come up with some amazing work. Undercover Mosque, by BBC 4, was as first rate and important a piece of investigative journalism as one will ever find. And the bulk of the BBC's work, when not on topics that lend themselves to left wing, avant garde causes or anti-americanism, is even handed and quite good. In what remains, which is a sizable portion of their reporting, there is a clear, if not at times over the top, anti-war, anti-american, anti-conservative bias and an embrace of suicidal multiculturalism - particularly a pro-Muslim bent - that pervades their work. Indeed, it sometimes pervades its work to a high degree of comedy. The BBC certainly seems to have a preference for political parties in its own country. And how many news rooms do you know contain a picture of Bush in Hitlerian garb? The Beeb's bias is both active and passive - it is evident in what the BBC chooses to report, and also in what the BBC chooses to simply omit from its coverage. And over the past few years, it has spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer pounds to in a court battle to keep the "Balen Report" secret - an internal report on pro-arab, anti-semetic bias at the Beeb. The website Biased BBC does an excellent job of documenting BBC outrages, both active and passive on a daily basis.

The BBC has for years claimed the outrageous fiction that they are unbiased. Thus, it was good to hear today at least some small note of reality - that the BBC is at least acknowledging a portion of this bias in a report released but not yet up on the BBC website. The Times has the story:

There are some things you do not need an official report to tell you - that John Prescott thinks he is a babe magnet, that President Mugabe is not entirely in favour of white farmers and that Al-Qaeda takes a pretty dim view of the West. The report commissioned by the BBC into itself concluded with something equally blindingly obvious. It said that the organisation is institutionally biased and especially gullible to the blandishments of politically driven celebrities, such as Bono and Bob Geldof. Almost anyone in Britain could have told the BBC that for free, but maybe it’s better to have it in an official report.

All media organisations are biased and that applies especially to newspapers. But our bias is openly declared. If readers want different views they have no compulsion to pay and can go elsewhere. The BBC is in a different category; everyone has to pay for it and it is in the tricky position of being founded to be free from bias. It is meant to be a beacon of objective truth in a wildly polarised world. A tall order. In theory even rabid rightwingers and demented leftists can listen or watch (and increasingly read online) the BBC without discerning any tilt. But what emerges from the report is a picture of an organisation with a liberal, anti-American bias and an almost teenage fascination with fashionable causes. The report singles out the BBC’s overwhelming and uncritical backing for the campaign over Live Aid and now the Live Earth concerts on global warming.

That the BBC should investigate itself is perhaps admirable, but only if it acts on the conclusions. The likelihood is that it will lament its shortcomings, pledge to do something and carry on much as before. Changing its cosy culture will take more than a report; some who have worked there say it would require a small neutron bomb. The BBC is a self-perpetuating liberal arts club. Recruitment is the key. It needs to employ more nonconformist journalists whose paper of choice is not The Guardian.

Read the story here. And then there is this from the Telegraph:

The BBC has failed to promote proper debate on major political issues because of the inherent liberal culture of its staff, a report commissioned by the corporation has concluded.

The report claims that coverage of single-issue political causes, such as climate change and poverty, can be biased - and is particularly critical of Live 8 coverage, which it says amounted to endorsement.

It warns that celebrities must not be pandered to and allowed to hijack the BBC schedule.

After a year-long investigation the report, published today, maintains that the corporation’s coverage of day-to-day politics is fair and impartial.

That last statement is simply ridiculous and why I am incredibly cynical about this report doing anything but provide the BBC a whitewash. The BBC's day to day reporting is often its most objectionable. Just click on a few of the links I have included above to see for yourself. To continue:

. . . The report concludes BBC staff must be more willing to challenge their own beliefs.

It reads: “There is a tendency to 'group think’ with too many staff inhabiting a shared space and comfort zone.”

A staff impartiality seminar held last year is also documented in the report, at which executives admitted they would broadcast images of the Bible being thrown away but not the Koran, in case Muslims were offended.

During the seminar a senior BBC reporter criticised the corporation for being anti-American.

The report was jointly commissioned by BBC managers and the board of governors and will be published by the BBC Trust, which has since replaced the governors.
It has been approved by a committee headed by BBC trustee and former ITN editor-in-chief Richard Tait. Other members include BBC deputy director-general Mark Byford, head of BBC News Helen Boaden and creative director Alan Yentob.

Writing in The Observer yesterday, Mr Tait said that “the BBC cannot allow its output to be taken over by campaigning groups” and added: “At the BBC impartiality is and must remain non-negotiable because it is vital to safeguard the BBC’s independence.”

The report offers 12 new principles for the corporation to adopt to safeguard its impartiality.

These include: “Impartiality is no excuse for insipid programming. It allows room for fair-minded, evidence-based judgements by senior journalists and documentary-makers, and for controversial, passionate and polemical arguments by contributors and writers.”

A BBC spokeswoman said: “This report is about looking forward and how we are going to face the challenges of impartiality in the modern world.”

I apologize for being cynical, but the bias at the BBC news division is far too much for me to stomach, particularly since not only are its toxins infecting the UK, but it is also being pumped into the US. This internal BBC report seems more of a whitewash then anything else.

The BBC is, by law required to be objective in its reporting. The people of Britain are required by law to fund the BBC through a licensing fee on all television owners. Only half of the equation is being upheld at the moment.

There is no reason whatsoever for the BBC's news division to remain on the public tit, particularly when it is so clearly failing in its legal mandate. But even beyond that, there is no reason that the BBC news division should not compete in the marketplace as do nearly all other news divisions in the world outside of dictatorships and communist countries. The New York Times is watching its stock values plummet because of its one sided reporting. There is no reason the BBC should not enjoy the same opportunity.

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Britain Falling

American commentator Cal Thomas opines this morning that the end result of 60 years of hard left multiculturalism, social experimentation, socialist government policy and EU / British immigration policy is now culminating in the suicide of Britain. I can't say that I disagree. Britain's domestic policies and politics have become particularly indefensible as it has become more and more obvious that there is an existential threat posed to the UK by its immigration policy and its infestation by Wahhabi / Salafi Islamists. While no one is more appreciative then I of Tony Blair as a true ally of the U.S., from this side of the pond at least, looking at British domestic politics, it seems that he has done nothing to stem the suicidal tide set in motion by the UK's leaders early in the past century. To the contrary, he appears to have hastened it:

There are two ways to destroy a nation. One is from without by an invading military force. The other is from within when the people of the nation no longer embrace and promote the history, language and culture that brought it to prominence and power. Britain has chosen the second option, which is national suicide.

In addition to its indefensible immigration policy, which is rapidly diluting British culture, the nation's public schools are giving up classical teaching in history, science and English literature in favor of trendy things to make the subject matter more "popular." It isn't working. Students increasingly find the new curriculum as unpalatable as school lunches.

According to the British think tank, Civitas, no major subject area has escaped the blight of political interference. The Civitas report is called "The Corruption of the Curriculum." It says history classes teach from speeches by Osama bin Laden and what Arab media say about Sept. 11 with no balancing material from American sources. "History has become so divorced from facts and chronology that pupils might learn the new Œskills and perspectives' through a work of fiction, such as ŒLord of the Rings,'" says the report.

Science classes are dominated by debates over abortion, teaching about genetic engineering and the use of nuclear power, rather than emphasizing laboratory work. In English, the pursuit of gender and racial equality has led an exam board to produce a list of modern poems from everywhere but England and Wales, where many of the greatest writers were born. The English literature exam features 32 contemporary poems and only 16 poems written prior to 1914. Exam candidates must choose two about which to write, being careful to select one from each gender (what no gay or transgender writers?).

The Civitas report says, "The traditional subject areas have been hijacked to promote fashionable causes; teachers are expected to help to achieve the government's social goals instead of imparting a body of academic knowledge to their students."

The Daily Telegraph reports on another study which shows that attempts to make science more popular with the culturally trendy has had the opposite effect, "with pupils less interested in the subject and less keen to pursue it than they were under the previous, more fact-based lessons."

Private schools continue to teach the old subjects in the traditional manner and that is why what some are calling "educational apartheid" is becoming more obvious and a major concern. The study of science classes concludes that future scientists will be even more likely to come from these independent, or private schools, because the public school courses will leave state school students ill-equipped for further study.

A nation that lacks sufficient confidence to teach the next generation its own history, culture and even science is a nation that is unlikely to mobilize the national will to resist an invading enemy.

My own theory is that prosperity has a lot to do with this jettisoning of the past. When a nation focuses on profits, instead of prophets, and sexual pleasure instead of fidelity and virtue, it dooms itself to eventual extinction. . . .

Read the entire story here. I am an anglophile with a tremendous appreciation for the rich history of Britain and all of the good that it has done throughout the world. Britain is the mother of modern capitalism and democracy. Everywhere that Britain left its footprint the deepest during the age of empire, what the Brits left in their wake were the foundations of capitalism, a solid educational system, an equally solid legal system, and democracy. Were you find nations today that are the most free and who enjoy the highest standard of living, you will often find the footprint of Britain. The small island nation of Britain has been the great engine of historical development over the past millenium, really.

To my own thinking, it is the praetorian and avant garde left encapsulated by the BBC, that has led this charge to the cliff. But Britain's end is far from writ in stone. I still believe that, in its darkest hour, the sons and daughters of Chruchill, Nelson, Wellington, Adam Smith, William of Normandy and countless other legends of history will take back their country.

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UK - A Leftist Mind At Work . . .

One of the biggest complaints I have heard from my UK friends and acquintances has been about the police - or rather the lack of local policing. Police in the UK are centralized and run by the government. Many local communities suffer from a lack of responsive and efficient police services.

It would seem patently obvious that if you want to make the police responsive to local concerns, you would give the locals the hiring and firing authority through elections. No more appointments from above. The people elect their constables and sherrifs, and the constables and sherrifs are then given full hiring and firing authority over their personnel. Budgeting for them is set at the local level with grants from the central government. The central government can set the minimum standards and ground rules, but all beyond that is between the locals and their elected police officials.

Ah, but that would violate the very first tenet of the multicultural left - that they are superior and the decisions should be left to them. Therefore, when John Reid, Labour's current Home Secretary, looks at how to better increase the accountability of local police to the local populace, the mere mention of local elections does not even pass his lips. Instead, he suggests that the Brits be brave when tackling this issue, and that they start giving out phone numbers directly to the police station:

. . . [L]et's explore how to increase local accountability while decreasing central direction. Ensuring that the police are accountable to the public they serve is essential in retaining confidence in the work they do. We should not be frightened of exploring new ways of doing this. We need to look at what works. Ideas like providing dedicated local phone numbers for the public to contact their neighbourhood policing teams directly, where they know who is responding to their concerns. The best are already doing this and building trust and better relationships with the communities they serve. We need to go further.

This is so ridiculous. Do read the piece John Reid authors in The Telegraph - it is so full of platitudes it absolutely reeks. It is a leftist manifesto of promises that can best be met not by devolving power and responsibility to the unwashed masses, but by following the ideas of those with superior intelligence - i.e., the leftists. God save the Queen. Its going to take divine intervention to turn this ship of state.

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UK - Enjoying the Many Benefits of Multiculturalism & EU Membership

It is hard to see the benefit for the UK of its membership in the EU, particularly outside of the economic arena, if even there. One of the great EU accomplishments was its Human Rights Convention that Britain adopted as its own under Tony Blair's administration. Such a utopian and wonderful idea it is. But then, it generates suicidal outcomes such as described below, when EU dictates marry up with well meaning leftists permeating the judiciary who are quite willing to substitute their own utopian judgment for that of the governments - not on the issue of whether there is sufficient cause to justify deporting a terrorist, but rather on whether an agreement with a foreign country negotiated by the UK government can be trusted to uphold the requirements of the EU Convention:

Two Libyan terror suspects will be freed to walk the streets after the Home Office's attempts to deport them were thrown out by senior judges.

Home Secretary John Reid wanted to send the men home using a controversial memorandum of understanding by which Colonel Gaddafi's government promised not to torture or kill them.

The aim was to overcome objections to their removal on human rights grounds.

But the Special Immigration Appeals Commission in London ruled that the Libyan government could not be trusted and blocked the deportation order, despite a mass of evidence of the threat they pose to national security.

The move struck a damaging and embarrassing blow to the Government's entire counter-terrorist strategy and means other Libyan terror suspects detained in the UK may also have to be released.

Tony Blair expressed anger at the decision, saying: "In order to be able to give a strong signal that those people cannot get away with what they want to do, we have to be able to deport people and send them back to their own country."

One of the suspects, identified only as 'DD', set up an extremist Islamic website which praised martyrdom and is related to convicted and dead terrorists.

He was caught with a streetmap on which footpaths underneath the approach flight path to Birmingham International Airport had been highlighted.

The judges concluded that he is a "real and direct threat to the national security of the UK" and a "global jihadist with links to the Taliban and Al Qaeda".

The other man, known as AS, was described as a "senior member" in a terrorist group thought to have planned attacks in Europe, and as "a clear danger to national security".

Despite the threat they pose, the court upheld their appeals against deportation.
Both men are expected to be freed on bail next week - overruling Home Office objections - with strict conditions including 12-hour curfews at their home addresses.

The court's chairman, Mr Justice Ouseraidley, ruled that their human rights could be breached if they were sent home to Libya, even though it was "not a probable risk", and that they could be denied a fair trial.

He said the only monitoring arrangements relied on an organisation run by Colonel Gaddafi's son ensuring that the men were not mistreated.

The suspect known as DD came to Britain three years ago with his Moroccan wife. He claimed asylum and has been in detention since 2005 awaiting deportation on security grounds.

He is related by marriage to the suspected ringleader of the Madrid train bombings which killed 191 in 2004, who is thought to have blown himself up in a by Spanish police.

The man known as AS is accused of supporting a "serious terrorist group" based in Milan. He arrived in Britain in 2002 and claimed asylum. He served a prison sentence for offences relating to forged and stolen travel documents and has since been held under immigration powers.

The Home Office has signed memoranda of understanding with Libya, Jordan and Lebanon - and reached a similar deal with Algeria - in the hope of deporting foreign terror suspects to countries with questionable human rights records where there is not enough evidence to prosecute them in Britain.

Some two dozen suspects are held awaiting removal. But a string of legal appeals has meant that none has been sent home and yesterday's ruling raises grave questions over the entire strategy.

The Home Office said it planned to appeal, although SIAC judges described the chances of success as "scant".

Civil rights campaigners urged ministers to reconsider the whole principle of memoranda of understanding deals with Islamic states. . . .

Read the entire article here. The basis for this legal decision would seem far outside the competency of this judge. The Tories were talking last year about scrapping the EU Human Rights Convention and drafting their own Bill of Rights and a written Constitution. Now seems like it would be a good time for that. While your at it, you may want to enshrine a cannon or two on the concept of judicial deference, and perhaps even competency reviews. Alas, Britain, when will you take your country back?

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Britain Takes Another Step On The Multicultural Road To Anglo-Saxon Suicide

The multicultural nuts in Britain are at it again, chipping away at their own societal mores and rights in order to conform to medieval customs of a culture not only not their own, but wholly antithetical to their own. (If you do not know just how antithetical, watch Undercover Mosque). This time the UK is altering fundemental tenets of their legal system.

We in the West live in freedom because we are a nation of laws. Our legal system has slowly developed over millenia to be a common sense balance of competing interests designed to insure, to the maximum extent possible, the fair adjudication of legal cases. More specifically, for about half a millenium, it has been the custom in English common law that an accused has the right to confront his accuser in a public trial. And for even longer, it has been the custom of asking a jury and a judge to evaluate the testimony of witnesses at trial. In evaluating the truthfullness of witnesses, the jury and judge must - and traditionally have been - able to see the witnesses, to watch their mannerisms and facial expressions, in addition to listening to their testimony. Those are bedrock principals at the heart of anglo-saxon system of justice in America and, until today, in the UK.

The wearing of the Muslim veil in court was backed by new official guidelines today.

Senior judges who examined whether Muslim women should be allowed to wear the full facial covering, known as the niqab, said it should be decided on a case-by-case basis.

Muslim women should be permitted to wear the garment providing it did not interfere with the administration of justice, the Judicial Studies Board’s Equal Treatment Advisory Committee said.

The guidance follows a case at an immigration court in Stoke-on-Trent last November where the judge, George Glossop, ordered an adjournment because he was having difficulty hearing legal executive Shabnam Mughal.

The guidelines said: “Each situation should be considered individually in order to find the best solution in each case.”

Forcing a woman to choose between participating in a court case or removing the veil could have a “significant impact on that woman’s sense of dignity”, it added, and could serve to “exclude and marginalise” her.

Committee chairwoman Mrs Justice Cox said: “At the heart of our guidance is the principle that each situation should be considered individually in order to find the best solution in each case.

“We respect the right for Muslim women to choose to wear the niqab as part of their religious beliefs, although the interests of justice remain paramount.

“If a person’s face is almost fully covered, a judge may have to consider if any steps are required to ensure effective participation and a fair hearing - both for the woman wearing a niqab and for other parties in the proceedings.

“This is not an issue that lends itself to a prescriptive approach - we have drawn on a wealth of cases that demonstrate that, and we have drawn up guidance for different court personnel and parties.”

If the wearer is appearing as a victim, it should not be “automatically assumed” that the niqab would create a problem, the guidelines said.

“Nor should it ever be assumed without good reason that it is inappropriate for a woman to give evidence in court wearing the full veil,” it added.

If a judge felt it necessary to ask a victim to remove her veil, he or she should consider the request carefully, and be “thoughtful and sensitive”.

The courtroom could even be cleared of anyone not directly involved in the case for her to proceed with her evidence, it said.

Asking a witness or defendant to remove the garment may be appropriate but “careful thought” should be given to any such request, the guidelines said.

Read the entire article here. This is insanity. Somebody please tell the suicidally multicultural left that it is quite acceptable to give freedom of worship to others while still maintaining the viability of one's own culture in one's own country. Turkey and Tunisia, two Muslim majority nations that have and wish to maintain a secular government ban the wearing of the hijab or similar clothing in schools and government buildings. The UK and Europe are faced by the growing menace of Salafi / Wahhabi Islam taking root across the continent. One of the tenants of Salafi / Wahhabi Islam is not to integrate into Western society. Putting these two together, it would certainly be reasonable for European countries to ban such clothing as a function of upholding their secular governments, asserting the primacy of their Western values, and promoting integration. It would seem reasonable in any event when fundemental principles of the anglo-saxon legal system are at issue.

Instead, we have the UK now changing their legal system to make do for the radical Islamists in their midst. They do so even as they have outlawed criticism of Islam and now are not even teaching their own history out of fear of offending Muslim children who are getting filled with differing versions of propogandist hatred in their mosques about the crusades and the holocaust.
May God save the Queen. Someone has to, as it will most certainly not be the well meaning leftists that have held Britain in their thrall since the end of WWII.

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Happy St. George's Day

April 23 is the national holiday of England. Historically, it is a day for ex-pats celebrate their beloved home, for anglophiles to reflect on the great history of England and the many gifts the small island country has given to the world, and a day for people in England to . . . stay subdued. A celebration of country and patriotism is frowned upon by the multiculturalists that are in control and mired in self-hatred. It is a good sign that this may be changing. This from the Guardian:

St George's Day, which used to pass unnoticed, is this year being celebrated as never before. In Norfolk, schoolchildren are filling the skies with red-and-white balloons; from Manchester to Dorset, giant dragons have been parading; in Lancashire, special St George's sausages are being consumed; in Kent, an insulation firm is giving its workers the day off.

The festivities are, however, characterised by an element of bitterness absent on St Andrew's, St David's or St Patrick's days. Every April, official reluctance to fly the flag of St George on public buildings, the rejection of applications for pub opening-hours extensions and bans on various kinds of patriotic expression provoke angry complaints.

In England's capital, Mayor Ken Livingstone refused for years to allow any acknowledgement of the country's national day, while happily funding extravagant celebrations for St Patrick's Day, Diwali and the Chinese New Year. He has now bowed to protests, but some English patriots consider London's principal event today, the screening of a Monty Python film in Trafalgar Square, to be something of an insult.

Behind all this sulky animosity to St George seems to lurk a peculiar repugnance for English national sentiment on the part of the British establishment. . . .

It was not some scowling ministerial crony of Gordon Brown who refused a publican a St George's Day extension but allowed one for the Chinese New Year: it was Norwich magistrates. It was Liverpool councillors who ordered a shopkeeper to remove St George's Day flags from around his premises, without apparently objecting to Irish tricolours on St Patrick's Day. . . .

In fact, authority figures from all parts of the Kingdom have long discouraged expressions of Englishness at any time of the year. During last year's World Cup, employers banned workers from displaying the English flag, even though similar treatment of the Saltire would have been unthinkable. Police warned that England flags on vehicles might frighten horses. Schools forbade children from wearing England badges.

British luminaries who applaud expressions of Celtic, African or Catalan nationalism treat its English equivalent with disdain. According to them, England is not really a nation at all. They consider any of their fellow citizens who embrace English identity to be Morris-dancing nincompoops. The Tories oppose the creation of an English parliament even though they would be likely to dominate such an institution.

. . . [T]he adoption of a robust national consciousness might infuse [the people of England] with a new-found assertiveness. Our rulers know that if this happens, their own rootless values and dogmas will be unlikely to survive, and their own days may be numbered. Hence, the very possibility of an English identity must be denied.

Read the entire article here.

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The Islamicization of Europe

The great fight of our time is between the values of Western Civilization that have their roots in the humanistic philosophies of ancient Greece, and the triumphalist, absoloutist, and medieval Wahhabi / Salafi sect of Islam - originating out of Saudi Arabia and tracing its origins back to the philosophy of Ibn Taymiya. The two cannot coexist. The battle is occurring at varying levels world-wide today, but is well on its way to reaching critical proportions in Europe. While the ultimate outcome of the Islamicization of Europe is perhaps debatable, the reality of it cannot be questioned at this point. It is a function of the suicidal philosophy of multiculturalism and all of the policies predicated thereon, not the least of which is immigration policy.

For example, today there is this from the Gates of Vienna:

In 1974, former Algerian President Houari Boumedienne warned Europe in a speech at the UN : “One day, millions of men will leave the Southern Hemisphere to go to the Northern Hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory.”

“Soon we will take power in this country. Those who criticize us now, will regret it. They will have to serve us. Prepare, for the hour is near.” — Belgium-based imam in 1994.

Marie Simonsen, political editor of the Norwegian left-wing newspaper Dagbladet, wrote in March 2007 that it should be considered a universal human right for all people everywhere to migrate wherever they want to. This statement came just after a UN report had predicted a global population growth of several billion people to 2050, which amounts to a growth of more than one million people every week. It doesn’t take much skill to calculate that unlimited migration will spell certain death for a tiny Scandinavian nation such as Norway — not in a matter of generations, but theoretically even within a few weeks.

Do read the entire post. It has much worth reading on Islamicization going on throughout Europe. And there is an exceptional post in Dhimmi Watch. It is an essay by Fjordman on Islamicization in Sweden and how it is being encouraged by the state:

I decided to write this essay following the riots in Malmö this weekend. Malmö is Sweden's third largest city and by far the worst city in Scandinavia when it comes to Muslim aggression. I read recently that an Arab girl interviewed in Malmö said that she liked it so much there, it felt almost like an Arab city. Native Swedes have been moving away from the city for years, turned into refugees in their own country by Jihad, not too different from the non-Muslims in some regions of the Philippines, southern Thailand or Kashmir in India, or for that matter, Christian Serbs in Kosovo.
Sweden was presented during the Cold War as a middle way between capitalism and Communism. When this model of a society collapses – and it will collapse, under the combined forces of Islamic Jihad, the European Union, Multiculturalism and ideological overstretch – it is thus not just the Swedish state that will collapse but the symbol of Sweden, the showcase of an entire ideological world view. I wrote two years ago that if the trend isn't stopped, the Swedish nation will simply cease to exist in any meaningful way during the first half of this century. The country that gave us Bergman, ABBA and Volvo could become known as the Bosnia of northern Europe, and the "Swedish model" will be one of warning against ideological madness, not one of admiration. I still fear I was right in that assessment.

Jonathan Friedman, an American living outside Malmö, mentions that the so-called Integration Act of 1997 proclaimed that "Sweden is a Multicultural society." Notes to the Act also stated that "Since a large group of people have their origins in another country, the Swedish population lacks a common history. The relationship to Sweden and the support given to the fundamental values of society thus carry greater significance for integration than a common historical origin."

Native Swedes have thus been reduced to just another ethnic group in Sweden, with no more claim to the country than the Kurds or the Somalis who arrived there last Thursday. The political authorities of the country have erased their own people's history and culture.

Jens Orback, Minister for Democracy, Metropolitan Affairs, Integration and Gender Equality from the Social Democratic Party said during a debate in Swedish radio in 2004 that "We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be so towards us."

This is a government that knows perfectly well that their people will become a minority in their own country, yet is doing nothing to stop this. On the contrary. Pierre Schori, Minister for immigration, during a parliamentary debate in 1997 said that: "Racism and xenophobia should be banned and chased [away]," and that one should not accept "excuses, such as that there were flaws in the immigration and refugee policies."

In other words: It should be viewed as a crime for the native population not to assist in wiping themselves out.

Orback's attitude is what follows once you declare that culture is irrelevant. Our culture, even though we try to forget it, is steeped in a Judeo-Christian morality based on the Golden Rule of reciprocity: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (Luke 6:31)
Muslims, on the other hand, are steeped in an Islamic tradition based on Muslim supremacy. Muslims view lack of force as a sign of weakness, and they despise weakness, which is precisely why Adolf Hitler stated his admiration for Islam, and thought it would be a better match for Nazism than Christianity, with its childish notions of compassion.

A Swedish man was nearly killed for the crime of wearing clothes with his own national flag while Sweden was participating in the 2006 football World Cup. Some "Multicultural youths" found this to be an intolerable provocation, and the 24-year-old man was run down by a car in Malmö, where Muhammad is becoming the most common name for newborn boys.

Feriz and Pajtim, members of Gangsta Albanian Thug Unit in Malmö, explain how they mug people downtown. They target a lone victim. "We surround him and beat and kick him until he no longer fights back," Feriz said. "You are always many more people than your victims. Cowardly?" "I have heard that from many, but I disagree. The whole point is that they're not supposed to have a chance." They didn't express any sympathy for their victims. "If they get injured, they just have themselves to blame for being weak," said Pajtim and shrugged.

The wave of robberies the city of Malmö has witnessed is part of a "war against the Swedes." This is the explanation given by young robbers from immigrant background in interviews with Petra Åkesson. "When we are in the city and robbing we are waging a war, waging a war against the Swedes." This argument was repeated several times. "Power for me means that the Swedes shall look at me, lie down on the ground and kiss my feet." The boys explain, laughingly, that "there is a thrilling sensation in your body when you're robbing, you feel satisfied and happy, it feels as if you've succeeded, it simply feels good." "We rob every single day, as often as we want to, whenever we want to. The Swedes don't do anything, they just give us the stuff. They're so wimpy."

"Exit Folkhemssverige – Ensamhällsmodells sönderfall" (Exit the People's Home of Sweden - The Downfall of a Model of Society) is a book from 2005 about immigration and the Swedish welfare state model dubbed "the people's home," written by Jonathan Friedman, Ingrid Björkman, Jan Elfverson and Åke Wedin. According to them, the Swedish Multicultural elites see themselves first of all as citizens of the world. In order to emphasize and accentuate diversity, everything Swedish is deliberately disparaged. Opposition to this policy is considered a form of racism:

"The dominant ideology in Sweden, which has been made dominant by powerful methods of silencing and repression, is a totalitarian ideology, where the elites oppose the national aspect of the nation state. The problem is that the ethnic group that are described as Swedes implicitly are considered to be nationalists, and thereby are viewed as racists."

The authors fear that the handling of the immigration policies has seriously eroded democracy because the citizens lose their loyalty towards a state they no longer consider their own. "Instead of increasing the active participation of citizens, the government has placed clear restrictions on freedom of thought, freedom of speech and freedom of congregation."

Mona Sahlin has held various posts in Social Democratic cabinets, among others as Minister for Democracy, Integration and Gender Equality. Sahlin has said that many Swedes are envious of immigrants because they, unlike the Swedes, have a culture, a history, something which ties them together. Notice how Swedish authorities first formally state that Swedes don't have a history or a culture, and then proceed to lament the fact that Swedes don't have a history or a culture. A neat trick.

Sahlin has also stated that: "If two equally qualified persons apply for a job at a workplace with few immigrants, the one called Muhammad should get the job. (…) It should be considered an asset to have an ethnic background different from the Swedish one." In 2004, she was quoted as saying that "A concerted effort that aims at educating Swedes that immigrants are a blessing to their country must be pursued," stressing that her compatriots must accept that the new society is Multicultural. "Like it or not, this is the new
Sweden."

Mona Sahlin was elected leader of the Social Democratic Party, as thus a future contender for the post of Swedish Prime Minister, in 2007.

Why does the government dispense with the social contract and attack its own people like this? Well, for starters, because it can. Sweden is currently arguably the most politically repressive and totalitarian country in the Western world. It also has the highest tax rates. That could be a coincidence, but I'm not sure that it is. The state has become so large and powerful that is has become an autonomous organism with a will of its own. The people are there to serve the state, not vice versa. And because state power penetrates every single corner of society, including the media, there are no places left to mount a defense if the state decides to attack you.

It has been said jokingly that while other countries are states with armies, Pakistan is an army with a state. Likewise, it could be argued that Sweden started out being a nation with a bureaucracy and ended up being a bureaucracy with a nation. In fact, the bureaucracy formally abolished the very nation it was supposed to serve. Its representatives are no longer leaders of a people, but caretakers preoccupied only with advancing their own careers through oiling and upholding, if possible expanding, the bureaucratic machinery.

Swedes pay the highest tax rates of any (supposedly) free nation, and for this they get flawed social security, non-existent physical security and a state apparatus dedicated to their destruction. . .

Do read the entire essay here.

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A Guardian Frontal Assault on the Left's Cherished Philosophy of Relativism?

News Flash: The top eight circles of Hell are under a severe winter weather warning and ice is now forming in the ninth and last circle of Hell as temperatures continue to plummet. Earlier today, a person identifying himself as a spokesman for Satan contacted the Weather Channel and is reported to have asked "W-W-W-hat the hell is g-g-g-oing on up there?"

I never thought that I'd see this one. The UK newspaper The Guardian, often an excellent news source for factual reporting but whose editorial position occupies the very far left of the very far left, invited Julian Baggini, founder and the editor of the Philosophers' Magazine, to take pot shots at relativism and multiculturalism in their opinion pages. And Mr. Baggini does not disappoint, laying the blame on leftist academics and intellectuals for spreading this vacuous philogophy that has the UK and the rest of Europe in its terminal embrace.

I don't usually consider either the Ministry of Defence or the Vatican to be prescient founts of wisdom. But when two such different oracles issue remarkably similar warnings, you have to take notice. Earlier this week it was revealed in this newspaper how the MoD believes that "the trend towards moral relativism and increasingly pragmatic values" was causing more and more people to seek "more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism". Flash back to 2004 and you find Pope John Paul II encouraging the then Cardinal Ratzinger to challenge a world "marked by both a widespread relativism and the tendency to a facile pragmaticism" by boldly proclaiming the truth of the church. Ratzinger has been preaching about the dangers of relativism ever since.

Put the two together and you have a worrying prognosis. The clash of civilisations is happening not between Islam and the west, as we are often led to believe, but between pragmatic relativism and dogmatic certainty. On this analysis, it is easy to see liberal democracy not as the crowning achievement of civilisation but a manifestation of a laissez-faire, morally bankrupt modernity. "Relativism appears to be the philosophical foundation of democracy," said Ratzinger in 1996. "Democracy in fact is supposedly built on the basis that no one can presume to know the true way."

It is no surprise that both the MoD and the Pope believe that the beneficiaries of this polarisation will be those offering certitude, since belief in something is almost always preferable to belief in nothing. As Walter put it in the film The Big Lebowski: "Say what you like about the tenets of national socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."

How did we get to this dismal Hobson's choice? The finger of blame has to be pointed largely at academics and intellectuals who have been so keen to debunk popular notions of truth that they have created a culture in which the middle ground between shoulder-shrugging relativism and dogmatic fundamentalism has been vacated.

. . . They owe us an apology for failing to either see themselves, or make it clear to others, that in the everyday world we can and must distinguish truth and falsity, right and wrong, even if on close examination these terms do not mean what we thought they did. Science may not be God-like in its objectivity, but it is not just another myth. Moral values must be questioned, but if discrimination against women, homosexuals or ethnic minorities is wrong here, then it is wrong anywhere else in the world. Truth may not be the simple phenomenon we assume it to be, but falsehoods must be challenged.

Unless we can make a convincing case that the choice is not between relativism or dogmatism, more and more people will reject the former and embrace the latter. When they do, those who helped create the impression that modern, secular rationality leaves everything up for grabs in the marketplace of belief will have to take their share of the blame.

Do read the entire article here. This essay comports near perfectly with the one by Victor David Hanson that I posted here.

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The U.K. Military's Insane Folly

Britain is reeling in the wake of the Iranian hostage crisis. How Britain handles the aftermath of that crisis will have significant and lasting effects on national identity as well as the morale and effectiveness of the military. As you will see below, Britain is now off to an incredibly bad start.

The facts of the crisis are simple. Fifteen British sailors and marines are taken hostage by Iranians without shot one fired. Within days, they begin appearing on Iranian television spouting propoganda on behalf of their captors - and even an officer gets in on the bit.

In days gone by, a person captured by a hostile force was expected not to cooperate with the enemy. From the U.S. military, Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale and John McCain come immediately to mind as role models. They endured years of true torture and solitary confinement. At some point, these men, in refusing to cooperate with their captors, went beyond what would be expected of the average soldier, and clearly went into the realm of the heroic.

Nobody can expect those type of heroics from the average soldier, but the actions of the 15 sailors and marines in this instance were craven by any measure. The sailors and marines were held captive for thirteen days. They suffered "psychological pressure." They participated with Iran in a propoganda offensive against the country they were sworn to serve.

There is only one thing that ameliorates their horrid performance. That is that, no matter how you look at it, they were captured because of truly unconscionable negligance by the Commander of the HMS Cornwall in allowing them to operate outside of support at a time of heightened tension and in the same area where a kidnapping had occurred before. The first discipline in this case should have been - and should be - publicly relieving of duty the Commander of the HMS Cornwall. Such mistakes by those to whom we entrust the lives and well being of our soldiers cannot be countenanced. There are no second chances for that type of negligence by a Commander. The importance of relieving the Commander is to send a clear and unambiguous message to every officer in Her Majesty's navy that their first duty is to take care of their charges, and a message to every enlisted man and woman that their lives matter - that they are not pawns for an officer to move about with no consequence.

As to the hostages themselves, how to deal with them is a decision that should be left to anaval board of inquiry. In any event, the performance of the hostages while captives of Iran is not something that the UK military wants to be the model for future instances when a soldier is taken by coercion and confined by a hostile force.

So what has happened up to this point? The Commander of the Cornwall is still in place, Tony Blair has defended the Rules of Engagement (ROE), the First Sea Lord has fully supported the actions of the sailors and marines both in giving up without a shot and then their actions while captives. That is all very bad, but now it get's much, much, much worse. The 15 are being feted as heros and being rewarded with treatment reserved for Her Majesty's soldiers that have earned the Victoria Cross:

The 15 British military captives who were released by the Iranians have been authorised by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to sell their stories.

MoD officials claimed that the move to lift the ban on military personnel selling their stories while in service was justified because of the “exceptional circumstances” of the case. The hostages are expected to earn as much as £250,000 between them.

. . . The MoD said: “Serving personnel are not allowed to enter into financial arrangements with media organisations. However, in exceptional circumstances — such as the awarding of a Victoria Cross or events such as those in recent days — permission can be granted by the commanding officer and the MoD.”

Read the whole story here.

Now, to understand just how incredibly, utterly, supremely insane that is, the Victroia Cross is roughly equivalent to the U.S. Medal of Honor - which with Vice Admiral Stockdale was rewarded after lasting through six years of torture and hell while refusing to betray his country. It is awarded for incredible acts of bravery at threat of loss of life. As to the 15 hostages, beyond fully cooperating with the Iranians in all that they asked, what did these sailors and marines do? Absolutely nothing of bravery. They survived. That is it. And in surviving, they managed to display cowardice that brought humiliation upon their country - all within the record time of thirteen days of capture. I feel deep sympathy for their plight. That does not excuse their performance.

And now the Ministry of Defense is going to allow them to profit from their performance as if they were heroes or their actions otherwise so laudible as to justify their profit therefrom? Using extreme tact in my choice of words, I would describe that as a permissive act wholly contrary to promoting military virtues.

What messages have just been sent to every member of Britain's armed forces? Is a premium being placed on bravery and service to country? Are those who have spilled their blood while acting with bravery under fire being applauded and upheld as the model? I can imagine nothing worse for the morale of the British forces and for the parents of every child wounded or killed in combat then this craven lunacy. And its long term impact on Britain's national identity must be equally horrid if tales of the Falklands are to be replaced by tales of the Iran crisis told with tones of approval and acceptance. It is not a tale to be publicized. It is not a tale to be approved of in the national consciousness. It is a tale only to be told in the stiff verbiage of an official inquiry, and it is a tale whose ending should only be with the words "never, never again."

Their needs to be a purge of everyone in a leadership position between the Ministry of Defense, through the naval chain of command, and right down to the Commander of the HMS Cornwall. This insanity needs to end or Britain's military will not be a fighting force much longer. The legacy of Nelson will be but a dim shadow indeed.

Update: It appears the BBC has pulled the plug on a 90 minute documentary about a British soldier in Iraq who in fact earned the Victoria Cross for exceptional acts of bravery under combat:

Private Johnson Beharry's courage in rescuing an ambushed foot patrol then, in a second act, saving his vehicle's crew despite his own terrible injuries earned him a Victoria Cross.

For the BBC, however, his story is "too positive" about the conflict. . . The BBC's retreat from the project, which had the working title Victoria Cross, has sparked accusations of cowardice and will reignite the debate about the broadcaster's alleged lack of patriotism.

Read the story here. One, what does it say about a country that will not give publicity to its true heroes, but will give publicity to the story of 15 hostages who betrayed their country? Two, one of the first steps in restoring reality, sanity and morality to the UK has to be getting the news division of the BBC off of the public tit.

Update: The Telegraph has an op-ed that shows, one, that there is a segment of the population that understands just how wrong and inappropriate this action by the Ministry of Defense was. Unfortunately, it also shows why the conservatives in Britain will not be effective in addressing the problem. The Telegraph decrys the problem with what can only be described as a shrugging impotence. There is no demand that anything be changed, there is no call for people to be fired or relieved, there is no call for the public to organize and march on Downing Street. I cannot imagine how beaten down the conservatives must be in the UK only to criticize this situation and nothing more. Is their no leadership in Britain that will not just criticize, but challenge the insanity?

Update: Perhaps my criticism of the UK conservatives is not quite fair. The UK has reversed itself is now refusing to allow the sailors and marines who have not already done so to sell their stories, and there is an excellent op-ed in the Telegraph that fully notes the rot in the MoD and calls for change.

Update: As to the effect on the morale of British soldiers, see here.

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This is so fundamentally wrong . . .

Can Britain, with a multiculturalist philosophy permeating many sectors of society, survive the coming storm with its anglo saxon values intact? I've asked that question before here. I have also posted that Islam should under no circumstance be protected from criticism, to the contrary, it needs to be put under the light of scrutiny and subjected to reasoned criticism if it is ever to moderate and modernize. The article below, published in The Guardian, establishes the worst possible nexus between these prior posts.

Today, The Guardian is reporting that many teachers in Britain are altering their school lesson plans on "controversial subjects" so as "not to cause offense" . . . to guess who?

Schools are dropping controversial subjects from history lessons - such as the Holocaust and the Crusades - because teachers do not want to cause offence, Government research has found.

. . . Some teachers have . . . dropped the Holocaust completely from lessons over fears that Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic reactions in class.

And one school avoided teaching the Crusades because its "balanced" handling of the topic would directly contradict what was taught in local mosques.

The report, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, said: "Teachers and schools avoid emotive and controversial history for a variety of reasons, some of which are well-intentioned.

"Staff may wish to avoid causing offence or appearing insensitive to individuals or groups in their classes.

"In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship."

The researchers gave the example of one history department in a secondary school in a northern city which decided not to teach the Holocaust as a topic for GCSE coursework.

The report said the teachers feared confronting "anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils". Christian parents at another school complained over the way the Arab-Israeli conflict was taught.

This takes my breath away. It would seem that the multiculturalist philosophy has so seeped into the mainstream of British society that even the teaching of BRITISH history, as well as teaching about the single most well documented historical event in history - THE HOLOCAUST - must give way to the versions of history expoused in radical mosques. This is beyond insanity.

Do these spineless teachers and their supervisors understand the harm that they are doing - to all of their students, the Muslims included? They are enabling the racism and radicalism of the worst kind -- a sure fire way to stratify society and prevent integration. This is just so wrong on such a fundamental level it is hard to get my arms around it. Let me just say to my British friends, as an anglophile, if you are allowing things like this to occur without marching on 10 Downing Street carrying a burning torch, you are teetering on the edge of losing your society.

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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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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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