Taqiyya From The Times

Today's papers contain some amazing examples of clueless reporting by the MSM. The article that has to take the cake is the NYT article "The Guidebook for Taking a Life." This is an article that purports to identify jihadi "rules of war" by talking to selected salafists. It is nothing but complete disinformation, painting a false picture of radical Islamists - or as they would call it, taqiyya. The Times authors suggest that there is some moral and ethical code animating the radical Islamists. The problem with this bit of pro-Islamist insanity is that, in articulating the rules, the authors completely ignore the endless contradictory real world examples:

Rule No. 1: You can kill bystanders without feeling a lot of guilt. . .

Is this supposed to suggest that the Islamists feel any sort of remorse over collateral damage - or that collateral damage is even a viable concept among the Salafists? The majority of terrorist attacks are clearly designed to kill as many bystanders as possible. The suggestion that the animals that make up al Qaeda and other related terrorist organizations feel guilt over the death of "bystanders" does not comport with reality. Has anyone ever heard a single bit of Salafi propoganda bemoaning the death of innocent bystanders? The question for the Salafists in regards to "bystanders" is not guilt, its targeting.

Rule No. 2: You can kill children, too, without needing to feel distress. . .

True the Salafists argue that the collateral death of children is okay because they will go to Allah without sin and immediately age to the point where they can enjoy their 72 virgins. But the reality goes far beyond that. It begs the far more important "rules" for these animals. What about the deliberate targeting of children for murder when they are, by definition, without sin? What about the use of children as cover to be deliberately sacrificed in attacks? What about the brain washing of children to themselves become suicide bombers? There are no moral or societal limits on these animals as regards children. To suggest otherwise is deny reality.

Islamic militants are hardly alone in seeking to rationalize innocent deaths, says John O. Voll, a professor of Islamic history at Georgetown University. “Whether you are talking about leftist radicals here in the 1960s, or the apologies for civilian collateral damage in Iraq that you get from the Pentagon, the argument is that if the action is just, the collateral damage is justifiable,” he says.

This is the single most offensive statement of this utterly disingenuous article. One, there are no innocents to the Islamic animals. Two, the Islamist animals target women, children, and "bystanders" for death. The term collateral damage is not a term used by Islamists. It is a term used by the U.S. military who routinely do all that they can not to kill civilians. To even suggest that there is any moral equivalence between the unintended killing of innocents by the U.S. military and the targeting of innocents by the Islamist animals is grossly distorted and absurd.

Rule No. 3: Sometimes, you can single out civilians for killing; bankers are an example.

Sometimes? Bankers? This is shear sophistry and dissimulation. The Salafists have so interpreted their religion that their are no civilians. Bin Laden justified the Twin Towers attack on the logic that all Americans, including the civilians in the Twin Towers, were tax payers and thus supporters of America's military. Omar Bakri, the spiritual guide to some of the perpatrators of 7-7, reasoned that the Koran allows the killing of non-Muslim civilians in retaliation for the killing of Muslim civilians. He then blamed the West - including the United States - for killing Muslim civilians starting with the Crusades, circa 1294. The bottom line, there is no moral prohibition on the deliberate murder of any civilian. And indeed, it would seem that the Salafists far prefer the soft targets that civilians present.

Rule No. 4: You cannot kill in the country where you reside unless you were born there. . .

From what planet did this one drop? The 9-11 hijackers were not born in the lower 48. Iraq, Afghanistan, Spain, Lebanon, Israel, and I do not know how many other countries have experienced terrorism in the very recent past, if not on a daily basis, at the hands of the foreign born jihadis. Is this the NYT trying to tell us that we do not have to be concerned with any of the foreign born Islamists in this country? Who wrote this obvious falsity? CAIR?

Rule No. 5: You can lie or hide your religion if you do this for jihad.

This one is well known. It should receive a lot more publicity however. I am aware of no other religion that explicitly condones lying in order to commit acts of murder and mayhem. That certainly should be a centerpiece of dealing with any Muslims or Muslim organizations that one has any reason to suspect may be tied to radical Islam, such as CAIR or the Muslim Brotherhood.

Rule No. 6. You may need to ask your parents for their consent [to conduct jihad].

On one hand, how many times do we hear reports of captured jihadis where the parents are reported saying they cannot believe that their son or daughter could possibly be involved in terrorism. On the other hand, it would seem that many families in the Mid-East are proud when their child engages in terrorism or blows himself up along with a bunch of "bystanders." I personally think that we should hold such families equally responsible for the terrorism committed by their child. But that's just me.


Read the entire article here. Were I a cynic, I would call this the norm for NYT reporting on issues relating to terrorism. But I am a realist. So I will still call this piece of taqiyya the norm for the NYT. I do not understand how anyone pays for the suicidal fiction this paper is peddaling.

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U(K)tter Bull – Answering the Independent’s Claim that the U.S. is to Blame for the UK’s Hostage Crisis

The article “The Botched U.S. Raid That Led to the Hostage Crisis,” appearing in the British newspaper, The Independent, is a just a horrid hit piece. It's rank speculation masquerading as fact with a twist of moral equivalence that turns reality on its head. In the scenario posited by the Independent, hostage taking Iran is simply an innocent victim who has struck back only after unreasonable provocation by a bellicose and reckless U.S. It’s dangerous and utter nonsense.

The Independent claims that Iran’s kidnapping of 15 sailors and marines was a response to an unjustified U.S. provocation - a “botched” raid it claims was aimed at securing two high ranking Iranians, the head of intelligence for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) and the deputy head of Iran’s National Security Council. The Independent tells us that these officials were openly in Iraq for meetings with Kurdish leaders on “bilateral security issues.”

As the Independent describes it, the alleged U.S. attempt to secure these two men has “provoked a dangerous escalation.” Moreover, the Independent asserts that the raid was unjustified, describing it as the moral equivalent of “Iran . . . kidnap[ing] the heads of the CIA and MI6 while they were on an official visit to a country neighboring Iran, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan.” The raid ultimately netted five people the Independent describes as “junior liaison agents,” but not the two senior Iranian officials supposedly targeted.

The premise that Iran is an innocent victim that the U.S. should be leaving Iran alone is ridiculous. The Independent is either wholly ignoring the larger picture surrounding Iranian actions, or they have they been asleep for a few years and need to catch up on current events. There is precious little of anything innocent about Iranian involvement in Iraq. Nor is there anything innocent about Iran’s surge towards acquiring nuclear weapons. By ignoring these, the Independent distorts reality and engages in a suicidal game of moral equivalence.

As to Iran’s involvement in Iraq, there is no question of the theocracy’s complicity in the death and mayhem going on inside the country. For example, see here and here. And that mayhem is not just aimed at Americans and Sunnis – and Shias for that matter, it’s taking the lives of British soldiers in Basra also. See here.

Such acts are a provocation to the US and UK -- a real one, involving blood and brain matter splattering across streets, limbs lost, and hearts taking their final beat. In various forms, it has been going on since 2003. And the instruments of that bloodshed are the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Quds Force operating inside Iraq. Such provocation demands an adequate response. It justifies not only covert action against Iranian interests, but also overt actions if the U.S. or U.K. were inclined to take it.

Two, there is nothing innocent about Iran and the pending nuclear crisis they are imposing on the world. How dangerous is a nuclear armed Iranian theocracy? No less then the preeminent scholar of Middle Eastern history and culture, Bernard Lewis, spoke to the world on this issue some months ago:

A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."

In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead--hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.

See here. Then today there was this assessment from the brilliant scholar, Thomas Sowell:

Once Iran has nuclear weapons, that will be an irreversible change that will mark a defining moment in the history of the United States and of Western civilization, which will forever after live at the mercy of hate-filled suicidal fanatics and sadists.

See here. The threat posed by a nuclear armed Khomeinist theocracy is palpable and existential. George Bush has promised to meet it. He has flatly stated that he will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. I trust he has said what he means. Indeed, even Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have made noises indicating that they would take military action to stop Iran from attaining nuclear weapons.

Everyday, we inch closer to open warfare with Iran as they refuse to give up their quest for a nuclear weapon. Iran has not responded to years of European diplomacy. Nor has the theocracy responded to sanctions. Quite the opposite, they have increased the speed of their nuclear program. If Iran is going to be made to stop, the mullahs must understand the price to be paid to continue on their current path will be be real and it will be severe.

Doing absolutely nothing beyond diplomacy and tepid sanctions leaves Iran’s theocrats with a belief that the West is a eunuch. And indeed, as any student of the Iranian Revolution knows, that is a cherished belief among the mullahs. One of Ayatollah Khomeni’s favored expressions was that the West “can’t do a damned thing.” Unfortunately for the world, Jimmy Carter was President when Khoemeni popularized that phrase. Interestingly, the U.S. hostages were released the day Ronald Regan was inaugurated as President. I have no doubt that there were limits to how far Khomeini was willing to test his thesis – and Regan’s inauguration as President marked one of those clear limits.

The only way we will stop Iran’s nuclear program short of open war is to make Iran’s mullahs understand that we are able and willing to engage Iran. As long as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei feels safe and secure, Iran will not turn from its path of murderous complicity in Iraq and the pursuit of nuclear weapons. Thus, unless we want open war in the very near future, we have to aggressively engage Iran on the margins and make them feel the pain. Put another way, in the larger context that takes into account Iranian direct support for warfare targeting the US and Britain inside Iraq, as well as the Iranian drive for nuclear weapons, the U.S. raids on Iranian high value targets are not only wholly warranted, they are a necessity born of self-defense.

But all of that is mere context, for having now justified covert actions against Iran, such as targeting their senior officials in Iraq, it matters not to the instant case as the Independent provides no reasonable proof that the "botched" raid happened as they allege. The sole proof the Independent offers to establish that U.S. troops were targeting the two senior Iranian official is a bald assertion by the Chief of Staff to the governor of Kurdistan Regional Government. It is more then curious that the Independent should fail to tell us how he acquired his knowledge or give us any other indicia of the reliability of his statement. Certainly the Independent would have included anything that might have buttressed his assertion. Since I seriously doubt the Kurdish staff official was included in the planning of the raid, we can safely assume that he is not stating first hand information. In other words, it is apparent that this “source” is speculating or repeating speculation as to the target of the U.S. raid in question.

Moreover, as a logical matter, I have a lot of trouble believing that the U.S. could have “botched” a raid targeting the two senior Iranian officials given the scenario painted by the Independent. The target location of the raid was in a secure area regularly trafficked by Kurds. The two Iranian officials were operating in the open. In such circumstance, it is more then difficult to believe that the U.S. would pull the trigger on a raid by its Special Forces when the alleged subjects of the assault were not present at the target location. Raids such as this are not spur of the moment operations. With the two officials making no attempt to conceal their presence, they would have been easy to track, and the raid would not have commenced until intelligence confirmed the location of the two men. In short, there is no alternative reason to support the Independent's claim that the raid was actually targeting the two senior Iranian officials.

Further, the Independent takes some cheap shots at the U.S. regarding the five Iranians seized during the raid, surmising that they were cleary inocent diplomatic staff:

US officials in Washington subsequently claimed that the five Iranian officials they did seize, who have not been seen since, were "suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraq and coalition forces". This explanation never made much sense. No member of the US-led coalition has been killed in Arbil and there were no Sunni-Arab insurgents or Shia militiamen there.

Neither you, I, nor the author of this piece has any clue what intelligence the U.S. was operating on when it took these five Iranians into custody. But that does not stop the Independent. Let me ask, if you wished to set up a headquarters for a covert network, do you want it at a location crawling with US and British forces, or would you prefer an area that is easily accessible, in reasonable proximity, and with far less security roaming about? The Independent’s speculation based on just geographical location is nonsensical.

Next, the Independent speculates as to Ali Khamenei’s motivation in taking the 15 sailors and marines as hostages. The author gives not one shred of evidence for his assertion that the taking of the 15 hostages was a strike in retaliation for the “botched” raid. The fact that IRNA portrayed the U.S. raid as targeting the two senior officials tells us nothing. There is more then one reason to take the fifteen sailors and marines hostage that make more sense then simple revenge for a “botched” mission by the U.S.

One, the kidnapping fell on the eve of a Security Council vote to impose more sanctions on Iran for their failure to halt their nuclear program. That seems too fortuitous to be coincidental. Thus, it is conceivable that this kidnapping is meant to slow the pace of pressure being brought to bear on Iran over the nuclear program.

Two, given that the UK was targeted and not the US, it is quite possible that Iran is attempting to drive a wedge in the alliance between the US and the UK. If so, then the Independent is doing the work for Ahmedinejad and company by writing articles such as this one today, blaming the US for the kidnapping – not Iran.

Lastly, the Middle Eastern scholar and terrorism expert Walid Phares has written that the kidnapping is most likely a gambit by Khamenei to draw a limited military response, and that the kidnapping is directed squarely at quelling internal dissent in Iran that threatens the theocracy. See here.

I could go on here, but, what it boils down to that nothing in this article by the Independent blaming the US for the Iranian kidnapping withstands even minimal scrutiny. In sum, this is a hit piece that blames the U.S. for the an abominable act by the thuggish Iranian theocracy. And this is certainly not the mullahs first act of kidnapping. Actually, kidnapping is a well established part of Iranian foreign policy. Iran has been involved in kidnapping over 1,000 people since the mullahs came to power in 1979. But I digress.

Is the U.S. targeting Iranians in Iraq and elsewhere? I certainly hope so. Does that make the U.S. morally guilty for any Iranian retaliatory act? The answer is yes only if you are an apologist for Iran, or so steeped in the doctrine of moral equivalence that you cannot see a difference between Iran and the U.S. If so, please see the differences here. At any rate, I am not sure which of the two categories the Independent fits into, but it is at least one of them.

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Britain’s Existential Problem: Part I - Multiculturalism

I am an anglophile – and remain so despite the recent unjustified attack by the Prince on that American icon, McDonalds. My respect for the U.K., its traditions, its history, and its people could not be higher. British culture at its best is, in my view, the pinnacle of culture in the Western World. Unfortunately, I also recognize quite clearly that the U.K. is in serious trouble, and at the top of the list of those troubles is the question of whether the U.K. can integrate its Muslim population, and if not, can Britain survive the coming storm with its Anglo-Saxon ethos intact?

With that said, I think that Britain's troubles are manifold, but in large measure derive from a particularly virulent form of multiculturalism and its intertwined doctrine of moral equivalence. A good place to start looking at its problems today is to look at multiculturalism's origins and how it mestastisized throughout the U.K. in the years following World War II.

Britain, Multiculturalism, and Moral Equivalence

Take up the White man's burden –
Send forth the best ye breed –
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild –
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

Rudyard Kipling, excerpt from The White Man’s Burden, 1899

Kipling wrote The White Man’s Burden both as an exhortation for the United States to take up the banner of imperialism from Britain, and as a warning of its costs. You will not find a hint of the multicultural philosophy in this most decidely non-pc work. Multiculturalism would not really start to take hold in Britain for yet a half century. Kipling's work encapsulates the British belief that had existed for centuries, that the U.K.’s culture and societal values were morally superior and, as such, colonialism and imperialism were not only justified, but a moral imperative.

It was quite idealistic, and it conveniently ignored the profit motive that directly motivated colonialism. But, there is nothing evil in a profit motive – indeed, it is a simple reality of mankind. In all the places where people enjoy the most freedoms and the highest standards of living, even among the poorest of them, it is in those countries that embrace capitalism and acknowledge the reality that mankind is motivated by profit in return for their effort.

What were the Anglo-Saxon cultural mores that molded Kipling and the British citizenry of his day? There was democracy, a freedom of the press, a freedom of speech, there was education and culture, there was rule by law, there was tolerance – including religious tolerance, there was a sense of fair play and a chivalric ideal, and there was capitalism.

Were there a lot of acts taken by the British that were not only out of line with those mores, but indeed, blatant acts of brutal suppression? One could fill tomes with the atrocities. But the passage of years has shown that, where the British footprint was the largest – in the New World, in India, in Hong Kong, those higher mores – or the desire to achieve those mores – have been Britain’s enduring legacy. In essence, imperfect though our systems may be, Britain, more then any other country, can lay claim to being the mother of the best values that dominate Western society today.

But in the century that has past since 1899, Britain has changed in many fundamental ways. World War I saw the flower of British youth wasted by foolish generals in carnage on a never before seen scale. By the time Hitler rose, many of Britain’s colonies had risen in rebellion, taking a position that Britain had no right to impose their will upon the native inhabitants. In fairly short order, by the mid-point of the century, Britain had given up all but a few small remnants of its once huge colonial empire, having neither the manpower to maintain its colonies by force, nor the desire to further coercively impose its will upon restive colonies. The natives were shouting at the top of their lungs of their desire to rule themselves, and they demonized Britain and colonialism in the process.

But divesting the empire did not bring a clean end to Britain’s imperial period. The legacy of imperialism was ingrained in the British psyche. And with that, a large segment of the British intelligentsia bought into the proposition that not only did the natives have a right to self rule, but that Britain’s history of colonialism was a clear and immoral violation of that right. All prior acts of Britain were viewed not in the reasoned context of world history at any particular time, but through a modern, moralistic lens colored with the original sin of colonialism. Thus, history was set adrift from its moorings in reality. And being the intelligentsia, these were the writers, the teachers, the elected government officials – and thus, the people who held sway over the information in society. The end result, as one loyal subject of the queen cogently – and recently – observed, is that “[a]n overwhelming, politically correct, colonial guilt complex exists in Britain today and colonialism is synonymous with evil.”

With Britain’s past – and thus the mores and ethos that motivated that past – seen as evil, the concepts of multiculturalism and moral equivalence became the morally and politically correct doctrine of British society. By multiculturalism, I mean, a belief that “All cultures are equally good.” In other words, cultural norms are not subjected to a value analysis. Rational judgments of the relative value of any particular element of the comparative cultures are explicitly excluded from, and condemned by, multiculturalism. Inextricably intertwined in this concept is the equation of moral equivalence. The act of one country or one person is morally justified because of some act or prior bad act of another country or person.

When multiculturalism first started to creep into vogue in British society, it had two major lures. The first lure was that it allowed one to feel morally superior by divorcing themselves from a sinful past. Adherents adopted the proposition that, yes, the U.K.’s colonial past was evil, but the person bore no responsibility for that because they now recognized it as such. But then the truly insidious nature of multiculturalism surfaced. That being that it combined both a belief that one’s own past was sinful with a failure to subject the history and cultural norms of another country to a value analysis. Thus, the equation became that all other cultures are superior to our Western culture.

The second lure of adopting multiculturalism, from the time it first appeared in Britain until the point that it was thoroughly ensconced, was that it came with no societal cost. In the post World War II world, Britain had not yet opened the flood gates for Middle Eastern and Asian immigrants. Radical Islam was entombed far away in the Middle East and its reality known only to a few scholars. The only existential threat to Western Civilization was the Soviet Union, and it was held in check behind the Eastern Block borders by NATO.

Today, the story is completely different. Today, multiculturalism has matured and spawned numerous policies and norms – not the least of which include a lax immigration policy, a criminalization of the criticism of Islam, and a cringing guilt reaction when radical Muslims scream the word “Islamaphobia.” And today, for people who expouse multiculturalism, and indeed, for all of the people inhabiting the U.K., the bill for adopting the philosophy of multiculturalism is now due and owing.

How dangerous is the multicultural philosophy to the U.K.? It will take more time to answer that then this post. But its danger can easily be seen in the one example below:

I believe that we can all agree that a nuclear armed Iran may pose a threat to the Western world. In a recent piece in the Guardian, "Why Can't MP's See The Folly of Trident," Mary Riddel posited two related arguments that derive directly from the philosophy of multiculturalism and use the equation of moral equivalence. The first was that the U.K. could not upgrade its nuclear arsenal while at the same time maintaining that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon. The second argument, this one made implicitly by reference to how other countries view the U.K., was that Iran should be allowed a nuclear weapon if the U.K. has one.

What follows is my response that I posted to the Guardian website and elsewhere on this blog:

--------------------------------------------------

Britain and Iran do not inhabit the same moral plane. State sanctioned murder on a grand scale is not something in which Britain normally engages. No one on this earth is worried that the U.K. will decide to smuggle a nuclear bomb into Delhi and then either set it off or otherwise use it as a form of nuclear blackmail. Britain does not open its meetings of parliament each week by asking for death to all of the people who inhabit Israel and America. Britain does not pay terrorist groups on a varying scale dependent on how much death and destruction they cause in Israel or elsewhere as needed. Britain does not use real physical torture as a state sanctioned instrument of its policies. Britain does not glorify suicide and suicidal cults. Britain has never sent tens of thousands of teenagers to their death by sending them unarmed to clear minefields or to charge machine gun nests in time of war. And Britain is not a theocracy founded upon an incredibly aggressive and triumphalist religion that explicitly animates its state policy. As the preeminent American scholar on the Middle East, Bernard Lewis wrote a few months ago:

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A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."

In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead--hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.

The ultimate truth is this – the argument of moral equivalence is always a utopian canard. Britain and Iran do not inhabit the same moral plane. There is no hypocrisy in Britain's retaining or improving its nuclear arsenal in this imperfect and dangerous world even as it demands that a truly dangerous theocracy cease and desist in its own drive for nuclear weapons.

And the assertion that the U.K. "merit[s] the means of mass annihilation because [they] are 'good' and other countries are 'bad' is seen as risible throughout the non-nuclear world," that assertion is ridiculous. It is the penultimate multicultural argument, devoid of any discriminating value judgments or analysis. Rather then repeat, with slight variation, the argument made above, let me just put it simply: Please name for me any country still extant that has predicated its defense policy on opinion or popularity polls taken in other countries?

I will not hold my breath while you try to list them.

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