This Christmas: Pray for Christians Under the Boot of Islamic Oppression

Latma TV is a satirical site with a serious message. Here is their take on Christmas in Bethlehem.



(Thanks to Scott Masson for pointing out this video for me.)

All over the Western world, we allow Muslims to enter our countries, build mosques, stay in cliques speaking a foreign language and remain under the malign influence of fire-breathing, fundamentalists leaders funded by Saudi Arabia.

In the Middle East, Christians are being persecuted, hounded out and ethnically cleansed. In Iraq the ancient Church (which pre-dates the rise of the Muslim heresy) is nearly extinct. In Egypt (which was a Christian country until being taken over by violent jihadists) Christians are struggling to hang on against persecution and violence. In Judea and Samaria the Palestinian Authority is gradually pushing Christians out. And we send them foreign aid.

I think we should take no more immigrants from and send no more foreign aid to countries that do not offer complete freedom of religion to Christians. Instead we should place them under a trade embargo and seek to isolate them in the court of world opinion.

Islam opposes freedom of religion categorically; Islam therefore is a totalitarian political system which must be opposed by all who love freedom. Islam must change; we must resist.

Pray for our brothers and sisters under the heel of Islam this Christmas. May this be the last Christmas that Muslims rule over Christians anywhere on earth.

Islam and Religious Freedom: It is Time to Face Some Unpleasant Facts

Further to the last post, this article by Andrew G. Bostom in American Thinker, points out what serious observers of Islam have always known: namely, that the barbaric penalty of death for apostasy is deeply rooted in Islam and not merely an aberration embraced by a few, fringe, fanatical groups. What this means is that Islam is not compatible with natural law, Christianity or the Western secularized human rights tradition.

This is a serious issue that many politicians and left-wing secular and religious activists refuse to tackle honestly.

Will Mainstream American Islam Condemn Pastor Nadarkhani's "Apostasy" Death Sentence? Where is CAIR? Where is the Islamic Society of North America? - snip -

Thus far mainstream American Muslim advocacy groups-notably the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) have failed to condemn Pastor Nadarkhani's heinous death sentence. This dereliction of basic moral duty by CAIR and ISNA, so vocal in highlighting the slightest perceived "violations" of Muslim rights here in the US, demonstrates that the continued failure of Islam to uphold basic freedom of conscience extends beyond the "Near East," to Muslim communities across the entire world.

Notwithstanding transparent last minute Iranian efforts to recast the criminal proceedings against Pastor Nadarkhani with allegations of-what else-"Zionist conspiracism," or other trumped up charges, a translated Iranian Supreme Court brief from 2010 (obtained by CNN from the American Center for Law and Justice, and translated from its original Farsi by the Confederation of Iranian Students in Washington) makes plain that apostasy is the sole charge.

Mr. Youcef Nadarkhani, son of Byrom, 32-years old, married, born in Rasht in the state of Gilan is convicted of turning his back on Islam, the greatest religion, the prophecy of Mohammad at the age of 19...He (Nadarkhani) has stated that he is a Christian and no longer Muslim...During many sessions in court with the presence of his attorney and a judge, he has been sentenced to execution by hanging according to article 8 of Tahrir Al- Wasilah (a book on Islamic Law, Sharia, authored by Ayatollah Khomeini as a guide for Muslims)

The quintessence of a contemporary Shiite pronouncement on apostasy in Islam (which cites Khomeini's treatise extensively) appearing in Kayhan International, March 1986, stated openly

In Islam, apostasy is a flagrant sin and guilt for which certain punishments have been specified in Shari'a (Islamic law). Apostasy means, to renounce the religion or a religious principle after accepting it. In other words, one's departure from Islam to atheism is called apostasy. A person who abandons Islam and adopts atheism is called an apostate . . ...Apostasy is the escape from the pattern of creation and nature and that is why the word "voluntary" has been adopted for such an apostate...Can the penalty of escaping from the path and pattern of nature and creation be anything other than annihilation? This is the same thing that has been crystallized in the penal code of Islam. The anti-apostasy punishments of Islam are proper laws to rescue mankind from falling into the cesspool of treason, betrayal, and disloyalty and to remind the human being of his ideological commitments.

Iranian apostasy law is consistent with mainstream Islam's rejection of freedom of conscience since the 7^th century advent of the creed, through the clear modern dictates of the global Muslim umma's religio-political hierarchy as put forth in the 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, signed by all 56 member nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (now the Organization of Islamic Cooperation).

• Koranic verses, such as 2:217 and 4:89 and their classical, mainstream exegeses by seminal Koranic commentators such as Baydawi (on 4:89: "Whosoever turns his back from his belief [irtada], openly or secretly, take him and kill him wheresoever ye find him, like any other infidel") and Qurtubi (on 2:217: "Scholars disagree about whether or not apostates are asked to repent. One group say they are asked to repent and, if they do, they are not killed. Some say they are given an hour and others a month. Others say they are asked to repent three times, and that is the view of Malik [founder of the Maliki school of Islamic Law]..It is also said they are killed without being asked to repent.")
• Muhammad is reported to have sanctioned lethal punishment for apsotates in the two most important canonical hadith collections, i.e., Bukhari and Muslim, and the Muwatta of Imam Malik:

Bukhari, volume 9, #17-Narrated Abdullah: Allah's Messenger said, "The blood of a Muslim who confesses that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that I am His Messenger, cannot be shed except in three cases: in Qisas (equality in punishment) for murder, a married person who commits illegal sexual intercourse and the one who reverts from Islam (Apostate) and leaves the Muslims."

Bukhari, volume 9, #57-Narrated Ikrima, "Some atheists were brought to Ali and he burnt them. The news of this event, reached Ibn Abbas who said, "If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah's messenger forbade it, saying, "Do not punish anybody with Allah's punishment (fire)." I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah's Messenger, "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him."

Muslim-Chapter 6: WHEN IT IS PERMISSIBLE TO TAKE THE LIFE OF A MUSLIM, Book 016, Number 4152: Abdullah (b. Mas'ud) reported Allah's Messenger as saying: It is not permissible to take the life of a Muslim who bears testimony (to the fact that there is no god but Allah, and I am the Messenger of Allah, but in one of the three cases: the married adulterer, a life for life, and the deserter of his Din (Islam), abandoning the community.

Muwatta of Imam Malik, #1410-"Zaid b. Aslam reported that the Apostle declared that the man who leaves the fold of Islam should be executed."

• There is also a consensus by all four schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (i.e., Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, and Shafii), as well as classical Shiite jurists, that apostates from Islam must be put to death. Averroes (d. 1198), the renowned philosopher and scholar of the natural sciences, who was also an important Maliki jurist, provided this typical Muslim legal opinion on the punishment for apostasy: "An apostate...is to be executed by agreement in the case of a man, because of the words of the Prophet, 'Slay those who change their din [religion]'...Asking the apostate to repent was stipulated as a condition...prior to his execution."
• The contemporary (i.e., 1991) Al-Azhar (Cairo) Islamic Research Academy endorsed manual of Islamic Law, Umdat al-Salik (pp. 595-96) states: "Leaving Islam is the ugliest form of unbelief (kufr) and the worst.... When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostasizes from Islam, he deserves to be killed. In such a case, it is obligatory...to ask him to repent and return to Islam. If he does it is accepted from him, but if he refuses, he is immediately killed."
• The equivalent, gravely negative implications of the OIC's Sharia-based Cairo Declaration are most apparent in its transparent rejection of freedom of conscience in Article 10, which proclaims: "Islam is the religion of unspoiled nature. It is prohibited to exercise any form of compulsion on man or to exploit his poverty or ignorance in order to convert him to another religion, or to atheism." Ominously, articles 19 and 22 reiterate a principle stated elsewhere throughout the document, which clearly applies to the "punishment" of so-called "apostates" from Islam: "[19d] There shall be no crime or punishment except as provided for in the Sharia.; [22a] Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Sharia.; [22b] Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right, and propagate what is good, and warn against what is wrong and evil according to the norms of Islamic Sharia.; [22c] Information is a vital necessity to society. It may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, undermine moral and ethical values or disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or weaken its faith."

The universality of these Islamic attitudes affects Muslim communities in the West, including North America. Syed Mumtaz Ali, the late architect of Canada's Sharia (Islamic Law) tribunal, and law professor Ali Khan, for example both have openly advocated extending Islamic apostasy laws to the West. Mumtaz Ali, in a disturbing essay, affirmed the traditional Islamic legal viewpoint that apostates must "choose between Islam and the sword," arguing further that if Canada were to act in accord with its own Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Canadian government must grant the country's Islamic community authority to punish those Muslims who apostasize, or malign their faith.

Muslim immigration to the West is creating a Fifth Column within our culture that is dedicated to destroying our freedom. We all know that many Muslim immigrants come here because they want the freedom the West has to offer and they are welcome. But those who seek to bring Sharia Law with them should not be granted the privilege of being allowed to come and live here.

Any Muslim who wishes to immigrate to the West should be required to renounce the intolerance of Sharia Law and refused entry if they choose not to do so. It is their choice; no one is pressuring them to come here in the first place. If they prefer to live in a country where freedom of religion does not exist, let them do so.

When Will the Arabs Recognize the Legitimacy of Israel?

Palestine Media Watch is an Israeli organization that provides an essential service by monitoring what the Palestinian Authorities officials and ordinary citizens are saying publicly in Arabic. What they say in English for the consumption of Westerners is often very different from what they say among themselves. And, of course, the left-leaning Western media never dig for the truth and so we live with systemic disinformation. That is why the PMW is so important.

The real reason why there is no peace in the Middle East is that the Arabs will not accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish state on her ancient, ancestral homeland. They want one State of Palestine with a ruling Arab majority and they want Israel to be destroyed as a Jewish State. This is because of Islamic supremacism, which proclaims that Islam supersedes both Judaism and Christianity as the one true religion. It not only wants to exist and be left alone; deep in its DNA is a thirst for domination and world rule. In this it resembles Communism and some of the ancient empires of world history.

Here is a sampling of what the Palestinians say among themselves, which shows that Israel has no partner for peace. From the PWA website:

Official PA daily calls Israel "the territories occupied in 1948":

"Under the slogan, 'Palestine is closer: Lod shall remain', the 'Khutwa' youth group, in cooperation with a group of Palestinian youth from the West Bank and from the territories occupied in 1948 (i.e., Israel), held a charity performance to support the resolve of our people in the occupied Palestinian city of Lod...
Manal Taha, one of the organizers of the event... [said that Israel's aim is] to threaten the resolve within the occupying entity, which continues through the actions of the authorities in Jaffa, Acre, Haifa, Jerusalem, and other occupied Palestinian cities. She added, 'Through this event we hope to turn the spotlight onto the suffering of our people in the Interior (i.e., in Israel). In addition, we aim for this event to be a first step on the road to restoring the spiritual connection between Palestinians wherever they may be, by carrying out other activities in the future for these purposes. Taha called upon everyone to participate in this activity, whose aim is to energize the connection between the Palestinians of the territories occupied in 1948 and [those in] the territories occupied in 1967."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 23, 2011]

Official PA daily states that Israel - "the territories occupied in 1948" - is "currently under the rule of the occupation":

"If you climb the Khirbat Safa Hills [in the West Bank] and look with your eyes towards what the Israeli occupation and its settlers have seized, your eyes will well up and cause you to weep twice: once over the territories occupied in 1948 (i.e., year of Israel's creation), which are currently under the rule of the occupation. The Safa Hills look out over wide expanses of these territories, and sometimes you can see the Mediterranean Sea, the city of Ashkelon (i.e., Israeli city), and even Tal Al-Rabi'a "Tel Aviv", upon which the occupation has consolidated its control."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 31, 2011]

The following are examples of the PA calling Israel "stolen":

In a 12th-Grade schoolbook published by the PA Ministry of Education, and in use today:

"Palestine's war ended with a catastrophe that is unprecedented in history, when the Zionist gangs stole Palestine and expelled its people from their cities, their villages, their lands and their houses, and established the State of Israel."

[Arabic Language, Analysis, Literature and Criticism, Grade 12, p. 104]

You can read more of this sort of documented evidence here.

Constant hectoring from Obama, the UN, the Europeans etc. of Israel to compromise and to negotiate is worse than useless under these conditions. All that amounts to is a demand for Israel to unilaterally surrender.

Anyone interested in peace in the Middle East should be pressuring the Arabs to accept a two-state solution with guaranteed security for Israel. Anyone who pressures Israel to compromise when the Arabs refuse even to recognize the Jewish state as legitimate is really on the side of the anti-Jewish, Muslim extremists who are determined to finish what Hitler started. The issue really is that stark.

Robert Reilly and the Closing of the Muslim Mind

Robert Reilly gets it. He understands that the civilizational crisis facing us today is rooted in theology. Here is a link to a terrific lecture he gave recently at the Heritage Foundation on his book: The Closing of the Muslim Mind.

Here is a synopsis of his lecture:

People today are shocked and frightened by the behavior coming out the Islamic world – not only because it is violent, but also because it is seemingly inexplicable. While many explanations have been offered as to “what went wrong” in the Muslim world, no one has decisively answered why it went wrong. In The Closing of the Muslim Mind, Robert R. Reilly locates the roots of contemporary troubles in a pivotal struggle that occurred within the Muslim world nearly a millennium ago. It was a battle over the role of reason – and the side of irrationality won. The theology that resulted, Reilly posits, produced a fertile field for Islamism, and now constitutes the chief obstacle to finding common ground with the Islamic world. In the view of former National Security Advisor John Poindexter, this book is “meticulously researched … must-read for today’s national security leaders.”

The lecture is well-worth the hour or so it takes to listen to. Reilly gives chapter and verse citations for some of the claims I lightly skated over in my last post.

Geert Wilders Acquited! Good News for Freedom of Speech in Europe

Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician on trial for criticizing Islam as a totalitarian ideology bent on world dominion, has miraculously been acquited by an Amsterdam court!

I have previously blogged about this trial and Wilders' fight for free speech in the Netherlands and the West generally. The first link gives the transcript of his closing remarks at the trial:

European Freedom on Trial

Defending Free Speech Against the Hard Left and Islam

Geert Wilders' Speech in Rome: Facing the Potential Fall of the West without Giving Up Hope

The Voice of Freedom in Europe: Will It Be Silenced Forever?

German Reporter Claims Jesus Taught Violent Jihad in Wilders Interview

Geert Wilders' Speech at Ground Zero on 9/11

Robert Sibley on Geert Wilders and Freedom

Rick Moran at American Thinker describes the victory and the Muslim response. Unsurprisingly, they will continue the lawfare by going to the United Nations. They do not believe that European nations should have the sovereign right to make their own laws because they ultimately do no recognize any law but Shariah.

Predictably, some Muslims groups were outraged:

Minorities groups said they would now take the case to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, arguing the ruling meant the Netherlands had failed to protect ethnic minorities from discrimination.

"The acquittal means that the right of minorities to remain free of hate speech has been breached. We are going to claim our rights at the U.N.," said Mohamed Rabbae of the National Council for Moroccans.

No doubt they will get a sympathetic hearing at the UN with the anti-Semites, anti-Western, anti-Christian representatives becoming enraged at the result of the court case.

But what can they do to the Netherlands? Not much, which means their efforts will be for PR purposes and nothing more.

Note that they, like Marxists, have become adept at utilizing the rhetoric of rights and multiculturalism,(in which they do not believe), against their Western enemies. Posing as persecuted minorities they try to stamp out all criticism of Islam and restrict free speech for their own totalitarian purposes. They have not embraced Western ideals of free speech and tolerance; they scorn such ideals even as they use them against us in order to undermine those ideals and eventually stamp them out.

No country in the world dominated by Shariah law has religious freedom, freedom of speech or individual liberty (especially in the case of women). Any Muslim who wishes to live under Western law and according to the Western political philosophy of limited government, separation of church and state, etc. is welcome in the West. But a significant minority of Muslims - largely supported by Saudi oil money - are anti-Western and seek to overthrow the West and impose Shariah. They are enemies and must be resisted.

Geert Wilders has been persecuted by the Left in his country because he insists on standing up to the latter group, while having no problem with the former group. He claims that Islam is a totalitarian ideology and history is on his side. The only debatable point is whether a given Muslim group is willing to give up Islamic ideology and adapt to the ideals of the West or not. When you see honor killings, anti-Semitism, and support for radical organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot Hamas, and creeping Shariah, you know which kind of Muslim group you are dealing with.

The entire Western world owes Geert Wilders a debt of gratitude for having the courage to stand up to thugs and totalitarians who want to sell out liberty for peace.

Yale Closes Its Initiative for the Study of Antisemitism

More news from Yale University that vindicates Bill Buckley's indictment of it in his famous book, God and Man at Yale (as if it needed further vindication). Saudi oil money and leftist political correctness apparently trump the truth at today's postmodern Yale University. The latest bit of evidence for this depressing conclusion is the announcement of the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism."

The New York Post has the gory details:

Yale University last week killed the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplin ary Study of Antisemitism -- the only program of its kind in the country, an academically stellar one-stop anti-Semitism research shop. Worse, it almost certainly did so because YIISA refused to ignore the most virulent, genocidal and common form of Jew-hatred today: Muslim anti-Semitism.

Citing an official review by a faculty committee that it refuses to identify, Yale will shut down the program at the end of next month. The university's top flack, Director of Strategic Communications Charles "Robin" Hogen, wrote an e-mail claiming that YIISA had failed a key test: It was supposed to "serve the research and teaching interests of some significant group of Yale faculty and . . . be sustained by the creative energy of a critical mass of Yale faculty."

Funny, last year, at YIISA's hugely successful inaugural conference on global anti-Semitism, Yale Deputy Provost Frances Rosenbluth said just the opposite, noting that YIISA was "guided by an outstanding group of scholars from all over the university representing many different disciplines," including professors of history, sociology, comparative languages, psychiatry, economics and political science.

Actually, Hogen's e-mail itself contradicts Yale's stated excuse: He notes that "the steering committee did express continued support for the faculty reading group on anti-Semitism." Plus, "institutional support will remain for the group of faculty who wish to continue their scholarly exploration of this important subject."

Which is it -- no faculty interested in studying anti-Semitism, or lots of faculty interest in studying anti-Semitism?

It apparently depends on which anti-Semitism. Christian anti-Semitism is fine; political Jew-hatred, like communist or fascist anti-Semitism, no problem. But get anywhere near Muslim or Middle Eastern anti-Semitism, as presenters at YIISA's conference did last year, and you've crossed the line.

Yale certainly got an earful after the conference. The PLO representative in America scolded the school's president, Richard Levin, complaining of the attention paid to anti-Semitism among Palestinians and Muslims.

"It's shocking that a respected institution like Yale would give a platform to these right-wing extremists and their odious views," PLO "Ambassador" Maen Rashid Areikat wrote. "I urge you to publicly dissociate yourself and Yale University from the anti-Arab extremism and hate-mongering that were on display during this conference."

Other attacks came from left-wing bloggers and anti-Israel bigots, as well as one Yale law student who complained about the conference's potential dangers.

Citing the supposed "dangerous landscape on which American Muslims now dwell" to complain about alleged "anti-Muslim bigotry disseminated under Yale's banner of credibility," Yaman Saleh insisted that "the university cannot preach tolerance and inclusion while simultaneously also providing a haven for bigoted ideas about Muslims and Arabs that often form the basis for Islamophobic sentiment in this country."

Funny, there wasn't a peep about bigoted ideas presented under "Yale's banner of credibility" a year earlier, when a lecturer at Yale's new Jackson Center for Global Affairs took her graduate students to New York to visit with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad explained to the students that there is no hard scientific proof that the Holocaust happened.

Neither the lecturer nor the center faced much criticism about meeting with a dictator just a few months after he'd murdered, tortured and terrorized his own citizens to hijack an election.

Read the rest here.

The Jewish Anti-defamation League issued a press release:

Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, said in a statement:

Whatever purported issues and problems arose regarding the Yale Interdisciplinary Center, what was required was a concerted effort to work out the problems rather than ending the program. Especially at a time when anti-Semitism continues to be virulent and anti-Israel parties treat any effort to address issues relating to anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism as illegitimate, Yale's decision is particularly unfortunate and dismaying.

The Yale Center was organized in a serious way and, under the leadership of its director, Professor Charles Small, produced significant programs and research in its short history. If there were problems that the university raised, they needed to be dealt with and resolved. The decision to end the Center was a bad one on its own terms, but it is even worse because it leaves the impression that the anti-Jewish forces in the world achieved a significant victory.

You may remember the flap in which Yale University Press refused to print the Danish Mohammed cartoons in a scholarly book about the Danish Mohammed cartoons. Free speech at Yale increasingly seems to be limited to those who refrain from criticizing Islam.

Why Do Western Leftist Leaders Refuse to Deal with the Reality that Israel's Neighbors Do Not Want a Two-State Solution?

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu spoke earlier today in the Knesset about how the root of the conflict in the Middle East is the refusal of Israel's neighbors to acknowledge Israel's right to exist. He is utterly clear and objectively right, but why do so many in the West pretend that the Palestinians want anything other than an Arab, Muslim state dominated by non-Jews? After the founding of the State of Israel nearly a million Jews were expelled from Arab countries, so why would anyone think that a Muslim Palestine would do any different? Unless one thinks that the more likely scenario is genocide - a second Holocaust.

Israel will never let itself be destroyed. And her enemies show no sign of wanting to make a permanent peace. Why does Obama constantly speak as if it were Israel which was the impediment to the peace process? Since when is self-defense as sin just because you are Jewish? Why do we tolerate genocidal, anti-Semitic, hatred and still manage to blame Israel? Have we forgotten how many Europeans blamed the Jews for Hitler's hatred of them? Are we determined to make the same mistake all over again?

From PM Netanyahu's speech:

The Middle East is changing rapidly and drastically. Hundreds of millions of people around us yearn for political and financial freedom and are fighting to obtain these freedoms. These are inevitable changes. It is very possible that in the long term, these changes will be for the best, and I hope they will, for the good of these people and because at the end of the day, if this struggle is successful, it will promote the chance for peace and the peace’s resilience. But in the short term, in the interim, our situation could possibly worsen, be more problematic and more challenging. We can see what is happening in Egypt, in Syria and in Lebanon. Lebanon is now controlled by Hezbollah, under the sponsorship of Iran, when only five years ago there was such great hope for freedom and progress. We saw what happened along the borders of Israel yesterday. Thousands thronged against our fences in an attempt to invade our territory and challenge our sovereignty. I must say that from the point of view of yesterday’s rioters, 63 years of Israeli independence have changed nothing.

What were they yelling in Gaza yesterday? They were shouting that they want to return to Jaffa.
What were they crying in Syria yesterday? They were chanting that they want to return to the Galilee.
What did the leader of Hamas say yesterday? “We want to see the end of the Zionist agenda,” the very same words used by his patrons in Iran, but, my friends, this was not only said there.

I said that we hear what is being said around us, but the most interesting thing is what happened in Bil’in. And this does not only happen there, but it was interesting, because two days ago at the demonstration in Bil’in, the cat was let out of the bag – more precisely, the key was let out of the bag. At the procession in Bil’in, a young girl was walking along holding a large symbolic key. Every Palestinian knows what that key symbolizes. This is not a key to their homes in Bil’in, Ramallah or Nablus. It is the key to our homes in Jaffa, Acre, Haifa and Ramle. My friends, the root of this conflict never was a Palestinian state, or lack thereof. The root of the conflict is, and always has been, their refusal to recognize the Jewish state. It is not a conflict over 1967, but over 1948, over the very existence of the State of Israel. You must have noticed that yesterday’s events did not occur on June 5, the anniversary of the Six Day War. They occurred on May 15, the day the State of Israel was established. The Palestinians regard this day, the foundation of the State of Israel, their nakba, their catastrophe. But their catastrophe was that they did not have a leadership that was willing to reach a true historic compromise between the Palestinian people and the Jewish people.

Regrettably, since then until this day, they have not had a leadership that is prepared to recognize the State of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people. That has not happened yet.

My friends, we must not bury our heads in the sand. We must face reality, as it is, with our eyes wide open. We must stop self-flagellating and blaming ourselves. We must call a spade a spade: the true reason the Palestinians refuse to recognize the State of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people. I must say that I think that most people are beginning to understand this in face of the reality that is unfolding before us in our region and along our borders in particular. And I believe that most people are united regarding the standpoints that I will point out.

First, the people is united in our need to defend the country and its borders. Second, it is united in our need to maintain peace with Egypt and Jordan. Third, it is united faced with the threat of a nuclear Iran.

I also believe that most people are also united in regard to my viewpoints on the issue that seems to be in dispute, the political process with the Palestinians. The citizens of Israel are much more united than is commonly believed, and much more united than the political parties that are supposed to represent them here in this house. There are consensuses regarding the basic issues:

First, about my demand that the Palestinians recognize the State of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.

Second, about my view, which is shared by many here, that the agreement between us must end the conflict and end the demands from the State of Israel.

Third, that the problem of the Palestinian refugees will be resolved outside of Israel and not within its borders.

Fourth, that a Palestinian state only be established under a peace treaty that will not compromise the safety of Israel. I believe there is agreement on this, and I stress that this state must be demilitarized, with practical security arrangements, including long term IDF presence along the Jordan River.

Fifth, we agree that we must maintain the settlement blocs. Many of us agree that the settlement blocs must remain inside the borders of the State of Israel.

Sixth, that Jerusalem remain the united and sovereign capital of the State of Israel.

These are the principles that guide my path, our path.

I know that a huge majority of people understands that we can only make peace with those who want to make peace with us. Those who wish to obliterate us are no partners for peace. A Palestinian government with half its members declaring daily that they plan to annihilate the Jewish state is not a partner for peace. Those who say, and I am familiar with the saying, that you only make peace with your enemies, must complement the statement with a small but important remark. You only make peace with an enemy, but with an enemy who has decided to make peace.

We can only pray that some day, the enemy will finally want to make peace. At this point, it does not appear that European and US policies are contributing to that goal. For this, the West must bear a heavy responsibility. If another Holocaust occurs, that may well be the death knell of Europe and maybe of the West.

The Coming War Against Israel

(Sorry for the slow blogging lately; its the day job again. Hopefully, grading will be over in another week.)

Neil Snyder paints a frightening but completely plausible picture of the next Arab assault on Israel in "The Next Gaza War Will Be a Coordinated Attack."

"There should be no doubt that the next Gaza war won't resemble the 2008-2009 war, and it could start at any time.

- - snip - -

Since the end of the last Gaza War, we've witnessed a flurry of activity to rearm Hamas and Hezb'allah. For example, in November 2009, Israel seized a ship carrying Iranian arms bound for Hezb'allah on Israel's northern border. According to Israel's deputy naval commander, Rani Ben Yehuda, the cargo included "dozens of containers with hundreds of tons of arms." Later reports revealed that the shipment contained more than 500 tons of weapons. (One ton equals approximately 2,205 pounds.) Just last week, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad admitted that he has allowed Iranian weapons to flow through Syria to Hezb'allah, and Hezb'allah chief Hassan Nasrallah has made it clear repeatedly that Hezb'allah will cooperate with Hamas if another Gaza war breaks out. Those weapons are needed for an attack on Israel.

In May 2010, the Israeli navy intercepted the "humanitarian aid" ship MV Mavi Marmara, which was bound for Gaza on Israel's eastern border. Nine terrorists posing as passengers died when they attacked Israeli commandos boarding the vessel. Ten commandos were wounded during the clash. Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas called the incident "a massacre"; a host of European Union officials demanded a full inquiry; Turkey erupted in protest; Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vowed to do his part to protect Palestinians in Gaza; and the global media launched a vigorous campaign to smear Israel. Scant attention was given to the fact that the ship's cargo contained weapons of war.

- - snip - -

In February 2011, the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to emerge from the shadows and engage openly in political activity for the first time in 57 years. Following Mubarak's resignation, Muhammad Ghannem, a leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, told the Iranian news network Al-Alam that the Egyptian people need to prepare for war with Israel. Supplying weapons to Hamas is a step in that direction.

- - snip - -

In March 2011, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reached an agreement with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to build an Iranian naval base in Latakia, Syria's largest port, from which Iran can operate freely in the Mediterranean Sea. Within days of the announcement, Israel intercepted a Gaza-bound ship leaving Latakia carrying Iranian weapons to Gaza. . . . Will they take part in the next Gaza war? With Assad's power diminishing and Islamist groups in Syria increasing their strength, the answer is probably "yes" -- if not directly as combatants, then as guerrilla fighters.

- - snip - -

Since the Arab Spring began in Tunisia in January 2011, Iran has stepped up its efforts to spread its version of radical Islam throughout North Africa and the Middle East. Jordan's King Abdullah, noticing a tidal shift occurring in the region and feeling the heat at home, decided it was time to make nice with Iran. Both the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda have a presence in Jordan and close ties with Iran, but until recently, they have been kept in check. That's changing, too, and an emboldened Islamist element in Jordan could topple Abdullah's regime and/or force him to rethink Jordan's peace treaty with Israel. Will Jordan join the next Gaza war? The answer isn't an unequivocal "no."

- - snip - -

We're witnessing the fruition of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's plan to destroy Israel. His first step was to announce his intention to the world. Some mocked him, but he meant business. Next, he worked to undermine political regimes in every country in the region and to strengthen Islamist elements beholden to him. All the while, he has worked feverishly to develop Iran's nuclear capability. Today, Israel is surrounded: Hamas in Gaza on the west, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt on the south and southwest, Hezb'allah in Lebanon on the north, a host of emerging Islamist terrorist organizations in Syria on the northeast, and on the east, a weakened monarch in Jordan attempting to restrain radical Islamists. With Ahmadinejad's unswerving support, the only step remaining is a coordinated attack on Israel."

Read it all here.

In September, the PA is going to try to have its state recognized by the UN. That could create a pretext for war once Israel and the US reject it and the US vetos a resolution on it in the Security Council. Or, the strategy could be to mount a war now and have the UN resolution be part of the "peace agreement."

Or, maybe the PA knows that Obama will stand by and let the resolution clear the Security Council, in which case it could be enforced. All the US has to do is stand aside as the enemies of Israel destroy her. Does the PA know something the rest of us do not know?

British Muslims for Israel

Well, this is heartening. Melanie Philips calls attention to a new group of Muslims in Britain who call themselves "British Muslims for Israel."

A warm welcome to a new and very brave kid on the block – British Muslims for Israel. As I have often said, where someone stands on Israel is for me the litmus test of whether they are a decent and rational human being or pose a threat not merely to Jewish interests but to civilised values. Unfortunately, even among those many Muslims who are opposed to the jihad and support western democracy, animosity towards Israel often runs horrifyingly deep. Any Muslim who speaks up in defence of Israel runs significant personal risks. So those behind British Muslims for Israel, which has emerged from the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy, merit a huge amount of praise and support. They also offer a ray of hope for the future. They show that there are Muslims who pass that key civilisational litmus test with flying colours.

You can see an interview with the leader of this new group below. Hasan Afzal is a committee member at the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy. (It starts out in Hebrew but it switches to English for the interview.)



Is this not the voice of reason and sanity? I wish him well. Muslims who do not wish to be associated with the barbaric violence of those who push themselves forward as spokesmen for all Muslims now have a flag to rally around.

Melanie Philips is absolutely right that tolerance of the existence of Israel is the absolute minimum standard for Muslims who want to be perceived as peaceful and civilized. Anti-Semitism is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to human rights and freedom.

Andrew C. McCarthy sharpens the issue of how to make critical distinctions in his new little booklet entitled: "How Obama Embraces Islam's Sharia Agenda" (Encounter Books Broadsides No. 18, 2011). In this pamphlet, he argues that the US government and the Western ruling elite is making a crucial mistake in where they are drawing the line between Muslims we can live with as neighbors and those Muslims who constitute a threat to our civilization.

McCarthy notes that the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, insists that Islam is a religion of peace and that the US and the West is not at war with the entire Muslim world. We can all agree on the latter at least. But we all know that there is a certain minority of fanatical, theocratic Muslims who seek world domination, the fall of the West and the establishment of a worldwide caliphate. They attacked us on 9/11.

Obama contends that we are only at war with the actual terrorists - a tiny group of fanatics. In fact, the Obama administration actually thinks that terrorists are nothing more than individual crazies who do not represent anything other than themselves. McCarthy argues that treating the terrorists as isolated, fanatical madmen prevents us from studying Islam, understanding Islam and getting to a comprehension of who they really are, where they come from and what their motivations and beliefs are.

McCarthy wants to draw a line between those Muslims - and there are many such Muslims in the West - who accept the Western legal/political heritage and desire to live under it in peace, on the one hand, and those Muslims who may live in the West or in Muslim countries who reject the West as an idea and want to conquer it.

Mulisms of the first sort often fled political oppression just so they could have the privilege of raising their families in a liberal democracy. Muslims of the second sort, however, especially second generation ones who get radicalized, often see their role as to create enclaves in which Sharia law can be established and then gradually extended to the society as a whole. In Europe, with the lack of assimilation and the low native European birthright plus the high Muslim birth rate and immigration rate, this strategy is extremely realistic and has a high chance of success. Already the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his capacity of spokesman for the Religious Left, has opened the door to Sharia as a parallel legal system in Britain.

McCarthy's point is that the danger to the West is not merely from terrorists, who want to conquer the West and impose Sharia law, but from all those Muslims who want to accomplish the same goals by means other than outright violence. This failure to recognize that many Muslim groups, which do not engage in terrorism themselves, are in sympathy with the goals and aims of the terrorists. The crucial issue is not whether they are committed to pursuing their goals peacefully or violently, but which goals they have. To want to overturn Western principles of law, politics and human rights in order to transform the West into conquered Islamic territory is to make oneself an enemy of the West.

Where is Arab Genocide Week on Canadian Campuses?

The formidable Rex Murphy has a nice column in the National Post on the shameful travesty known as "Israeli Apartheid Week" entitled: "Where's the Gadaffi Apartheid Week?" The outrage is suspiciously selective, isn't it?

IAW -as, alas, most know -is the annual festival of scorn and propaganda against the world's only Jewish state, an annual attempt to depict Israel as being in the same moral sewer as South Africa in the days of apartheid.

IAW tries to do much with big words like apartheid and genocide and racism, where they really do not apply at all. Israel is not perpetrating a genocide against the Palestinians. Nor is Israel a racist state. . . .

Did I miss Saudi Arabian Gender Apartheid Week? Or let's take another example: This very week in Libya, there is a zealous tyrant turning fire on his own people. Is there, or has there ever been, a Gadaffi Apartheid Week or its equivalent anywhere?

Even as injustices multiply against Christians in various Middle East countries, as Egypt roils with sectarian outrage, why is there not the same righteous fury that grips all the groups who annually appoint themselves scourges of the "Zionist entity" against the perpetrators of those depravities? Their moralism is so singular.

Read the rest here. But what I want to know is where is "Arab Genocide Week?"

Rick Moran has a post describing an all-too-common tragedy in the Middle East here. Terrorists broke into a Jewish home in a settlement in the West Bank and murdered 3 children including an infant and their parents. They are baby-killers. And the reaction of the Arab population? From American Thinker:

Meanwhile, YNet reports the reaction of Palestinian residents of Rafah:

Gaza residents from the southern city of Rafah hit the streets Saturday to celebrate the terror attack in the West Bank settlement of Itamar where five family members were murdered in their sleep, including three children.

Residents handed out candy and sweets, one resident saying the joy "is a natural response to the harm settlers inflict on the Palestinian residents in the West Bank."

These are the barbarians the Israelis are up against. Yet Western Leftists and their Muslim allies call Israel the apartheid state. The truth is that the Arabs are doing their best to drive Jews out of their countries and out of the Middle East altogether. If any group is committed to anything in any way similar to what South Africa practiced, it is the Arabs. Only they are worse; they won't be satisfied with apartheid, they want genocide.

Islam, the Caliphate and the West

Andrew McCarthy is doing great work explaining to poorly educated Westerners the history, teachings, strengths and weaknesses of Islam from a Western, Christian perspective. His National Review article "The OIC and the Caliphate" is well-worth reading.

"The Organization of the Islamic Conference is the closest thing in the modern world to a caliphate. It is composed of 57 members (56 sovereign states and the Palestinian Authority), joining voices and political heft to pursue the unitary interests of the ummah, the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims. Not surprisingly, the OIC works cooperatively with the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s most extensive and important Islamist organization, and one that sees itself as the vanguard of a vast, grass-roots movement — what the Brotherhood itself calls a “civilizational” movement.

Muslims are taught to think of themselves as a community, a single Muslim Nation. “I say let this land burn. I say let this land go up in smoke,” Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini famously said of his own country in 1980, even as he consolidated his power there, even as he made Iran the point of his revolutionary spear. “We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah.” Muslims were not interested in maintaining the Westphalian system of nation states. According to Khomeini, who was then regarded by East and West as Islam’s most consequential voice, any country, including his own, could be sacrificed in service of the doctrinal imperative that “Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”

Because of that doctrinal imperative, the caliphate retains its powerful allure for believers. Nevertheless, though Islamists are on the march, it has somehow become fashionable to denigrate the notion that the global Islamic caliphate endures as a mainstream Islamic goal.

It was only a week ago that close to 2 million Muslims jammed Tahrir Square to celebrate the triumphant return to Egypt of Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, a Khomeini-esque firebrand who pulls no punches about Islam’s goal to “conquer America” and “conquer Europe.” Yet, to take these threats seriously is now to be dismissed as a fringe lunatic, a Luddite too benighted to grasp that American principles reflect universally held truths — truths to which the ummah, deep down, is (so we are told) every bit as committed as we are.

The caliphate is an institution of imperial Islamic rule under sharia, Muslim law. Not content with empire, Islam anticipates global hegemony. Indeed, mainstream Islamic ideology declares that such hegemony is inevitable, holding to that belief every bit as sincerely as the End of History crowd holds to its conviction that its values are everyone’s values (and the Muslims are only slightly less willing to brook dissent). For Muslims, the failure of Allah’s creation to submit to the system He has prescribed is a blasphemy that cannot stand.

The caliphate is an ideal now, much like the competing ideal of a freedom said to be the yearning of every human heart. Unlike the latter ideal, the caliphate had, for centuries, a concrete existence. It was formally dissolved in 1924, a signal step in Kemal Atatürk’s purge of Islam from public life in Turkey. Atatürk, too, thought he had an early line on the End of History. One wonders what he’d make of Erdogan’s rising Islamist Turkey.

What really dissolved the Ottoman caliphate was not anything so contemporary as a “freedom agenda,” or a “battle for hearts and minds.” It was one of those quaint military wars, waged under the evidently outdated notion that Islamic enemies were not friends waiting to happen — that they had to be defeated, since they were not apt to be persuaded."

Read the rest here.

Islam has been conquering Christian lands ever since the 8th century (eg. North Africa, Eqypt, the Middle East, Asia Minor). Charles Martel halted Islamic advancement into Europe at the Battle of Tours in 732 AD and during the Reformation the Turks were barely repulsed from Europe. Between the Siege of Vienna in 1529 and the Battle of Vienna in 1689 the tide turned with the result that Europe was preserved from Muslim rule. Taking the Iberian Peninsula back from Muslim conquest took seven centuries and was not complete until the end of the 15th century.

The question is whether Islam as a whole, or which parts of it, still holds to the ideal of the Caliphate as an alternative to the Western ideal of liberal democracy, human rights and individual freedom. There is no doubt that many Muslims, especially those educated or living in the West, have been influenced by Western ideals and there is also no doubt that the ideals of jihad, conquest, the worldwide dominion of Allah and Islamic supremacy also live on in widespread tracts of Islam. It is not always easy for Westerners to discern which geographical, ethnic and theological distinctives characterize which Islamic groups and individuals and to what extent they fall into which camp.

One implication of this is that the study of Islamic history, culture, politics, philosophy and religion is more important today than ever. Another implication is that it is naive for Westerners to project their own ideals onto Muslims as if all right-thinking people necessarily believe as we do. This is dangerous and makes us easy targets for subversion.

But when historical ignorance is compounded by naivety and a deep, pathological hatred of all things white, male, Western and Christian, we have a recipe for disastrous civilizational defeat. Make no mistake: if Islam triumphs over the West the list of good, decent, humane, civilized and life-affirming things that will disappear is a long one.

I do not think we can be conquered from without by force, not by Islam nor by any other earthly power. But I do think we can crumble from inward rot and the multicultural, liberal fascist, atheist, materialist, secularist, feminist, socialist and cultural Marxist voices embedded deeply within our cultural institutions are symptoms of a spiritual rot at the core of our civilization.

Those who care about the survival of freedom and justice and the glories of Western culture should be more concerned about the threat from within than the threat from without.

The Voice of Freedom in Europe: Will it Be Silenced Forever?

Geert Wilders is on trial for utilizing his right to free speech by criticizing Islam for its violence, its threats to those who oppose it and its Islamic supremacist ideology. After a first trial fell apart, it has now resumed. The left-leaning elites who have ruled the Netherlands for decades are determined to silence him, but the people vote for his party in increasing numbers and his party now props up the ruling coalition. Here is the voice of freedom.

The Decline of the Church of England

Jonathan Wynne-Jones suggests that Christianity in the UK may have reached a tipping point today as the Church of England announces the merging of three dioceses into one in predominantly Muslim areas.

The language is not of cuts, but instead of a “radical and realistic” approach, and Church House argues the changes will make “for more effective ministry and mission”. But for all the attempts to try and talk up the new proposals, it is difficult to see past the fact this represents the first time the Church has reduced the number of its dioceses.

It is also difficult not to see the merger – or axing depending on which way you’re looking at it – in the context of the rise of Islam in Britain. In Bradford, one of the dioceses that is being subsumed, Muslims make up as much as three-quarters of the population in some parishes.

A report published by the Church earlier this year discussed the issues facing clergy trying to minister in areas with high numbers of ethnic minorities. It revealed the percentage of Christians is as low as 10 per cent in some parishes.

When Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, warned of “no-go areas” in Britain for non-Muslims, he was widely ridiculed and criticised, but the Church’s report suggests that his critics have their heads in the sand. Bleak and rather extreme it may have been, but statisticians have already predicted that by 2035 there will be more active Muslims in Britain than church-going Christians.

So Islam is rising fast and the Christian majority may be gone by 2035. Old Christian England is going down quickly and the white, nominally-Christian, leftist elites will be the ones to lose power. I hope they can be honest enough to face up to the horror that awaits them.

Let's see, if they get women bishops by 2012 or 13 and homosexual bishops shortly thereafter, they should enjoy their cultural Marxism for about 20-30 years at most before utter collapse and ruin under Sharia Law. It sure looks like God is not mocked.

Disinviting Islam

At the group blog "What's Wrong with the World" a series is being published this week entitled: "Disinviting Islam." Part I: The Need was published on Monday and Part II: Proposals was published yesterday. Part III on how this approach of "Disinviting Islam accords with Christian charity will appear on Friday. I recommend the reading of the whole series.

The premise is that we need to recognize that the threat of Islam weakening our societal foundations from within and gradually taking over our societies by imposing Sharia one step at a time is much more serious than the threat from radical Islamic terrorism. The two problems are related, of course, but terrorism is only a means to the end of the take-over of the West, not an end in itself. So to focus exclusively on terrorism as if it were an irrational phenomenon in itself that bears no relation to the millennium-long, on-again off-again war of Islamic aggression against the West is naive and dangerous.

We cannot will into existence the world we wish existed; we must deal with the world as it it. The Utopianism and anti-realism of the Left has weakened both the intellect and the will of our culture over the past 150 years in such a way as to leave us exposed to a virile religious ideology that seeks to impose theocracy on the entire globe. Our military and economic strength appears overwhelming, but if we lack the will to use our strength we will fall inevitably to an enemy whose will is stronger even though his strength is less. After all, unused strength is as useless as weakness when the battle starts. And the battle for Western culture is already underway.

Will Muslim Women Be Exempted from Full-Body Patdowns at Airports in the US?

From the "You can't make this stuff up department" comes this non-answer by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to a perfectly reasonable question.

When asked today if she will insist that Muslim women wearing hijabs must go through full body pat downs before boarding planes, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano did not say yes or no, but told CNSNews.com there will be “adjustments” and “more to come” on the issue.

“On the pat downs, CAIR [the Council on American-Islamic Relations] has recommended that Muslim women wearing hijabs refuse to go through the full body pat downs before boarding planes,” CNSNews.com asked Napolitano at a Monday press conference. “Will you insist that they do go through full body pat downs before boarding planes?”

“Look, we have, like I said before, we are doing what we need to do to protect the traveling public and adjustments will be made where they need to be made,” Napolitano responded. “With respect to that particular issue, I think there will be more to come.

Why on earth was the answer to the question not a straightforward "Of course Muslim women will not be treated any differently than non-Muslim women. We recognize that this is not pleasant for anybody but we are committed to the safety of the traveling public as our highest priority." Now, I would not have liked that answer, but I certainly could see the logic given the assumptions of the Obama administration about terrorism and political correctness.

Instead, she hints that maybe the answer is "No." Is this because a possible change in the "peek and grope" approach is being planned for everyone? Or it is because an exemption is being discussed by the administration for Muslim women? We don't know at this point. But even if a change for all was being contemplated, that would not prevent the "we will treat Muslim and non-Muslim women exactly alike" answer from being applicable.

Can you believe that the Obama administration would leave itself open to being perceived by the public as even considering exempting Muslims only from a policy caused by Muslim terrorism? Me neither.

A Muslim Speaks Out on the Need for Profiling

Arsa Q. Nomani is a Muslim who is calling for rational profiling at airports. In an article in The Daily Beast entitled, "Airport Security: Let's Profile Muslims," she writes:

In the debate, I said, “Profile me. Profile my family,” because, in my eyes, we in the Muslim community have failed to police ourselves. . .

This is the kind of honesty we need if the Muslim component of Western societies is to become truly a part of Western society. She argues for racial and religious profiling using facts and common sense:

As an American Muslim, I’ve come to recognize, sadly, that there is one common denominator defining those who’ve got their eyes trained on U.S. targets: MANY of them are Muslim—like the Somali-born teenager arrested Friday night for a reported plot to detonate a car bomb at a packed Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in downtown Portland, Oregon. . . .

Profiling doesn’t have to be about discrimination, persecution, or harassment. As my debating partner, conservative columnist Deroy Murdock put it: “We are not arguing that the TSA should send anyone named Mohammad to be waterboarded somewhere between the first-class lounge and the Pizza Hut.”

But to me, profiling isn’t about identity politics but about threat assessment.

According to a terrorism database at the University of Maryland, which documents 60 attacks against airlines and airports between 1970 and 2007, the last year available, suspects in attacks during the 1970s were tied to the Jewish Defense League, the Black Panthers, the Black September, the National Front for the Liberation of Cuba, Jewish Armed Resistance and the Croatian Freedom Fighters, along with a few other groups.

In each of these groups’ names was a religious or ethnic dimension. For that time, those were the identities that we needed to assess. Today, the threat has changed, and it is primarily coming from Muslims who embrace al Qaeda’s radical brand of Islam.

This article reinforces my earlier post on the morality of profiling and the immorality of political correctness. I respect this person's decision to place the safety of her fellow citizens above the her own interests narrowly construed. But above all I admire her desire to protect the innocent from the depredations of the wicked. If all Muslims were like her, no one would need to profile any of them.

Appeasement Did Not Win the Cold War and It Won't Work with Islam

George Weigel learned a thing or two by researching and writing extensively about Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II. His treatment of John Paul II's role in ending the Cold War and liberating Eastern Europe from the Russian yoke in his great biography of the Pope is sterling and it highlights the huge gap between the curia's seemingly incurable, temperamental proclivity for appeasement of dictators and totalitarian systems.

But John Paul II was only able to do what he did to confront the Communist regimes because he went over the heads of the Vatican bureaucracy to speak directly to the people. He was able to broker his natural charisma, his media savvy and his personal courage to do what he never could have gained a consensus among his bureaucrats to do. (My favorite line from the CBC movie version of his life is one worried Vatican official saying to another: "He is the pope and he KNOWS it!")

Pope Benedict XVI is a good man with a firm commitment to orthodoxy, but when it comes to politics, the media and communicating his message without letting it be corrupted or co-opted between the time when it leaves his mouth and the time when it reaches the hearers of his audience - well, the most charitable thing to say is that he is no John Paul II.

John Paul II is one of the greatest historical figures of the 20th century and one of the reasons for this assessment is his role in liberating Eastern Europe from totalitarian rule. His contribution to the consigning of Communism to the dustbin of history was made because he rejected the quarter century long Vatican posture of appeasement of Communism and joined Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in being willing to confront totalitarianism with courage and determination.

Today, the Vatican tendency to appease totalitarianism has not changed and was on display in the recent synod on the Middle East held in Rome. The synod hardly criticized Muslims for anything but let Israel have it with both barrels. There were calls for the Palestinian "right of return" and for the handing over of all "occupied lands." The whole tone was that Israel is the problem and peace cannot be achieved without more unilateral concessions from Israel - concessions that place the viability of the country in serious jeopardy. Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee, who addressed the synod, reports that at the news conference at which the final report was released, the following revealing statements were made by Monsignor Cyril Salim Bustros. Despite the fact that these statements were not in the final message from the synod, they do reflect the thinking of many at the synod.

But now in October 2010, Monsignor Cyril Salim Bustros, Greek Melkite archbishop of Our Lady of the Annunciation of Boston, Massachusetts has stated that "[t]he Holy Scriptures cannot be used to justify the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of the Palestinians, to justify the occupation by Israel of Palestinian lands." Furthermore, Bustros said that "[w]e Christians cannot speak of the 'promised land' as an exclusive right for a privileged Jewish people. This promise was nullified by Christ[.]" And finally, Bustros affirms that "[t]he Palestinian refugees will eventually come back and this problem will have to be solved."

In essence, these words contradict "the Second Vatican Council teaching and Pope Benedict himself -- who has welcomed the return of Jews to their ancient homeland."

Not all Catholics on the Left, it would seem, have yet accepted Vatican II! Forget the right, when will the Left catch up with the repudiation of supersessionism? Perhaps it is the case that the long-standing Vatican tendency to appeasement is leading the Roman Catholic Church into dangerous anti-Semitic waters.

Ironically, just as the synod was ending, the ineffectiveness of appeasement was made clear by a vicious attack on a Catholic Church in Baghdad. See the Washington Post story here. George Weigel comments at First Things:

The murder of more than 50 Catholics by jihadists during Sunday Mass in Baghdad on Oct. 31 is the latest in a series of outrages committed against Christians by Islamist fanatics throughout the world: Egypt, Gaza, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Sudan and on the list goes. The timing of the attack on Baghdad’s Syriac Catholic cathedral was striking, however, for it came shortly after the conclusion in Rome of a special Synod on the Middle East. During the Synod, very little was said about Islamist persecution of Christians; indeed, every effort was bent to show the Catholic Church sympathetic to Muslim grievances, especially with regard to the politics of the Middle East.

This strategy of appeasement has always struck me as unwise. The al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists’ answer to the Synod—the Baghdad murders—has now proven the strategy deadly. Appeasement must stop. . . .

The Vatican bureaucracy and local Catholic leaders in the Middle East must also reexamine the assumption—widely bruited at the recent Synod—that resolving the Israel-Palestine issue through a two-state solution will solve every other issue between militant Islam and Christianity. It won’t. Moreover, a viable two-state solution, which every reasonable person supports, is not on the short-term horizon (although important steps are being taken to build the infrastructure of civil society on the West Bank). Meanwhile, Islamist depredations against Christians in the Holy Land are a present reality. Christian leaders whose people are being murdered by jihadists and other Islamist fanatics ought to stop blaming their precarious situation on the State of Israel and put the blame where it belongs: with Muslim intolerance.

Weigel is absolutely right. The Synod on the Middle East was just another sad chapter in the history of Vatican appeasement of totalitarianism. Islam must be confronted as Communism was confronted. It cannot be won over by concessions or bowing and scraping, which it interprets as signs of weakness. Where is John Paul II when we need him?

German Reporter Claims Jesus Taught Violent Jihad in Wilders Interview

In the wake of Angela Merkel's recent comments about the failure of multiculturalism, an actual debate has broken out in Germany about the issue of Islam. So Der Spiegel decided to interview Geert Wilders, who is currently on trial for saying what everyone knows to be true, but is afraid to say out loud, in the Netherlands.

All this is background. What I want to point out is the following passage. Note clearly the reporter's quotation from the Gospel of Luke:

SPIEGEL: You compare the Koran with Hitler's "Mein Kampf." Have you read "Mein Kampf"?

Wilders: Yes, but not in its entirety. The Koran has, in any case, more anti-Jewish passages. In principle, these are concoctions with a totalitarian approach, which allows no room for other opinions. Fascism, communism and Islam adhere to the same principle.

SPIEGEL: Your own principle is apparently this: The more drastic the comparison, the more headlines it generates.

Wilders: I don't need headlines. For me, it's the truth that matters.

SPIEGEL: The truth is that you are dividing Dutch society: Here in The Hague, nearly half of the residents come from immigrant families, and many of them are Muslims. And you are calling for the Koran to be banned?

Wilders: "Mein Kampf" is banned in our country. But the Koran is worse in terms of inciting hatred and violence. If my left-wing friends were consistent, the Koran would have to be banned.

SPIEGEL: Are you familiar with this quote from the Prophet? "But these enemies of mine, who did not want me to be their king, bring them here and slay them before me"?

Wilders: I have read many such passages.

SPIEGEL: The Prophet cited in this case was Jesus, from Luke, Chapter 19, Verse 27. Do you admit that there are also calls for violence in the Bible?

Wilders: There are brutal passages in the Old Testament; the New Testament takes a more moderate approach. But a key difference between Christianity and Islam is that Muslims believe that the Koran contains verbatim the word of God; it is written in the imperative. This precludes a comparison with Christianity.

It is too bad that Wilders was suckered in because of his lack of biblical knowledge. He should have pointed out that this was spoken by a character in a parable told by Jesus, a parable that had a point that entirely unrelated to a call to violent jihad. This was a mangling of Scripture by quoting an isolated statement out of context.

He should have pointed out the dishonesty of the reporter's claim that this was a call to violence by Jesus. Is German higher criticism now presenting Jesus as a ruthless, violent nationalist or something? I thought the German Christian attempt to do this in the 1930s had been declared a failure.

A first year Bible college student who used the NT in the way this supposedly educated reporter did would be in big trouble. But this kind of systematic deception is not something the editors of Der Spiegel are ashamed of, apparently, because they have left this interview up on their website.

The palpable hostility and ritualized contempt dripping from the words of this smug and self-righteous politically correct reporter is unbelievable. He even begrudges Wilders state protection against Islamic assassins thus implying that he would like to see Wilders killed instead of having his free speech protected. What a coward this reporter reveals himself to be. I suppose he hopes to be killed last.

Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Shocking Evil that So Often Goes Unchallenged

This article by Jonathan Kay in The National Post entitled "Jonathan Kay on Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Hate Reaching Back 1,400 Years" discusses the noxious facts about Muslim hatred of Jews - not Israel but Jews - that contemporary liberals/progressives refuse to face up to and take into account when discussing the Middle East situation. Kay writes:

When Israeli planes smashed Egyptian airfields in the opening hours of the Six-Day War, announcers on Radio Cairo took to the airwaves, calling on Arabs in neighbouring countries to attack any Jews they could find. In the Libyan capital of Tripoli, then home to about 5,000 Jews, rioters responded with an orgy of murder, arson and looting that lasted three days. Even after the survivors had fled to Israel and the West, leaving Libya effectively judenrein, the anti-Semitic bloodlust remained unquenched. It was “the unavoidable duty of the city councils,” opined one Libyan newspaper, “to remove [Jewish] cemeteries immediately, and throw the bodies of the dead, which even in their eternal rest soil our country, into the depths of the sea … Only then can the hatred of the Libyan people toward the Jews be satiated.”

Shocking words. Yet they do not come as a shock when one comes upon them in Martin Gilbert’s newly published history of Jews in Muslim lands, recently excerpted on these pages. By that point in the chronology, I had become so numbed by the author’s relentless catalogue of pogroms, executions, expulsions, forced conversions and the generalized terrorizing of Jews that the atrocities had lost their power to appall. It is not that Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill and author of books too numerous to count on Jewish and Israeli themes, is an unimaginative storyteller; this simply is the grim, unchanging nature of the epic hatred he has taken as his subject.

The Koran contains several very specific curses against Jews. And as modern terrorists often like to remind their YouTube audiences, Muhammad himself was a prolific Jew-killer. This passage from In Ishmael’s House, for instance, describes events that took place after the Prophet’s soldiers captured members of the Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe in the year 627: “[All] 700 Jewish men were taken to the market at Medina. Trenches were dug in the market square and the men, tied together in groups, were beheaded. Their headless bodies were then buried in the trenches while Mohammed watched … All Jewish males who had not reached puberty, and all the remaining women and girls, were sold into slavery.” This mass slaughter came to be described in Muslim religious literature as the product of divine revelation. To this day, it is cited as clear proof that Allah permits the most hideous forms of punishment to be meted out against nonbelievers. . . .

Gilbert avoids broad generalizations. As his narrative moves forward from century to century, he shows snapshots from different Muslim lands — emphasizing scattered instances, such as in Cordoba and, later, the Ottoman Empire, where truly humane and enlightened Muslim leaders took pains to protect Jewish subjects. In the courts of such leaders, Jews often rose to positions of wealth and power — typically as doctors, linguists and commercial liaisons. Yet these successes didn’t help Jews win acceptance but rather the opposite: Muslims saw Jews’ good fortune as an insult to the revealed order of the universe.

Gilbert acknowledges Christian anti-Semitism, but highlights a crucial difference between it and Muslim anti-Semitism.

It goes without saying that Muslim civilization has no monopoly on violent and systematic anti-Semitism: Spasms of murderous Jew-hatred were common all across Christendom during the 14 centuries of Islam’s existence. But in recent generations, Western societies at least have tried to come to terms with their history in a morally serious way. Gilbert’s book makes clear that this self-critical approach to history remains foreign to Muslim societies, especially where Jews are concerned. While Israelis have wrung their hands for three generations over the relatively minor (by historical standards) bloodshed incurred in their nation’s creation and the wars that have unfolded since, no equivalent soul-searching has accompanied the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Muslim lands in the middle of the 20th century or the persecution and pillaging of countless Jewish communities throughout the entire history of the Islamic faith.

Israel is being made into a pariah on the world stage, especially at the United Nations. Why does Islam get a free pass? Why don't the nations of the West demand that Islam reform itself if it wishes support for negotiations with Israel to settle the Palestinian dispute? Why are Muslims not held to account for their crude, barbaric and violent anti-Semitism? Do the liberals/progressives who ally themselves with Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations understand who they are enabling and standing with?

See Martin Gilbert, In Ishmael's House: A History of the Jews in Muslim Lands.

Islam, Religious Freedom and the West

Andrew McCarthy points out that the assault on free speech by Muslims is a threat to the freedom of the West in an article entitled "The Wilders West."

For a prosecutor, it was a simple matter of cause and effect. First, I showed that the “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, called for acts of violence: He admonished Muslims that Allah commanded them to slay non-believers and precisely quoted Islamic scriptures to back up that admonition. Then I showed that Muslim terrorists responded to these scripturally based exhortations by plotting and carrying out terrorist acts.

For this, the Clinton administration presented me the Attorney General’s Exceptional Service Award, the Justice Department’s highest honor. For doing exactly the same thing, the justice department of the Netherlands presented Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders with an indictment.

I got the pretty glass eagle for the mantelpiece, and the Blind Sheikh got sent to prison. Wilders, by contrast, got to stand in the dock while the global Islamist movement got to savor the possibility of something far more valuable than a trophy: a white flag draped over the shriveling remains of free speech. Wilders has been acquitted, but his trial was nonetheless damaging to what remains of the Western tradition of free discourse and inquiry.

But is there really a threat to freedom of speech and ultimately freedom not to be Muslim? McCarthy again:

When it comes to Islam as a category of speech, there is no doubt that our current government reflects the transnational progressive consensus: that the Western tradition of critical examination must give way to the Muslim tradition of submission. This is why when jihadists attack, the self-loathing elite’s response is to wonder what we did to offend them. It is also why when Muslims rioted over harmless cartoon depictions of their warrior-prophet as a warrior-prophet, the State Department’s harshest condemnation was reserved not for the marauders but for the offending newspaper. It is why Yale University Press would only publish a book about the cartoon controversy after the author agreed to purge from its pages the cartoons themselves. It is why the Washington Post just spiked a “Where’s Mohammed?” spoof in which the prophet nowhere appeared — and, by this craven act, validated cartoonist Wiley Miller’s point about Western timidity.

At least Mr. Miller is around to tell the tale. Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris had to go underground for merely suggesting an “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” — as Mark Steyn observes, even being a good lefty who never followed through and tried to disavow the whole business didn’t help her. The threat whose name must not be spoken was too much. On the FBI’s advice, she disappeared without a trace, much to the relief of her former employer, the Seattle Weekly.

Islam does not seek freedom of all religions. Its goal is world domination and the suppression of all rival religions and political systems. The reason for this is that Islam is not simply a religion as "religion" has come to be defined in the West. It is both what we call a religion and also what we call a political philosophy. So it is an alternative both to Christianity, Judaism, paganism, Hinduism, Buddhism etc., on the one hand, and also to liberal democracy, on the other.

There can be no doubt that Islam and Western religion/Western political institutions are incompatible unless the Muslims immigrating to the West accept that Islam here can only be a religion and not a political system. The West is divided into two groups: a left-wing elite that is willing to let Islam be a political system as well as a religion and a conservative majority that is only willing to accept Islam as a religion, not as a political system. The flashpoint is the attitude toward Sharia Law. Sharia Law is incompatible with Western culture and that is the point at which the battle must be joined.