Columbia University Welcomes the Man Who Would Finish Hitler's Work

A student asked me if there is anybody I would want to see banned from speaking at Tyndale or if I think freedom of speech is absolute. My answer was that yes, there are speakers who should be banned from Tyndale.

If students want someone to protest, there are plenty of opportunities.

For example, just the other day I came across this article by Mona Charon, which talks about how Columbia University has "Oops, done it again." It is once again hosting Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he is in town to speak at the United Nations General Assembly.

And some students, at least a few in the student newspaper anyway, are protesting. Good on them. Charon writes in the National Journal:

The Columbia Spectator is the student newspaper at Columbia University, the school I was once proud to call my alma mater. A report in that newspaper raises the following question: Are leading American universities producing moral illiterates?

According to the Spectator, a group of students who are members of a group called CIRCA, the Columbia International Relations Council and Association, has been invited to attend a private dinner with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he travels to New York for the United Nations General Assembly meeting next week. A student spokesman for the group, asked if the invitation provoked controversy within CIRCA, seemed surprised by the question. “Everyone was really enthusiastic,” said Tim Chan. “They’re thrilled to have this opportunity.”

Ahmadinejad represents everything that campus liberals profess to hate. In order of importance, those things would be: (1) persecuting homosexuals; (2) cruel and abusive treatment of women; (3) brutal treatment of minorities; (4) shooting opponents of the regime in the streets; (5) restricting free speech; (6) building nuclear weapons; and (7) sponsoring terror worldwide. Tehran provides material and moral support for Bashar Assad’s murderous regime in Syria, which has mowed down protesters by the thousands in the past few months. The Iranian regime is also guilty of fetid anti-Semitism, and has the blood of many American soldiers who served in Iraq on its hands — though it isn’t clear that the latter two offenses rate very highly with Columbia students.

Even as members of CIRCA were eagerly anticipating dining with one of the world’s true fiends, the Iranian government was refusing to release American hikers Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal, who were recently convicted of espionage after a secret trial and sentenced to eight years in prison. Both Bauer and Fattal are graduates of Berkeley, and believers — if you can extrapolate from their backgrounds in “sustainable development” and freelance photography for leftist outlets like Democracy Now! — in liberal causes. Even if members of CIRCA feel no particular solidarity with the hikers as fellow Americans, they might at least feel something for fellow members of the liberal clerisy. But apparently not.

College students are old enough to be responsible for their own moral decision-making, but the faculty and administration of Columbia University certainly provided an appalling example in 2007 when they invited Ahmadinejad to speak.

It is, shall we say, problematic, that Columbia thinks this Jew-hating, holocaust-denying, anti-Western instrument of a totalitarian theocracy is a lovely dinner guest. Why would they think so? Charon nails it in the final paragraphs of her article:

Something is inoculating Ahmadinejad from the total contempt members of the university community would ordinarily feel toward someone with his views and his behavior. . . .

My suspicion is that the harshly adversarial pose of the university toward American society and culture leads to a misplaced benefit of the doubt toward enemies of this country. It is Ahmadinejad’s very hatred of the U.S. that makes him intriguing to Columbia.

This is an excellent example of how blind people have become as a result of the anti-Western, anti-Zionism, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-colonialism, anti-patriarchy, anti-Catholic, anti-Tradition propaganda that almost totally dominates most secular universities today. Just because Muslim fanatics are anti-Western, they are treated as allies by the Left. It is just like Jane Fonda going to Hanoi and calling America evil during the Vietnam War. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The answer to the student newspaper's question above is: "Yes, leading universities are turning out moral illiterates." Here we see the results. Bow to dictators and haters; attack and ban those who would stand up to them. The problem with Columbia is that George W. Bush would be protested and Ahmadinejad gets a pass. It is the mindset that sees this as normal that I see as the problem. We are talking about radically different worldviews here.

What unites radical Islamists, anarchists, Marxists, radical Feminists etc. is the conviction that Western civilization and Christianity are evil and must be destroyed. You can see it in the sexual revolution, which is an assault on the family. You can see it in the way the Obama administration refuses to hold Islamic extremism accountable. You can see it in the way the Left treats Israel.

As the writer of Ecclesiastes might well have said, "There is a time to protest and a time to keep silent."

Political Correctness Kills Innocent People

The US soldier arrested the other day has confessed to wanting to attack the US military base at Fort Hood and is an Islamic extremist. So it is clear that the US military is infested with traitors and the Obama administration is unconcerned. It is another example of how political correctness kills innocent people.

On Wednesday, Private First Class Naser Jason Abdo was arrested and found with a large quantity of weapons and explosives materials. The incident is a classic example of al-taqiyya, the Islamic doctrine of lying to non-believers. He publicly opposed the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, and now has admitted to planning on doing a similar attack on the same target.

Abdo converted to Islam at age 17, and is described by his peers as being “kind of weird” and a loner. He joined the military, and became part of the 101^st Airborne Division based at Fort Campbell in Kentucky. In June 2010, he tried to avoid being deployed to Afghanistan by applying for conscientious objector status. Major media attention followed.

“I began to understand and believe that only God can give legitimacy to war and not humankind. That’s when I realized my conscience would not allow me to deploy,” he wrote in an essay about his application. He also said in an interview that he cannot “involve myself in an army that wages war against Muslims. I don’t believe I could sleep at night if I take part, in any way, in the killing of a Muslim.” He also expressed his opposition to the Fort Hood shooting, saying it was “an act of aggression by a man and not by Islam.”

His request was denied at first, but then approved in the spring. However, things still didn’t go as planned for Abdo. His discharge from service was delayed after child pornography was found on his computer. It has now come out that the material was found after an investigation began when he made anti-American remarks in a language class. This is reminiscent of Major Nidal Hasan, who also made statements exposing his extremism in front of classmates before carrying out his attack and supported releasing Muslims from service as conscientious objectors.

What I would like to know is when the US military, for the first time in history, accepted the concept of "selective conscientious objection." Up until now the only person eligible for conscientious objector status in the United States is the person who takes the position that all killing in war goes against his conscience. He must prove that this is a longstanding and absolute rejection of war in its totality. Amish, Mennonites, Quakers, and others who take a totally pacifist position have been given this status on the assumption that there will never be a significantly large enough number of such people to affect the ability of the nation to defend itself. So respecting their conscience is a humane luxury the state can afford.

But soldiers, especially those who signed up voluntarily, who refuse to fight in one war or battle while acknowledging that they would fight under other conditions have always been dealt with harshly. It is sometimes execution (if it occurs on the battlefield), usually prison and just possibly, in the most lenient cases, dishonorable discharge. To volunteer to join the army is to give up one's right to decide which wars and battles one is going to fight in - for reasons too obvious to require elaboration.

The refusal to fight other Muslims should be a huge red flashing light for military authorities. A pattern is being established - we are now beyond the one, isolated case. A question for legitimate debate now is whether having Muslims in the armed forces is too much of a risk in a time of war against a Muslim enemy. Nobody has a civil right to be a member of the military. You have to qualify.

One also has to wonder where the order to give Abdo conscientious objector status came from. My guess would be that it was not a career military officer, but a political appointee of the Obama administration. I wonder if anyone will look into this question.

The New York Times Continues Its Relentless Assault

The orchestrated campaign of villifying and smearing Christians and Christianity continues at the New York Times. Today in an op ed column Roger Cohen becomes completely unhinged.

"Breivik has many ideological fellow travelers on both sides of the Atlantic. Theirs is the poison in which he refined his murderous resentment. The enablers include Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, who compared the Koran to "Mein Kampf" on his way to 15.5 percent of the vote in the 2010 election; the surging Marine Le Pen in France, who uses Nazi analogies as she pours scorn on devout Muslims; far-rightist parties in Sweden and Denmark and Britain equating every problem with Muslim immigration; Republicans like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Representative Peter King, who have found it politically opportune to target "creeping Shariah in the United States" at a time when the middle name of the president is Hussein; U.S. church pastors using their bully pulpits week after week to say America is a Christian nation under imminent threat from Islam."

How delusional is Cohen? Consider this sentence:

European Christendom in this context is a mirror image of the idealized caliphate of Osama bin Laden.

European Christendom is the same as the idealized caliphate of bin Laden? There are only two possibilities to explain this kind of delusional statement. One is that Cohen is simply ignorant of history. The other is that Cohen is willfully distorting the facts of history in order to demonize the greatest culture in history so he can help destroy it and replace it with a Utopian dreamworld invented by some madman named Marx. If so, he wouldn't be the first.

If he really means what he says, he is an enemy of science, progress, reason, faith and all the blessings of the Western world. He and Osama bin Laden have a lot in common.

There is nothing new about these tactics. They are part of the playbook of the Left. As Timothy Birdnow notes:

So now Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, Newt Gingrich, Peter King are all the equivalent of Breivik and Osama Bin Laden; monsters itching to kill! kill! kill! Subhuman brutes on the verge of genocide. And any attempt to defend ourselves is an act of aggression against a harmless people who just happen to cut off heads, blow up pizza parlors and airplanes, etc. No! The real villains are those E-VIL right wingers who say "you will not destroy us".

We have seen this in liberals at least since the assassination of John Kennedy; Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist, yet liberals have invented all manner of conspiracy theories pinning his murder on the Right. Yet when John Hinckley Jr. shot Ronald Reagan it was a disturbed man to the media. We've had Timothy McVeigh pinned on Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio, yet Major Hassan's little Allah Akbar! moment was said to have nothing to do with radical Islam. (McVeigh was a Nazi, an atheist, and by his own admission a man of the Left.) Remember the leftist who flew his plane into the Texas IRS building? He was immediately linked to the Tea Parties by the left and their lapdog media. Remember the Missouri Fusion Center report? Remember the DHS report warning of "conservative terrorists", people like returning veterans, Christians, pro-lifers, etc.? There has been an ongoing effort to demonize good, normal Americans. And there has been an even longer attempt to destroy Christianity, the cornerstone of Western Civilization. Promoting the idea of a "parity of evil" between religions, the notion that Islam and Christianity are just as malignant, is a high priority for the Left, particularly the atheistic Left.

Somebody tell the Daily Worker it can stop publication; its role in American journalism has been taken over by the New York Times.

By the way, a Muslim soldier who was AWOL was arrested today near Fort Hood with bomb making materials in his motel room and a pistol and "Muslim extremist literature" in his backpack. As a Muslim he had refused to go to Afghanistan because it would mean fighting fellow-Muslims. He was also under investigation for child pornography.

The headline? "Soldier's Arrest Revives Fears at Fort Hood."

At least it wasn't: "Terrorist Belonging to a Religion Exactly Like Christianity Arrested."

More on the Mendacity of the New York Times

This time the Wall Street Journal points out the deceptive, manipulative, lies of the New York Times as it attempts to use the human tragedy of mass murder by a madman to discredit Christianity and conservative bloggers:

In an editorial today, the New York Times issues a demand to the anti-Islam bloggers whose work Norway terror defendant Anders Breivik cited in his manifesto:

Mr. Breivik appears to have been deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about Islam's supposed threat to Western civilization. Their tendency to paint law-abiding Muslims with the same brush as extremists is repugnant. They need to categorically denounce Mr. Breivik's depravity.

OK, here's Robert Spencer on Saturday: "SIOA and SIOE [Stop Islamization of America and Stop Islamization of Europe] declare our sympathy for the victims and relatives of the victims of the heinous mass murders in Norway. We denounce the attacker and reiterate our dedication to the defense of free societies and opposition to all vigilantism and violence."

And here's Pamela Geller, also on Saturday: "He is a murderer, a mass murderer. Period. He's not anything else. He is sick, sick to death and he has aided the enemy in so many ways it defies comprehension. Anyone who would kill children is insane. And if he's a right winger who hates Muslims, how does that translate into killing a bunch of political youth party Workers' Youth League? . . . I despise savagery and inhumanity in any all instances. Period. This abject loser lowered himself to sub-human status."

One need not endorse Spencer's or Geller's views to acknowledge that they have already done what the Times demanded of them three days later. The Times's failure to acknowledge that is sloppy and dishonest.

A postscript: Yesterday we wrote that we did not know Spencer's religion. A reader points out that in a lengthy bio on his website, he says he is Catholic. If we'd have guessed, we'd have gotten it wrong. Another lesson in the importance of not jumping to conclusions.

I can only add this: the liberal attempt to blame conservatives for the Norway massacre has a secondary purpose besides the attempt to make Christians and conservatives look bad. It also deflects attention away from the culpability of the Left for the attack itself.

The mad policies of the culture of death and multiculturalism, which lead to the failure of a society to reproduce itself, and the naive Utopian belief that millions of Muslim immigrants can be brought into Western countries without being assimilated to the ethos of the West with no problems have created the conditions under which social peace is strained to the breaking point,. Those who have advocated such insane ideas should now take responsibility for the breakdown in social peace and civility. This is not to justify terrorism; it is to point out that the warnings conservatives have been issuing for years have not been heeded and violence has been the result. We wish liberals were willing to rethink multiculturalism precisely so that violence could be avoided.

When you meditate on the horror of terrorism - from both European and Islamic sources - remember that this is the entirely predictable fruit of policies the Left has convinced us to implement. So when will the editors of the New York Times apologize for their errors? When will they accept responsibility for the inevitable outcome of their policies? When will they apologize for mass murder in Norway?

Liberal Media Exploit Mass Murder to Take A Cheap Shot at Christians

You knew it was coming. Yet when it happens you still shake your head at the hate-filled, extremism that seeks every possible way to attack Christianity.

The New York Times ran this headline: "As Horrors Emerge, Norway Charges Christian Extremist."

It does not matter than he does not belong to a church.
It does not matter that he is not a believer in Christian doctrine.
It does not matter that Christianity condemns murder.
It does not matter that Christians the world over condemned the actions of this likely insane megalomaniac swiftly, totally and without reservation.

No, none of that matters. If the NYT gets a chance to frame a story in such a way as to make Christianity look bad it just salivates with lust for defamation and condemnation. Its moralistic "We told you so . . . Christians are evil" tone is repulsive and should be condemned by all reasonable people whether Christian or non-Christian.

Bill O'Reilly has an eloquent and hard-hitting defense of Christianity from the attacks of those who wish the world was rid of Jesus Christ.



If the Antichrist appeared tomorrow and sat with the New York Times for an interview, he could count on their endorsement. Can there be any doubt of that?

By the way, here are three more reasons why Breivik could not possibly be a Christian.

1. If he really was a Knight Templar he would never kill innocent civilians; his job would be to protect them.

2. If he was a Christian and felt called to fight he would join the army and serve in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban and Al-Quaida, which are violent armed groups threatening world peace.

3. If he was a Christian, he would not have left the political party that opposes high levels of Islamic immigration to Norway, which is to say that he would use democratic means of persuasion to work for a cause in which he believed. By resorting to terrorism he became as bad as what he (supposedly) opposes.

European Freedom on Trial

Here are Geert Wilders' closing remarks at his free speech trial in Amsterdam. I include them here as a matter of historical record and out of respect for one of the few political figures in Europe who is willing to speak the truth in an age of lazy lies.

Geert Wilders lives under constant police protection. One of his close associates was murdered by Islamic radicals; another is in exile in America. You would think that every Dutch official who was committed to freedom and justice would be on his side. Yet, the liberal elites of the Netherlands persecute him and seek to take away what little still freedom has. His political party won the third highest number of votes in the last election, but these elites despise ordinary voters and care nothing for democracy.

Geert Wilders is not perfect. He is a political liberal who greatly respects Christianity even though he is not a believer himself. There is an honorable tradition of such political leaders in the West; Thomas Jefferson comes to mind. But unlike those who dominate European politics today, Wilders is not anti-Christian and he does not see Christianity as something that must be eradicated in order for hedonistic individualism in the form of the sexual revolution to reign unchallenged. He does not worship the spirit of the age, which is also called the spirit of the generation of '68. He is no cultural Marxist and he believes that tradition, family, limited government, free speech, individual freedom and the rule of law are precious goods and the fruit of the Christian West. Leaders like Geert Wilders are the kind of political leaders who should be running Europe, not on trial.

Mister President, members of the Court,

I am here because of what I have said. I am here for having spoken. I have spoken, I speak and I shall continue to speak. Many have kept silent, but not Pim Fortuyn, not Theo Van Gogh, and not I.

I am obliged to speak. For the Netherlands is under threat of Islam. As I have argued many times, Islam is chiefly an ideology. An ideology of hatred, of destruction, of conquest. It is my strong conviction that Islam is a threat to Western values, to freedom of speech, to the equality of men and women, of heterosexuals and homosexuals, of believers and unbelievers.

All over the world we can see how freedom is fleeing from Islam. Day by day we see our freedoms dwindle.

Islam is opposed to freedom. Renowned scholars of Islam from all parts of the world agree on this. My witness experts subscribe to my view. There are more Islam scholars whom the court did not allow me to call upon to testify. All agree with my statements, they show that I speak the truth. That truth is on trial today.

We must live in the truth, said the dissidents under Communist rule, because the truth will set us free. Truth and freedom are inextricably connected. We must speak the truth because otherwise we shall lose our freedom.

That is why I have spoken, why I speak and why I shall continue to speak.

The statements for which I am being tried are statements which I made in my function as a politician participating in the public debate in our society. My statements were not aimed at individuals, but at Islam and the process of islamization. That is why the Public Prosecutor has concluded that I should be acquitted.

Mister President, members of the Court,

I am acting within a long tradition which I wish to honour. I am risking my life in defence of freedom in the Netherlands. Of all our achievements freedom is the most precious and the most vulnerable. Many have given their lives for freedom. We have been reminded of that in the commemorations of the month of May. But the struggle for freedom is much older.

Every day the armoured cars drive me past the statue of Johan de Witt at the Hofvijver in The Hague. De Witt wrote the “Manifesto of True Freedom” and he paid for freedom with his life. Every day I go to my office through the Binnenhof where Johan van Oldenbarneveldt was beheaded after a political trial. Leaning on his stick the elderly Oldenbarneveldt addressed his last words to his people. He said: “I have acted honourably and piously as a good patriot.” Those words are also mine.

I do not wish to betray the trust of the 1.5 million voters of my party. I do not wish to betray my country. Inspired by Johan van Oldenbarneveldt and Johan de Witt I wish to be a politician who serves the truth end hence defends the freedom of the Dutch provinces and of the Dutch people. I wish to be honest, I wish to act with honesty and that is why I wish to protect my native land against Islam. Silence is treason.

That is why I have spoken, why I speak and why I shall continue to speak.

Freedom and truth. I pay the price every day. Day and night I have to be protected against people who want to kill me. I am not complaining about it; it has been my own decision to speak. However, those who threaten me and other critics of Islam are not being tried here today. I am being tried. And about that I do complain.

I consider this trial to be a political trial. The values of D66 [a Dutch leftist liberal party] and NRC Handelsblad [a Dutch leftist liberal party] will never be brought before a judge in this country. One of the complainants clearly indicated that his intentions are political. Even questions I have asked in parliament and cooperation with the SGP are being brought as allegations against me by Mr Rabbae of GroenLinks [the leftist Dutch Green Party]. Those on the Left like to tamper with the separation of powers. When they cannot win politically because the Dutch people have discerned their sinister agenda, they try to win through the courts.

Whatever your verdict may be, that is the bitter conclusion of this trial.

This trial is also surrealistic. I am being compared with the Hutu murderers in Rwanda and with Mladic. Only a few minutes ago some here have doubted my mental health. I have been called a new Hitler. I wonder whether those who call me such names will also be sued, and if not, whether the Court will also order prosecution. Probably not. And that is just as well. Because freedom of speech applies also to my opponents.

My right to a fair trial has been violated. The order of the Amsterdam Court to prosecute me was not just a decision but a condemning verdict by judges who condemned me even before the actual trial had begun.

Mister President, members of the Court, you must now decide whether freedom still has a home in the Netherlands

Franz Kafka said: “one sees the sun slowly set, yet one is surprised when it suddenly becomes dark.” Mister President, members of the Court, do not let the lights go out in the Netherlands.

Acquit me: Put an end to this Kafkaesque situation.

Acquit me. Political freedom requires that citizens and their elected representatives are allowed to voice opinions that are held in society.

Acquit me, for if I am convicted, you convict the freedom of opinion and expression of millions of Dutchmen.

Acquit me. I do not incite to hatred. I do not incite to discrimination. But I defend the character, the identity, the culture and the freedom of the Netherlands. That is the truth. That is why I am here. That is why I speak. That is why, like Luther before the Imperial Diet at Worms, I say: “Here I stand, I can do no other.”

That is why I have spoken, why I speak and why I shall continue to speak.

Mister President, members of the Court, though I stand here alone, my voice is the voice of many. This trial is not about me. It is about something much greater. Freedom of expression is the life source of our Western civilisation.

Do not let that source go dry just to cosy up to a totalitarian ideology. “Freedom,” said the American President Dwight Eisenhower, “has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed – else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.”

Mister President, members of the Court, you have a great responsibility. Do not cut freedom in the Netherlands from its roots, our freedom of expression. Acquit me. Choose freedom.

I have spoken, I speak, and it is my duty – I cannot do otherwise – to continue to speak.

Thank you.

The lights are indeed going out all over Europe. The alliance of leftist anarchists and Islamic radicals is squeezing true political liberalism in a crushing vice. Pray that this trial will end in victory for freedom and justice, not just for the sake of Geert Wilders but for the sake of Europe.

The West Must Not Incentivize Violence by Accepting False Guilt

Jenny McCartney, a columnist for The Daily Telegraph, has a good blog post entitled: "Omar bin Laden has two messages: one for the West, and one for the Islamist world" in which she discusses the rather ambiguous messages coming from one of bin Laden's sons regarding the killing of Osama bin Laden.

She notes that Omar bin Laden tries to turn the West's commitment to the rule of law against it by trying to make Westerners feel guilty for retaliating against bin Laden in the same way bin Laden attacked the US. He asserts that he condemns his father's violence, although we have no way to judge the sincerity of his assertion, and this gives him an opening for criticizing the West.

I think McCartney has him all figured out:

Omar bin Laden publicly opposed his father’s ideas when Osama was alive: he still does, but has now taken up the metaphorical sword of familial defence. Yet whatever complicated psychological position Omar now finds himself in, it is clear that the US’s killing of his father was not at all arbitrary, in the sense of capricious or uncontrolled. The US is a nation that, unlike Britain, supports and regularly enacts the death penalty. Osama bin Laden, in 2004 and again in 2006, admitted directing the activities of the 9/11 bombers. If Osama’s execution was justified as an act of US self-defence – as President Obama argues – it was also broadly in keeping with that nation’s code of retributive justice.

It is a tactic familiar to terrorism, from the Provisional IRA in its heyday onwards, that it reserves for itself the right to wage a brutal and summary “war” against its opponents, but to be treated by them in return with all the complicated legal privileges of a liberal democracy. The US has declined, in the case of Osama bin Laden, to buy into that particular bargain, although President Obama has done well thereafter not to pander to the more ghoulish impulses of elements in the US population by touting death photographs as a trophy. Omar bin Laden can perhaps draw consolation from the fact that, unlike him, his father – who regarded the murder of thousands of blameless US citizens as a triumph – strongly approved of the principle of sudden death.

The US declined to resort to international law procedures in the case of bin Laden. It just killed him. But it was bin Laden who did it first. It was bin Laden who ignored the "rules of international law" by flying airplanes into skyscrapers and the US would not have done what it did if bin Laden had not done what he did first. So it is bin Laden who deserves the criticism and the US was perfectly justified in responding in kind.

This is something a lot of people either don't understand or are being willfully obtuse about. War is always a failure of diplomacy and a breakdown of the rule of law. War is about restoring the rule of law, but whoever attacks first has stepped outside the law and chosen to resort to force.

The next time the Arabs attack Israel, they need to understand that they are abandoning diplomacy, international law and all pretext of seeking justice. They are resorting to brute force. And when they did that in 1967 Israel seized the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza. It is ridiculous for the Arabs then to cry foul and demand the land back. It was they who chose to live by the sword, just as bin Laden did, and those who live by the sword die by the sword.

If the world community rewards the Islamists for using violence to get what they can and they demanding that their victims be punished for winning the battle, then the world community should expect that there will be a never-ending resorting to violence over and over again. If there is no fear that will face retribution and possibly lose land, they have every incentive to attack and no reason to hold back.

So, does the world want peace or war? Which is it? If you support the apologists for bin Laden in condemning the US for fighting back in self-defense, then you are supporting violence and make further war and terrorism more likely. If you support forcing Israel to give up defensible borders and the land they won in a defensive war to the aggressors, then you incentivize aggression and war.

It is rank hypocrisy to appeal to "peace" and "international law" in order to make war, terrorism and violence profitable. And it is not "Christian" or "moral" to do so either. It is folly.

N. T. Wright: No Winston Churchill

N. T. Wright, the darling of American Left-wing Evangelicals, has waded into politics criticizing American exceptionalism and calling President Obama a "vigilante." Trevor Presaud at Christianity Today writes:

Popular author and New Testament scholar N.T. Wright has accused the world of giving America a free pass for violating Pakistan's sovereignty and killing an unarmed man during the recent attack that killed Osama bin Laden.

The former bishop of Durham sent a short statement to The Times' religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill in which he pointed out that Americans would be "furious" if Great Britain's military had staged an unannounced raid against hypothetical Irish Republican Army terrorists and killed them, unarmed, in a Boston suburb.

The only difference, Wright says, is "American exceptionalism."

"America is allowed to do it, but the rest of us are not," said Wright, who is now the research professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. "By what right? Who says?"

President Obama, Wright says, has "enacted one of America’s most powerful myths," the vigilante hero going outside the law to execute "redemptive violence" against an enemy who has rendered the legitimate authorities impotent. "This is the plot of a thousand movies, comic-book strips, and TV shows: Captain America, the Lone Ranger, and (upgraded to hi-tech) Superman. The masked hero saves the world."

While this myth may have been a necessary dimension of life in the Wild West, Wright says, it also "legitimizes a form of vigilantism, of taking the law into one’s own hands, which provides ‘justice’ only of the crudest sort."

Clearly, Dr. Wright despises America. Ordinarily, the mask of politeness prevents his true feelings from showing through but on this occasion his all-too-typical left-wing animus toward America causes the mask to slip.

It is a bit odd, to put it mildly, to accuse the President of the US of acting as a "vigilante." The President takes an oath to defend the Constitution and acts as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the nation. Radical Islam in various amorphous forms, including Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda, has declared war on the Unites States and Israel (and the West in general including the UK) and President Obama's sworn duty is to defend the United States against attack. On 9/11 and numerous other occasions the Islamists have used the methodology of terrorism to try to undermine morale, instill fear and probe for weaknesses in the West. In Europe they find flabby non-resistance, but in the US they find a bit of steel in the way.

The US armed forces have killed Islamist terrorists in various ways: on the battlefield, by missiles, by un-maned drone bombings, and so so. bin Laden was in a command center giving operational direction to his organization just like Hitler in his bunker. He deserved a chance to surrender if that was possible, but he was an enemy combatant. He resisted and he was killed. If they had dropped a precision bomb on the house it would have been the same outcome.

Dr. Wright clearly resents the fact that the United States has the military and intelligence resources to carry out a defensive war against the Islamists. Perhaps it is envy. His own country is weakened by decades of socialism and pretty much in surrender mode and seems unable or unwilling to stand up to the threat of Islamic invasion, occupation and domination. Already parts of some British cities are under de facto Sharia Law and UK laws are increasingly used to silence all criticism of Islam by those who hope to use Islam to destroy the Christian character of the nation.

I do think there is something to Dr. Wright's suggestion that the myth of the lone hero who makes things right by force is attractive to Americans. It illustrates the fact that Americans have not yet made their peace with decline, decay and defeat. Americans know evil exists in the world but they expect to defeat it when it rears its ugly head; they expect justice to triumph. Poor, tired, old Europe seems well past that stage.

The great Winston Churchill would not have reacted like Dr. Wright. He would have reacted with genuine admiration for a nation that has a bunch of terrorists bomb their two greatest cities and does not rest until it finds their leader and puts a bullet between his eyes. He would have done the same to his enemy, Hitler, if he had had the chance. And he would not have fretted and wrung his hands about how it looked to the professional armchair critics abroad. But alas, the days when Britain could produce a Winston Churchill seem to be over for good.

But America is not ready to go gently into that dark night just yet. If that galls Dr. Wright, well basically the bottom line is that few people in America will care about what he thinks. And somewhere, I have to think, a plump old man with a cigar between his teeth is smiling in approval.

Archbishop Rowan Williams is "Uncomfortable" About bin Laden Killing

Tim Ross, writing in the Daily Telegraph, reports on Archbishop Rowan Williams' response to the US finally getting the terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden this week. Is he happy to see justice done? Is he glad that the terrorist organization has had its leadership decapitated? Do his thoughts immediately go out to the 9/11 victims and how they have suffered?

Well, no, actually. He equivocates in the most disgraceful manner and lets the enemy know that he can count on liberal, Western, religious leaders to bow and scrape before their intimidation.

Dr Rowan Williams warned that the shooting dead of the unarmed al-Qaeda leader meant justice was not "seen to be done".

The differing accounts of the American special forces' operation which have emerged from the White House since Monday "have not helped", he said.

At a press conference at Lambeth Palace, The Daily Telegraph asked Dr Williams whether he thought the US had been right to kill bin Laden.

After declining to respond initially, he later replied: “I think the killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling, because it doesn’t look as if justice is seen to be done in those circumstances.

“I think it’s also true that the different versions of events that have emerged in recent days have not done a great deal to help here.

“I don’t know full details any more than anyone else does. But I do believe that in such circumstances when we are faced with someone who was manifestly a war criminal, in terms of the atrocities inflicted, it is important that justice is seen to be observed.”

This kind of servile self-loathing only encourages the fantasies of Islamists worldwide. This one decisive action taken by the US may save thousands of lives by making terrorists come to grips with reality, while all the liberal platitudes and posturing in the world by self-important religious leaders will only make things worse.

I don't know how justice could not be seen to have been served in this case. There must be some other reason why Williams is "uncomfortable." Maybe it is that every instance of capital punishment is a case of "killing an unarmed man." So, perhaps he is saying that he is against capital punishment for a bloodthirsty, fanatical, war criminal. Does he really think that society owes him room and board and lots of lawyers for the rest of his natural life after what he has done? He got exactly what he deserved.

I think Dr. Williams should worry more about why the Church of England is in such decline and why the Anglican Communion is falling apart and rather less about telling the government what to do.

When one reflects on the reaction of Europeans to this event, Americans must be able to understand now that it was not George W. Bush they hated - it was the free country he represented. If I were an American I would be wondering if it isn't time for Europeans to pay for their own national defense and why not bring American troops home.

And when one reflects on this kind of reaction, one can't help thinking that bin Laden was right about Europe but wrong about America when he made his famous "weak horse, strong horse" remarks.

Is Islamic Terrorism the Fault of the West?

That is what apologists for radical Islam would have you believe.

Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is holding hearings on the issue of how and why American Muslims are being radicalized and recruited for terror attacks. This common-sense effort (if his committee was not addressing the root causes of the majority of terror attacks in the US in the past 20 years it would hardly be doing its job), has occasioned a terrific howl of protest from groups with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and other related terror organizations. It has also caused the American Left to become unhinged with all sorts of wild-eyed accusations about the motives of Rep. King.

One often repeated theme is mouthed by Imam Feisal Abdual Rauf on this video interview at Real Clear Politics. Notice his arguments. My comments are in red following each point.

1. The problem is not Islam because all religions have extremists and so moderates of all religions should band together to oppose extremist ideologies.

But, of course, Hinduism is not blowing up jetliners right now, nor is Judaism setting off bombs in Times Square. And Evangelicals quoting Revelation are not being caught with weapons of mass destruction plotting to create mayhem in American cities. Muslims are and until Muslim leaders face up to reality a solution will be hard to find. Rather than pretending that all religions have the same problem as Islam, Imam Rauf should be asking why it is Muslims doing these horrible things. He seems intent on deflecting attention from the main point.

2. He rejects the interviewer's reasonable suggestion that, given the on-going string of Islamist terror attacks over the past few years we ought to explore the ideology behind them. He basically says, "No, we should not focus on Islamist ideology, but on terrorism itself.

But we are dealing here with a systematic campaign fueled by a coherent, if evil, ideology, not the random actions of madmen like the Giffords shooting tragedy. So if we don't examine the ideological roots, we will never really examine the causes of the problem. Rauf's argument would lead to exactly that unfortunate result.

3. Then Rauf gets into his main argument, which is that if you allow anyone in the West to speak badly of Islam or try to connect terrorism with Islamic beliefs, then you create a backlash in the Muslim world. He takes a swipe at Evangelicals and subtly suggests that there is some sort of moral equivalence between conservative Christians and Islamists - without coming right out and saying so in so many words. Then he mentions the Danish cartoons and not-so-subtly suggests that this "arouses hostility." He actually says that when Westerners do something Muslims find offensive it is the Westerners who are "creating hostility."

It is our fault. We cause their violent rampages. They, apparently, have no choice in how they respond to our provocations. This seems rather patronizing - to Muslims. Notice that he is expanding on his theme in #1 above. (He is very disciplined in staying on his talking points.) He really expects us to believe, apparently, that there is nothing about Islam in particular that is related to Islamist terrorism. It's just random acts of mad men just like when Christians snap and do something violent.

4. In response to a question Rauf actually says that what fuels Islamic terrorism is radical ideologies from all sides!

Here he is blaming the West for causing Islamic terrorism by criticizing Islam. In his world (which is the same world in which the Western Left lives), only "extremists" and "radicals" ever criticize Islam. Ironically, he implies this in answering a question in which the interviewer quotes David Cameron and Angela Merkel as saying that multiculturalism is a failure. Are they dangerous extremists too? (A risible thought, that!) In the next paragraph, he goes after another "religious extremist," Samuel Huntingdon.) In Rauf's world, nobody is supposed to criticize Islam and anyone who does is fueling terrorism. There is a chilling threat implied clearly in these words.

5. Then, as the argument seems to be going against him, right on cue he plays the victim card.

I hope no relatives of 9/11 victims were watching this disgusting attempt to portray himself as the victim of terrorism. Terrorism has real victims and they are not usually on TV defending Islam.

Some far more sensible and reasoned perspectives on the hearings are available from Ruth Marcus here and Jennifer Rubin here. Both are published in that rabid hotbed of extremist, Christian fundamentalism: The Washington Post. I suppose they will likely cause several more terrorist attacks each, if Imam Rauf is correct.

Jennifer Rubin's column today describes the first day of hearings and is tellingly entitled: "Democrats embarrass themselves at Islam radicalization hearings."

By the way, if you want some facts and figures on just how "under siege" the American Muslim community actually is these days, check out Calvin Freiburger's post "No Islamophobia Epidemic Here: The Surprising Truth About Hate Crimes in America." It puts the tearful histronic performance of Keith Ellison at the hearings in perspective.

Why Western Intellecutuals Fail to Understand Islam

Hint: it is the same reason they are unable to understand Christianity. There is a tremendous gap between the 70% of ordinary American people, who are largely Christian, and the ruling, coastal elites, who are largely secularized and post-Christian.

The problem is not so much that the ruling elites do not have enough factual information about the various world religions, though that is a glaring deficiency in their educations and a problem in itself; it is more that the ruling elites have imbibed certain 19th century Marxist ideas and have long-since forgotten the origin of these ideas. They actually have no idea that their materialist philosophy of history or their jaundiced view of capitalism or their conception of religion as infantile and constricting is actually just a parroting of a discredited economist and Christian heretic named Karl Marx.

Robert Sibley offers a good example of this phenomenon in his recent Ottawa Citizen column entitled: "The 'root cause' of Islamism, or waking the West from its multicultural slumber."

During the last decade of Islamist terrorism, numerous commentators, particularly those on the left, have adopted a materialist approach to explain why some Muslims want to slaughter guests at hotels in Mumbai or detonate bombs at Christmas festivals in Sweden.

Terrorism, they argue, is rooted in poverty, frustration over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and memories of western imperialism. In other words, so the argument goes, the West itself is to blame for terrorism. If only the West would apologize, make reparations, abandon Israel, leave the Middle East and Afghanistan, all would be well. Or at least that’s where the root-cause crowd’s assumptions logically lead.

Read it all here.

The main problem here is the Marxist philosophy of history, which knows ahead of time that the "real" cause of historical events is material and economic conditions. This means that it is poverty combined with envy of the material riches of the West that actually is the root of Islamic terror. No historical research is needed except to assemble facts in support of what we already know. The terrorists cannot be motivated by religion. That is impossible because anyone who blows up a plane because of religious convictions is by definition insane. Since insanity has nothing to do with rational political ideologies, there can be no connection between the two. So blaming the "religion of peace" whose name means "submission" is simply wrong.

As long as Western intellectuals allow unexamined, out-of-date Marxist presuppositions about history, economics and religion to guide their thought about Islamism they will never understand what we are up against. Never.

One of These Things is Not Like the Others

Here is a hatchet job on Sarah Palin that tells us nothing whatsoever about Sarah Palin, but quite a lot about the leftist mind and the way in which it views the world.

David Hughes writes a post on his blog at the Daily Telegraph entitled: "What do Sarah Palin and fundamentalist Muslims have in common?" in which he notes that hardline Muslims in Britain have mounted a campaign of fear and intimidation against a Muslim academic who come out in favor of Darwinism:

The hounding of Dr Usama Hasan, a science lecturer at Middlesex University and a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, following a lecture he gave on evolution is turning ugly. The First Post reports that Hasan has been forced to retract his assertion that Darwinism is compatible with Islam after receiving death threats. He delivered his message in a lecture at the Masjid al-Tawhid mosque in Leyton and was accused of “blasphemy” by some in the audience and even branded an apostate who should be killed. His father, Suhaib, head of the mosque’s committee of trustees, has now issued a statement on his son’s behalf which read: “I seek Allah’s forgiveness for my mistakes and apologise for any offence caused.” The climbdown exposes the depth of feeling on this issue among some Muslims.

He then has the temerity to assert that Sarah Palin is just like these illiberal brutes. And why does he think this? Has Palin issued death threats to Christian scholars who teach evolution? No. Well, has she called for making the teaching of evolution illegal? Actually, no. Does she advocate the killing of anyone who abandons the Christian religion? No, she hasn't done that either.

So how exactly is she "just like" these 7th century fanatics? Well, you see, she expressed doubts about the holy book of Darwin and said that teaching creation and evolution side by side in schools would be a good idea so that people could make up their own minds. Imagine, freedom of thought for the masses! No wonder liberals get the shakes and fear the apocalypse.

Let's look at the difference between Palin and Islamists.

Palin: She is a conservative, which means she stands for classical, 19th century liberalism in which there is free speech, free association, freedom of religion and so on. The role of government is not to inculcate a secular or a Christian or an Islamic worldview into the population; the role of government is limited to what parents and churches and local communities cannot do such as national defense and a few other things. She believes everything that possibly can be done at the state level should be. She is a woman who demonstrates that women are competent and equal not sniveling victims. She is a Christian who is not ashamed of her faith and she is a patriot who loves her country.

Islamists: They believe in imposing their religion on everyone else by force and want to establish a theocracy in which Sharia Law reigns supreme. They do not accept free speech and want anyone who criticizes Islam to be fined, jailed or worse. They do not accept freedom of religion and believe that apostates from Islam should be killed. They oppress women mercilessly and cannot accept individual freedom or democracy (except as a means to a totalitarian theocracy as in Iran and Gaza).

Now, these two things are pretty different, I'm sure you would agree. But let's look at one more thing: Liberalism.

Liberalism: Now, by liberalism I meant the 20th century version which has been hijacked and twisted out of recognition by progressivism and socialism - the kind represented by Democratic Socialists of America, political correctness, and Barack Obama. They want to impose their secularist creed on everyone and they do not believe in freedom of religion. They do not believe in freedom of speech; in fact, they are constantly pushing speech codes that force people to speak in politically correct ways or face punishment, harassment and shaming. They are intolerant of Christianity and love to promote Islam as a counterbalance to Christianity. Multiculturalism is a great excuse to systematically eradicate Christianity from the public square in the West. They are collectivists and do not trust individuals with too much freedom.

Now, as they say on Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the others. Which one?

Why, it seems to me that Liberalism and Islamism are much closer in spirit to one another than either is to Sarah Palin.

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.

Islam as a Mirror to the West

Here is a perspective on Islam in Europe from Alexandr Vondra, foreign minister of the Czech Republic, who is unusually blunt in his assessment of the potential danger to Europe from militant Islam. He does not mouth the usual platitudes about how Islam is a religion of peace and only a few marginal, insane terrorists distort the good reputation of Islam. He argues that the West has an important role to play in the internal struggle within Islam between radicals and moderates for the soul of Islam and for power.

His article in the Middle East Quarterly is entitled: "Radical Islam Poses a Major Challenge to Europe." Here is an excerpt:

"The role of Islam in Europe is crucial for Europe's future security and prosperity. On one hand, there are millions of Muslims who have become an integral part of European societies and who contribute to the continent's social and cultural diversity, but, on the other hand, there is a growing sentiment in the Muslim world, including Muslim communities in Europe, that is generally hostile to Western interests and values. I think we all find it most disturbing that, in recent years, these radical trends seem to be gaining strength.

The activities of radical Islam's followers and sympathizers in Europe pose a major challenge to our continent today. The challenge is not only the obvious physical threat these fundamentalist groups represent but rather the fact that the radical currents within Islam question virtually every single tenet of European society today and Western society in general.

At this point, you probably expect a common political disclaimer that is almost obligatory whenever anybody says anything about Islam these days—perhaps a few words about a great and generally peaceful religion that has little to do with a small number of thugs and terrorists. Well, I will not avoid such words completely, but allow me to rephrase it a little bit: I still believe that the majority of Muslims prefer peaceful means to terrorism and coexistence to war. But, unfortunately, the facts supporting these views are increasingly hard to find, not only with every new attack against values and interests that are perceived to be Western, but also increasingly with every new anti-Western statement from major Muslim opinion leaders, both within and outside Europe, many of whom have so far been viewed as moderate."

So what happens if the radicals win control of Islam?

If the militants in the end crush the moderate forces in the Muslim world, the West must be ready.

First of all, we should abandon the self-destructive debates about whether the West's policies in the Middle East are a legitimate raison d'être for radical Islam. Such debates are simply wrong. Radical Islamists challenge practically everything that our society claims to stand for, no matter what the Western policies were or are. These challenges include the concept of universal human rights and freedom of speech. That, however, does not discourage radical Muslims from using these basic principles against the West whenever they find it suitable.

The radicals, for instance, do not even theoretically admit that non-Muslims are entitled to the same rights as Muslims. Yet, simultaneously, they ferociously argue for human rights whenever the authorities might apply any pressure against them. In such a way, they corrupt the whole system and blur the difference between victim and perpetrator.

The same applies to freedom of speech: Everyone here remembers the upheaval surrounding the Danish cartoons. It seemed that virtually everybody in the Islamic universe who held any imaginable grudge against the West hopped on the bandwagon and joined often violent protests. Does it not surprise that the cartoons insulted those who have themselves depicted and drawn far worse attacks against our own values?

These days, the West does not seem quite ready to face the threat of radical Islam. The self-criticism and the tendency to blame ourselves for evil deeds of others are weakening us. The unity of the West we saw after the cowardly murder of some three thousand civilians on 9-11 has disintegrated.

What is the answer? How can the West get ready to face the threat of Islam?

The same could be said about our traditional system of values, our Western spirit, and our Western identity. Some have attempted to replace our original set of Judeo-Christian values with a fuzzy and amorphous moral mixture that would have all of humanity join in some kind of a brave new world as one global happy family. Theoretically, this could work nicely if everybody truly joined in, but, in practice, such a plan seems to be failing. Our partners in other parts of the world cherry-pick some of the benefits of the Western system while at the same time criticizing it for corruption and hypocrisy. As we became more open, other forces in the world began to identify themselves in opposition to us.

And then he writes an arresting sentence containing this striking image:

From this point of view, the threat represented by radical Islam provides us with a useful mirror. It might, after all, help us grasp the seriousness of our situation and the challenges we face.

Perhaps what he means is something like this: Islam is a threat to Europe but the more serious threat is the moral rot and the secularism that corrupts and weakens us. The threat from Islam forces us to behold our own visage in the mirror and what we see ought to frighten us far more than terrorists ever could.

If the West Falls, It Will Happen Because of Stupidity

Bruce Thornton, author of Decline and Fall: Europe's Slow Motion Suicide, has an excellent article in The City entitled: "Politics Based on Illusion." His main point is extremely important: that the Ruling Class of the West - the academics, the media and the bureaucratic class - is exhibiting a massive failure of imagination. This failure of imagination renders us vulnerable and is extremely dangerous.

The great historian of Soviet Russia, Robert Conquest, once wrote something about the dangers of naïve diplomacy that I’m reminded of daily. “We are still faced with the absolutely crucial problem of making the intellectual and imaginative effort not to project our ideas of common sense or natural motivation onto the products of totally different cultures,” Conquest observed.

- - snip - -

America’s 30-year struggle with Islamic jihad has been defined by just this sort of failure of imagination. Yet the diplomatic pathology has much deeper roots, and reflects a larger set of assumptions about human and state behavior going back to the Enlightenment—what we can call utopian universalism. In this view, all peoples are essentially rational and want the same political and social goods, particularly personal freedom and material prosperity. If they behave irrationally or destructively in seeking other goods, blame this on the fact that they have not yet been educated to their true interests. They remain mired in ancient superstitions, particularly those of religion, ethnic loyalties, and nationalism. Yet in time, the progress of knowledge, technology, and global trade will sweep away these impediments to happiness.

This vision of human identity lies behind the idealistic internationalism that dominates inter-state relations in the West.

- - snip - -

Far from universal, however, these ideals reflect a particular history—that of the West—beginning in ancient Greece and Jerusalem and developed further by the Romans and Christianity. They have become globalized mainly by Western power and dominance. . . . Within the West itself, this “moralizing internationalism,” as historian Corelli Barnett calls it, was exploded by the carnage of the twentieth century, in which nationalist and ethnic loyalties, incoherent political religions like fascism and Communism, and finally a renewed religious fanaticism have created mountains of corpses.

Far from universal, however, these ideals reflect a particular history—that of the West—beginning in ancient Greece and Jerusalem and developed further by the Romans and Christianity. They have become globalized mainly by Western power and dominance.

- - snip - -

Despite the examples of these historical failures, we have made the same mistakes in our conflict with Islamic jihad, starting with the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Rather than attempting to understand the religious motives of Islamic jihadists, which they clearly articulate and link to their reading of traditional Islam, we reduce them instead to our own secularized, materialist beliefs.

It is extremely important to understand that not everyone in the West, let alone everybody in the world, thinks the same way and is driven by the same priorities. There is a real reductionism about human nature: all people need is food, shelter, sex and consumerist, low-brow, non-stop, 24/7 entertainment. This is a kind of crudely Marxist argument that sees all human behavior and all of history as explicable by economics.

If you think that human nature is what Darwin and Marx says it is, then you will never understand Islamic fervor, any more than you will understand traditional, orthodox Christianity.

But not understanding everything in the world is not necessarily dangerous; failing to understanding your sworn enemy - one that is fueled by petro dollars - can be deadly.

Is CAIR a "Moderate" Islamic Organization?

Is CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) a moderate Islamic group which should be allowed a place at the table and accorded respect as an organization that promotes mutual respect for religious differences and Western values?

Andy McCarthy, author of The Grand Jihad, says no. But many Left-wingers say yes. So which is it?

The Hill reports that CAIR is giving Helen Thomas a lifetime achievement award:

The longtime White House correspondent who resigned from Hearst newspapers in June in the wake of comments she made about Israel will receive a lifetime achievement award from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

CAIR is honoring Helen Thomas, who is of Lebanese descent and now 90 years old, at its Leadership Conference and 16th Annual Fundraising Banquet on Oct. 9 in Arlington, Va.

Speakers will also include Oxford Islamic studies scholar Tariq Ramadan.

Thomas started at the White House as a reporter during the Kennedy administration. In a video interview captured at a White House Jewish heritage event for RabbiLIVE.com that spread quickly across the Internet, Thomas advised Israeli Jews to "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home" to Poland, Germany, America and "everywhere else."

So here it the bottom line. Maybe Andrew McCarthy is crazy and wrong about the ties of CAIR and many other Muslim organizations in America to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas etc. But no one can deny that CAIR is giving an award to a vicious, life-long, anti-Semite.

So it seems obvious to me that, if McCarthy is wrong and CAIR is properly to be regarded as a "moderate" Islamic organization, then the definition of "moderate" must be "Anti-semitic." Now, if the meaning of moderate must be stretched to this extent - so that it includes honoring Anti-semitism, then I think we should all be opposed to this kind of "moderate Islam" just as strongly as we ought to oppose Islamic terrorists like Hamas and al-Qaeda.

But that, we must remember, was McCarthy's point in the first place. Game, set and match to McCarthy.

Ahmadaminejad's Anti-Semitic Slurs and Conspiracy Theories on Display at the UN

Once again, the UN was disgraced as a place of serious debate by the monstrous antics of the President of Iran. The Hill reports:

The U.S. delegation to the U.N. walked out of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech before the general assembly Thursday after the controversial leader said some believe Americans were behind the 9/11 terror attacks.

The Associated Press reported that Ahmadinejad claimed that some speculate that Americans organized the attack to ensure Israel's survival.

The U.S. delegation issued a statement in response, the AP reported.

"Rather than representing the aspirations and goodwill of the Iranian people, Mr. Ahmadinejad has yet again chosen to spout vile conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic slurs that are as abhorrent and delusional as they are predictable," they said.

Relations between Iran and the West have been tense for many years over the Middle Eastern country's nuclear ambitions and anti-American and -Israel statements made by its president.

Congress overwhelmingly passed a new set of sanctions against Iran in June that penalize companies that assist Iran with petroleum refining.

In 2005, Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

This Washington Post video shows the walk-out by the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Costa Rica, and 27 European nations. It also shows a rally held outside the UN by Iranian exiles and Iranian Americans at which former Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, calls for the overthrow of the Iranian theocracy.

Walking out is an empty gesture, however, in response to a fanatical regime bent on acquiring nuclear weapons with which to pursue its genocidal ambitions and dreams of world conquest.

What is a Moderate Muslim?

Ben Shapiro at Townhall has had enough of Michael Moore's support for radical Islam and he executes a nice smackdown using both humor and logic. In the course of his entertaining rant of a post, however, he states clearly just exactly what needs to be emphasized in this whole debate.

Western societies don't need to worry only about actual terrorists - the people who strap on bombs and blow themselves up. We also need to worry about those who teach the religious doctrines which inspire the terrorists, those who provide the financing for the terrorists networks and those who give the terrorist cause legitimacy by repeating their anti-Western rhetoric and rubbing shoulders with terrorist organizations like Hamas.

But what is a moderate Muslim anyway? Shapiro gets it exactly right.

Liberals simply don't understand the Muslim world. They're under the bizarre misimpression that if a Muslim isn't actively strapping a bomb to his chest, he's a "moderate." By that standard, Imam Rauf -- the man behind the ground zero mosque -- is moderate, despite the fact that he refuses to condemn Hamas, associates with terrorist funders and anti-Semites, and believes that United States foreign policy was responsible for 9/11.

The truth is that there are three groups of Muslims: those who are terrorists; those who agree with terrorists and support them with money, rhetoric or time; and those who are truly moderate. Only group three is worth cultivating. And group three would never have the gall to build a mosque at ground zero, let alone preach to the American public about their supposed racism for opposing such a mosque.

Once we accept that there are three groups of Muslims instead of two and that the second group is in many ways as dangerous as the first, we are ready to have an serious, adult debate about the Ground Zero Mosque. The issue is whether Imam Rauf and his mysterious backers belong to the third group or to the second.

If it turns out (as a great deal of factual evidence seems to indicate) that Rauf is clearly in the second group, it should be a no brainer that he should be ostracized, hounded, opposed and shamed into retreating. In fact, if Rauf really is in the second category, building the mosque (or whatever they are calling it this week) would be a second victory for Islamism at the same site.

Inman Rauf's Protection Racket and Freedom of Speech

I predict that Inman Rauf's comments on Larry King Live the other night will prove to be a turning point in the Ground Zero Mosque controversy by turning public opinion firmly against the project and requiring Rauf and his shadowy financial backers to back down. For the record, he said:

Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, the self-professed bridge builder “devoted to peacemaking,” is now claiming that the Muslim world will erupt in violence if he withdraws his plan for the Muslim community center and mosque he intends to build right near Ground Zero.

Rauf told Soledad O’Brien on CNN’s “Larry King Live” that:

If we move that location, the story will be that the radicals have taken over the discourse. The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack.

Rauf went on to say that the violent reaction in the Muslim world could be worse than it was to the Danish cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad in a negative light.

O’BRIEN: But the controversy itself–
RAUF: So the Cordoba house —
O’BRIEN: –though, right, isn’t that causing to some degree an instability and a risk, a risk of safety? I mean, there’s an address now that has become the flash point for a lot of anger. Isn’t that a risk to Muslims and Americans?
RAUF: There is a certain anger here, no doubt. But if you don’t do this right, anger will explode in the Muslim world. If this is not handled correctly, this crisis could become much bigger than the Danish cartoon crisis, which resulted in attacks on Danish embassies in various parts of the Muslim world. And we have a much larger footprint in the Muslim world. If we don’t handle this crisis correctly, it could become something which could really become very, very, very dangerous indeed.

Instead of trying to calm down the Muslim world, whatever the ultimate fate of his prized project turns out to be, the bridge builder warns us that we better do things his way or there will be security risks for the United States and Americans abroad.

Inman Rauf is playing the oldest game in the books; you would think he was raised in Chicago. "Listen, I'm really sympathetic and I'd like to help you out. But you know there are some crazy guys out there and they hurt people. If you could just help me out a little, I could take care of those guys for you. Nice little G-20 Western democracy you have here - it would be a shame if anything happened to it."

On the other hand, Reuters reports that Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, is to present an award to Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard despite threats from barbaric Muslims who talk openly of violence and murder. Merkel's comments (at the end of this quote) should be a lesson to appeasing, cowardly, leftists in the US:

Organizers of the M100 Media Prize to be awarded at Potsdam near Berlin said the cartoons had "triggered an international controversy about freedom of speech and sparked worldwide, partly violent demonstrations of Muslims who felt insulted."

Most Muslims consider any depiction of the founder of Islam to be offensive, and the Danish cartoons portrayed Mohammed with a turban shaped like a bomb. At least 50 people died in ensuing riots by enraged Muslims in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Westergaard stood by his work "invoking the right to freedom of speech," said the M100 prize committee, praising the Dane's "courage to stand by these democratic values and defend them, notwithstanding threats of violence and death."

The Organizers issued a statement from Merkel saying that, at a time when Germany is marking 20 years of unity after the fall of East Germany's communist regime, her country was "still conscious of what the lack of freedom implies."

That is the message we need to hear. Freedom of speech is essential to democracy, which is why Islamists hate it so passionately. When ever one of these controversies arises (and they seem to be arising every other day lately) the focus needs to be on Muslim violence and the need for Muslim leaders to unequivocally condemn such violence if they want to be taken seriously in the public debate on religious freedom.

The Florida pastor who threatened to burn the Koran has flushed out the hypocrisy of leaders like Obama and Bloomberg, who appeal to the principle of religious freedom when it advances the interests of Muslims and then do a 180 degree turn about when the principle of religious freedom appears to go against Muslim interests.

Those who argue, like General Petraeus, that Pastor Jones' actions imperils troops in Muslim countries are simply acting in a cowardly fashion. It isn't one little congregation in Florida that Islamists object to: it is America and the ideals upon which it was built. And to imagine that the West can ever do enough to appease Islamists so they won't attack us anymore is ridiculous. If we don't stand for free speech and freedom of religion, including when Islam is ridiculed or attacked, then we are not standing for truth and right.

Remembering the Victory of Vienna in 1683

David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen explains why it happened on September 11.

On this ninth anniversary of 9/11, I should like to take my reader back, briefly, to "9/10." But, instead of Sept. 10, 2001, I have selected 1683. There is limited space in a newspaper column, so history buffs among my readers will have to forgive my simple précis.

I refer to the date of a very large, outdoor Papal Mass. It was not sung by the Pope himself -- at the time, Innocent III, one of history's great reformers -- but by his legate. The location was the hill of Kahlenberg, to the west of the walls of the city of Vienna, as they then were. The participants were 16,000 troops assembled by King John III Sobieski of Poland.

They had come to face the armies of Mehmed IV: the Ottoman Sultan and Caliph, unquestionably the greatest power in the Islamic world, and perhaps the world generally, since the fall of Constantinople in 1454 had capped the Muslim conquest of the Byzantine Empire. Constantinople (now Istanbul) had itself only fallen after many attacks and sieges over centuries.

Vienna had been under its own latest siege and bombardment since July. The first had been in 1529; another had continued for more than 20 years. This one was easily the largest: a force of more than 70,000 of the feared Ottoman Janissaries were backed by as many reserves, and all were supplied by a vast logistical network through the Balkans. Every conceivable preparation had been made, with the benefit of a sesquicentury of experience, to assure that finally Vienna would be taken. This in turn would open the Danube to further Ottoman conquests, into the heart of Europe.

Fortified by the Mass, the Polish troops went into action. The main engagement was on Sept. 11, 1683 (making today the 327th anniversary). It was notably the largest cavalry charge in history.

In the space of a few hours, the Ottoman armies were routed. At least 20,000 bodies were left on the field, mostly Janissaries, and all cannon were abandoned as survivors scattered in a wild, disordered retreat. On Sept. 12, there were mop-up operations.

I wonder how many of my readers knew the significance of the date that al-Qaeda chose to launch its terror attacks on New York and Washington? We may not remember history, but they do.

Those who forget their own history will never understand their present.