Read all about the recently held “Festival of Resistance” in Canada where Islamists and Marxists got to hold hands and find reassurance in the fact that someone out there is as deluded as themselves, the sheer lunacy of it all is sure to make you chuckle. (h/t Oh Canada)

Tarek Fatah summed it up nicely (again):

“For atheists, considered worthy of the death penalty by Islamists, to team up with their ultimate opponents in attacking Canadian civic society, demonstrates the fundamental bankruptcy of these two political ideologies.”

Jonah Goldberg points out the absurdities and hilarities of a similar event in Cairo:

At the annual Cairo antiwar conference in Egypt, the hot panel discussion this year was “Bridge-Building Between the Left and Islam.” John Rees, a British Trotskyite, observed: “Where else can you sit down in a single evening and listen to senior people from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, people from the revolutionary left and the antiwar movement from around the globe?”

Gosh, it sounds great. I’m just sorry I missed the rollicking game of Pictionary between the Castroites and the jihadis afterwards.

[..]

In the 1960s, every would-be revolutionary called himself a Marxist, usually without any serious regard to what Marx wrote, said or believed. The specifics of the ideology didn’t matter, because Marxism was the oogah-boogah word radicals used to scare the fat, lazy bourgeoisie. In 1969, Stuart Schram, a specialist on Chinese Communism, wrote that “never in the course of the past century has the name Marx been so widely invoked; never has this name served to justify so many ideas and actions totally foreign to the genius of Marx.”

Today, Marxism has lost its oomph. Yuppies drinking five-dollar lattes put Che Guevara t-shirts on their private-school toddlers.

And because nobody thinks Marxists are scary anymore, radicals consumed with hatred for the status quo — for America, for Western civilization or for the plain old dreariness of their boring lives — don’t bother calling themselves Marxists anymore. It’s not that they’re any more or less Marxist then they were before. It’s just that Marxism won’t get a rise out of your in-laws the way it used to.

But Islamic radicalism? Hooboy, that’s where the action is. Of course, not everybody follows the John Walker Lindh route and actually converts to Islam, just as not every Black Panther supporter became a bank robber. But who can deny that this post-colonial, anti-imperialism, indigenous-peoples-and-the-suburban-revolutionaries-who-love-them-unite! stuff is in many respects just a magnet for the same riffraff and rabble rouses of yesteryear?

Sure, there’s much to fear in Jihadism. But there’s also something deeply pathetic about it, too. And that’s worth pointing out.

More on the great useful idiot tradition of the Left here.

Tarek Fatah is a Canadian Muslim who has been speaking out, despite persistent death threats, against the Islamists, as well as against the useful idiots on the far left who blindly ally with them (Toronto Star):

Tarek Fatah, a long-time left-leaning Muslim, jokes that maybe he’s just too good looking to be taken seriously as a representative of Islam. Certainly, the things he has to say about small-l liberals and the radical left in Western democracies – and their attitudes toward his faith – are anything but pretty.

“The liberal-left has a preconceived vision of what a Muslim is, and most of us don’t fit that mould,” says Fatah, a moderate leader in the Canadian Islamic community.

Clean-shaven himself, Fatah says many on the left expect Muslims to have dark, unruly beards and to be wearing unflattering flowing robes.

Fatah and many of his friends eschew both, but he’s known Muslims to rent robes when they meet with politicians or activist groups, in order to provide good visuals for the media.

But more disconcerting, he says, is a tendency he’s noticed among many on the left to embrace radical Muslims because they like the anti-U.S., anti-George W. Bush rhetoric of such people.

“They think they’re like the Sandinistas,” he says, referring to the Nicaraguan rebels of the 1980s.

Fatah’s frustration boiled to the surface this week as he prepared to fly to New York for a private screening of Islam vs. Islamist, a film cut from the line-up of the America at a Crossroads series of documentaries last month after PBS producers decided it was too alarmist.

For Fatah, the abrupt cancelling of a film looking into intimidation of moderate Muslims such as himself by conservatives is a symptom of something much more troubling he’s noticed in Western society – liberal guilt feeding liberal racism.

“It’s the racism of low expectations,” he says, adding the left is too willing to overlook the sexist and homophobic attitudes of conservative Muslims in hopes of gaining an ally against the U.S. administration.

Add to that liberal guilt for being part of the rich West, he says, and a situation soon develops in which the most outspoken Muslim critics of the West get the most attention.

“Moderate Muslims don’t have a place where they can speak, and the censoring of this film shows it,” says Fatah, who is featured in the film, produced by Martyn Burke.

Fatah lashed out at anti-war groups who march shoulder to shoulder with conservative Muslim groups to protest the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, without paying enough attention to the politics of the groups they are allying with.

[..]
A subject of numerous death threats for his criticism of conservative Muslims, Fatah says members of the left, by trying to be culturally sensitive, have at times become little more than apologists for those making the threats.

“The people who we hope in Western society would say, `How dare you make death threats,’ are saying, `Oh, we can understand, there’s a cultural disposition that permits people to be idiots’,” he says.

“They’re homophobes, but we understand.”
[..]
But for Fatah, the issues are much larger, a marriage of convenience between the left and conservative Muslims.

“Nothing makes them feel better than to say, `Those people who are being pissed on by George Bush, we’ll take care of them,’” Fatah says.

In so doing, he says the left may be falling into the same trap that the right once did – allying with Muslim fundamentalists to satisfy short-term goals, without enough attention paid to what those people believe.

“Toronto’s downtown war-withdrawers, Trotskyites march with the very people who would hang them,”
he says, pointing out that many on the left are atheists.
“The biggest crime in the eyes of Islamists is someone who denies the existence of God.”

Still on Progressive Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has long held that if Islamic culture is to change, if it is to evolve, if it is to undergo a Reformation, the key is the women of Islam. The key is their liberation.

Here are some positive signs that this process is indeed slowly but surely getting under way.

US:

NEW YORK: Muslim feminists from around the world have vowed to create the first women’s council to interpret the Koran and overcome two stereotypes about their religion: that Muslims are terrorists and Islam oppresses women.

The women’s council was among the most groundbreaking ideas introduced at a weekend meeting of more than 100 leaders in the fledgling Islamic feminist movement.

Many in the newly formed group, the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality, said strict sharia law was not divine because it was created by men and should be changed to incorporate women’s rights.
[..]
Daisy Khan, director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, said she hoped to create a fund to provide scholarships for Muslim women to study Islamic law so they could form a Shura Council of Women, the first with women interpreting the Koran.

Overcoming the “stereotype that Islam oppresses women” sounds a little contradictory if they feel the need to incorporate women’s rights into Sharia (indicating these rights are absent) and reinterpret the Koran, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on that one. Its only the start of a rather long road after all. But to quote Michael Totten, on the fact that burkas and veils are tools used by men to oppress women: “Spare me the excuses. I have heard them all and I’m not buying.”

Malaysia (from the same article):
Zainab Anwar, “executive director of Sisters in Islam, a Malaysian group working on women’s rights within the Islamic framework”, speaking at the above meeting:

“In our societies men hold power and they decide what Islam should mean and how we can obey that particular understanding of Islam,” [..]
“I can’t live with a God that is unjust,” she said. “The law is progressive, but those men controlling the law aren’t.”

Now we’re talking.

Canada:
(h/t RightGirl at the Western Standard blog)

Speaking at a conference in Gatineau, Que., Saturday, journalist-filmmaker Nelofer Pazira (Kandahar and Return to Kandahar) told the audience it is time for the Muslim community to start looking in the mirror.

Instead of complaining that the media only show fanatics and extremists, “we must look at ourselves and see how much we have contributed to that,” she said. Reticence and fear of being labelled have silenced too many moderate Muslims, Pazira added.

She was speaking at the 24th annual conference of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, which drew close to 200 women, and a handful of men, from across Canada.

Pazira spoke after morning prayers, the singing of the national anthem (full versions in both English and French) and a keynote address by noted Mideast expert Mai Yamani.

“I’m tired of all our complaints about the media,” she said, smiling. (Pazira works for CBC’s The National.) “We do not make it easy for the media to cover us.”
[..]
For Yamani an anthropologist who was the first Saudi Arabian woman to obtain a doctorate at the University of Oxford, and now a research fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London the challenge is broad.

Muslim women at the crossroads, she said, must choose between an open Islam that embraces the modern and a closed version that rejects the realities of our time. But the choices made will affect everybody.

“We are all at the crossroads Muslims, Christians, Jews and we have no option but to face the future together. We all share a humanity.”

The fundamentalist approach to Islam, both abroad and at home, came in for much criticism at the conference. The council, which does not claim to speak for all Muslim women, says its membership is mostly educated and professional women.

One woman raised in the West expressed her frustration at how the situation has developed here, where people should know better. Shahla Khan said conservative Islam has come into the West and is dominating the scene. She said she gets angry every time she goes to a mosque and has to enter through the back door, while her sons and husband go in through the front.

Her comments drew loud applause.

Yamani, whose books are banned in Saudi Arabia, said it is time for moderate and liberal Muslims to start speaking out more. “All the intellectuals and the more liberal Muslims have been marginalized and silenced.”

Germany:
(h/t The Jawa Report)

A female speaker gives a brilliant speech on the treatment of women in Islam, on honour killings, and on the need for Muslims to stand up against the Islamists. “We have to confront Political Islam full force”. I don’t know what conference she is speaking at, but it was held March 8th (International Women’s Day), this year:

(UPDATE) Iran:
Nobel peace prize winner and law lecturer at the University of Tehran, Shireen Ebadi, in a Q&A for the Times of India:

Q: You’re a Muslim arguing for dynamic interpretation of Islamic laws to make women equal before law. What’s your message to those who believe Islam condemns women to an inferior status?

A: I say, look carefully in the Koran so that the oppressors cannot mislead you with selective quotes. Don’t let people masquerading as clerics claim monopoly on understanding Islam. Allah created us as equal, and when we struggle for equality, we’re doing what Allah wanted us to do.

Q: Is it possible to follow every tenet of Islam in today’s world?

A: Many Islamic laws, like stoning to death, are not even there in Koran. But some laws need to be discussed. For example, Koran says during Ramadan a Muslim must fast from sunrise to sunset. It’s easy to do so in Iran or Saudi Arabia where the days and nights are almost equal. But if a Muslim goes to the North Pole, can he fast for six months, which is the duration of the day? So a third way is needed — and offered by Islam. The secondary laws say, implement the law in its spirit. In this case, divide the day(24 hours) into three equal parts, and use one part for fasting. By another law a rape victim has to produce four witnesses. This was to ensure no one will bring false testimonials. Today, the medical profession is such that it needs a single drop of blood to establish paternity. Surely it can serve in place of four witnesses!

See also my previous post “Democratic Muslims of Denmark; Copenhagen – the Mecca of the liberal Islamic reformation?”, which includes videos of Irshad Manji and Wafa Sultan speaking at a conference in Denmark organised by the Democratic Muslims organisation.

Note that I’ve been using the term “Progressive” rather than “Moderate”, as is common in Western media. Here’s part of the reason why. Foreign Policy has published a study which looks at the different between Moderate and Radical Muslims, in an attempt at answering the question “What Makes a Muslim Radical?”. The study found that there is in fact very little difference. And when a difference exists, it is not in the way you may expect.

The study is based on a Gallup World Poll that included more than 9,000 interviews in nine predominantly Muslim countries.

Their findings:

• “There is no significant difference in religiosity between moderates and radicals” and “radicals are no more likely to attend religious services regularly than are moderates.”
• “The radicals were found to earn more and stay at school longer than the moderates.” Yep, you read that right. Poverty has little to do with radicalisation. In fact I’d say it is more likely the same forces, that drive large segments of the Western middle class towards idealist “mass movements”, like Socialism, drives the more well-off Muslims towards the mass movement of radical Islamism. Others are of course simply brainwashed. More on this below.
• “More radicals expressed satisfaction with their financial situation and quality of life than their moderate counterparts, and a majority of them expected to be better off in the years to come.” Fits in well with my last comment.
• “Both moderates and radicals in the Muslim world admire the West, in particular its technology, democratic system, and freedom of speech.” Perhaps it is themselves they hate?
• “Although almost all Muslims believe the West should show more respect for Islam, radicals are more likely to feel that the West threatens and attempts to control their way of life. Moderates, on the other hand, are more eager to build ties with the West through economic development.” Again, seems like leftard paranoia to me. The West controls their way of life. In Australia leftards complain about the Liberal Party imposing “a fascist state” on them etc, while other people are happy for the economic opportunities presented to them. The G20 protests being a perfect example.

One of the things the above goes to confirm is that there is no great silent body of Moderate Muslims in the meaning that most Westerners attach to the term, although there is a small but growing number of Progressive Muslims or Democratic Muslims or Reformation Muslims or, as Wafa Sultan who believes Islam can only be transformed, not reformed, may prefer, Transformation Muslims. What there also is is a mass movement of Islamism, a utopian ideology like many before it, which has found extremely fertile ground in Islamic cultures. And that ground is extremely fertile for a mixture of cultural, religious and historical reasons, like the religious tradition of Jihad, a cultural obsession with honour and a visceral ly ingrained sense of victimhood. Unsurprisingly the leaders of the movement are from amongst the well off and educated, from sections of society that have been susceptible to the siren song of utopian ideology since concepts of power and possession first appeared amongst human beings.

I also recommend this article by historian Charles Allen, who traces the ebbs and flows and the current surge of the utopian political ideology embedded in Wahhabi and Deobandi (the sect the Taliban belong to) Islam. Extract:
(h./t Judith Apter Klinghoffer)

There is a widely held view in the West that the violence perpetrated by Muslim jihadists is a response to Western imperialism: a defence of Islam that will cease as soon as the US and its allies pull out of the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan (taking the Israelis with them). As a student of South Asian history I am bound to take a more sanguine view: that this violence has its roots in the perceived failure of Islam to achieve its destiny as a global religion, resulting in attempts to renew Sunni Islam and set it back on course to become the new world political order. The failure of our respective state departments to recognise the true nature of this revivalism has, I believe, contributed significantly to the West’s failure to get to grips with the phenomenon of Islamist extremism.

Finally, for a look even further into the history of Islam and what wrong, have a read of “Islamic world needs to look back to fine tune and set its future bearings”, by Iranian journalist Iqbal Latif.

Victor Davis Hanson in the National Review, Nov 3: “Before Iraq: The assumptions of a forgetful chattering class are badly off the mark” (***)

Long forgotten is the inspired campaign that removed a vicious dictator in three weeks. Nor is much credit given to the idealistic efforts to foster democracy rather than just ignoring the chaos that follows war — as we did after the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan, or following our precipitous departure from Lebanon and Somalia. And we do not appreciate anymore that Syria was forced to vacate Lebanon; that Libya gave up its WMD arsenal; that Pakistan came clean about Dr. Khan; and that there have been the faint beginnings of local elections in the Gulf monarchies.

Yes, the Middle East is “unstable,” but for the first time in memory, the usual killing, genocide, and terrorism are occurring in a scenario that offers some chance at something better. Long before we arrived in Iraq, the Assads were murdering thousands in Hama, the Husseins were gassing Kurds, and the Lebanese militias were murdering civilians. The violence is not what has changed, but rather the notion that the United States can do nothing about it; the U.S. has shown itself willing to risk much to support freedom in place of tyranny or theocracy in the region.

Instead of recalling any of this, Iraq is seen only in the hindsight of who did what wrong and when. All the great good we accomplished and the high ideals we embraced are drowned out by the present violent insurgency and the sensationalized effort to turn the mayhem into an American Antietam or Yalu River. Blame is never allotted to al Qaeda, the Sadr thugs, or the ex-Baathists, only to the United States, who should have, could have, or would have done better in stopping them, had its leadership read a particular article, fired a certain person, listened to an exceptional general, or studied a key position paper.

Charles Moore in the Telegraph, Nov 4: “From Suez to Iraq: how to weaken the will of the West”

Today, everyone blames the neoconservatives. It reminds me of a remark by Daniel Defoe in the early 18th century that the apprentice boys of London have very little idea of what a Papist is, but thousands of them are more than happy to go out and break his windows. Who in Britain knows that neocons are a phenomenon of the Left and that neither George W. Bush, nor Dick Cheney, nor Donald Rumsfeld has ever been one? Indeed, devilishly clever though neocons may be, they can’t be very good at PR, for they were responsible for about five per cent of the action in Iraq and have attracted about 95 per cent of the blame.

It is not mad ideology that got us into this war – or rather, the madness and the ideology come from our opponents, not from ourselves. If we do pull all our troops out, mock Blair and Bush, and hail some deal with Iran as “peace”, we shall have a few weeks of self-congratulation, but that is all.

The Islamist movements that wait to cheer our withdrawal are not militarily strong, but they are good at what they call “the management of savagery”, and they know that the West’s attention span is much shorter than their own. It is a pity that we seem so determined to prove them right.

Sean M. Maloney on Macleans.ca, Nov 6: “The exit strategy”

Victory in Afghanistan means understanding what we can achieve there, then sticking to it

Any discussion of a Canadian exit strategy for Afghanistan must take into account the reasons we are there in the first place, what we hope to accomplish given the current situation — which has evolved over the course of five years — and how we get there from here. All of this must be balanced against what resources Canada can bring to bear and how those resources are balanced with other national requirements. This is the essence of strategy.

Canada is al-Qaeda’s enemy. We stand for everything they hate, and they cannot be negotiated with — negotiations are neither acceptable nor desired, on either side. The war in Afghanistan is one of several conflicts that fit under the umbrella of the global war against the al-Qaeda movement, what is now referred to as “The Long War.” Afghanistan is but one front: in the Second World War there were operations in Europe, the Atlantic, Pacific, North Africa and so on, but Canada committed mostly to the Atlantic and Europe. In this case, Canada has chosen to focus on Afghanistan and not Iraq, the Philippines, the Horn of Africa, nor the streets of Madrid or London.

[..] A lack of perspective in Canada is a continuing problem. False analogies to the Soviet period (and even Vietnam) even figure in parliamentary committee debate: “the Soviets and the British couldn’t succeed, therefore we can’t,” one MP told me. We are not trying to do what the Soviets were attempting, but let’s look at the numbers anyway. The Soviets killed two million Afghan civilians using indiscriminate firepower and socialist societal transformation techniques. Soviet losses from their illegal intervention in 1979 to their withdrawal in 1989, we now believe, were around 28,000 killed over 10 years, or 2,800 per year. NATO and OEF losses over a five-year period are around 500. We are not employing indiscriminate firepower, there are comparatively few civilian casualties, and we are there in support of a legitimate, elected government. There is no real comparison.

[..]Canada will be walking out the front gate when we feel the job is done, not slink out some dark back window when the going gets rough. After the disasters at Hong Kong and Dieppe during the Second World War, it was difficult if not impossible to see victory three and four years later in 1945. In the dark days of 1995, we never believed that peace could be achieved in Bosnia, yet in 2004 the situation was stable enough for Canada to withdraw. We are in a stronger position in Afghanistan against our enemies now than we were in the Balkans five years in, and during the first years of the Second World War: let’s not throw it away and say it was all in vain because of ignorance and fear.

Nibras Kazimi in the NY Sun, Nov 6: “Something Is Changing”

Lately, I’ve been hearing worrisome things about the Iraq Study Group. James Baker, the co-chairman of this congressionally mandated bipartisan body, reportedly is going to recommend some radical strategic changes in America’s Iraq policy. But my worries were laid to rest last week when President Bush made it very clear that he is indeed staying the course, even though he put some rhetorical distance between himself and the loaded catchphrase.

According to multiple sources, the Baker report, to be released late November, will counsel burying the “democracy as stability” doctrine for the Middle East and also recommend opening lines of communication with Iraqi insurgents and their cheerleaders in Iran and Syria. Furthermore, the Saudis will be brought in to “fix” Iraq — just as they were asked to step in and fix Lebanon in the early 1990s.

The report, arriving at a politically melodramatic moment for Mr. Bush’s political opponents at home, will likely find favor among foreign opponents to Mr. Bush’s vision for the Middle East. But Mr. Bush, whose instincts are commonsensical, is likely to send the report back with some pertinent questions scribbled in the margins:
[..]
But Jim, there is one thing I’d like to know and that is why did Lieutenant Mohammad Hikmet al-Badrani, a young Iraqi Sunni from Mosul, keep firing his weapon when attacked by the insurgents two weeks ago, and why did he give up his life for a new Iraq?

It is easy for journalists to ride the ” Iraq is failing” wave and churn out the safe stories that tell us that all is bad. It is much harder for them to make sense of why so many Iraqi policemen and soldiers are fighting back when attacked rather than dropping their weapons and cowering for safety. Something is changing in Iraq, and it is happening despite the serial bungling of Mr. Maliki’s government or the incessant predictions of an American withdrawal. It is happening because more and more Iraqis understand what is at stake should those murderous insurgents win.

Would Lieutenant Badrani have cut and run had he been aware of Mr. Baker’s wobbly recommendations? I don’t think so. And I don’t think that Mr. Bush’s resolve on this long course ahead will fail either.

James Q. Wilson in the Wall Street Journal, Nov 6, “The Press at War: What ever happened to patriotic reporters? “

Between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed the successes. About 40% of the stories reported terrorist attacks; scarcely any reported the triumphs of American soldiers and Marines. The few positive stories about progress in Iraq were just a small fraction of all the broadcasts.

When the Center for Media and Public Affairs made a nonpartisan evaluation of network news broadcasts, it found that during the active war against Saddam Hussein, 51% of the reports about the conflict were negative. Six months after the land battle ended, 77% were negative; in the 2004 general election, 89% were negative; by the spring of 2006, 94% were negative. This decline in media support was much faster than during Korea or Vietnam.

Naturally, some of the hostile commentary reflects the nature of reporting. When every news outlet struggles to grab and hold an audience, no one should be surprised that this competition leads journalists to emphasize bloody events. To some degree, the press covers Iraq in much the same way that it covers America: it highlights conflict, shootings, bombings, hurricanes, tornadoes, and corruption.

But the war coverage does not reflect merely an interest in conflict. People who oppose the entire war on terror run much of the national press, and they go to great lengths to make waging it difficult.

and Canada:

A couple of days later, an unnamed very senior mega-important super-duper government official (as The New York Times says when it’s leaking details of U.S. national security programs) told me that, after untold meetings during the Chrétien-Martin years, he’d concluded that Canada, like New Zealand, saw itself not as a country but as an NGO. [..] Australia, on the other hand, is an old-fashioned nation state: it has responsibilities rather than attitudes. A few days into my trip to the Antipodes, I’d heard so often the line that Canada to America is like New Zealand to Australia, that I began proposing an alternative: Canada to America is like Indonesia to Australia–crazy joint to the north where half the people are jumping up and down shouting, “Death to the Great Satan!” But, after mulling it over, I decided this was unfair to the Indonesians. The world’s largest Muslim nation is a fragile democracy, to be sure, but it seems, for the moment, to be doing quite a good job holding down the Islamists.

And while I am here, here’s Steyn on Iraq:

On the ground America has allowed its enemies to subvert Iraq with impunity. My model here would be the so-called “Confrontation” in Indonesia 40 years ago, a conflict so obscure I’ll bet most readers have never heard of it. The Indonesians were convinced that the British had set up the new Federation of Malaysia as a neo-colonial puppet regime and so sent “insurgents” across the borders to subvert it and foment coups, secessions, etc. British and Commonwealth forces decided to return the favor and sent troops on lethally effective raids into Indonesia, keeping Jakarta on the defensive and dramatically reducing the amount of mischief they were able to make. The Brits and Aussies and Malays won that one with barely a word of it making the papers. This is exactly what the Americans should be doing with Syria and Iran. Instead, we accept the same de facto one-way traffic flow as applies on the US-Mexican border. This is one reason why we wound up hunkered down in the “Green Zone”. In future, it should be the other fellow who has to have a Green Zone.

The above comment is from National Review’s symposium “Last Chance for Iraq?”, which appeared in the September 11 print edition only. The other contributors were Michael Rubin, Michael A. Ledeen, Newt Gingrich and David Frum. You can see read their contributions on the American Enterprise Institute website.

Symposiums seem to be all the rage this week and National Review have another one on their site, also from September 11, on the question “Did It Change Us?”, which also featured Mark Steyn. Others include Daniel Pipes and James Lileks.

Here’s Pipes:

9/11 changed much for conservatives, little for liberals.

Conservatives tend to see the United States, Western culture, and even civilization itself under assault from a barbaric totalitarian force in some way connected to Islam. They perceive a cosmic struggle — reminiscent of those in World War II and the Cold War — over the future destiny of mankind.

Liberals tend to have a far more relaxed view of the situation, as symbolized by John Kerry’s 2004 comment calling terrorism a “nuisance” and comparing it to gambling and prostitution. Liberals widely accuse conservatives, for self-interested reasons, of exaggerating the threat. The hard Left goes further and purveys conspiracy theories about the Bush administration having perpetrated 9/11.

As I pointed out already in 1994 (in a National Review article), the current debate divides along lines closely mirroring those concerning the Soviet Union. Conservatives, being prouder of what Americans have created, worry more about external threats and urge confrontation; liberals, being more self-critical, are more sanguine, and prefer conciliation. Put differently, 9/11 mobilized conservatives against radical Islam even as it mobilized liberals against conservatives.

Looking ahead, nothing but an atrocity of terrible proportions will wake liberals and make “united we stand” once again a meaningful slogan.

But this is a Steyn post, so curtain call, buddy:

In the end, very little changed. The so-called “9/11 Democrats” are almost as invisible a presence as the “moderate Muslim,” and, insofar as one can tell, are most likely outnumbered by members of the Scowcroftian unrealpolitik Right still wedded to stability uber alles. In theory, if you’d wanted to construct an enemy least likely to appeal to the progressive Left, wife-beating gay-bashing theocrats would surely be it. But Islamism turned out to be the ne plus ultra of multiculti diversity-celebration — for what more demonstrates the boundlessness of one’s “tolerance” than by tolerating the intolerant. The Europeans’ fetishization of the Palestinians — whereby the more depraved the suicide bombers are the more brutalized they must have been by the Israelis — has, in effect, been globalized.

Anyone who’s mooched about the Muslim world for even brief amounts of time is struck by what David Pryce-Jones calls its “intellectual poverty”: It has a remarkable lack of curiosity about anything beyond its horizons. That hobbled it for centuries in its wars against the west. But our multicultural mindset is its mirror image: For isn’t the principle characteristic of “multiculturalism” its almost total lack of curiosity about other cultures? The multicultis make bliss of ignorance: You don’t need to know anything about Islam, you just have to feel warm and fluffy about it, and slap that “CO-EXIST” bumper sticker on your Subaru. If you want to know how little changed on 9/11, look at how it’s being observed in the nation’s schools.

“It’s a battle of ideas as much as it is a military battle.”
—General John Abizaid, January 29, 2004

So apparently we are losing the battle of ideas in the war against radical Islam. You know, the one that can’t be won with tanks and bombs and all that. And the problem goes well beyond PR disasters resulting from military misadventure, perceived or otherwise.

How can this be, you may ask? You’d think that after winning the Cold War this would be one aspect of the war the West would have down pat, right? After all, the same battle-hardened “ideas” that won then have been set to work now, so victory is in the bag.

Newt Gingrich, for one, certainly seems to think so:

“On the Sunday talk shows, former House speaker Newt Gingrich has been insisting that the White House pursue Mideast regime change and “use the kind of strategy we used” in Eastern Europe to encourage democratic revolts in terrorist states.”

The strategy used in Eastern Europe was to deploy behind enemy lines the implicitly secular ideas of individual freedom and democracy against the ideas totalitarianism and oppression. Lo-and-behold, the ultra-secular populace more than gladly capitulated and liberation was imminant. And if freedom can be measured by the number of nightclubs and shopping malls per capita, Moscow and Prague are poised to become freer than Paris and London by the end of the decade.

Apparently this is the strategy that Mr Gingrich has in mind for the White House. Ditto for President Bush, although her prefers to use subtler terms like “promoting freedom and democracy”. Thats President Bush who betrayed his absolute ignorance of Islam, let alone radical Islamism he is supposedly leading the free world against when, two month before the invasion of Iraq, he expressed curious surprise after members of the Iraqi opposition mentioned there being two kinds of Islam – Sunni and Shiite. This conversation allegedly took place when President Bush invited the Iraqis to watch the Superbowl with him, perhaps eager to show off one of the fruits of freedom and democracy and thus whet the appetite of the Iraqis for the coming liberation. (source: former US Diplomat Peter Galbraith in “Iraq: The Reckoning” documentary, nov 2005 )

Besides the folly of equating the ideological battleground of secular Eastern Europe, prostate beneath the boot of atheistic Communism, with that of the religiously conservative Islamic Middle East (and Islam in the rest of the world, for that matter), even one that is in parts beneath the boot of secular military dictarship, there are two problem with simply reapplying the Cold War approach. Both of them stem from the forces of globalisation that have reshaped the world since the Cold War ended. The first is the demographic Achilles heel the West has created for itself through irresponsible mass immigration. The second is the exponential multiplication of ideological battle fronts brought about by advances in communications technology.

As Mark Steyn wrote last week:

Our enemies understand “why we fight” and where the fight is. They know that in the greater scheme of things the mosques of Jakarta and Amsterdam and Toronto and Dearborn, Mich., are more important territory than the Sunni Triangle. The U.S. military is the best-equipped and best-trained in the world. But it’s not enough, it never has been, and it never will be.

That is the territory for which the battle of ideas, the famed battle “for hearts and minds” should now be waged in the West, as well as the Middle East – mosques, schools, universities, libraries, internet forums, the blogosphere and all other forms of electronic and print media. That is the battle being lost, that must be won and which has now drawn all of us in. Yet far beyond not “understanding “why we fight”, most people in the West are oblivious to the fact that there is a fight on in the first place.

Here’s a couple of examples from the weekend’s press that serve as both metaphor and example of why we may be losing.

Exhibit A: In Germany a group of Muslims have launched a new dawah initiative – a mosque on wheels. Presumably taking advantage of the current heat wave, the truck rolls around the cities of Germany, reeling kids in by playing the ice-cream truck melody familiar to children everywhere. “Would you like a Koran with that?” Ok, I am joking about the ice-cream. But the rest is true.
The “Islamobil” is touring Germany, with the goal of “informing Germans about Islam”, explains one of the tour organisers, Gülüzar Keskin. Well, it sure beats door knocking. One of the first things that comes to mind is what the response may be if a Christiamobil attempted a loop of Cairo, Tehran or Islamabad, but I won’t dwell on the obvious.

The tour has apparently going very well:

‘Many visitors have already asked us if we have addresses for mosques nearby, so that they can get more information about Islam.” Keskin said.

I am all for interfaith and intercultural dialogue and Westerners learning about Islam. But that is different from open-ended religious campaigning. A measure of a society’s instinct for cultural self-preservation must surely be also applied.

Exhibit B: Channel 4 is soon screening a program titled a “A Beginner’s Guide to Islam.” Fair enough, you may think, any education enquiry into one of the world’s great religions is welcome just about now. But wait, here are the details:

Sir Bob Geldof’s daughter, Peaches Geldof is to present a new TV series about religion for Channel 4.

As part of ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Islam’ Peaches will be moving in with a devout Muslim girl from Morocco and her family.

The house [sic] long programme intends to find out what the Islamic world makes of someone like mardy Peaches and disprove Islam’s allegedly ‘bad’ reputation.

During the show Peaches will be witnessing the sacrificing of a sheep and attend a ‘taking the veil’ party…rocking.

A programme spokeswoman said to MSN: “The contributors will come face to face with three of the worlds most talked about religions, exploring their unfamiliar rituals and testing regimes.”

Other programmes in the series will feature Paul Nichols taking a look at Hinduism in India and comedian Hardeep Singh Kohli trying to find out what Scientology really is all about.

More details here:

Geldof sets out to prove that Islam does not deserve its “bad reputation”.

The hour-long program will find out “what the Islamic world makes of this precocious London party girl”, according to Channel 4.

17 year old Peaches Geldof (full name Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof), whom I wish the best of luck in her experience, is pictured top right.

Now, I understand that “the battle of ideas” is the furthest thing from the minds of the shows producers and that for them it is all about the battle of the ratings. Channel 4 is not the global Embassy of Western Secularism (perhaps that honour can be reserved for the culturally sensitive organisers of Kabul’s first fashion show). My point is rather that their attitudes and the recruitment of Peaches Geldof to present a “Beginner’s guide to Islam”, is representative of a misguided and naive championining of certain aspects of Western culture, beneath the banner of “freedom”, that have become the de facto frontline deployment in the aforementioned battle of ideas. A battle, that, as mentioned previously, has been globalised into a universality. ( Meaning that, by the way, whether they like it or not, Channel 4 ARE involved in the battle. And in that context, can you think of anything more idiotic than sending an over-sexualised teenager in a mini-skirt, accompanies by soft porn promo shots to “learn [and thus teach her viewers] about Islam”? Is the cult of youth, beauty and ratings obsession of the West so far gone that it is completely oblivious to the moral irresponsibility of this undertaking?) The aspects I am talking about are liberated sexuallity, adolescent self-determination, the cult of youth etc. – all of which, in this context, are examples of a degraded understanding of a great and noble idea of individual freedom.

The show will present yet another opportunity for Muslims to point out the moral depravity of the West, the lack of modesty in Western women, to lecture about parental irresponsibility, chastity, alcohol and drug use etc etc. Is it not mundanely predictable yet, “what the Islamic world will make of this precocious London party girl”? Is there a better vehicle for dawah? (Well, yes, probably the Islamobil, you might think). Peaches may be a perfectly innocent and intelligent young woman, but what matters here is comparative perception and reputation, which may or or may not have been caricatured by the gossip press.

Of course this would be at least in part a result of a deliberate baiting of controversy, a sure ratings winner. Perhaps for their next sensation they can send Tommy Lee to do a semester at Al-Azhar University. That sure fire hit would really be a service to Western civilisation.

In the Cold War years youth, beauty and mini-skirts may have screamed “freedom” to repressed masses stuck in the bland greyness of Communist totalitarianism. But for most of the deeply conservative and often bitterly alienated Muslims that radical Islam targets for its recruitment these same things only scream about Western depravity and godlessness. For many Muslims rather than being the personafication of freedom, Peaches will be a mini-skirt inch away from being a sign of the pending apocalypse.

A “Beginner’s Guide” may well do with dictionary and for that purpose I recommend Wolfgang Bruno’s Islamic Dictionary for Infidels”, which should perhaps be required reading for all our esteemed leaders:

Andrew G. Bostom, author of “The Legacy of Jihad,” notes that President Bush has repeatedly stressed the paramount importance of promoting freedom in the Middle East. However, Bostom points out that Hurriyya, the Arabic for “freedom,” and the uniquely Western concept of freedom “are completely at odds.” Hurriyya – “freedom” – is – as Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) the lionized “Greatest Sufi Master,” expressed it -“perfect slavery” under the will of Allah. Bernard Lewis, in his analysis of hurriyya for the venerated Encyclopedia of Islam, maintains that:

“…there is still no idea that the subjects have any right to share in the formation or conduct of government—to political freedom, or citizenship, in the sense which underlies the development of political thought in the West.”

Meanwhile, the German- Syrian scholar Bassam Tibi, a Muslim reformist, is warning the West against wishful thinking in its “dialogue” with Muslims. “The dialogue is not proceeding well because of the two-facedness of most Muslim interlocutors on the one hand and the gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists on the other.”

..

(The whole essay is highly recommended reading)

It is wishful thinking indeed that Cold War strategies can work against an enemy ideologically alien to the previous one, on a ubiquitously redefined battlefield. And what could possibly examplify the “gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists” better than Peaches Geldof being sent to “find out what the Islamic world makes of her” and “disprove Islam’s allegedly ‘bad’ reputation”.

We are taking damage in this “battle of ideas” and the source of the damage is friendly fire.

Yet another brilliant essay from Fjordman has been posted at the Brussels Journal.

Stupidity Without Borders – The Alliance of Utopias

From the desk of Fjordman on Mon, 2006-07-17 08:38

The 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries have witnessed the most spectacular population growth in human history, most of it in Third World countries. The world’s population, estimated at 6.4 billion in 2006, grows by more than 70 million people per year. In sixty years, Brazil’s population has increased by 318 per cent; Ethiopia’s by 503 per cent. There are now 73 million people in Ethiopia – more than the population of Britain or France.

At the same time, many of the most economically successful countries, both in the East and in the West, have problems with ageing or declining populations. At its peak around 1910, one-quarter of the world’s population lived in Europe or North America. Today the percentage has probably declined to about one-eighth. South Korea’s birthrate has dropped to the point where the average Korean woman is expected to have only one child throughout her life. The U.S. still has a birthrate of more than two, while the U.K. saw births inch up from 1.63 to 1.74 and Germany from 1.34 to 1.37 in the same period. The low birthrate problem in Asia is rooted in women’s rising social and economic standing. Japan’s birthrate was 1.28, comparable to Taiwan’s 1.22, and Hong Kong’s 0.94.

“Europe and Japan are now facing a population problem that is unprecedented in human history,” said Bill Butz, president of the Population Reference Bureau. Countries have lost people because of wars, disease and natural disasters but never because women stopped having enough children. Japan announced that its population had shrunk in 2005 for the first time, and that it was now the world’s most elderly nation. Italy was second. On average, women must have 2.1 children in their lifetimes for a society to replenish itself, accounting for infant mortality and other factors. Only one country in Europe – Muslim Albania – has a fertility rate above 2. Russia’s fertility rate is 1.28.

Writer Spengler in the Asia Times Online commented that demography is destiny: “Never in recorded history have prosperous and peaceful nations chosen to disappear from the face of the earth. Yet that is what the Europeans have chosen to do. Back in 1348 Europe suffered the Black Death.” “The plague reduced the estimated European population by about a third. In the next 50 years, Europe’s population will relive – in slow motion – that plague demography, losing about a fifth of its population by 2050.”

It’s numbers like these that have prompted Singapore’s former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew to state that “it’s demography, and not democracy, that will be the critical factor shaping growth and security in the 21st century. High rates of births are contributing to the booming populations which are dragging down developing nations. Meanwhile falling birth rates are sapping the growth of developed nations.” “Although migration is one option developed countries are looking at to keep their economies vibrant,” Lee said, “it might not solve all their troubles and might even breed social tensions.” According to him, governments may not be able to afford to keep out of personal issues like sex, marriage and procreation much longer.

Historian Niall Ferguson reveals how Islam is winning the numbers game. “If fertility persisted at such low levels, within 50 years Spain’s population would decline by 3-4 million, Italy’s by a fifth. Not even two World Wars had inflicted such an absolute decline in population.” “In 1950 there had been three times as many people in Britain as in Iran. By 1995 the population of Iran had overtaken that of Britain. By 2050, the population of Iran could be more than 50 per cent larger. At the time of writing, the annual rate of population growth is more than seven times higher in Iran than in Britain.”

Even in developing countries such as fast-evolving China, population growth is falling, and in the Indian subcontinent, Muslims have higher growth rates than Hindus or other non-Muslims. We thus have a situation with an explosive population growth in failed countries, while many of the most economically and technologically advanced nations, Eastern and Western, have stagnating populations. This strange and possibly unprecedented situation, which could perhaps be labelled “survival of the least fit”, will have dramatic consequences for the world. It is already producing the largest migration waves in history, threatening to swamp islands of prosperity in a sea of poverty.

..

You really should read it all.

Another overdue one from the post queue, on an issue I said I’ll get back to – the debate in Canada following the June 2-3 arrests of 17 Islamist terror suspects.

I will not go into the details of the arrests, the plot and the court proceedings here, as that has been thoroughly covered on many sites. Check out the Wikipedia entry or the related post on the Counterrorrism blog.

Instead, here is collection of quotes I compiled over several weeks following the arrests. The media surveyed here is by no means an exhaustive list, but I covered a farely good chunk of it, at least in Canada. A look at the whitewash, the common sense, the inane political correctness, the voices of reason and the voices of delusion.

I decided not to try to attempt to categorise the quotes, they are presented in chronological order, as they appeared in the media. At little rough around the edges, but you get that. This list is sure to come in handy for future reference.

As a prelude some relevant background quotes from 1998-2006, compiled by Steward Bell in his June 3rd article in the National Post.

TARGET: CANADA

1998 “You cannot stop us.” A World Islamic Front letter is sent to police advising that a biological and chemical weapons attack would be launched in the Montreal subway system.

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A group of Algerians is arrested and deported.

1999 "In the summer of 1999, Samir Ait Mohamed and Ahmed Ressam discussed placing explosives in the Outremont suburb of Montreal because it was a predominantly Jewish neighborhood," the FBI says.

2001 "Special file for our brother Abu Bakr al-Albani on the nature of his mission. First, the mission. Gather information on ... the possibility of obtaining explosive devices inside Canada." -- August 2001 e-mail found on al-Qaeda computer in Kabul.

2001 "In the lead-up and immediate aftermath to 9/11... there was a conspiracy of eight individuals who had designs to execute an act of serious violence in the Toronto area," Jack Hooper, CSIS Deputy Director of Operations, states.

2002 "As you kill, you will be killed." -- Osama bin Laden in an audiotaped speech that threatened Canada.

2004 "Human Targets: We must target and kill the Jews and the Christians.... The grades of importance are as follows: Americans, British, Spaniards, Australians, Canadians, Italians," instructs Al Battar, an al-Qaeda training manual.

2005 "And now you will get news of what hurts you." A jihadists video production posted on the Internet repeats bin Laden's 2002 threat to Canada.

2006 "We have a bifurcated threat at this point -- the threat that comes to Canada from the outside as well as a homegrown threat, and the homegrown variants look to Canada to execute their targeting," Mr. Hooper warns.

_M#]

Same Steward Bell article, former RCMP jihadism expert Tom Quiggin, now a university researcher in Singapore and “Canada’s only court-recognized expert on jihadism”:

Canadians should not be surprised to see terrorism coming so close to home… A clear sense of denial exists in Canada about the degree to which terrorism activity occurs. Political correctness is wielded as a weapon against anyone who dares to speak out. Yet some of the world’s most infamous terrorists have operated in Canada almost unhindered for years…Even direct threats against Canada and attacks against Canadians with multiple deaths have not broken this denial. As a result of the highly suppressed political discourse in Canada, the domestic response to this growing problem has been limited.”

Steward Bell himself now. Bell is the author of “Cold Terror: How Canada Nurtures and Exports Terrorism Around the World”:

In Europe, the United States and Australia, intelligence agencies have been reporting the same trend: loose homegrown youth networks (some of them virtual networks that exist only in cyberspace) inspired by al-Qaeda but that operate locally and autonomously.

…

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Western jihadist youth counterculture is the next phase in the evolution of global terrorism. Since becoming a credible threat in the late 1980s, al-Qaeda has decentralized and spread from its origins in Pakistan and Afghanistan to the point that a "high percentage" of the extremists on the CSIS radar screen are now Canadian-born. "These individuals are part of Western society, and their 'Canadianness' makes detection more difficult," a "secret" CSIS report notes.

Generation Jihad encompasses a variety of ethnic backgrounds, and includes Africans and South Asians as well as converts to Islam. Some are educated and computer-literate, while others have criminal records and more closely fit the profile of street-gang culture.

But they share a devotion to puritanical Islam, contempt for non-Muslims (and other Muslims deemed not sufficiently Islamist) and a seething anger at what they see as the worldwide oppression of Muslims. On top of that, they believe that terrorist violence is a justified response to the "war on Islam" they are convinced the West is waging in such places as Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as within Western countries such as Canada, which have arrested Muslims for terrorism.

_M#]

from a review of Bells “Cold Terror: How Canada Nurtures and Exports Terrorism Around the World”:

Bell worries most about al-Qaeda-style radical Islam, because it preaches and practises “violence without limits” and “serves not only a strategic purpose, but fulfills the will of God.” To Islamic terrorists, chemical, nuclear and biological weapons are “the bigger, the better.” He observes that “their hatred arises from centuries-old grievances and their aim is long term: a world under the rule of Islam, the one true faith.”

Alvin Chand, the brother of suspect Steven Vikash Chand speaking outside the courthouse. (New York Times):

“He’s not a terrorist, come on, he’s a Canadian citizen… The people that were arrested are good people. They go to the mosque. They go to school, go to college.”

Tarek Fatah, the communications director of the Muslim Canadian Congress, (in the same NY Times article), speaking about Qayyum Abdul Jamal, the oldest of the suspects and the imam of the Ar-Rahman Quran Learning Center:

“He took over an otherwise peaceful mosque and threw out the old management. There were reports throughout the community of him making hate speeches.”

“This is the work of people who believe they are victimized when they are not. Many Islamacists are preying on the Islamic community.”

“Law enforcement agencies have done a great service to the Muslim community by busting this terrorist cell.”

More reason and common sense from Mr Fatah further down.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper,
(in the same NY Times article):

“These individuals were allegedly intent on committing acts of terrorism against their own country and their own people. Today, Canada’s security and intelligence measures worked.”

Mike McDonell, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police assistant commissioner
(in the same NY Times article):

“They represent the broad strata of our society. Some are students, some are employed, some are unemployed.”

Yep, the whitewash brigade has sent in the PC cavalry.

Roger L Simon, June 3, commenting on the above NY Times article, in “Eight Paragraphs down”:

I can’t say I’m surprised it took eight paragraphs before the New York Times deigned to tell us what might be behind (have motivated) the arrest of 17 people in Ontario over the last couple of days. In fact it takes them six paragraphs before they even name any names. And of course they hasten first to make sure we know most of these men (not yet identified as Islamists) are “young people,” shades of the French linguistic obsession with les jeunes, lest we might think them representative of a hostile ideology. This political bowdlerization is accomplished in paragraph four. Think for a moment how the Times would have constructed an article (has constructed many articles) about the malfeasance of US servicemen. They sure wouldn’t bury the lede. They would scream “American failure” at the top of their semi-refined lungs in paragraph one.

Andrew C. McCarthy, June 5th, commenting on the “broad strata of society” comment above, in The Elephant in the Room: The mainstream media continue to suppress the “Islam” in Islamic terrorism. (National Post):

In point of fact, however, they represent a very narrow stratum of Canadian society: They are Muslims, many of whom attend the same mosque, the Al-Rahman Islamic Centre for Islamic Education in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga.

Not only were all those arrested Muslims. The reported evidence against them fits to a tee the shopworn pattern of Islamic terrorism repeated for much of the last two decades. Young men were radicalized at the local mosque and its companion school by elders preaching from the Koran. They participated in paramilitary training in rural outposts. The training involved firearms and communications equipment. The plotters may have conducted surveillance on specific targets. And they ordered prodigious amounts of explosives components—in this case, tons of fertilizer in preparation for the construction of crude but deadly effective ANFO (ammonium nitrate and fuel oil) bombs.

Nonetheless, the rigorous media practice in Phase One is to suppress any reference to Islam,…..

[#M_Click to expand extract inpost.|Close| the single thread that runs through virtually all modern terrorism—from New York, to Virginia, to Bali, the Djerba, to Baghdad, to Mombassa, to Tel Aviv, to Nairobi, to Dar es Salaam, to Ankara, to Paris, to Riyadh, to Amman, to Sharm el-Sheikh, to Aden, to London, to Madrid, and, now, to Toronto.

Consequently, the piece of information most obviously pertinent to the public’s understanding of what could be catalyzing this global savagery is consciously withheld. Such a revelation might, after all, lead people to ask the sensible question: What is it about Islam that makes it such a fertile breeding ground for this pathology?

Instead, we are given the defendants’ nationality, or, even more vaporously, the continental region from which they emigrated to wherever they happen to be making mischief at the moment. The Times relates that the “17 men” arrested in Canada “were mainly of South Asian descent and most were in their teens or early 20’s.”

....

Yes, public discussion of Koranic verse and all things Islamic is permissible only when the coverage template moves into Phase Two. This phase is basically the group hug for Muslims—modern journalism’s act of contrition for reluctantly having to report on all these pesky arrests and plots and ANFO bombs. And somehow, the media-mined verses are never, for example, “[F]ight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)” (Sura 9:5). Rather, they are about a humble, unarmed man laid low by the infidels … while he’s dabbling in chemical explosives.

Phase Two was also in full swing Monday, as the Times returned to the Canadian plot. The conspiracy’s leaders, we were told, may have “led prayers” and given “fiery speeches,” but this doesn’t mean they “openly embrace[d] violence.” After all, it’s just Islam (many of whose fiery scriptures openly embrace violence).

….

No, in Phase Two, balance is not a priority. Once the press finally summons the courage to utter that Muslims have been arrested, its primary duty is to obsess over how the “Muslim community” will react. The Times thus admonishes that “some in the Muslim community [are] skeptical about the lack of specific charges.” Indeed, “[s]ince Sept. 11,” we are advised, “several police investigations against Muslims here have unraveled after arrests were made, which has left a bitter legacy within the Muslim community.”

Naturally, there is no discussion of what the Muslim community thinks about the more important “bitter legacy”—namely, the violence that stems from within the Muslim community. There is no mention of the fact that, before and after the 9/11 attacks, numerous indicted Muslims have been convicted by impartial juries of terrorist acts and plots—to say nothing of the countless Muslims who proudly claim credit for barbaric acts while managing to evade capture. Nor is there acknowledgement that convictions for terrorism routinely follow these monotonous protestations about Muslims being framed, Muslims being entrapped, and Muslims being otherwise ensnared by “Islamophobic” authorities—such claims having been dutifully echoed ad nauseum across our 24/7 media, regardless of whether they passed the laugh test.

_M#]

Click the link to read the rest of this (rather long) post.

Read the rest of this entry »

Still on Canada, an educational look into the workings of some rather twisted and hateful minds. “Hateful chatter behind the veil” traces through cyberspace the digital footsteps left by the wives of some of the terror suspects arrested in Canada on June 3rd.

The whole article is worth reading, but here are some selection.

MISSISSAUGA — When it came time to write up the premarital agreement between Zakaria Amara and Nada Farooq, Ms. Farooq briefly considered adding a clause that would allow her to ask for a divorce.

She said that Mr. Amara (now accused of being a leader of the alleged terror plot that led to the arrests of 17 Muslim men early this month) had to aspire to take part in jihad.

“[And] if he ever refuses a clear opportunity to leave for jihad, then i want the choice of divorce,” she wrote in one of more than 6,000 Internet postings uncovered by The Globe and Mail.

Wives of four of the central figures arrested last month were among the most active on the website, sharing, among other things, their passion for holy war, disgust at virtually every aspect of non-Muslim society and a hatred of Canada. The posts were made on personal blogs belonging to both Mr. Amara and Ms. Farooq, as well as a semi-private forum founded by Ms. Farooq where dozens of teens in the Meadowvale Secondary School area chatted. The vast majority of the posts were made over a period of about 20 months, mostly in 2004, and the majority of those were made by the group’s female members.

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Ms Farooq, on jihad:

There is nothing casual about Ms. Farooq's interpretation of Islam. She reiterates the belief that jihad is the "sixth pillar" of the religion, and her on-line postings are decidedly interested in the violent kind. In the forum titled "Terrorism and killing civilians," she writes a detailed point-by-point explanation of why the Taliban is destined to emerge victorious in Afghanistan

Ms. Farooq on homosexuality:

Ms. Farooq's criticism is often directed first at other Muslims. When another poster writes about how he finds homosexuality disgusting, Nada replies by pointing out that there are even gay Muslims. She then posts a photo of a rally held by Al-Fatiha, a Canadian support group for gay Muslims. "Look at these pathetic people," she writes. "They should all be sent to Saudi, where these sickos are executed or crushed by a wall, in public."

Mariya's (wife of alleged leader Fahim Ahmad) wishes for Israel's jews:

In a thread started by Mr. Fahim's wife, Mariya, marking the death of Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi after an Israeli missile strike, Ms. Farooq unleashes her fury: "May Allah crush these jews, bring them down to their kneees, humuliate them. Ya Allah make their women widows and their children orphans."

By the way, they certainly did not get it from their parents:

While his daughter has used her Internet forum to lament the end of the Taliban, Mr. Farooq is a firm supporter of Canada's mission in Afghanistan. Many of the soldiers he serves at CFB Wainwright will eventually be joining the mission.

Ms. Farooq's feelings towards the ever-tolerant and all-accepting Canada:

Ms. Farooq's hatred for the country is palpable. She hardly ever calls Canada by its name, rather repeatedly referring to it as "this filthy country." It's a sentiment shared by many of her friends, one of whom states that the laws of the country are irrelevant because they are not the laws of God.

In late April of 2004, a poster asks the forum members to share their impressions of what makes Canada unique. Nada's answer is straightforward.

"Who cares? We hate Canada."

Ms Jamal's paranoia (Ms Jamal is 44):

"You don't know that the Muslims in Canada will never be rounded up and put into internment camps like the Japanese were in WWII!" she writes in one 2004 post. This is a time when Muslims "are being systematically cleansed from the earth," she adds.

Mr Fahim on beheadings:

In May, 2004, the Meadowvale students come across an extremely graphic video showing the beheading of a U.S. hostage in Iraq. Mr. Fahim, posting under the name "Soldier of ALLAH," praises the killers as mujahedeen who will be rewarded in the afterlife. Another poster maintains the beheading was actually carried out by U.S. forces as a ploy to direct anger at the Muslim community. It's this post that inspires Nada to prohibit any further discussion of similar conspiracy theories.

Three posts later, her husband reprints an article claiming the Americans were responsible for the beheading.

_M#]

I get a strong sense of deja vu reading these forum quotes as I’ve spent a bit of time on various Muslim forums, Australian and international, and on every one there is always a vocal minority, who hold the same views, use the same tone, says the exact same things, pretty much word for word, with the same hate for all things Western, with the same rabid paranoia, the same sense of victimhood and the same urgency for violent and spectacular revenge. And I will be posting examples to confirm this and links, so people can confirm it for themselves. What is interesting is how other Muslims react to these people. On some forums they are derided, disciplined, put in their place and educated, while in other places they are the ones attempting to do the disciplining and educating. And I would at this point commend the Muslims of the rational, scholared and non-insecure varieties, who have to confront these degenerates and put them in place, even as they rant on deliriously, all the while making a mockery of their religion. I have seen great patience and perseverence displayed by those who try to bring these fevered jackasses back to the straight path. Now that is a community service.

Link to full article.

A familiar tale. Margaret Wente writing in the Globe and Mail.

Canada’s community of victims

Leading politicians have symbolically ground my people under their high-heeled feet

MARGARET WENTE

Saturday, June 24, 2006

As an American Canadian, I believe it’s way past time for the government to acknowledge the injustices done to my people. American immigrants to Canada are the targets of the grossest sort of suspicion, discrimination, hostility and abuse. Leading politicians have symbolically ground my people under their high-heeled feet. We are grotesquely stereotyped as lackeys of the evil empire. Enough is enough! We want you people to say you’re sorry. And let’s not forget the War of 1812: You guys owe us for burning down the White House.

I also suffer from the burden of my gender. Women suffered decades of discrimination before the Charter of Rights came along. For a long time, we couldn’t even vote! And are we equal now? Ha, ha. Every one of us deserves compensation for not sharing 50-50 in this nation’s wealth. Time for reparations, guys.

Also, you may have guessed that my name is German. German Canadians were treated shamefully during the two world wars. Surely we deserve at least as much as the government gave the Ukrainians. We demand closure, too. A sincere apology from the PM would be a start. We also want our own wing in the Human Rights Museum and the chance to amend the history textbooks so future generations will never be allowed to forget the atrocities committed against us by this racist nation. The money is just symbolic, of course. A few million ought to do it.

I admit there is a slight problem with my demands. I’m pretty sure my ancestors were guilty of oppression, too. In fact, I’m pretty sure that half my ancestors oppressed the other half. By the time we sort this out, I’ll be apologizing to myself, and my share of the take will net out to zero.

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Canada has honed the arithmetic of grievance to the second decimal point. We are, as Joe Clark said, a community of communities, each with its own set of gripes. Even as Stephen Harper prepared his apologies for the Chinese head tax, members of the Sikh community were demanding redress for the harsh treatment of their great-grandfathers aboard the Komagata Maru. That's the ship that was forced back to India after trying to land in Vancouver in 1914. "We want a clear and unequivocal apology from the government of Canada," said B.C. politician Raj Chouhan. "We have an apology for the Chinese head tax. We have an apology for Japanese internment. Why not an apology for the Komagata Maru?"

Not everyone is thrilled about all of this apologizing. Lois Hashimoto, for one. In her view, identity politics is what's wrong with Canada. "I thought with Stephen Harper we could get some plain, common sense, honest, democratic way of addressing past wrongs, both real and alleged," she says. She had hoped in vain that he wouldn't succumb to what she calls the tyranny of redress.

"No one would dispute that the Chinese head tax was racist and unjust," says Ms. Hashimoto. "Why, then, did Chinese immigrants pay this discriminatory tax, even when it reached the exorbitant amount of $500, and continue to come to Canada? Wasn't it because they believed that Canada offered a much better future for themselves and their descendants? Hasn't their faith been vindicated? Did these courageous and indomitable immigrants dare to dream that a young immigrant Chinese girl would one day become the Governor-General of Canada? Isn't this 'redress' enough?"

Ms. Hashimoto spent much of the Second World War in an internment camp for Japanese Canadians. Eventually, she received $21,000 in redress. "Getting the 'redress' was a windfall," she says. "But now I see the result of my greed: Ours is a country where playing the victim pays." That settlement, she notes, included $24-million to set up the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, an outfit that's devoted itself to detecting racism in every nook and cranny of Canadian life and stoking the flames of grievance ever higher.

Like many other hyphenated Canadians, Ms. Hashimoto insists her ethnic lobby group does not speak for her. She has long quarrelled with the National Association of Japanese Canadians, which describes the government's official postwar policy of forced assimilation for Japanese Canadians as "ethnic genocide." Nonsense, she argues. "All my Nisei friends agree that forced assimilation was actually a good thing."

"I'm pretty dubious on the issue of refreshing injustices," historian Desmond Morton said recently. "Where does it end? The lineup will grow and simply become a catalogue of victims."

He's right about that. The government has a pot of money for a program called Acknowledgment, Commemoration and Education. Victim groups are swarming to this pot as bees to nectar. According to government records released to the Winnipeg Free Press, Ukrainians want $12.5-million for their internment during the First World War. The Germans want $12.5-million, too. The Italians want $12.5-million for the internment of 700 men during the Second World War. The Sikhs want $4-million, the Croats $2.8-million, and the Jews $2-million for being barred from immigrating to Canada between 1923 and 1945. African Canadians and Doukhobors want another $7-million for unspecified grievances.

What happens when identity lobbyists are allowed to rewrite history? Take a guess. Some of those interned Italians, for example, were no doubt treated unjustly. But plenty of them were loyal fascists with a fierce allegiance to the Axis cause. "With a backroom accord, the government and community associations are -- unwittingly, I hope -- trying to treat a group of fascists as innocent bystanders," wrote Angelo Principe, a former University of Toronto professor who is an expert on the history of the internees.

In other words, history is never black and white -- except for the approved Canadian version, which is increasingly a narrative of oppressors and oppressed. Get used to it. A mari usque ad mare, we are a group of victims united only by our collective sense that, somehow, somewhere, Canada has done us wrong.

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