Melanie Phillips expressed her view this week that re-Christianisation is vital for Europe if it is to defend its Western values against Islamisation, an opinion I happen to agree with (h/t Saint):

The crucial insight here is that only a strong indigenous faith has the capacity to resist Islamisation. That is why the collapse of Christianity in Britain and Europe and its steady replacement by secularisation is so catastrophic for the defence of the west. The useful idiots who believe that only a secular society can hold off the forces of irrational belief at the heart of the Islamic jihad have got this diametrically the wrong way round. Secularisation produces cultural enfeeblement, because the pursuit of personal happiness trumps absolutely everything else. The here and now is all that matters. Dying for a cause, however noble, becomes an absolute no-no. It’s better to be dhimmi than dead – the view that has now effectively prevailed in Britain and Europe.

[..] Although the US is the high temple of consumerism, it is still a country with a very strong sense of its Christian faith. That fact is key to its robust sense of national identity, confidence and pride; and because it has such a strong sense of itself as a nation, it is prepared to fight to defend itself – the one bit of the analysis that the Islamists got wrong (although there are now deeply disturbing signs that the west’s cultural enfeeblement is beginning to erode American resolve too, at least around the edges).

That is why the cultural cringe of the Church of England before the advance of both secularism and Islamism is such unmitigated disaster, and why the Pope’s recent intervention was so significant. That is why those who sneer at President Bush’s strong Christian faith are cultural lemmings. And that is why I, a British Jew, argue that it is vital that Britain and Europe re-Christianise if they are to have any chance of defending western values.

She has drawn sharp criticism for this statement firstly because she does not herself subscribe to the belief system she is laying her hopes on and secondly because a re-Christianised Europe seems like a wild fantasy to some considering its current state. Writes Norman Geras:

A more serious problem still is that the re-Christianization of Britain and Europe just isn’t, as things currently stand, a credible societal project. Christians have been doing their bit to spread the Christian word for a very long time now. What is suddenly going to make the difference and bring new adherents flooding in, or ‘activate’ hitherto passive or lapsed believers?

Well, I can list several factors, that may not mean much when taken alone, but in combination may do just that.

1. Hundreds of thousands of Catholic Polish migrants have moved West since the 2004 EU enlargement round – about 300,000 to Britain alone. In Poland over half the population attends mass weekly, compared to under 20% in France or Italy. Poland accounts for about a quarter of Europe’s seminarians and thousands are migrating westward. Said Father Jan-Marie Szewek: “We Franciscans want to join in the rechristianization of Europe”.

Call it the Polish pastor effect.

2.According to some estimates the world’s fastest growing religion is not Islam but Christianity. Its just that most of the growth is happening in the Third World now and it is the Pentecostal Churches that are gaining the numbers. The Catholic Church is also experiencing strong growth. And this revitalised Christianity is starting to spill over back into the West. Says a Kenyan pastor in one of the largest churches in London: “I am in this country, believing that God sent me here in Great Britain to make a voice on His behalf to let them know that they need to repent and come back to God.”
Sociologist of religion Philip Jenkins, in his book “The Next Christendom: The Rise of Global Christianity”, argues that “within the next 25 years the population of the world’s Christians is expected to grow to 2.6 billion (making Christianity by far the world’s largest faith)”. An increased percentage of Christian migrants to Europe is likely, as European politics continue to shift towards the anti-Islamic immigration right. And the Pentecostal Churches have been growing rapidly in Australia even without a significant contribution from migrants. It won’t be too big of a surprise if its takes off in Europe too. Even the presence of a large Muslim population itself may contribute to a resurgence of religiosity amongst the secular Europeans, finding themselves inspired to seek their own Christian roots, much like European secularism draws many Muslim migrants towards secularism and more liberal interpretations of Islam. By the way, according to Wikipedia (edit: which quotes bible.ca) Christianity gets 2,500,000 converts per year, compared to Islam’s 865,000. Majority Muslim nations have higher birth rates, but that advantage is dimishing – birth rates are falling in Muslim majority nations, while Christianity is gaining in other countries with high birth rates.

3. Melanie Phillips is far from being the only non-Christian in Europe who holds to the above view. Said Oriana about Pope Benedict XVI: “I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It’s that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion.” Upon her death Oriana left all her books and papers to Pope Benedict. She had a private audience with him last year and considered him “an ally in her campaign to rally Christians in Europe against what she saw as a Muslim crusade against the West.” This emerging alliance between the anti-Islamisation secularists and conservative Christians is as natural, even as it is as odd, as the alliance between the Islamists and the far Left. And even religion needs good publicity. Don’t also underestimate the ability of Pope Benedict himself to pump some life back into European Christianity. And by the way, why did he chose the name Benedict? Here’s why:

He was thinking of not one, but two previous Benedicts.

Saint Benedict, Benedict XVIThe first was not even a Pope. In fact, he was just a simple monk who desired nothing more than to live a quiet life of prayer and work and lead others to do the same. This Benedict, born in the 5th century in Nursia, an area of Italy, fled the decadent urban life of Rome to seek a life of solitude in the country. Monastic life was chaotic and unregulated at that time, and so this young man gathered a band of monks around him and formed a community, writing a rule of life that was so practical that it became the pattern for thousands of monks and monasteries all over the world. These monks who followed this rule ultimately were the ones who evangelized and educated Europe during the “dark ages” and are still doing the work of evangelization and education today.

It is clear that Pope Benedict XVI is dedicated to gathering around himself a band of disciples who, through prayer and hard work, will lead to the re-Christianization of Europe and to the carrying of the gospel to lands that have not yet heard it.

4. In times of trouble and hardship people turn back to religion. It is as simple as that. As conditions in Europe worsen, with the aging of the population, faultering economies and problems that have come with over-immigration, and the going gets tough, the tough, and especially the weak, will get going to church.

5. Its the demographics, stupid. From the cover story of Prospect magazine, “God returns to Europe”, by Eric Kaufmann:

Europe—especially western Europe—is seen as the world leader in secular modernisation, and is used as the model by Norris and Inglehart for their theory of secularisation. But if western Europe really is the trend-setter for secularism, there is a problem: secularisation appears to be losing force in its own backyard. Western Europe can broadly be divided in two. On the one hand are Catholic countries like Spain or Ireland, where religiosity is still high—around 60 per cent of the Irish population regularly attend church—and secularisation arrived only in the second half of the 20th century. On the other are the largely Protestant nations (including Britain) and Catholic France, which secularised earlier. But survey data from 1981-2004 show that in these latter nations, on average, postwar generations are no longer becoming more secular. It seems as though western Europe, with the possible exception of Italy, will converge towards a church attendance rate of little more than 5 per cent. However this will mask a much larger proportion—around half—who continue to describe themselves as religious and affiliate with a religious denomination.

These people, described by Grace Davie as “believing without belonging,” are seen by some as carriers of a flimsy faith which will soon disappear, and which doesn’t affect behaviour or attitudes. But if this is the case, how do we explain the fact that the fertility of these non-attending believers is much closer to church attenders than to non-believers? The non-attending religious are also significantly more likely than non-believers to identify themselves as ideologically conservative, even when controlling for education, wealth, age and generation. And the religious population has two demographic advantages over its non-believing counterpart. First, it maintains a 15-20 per cent fertility lead over the non-religious. Second, religious people in the childbearing 18-45 age range are disproportionately female. Offset against this is the much younger age structure of secularists.

The pivotal question is where the balance lies between religious fertility and religious abandonment in the secular cutting-edge societies of France and Protestant Europe. The population balance in these countries stands at roughly 53 per cent non-religious to 47 per cent religious. My projections, based on demographic differences between the populations and current patterns of religious abandonment, suggest that the secular population will continue to grow at a decelerating rate for three or four more decades, to peak at around 55 per cent. The proportion of secular people will then begin to decline between 2035 and 2045. The momentum behind secularisation in the most secular countries is a reflection of the religious abandonment of the pre-1945 generations, which overwhelmed the fertility advantage of the faithful. The end of apostasy in more recent generations means a population more religious at the end of the 21st century than at its beginning. As in the case of the Mormons or early Christians, demography rather than mass conversion will be the main agent of change.

He then adds the compounding significance of immigration to the equation:

This slow shift against secularisation would have only a gradual impact on the spirit of European society were it not for immigration. Immigration from Latin America has enabled American Catholics to grow despite losing far more believers to other denominations than they get in return. In Europe, immigration will similarly drive the rise of the religious population, especially its Islamic part.

However, due to factors I have already mentioned above, Islam’s immigration advantage is likely to diminish while that of Christianity is likely to grow.

So lets not write off European Christianity just yet.

UPDATE: Michael Burleigh with a couple more possibilities in the Telegraph, Nov 7:

What he [Nick Spencer of the Theos think tank in Britain] describes as a new, diffuse concern with “wellbeing” will inevitably make religion more important to politics, in that politicians will have to address an essentially religious agenda, based on values and ultimate meanings, of the sort with which Senator McCain electrified the Conservatives when he addressed their party conference.

It is also probable that infantile Islamic enragement, and the sillier provocations of “diversity” officers in local government, will sooner rather than later trigger a much broader revival of cultural Christianity, as people balk at the insensitive disregard of this country’s two-millennia-old religious traditions, which are far from defunct in the moral imaginations of many.

All about the state of the war against Islamo-Fascism (or whatever it is called this week).

Sunday 27th of August:

• Mark Steyn, in the Chicago Sun Times: “Homeland security can’t get over the pump”. You’ll probably be as disturbed as I was to note that the term “penis pump” features no less than 8 times in Mark’s latest.

• David Warren: “Faint Hope for Lebanon”

• Shelby Steele in The Opinion Journal: “Life and Death”
  “Western guilt blinds us to the nature of Islamic extremism.”

  From nations on the verge of nuclear weapons to isolated individuals–take the recent Seattle shootings–Islamic militancy grounded in hatred of Israel and America has become the Muslim world’s most animating idea. Why?

  I don’t believe it is because of the reasons usually cited–Israeli and American “outrages.” No doubt Israel and America have made mistakes in the Middle East. Certainly, Israel was born at the price of considerable dislocation and suffering on the part of the Palestinians. And yes, there will never be a satisfying answer for this. Yet every Israeli land-for-peace gesture has been met with a return volley of suicide bombers and rockets. Palestinians have balked every time their longed-for nationhood has come within grasp. They have seemed to prefer the aggrieved dignity of their resentments to the challenges of nationhood. And Hezbollah launched the current war from territory Israel had relinquished six years earlier.

  If this war makes anything clear, it is that Israel can do nothing to appease the Muslim animus against her. And now much of the West is in a similar position, living in a state of ever-heightening security against the constant threat of violence from Islamic extremists. So here, from the Muslim world, comes an unappeasable hatred that seems to exist for its own sake, a hatred with very little actual reference to those it claims to hate. Even the fighting of Islamic terrorist groups is oddly self-referential, fighting not for territory or treasure but for the fighting itself. Standing today in the rubble of Lebanon, having not taken a single inch of Israeli territory, Hezbollah claims a galvanizing victory.
  ..

  White guilt in the West–especially in Europe and on the American left–confuses all this by seeing Islamic extremism as a response to oppression. The West is so terrified of being charged with its old sins of racism, imperialism and colonialism that it makes oppression an automatic prism on the non-Western world, a politeness. But Islamic extremists don’t hate the West because they are oppressed by it. They hate it precisely because the end of oppression and colonialism–not their continuance–forced the Muslim world to compete with the West. Less oppression, not more, opened this world to the sense of defeat that turned into extremism.
  ..
  Over and over, white guilt turns the disparity in development between Israel and her neighbors into a case of Western bigotry. This despite the fact that Islamic extremism is the most explicit and dangerous expression of human bigotry since the Nazi era. Israel’s historical contradiction, her torture, is to be a Western nation whose efforts to survive trap her in the moral mazes of white guilt. Its national defense will forever be white aggression.

  But white guilt’s most dangerous suppression is to keep from discussion the most conspicuous reality in the Middle East: that the Islamic world long ago fell out of history. Islamic extremism is the saber-rattling of an inferiority complex. America has done a good thing in launching democracy as a new ideal in this region. Here is the possibility–if still quite remote–for the Islamic world to seek power through contribution rather than through menace.

Saturday, August 26, 2006:

• Diana West on Townhall.com: What President Bush should say to us, part 2.
  Part 1 featured last week.

  [..] I am asking Congress to amend our laws to bar further Islamic immigration, beginning with immigration from sharia states. This, the most crucial domestic component of my anti-sharia program, will undoubtedly be regarded as the most controversial because it necessitates making a definitive judgment against the laws promulgated by Islam, a religion. This may appear to go against our cherished tradition of religious tolerance, not to mention good manners. But if the laws promulgated by Islam directly threaten freedom of conscience, freedom of expression and religion, women’s rights and key concepts of equality — and they do — it is a sign of intellectual rigor mortis not to say so. And I do say so, but, again, not to launch a transformative military or cultural offensive against Islam, but to initiate the mobilization of a defensive movement to prevent the Islamization of American law and liberty.[..]

• The Australian featured an extract from Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book “The Caged Virgin: A Muslim Woman’s Cry for Reason”, under the title “Women the future of freedom”. “Ayaan Hirsi Ali says the liberation of Europe’s Muslim women is the best way to encourage assimilation into Western society but the opportunity is being wasted.”

Friday 25th of August:

• Oliver North on the Real Clear Politics website: “Stunningly Naïve”

• Nibras Kazimi: in the New York Sun: “Islam and the city”

• Caroline B. Glick: “The necessary accounting”
  “Is Israel’s current political and military leadership capable of drawing the proper lessons from the war?”
• Joel Mowbray in the Washington Times: “A professor’s Islamic ties”
  “Headline-grabbing stories about a British-based Muslim academic’s public support for “martyrdom” last weekend missed a key detail: His mentor and frequent collaborator is a high-profile scholar who has been consulted repeatedly by the FBI, Professor John Esposito of Georgetown University.”

• Pamela Bone in The Australian: Muslim sisters need our help
  “If she is dubbed right-wing for expressing solidarity with women in Islamic countries, the author doesn’t mind wearing the label.”

• Victor Davis Hanson: “Relearning lessons in the War on Terror”

• Fjordman: “First They Came For the Jews: The Story of Yet Another World War”

And because this is coming a day late, here’s the Monday Bonus:

• Mark Steyn in the NY Sun: “Achilles’ Heel”

  Our Thought For The Day comes from Steve Centanni, the Fox News reporter freed over the weekend by his captors in Gaza:

  “We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. Don’t get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it.”

  ..

  But Centanni and Wiig’s brief interlude as practicing Muslims is revealing in a larger sense. Ever since 9/11, the western multicultural mindset has been desperately trying to swaddle Islam within the fluffy quilt of diversity. It’s “just” another religion, like the Congregationalists and Episcopalians. To be sure, it’s got a few hotheads, but haven’t we all? Sticking with this line requires an awful lot of brushing under the carpet and there’s so much under there by now it looks like a broadloomed Himalayas. For a start, you can’t help noticing the traffic is mostly one-way..

  ..

  Christians and Muslims are both “people of the book.” But there’s a difference: Christianity started out as a religion of the weak, held by the lowliest in society and advanced by conversion and example, independent of the state. A distinction between religion and temporal power is embedded in its founding narratives. Compare the final words of Jesus to his disciples, on the day of his ascension …

  “Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”

  … with the final words of Mohammed to his disciples:

  “I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god but Allah.’”

  ..

  The bad news is that Islam will soon be able to enforce submission-conversion at the point of a nuke. The good news is that any religion that needs to do that is, by definition, a weak one. More than that, the fierce faith of the 8th century Muslim warrior has been mostly replaced by a lot of hastily cobbled-together flimflam bought wholesale from clapped out European totalitarian pathologies. It would have struck almost any other ruler of Persia as absurd and unworthy to be as pitifully obsessed with Holocaust denial as President Ahmadinejad is: talk about a bad case of Europhile cultural cringe. But in today’s mosques and madrassahs there is almost as little contemplation of the divine as there is in the typical Anglican sermon. The great Canadian columnist David Warren argues that Islam is desperately weak, that it has been “idiotized” by these obsolescent imports of mid-20th century Fascism. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but, if Washington had half the psy-ops spooks the movies like to think we have, the spiritual neglect in latter-day Islam is a big Achilles’ heel just ripe for exploiting.

• Washington Times, Monday Editorial: “‘Peacekeeping’ farce in Lebanon”

• Stanley Kurtz in the National Review: “Our Fallout-Shelter Future”
  
  We’ll be back to duck and cover if we don’t stop Iran first…

• Frederick Grab in the Washington Times: “The current clash of civilizations”

• Nicholas Wapshott in the NY Sun: “Ahmadinejad’s Jaw-Jaw Play”

• Washington Times, Monday Editorial: One picture of ‘moderate’ Islam (that would be Indonesia)

Ah, what the hell, I am going to get right up to speed and throw in a couple of pieces from today too:

• Caroline B. Glick: “Terrorist theater tricks”

  The blogosphere, and particularly Little Green Footballs, Powerline, Zombietime, Michelle Malkin, and EU Referendum, have relentlessly exposed the systematic staging of news events, fabrication of attacks against relief workers, and doctoring of photographic images by Hizbullah with the active assistance of international organizations and the global media.

• Dennis Prager: “Just a Reminder About Who and Why We Are Fighting”

  [numerous examples of Islamo-Fascist immorality snipped]

  Does all this suggest that we are fighting a billion Muslims? Of course not.

  Does all this suggest that all or even most Muslims are bad people? Of course not.

  It does suggest, however, that the dominant forces within Islam are bad at this time; that Muslims who see this evil in their midst have not mobilized any counterforce either out of fear for their lives or for some other reason; and that decent men and women around the world — Hindu, Christian, Jewish, atheist, Buddhist and Muslim — are threatened by this powerful, death-loving force.

  Muslims who do not acknowledge the threat to civilization from within the Muslim world at least have two excuses — fear for their lives or group solidarity. What excuses do non-Muslims have who deny this threat?

Coming in a day late this week, the weekend opinion and commentary roundup. Mostly Middle East conflict and radical Islamism related.

Mark Steyn in the NY Sun: Disproportion

“Disproportion” is the concept of the moment. Do you know how to play? Let’s say 150 missiles are lobbed at northern Israel from the Lebanese village of Qana and the Israelis respond with missiles of their own that kill 28 people. Whoa, man, that’s way “disproportionate.”

But let’s say you’re a northwestern American municipality — Seattle, for example — and you haven’t lobbed missiles at anybody, but a Muslim male shows up anyway and shoots six Jewish women, one of whom tries to flee up the stairs, but he spots her, leans over the railing, fires again and kills her. He describes himself as “an American Muslim angry at Israel” and tells 911 dispatchers: ”These are Jews. I want these Jews to get out. I’m tired of getting pushed around, and our people getting pushed around by the situation in the Middle East.”

Well, that’s apparently entirely “proportionate,” so “proportionate” that the event is barely reported in the American media, or (if it is) it’s portrayed as some kind of random convenience-store drive-by shooting. Pamela Waechter’s killer informed his victims that “I’m only doing this for a statement,” but the world couldn’t be less interested in his statement, not compared to his lawyer’s statement that he’s suffering from “bipolar disorder.” And the local FBI guy, like the Mounties in Toronto a month or so back, took the usual no-jihad-to-see-here line. ”There’s nothing to indicate it’s terrorism related,” said Special Assistant Agent-In-Charge David Gomez. In America, terrorism is like dentistry and hairdressing: It doesn’t count unless you’re officially credentialed.

Kennet Bialkin in the NY Sun: Fool’s Game

The killing of civilians has always been a tragic byproduct of war — an end to that killing is the proper objective of a decent society. On that we can all agree. Blame for that killing is another thing. The Arab world blindly blames Israel. It stirs up passions in the Arab Street, and another generation of uneducated youth dwell in ignorance and hatred as their societies and economies continue to descend into ruin.

Does it matter to them that many of the civilians in Lebanon who were killed were used as shields and cover by terrorists who hid behind their skirts? Does it matter that they were prevented from taking shelter in a safer place by those who claim to be fighting for their freedom? Does it matter that Israeli raids come as a response against a prior rain of fire against Israeli civilians, without reason or provocation except a desire to destroy the Jewish state?

..

A simple cease-fire that would permit Hezbollah to rearm and commence future assaults against Israel will send the message that Hezbollah has achieved a victory and that terrorism succeeds. It is a message America’s enemies would welcome and may be expected to act upon.

..

The Arab street has leapt to the defense of the terrorist outlaws and have exulted in the sending of unguided missiles and rockets against the citizens of Israel.

The sight of such bloodthirsty joy reveals the sickness of Arab society, which should more properly be hanging its head in shame. The purpose of Hezbollah and their ilk is to kill Jews and destroy the State of Israel in the name of Allah. Most Arabs world leaders and much of the international community reveal their hypocrisy by failing to support Israel’s determination to deny a victory to Hezbollah in order to discourage a likely renewal of terror. Much of the world heaps criticism on Israel’s strong defense, which may necessarily involve the killing of innocent Lebanese civilians. The blame for those deaths properly rests on the head of Hezbollah. Yet much of the world sees no difference between the terrorists who provoke the bloodshed and the Israelis who are engaged in an existential defense of the country. As pointed out elsewhere by Mort Zuckerman, it is the failure to distinguish between the arsonist and the firefighter.

Rafia Zakaria in Frontline Magazine (India): Crime & abetment
(via JihadWatch)

European Muslims remain silent on horrific crimes within the community citing fear of fuelling Islamophobia as the reason.

ON June 27, 2006, the two murderers of a 19-year-old honour killing victim, Ghazala Khan, were sentenced to life in prison by a Danish court. On September 23, 2005, Ghazala Khan, a Danish Pakistani, was gunned down by her own brother at a suburban Danish railway station Her crime was marrying a man of her own choice. Her husband Emal Khan survived the attack despite being shot in the abdomen. Seven other people, including an aunt and cousins, were convicted of being accessories to the murder.

..

Ghazala Khan is hardly alone in her tragic and untimely end. On July 14, 2006, the killers of 25-year-old Samaira Nazir, a British Pakistani girl, were sentenced to life in prison. In a story unparalleled in the grotesque cruelty of its execution, Samaira, who had defied her family by marrying an Afghan immigrant, was held down by her mother while her brother stabbed her more than 18 times. Her two nieces, aged two and four, were made to watch as their young rebellious aunt was given the treatment deserved by girls who defy the will of their family.

..

Despite the alarming details of both cases, little has emerged in terms of condemnation by the European Muslim community.

..

Comforted by the truth that Islam itself is a religion of peace and that there is no doctrinal support for terrorism or misogyny if one follows the “correct” Islam, Muslims in the East and the West remain largely inactive and apathetic to the ravages that such extremist and misogynistic interpretations of their faith have on their faith as well as the world around them.

While countless sermons across the Muslim world on any given Friday are devoted to the insidious and nefarious tactics of Islamophobes that want to malign Islam, and millions of dollars are devoted to excavating the image of Islam as a religion of peace by distributing pamphlets and holding open mosque nights, little time or intellectual energy is devoted to cleaning house from within. Similarly, while much effort is expended on ensuring that new generations of Muslims remain pious in observing proper Islamic dress codes and dietary rules, little is done to ensure that they are aware of the evils of terrorism. Organisations like the Council on American Islamic Relations(CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the MCB devote immense efforts to documenting incidents of Islamophobia. At the same time, nearly all the anti-terrorism material available on the websites of these organisations are directed toward the larger public rather than Muslim youth who are most vulnerable to the propaganda of extremist and distorted interpretations of Islam.

Many Muslims are especially susceptible to the tendency to hold internal reform hostage to external geopolitics. Discussions emphasising the necessity of development of initiatives that acknowledge and combat misogyny and terror inevitably devolve into tirades that enumerate the geopolitical injustices Muslims across the globe are subject to. In a distorted expression of supposed solidarity, the unjustified and gruesome deaths of innocent civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Lebanon are used to construct an ideological wall that requires a conscious and purposeful denial of the atrocities perpetrated by Muslims. If the history of the world is any testament, making internal reform conditional on the cessation of all atrocities against Muslims is akin to eliminating its remotest possibility.

One catastrophic result of elevating Islamophobia to a status that invalidates all necessity for reform is that many Muslims, in their obstinate belief that all critique is borne out of a desire to malign their faith, resolutely refuse to accept the existence of any problems in their community. In a much-cited Pew Research Poll, it is reported that 56 per cent of British Muslims and 46 per cent of French Muslims do not believe that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks. Given the vast amounts of evidence establishing the identity of the 9/11 hijackers, this stubborn and misguided denial demonstrates the delusion that pervades the communities.

The resulting intellectual stagnation has thrust Muslims into even deeper isolation and denial, which is concertedly destroying the possibility of wresting Islam from the clutches of decline. Moderate Muslims, on whose backs the hopes for redemption of the faith are so optimistically constructed, are the very people whose apathy is at the root of such devolution. When confronted, they too limit their involvement to verbal condemnations of both terrorism and misogyny, believing that their own lack of positive support for either are adequate vindications for their inaction; Thus unwilling to ostracise extremists openly from their mosques and communities, they remain content in their apathy and fully assuaged by a self-righteous and often misplaced sense of victim-hood.

Hugh Fitzgerald on JihadWatch: What Did The Bush Administration Not Know (about Sunnis and Shi’a) and When Did It Not Know It

..

Now suppose Bush and Rice and Rumsfeld and others had done what they should have done beginning on September 12, 2001: start studying, and start having their staff studying, what is contained in the Qur’an and Hadith, and what Muhammad, that Perfect Man always and everywhere to be emulated by Muslims, actually did. Imagine they had not relied on the espositos and the armstrongs for the acquisition of such information. Imagine they had thereby come to realize the significance of the changes, largely because of OPEC revenues, that had provided the wherewithal hitherto lacking, that transformed this or that local Jihad (against India, against Israel) into something much bigger, more potent, more permanently menacing. Suppose, that is, that they entered Iraq – as they claimed initially they did – only to find and destroy certain kinds of weapons, and not to rebuild, reconstruct, or otherwise attempt in Iraq or elsewhere to create an impossible “new Middle East.” Suppose they had entered Iraq recognizing the tenets and 1350-year history of Islam that explained why, in the Middle East (whether old or “new” hardly mattered) and in many other parts of the world, Muslim attitudes, atmospherics, and behavior are a threat to all non-Muslims — whether they now live in countries where Muslims dominate, or as yet still live in the Land of Infidelity, the Bilad al-kufr, perhaps best translated as the Lands of the Infidels.

And suppose, then, they had entered Iraq with only one goal: to weaken the camp of Jihad. Removing dangerous weaponry was not an irrational goal. Nor is it clear to all today that even if the exaggeration and misstatements that have been uncovered are taken into account, that the expressed need to search Iraq for such weapons was irrational. But had they studied Iraq more closely, had they not relied either on the assurances of those most ingratiating and charming Iraqi exiles, or on those American policymakers who had been seduced by them, they might, more coldly, have recognized that Iraq was the perfect place for the two main kinds of divisions within Islam – the sectarian and ethnic – to appear, to widen, and to have the effect, without any further effort on the part of the Americans, of weakening the camp of Jihad.

..

Michelle Malkin in The Detroit News: Welcome to theater of jihad absurd

Welcome to the marquee performance of “Qana: The Fraud and the Furious,” brought to you by the Acting Guild of the Religion of Perpetual Outrage.

The drama unfolded over last weekend with mob scenes across the Muslim world, ostensibly — ostensibly — in response to civilian deaths in Qana, Lebanon. Angry Muslims from Beirut to Gaza to Lahore set fire to American and Israeli flags. They burned effigies of Western leaders. They raised their voices in chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”

The nervous nellies sitting in the world’s balcony seats exclaimed that the tragedy in Qana will make the Muslims hate us more. But if the uproar over the accident in Qana — an Israeli exception to the Hezbollah rule — sounds like a tired old re-run to you, well, it is.

This ongoing production utilizes the same talented field of Jew-haters and West-haters and flag-burners and machete-wielders who brought you worldwide months of manufactured rage over the Mohammed cartoons, crazed riots in Nigeria over the Miss World pageant, sharia-approved murders in Somalia of World Cup soccer fans, the fictional Jenin “massacre,” the fable of Mohammed al-Dura, and ululating protests over the corrupting influences of “The Satanic Verses,” Theo van Gogh, Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald’s, the sacrilegious Burger King ice-cream swirl, Valentine’s Day and Piglet from “Winnie the Pooh.”

The truth about Muslim outrage over Qana is that it’s not really about the tragic deaths at Qana — just like the Mohammed cartoon jihad was not really about the cartoons. It’s a pretext for much grander goals to defeat the infidels — be they Israeli, Danish, Dutch or American.

…

Clifford D. May in the National Review: Hezbollah’s Psych-Ops

They know the minds of their enemies

Hezbollah and its foreign sponsors deserve credit: They understand the perverse psychology of the Middle East. They knew they could launch a war against Israel and then have Israel get the blame for the devastation that inevitably would follow.

They knew also that if Israel failed to respond forcefully to their ground and missile attacks, they could say Israel was cowardly. And if Israel did respond forcefully, they could say Israel was a bully, its response “disproportionate” — even while insisting that Israel was doing them no serious damage.

Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post: Israel’s Lost Moment

WASHINGTON — Israel’s war with Hezbollah is a war to secure its northern border, to defeat a terrorist militia bent on Israel’s destruction, to restore Israeli deterrence in the age of the missile. But even more is at stake. Israel’s leaders do not seem to understand how ruinous a military failure in Lebanon would be to its relationship with America, Israel’s most vital lifeline.

For decades there has been a debate in the U.S. over Israel’s strategic value. At critical moments in the past, Israel has indeed shown its value. In 1970, Israeli military moves against Syria saved King Hussein and the moderate pro-American Hashemite monarchy of Jordan. In 1982, American-made Israeli fighters engaged the Syrian air force, shooting down 86 MiGs in a single day without a single loss, revealing a shocking Soviet technological backwardness that dealt a major blow to Soviet prestige abroad and self-confidence among its elites at home (including Politburo member Mikhail Gorbachev).

..

The U.S. has gone far out on a limb to allow Israel to win and for all this to happen. It has counted on Israel’s ability to do the job. It has been disappointed. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has provided unsteady and uncertain leadership. Foolishly relying on air power alone, he denied his generals the ground offensive they wanted, only to reverse himself later. He has allowed his war Cabinet meetings to become fully public through the kind of leaks no serious wartime leadership would ever countenance. Divisive Cabinet debates are broadcast to the world as was Olmert’s own complaint that “I’m tired. I didn’t sleep at all last night.” (Haaretz, July 28.) Hardly the stuff to instill Churchillian confidence.

His search for victory on the cheap has jeopardized not just the Lebanon operation, but America’s confidence in Israel as well. That confidence — and the relationship it reinforces — is as important to Israel’s survival as its own army. The tremulous Olmert seems not to have a clue.

I am running out of time, so links only for the rest (not reflective of the quality!).

Victor Davis Hanson in the National Review Online: The Brink of Madness (!!)

Victor Davis Hanson in the Washington Times: It’s not just about land

Diana West in the Washinton Times: See no terrorists”

Youssef Ibrahim in the NY Sun: The Whole Arab World Is Now at a Crossroads

Moshe Yaalon in the Washington Post: The Rules of War

By Omar Fadhil in the Philadelphia Enquirer: Is Hezbollah launching Iran’s Armageddon?

Joel Mowbray in the Washington Times: Overcoming Islamism