That was fast: US cuts off UNESCO funding

Israel Matzav

That sure didn't take long. After a vote on Monday that made the non-existent state of 'Palestine' a member, the United States has announced that it has cut off funding to UNESCO (Hat Tip: Gershon D).

The United States said on Monday it had stopped funding UNESCO, the U.N. cultural agency, following its vote to grant the Palestinians full membership. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters the United States had no choice but to halt funding because of longstanding U.S. law, saying Washington would not make a planned $60 million transfer that was due in November.

Voice of America adds:

Washington currently is UNESCO's biggest funding source, supplying 22 percent of the agency's budget.

Earlier Monday, the Paris-based UNESCO voted to approve the Palestinian membership bid by a vote of 107 to 14, with 52 abstentions.

France voted for the motion, along with almost all Arab, African, Latin American and Asian nations, including China and India. Israel, the United States, Canada and Germany voted against it. Japan and Britain abstained. A two-thirds vote was required by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's 193 members.

The White House called UNESCO's decision “premature,” saying it undermines the international community's goal of a comprehensive Middle East peace plan. Spokesman Jay Carney said the move is a distraction from the task of restarting direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, called the vote “deeply damaging to UNESCO.”

Israel's Foreign Ministry described the move as a “unilateral Palestinian maneuver” that would further harm efforts to secure a peace agreement. The ministry thanked countries that opposed the measure and said it was “disappointing” that the European Union could not reach a unified position to prevent the decision.

They were warned.

Where are the Muslim Brotherhood and the Obama Administration Taking America?

Dr. Essam Abdallah

- In this article, published in the leading liberal pan Arab "Elaph”, Egyptian liberal writer Dr. Essam Abdallah exposes the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood within the Obama Administration and the campaign led by CAIR and its allies against Middle East Christians, US experts and American Muslim reformers. Abdallah's article is powerful evidence to a reckless policy of backing Islamists, perpetrated by the Obama Administration and its advisors on Islamic affairs. The Editors.

Disturbing reports are coming out of Washington, D.C.

These reports reveal the depth of the below-the-surface coordination between the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian regime and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Libya and Jordan. This bloc of regimes and organizations is now becoming the greatest Islamist radical lobby ever to penetrate and infiltrate the White House, Congress, the State Department and the main decision making centers of the US government. All of this is happening at a time when the US government is going through its most strategically dangerous period in modern times because of its need to confront the Iranian Mullahs regime, which is expanding in the Middle East, as well as penetrating the United States, via powerful and influential allies. It looks like the near future will uncover many surprises after the fall of the Gaddafi regime, as we realize more and more that the popular revolts in the Arab world - and the Obama Administration’s position towards them - were determined by political battles between various pressure groups in Washington. Moreover, pressures by these lobbying groups have left an impact on the region's events, the last of which was the canceling of the visit of Maronite Patriarch Rahi to Washington. A number of Arab and Western news agencies have leaked that one of “those who sought to cancel this visit was Dalia Mujahid, a top advisor on Islamic and Arab affairs at the State Department, who is of Egyptian origin. And that”, said the reports, “came at the request of the high command of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, who wish to see the US Administration support the Islamist Sunni current.”

Also very noticeable at this point is the growing domination of Islamist forces around the Mediterranean: the victory of the Nahda Islamist Party in Tunisia, the declaration by (TNC Chairman) Mustafa Abdeljalil that Libya is an Islamist state and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. These developments wouldn't have happened without the approval of the United States. A document published in Washington indicated that Egypt will face more violence and tensions while moving to the Pakistani, rather than the Turkish, model. Egypt will be ruled by an opportunistic bourgeoisie and a regime declaring itself Islamist, and it will be backed by a military institution. The military will be used by the Islamists to maintain power but the armed forces, the parliament, the regime and the constitution will all become Islamist.

In return, the Maronite Patriarch is denied a visit to Washington, Coptic Christian churches are destroyed in Egypt, and Coptic demonstrators are massacred at Maspero in Cairo by the Egyptian military, demonstrating that the goal is to suppress Christians in the Middle East, who are - as Patriarch Rahi said - paying a high price for the revolts of the Arab Spring. Rahi expressed his concerns about the fate of Syrian and Lebanese Christians and sees, as does the world, the flight of millions of Iraqi and Middle Eastern Christians from their homelands as a result of events in Iraq, and the methodic persecution against the Copts. The Christians of Egypt aren't only facing suppression and ethnic cleansing but a form of genocide.

The real question now is: who is allowing the Muslim Brotherhood lobby to damage the relationship between the US Administration and millions of Middle East Christians? This lobby was able to delay meetings between leaders from Coptic Solidarity International, including Magdi Khalil and Adel Guindy, with the US Government. Similar obstructions have been happening with Chaldean and Assyrian delegations over the past few years. Moreover, the Muslim Brotherhood has waged a hysterical campaign against prominent experts in counterterrorism such as Steven Emerson, Daniel Pipes, John Guandolo and Robert Spencer. One particularly rough campaign was waged by CAIR against Professor Walid Phares, one of the most important, and even prescient, experts in counterterrorism and Jihadist movements in the US. In his book, “The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East”, Dr. Phares predicted its evolution and the shape of coming Islamist regimes in the region.

But the Muslim Brotherhood’s campaign is not limited to liberal Arabs, Christians, Jews and Atheists. It has also targeted Muslims who oppose the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood) lobby such as Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, the President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD); Sherkoh Abbas, from the Syrian Kurdish Council; Farid Ghadri; the Somali-American author Ayan Hirsi Ali; Ali al Yammi; Tarek Fatah and many more. Attacking Muslim liberals in the West helps the Muslim Brotherhood's project in the radical Islamization of the Middle East, but it does not at all help US interests. Oppressing opposition, diversity, pluralism, and shedding human rights and freedoms are in direct contradiction to the values defended, and sacrificed for, by America's founding fathers as well as by all those who fought wars for America throughout her history.

These intimidation and suppression campaigns directed against Arab and Middle East Christians – and against intellectuals and researchers opposing the Muslim Brotherhood and its sinister ties to Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran - in fact are aimed at America’s ability to become aware of the threat all of them pose to American freedoms. For American strength isn't only in its navies and military power, but in its Constitution and the laws which provide the moral force for all other distinctly American liberties.

Note that the US Constitution did not include any suppressive articles (regarding freedom of religion or freedom of speech), the lack of which is the case in many Middle Eastern countries. Rather, it was written in the spirit of a Jeffersonian federal democracy based on individual freedoms.

So, all things considered both here and in the Middle East, where exactly are the Obama Administration and the Muslim Brotherhood lobby, together, taking America? And why?

Dr. Essam Abdallah is an Egyptian liberal intellectual who writes for the leading liberal pan Arab "Elaph”.

Simon Deng, Former Sudanese Slave says “Calling Israel a racist state is absurd and immoral.”

Adam Levick

Simon Deng, a former South Sudanese slave in Islamist Northern Sudan, gave the following speech at Durban Watch Conference in New York on Sept. 22nd.

He passionately refuted the malicious ‘Zionism is Racism’ canard and pointed out that it is the Arab Islamists who have engaged in the ethnic cleansing of millions of Sudanese, both Muslim and Christian. He further notes that Israel is the ultimate destination of Sudanese refugees, not Egypt -who has attacked and oppressed them. What follows is Simon Deng’s prepared remarks before the Durban Watch Conference:

I want to thank the organizers of this conference, The Perils of Global Intolerance. It is a great honor for me and it is a privilege really to be among today’s distinguished speakers.

I came here as a friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. –I came to protest this Durban conference which is based on a set of lies. It is organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kinds of oppression.

It will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel. The UN has itself become a tool against Israel. For over 50 years, 82 percent of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state – Israel. Hitler couldn’t have been made happier.

The Durban Conference is an outrage. All decent people will know that.

But friends, I come here today with a radical idea. I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN’s anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people.

Please hear me out.

By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.

For over fifty years the indigenous black population of Sudan — Christians and Muslims alike — has been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum.

In South Sudan, my homeland, about 4 million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005. Seven million were ethnically cleansed and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.

The UN is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency for them. and they are treated with a special privilege.

Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored. The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the real causes of Sudan’s conflicts. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur? It is not a “tribal conflict.” It is a conflict rooted in Arab colonialism well-known in north Africa. In Darfur, a region in the Western Sudan, everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and converted the indigenous people to Islam. In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum, the Darfuris are not Muslim enough. And the Darfuris do not want to be Arabized. They love their own African languages and dress and customs. The Arab response is genocide! But nobody at the UN tells the truth about Darfur.

In the Nuba Mountains, another region of Sudan, genocide is taking place as I speak. The Islamist regime in Khartoum is targeting the black Africans – Muslims and Christians. Nobody at the UN has told the truth about the Nuba Mountains.

Do you hear the UN condemn Arab racism against blacks?

What you find on the pages of the New York Times, or in the record of the UN condemnations is “Israeli crimes” and Palestinian suffering. My people have been driven off the front pages because of the exaggerations about Palestinian suffering. What Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin. But the truth is that the real sin happens when the West abandons us: the victims of Arab/Islamic apartheid.

Chattel slavery was practiced for centuries in Sudan. It was revived as a tool of war in the early 90s. Khartoum declared jihad against my people and this legitimized taking slaves as war booty. Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves. We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery.

I am a living proof of this crime against humanity.

I don’t like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.

I was only nine years old when an Arab neighbor named Abdullahi tricked me into following him to a boat. The boat wound up in Northern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings and humiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with animals; eating the family’s left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word “no.” All I could say was “yes,” “yes,” “yes.”

The United Nations knew about the enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs. Their own staff reported it. It took UNICEF – under pressure from the Jewish –led American Anti-Slavery Group — sixteen years to acknowledge what was happening. I want to publicly thank my friend Dr. Charles Jacobs for leading the anti-slavery fight.

But the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, and UNICEF backtracked, and started to criticize those who worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN’s actions.

My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League.

As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.

I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt. They were wrong. When Egyptian security forces slaughtered twenty-six black refugees in Cairo who were protesting Egyptian racism, the Sudanese realized that the Arab racism is the same in Khartoum or Cairo. They needed shelter and they found it in Israel. Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for very long distances, the refugees’ only hope was to reach Israel’s side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.

Black Muslims from Darfur chose Israel above all the other Arab-Muslim states of the area. Do you know what this means!!!?? And the Arabs say Israel is racist!!!?

In Israel, black Sudanese, Christian and Muslim were welcomed and treated like human beings. Just go and ask them, like I have done. They told me that compared to the situation in Egypt, Israel is “heaven.”

Is Israel a racist state? To my people, the people who know racism – the answer is absolutely not. Israel is a state of people who are the colors of the rainbow. Jews themselves come in all colors, even black. I met with Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Beautiful black Jews.

So, yes … I came here today to tell you that the people who suffer most from the UN anti-Israel policy are not the Israelis but all those people who the UN ignores in order to tell its big lie against Israel: we, the victims of Arab/Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab/Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel hatred.

Look at the situation of the Copts in Egypt, the Christians in Iraq, and Nigeria, and Iran, the Hindus and Bahais who suffer from Islamic oppression. The Sikhs. We – a rainbow coalition of victims and targets of Jihadis — all suffer. We are ignored, we are abandoned. So that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.

In 2005, I visited one of the refugee camps in South Sudan. I met a twelve-year-old girl who told me about her dream. In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor. And then, she wanted to visit Israel. I was shocked. How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel? When I asked why she wanted to visit Israel, she said: “This is our people.” I was never able to find an answer to my question.

On January 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. For South Sudanese, that means continuation of oppression, brutalization, demonization, Islamization, Arabization and enslavement.

In a similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in their homeland and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel’s legitimacy.

As a friend of Israel, I bring you the news that my President, the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir — publicly stated that the South Sudan embassy in Israel will be built— not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people.

I also want to assure you that my own new nation, and all of its peoples, will oppose racist forums like the Durban III. We will oppose it by simply telling the truth. Our truth.

My Jewish friends taught me something I now want to say with you.

AM Y’ISRAEL CHAI!

The people of Israel lives!

Thank you

So what is next?

The American real estate sale

Bill Turner, Boise Conservative Examiner

America, no longer a country, just a piece of real estate brokered through the global MLS (Multiple Listing Service). For decades Americans have been nudged towards the unthinkable, surrendering sovereignty to foreign governments and not just any foreign governments, but communist governments. Both the Democrats and the Republicans have pushed this agenda, at the state and federal level, through a variety of programs, all of which have been designed to push the people of America into gradually accepting the invasion of the Chi-Com’s.



Continue reading on Examiner.com The American real estate sale - Boise Conservative | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-boise/the-american-real-estate-sale#ixzz1cO4DEiXj The May 18th, 2010 edition of the Idaho Statesman included an article about a twenty three person delegation from the Guangdon Provence in China, visiting The Core in Idaho. The Core is a Trojan Triangle (An area selected for its transportation, education and community allegedly). The Trojan Triangle is really an area that contains the ability to become a Foreign Trade Zone, qualifies for the federal EB-5 program (A program that allows non US citizens to invest a million dollars in a business, and be fast tracked for citizenship, well ahead of others) and are TEA Zones (Targeted Employment Zones). The EB-5 visa program was created in the Immigration Reform Act of 1990, the year that many experts state, was when the decision was made to dissolve the United States as a free and sovereign nation. The question that the Idaho Statesman failed to answer is, “What does a twenty three person delegation from China want in Idaho?”.

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The delegation wants the same thing the other Chi-Com’s want, access to American resources, tax breaks, and now, stimulus money. The Core in Idaho has been designated as an “Intermodal Commerce Zone”. The Intermodal Surface Transportation Act of 1991 was another nudge towards surrender of sovereignty. Intermodal Commerce Zones are inland ports, management areas, off the tax rolls and governed by a board of directors or Port Authority. There is no real accountability or oversight of these ports, due to the fact that they are off of the tax rolls. Combine the ease of citizenship through the EB-5 program, the availability of stimulus funds and tax breaks, and it makes sense for the communist Chinese to invade America. Globalists who are courting these Chi-Com’s know that all companies in China are owned by the Chinese government or military, but they all make vague statements about them doing business with companies, not countries. Idaho’s Governor, Butch Otter, made the same vague argument both directly and indirectly, through his minions at the Idaho Statesman, when challenged on his dealings with the Chi-Com’s. Governor Otter has made his Project 60, an economic and development plan to take Idaho’s Gross Domestic Product from fifty two billion dollars a year to sixty billion dollars a year, a key platform of his leadership. However, a key component of Project 60 is the EB-5 program and the invasion of Idaho by Chi-Com’s and other countries. Governor Otter and his supporters deny the pay to play aspects of the EB-5 program, but then turn around and use that same program as a key marketing component of his Project 60, a fast track to American citizenship. To go with the EB-5 program and the Intermodal Commerce Zones in Idaho, Governor Otter has either lobbied for or not protested the fact that almost the entire state of Idaho is now a TEA Zone, allowing him to facilitate the invasion of the Chi-Com’s. Governor Otter has managed to offer tremendous incentives to the Chi-Com’s.

An August 8th, 2010 article in the Real Estate Section of the Idaho Statesman described two businessmen, Raymond Ku from Taiwan and Sima Muroff, a Russian, who are, as of the date of that article, actively engaged in selling Idaho “investment opportunities” globally with the EB-5 program as the carrot on the stick, all the while, these two are making money through fees and commissions on facilitating the EB-5 program, in conjunction with real estate commissions. To deny that Idaho isn’t being sold to the Chinese and other countries is to deny the existence of air. Raymond Ku made millions getting people out of Hong Kong before the communist takeover of 1997. Mr. Ku currently has a network of over fifty immigration/investment centers spread across China, to facilitate his communist clients coming to America.

This is not an issue that is solely an Idaho issue. Thirty five of the fifty (or fifty seven if you are B. Hussein Obama) states have at least one Chi-Com taking advantage of the American Real Estate Sale. Should someone stand up to the government and blow the whistle on the sale or outright give away of American technology to China, one can expect false criminal charges and/or an outright beating. In July of 2011, the NGA (National Governors Association) met in Salt Lake City Utah. The first day of the meeting consisted of one on one meetings between the communist Chinese Provence leaders and the governors of each state in America. The meeting was closed door and involved one on one arm twisting by the Chinese. All the usual Quislings were present at this event. And, as evidenced by a CSPAN video (pay attention to the hand gestures used, as they are a skillful way of manipulating people, that is rarely taught at anything but intelligence agencies), at the winter NGA meeting, should a tough question be posed, it will not be answered, even if someone must pull a fire alarm.

Although this seems overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be. If each American emails their governor and asks why they are involved in selling their states land, resources and sovereignty to foreign nationals, then takes the written response to the local media, on a slow news day and take multiple copies to your Central Committee meeting for your political party, and spread the news. The more people who know, the harder it will be for those who seek to destroy America to accomplish their evil goals.

Stay tuned for more about the Chi-Com’s in America and Hoku in Idaho.

Bill Turner

Pastor/Journalist



Continue reading on Examiner.com The American real estate sale - Boise Conservative | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-boise/the-american-real-estate-sale#ixzz1cO4M6Orc

Uncle Sam Is No Venture Capitalist

Mike Brownfield

It’s yet another inauspicious announcement the Obama Administration didn’t want you to hear. Late on Friday, the White House announced that it ordered an independent review of loans made by the Department of Energy to energy companies after months of weathering criticism for its $528 million loan to the now-bankrupt Solyndra solar panel company.

The White House’s independent investigation, though, isn’t the only one in town. The FBI raided Solyndra after it declared bankruptcy, and Congress is diving in with an investigation of its own. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who has been a strong advocate of this federal loan program, is set to testify before a congressional committee in mid-November on his involvement in the scandal. And Heritage’s Lachlan Markay reports that the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced Friday that it will vote to subpoena a host of White House documents related to Solyndra, including messages from the President’s Blackberry. The White House, though, would not comment on whether it will comply with the subpoena. Even the mainstream media is picking up on the story. On yesterday’s Meet the Press, host David Gregory asked White House senior adviser David Plouffe whether, in times of dire economic straits, the government should be playing venture capitalist and trying to prop up green energy industries. Plouffe’s answer? In a nutshell, other governments are doing it, so we should, too: “Listen, you see what’s happening in other countries, you know, huge investments in this clean energy sector. We have to do everything we can.”

But as the motherly advice goes, just because all your friends are jumping off a bridge, that doesn’t mean you should do it, too. Unfortunately, this seems to be the logic the Obama Administration is operating under, despite the weight of common sense that should otherwise be holding it back: If the centrally-controlled economy of China does it, so shall America.

The latest proposal on the table is the Clean Energy Deployment Administration–a veritable “green bank” that would provide loan guarantees to energy and automotive projects that Washington deems worthy. And what it amounts to is a costly subsidy financed by the taxpayers that invites the government to stick its finger into the private energy marketplace. If the company defaults, the taxpayer is on the hook–just like in the case of Solyndra. The total cost of the program? Ten billion dollars, with projected costs hitting an additional $1.1 billion over the next five years.

So what about the Administration’s argument that other countries are investing heavily in these industries, so the United States must keep up? In a new paper, Heritage’s Nicolas Loris analyzes the green bank program and points out a harsh reality: When subsidies are removed from these green energy industries, they collapse because they were developed in a bubble and can’t survive on their own. Loris explains that European countries–which pursued the path the Obama Administration would like to go down–learned that lesson the hard way and are making an exit:

When faced with a need for drastic budget cuts and job creation, Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the Czech Republic decided to reduce subsidies for green energy programs, such as wind and solar energy. As a result, some industries have collapsed and others are either collapsing or face difficult roads ahead.

Although each European country has taken a different approach to subsidize green technologies, the results have been the same: Artificially propping up industries by reallocating labor and capital toward uncompetitive projects, forcing higher energy prices on ratepayers, and failing projects are costly to the economy and the taxpayer.

Europe has seen that picking winners and losers in green energy doesn’t work and brings with it a steep cost. The Obama Administration has seen it first hand with Solyndra, the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars it wasted, and the 1,100 former employees now out of work. But for some reason, even that first-hand experience can’t convince them to stop playing with taxpayer dollars as if it’s their “Monopoly” money to burn.

Congress should refuse to expand loan guarantee programs and quit putting taxpayers on the hook for an untold number of projects that could fail. The American people simply can’t afford to have Washington put them in the venture capital business.

Quick Hits:

* The Obama Administration is now seeking Pakistan’s help in starting talks with the Taliban and the Haqqani network in order to end the war in Afghanistan.
* NATO is set to end its seven-month bombing campaign in Libya at midnight tonight. Only eight of the 28 NATO member states participated in the effort.
* Police in Portland, Oregon, arrested 30 Occupy Wall Street protesters on Sunday. Some activists said they were targeting the neighborhood because they viewed its residents as part of the wealthy demographic they are protesting, the AP reports.
* Companies and multinational corporations in Europe are cutting back on production and slashing costs out of concern over the region’s economic prospects.
* EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) is disappointed in President Obama and blames him for dividing America. Watch the interview on Foundry.org.

Awaiting moderate Muslimes to condemn this report...well?

Top Muslim Declares All Christians 'Infidels'

Raymond Ibrahim
Pajamas Media
October 28, 2011

http://www.meforum.org/3085/muslim-declares-christians-infidels

To what extent was Egypt's Maspero massacre, wherein the military literally mowed down Christian Copts protesting the ongoing destruction of their churches, a product of anti-Christian sentiment?

A video of Egypt's Grand Mufti, Sheikh Ali Gomaa (or Gom'a), which began circulating weeks before the massacre, helps elucidate. While holding that Muslims may coexist with Christians (who, as dhimmis, have rights), Gomaa categorized Christians as kuffar — "infidels" — a word that connotes "enemies," "evil-doers," and every bad thing to Muslim ears.

After quoting Quran 5:17, "Infidels are those who declare God is the Christ, [Jesus] son of Mary," he expounded by saying any association between a human and God (in Arabic, shirk) is the greatest sin: "Whoever thinks the Christ is God, or the Son of God, not symbolically — for we are all sons of God — but attributively, has rejected the faith which God requires for salvation," thereby becoming an infidel. Gomaa then offered a hypothetical dialogue between Christians and Muslims to illustrate Islam's proper position:

Christians: You have the wrong idea about us; we don't worship the Christ.

Muslims: Okay, fine; we were under the wrong impression — but, by the way: "Infidels are those who declare God is the Christ, son of Mary."

Christians: But these are philosophical matters that we are unable to explain.

Muslims: Okay, fine; God is one—but, by the way: "Infidels are those who declare God is the Christ, son of Mary."

As a graduate of and long-time professor at Al Azhar university and Grand Mufti of Egypt (a position second in authority only to Sheikh Al Azhar), Ali Gomaa represents mainstream Islam's — not "radical Islam's" or "Islamism's" — position concerning the "other," in this case, Christians. Regardless, many in the West hail him as a "moderate" — such as this U.S. News article titled "Finding the Voices of Moderate Islam"; Lawrence Wright describes him as "a highly promoted champion of moderate Islam":

He is the kind of cleric the West longs for, because of his assurances that there is no conflict with democratic rule and no need for theocracy. Gomaa has also become an advocate for Muslim women, who he says should have equal standing with men.

How does one reconcile such sunny characterizations with reality? The fact is, whenever top Muslim authorities like Gomaa say something that can be made to conform to Western ideals, Westerners jump on it (while of course ignoring their more "extreme" positions). It is the same with Gomaa's alma mater, Al Azhar, the "chief center of Islamic and Arabic learning in the world."

MEMRI, for instance, recently published a report titled "The Sheikh of Al Azhar in an Exceptionally Tolerant Article: Christianity, Judaism Share Basic Tenets of Islam." Of course, the day after this report appeared, this same sheikh — Islam's most authoritative figure — insisted that the American ambassador wear a hijab when meeting him: just as Muslim "radicals" compel Christian girls to wear the hijab, "moderate" Al Azhar compels U.S. diplomats.

In short, yes, many religions "share basic tenets," but they are secondary to the differences, which are more final and define the relationship. Or, to put it in Ali Gomaa's paradigm: Fine, Christianity and Islam have commonalities — but, by the way: "Infidels are those who declare God is the Christ, son of Mary."

The fact is, this Quranic verse is as much a cornerstone of Islam's view of Christianity as the unity of God and Christ is a cornerstone of Christianity, articulated some 1700 years ago in the Nicene Creed. The issue is clear cut for all involved.

Accordingly, how can one fault Gomaa? As Grand Mufti, he is simply being true to Islam's teachings. Indeed, his consistency is more commendable than the equivocations of Western ecumencalists who, by falling over themselves to assure Muslims that they all essentially believe in the same things, demonstrate, especially to Muslims, that they believe in nothing.

Incidentally, if Gomaa upholds the plain teachings of the Quran concerning who is an infidel, is it not fair to assume he also upholds the Quran's teachings on how to confront them, as commanded in Quran 9: 29: "Fight … the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] until they pay the Jizya [tribute] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued." Of course, prudent Muslims, undoubtedly like Gomaa himself, know that now is not the time to talk openly about such things.

Either way, here is another reminder of how Quranic verses and terms that Western people brush aside as arcane or irrelevant have a tremendous impact on current events — such as Egypt's Maspero massacre: For the same word Gomaa, the nation's Grand Mufti, used to describe Christians is the same word Muslim soldiers used when they opened fire on and ran over Christian Copts; the same word twenty Muslim soldiers used as they tortured a protesting Christian; and the same word Muslims hurled at Christians during the funeral procession for their loved ones slain at Maspero: Infidel.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of The Al Qaeda Reader, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.


Comment: OK, time for all peaceful and moderate Muslims to come out now and condemn this report. If it is true there are peaceful Muslims, who believe in freedom of thought, religion our Western freedoms, stand up and make yourself known and heard-I an d the rest of the West are waiting. What, silence? We should then conclude what?

The people demand media justice

Dror Eydar

This summer we heard those crowned as "protest leaders" speak out about "social justice" and a "welfare state," and call out some anti-Netanyahu slogans as well. The government did not remain silent and established an appropriate committee, whose conclusions were taken seriously and brought before the cabinet for a vote. We are not naive though. From the beginning, we knew that even if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took us back to the dark days of the Mapai welfare state, the protest would continue. That is because the problem is not the economy, stupid, it is the government! The protest has always been political and all the clever social slogans will not help disguise that fact. The irony is that if the Left won the elections, the protests would end.

This week, they tried to renew the protests. They will remain with us as long as the media fuels them and provides silly press conferences in which Daphni Leef threatens the prime minister, saying, "This is the last time I will address you, Bibi." Take note of the fact that those who address him as "Bibi" are generally not his supporters. "Bibi" is meant to belittle and degrade. It is the same method used by Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, who despises Netanyahu. We do not hear about "Shimon" (Peres) or "Benny" (Gantz).

As our sages said, "There is no school of learning that does not discover something new." The second round of protests is not without its "new discovery" as well - the target this time will be the national media. Suddenly the protest leaders are concerned about the cultural quality of the public broadcasting. As Leef is quoted on the Yedioth Ahronoth web site, "We are living in a reality in which the prime minister has his own newspaper. Does that remind you of anything? Perhaps a different type of regime? He also has a TV station, whose directors he appoints."

I do not know whether to laugh or cry. The Left has always excelled in the use of this method - repeat the lie ad infinitum, and people will begin to believe it. There are three newspapers, two TV stations, and quite a few radio channels - all properly aligned with the Left and hostile to the government and coalition, and all allotting an unprecedented amount of prime time not only for the protests, but also for announcing the agendas of upcoming protest rallies. Israel Hayom also provided a decent podium for the protest organizers. But unlike in other forums, there was room here for opposition to them as well.

Alas, the voices of opposition. Did we hear the real-time voices of those who opposed the Oslo Accords? Those who opposed the horrific uprooting of Gush Katif, the results of which continue to haunt southern residents today? Did we hear the voices of those who opposed a Shalit deal over the past five years? Did we hear criticism of the protests and those leading them? Did someone investigate their sources of finance and political affiliations?

Despite the mountain of microphones that are constantly focused on every word she says, Leef wailed, "We are living in a reality in which our privilege to rely on the media as the watchdog of our nation and democracy is being taken away from us." It is the exact opposite. The media's vision, which Leef and her cohorts desire, existed not so long ago - monolithic, Pravda-like journalism, which advanced only the causes to which the white tribe subscribed; journalism that demeaned any conservative, neoconservative, national, Jewish idea; journalism that is extremely alienated from the government and coalition, despite the fact that a majority of the public supports them.

Israel Radio, Channel 1, and the national radio channels, require serious change. They need to give more air time to journalists with ideas other than those we have gotten used to hearing until now. Media directors know that. It would be simple justice after years of injustice and silencing. Israeli society has had enough of the political and cultural one-sidedness that it encounters every time it turns on the TV or radio.

What we saw last week at the hands of the protest leaders was yet another attempt at "media terrorism" directed at station operators. The idea was to slander them into maintaining the Leftist slant in the voices of those who grace their microphones.

Criticism by protest leaders concerning the national media indicates which political side they are on. They do not really care about social justice. They are more concerned with maintaining minority control over Israeli public opinion. Not any more. The public is demanding media justice.

The Colonization of the West

Sultan Knish

Once upon a time when you wanted to invade another people's land, you built your longboats, got together some young males with few prospects at home and set sail for greener pastures. Today the longboats are jet planes and the invaded use them to ferry over their own invaders.

Colonization usually required three elements. Surplus male population, the technology to make the journey and the means to subjugate or drive off the people already living there.

Western medicine and aid have helped create and sustain a surplus population which has nowhere to go and nothing to do in its own highly stratified societies. At home they start Arab Spring like revolutions, which is one more reason for China's One Child policy. With few economic opportunities in an oligarchy, they have to move elsewhere to get ahead. The ability to colonize distant parts of the world usually required a certain level of sophistication. Any barbarian could walk a few miles, grip an axe and smash the heads of the equally backward people who lived there. But eventually they would either come up against a more sophisticated empire or the sea, natural barriers that they couldn't cross without advancing further up the cultural ladder.

The West however has generously exported its technology to the point that it is ubiquitously accessible and while that hasn't made the world a more civilized place, it has made travel to the West easier for the less civilized parts of the world. Pakistan no longer needs to have a functioning society or intellectual inquiry to be able to reach the United States. It just needs some used Boeings and enough education to be able to maintain and operate them without dying in the process.

Using second-hand technology is much less demanding than creating it, it requires less of the original thinking that marks the more advanced society. You can train someone to use the fruits of a society with a spirit of open inquiry without actually sharing in that spirit. You don't need to think like a 20th century physicist about the world to be able to grasp the atom, you only need to follow the instructions that were stolen by the Soviets and then passed to the Chinese, that trickled down to the North Koreans and from there to Pakistan and then to Iran and from there to whichever terrorist group asks nicely.

The jet plane is if anything, a good deal more dangerous than an atom bomb. A single dirty bomb might kill a few hundred thousand people. Ten of them could account for under two million. But a jet plane can wipe out our entire civilization.

You can't colonize a continent with nuclear weapons, but you can do it with people. And people can't ride bombs, but they can fly jet planes. The Muslim airline hijacking industry was one of the more perverse campaigns of terror because without those jet planes, they would be back to the 7th century and with no access to those rich pulsating Western cities. Had the United States airline industry collapsed after September 11, the Muslim colonization industry would have been in big trouble with no way to ferry all those upper middle class young men or their young female "cousins" over to Jersey City, Dearborn or Islamberg.

The colonization of the West is unique in that the invaded are providing the invaders with their means of transportation, providing them with more social serves when they land and moving them up to the top of the social ladder in the foolish expectation that they will become Westerners even as it's painfully clear that this will never happen. Lenin talked about the capitalists selling him the rope with which he will hang them, but the West is giving the rope away for free and offering gratis knot tying seminars in their universities.

All the Muslim world has to do is provide their surplus population and for a small fee, we will ship them here, offer them scholarships, an education and the position froms which they can subjugate us. Half of Europe is on the brink of the abyss because its transnationalists decided that immigration was the way to break down national identity, without contemplating the possibility that the immigrants might have their own identity and would have little interest in being the raw clay for a Euro mold.

The worst stupidity of the 20th century was the peculiar belief that progress had unchained the world from history and set mankind free to achieve a new plateau. And no sooner had the bodies fallen in one war, then the same generation that stood in the trenches and their younger brothers insisted on repeating the same nonsense. And then when half the surviving young men of Europe had cleaned up the bloody mess, they learned nothing from the lessons taught to them by a handful of ugly men in cheap uniforms, except that their own nationalism which had been the only thing standing between them and a spot on the lower levels of the Thousand Year Reich, was a deadly disease.

After two world wars the Germans were no longer interested in sending the troops across the border, but much of Europe went on insisting that the Russians weren't going to cross the border either, just as fervently as their fathers had insisted that the Germans wouldn't. And when the Russians decided to give it up as a bad deal and try to grow some wheat for a change instead, then everyone assumed that history really was over and we could all get down to attending international conferences and vacationing in odd parts of the world where certainly nothing bad could possibly happen to us.

But the German birth rate is now the lowest in Western Europe and the Russian birth rate is nearly as bad. That explains the lack of wars. It's hard to have a war when you don't have the population for it. The present day German birth rate is less than half what it was in the 1930's. Pakistan's birth rate on the other hand is even better than Germany's was back then. And the Turkish birth rate almost perfectly matches Germany's birth rate in 1930-- no wonder then that Turkey is colonizing Berlin.

About the only militant countries anymore are the ones that have the birth rate to back up their bluff. Japan's low birth rate neatly meshes with its pacifism, while China's fertility is a strategic reserve that its rulers intend to unleash when it is safe. Russia may shake its stick, but its only surplus population is Muslim, and the day when the Red Square resounds with the Muslim call to prayer is not far off. That leaves the Muslim world, Latin America, India and Israel.

The United States isn't gone yet, but it also isn't capable of competing with the Mohammeds' and the Gomez', and with open immigration, immigration driven demographics are its destiny. Europe with its welfare states, extended vacations, late marriages, low rates of religion and high immigration rates is all but doomed.

Western societies with falling birth rates import their own colonizers just to be able to balance the birth rate books and pay off the retirement benefits for the previous generations. The only jobs left in the empire involve maintaining the byzantine human machinery of the empire and you don't have to speak English or know what you're doing to get one of those jobs.

Imagine of the Indians had sent boats to Europe for English and Spanish colonists who would come over, learn how to build teepees and pay enough taxes to keep the tribe set. That's the absurd scene here and it's bound to end the same way, with a lot of dead Indians, others living on reservations and a whole bunch learning to scrub floors and speak English and Spanish. Except we're the Indians.

Texas was originally part of Mexico, back when Mexico didn't have the population to fill it and the settlers did. Now the balance has shifted and Texas is sliding back into Mexican hands. The old logic of settlement is that land belongs to those who populate it. This is why countries have borders when they don't have the surplus population to expand beyond them. If they don't have borders or a surplus population, then they're a culture of the walking dead.

The West doesn't have a surplus population or borders and so it's being opportunistically colonized by those who come first. Of the colonists, the Muslims have a sense of manifest destiny to take over the world and rule it in the name of Islam, and with wealthy and influential backers in the Gulf, they have a death grip on Europe and are licking their lips at the thought of North America. There is a ridiculously simple way to stop it, but in a civilization obsessed with its own idealism, simplicity is vulgarity. It is much better to develop a convoluted plan for the brotherhood of all mankind, than to guard your own borders.

If the West were at least being colonized by competent cultures that were coming over because they had the technology and skills to make the conquest, then the end result wouldn't be a dark age.But the West is lending its technology and skills to its own conquest.

Having developed the oil that gave the Gulf its wealth, and then built its cities and its companies, it welcomes in their bastard children to raid its cities and rule over it. The West is not being defeated by cultures that are better than it, but by an ideology with a third rate copy of its religion which was in the right place at the right time when petroleum became a key element in its economic infrastructure.

The successful colonization of the West can only end in another dark age, but the resistance to it may yet give it another lease on life. The West may be facing dark times, but its prospects are better than the slow decay of Japan which lacks a demographic threat that can shake it out of its stupor.

Islam has pushed the West into a fight or flight mode, for the most part its leaders are fleeing and seeking for some terms of accommodation in the clash of civilizations. But enemies who were stupid and arrogant enough to burn their own longboats to kill a few thousand of the natives are making more mistakes.

The greatest miscalculation of any nation or force is the belief in the inevitability of its outcome. The transnationalists believed in the inevitability of their form of progress and refused to see anything that contradicted their assumptions. The Islamists, like all fanatics, are making the same mistake. Their sense of inevitability and invulnerability is a form of denial that masks their own cultural failures. The transnationalists and the Islamists have been lying to themselves and to their followers but the moment of truth is coming when the lies can no longer be sustained. For the transnationalists that day is coming sooner than it is for the Islamists, which is a good thing, because it gives the invaded a chance to wake up before the invaders.

WESTERN SCHOOLHOUSE ROT, BRAINWASHING CHILDREN WITH HATRED FOR ISRAEL…….

Tundra Tabloids

It’s called anti-Semitism 101.

Instead of teaching future generations about the evils of irrational Jew hatred, Western schools are inculcating future generations with Jew hatred, and the Left owns this development big time. They’re known to annually shed their expected drops of crocodile tears for dead Jews of the Holocaust, all the while their political parties, unions and teaching institutions drum up hatred for Israel and by extension, the Jews. KGS

NOTE: This article was published last night (30.10.2011) at YNET, this is republished here at the Tundra Tabloids with permission of the author.
WESTERN SCHOOLS PROMOTE HATRED OF ISRAELManfred Gerstenfeld

Earlier this month it became known that the German EVZ Foundation had financed two high school student programs which promoted hatred of Israel. This state foundation was created to compensate Holocaust slave workers and fight contemporary anti-Semitism.1 In one program, a Dutch Jewish anti-Israeli extremist Hayo Meyer came to the Anne Frank High School in Gutersloh. He equated Palestinian suffering with the mass murder of Jews in the Holocaust and termed Israel a ‘criminal state.’2

Since then, in the Nesbru High School in Asker, Norway an exhibition sponsored by Norwegian Church Aid, was held on “Palestine.” It included a picture of an Israeli flag crossed out and “Murder” written in reverse underneath it. After protest by an Israeli student and some bad publicity, the school finally decided to remove the exhibition.3

It is crucially important to know much more about hatred spread against Israel and Jews in schools in the Western world. This contributes to the formation of a new generation of Israel haters and anti-Semites.

Very few studies give information on these topics. In the 1990’s, Mitchell Bard studied the most widely used history textbooks in American high schools. Regarding Israel, he found them “full of factual errors, oversimplification, omission, and distortion.” Bard concluded that American “high schools are, as far as anti-Israeli teaching is concerned, even worse than universities.”

In 2008, another analysis by Gary Tobin and Dennis Ybarra confirmed this. They also found that Arab and Muslim interest groups try to whitewash and glorify all things Islamic and thus promote Islam. In this way, a whole series of lies has permeated American textbooks.

A study conducted on textbooks in France exposed that facts on the Middle East are presented in a way suggesting that Palestinian terrorism is different from general terrorism in history books.4

Joëlle Allouche-Benayoun summarized the description of Jews in French high school history books as a caricature: “In antiquity, these were the Hebrews whose religion, Judaism, was significantly improved by Jesus, founder of Christianity. At the end of the 19th century, a Jew and French officer [Dreyfus] was accused of treason. This divided the country until the beginning of the 20th century. In the middle of the 20th century during the Second World War, Jews were exterminated and others who created Israel since then carry on an unjust war against the innocent Palestinians.”5

A ‘Panorama’ television program aired by the BBC in 2010 exposed what is taught in Saudi-run Muslim schools in Britain. They use textbooks from Saudi Arabia which teach children from age 6 and up that Jews are descendents of monkeys and pigs. According to one textbook, “Jews are cursed by God.” This book asked children to list the negative qualities of Jews. Teenagers who follow the Saudi national curriculum are being taught that Zionists aim to take over the world for Jews and that the fabricated text of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is true.6

Sometimes, one can incite children with just a single sentence. In a Dutch language teaching book for the sixth grade in Belgium, students are asked to read sentences with the correct intonation. One was: “When a Palestinian child in Jerusalem saw a Jewish soldier arriving, he shrank in fear.”7

One can only imagine the reactions in Belgium if the text had read instead: “After a Palestinian suicide bomber killed many Jewish children and adults, the Belgian press mainly stressed the Israeli reaction to it.”

A related subject is biased teaching. Information on this is sporadic and anecdotal. Dutch Holocaust scholar Johannes Houwink ten Cate remarked that in 2006, he watched the T.V. news with an 11 year old child. “It showed that the Israeli army had inadvertently caused civilian casualties. The child didn’t believe that it was a mistake. I said: ‘Listen, you know that in general, the Israeli army tries to avoid civilian casualties.’ The child did not want to accept Ten Cate’s viewpoint and replied, “My teachers told me otherwise in school.”8

In the U.S. the youth group of the Orthodox Union, the National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY), has culture clubs in over 150 public schools. These reach approximately thirty thousand Jewish youngsters. Former O.U. Executive Vice-President Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb said, “We find that many of these children are very anti-Israeli. They have been very much brainwashed by an extremely anti-Israeli educational establishment.”9

The results of such distortions in teaching may lead many high school students – including Jewish ones – to arrive on campus with an ingrained anti-Israel bias. This will be caused partly by educators charged with forming young minds and values. Much more effort needs to be invested by parents, Jewish communities and the Israeli Government in order to expose and counteract this problem.

Footnotes:

Benjamin Weinthal, “NGOs demand German Shoah group Pay victims,” Jerusalem Post, 4 October 2011.
Benjamin Weinthal, “Germans use ‘anti-Israel’ Jews to soothe Holocaust guilt.” Jerusalem Post, 16 October 2011.
Eli Bondid, “Skole anklaget for antisemittisme i elevutstilling,” Norge Idag, 26 October 2011. [Norwegian]
Barbara Lefebvre and Ève Bonnivard, Élèves sous influence, (Paris; Louis Audibert, 2005). [French]
Joëlle Allouche-Benayoun, “ Juifs et judaïsme dans les manuels d’Histoire des lycées en France” in Barbara Lefebvre and Shmuel Trigano, L’image des Juifs dans l’enseignement scolaire, (Paris: Alliance Israélite Universelle, 2006), 40-41. [French]
Soeren Kern, “UK: Anti-Semitism Rampant in Muslim Schools, Second Generation More Extreme than Parents,” Hudson-NY.org, 9 December 2010.
Walter Janssens, Eddy van Eeckhoven, “Taalknikker 6 Werotaal, Leerboek Taal a,” (Brugge: die Keure, 1999) 94. [Dutch]
Manfred Gerstenfeld “Nederlandse Joden in een maatschappij zonder waarden,” in Manfred Gerstenfeld, Het Verval: Joden in een Stuurloos Nederland, (Amsterdam: Van Praag, 2010), 260-261. [Dutch]
Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, “The Orthodox Union and its Challenges,” Changing Jewish Communities 23, 15 August 2007.

Israel: A true ally in the Middle East

Robert D. Blackwill and Walter B. Slocombe

October 31, 2011
American leaders have traditionally explained the foundations of the U.S.-Israel relationship by citing shared democratic values and the moral responsibility America bears to protect the small nation-state of the Jewish people. Although accurate and essential, this characterization is incomplete because it fails to capture a third, crucial aspect: the many ways in which Israel advances U.S. national interests. Today, Israeli contributions to U.S. national interests cover a broad spectrum. Through joint training, exercises and exchanges on military doctrine, the United States has benefited in the areas of counter-terrorism, intelligence and experience in urban warfare. Increasingly, U.S. homeland security and military agencies are turning to Israeli technology to solve some of their most vexing technical and strategic problems.

This support includes advice and expertise on behavioral screening techniques for airport security and acquisition of an Israeli-produced tactical radar system to enhance force protection. Israel has been a world leader in the development of unmanned aerial systems, both for intelligence collection and combat, and it has shared with the U.S. military the technology, the doctrine and its experience regarding these systems. Israel is also a global pacesetter in armored vehicle protection, defense against short-range rockets, and the techniques and procedures of robotics, all of which it has shared with the United States.

In missile defense, the United States has a broad and multifaceted partnership with Israel. Israel's national missile defenses — which include the U.S. deployment in Israel of an advanced X-band radar system and the more than 100 American military personnel who man it — will be an integral part of a larger missile defense spanning Europe, the eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf to help protect U.S. forces and allies.

Israeli-developed defense equipment, some of which benefited from generous U.S. aid, now used by the U.S. military include short-range unmanned aircraft systems that have seen service in Iraq and Afghanistan; targeting pods on hundreds of Air Force, Navy and Marine strike aircraft; a revolutionary helmet-mounted sight that is standard in nearly all frontline Air Force and Navy fighter aircraft; lifesaving armor installed in thousands of MRAP armored vehicles used in Iraq and Afghanistan; and a gun system for close-in defense of naval vessels against terrorist dinghies and small-boat swarms. Moreover, U.S. and Israeli companies are working together to produce Israel's Iron Dome — the world's first combat-proven counter-rocket system.

Counter-terrorism and intelligence cooperation is deep and extensive, with the United States and Israel working to advance their common interest in defeating the terrorism of Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda and its affiliate groups, and preventing nuclear proliferation in the region. There are joint Special Forces training and exercises and collaboration on shared targets.

This intimate relationship reinforces overall U.S. intelligence efforts by providing Washington with access to Israel's unique set of capabilities for information collection and assessments on key countries and issues in the region. Such was the case, for example, when Israel passed to the United States conclusive photographic evidence in 2007 that Syria, with North Korean assistance, had made enormous strides toward "going hot" with a plutonium-producing reactor.

On important issues, the two nations do sometimes differ, a phenomenon not unique to the U.S.-Israel relationship. Over the decades, there have been periodic policy flare-ups, some even bitter, on topics ranging from Israel's preventive action against Iraq's nuclear reactor to Israeli sales of weaponry and military technology to China. Some of the most contentious disputes have been about actions affecting the Middle East peace process. But more often have been instances of U.S.-Israel collaboration — most important, the Arab-Israel peace treaties that are the anchor of American national interests in the Middle East.

We do not deny that there are costs to the United States, in the Arab world and elsewhere, for its support of Israel, as there are costs to U.S. support of other beleaguered — and sometime imperfect — friends, including West Berlin in the Cold War, Kuwait in 1990-91 and Taiwan today.

But the long-standing U.S. commitment to Israel has not prevented development of close ties with Arab nations, which understand — however much they disagree with U.S. support for Israel — that they benefit from a good relationship with the United States on other issues. Nor has it made the Arab oil-exporting states any less conscious of their own economic and strategic interest in a reasonably stable flow of oil to world markets, or their eagerness to buy first-class military equipment from the United States or to enjoy the benefits of U.S. protection against Iranian or other aggression.

Would Saudi Arabia's policies toward the United States, for example, be markedly different if Washington entered into a sustained crisis with Israel over the Palestine issue? Would Riyadh lower the price of oil? Would it stop hedging its regional bets concerning U.S. attempts to coerce Iran into freezing its nuclear weapons programs? Would it regard current U.S. policy toward Afghanistan more positively? Would it view American democracy promotion in the Middle East more favorably? Would it be more inclined to reform its internal governmental processes to be more in line with U.S. preferences? No.

In sum, we believe that Israel's substantial contributions to U.S. interests are an underappreciated aspect of this relationship and deserve equal billing to shared values and historical responsibility as rationales for American support of Israel.

Robert D. Blackwill, deputy national security advisor for strategic planning in the George W. Bush administration, and Walter B. Slocombe, undersecretary of defense for policy in the Clinton administration, are authors of the new report "Israel: A Strategic Asset for the United States" (The Washington Institute for Near East Policy).

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

Egypt's Massacre of Christians: What the Media Does Not Want You To Know

Raymond Ibrahim • October 31, 2011


Western media coverage of the recent massacre of Coptic Christians in Cairo, Egypt—in which the military killed dozens of Christians and injured some 300—was, as discussed earlier, deplorable. It merely repeated the false propaganda of the complicit state-run media, without checking facts. Since then, further proofs of the lies and brutality surrounding the massacre have emerged; they are compiled in the following report which consists of documented facts and videos from Arabic sources—many of which have not appeared in the Western media.

This report documents: 1) the activities of the Supreme Military Council of Egypt and its de facto ruler; 2) the lies and duplicitous tactics of both the Military Council and its media mouthpiece, Egyptian TV; and 3) the anti-Christian sentiment pervading all aspects of this incident. The Egyptian Military

Armored vehicles intentionally chased after and ran over protesters, killing and mutilating many:

Here is perhaps the clearest video; it shows a high-speed armored vehicle willfully plowing over unsuspecting Christian demonstrators.
This video shows another armored vehicle chasing protesters, and a soldier opening fire into the fleeing crowds.
This video shows high-speed armored cars running amok in the middle of the crowds, including chasing protesters on the curb, as well as soldiers beating protesters.
A new report by Magdi Khalil asserts that the day before the planned march, a "death squad" of snipers hid atop buildings and shot at protesters.
As for eyewitness testimonies attesting to the brutality of the massacre, they are many, and include Muslims.

The Tactics of the Military Council ( or "War is Deceit")

Notwithstanding crushing evidence, after the incident Egypt's Military Council held a news conference wherein senior official, Mahmoud Hegazy, spun lie after lie: he stated that the military would "never, never" run over civilians; that the very idea was "impossible, impossible!" and "Shame on those who accuse the Egyptian military of such things!... Never has our military run over a single person, not even when combating the Enemy [Israel]."

Hegazy portrayed the Christian protesters as the aggressors, attacking and killing "honorable" soldiers. To prove his point, he showed an image of a protester on top of a stalled armored vehicle, throwing a rock at the soldier inside, and a video of a military vehicle—that he claimed had been hijacked by a protester—driving wildly into the crowd.

What Hegazy failed to disclose, however, is that the "hijacked" vehicle running amok, and the one stalled and attacked by a protester, were one and the same vehicle: Al Dalil revealed that both vehicles had the same identification number. In other words, when the vehicle in which a soldier was chasing and running over protesters finally stalled, the protesters then attacked it. Egypt's leaders willfully manipulated the footage to exonerate themselves and portray the Copts as violent aggressors.

Several eye-witnesses, including Muslims, further stated that, to hide the "evidence," they saw soldiers hurling the mutilated bodies of those run over into the nearby Nile River. Likewise, among the slain, a dead Muslim soldier, whom the military said was killed by protesters, was actually killed by friendly-fire—although there are indications that he may have died elsewhere, and his corpse thrown among the dead for show.

As Copts have long suspected, the "thugs" (al-baltagiyya) who always appear in protests attacking Christians seem to be men whom the military uses to create an excuse to open fire and exercise brutality: Muslim eyewitnesses say they saw the thugs coming with State Security: Al Dalil showed a video clip of a soldier exposed dressed as a civilian, interspersed among Coptic protesters, and another video showing the thugs cooperating with the military.

This video might offer the greatest proof: Days before the massacre, when Copts were protesting the destruction of their latest church, around 20 Egyptian soldiers and security personnel captured a protester and mercilessly beat him (while calling him an "infidel," to put the beating in context). Mixed among the military (camouflage uniforms) and security (black uniforms) is what appears to be a plainclothes civilian, who proceeds to stab the Christian protestor in the head with a knife several times; the victim later received 20 stitches. The plainclothesman is most likely a member of the military or security, dressed as a civilian for stealth purposes, otherwise he would not have been able to move among them so casually.

The Role of the Egyptian State Media (or "War is Deceit")

"Egyptian TV"—demonstrating, unsurprisingly, that state-run media always serve dictatorial regimes—merely propagated the lies of the Military Council.

Even as armored vehicles were mowing down Christian protesters, Egyptian TV broadcast footage of reporters saying, "Help, the Copts are killing our heroic, patriotic soldiers and burning Qurans!" One segment on Egyptian TV had an outraged reporter condemning Christians—"as if they were the Israeli enemy"—for killing "our noble protectors [soldiers], who never once fired a single shot." As a result, many Muslims took to the streets brutally attacking Christians and their property.

Egyptian TV also lied by saying three soldiers died at the hands of Copts; officials at the TV station later confessed to making it up. That, however, did not stop a barrage of op-eds in Egypt blaming the Christians for their own massacre.

Due to Egyptian TV's misinformation, several Egyptian reporters unequivocally condemned it. Anchorwoman Dina Rasmi said: "I am ashamed that I work at this despicable TV channel… Egyptian TV was effectively calling for civil war between Muslims and Christians… Egyptian TV has proven that it is a slave to those who rule." Another news anchor, Mahmoud Yousif, announced that he "washes his hands of what Egyptian TV is broadcasting."

Anti-Christian Hate

Although it should be clear that anti-Christian sentiment fueled this latest Muslim slaughter of Christian minorities, a few specifics follow:

Soldiers screamed "Allahu Akbar!"["Allah is Greater!," the Islamist war cry], and cursed "Infidels!" as they approached and attacked the protesters—which of course is not so out of the ordinary when one considers that, even in olden times and in movies, the Egyptian military was called the Jihadiyya [the organization that wages holy war].
A video of a soldier boasting that he shot a Christian in the chest is greeted by the crowd around him with "Allahu Akbar!"
After the incident, Dr. Hind Hanafi, president of the University of Cairo, recommended separating the wounded Christians from the wounded Muslims admitted into the hospital, thereby institutionalizing religious discrimination, even in hospitals.

Conclusion

A massacre at this level never occurred during the thirty-year reign of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, and yet Mubarak is being charged with "crimes against Egyptians." What about the Military Council? It has committed greater crimes—even though it has been in charge for less than a year. Saddam Hussein was condemned by the international community for using chemicals on his own people; where are the international community, the media, and the so-called human rights groups when it comes to a government running over its own civilians with tanks and having "death squads" of snipers shooting at them?

Finally, if this report testifies to crimes against humanity, consider what it says about diplomacy: If Egyptian leadership lies and deceives to suppress its own "infidel" citizens—whose "crime" was to object to the continual destruction of their churches—how credible can it be to the outside "infidels," Israel and the U.S.?

Raymond Ibrahim, a Middle East and Islam specialist, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

France: "This Mosque Is a Direct Obstacle to the Integration of [Muslims]"

Soeren Kern
October 31, 2011

A French court has annulled the construction permit for a mega-mosque in the southern city of Marseille, home to the largest Muslim community in France.

The court ruling represents a major setback for proponents of the mosque, which has long been touted as the biggest and most potent symbol of Islam's growing place in France -- and Europe.

The move comes as a French newspaper published the contents of a leaked intelligence report about the rise of Islam in Marseille. The document states that "even if the number of individuals who have been radicalized to the point of supporting the Jihadists is relatively low, Islamic fundamentalism has progressed to the point where it has won over the majority of the Muslim population" who live in the city and who now number over 250,000. The Administrative Tribunal of Marseille ruled on October 27 that the mega-mosque project would have to be cancelled because of failures to meet urban-planning requirements. The court raised particular concerns over the project's failure to finalize a deal for a 450-space parking lot and to reassure planners that the mosque would fit in with the urban environment.

The tribunal noted "a lack of graphical material permitting the evaluation of the project's integration with neighbouring buildings, its visual impact and the treatment of access points and land."

The 22-million-euro ($31-million) project would have seen the Grand Mosque -- boasting a minaret soaring 25 meters (82 feet) high, and room for up to 7,000 worshippers in a vast prayer hall -- built on the north side of the city's old port in

the city's northern Saint-Louis area, an ethnically mixed neighborhood that suffers from poverty and high unemployment.

Several decades in the planning, the project was granted a construction permit in November 2009. At the time, city officials said the new mosque would help the Muslim community better integrate into the mainstream and foster a more moderate form of Islam.

The first cornerstone of the 8,300 square meter (92,000 square feet) project was laid in May 2010. The elaborate stone-laying ceremony was attended by Muslim religious leaders and local politicians, as well as more than a dozen diplomats from Muslim countries.

Full-scale construction of the Grand Mosque -- which was also to have included a Koranic school and a library, as well as a restaurant and tea room -- was scheduled to begin in February 2012.

But the project has faced stiff opposition from local residents and businesses. Opponents of the Grand Mosque have argued that it would be out of harmony with the neighborhood's economic and social fabric.

Local residents also pointed to potential parking problems surrounding the building. Authorities have estimated that the number of people attending Friday prayers at the mosque could reach 1,500, a figure that could rise to up to 14,000 on Muslim holidays.

The court decision comes as the French newspaper La Marseillaise on October 24 published extracts of a leaked intelligence report about the state of Islam in Marseille, France's second-largest city, where the Muslim population has reached 25% of the total population.

The confidential seven-page document, drafted by domestic intelligence in the French administrative department of Bouches-du-Rhône in March 2011, focuses on the phenomenon of Muslim street prayers in Marseille, but also provides a more general assessment of Islam in the city.

The document also addresses a specific mosque on Gaillard Street in the 3rd district of Marseille that is associated with Muslim immigrants from the Comoros Islands, an archipelago island nation in the Indian Ocean that gained independence from France in 1975.

"Far from being Comorian, this mosque promotes Islam marked by tribalism. It is clear that this mosque is a direct obstacle to the proper integration of Comorians in the Marseilles area, a kind of voluntary marginalization," the document states.

The Koranic school associated with this mosque is also criticised: "Far from awaking spirituality and minds, it locks them even further into a cultural loop and thus increases their communitarian inwardness."

The report describes the Muslim population of Marseille as a "marginalized population, poorly informed, uncultured and with a limited understanding even of their own religion, finding themselves in the hands of self-proclaimed imams, barely more competent than their flocks but sufficiently charismatic to obtain their blind obedience."

The document also calls for fewer mosques in Marseille. It states: "The abundance of prayer rooms in Marseille is largely a reflection of divisions of all kinds: obediential as well as nationalistic, ethnic and even business strategies that set Muslims in Marseille against each other."

The proposed solution is to "refocus the places of worship" which would "permit a professionalization of the imams, achieve economies of scale and force the Islamic federations and sects to reach a consensus. It would marginalize extra-national interests and also facilitate relations and observations with our institutional partners. Not more mosques but better mosques."

Nevertheless, the report warns against the construction of a grand mosque: "This building would dominate an entire part of the city which is not very elevated. It would be visible from most of the surrounding main roads and would perform the call to prayer by using a massive beam of light that would be seen across Marseille. The mosque is generally considered aggressive to the point where a local referendum on the matter would give results at least equivalent and perhaps more emphatic than the voting organized in the Swiss confederation last year [the Swiss vote to ban minarets]."

The report says that building new mosques is only a solution if their architecture is "discreet" in order to "limit their visual impact on the urban landscape."

The document concludes by stating that Muslims in France appear to want the state to intervene in religious matters: "It is interesting to note that the majority of Muslims find it natural for the state to organize religious practice, even by force if necessary, and that many of them even declare that they do not understand the neutrality of France in this matter."

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

Setting the Record Straight on the U.S. Troop Withdrawal from Iraq

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi
Pajamas Media

http://www.meforum.org/3084/us-troop-withdrawal-iraq

Following President Obama's promise that all American troops will be home from Iraq by Christmas time, there have been numerous misconceptions circulated in media reports about what is precisely going on regarding the U.S. withdrawal.

To begin with, there is a widespread notion that, in the words of one report in the Guardian, Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "[h]ad wanted to keep some U.S. troops in Iraq. … But he had to bow to pressure from pro-Iranian politicians and others in his coalition government who wanted all U.S. troops out."

These remarks are highly misleading, to put it mildly.

Here is what actually transpired: the U.S. military had for quite some time been intent on keeping between ten to twenty thousand troops in the country beyond the withdrawal deadline stipulated in the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) originally drawn up between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government. However, with the exception of the Kurdish parties, all Iraqi political factions were opposed to this idea from the start, including al-Maliki and his State of Law bloc.

Nonetheless, in August, Iraq's various parties — excluding the followers of the pro-Iran Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — held a meeting and agreed in principle on the idea of allowing a few thousand American soldiers to stay beyond the SOFA deadline and provide additional training for the Iraqi security forces.

The two reasons behind this desire for further American training are that the Iraqi military is seen as incapable of defending the country from foreign threats and that there is a lack of Iraqi know-how on the use of advanced weaponry, such as fighter jets, which the military has recently been purchasing. In fact, the Iraqi military estimates that further training will be needed until at least 2020.

The Iraqi politicians also agreed, however, on the condition that American troops should not be granted immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts, primarily because of memories of U.S. abuses like the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

This principle was reaffirmed in another meeting in October (again, excluding the Sadrists). In any case, the primary purpose of the October meeting was not to discuss the impending U.S. withdrawal, but to try (unsuccessfully, as usual) to resolve the problems in forming the Iraqi government, a process that's been going on since the March 2010 elections.

The debate over immunity has proven to be the main obstacle in negotiations between Washington and Baghdad regarding keeping troops beyond 2011. It was an Iraqi consensus nationalist position and not any pro-Iranian opposition to the U.S. presence that proved the stumbling block.

Even given all these issues, however, it is not necessarily true that no U.S. troops will remain on Iraqi soil after December 31. Iraq and the United States still agree on American soldiers remaining to train Iraqi security forces. General Babakir Zebari, the Iraqi army's chief of staff; al-Maliki; and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have all issued statements to this effect.

Thus, despite the initial failure of talks, there is still a significant chance of a small contingent force of a few hundred troops — rather than a few thousand — staying as "trainers."

Discussion is still taking place as the Iraqi government and the Obama administration try to find a compromise for a loophole on the immunity issues. U.S. soldiers would not have immunity status but trainers would get it by technically working for the State Department or NATO, which already has a 200-member training mission that will stay at least until 2013.

And if this solution fails, Iraq will probably hire ex-U.S. soldiers as civilian contractors to provide further training.

In light of all the misreporting in the media on these happenings, the most important point is that Iraq is setting the terms of its relationship with the United States as a sovereign nation, and is not acting at the behest of a foreign power, namely Iran.

Iran's government has had no role in influencing the Iraqi political factions' stances on the troop extension. In short, Baghdad is simply doing whatever it wants. A key underlying principle is simply this: Iraq doesn't want to be either too dependent on the United States or on Iran.

The Iraqi government will use the United States to ensure its sovereignty vis-à-vis Iran while insisting on showing that it isn't a U.S. protectorate. This strategy is likely to work and is not only in Iraq's but also in the U.S. interest.

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi is a student at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and has done work as an intern for the Middle East Forum.

King Abdallah of Jordan on How No One Trusts Obama...

Barry Rubin

Earlier this week, The Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth interviewed King Abdallah of Jordan.Here is the beginning of my post. Here’s how King Abdallah responded to Weymouth’s question, “Do you and other leaders in this area believe you cannot rely on the U.S.?"

He replied:

"I think everybody is wary of dealing with the West....Looking at how quickly people turned their backs on [Egyptian President Husni] Mubarak, I would say that most people are going to try and go their own way. I think there is going to be less coordination with the West and therefore a chance of more misunderstandings."

This is devastating. I'm not shocked that the king thinks that way but I am shocked that he says so openly. In other words he isn't afraid of Obama's being angry and thinks he has nothing to lose because things aren't going to be better. That's how far the situation has deteriorated. Imagine that instead of going to Jordan (which is also an Arab country in addition to being a pro-American, moderate one) for advice on building the opposition leadership in neighboring Syria, the Obama Administration went to the non-Arab, Islamist Turkish regime!

Jordan is now turning to Saudi Arabia, another country that is no longer relying on Obama, to be its protector and source for financial aid.

Jordan has been the most long-term, consistent ally of the United States in the Arab world, continuously for more than 40 years. Yet the king cannot trust those in the White House any more. They dumped Mubarak, they might dump him.

Therefore, no one will stick his neck out on behalf of U.S. interests or requests. Moreover, they are going their own way. While Washington extolls Islamist forces or things that benefit them in Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia, and Turkey, they don't seem to care at all about Israel, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia, the scattered survivors of recent developments and Obama's pro-Islamist policies.

Iraq's disinterest in having a continued U.S. troop presence arises from several issues but Baghdad's determination to go its own way is also connected to this situation. And in Afghanistan, the government knows that it cannot depend on a U.S. government that is not only withdrawing but has subverted the Kabul regime, proven powerless in dealing with Pakistan, and openly talks of political negotiations with the Taliban and even al-Qaida-linked terrorist groups (the Haqqani Network).

The U.S. policy formulated around 1955--allying with moderate Arab monarchies and nationalist regimes--as well as that originating in the 1970s--adding Israel to that list--has been undone by the Obama Administration. When the king of Jordan openly complains you know that U.S. credibility among pro-Western Arabs is pretty close to zero.

source:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jordans-king-abdullah-on-egypt-syria-and-israel/2011/10/24/gIQAejhRDM_story.html


Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish Studies,http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22

Veracity, Mendacity – and Islam

Bruce Bawer

The recent arrival in my mail of a book entitled Islam: Critical Essays about a Political Religion has prompted a number of thoughts. Edited by Sam and Wim van Rooy and published late last year, it is a massive compendium, just under 800 pages long. It is in Dutch. (The title is actually De Islam: Kritische Essays over een Politieke Religie.) And it is richly comprehensive, with thirty-four essays on such subjects as the Islamization of Europe, Islam in India, the term “Islamophobia,” jihad in Africa, dhimmitude, apostasy, the myth of Andalusia, taqiyya, Islam and the West, sharia law, Islam’s “fellow travelers,” Jews under Islam, Christians under Islam, Islam and women, Islam and slavery, Islam and fascism, and Islam vs. democracy. The authors are mostly Dutch and Flemish writers with considerable expertise in their subjects, plus a sprinkling of well-known international figures as Ibn Warraq​ and Bat Ye’or. I have not yet read every word of the book – and given my spotty Dutch I may never do so – but one thing is absolutely clear: this is most definitely not a product of the Islamic Studies propaganda factory. It is not the sort of book, in other words, in which you would be likely to find the work of John Esposito, the king of Islamic Studies in the U.S., who is a reliable apologist for Islam and whose Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University is, in fact, funded by (and named for) his good friend and benefactor, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal of Saudi Arabia. Nor is this book the sort of soft-focus feel-good material churned out by popular writers like Karen Armstrong​, who (it must be admitted) does a truly brilliant job of soft-pedaling the darker sides of Islam and emphasizing its warmly spiritual aspects, so that when you think of the religion you don’t picture a jihadist lopping off somebody’s head but a beautiful woman in a sensuously loose veil meditating at sundown under an olive tree while sipping coffee and nibbling on delicious figs.

No, the writers of this book are not propagandists for Islam. Instead, they are mostly generalists, journalists, independent scholars, or professors in non-Islamic disciplines who have developed an expertise in certain aspects of Islam. And they tell the truth about it. No, women are not equal under Islam. Yes, apostasy from Islam is a capital crime. No, Jews and Christians in medieval Andalusia did not live in perfect harmony with their Muslim overlords, but were systematically treated as inferiors, afforded limited rights, and subjected to a special tax. As Sam van Rooy writes in his introduction, the overarching purpose of this book is to dispel myths, dissolve naïveté, and challenge the absurd and historyless notion of Islam as a religion of peace. In short, this book is the real thing – a substantial education in the hard facts of Islam written by people who are free of the kind of institutional and ideological restraints that keep many a certified “expert” in the subject from telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about Islam.

The first of the two important points to be made here is that this book is far from alone. In the years since 9/11, while Islamic Studies professors have continued to whitewash the religion of peace, responsible-minded men and women outside of the Islamic Studies racket have taken up the job of truth-telling, publishing a number of substantial, and in some cases encyclopedic, volumes about Islam. Some of these authors have educational and professional backgrounds in areas entirely unrelated to Islam, but after the outrage of 9/11 felt driven to engage in a fast-track process of self-education about the belief system that had motivated bin Laden and his operatives. One thinks, for example, of Andrew Bostom, a physician and professor of medicine at Brown University​ who in the last few years has somehow found the time to produce massive, definitive books about the history of jihad and the legacy of Islamic anti-Semitism.

The second of the two important points to be made here is that while books like the van Rooys’ and Bostom’s do indeed exist – not only in English but in a number of major Western languages – ignorance and outright duplicity about the basic facts of Islam still reign supreme throughout the West. That insipid cliche about Islam as the religion of peace persists. An assortment of inane claims about the Koran – for example, that it forbids killing and that it prohibits compulsion in religion – persists.
And why do they persist? Because they are encouraged and promoted by Islamic Studies programs, by craven politicians, and by the mainstream media. I will never forget a TV interview I saw a couple of years ago in Norway. A Muslim woman politician told a female reporter that men and women are completely equal under Islam. The reporter smiled and nodded and went on to the next question. Or think of the 2008 lecture in which the Archbishop of Canterbury argued for sharia as an inevitable and benign addition to Western jurisprudence. And who can forget President Obama’s famous June 2009 speech in Cairo celebrating Islamic history and civilization, in which nearly every sentence was either an outrageous exaggeration or an outright falsehood?

The kind of blatant untruths about Islam that President Obama served up in Cairo are cultural-elite mantras. Some of those who recycle these lies are ignorant enough to think they are true. Others know better. But they have decided that when it comes to the subject of Islam, ideology matters more than truth. “Respect for difference” matters more than truth. Such is the essence of multiculturalism. For a good multiculturalist, the ultimate virtue is not embracing the truth but looking away from it in the name of cultural sensitivity. If one encounters evil in some non-Western culture – especially Islam – one must turn a blind eye to it. And one must call day night and night day: one must equate blatantly mendacious, whitewashing cliches about Islam with seriousness, intelligence, and open-mindedness, and equate frank, unvarnished accounts of Islamic theology, history, and culture with ignorance and bigotry.

Imagine how different things could be! Imagine if politicians, academics, and mainstream journalists actually began discussing Islam in a spirit of objectivity and intellectual responsibility. Imagine if books like the van Rooys’ and Bostom’s were prominently and favorably reviewed, made required reading in university courses, and became the sources of common wisdom about Islam for us and for our posterity. Alas, what is really happening – even though such solid compendiums of objective information are readily available – is that all too many members of the next generation, if they are “learning” anything at all about Islam, are “learning” it from slippery propagandists like Esposito and Armstrong. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, an intellectual travesty, an educational scandal, and a cultural disaster. And it does not bode well, needless to say, for the prospects of what some of us still like to think of as the Free World.