http://www.kerenmalki.org/photo.htm
http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/015906.shtml
'Today's [Yesterday now. -S] New York Times carries a review of a film called "Hot House" that goes inside Israeli prisons and examines the lives of Palestinian prisoners. We're not recommending the film or the review. But we do want to share our feelings with you about the beaming female face that adorns the article. You can see it here.
The film is produced by HBO. So it's presumably HBO's publicity department that was responsible for creating and distributing a glamor-style photograph of a smiling, contented-looking young woman in her twenties to promote the movie.
That female is our child's murderer. She was sentenced to sixteen life sentences or 320 years which she is serving in an Israeli jail. Fifteen people were killed and more than a hundred maimed and injured by the actions of this attractive person and her associates. The background is here.'
The mainstream press's point of view on Israel has changed radically. From the days in the 60's when idealistic young Brits and Americans would head off to Israel to experience life on a Kibbutz and get a feel for what plucky little Israel has suffered in its brief existence; we have travelled far. Now young Brits and Americans are more likely to go to the Palestinian arab territories and scream obscenities at the the Israeli security barrier while burning their own flags. And weirdly enough, the big newspapers and TV networks in the US and Britain seem to be of the same mind. So a useful corrective to the deluge of 'heartrending' stories of Palestinian stupidity and suicidal cultural supremacism is the story of the people they kill.
A request to other bloggers- please pass this on.
(Source: Little Green Footballs)
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Friday, June 29, 2007
How the war will be won
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/06/understanding-current-operatio/
'These operations are qualitatively different from what we have done before. Our concept is to knock over several insurgent safe havens simultaneously, in order to prevent terrorists relocating their infrastructure from one to another, and to create an operational synergy between what we're doing in Baghdad and what's happening outside. Unlike on previous occasions, we don't plan to leave these areas once they’re secured. These ops will run over months, and the key activity is to stand up viable local security forces in partnership with Iraqi Army and Police, as well as political and economic programs, to permanently secure them. The really decisive activity will be police work, registration of the population and counterintelligence in these areas, to comb out the insurgent sleeper cells and political cells that have "gone quiet" as we moved in, but which will try to survive through the op and emerge later. This will take operational patience, and it will be intelligence-led, and Iraqi government-led. It will probably not make the news (the really important stuff rarely does) but it will be the truly decisive action.'
'(a.) The enemy needs the people to act in certain ways (sympathy, acquiescence, silence, reaction to provocation) in order to survive and further his strategy. Unless the population acts in these ways, both insurgents and terrorists will wither, and the cycle of provocation and backlash that drives the sectarian conflict in Iraq will fail.
(b.) The enemy is fluid, but the population is fixed. (The enemy is fluid because he has no permanent installations he needs to defend, and can always run away to fight another day. But the population is fixed, because people are tied to their homes, businesses, farms, tribal areas, relatives etc). Therefore—and this is the major change in our strategy this year—protecting and controlling the population is do-able, but destroying the enemy is not. We can drive him off from the population, then introduce local security forces, population control, and economic and political development, and thereby "hard-wire" the enemy out of the environment, preventing his return. But chasing enemy cells around the countryside is not only a waste of time, it is precisely the sort of action he wants to provoke us into. That’s why AQ cells leaving an area are not the main game—they are a distraction. We played the enemy’s game for too long: not any more. Now it is time for him to play our game.
(c.) Being fluid, the enemy can control his loss rate and therefore can never be eradicated by purely enemy-centric means: he can just go to ground if the pressure becomes too much. BUT, because he needs the population to act in certain ways in order to survive, we can asphyxiate him by cutting him off from the people. And he can't just "go quiet" to avoid that threat. He has either to come out of the woodwork, fight us and be destroyed, or stay quiet and accept permanent marginalization from his former population base. That puts him on the horns of a lethal dilemma (which warms my heart, quite frankly, after the cynical obscenities these irhabi gang members have inflicted on the innocent Iraqi non-combatant population). That's the intent here.
(d.) The enemy may not be identifiable, but the population is. In any given area in Iraq, there are multiple threat groups but only one, or sometimes two main local population groups. We could do (and have done, in the past) enormous damage to potential supporters, "destroying the haystack to find the needle", but we don't need to: we know who the population is that we need to protect, we know where they live, and we can protect them without unbearable disruption to their lives. And more to the point, we can help them protect themselves, with our forces and ISF in overwatch.'
The author recently returned from six weeks in Iraq.
'These operations are qualitatively different from what we have done before. Our concept is to knock over several insurgent safe havens simultaneously, in order to prevent terrorists relocating their infrastructure from one to another, and to create an operational synergy between what we're doing in Baghdad and what's happening outside. Unlike on previous occasions, we don't plan to leave these areas once they’re secured. These ops will run over months, and the key activity is to stand up viable local security forces in partnership with Iraqi Army and Police, as well as political and economic programs, to permanently secure them. The really decisive activity will be police work, registration of the population and counterintelligence in these areas, to comb out the insurgent sleeper cells and political cells that have "gone quiet" as we moved in, but which will try to survive through the op and emerge later. This will take operational patience, and it will be intelligence-led, and Iraqi government-led. It will probably not make the news (the really important stuff rarely does) but it will be the truly decisive action.'
'(a.) The enemy needs the people to act in certain ways (sympathy, acquiescence, silence, reaction to provocation) in order to survive and further his strategy. Unless the population acts in these ways, both insurgents and terrorists will wither, and the cycle of provocation and backlash that drives the sectarian conflict in Iraq will fail.
(b.) The enemy is fluid, but the population is fixed. (The enemy is fluid because he has no permanent installations he needs to defend, and can always run away to fight another day. But the population is fixed, because people are tied to their homes, businesses, farms, tribal areas, relatives etc). Therefore—and this is the major change in our strategy this year—protecting and controlling the population is do-able, but destroying the enemy is not. We can drive him off from the population, then introduce local security forces, population control, and economic and political development, and thereby "hard-wire" the enemy out of the environment, preventing his return. But chasing enemy cells around the countryside is not only a waste of time, it is precisely the sort of action he wants to provoke us into. That’s why AQ cells leaving an area are not the main game—they are a distraction. We played the enemy’s game for too long: not any more. Now it is time for him to play our game.
(c.) Being fluid, the enemy can control his loss rate and therefore can never be eradicated by purely enemy-centric means: he can just go to ground if the pressure becomes too much. BUT, because he needs the population to act in certain ways in order to survive, we can asphyxiate him by cutting him off from the people. And he can't just "go quiet" to avoid that threat. He has either to come out of the woodwork, fight us and be destroyed, or stay quiet and accept permanent marginalization from his former population base. That puts him on the horns of a lethal dilemma (which warms my heart, quite frankly, after the cynical obscenities these irhabi gang members have inflicted on the innocent Iraqi non-combatant population). That's the intent here.
(d.) The enemy may not be identifiable, but the population is. In any given area in Iraq, there are multiple threat groups but only one, or sometimes two main local population groups. We could do (and have done, in the past) enormous damage to potential supporters, "destroying the haystack to find the needle", but we don't need to: we know who the population is that we need to protect, we know where they live, and we can protect them without unbearable disruption to their lives. And more to the point, we can help them protect themselves, with our forces and ISF in overwatch.'
The author recently returned from six weeks in Iraq.
God strikes at Pakistan
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6252588.stm
It is the wrath of Allah against Gen. Musharraf- as I'm sure hundreds if not thousands of mullahs will have said today at Friday prayers.
It is the wrath of Allah against Gen. Musharraf- as I'm sure hundreds if not thousands of mullahs will have said today at Friday prayers.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Whisper it, we're winning
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htwin/articles/20070625.aspx
'June 25, 2007: The Taliban has admitted defeat, in their own unique way. In recent media interviews, Taliban spokesmen announced a shift in emphasis to suicide bombings. The Taliban also admitted that the Americans had infiltrated their high command, which led to the death or capture of several senior Taliban officials, and the capture of many lower ranking ones as well. There have also been some prominent defections recently, which the Taliban spokesmen did not want to talk about. '
For those people who get their news from the BBC... here is the news.
'Terrorism is a step back for the Taliban, and an admission that they have failed, in the last two years, in their effort to march into Afghanistan and take over. Suicide bombing is suicidal in more ways than one. Most of the victims, so far, have been Afghans, and this has turned many likeminded (Islamic conservative) Afghans against the Taliban. But at this point, the Taliban have no choice.'
You won't be reading or hearing or seeing that extremely important piece of news on the BBC because the BBC can't bear the thought that 'our lads' might be winning against the unstoppable Muslim hordes. Lefty wankers.
'June 25, 2007: The Taliban has admitted defeat, in their own unique way. In recent media interviews, Taliban spokesmen announced a shift in emphasis to suicide bombings. The Taliban also admitted that the Americans had infiltrated their high command, which led to the death or capture of several senior Taliban officials, and the capture of many lower ranking ones as well. There have also been some prominent defections recently, which the Taliban spokesmen did not want to talk about. '
For those people who get their news from the BBC... here is the news.
'Terrorism is a step back for the Taliban, and an admission that they have failed, in the last two years, in their effort to march into Afghanistan and take over. Suicide bombing is suicidal in more ways than one. Most of the victims, so far, have been Afghans, and this has turned many likeminded (Islamic conservative) Afghans against the Taliban. But at this point, the Taliban have no choice.'
You won't be reading or hearing or seeing that extremely important piece of news on the BBC because the BBC can't bear the thought that 'our lads' might be winning against the unstoppable Muslim hordes. Lefty wankers.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Wahhabism isn't progressive
"One should read about the life of Sayyid Qutb, intellectual architect of the Muslim Brotherhood that we now apparently wish to embrace. He hated the very thought of Jews, though he had seen few if any in Egypt, and was only to encounter them in any real number in America. This middle-class Egyptian—subsidized generously by his own government, treated well and embraced by Americans—grew to detest the West for its liberality, its equality of the sexes, its material wealth, its friendship with the Jews.
In other words, his wretched life reminds us that envy, jealousy, anger at lost stature, these primordial emotions fuel jihadism. They may be enhanced by general misery, acerbated by statist failures and authoritarian governments, but ultimately the nihilist rages are attributable to the lethal mix of Middle East tribalism and Islam’s utter failure to account for and live with modernity.
Thinking that radical Islam will soften itself or evolve is analogous to a victorious Confederacy voluntarily ending slavery about 1870, a kinder, gentler Soviet Union without the gulags, Hitler in his dotage dismantling Auschwitz, or Tojo in the 1950s turning his old zeal to flooding the Co-Prosperity Sphere with cars and radios." Gazitis
http://victordavishanson.pajamasmedia.com/2007/06/21/
Absolutely right. If you go back to the very beginning of Wahhabism, you find the some motivational factors- envy, jealousy, anger at lost stature. I would add one more- the excruciating feeling that other people might be having fun and you aren't.
In other words, his wretched life reminds us that envy, jealousy, anger at lost stature, these primordial emotions fuel jihadism. They may be enhanced by general misery, acerbated by statist failures and authoritarian governments, but ultimately the nihilist rages are attributable to the lethal mix of Middle East tribalism and Islam’s utter failure to account for and live with modernity.
Thinking that radical Islam will soften itself or evolve is analogous to a victorious Confederacy voluntarily ending slavery about 1870, a kinder, gentler Soviet Union without the gulags, Hitler in his dotage dismantling Auschwitz, or Tojo in the 1950s turning his old zeal to flooding the Co-Prosperity Sphere with cars and radios." Gazitis
http://victordavishanson.pajamasmedia.com/2007/06/21/
Absolutely right. If you go back to the very beginning of Wahhabism, you find the some motivational factors- envy, jealousy, anger at lost stature. I would add one more- the excruciating feeling that other people might be having fun and you aren't.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Superb appraisals of Middle Eastern sit
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001473.html
If Michael J Totten dies, there will be a huge gap in what we know and think about the middle east. This article should be read by everyone who wants to know whats actually going on there. That is all.
If Michael J Totten dies, there will be a huge gap in what we know and think about the middle east. This article should be read by everyone who wants to know whats actually going on there. That is all.
Humour in the politically correct minefield
'Just for the record, Canadians are not humorless. We're humourless, OK? And in case you're planning a trip, jokes in Canada are not illegal. They're just federally regulated. And a good rule of thumb is this: We're not humorless about Anglophone Canada. Want to make a cheap crack about curling, or the Queen, or redneck Albertans? Feel free. But we are humorless about Francophone Canada.
It's not so much that Francophones themselves can't take a joke, but that the bien-pensant Anglos who police English Canadian culture don't want to risk letting them be put in the position of having to take a joke, lest it tear the country apart. There's a lesson here, both for the European Union and an increasingly Hispanicized U.S.: Gags are one of the great pillars of a common culture, but they're one of the first things to get lost in translation--and if you can't share a joke, it's hard to have a shared culture. That's why multilingual societies tend toward the humorless: see Switzerland and Belgium. (For the purposes of the preceding racist generalization, I should point out that I'm semi-Belgian.) '
http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/352/30/
I just love Mark Steyn- not in a poofy, gay sort of way, obviously, but in a 'Why can't I be even 10% that funny?' sort of way. Read the whole piece- its laugh-out-loud funny. But his point, that multi-lingual (and multi-cultural) societies are a lot less humorous than than mono-lingual ones is one I can personally attest to. When I lived in Alabama, there was a continual stream of wisecracks, gutter-jokes and witticisms bandied about, very often scabrous and filthy, very often massively politically incorrect and most of it extremely funny. Nobody thought much of it, and because the jokes were aimed at everybody, nobody could take offense without appearing sad and self-pitying. Its a great situation to be in, even when you are the butt of the joke sometimes. You just suck it up and take it like everybody else does.
When that camaraderie and shared world-view are damaged or extinguished, like in my office in London for instance, jokes become mine-fields. Each one could get you sacked for racism, sexism, being insensitive to the disabled or one of a million other crimes against political correctness. So nobody makes jokes. Its dull, its dreary, its just like the Soviet Union but its safe. I really really must move to somewhere where they still crack jokes, or I'm slowly going to go mad.
It's not so much that Francophones themselves can't take a joke, but that the bien-pensant Anglos who police English Canadian culture don't want to risk letting them be put in the position of having to take a joke, lest it tear the country apart. There's a lesson here, both for the European Union and an increasingly Hispanicized U.S.: Gags are one of the great pillars of a common culture, but they're one of the first things to get lost in translation--and if you can't share a joke, it's hard to have a shared culture. That's why multilingual societies tend toward the humorless: see Switzerland and Belgium. (For the purposes of the preceding racist generalization, I should point out that I'm semi-Belgian.) '
http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/352/30/
I just love Mark Steyn- not in a poofy, gay sort of way, obviously, but in a 'Why can't I be even 10% that funny?' sort of way. Read the whole piece- its laugh-out-loud funny. But his point, that multi-lingual (and multi-cultural) societies are a lot less humorous than than mono-lingual ones is one I can personally attest to. When I lived in Alabama, there was a continual stream of wisecracks, gutter-jokes and witticisms bandied about, very often scabrous and filthy, very often massively politically incorrect and most of it extremely funny. Nobody thought much of it, and because the jokes were aimed at everybody, nobody could take offense without appearing sad and self-pitying. Its a great situation to be in, even when you are the butt of the joke sometimes. You just suck it up and take it like everybody else does.
When that camaraderie and shared world-view are damaged or extinguished, like in my office in London for instance, jokes become mine-fields. Each one could get you sacked for racism, sexism, being insensitive to the disabled or one of a million other crimes against political correctness. So nobody makes jokes. Its dull, its dreary, its just like the Soviet Union but its safe. I really really must move to somewhere where they still crack jokes, or I'm slowly going to go mad.
A good model for undermining the wolves
http://www.vigilantfreedom.org/910blog/2007/06/20/zhudi-jasser-has-7-questions-for-cair/
'Zhudi Jasser is chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy'
His group poses these questions to CAIR:
'1- Will CAIR work to dismantle and lead an organized effort against terrorist organizations and individuals by name beginning with Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Jamaat al-Islamiya, and HAMAS to name just a few of the radical Islamist enemies of America? Will they name and ideologically engage the extremism of the Wahhabists of Saudi Arabia, the theocrats of Iran or the despots of Syria, Egypt or Sudan, and the litany of other dictatorships in the Muslim world? Empty generic condemnations of terrorism are of no impact.
2- Will CAIR acknowledge that political Islam (Islamism) whether militant or not, is the toxin which feeds the terrorism committed by radicalized Muslims?
3- Will CAIR acknowledge the need out of honesty for a faith-based civil rights organization to equally focus upon the civil rights abuses of Muslims by other Muslims as well as by non-Muslims whether it occurs in mosques, Muslim organizations, or so-called Muslim nations? A dismissal of Muslim abuses is hypocrisy.
4- Will CAIR acknowledge that counter-terrorism is a greater public responsibility to the organized American Muslim community than the obsession with the protection of our civil rights? Is it not the primary role of Muslim American organizations to lead the ideological war against radical Islamists? Isn’t this the number one issue on the mind of most Americans in 2007? Non-Muslims can do nothing to deconstruct this poisonous ideology. Our fellow Americans living in fear for their security are looking for us to lead this fight. The credibility of Muslims is suffering deeply as a result of the complete denial of this responsibility by groups like CAIR. In fact, there may be no better way to preserve our rights than by leading an ideological movement against political Islam and militant Islamism.
5- Will CAIR join anti-Islamist Muslims in declaring that the “Islamic state” regardless of its democratic processes is in principle significantly inferior to a “pluralistic Constitutional democracy under God” like the United States? Will CAIR declare the concept of a global Caliphate as archaic and no longer relevant to Muslims in the 21st century? Is the concept of the Muslim “ummah” or “nation” archaic?
6- Will CAIR join what was described in the Pew poll as the 49% of Muslims who felt that the mosque was not the place for the discussion of politics? Will they then help AIFD expose political sermons and their agenda around the United States? Will they moreover call upon our fellow co-religionists to fully and unequivocally separate the spiritual from the political? If they will not, will they recognize that they only represent Islamists and those who believe in political Islam—the remaining 51% according to Pew?
7- How can they honestly claim to speak for anyone beyond their membership and donors?'
CAIR is a Saudi-funded Wahhabist advocacy group masquerading as an Anti-Islamaphobia Moslem PR group. Its link to terrorist organisations, particularly Hamas, via Moslem 'charities' are now well established.
We need the same approach to MPACUK, the Muslim Council of Britain and all the other Wahhabist organisations in Britain which pretend to be voices of the mainstream.
'Zhudi Jasser is chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy'
His group poses these questions to CAIR:
'1- Will CAIR work to dismantle and lead an organized effort against terrorist organizations and individuals by name beginning with Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Jamaat al-Islamiya, and HAMAS to name just a few of the radical Islamist enemies of America? Will they name and ideologically engage the extremism of the Wahhabists of Saudi Arabia, the theocrats of Iran or the despots of Syria, Egypt or Sudan, and the litany of other dictatorships in the Muslim world? Empty generic condemnations of terrorism are of no impact.
2- Will CAIR acknowledge that political Islam (Islamism) whether militant or not, is the toxin which feeds the terrorism committed by radicalized Muslims?
3- Will CAIR acknowledge the need out of honesty for a faith-based civil rights organization to equally focus upon the civil rights abuses of Muslims by other Muslims as well as by non-Muslims whether it occurs in mosques, Muslim organizations, or so-called Muslim nations? A dismissal of Muslim abuses is hypocrisy.
4- Will CAIR acknowledge that counter-terrorism is a greater public responsibility to the organized American Muslim community than the obsession with the protection of our civil rights? Is it not the primary role of Muslim American organizations to lead the ideological war against radical Islamists? Isn’t this the number one issue on the mind of most Americans in 2007? Non-Muslims can do nothing to deconstruct this poisonous ideology. Our fellow Americans living in fear for their security are looking for us to lead this fight. The credibility of Muslims is suffering deeply as a result of the complete denial of this responsibility by groups like CAIR. In fact, there may be no better way to preserve our rights than by leading an ideological movement against political Islam and militant Islamism.
5- Will CAIR join anti-Islamist Muslims in declaring that the “Islamic state” regardless of its democratic processes is in principle significantly inferior to a “pluralistic Constitutional democracy under God” like the United States? Will CAIR declare the concept of a global Caliphate as archaic and no longer relevant to Muslims in the 21st century? Is the concept of the Muslim “ummah” or “nation” archaic?
6- Will CAIR join what was described in the Pew poll as the 49% of Muslims who felt that the mosque was not the place for the discussion of politics? Will they then help AIFD expose political sermons and their agenda around the United States? Will they moreover call upon our fellow co-religionists to fully and unequivocally separate the spiritual from the political? If they will not, will they recognize that they only represent Islamists and those who believe in political Islam—the remaining 51% according to Pew?
7- How can they honestly claim to speak for anyone beyond their membership and donors?'
CAIR is a Saudi-funded Wahhabist advocacy group masquerading as an Anti-Islamaphobia Moslem PR group. Its link to terrorist organisations, particularly Hamas, via Moslem 'charities' are now well established.
We need the same approach to MPACUK, the Muslim Council of Britain and all the other Wahhabist organisations in Britain which pretend to be voices of the mainstream.
Engaging the enemy
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1555
'In the past few days, the BBC appears to have turned itself into a mouthpiece for Hamas. From a steady procession of talking heads has issued a stream of Arab propaganda, along the lines that what has happened in Gaza is an inevitable outcome of the Israeli/western collective punishment of Palestinian voters for democratically choosing a party of which the west disapproves, along with the Israeli/western refusal to ‘engage’ with Hamas, a situation which must now be remedied forthwith. If we look a little more closely at these interviewees, however, it seems that such a consistent line may not be altogether coincidental. The casual listener and viewer has been led to assume that all these ‘experts’ are random, if well-informed, observers of the Middle East scene. But a rather different picture emerges if one joins up some of the dots.'
Ms Phillips then goes on to name and shame the various experts, revealing their often long history as apologists for Wahhabist groups and/or Wahhabist thinking. Time was we engaged the enemy with Royal Navy gunboats and Lee-Enfields- we now do it with billion dollar aid packages and encomiums on our national broadcast network. What a pitiful wreck of a nation.
'In the past few days, the BBC appears to have turned itself into a mouthpiece for Hamas. From a steady procession of talking heads has issued a stream of Arab propaganda, along the lines that what has happened in Gaza is an inevitable outcome of the Israeli/western collective punishment of Palestinian voters for democratically choosing a party of which the west disapproves, along with the Israeli/western refusal to ‘engage’ with Hamas, a situation which must now be remedied forthwith. If we look a little more closely at these interviewees, however, it seems that such a consistent line may not be altogether coincidental. The casual listener and viewer has been led to assume that all these ‘experts’ are random, if well-informed, observers of the Middle East scene. But a rather different picture emerges if one joins up some of the dots.'
Ms Phillips then goes on to name and shame the various experts, revealing their often long history as apologists for Wahhabist groups and/or Wahhabist thinking. Time was we engaged the enemy with Royal Navy gunboats and Lee-Enfields- we now do it with billion dollar aid packages and encomiums on our national broadcast network. What a pitiful wreck of a nation.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Winkling out the Wahhabists
http://www.islam-watch.org/Europe/Muslim_Understanding_Europe.pdf
This is a suggested document to weed out the Wahhabists lurking in the European undergrowth. Having read it, I would like it re-written by people who know more about Islam- there are many places where the author(s) should really have brought in mainstream Sunni or Shia clerics to find out what the moderate view really is, and where exactly Wahhabism strays from mainstream Islamic thought. But that is really peripheral. I think this is an excellent idea as it will for a benchmark and rallying point. If properly written, genuine mainstream law-abiding Moslems will have no problem signing up to it. Those who don't will have self-identified themselves with the Wahhabist doctrine, and can be much more easily excised.
Unsurprisingly, MPACUK, a supposedly 'mainstream' Moslem organisation but thoroughly Wahhabist in language and behaviour reject it out of hand:
'Of course, people like Mr Batten or Mr Solomon might want to differentiate between a mere disagreement of ideas and the so-called threat of violence and terrorism eminating from "fundamentalist" Islam. We reject indiscriminate violence and terrorism, but we cannot accept that they are a particular Muslim phenomenon. Rather they are the weapon of choice for the powerless.
objecting to political oppression and can therefore only be resolved by political means. Our government recognised this in the case of Irish terrorism which mainly abated once a political settlement of grievances was in sight. Our government's involvement in the illegal invasion of Iraq or unashamed partisan support for Israel in her quest to dominate the region through aggression against her Palestinian or Lebanese neighbours, on the other hand, is fuelling international terrorism.'
http://mpacuk.org/content/view/3271/35/
From the first instance I recall of the invocation of Irish Nationalist/Republican terrorism as a parallel to Wahhabist violence, I thought it was a terrible analogy. Simply compare the goals of the IRA with those of Al Muhajiroun: the IRA wanted the northern counties of Ireland to recombine with the southern counties in the Republic of Ireland- that's it. Al Muhajiroun want all the Moslem nations to become Wahhabist theocracies and infidel states to be forcefully converted or at least conquered by Wahhabist Moslems. The IRA saw that the EU would gradually bring about what the Armalite couldn't- the removal of British sovereignty in Ulster. So they stopped fighting. That was both limited and rational. The Wahhabist desire to remake the world to conform to its own harsh and pitiless creed is neither limited nor rational.
'Our government's involvement in the illegal invasion of Iraq or unashamed partisan support for Israel in her quest to dominate the region through aggression against her Palestinian or Lebanese neighbours, on the other hand, is fuelling international terrorism.' The footling invocation of these 'provocations' and iniquities ought to fool no one by now. Wahhabisms goal is not the correction of Britain's misguided foreign policy- these fripperies are used as bait to draw the support of lefty moonbats desperate for ideological bedfellows. Wahhabisms goal is as ambitious as a goal can be- worldwide victory and the annihilation of non-Wahhabist Islam. It has been for the last 600 years, and there's absolutely no evidence that that has changed since the Wahhabists took up residence in Bradford, Luton and Hayes.
This is a suggested document to weed out the Wahhabists lurking in the European undergrowth. Having read it, I would like it re-written by people who know more about Islam- there are many places where the author(s) should really have brought in mainstream Sunni or Shia clerics to find out what the moderate view really is, and where exactly Wahhabism strays from mainstream Islamic thought. But that is really peripheral. I think this is an excellent idea as it will for a benchmark and rallying point. If properly written, genuine mainstream law-abiding Moslems will have no problem signing up to it. Those who don't will have self-identified themselves with the Wahhabist doctrine, and can be much more easily excised.
Unsurprisingly, MPACUK, a supposedly 'mainstream' Moslem organisation but thoroughly Wahhabist in language and behaviour reject it out of hand:
'Of course, people like Mr Batten or Mr Solomon might want to differentiate between a mere disagreement of ideas and the so-called threat of violence and terrorism eminating from "fundamentalist" Islam. We reject indiscriminate violence and terrorism, but we cannot accept that they are a particular Muslim phenomenon. Rather they are the weapon of choice for the powerless.
objecting to political oppression and can therefore only be resolved by political means. Our government recognised this in the case of Irish terrorism which mainly abated once a political settlement of grievances was in sight. Our government's involvement in the illegal invasion of Iraq or unashamed partisan support for Israel in her quest to dominate the region through aggression against her Palestinian or Lebanese neighbours, on the other hand, is fuelling international terrorism.'
http://mpacuk.org/content/view/3271/35/
From the first instance I recall of the invocation of Irish Nationalist/Republican terrorism as a parallel to Wahhabist violence, I thought it was a terrible analogy. Simply compare the goals of the IRA with those of Al Muhajiroun: the IRA wanted the northern counties of Ireland to recombine with the southern counties in the Republic of Ireland- that's it. Al Muhajiroun want all the Moslem nations to become Wahhabist theocracies and infidel states to be forcefully converted or at least conquered by Wahhabist Moslems. The IRA saw that the EU would gradually bring about what the Armalite couldn't- the removal of British sovereignty in Ulster. So they stopped fighting. That was both limited and rational. The Wahhabist desire to remake the world to conform to its own harsh and pitiless creed is neither limited nor rational.
'Our government's involvement in the illegal invasion of Iraq or unashamed partisan support for Israel in her quest to dominate the region through aggression against her Palestinian or Lebanese neighbours, on the other hand, is fuelling international terrorism.' The footling invocation of these 'provocations' and iniquities ought to fool no one by now. Wahhabisms goal is not the correction of Britain's misguided foreign policy- these fripperies are used as bait to draw the support of lefty moonbats desperate for ideological bedfellows. Wahhabisms goal is as ambitious as a goal can be- worldwide victory and the annihilation of non-Wahhabist Islam. It has been for the last 600 years, and there's absolutely no evidence that that has changed since the Wahhabists took up residence in Bradford, Luton and Hayes.
Israel and Palestine Primer
Primer for discussing Israel and the Palestinian Arabs:
I think there should be some benchmarks of knowledge which must be achieved for anyone who wants to discuss the situation of Israel, both now and historically. Here are my suggestions of questions people should know the answers to-
1. In the last 3,000 years, has there ever been a time when no Jews lived in Jerusalem or Palestine?
2. How many Jews lived in Palestine in 1905? in 1930? in 1947?
3. Has there ever been a nation or state of Palestinian Arabs?
4. How many religions have/had a large presence in Syria, Lebanon and what is now Israel?
5. Who ruled the areas contained in Israel in 1890?
6. Who ruled the areas contained in Israel in 1925?
7. Did the Arabs in Palestine fight with the Ottoman empire or against it in World War I?
8. Did Great Britain and the United States want a Jewish state in 1947? Why not?
9. Was there ever a 'Two-State' solution in the Palestine Mandate territories?
10. What happened to the 'Two-State' solution?
11. How many times have Israels neighbors launched aggressive wars of annihilation against it?
12. Three of Israels neighbors have lost territory after losing wars they initiated against Israel. Should they get that territory back by right?
13. After the disastrous war against the new state of Israel in 1947/48, millions of Arabs voluntarily left Israel on the understanding that surrounding Arab states would soon destroy Israel and they could move back. Whose fault is it that those promises were hollow?
14. The millions of Arabs who left Israel voluntarily are spread all over the Levant in what are referred to as 'Refugee Camps'. Is it credible that someone who left their homeland 60 years ago is still a refugee? What is the difference between a 'Refugee camp' and a neighborhood?
15. The Ottoman Empire ethnically cleansed and murdered about 1.5 million Armenians in 1915/16. The Israelis have ethnically cleansed at most a few thousand Palestinian Arabs. Why is it Israel which is termed 'The new Nazi Germany'?
16. Why is the UN fixated on 'The Palestinian Territories', when in world terms there is virtually no violence, and much more serious territorial disputes?
17. In 1994, more than 800,000 Rwandans were murdered using extremely low-tech weapons by other Rwandans. The UN did absolutely nothing. Why is the death of four or five Palestinian gunmen enough to prompt a UN resolution?
18. In 2004, the (Arab) Sudanese government started using proxies to ethnically cleanse and murder the black population of Darfur. Hundreds of thousands of people have died. Why isn't there a UN department set up to agitate on behalf of Darfurians, like there is for Palestinian Arabs?
Answers:
1. No
2. The best estimates are: 60,000; 175,000; 1,200,000
3. No
4. Four- Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Islam, Judaism
5. The Ottoman Empire
6. The British Empire via a League of Nations mandate
7. With the Ottoman Empire
8. No. They believed it would cause trouble with oil-producing Moslem countries.
9. Yes. In 1947, the United Nations GA resolution 181 created two separate states, one for Jews and one for Arabs.
10. The Arab Palestinian state, with the support of all the surrounding Arab nations, declared war on the Jewish state, and lost the war during 1948. Israel incorporated some areas of the Arab territories, both as a punishment and to make the state of Israel more defensible.
11. Five
12. Under international war, territory lost by an aggressor as a consequence of defeat is no longer the sovereign territory of the aggressor, and may or may not be handed back at the discretion of the victor
13. The Arab states promised Arab Palestinians that the Jews would be defeated shortly, and therefore all the consequences of those promises are the responsibility of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
14. At the end of World War II, there were millions of refugees dislocated from many countries round the world. In 2007, the only group from that era still referred to as 'refugees' are the Palestinian Arabs. In most of the countries where Palestinian Arabs moved to, their 'Refugee Camps' are indistinguishable from the neighborhoods which surround them. They are a polite fiction.
15. A seemingly permanent lack of perspective seems to govern discussion and appraisal of Israel and its activities
16. There are many examples of much more serious breaches of sovereignty (China invaded Tibet which it has now incorporated into Greater China, for instance) which are virtually never discussed, whereas the 'Occupied Territories' are a constant topic at international gatherings.
17. There is apparently an unwritten rule that Arab lives are worth vastly more than black African ones. There is vast evidence that this is the case in recent UN behaviour.
18. There is only one group of people on the planet who have their own UN agency- the Palestinian Arabs. Why this should be the case, one can only guess, but it probably has to do with answer 17.
I think there should be some benchmarks of knowledge which must be achieved for anyone who wants to discuss the situation of Israel, both now and historically. Here are my suggestions of questions people should know the answers to-
1. In the last 3,000 years, has there ever been a time when no Jews lived in Jerusalem or Palestine?
2. How many Jews lived in Palestine in 1905? in 1930? in 1947?
3. Has there ever been a nation or state of Palestinian Arabs?
4. How many religions have/had a large presence in Syria, Lebanon and what is now Israel?
5. Who ruled the areas contained in Israel in 1890?
6. Who ruled the areas contained in Israel in 1925?
7. Did the Arabs in Palestine fight with the Ottoman empire or against it in World War I?
8. Did Great Britain and the United States want a Jewish state in 1947? Why not?
9. Was there ever a 'Two-State' solution in the Palestine Mandate territories?
10. What happened to the 'Two-State' solution?
11. How many times have Israels neighbors launched aggressive wars of annihilation against it?
12. Three of Israels neighbors have lost territory after losing wars they initiated against Israel. Should they get that territory back by right?
13. After the disastrous war against the new state of Israel in 1947/48, millions of Arabs voluntarily left Israel on the understanding that surrounding Arab states would soon destroy Israel and they could move back. Whose fault is it that those promises were hollow?
14. The millions of Arabs who left Israel voluntarily are spread all over the Levant in what are referred to as 'Refugee Camps'. Is it credible that someone who left their homeland 60 years ago is still a refugee? What is the difference between a 'Refugee camp' and a neighborhood?
15. The Ottoman Empire ethnically cleansed and murdered about 1.5 million Armenians in 1915/16. The Israelis have ethnically cleansed at most a few thousand Palestinian Arabs. Why is it Israel which is termed 'The new Nazi Germany'?
16. Why is the UN fixated on 'The Palestinian Territories', when in world terms there is virtually no violence, and much more serious territorial disputes?
17. In 1994, more than 800,000 Rwandans were murdered using extremely low-tech weapons by other Rwandans. The UN did absolutely nothing. Why is the death of four or five Palestinian gunmen enough to prompt a UN resolution?
18. In 2004, the (Arab) Sudanese government started using proxies to ethnically cleanse and murder the black population of Darfur. Hundreds of thousands of people have died. Why isn't there a UN department set up to agitate on behalf of Darfurians, like there is for Palestinian Arabs?
Answers:
1. No
2. The best estimates are: 60,000; 175,000; 1,200,000
3. No
4. Four- Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Islam, Judaism
5. The Ottoman Empire
6. The British Empire via a League of Nations mandate
7. With the Ottoman Empire
8. No. They believed it would cause trouble with oil-producing Moslem countries.
9. Yes. In 1947, the United Nations GA resolution 181 created two separate states, one for Jews and one for Arabs.
10. The Arab Palestinian state, with the support of all the surrounding Arab nations, declared war on the Jewish state, and lost the war during 1948. Israel incorporated some areas of the Arab territories, both as a punishment and to make the state of Israel more defensible.
11. Five
12. Under international war, territory lost by an aggressor as a consequence of defeat is no longer the sovereign territory of the aggressor, and may or may not be handed back at the discretion of the victor
13. The Arab states promised Arab Palestinians that the Jews would be defeated shortly, and therefore all the consequences of those promises are the responsibility of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
14. At the end of World War II, there were millions of refugees dislocated from many countries round the world. In 2007, the only group from that era still referred to as 'refugees' are the Palestinian Arabs. In most of the countries where Palestinian Arabs moved to, their 'Refugee Camps' are indistinguishable from the neighborhoods which surround them. They are a polite fiction.
15. A seemingly permanent lack of perspective seems to govern discussion and appraisal of Israel and its activities
16. There are many examples of much more serious breaches of sovereignty (China invaded Tibet which it has now incorporated into Greater China, for instance) which are virtually never discussed, whereas the 'Occupied Territories' are a constant topic at international gatherings.
17. There is apparently an unwritten rule that Arab lives are worth vastly more than black African ones. There is vast evidence that this is the case in recent UN behaviour.
18. There is only one group of people on the planet who have their own UN agency- the Palestinian Arabs. Why this should be the case, one can only guess, but it probably has to do with answer 17.
We fight for Westminster as before
'But Mr Barroso warned Britain not to block progress towards a treaty.
In an interview with the BBC, he said: "Sometimes I hear people saying that for Parliament to approve it would be by the back door.
"Britain is the country that exported Parliamentary democracy to the world. Do the British people consider Parliament the back door?
"Do the British people who killed their king to protect the rights of Parliament consider it the back door?
"Is that the respect some people show their Parliament, maybe the greatest Parliament in the world? I don't consider Parliament the back door."
He added that leaders had to stand up to the sort of "ugly nationalism" that traded on "imaginary threats" like the idea the EU was becoming a superstate.'
Back in the good old days, when Carney sideshows were common and much more titillating than they are now, midget fighting would often be on the bill. Sadly, we now have to limit ourselves to intellectual midget fighting.
What kind of an intellectual Goliath would conjure the vision of Englishmen stalwartly fighting for and defending their beloved Westminster parliament, but only because it legitimizes the institution he deems most malleable to painlessly remove Britain's sovereignty and independence? That would be the almost comically stupid Manuel Barroso. Manuel, you and your cronies may think us yokels too stupid to notice that this time, at this juncture we are handing over the last pieces of our national sovereignty. You are wrong. And there will be very profound consequences if you keep ignoring the perfectly rational anger of the people.
Gordon Brown- you have been warned. The point is: Englishmen have fought long and very hard for their parliament- why do you think we are going to stop now?
In an interview with the BBC, he said: "Sometimes I hear people saying that for Parliament to approve it would be by the back door.
"Britain is the country that exported Parliamentary democracy to the world. Do the British people consider Parliament the back door?
"Do the British people who killed their king to protect the rights of Parliament consider it the back door?
"Is that the respect some people show their Parliament, maybe the greatest Parliament in the world? I don't consider Parliament the back door."
He added that leaders had to stand up to the sort of "ugly nationalism" that traded on "imaginary threats" like the idea the EU was becoming a superstate.'
Back in the good old days, when Carney sideshows were common and much more titillating than they are now, midget fighting would often be on the bill. Sadly, we now have to limit ourselves to intellectual midget fighting.
What kind of an intellectual Goliath would conjure the vision of Englishmen stalwartly fighting for and defending their beloved Westminster parliament, but only because it legitimizes the institution he deems most malleable to painlessly remove Britain's sovereignty and independence? That would be the almost comically stupid Manuel Barroso. Manuel, you and your cronies may think us yokels too stupid to notice that this time, at this juncture we are handing over the last pieces of our national sovereignty. You are wrong. And there will be very profound consequences if you keep ignoring the perfectly rational anger of the people.
Gordon Brown- you have been warned. The point is: Englishmen have fought long and very hard for their parliament- why do you think we are going to stop now?
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Our belief in our values
http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2007-06-19fs.html Another interesting link on LGF. All very interesting and agreeable, but this caught my eye:
'Will Hutton has admitted that “the space in which to argue that Islam is an essentially benign religion seems to narrow with every passing day.” “The West,” he continued, “provokes Islam not by doing anything, although what it does is hardly helpful; it provokes at least some strands of Islamic thought simply by being.” That means “the only way we can live together peaceably with Islam is if we don’t compromise our own values.”'
I really hate wishy washy drivelly noodling that passes for thinking on the left. An Islam (I think he means the Wahhabists, folks) which is provoked by our mere existence is completely unaffected by whether we compromise our values or not. It will be affected by our soldiers, our spies and our very long prison sentances. It is US who are affected by compromises on our values. If we really believe in what we believe, we will carry on with our way of life even if there are 10 billion Muslims or none. Why can't a lefty just go ahead and say that? Too much pot before breakfast...
'Will Hutton has admitted that “the space in which to argue that Islam is an essentially benign religion seems to narrow with every passing day.” “The West,” he continued, “provokes Islam not by doing anything, although what it does is hardly helpful; it provokes at least some strands of Islamic thought simply by being.” That means “the only way we can live together peaceably with Islam is if we don’t compromise our own values.”'
I really hate wishy washy drivelly noodling that passes for thinking on the left. An Islam (I think he means the Wahhabists, folks) which is provoked by our mere existence is completely unaffected by whether we compromise our values or not. It will be affected by our soldiers, our spies and our very long prison sentances. It is US who are affected by compromises on our values. If we really believe in what we believe, we will carry on with our way of life even if there are 10 billion Muslims or none. Why can't a lefty just go ahead and say that? Too much pot before breakfast...
You made your bed...
'This is not at its heart a civil war, nor is it an example of the upsurge of regional Islamism. It is not reducible to an atavistic clan or fratricidal blood-letting, nor to a power struggle between warring factions. This violence cannot be characterised as a battle between secular moderates who seek a negotiated settlement and religious terrorist groups. And this is not, above all, a miserable situation that has simply slipped unnoticed into disaster.
The many complex steps that led us here today were largely the outcome of the deliberate policies of a belligerent occupying power backed by the US. As the UN envoy for the Middle East peace process, Alvaro de Soto, remarked in his confidential report leaked last week in this paper: "The US clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas, so much so that, a week before Mecca, the US envoy declared twice in an envoys meeting in Washington how much 'I like this violence', referring to the near-civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured."'
http://www.arabmediawatch.com/amw/Articles/Analysis/tabid/75/newsid395/3960/The-people-of-Palestine-must-finally-be-allowed-to-determine-their-own-fate/Default.aspx
I'm not sure how many people read this crap. I suspect its only a few hundred.
You want the answer to How did we get here? UN General Assembly Resolution 181, November 29, 1947.
"UN GA Resolution 181 calls for a partition of British-ruled Palestine Mandate territories into a Jewish State and an Arab State. Passed November 29, 1947 by 33 votes for, 13 against, 10 abstentions, one absent."
You want a two state solution, idiot? Go back to 1947 and DON'T declare war on the Jewish state. I swear to GOD.
The many complex steps that led us here today were largely the outcome of the deliberate policies of a belligerent occupying power backed by the US. As the UN envoy for the Middle East peace process, Alvaro de Soto, remarked in his confidential report leaked last week in this paper: "The US clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas, so much so that, a week before Mecca, the US envoy declared twice in an envoys meeting in Washington how much 'I like this violence', referring to the near-civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured."'
http://www.arabmediawatch.com/amw/Articles/Analysis/tabid/75/newsid395/3960/The-people-of-Palestine-must-finally-be-allowed-to-determine-their-own-fate/Default.aspx
I'm not sure how many people read this crap. I suspect its only a few hundred.
You want the answer to How did we get here? UN General Assembly Resolution 181, November 29, 1947.
"UN GA Resolution 181 calls for a partition of British-ruled Palestine Mandate territories into a Jewish State and an Arab State. Passed November 29, 1947 by 33 votes for, 13 against, 10 abstentions, one absent."
You want a two state solution, idiot? Go back to 1947 and DON'T declare war on the Jewish state. I swear to GOD.
Who is my enemy?
http://www.nysun.com/article/56899 Found this link at LGF. If this is true, we have all be wasting our time. 3000+ American soldiers, Marines and Airmen/women have laid down their lives for pretty much nothing. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were pointless.
'Today the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research will host a meeting with other representatives of the intelligence community to discuss opening more formal channels to the brothers. Earlier this year, the National Intelligence Council received a paper it had commissioned on the history of the Muslim Brotherhood by a scholar at the Nixon Center, Robert Leiken, who is invited to the State Department meeting today to present the case for engagement. On April 7, congressional leaders such as Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic whip, attended a reception where some representatives of the brothers were present. The reception was hosted at the residence in Cairo of the American ambassador to Egypt, Francis Ricciardone, a decision that indicates a change in policy.
The National Security Council and State Department already meet indirectly with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood through discussions with a new Syrian opposition group created in 2006 known as the National Salvation Front. Meanwhile, Iraq's vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, is a leader of Iraq's chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood. His party, known as the Iraqi Islamic Party, has played a role in the Iraqi government since it was invited to join the Iraqi Governing Council in 2003.
These developments, in light of Hamas's control of Gaza, suggest that President Bush — who has been careful to distinguish the war on terror from a war on Islam — has done more than any of his predecessors to accept the movement fighting for the merger of mosque and state in the Middle East.'
Defining categories and then assigning real life objects and events to those categories sounds like a boring philosophical exercise. But it isn't. So, State Department, we are at war with 'Terror' but not with 'Islam'. In the 'Terror' category we have Al-Qaeda, various rag-tag bands of Islamists in North Africa and Saddam Hussein (apparently). And in the 'Islam' category we have the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR, all those myriad of Saudi charities, virtually all the Moslems in India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Somalia etc. Using this analysis, we definitely should have 'won' by now. And in fact, all the accusations by lefty idiots in the US about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut would also pertain. Sadly, the categories which have been created by the US government and intelligence agencies do not correspond with reality. Try this: 'The world not controlled by Wahhabists, including all the Moslem societies not yet penetrated by the Wahhabist shock troops' and 'Wahhabists and their political paymasters'.
Our enemy is Wahhabism, and its infiltration of Moslem societies all over the world. The Muslim Brotherhood is the most important Wahhabist group in the world, certainly outside Saudi Arabia. Sayyed Qutb, its founder, was the most important Wahhabist of the twentieth century. It has lots of money, controls Al-Jazeera, and the largest US Islamic advocacy group, CAIR. It is present in every Moslem country in the world, and its tentacles grow every day, wherever there are poor, ignorant, frustrated Moslem boys.
I'm not sure what the goals of the State Department are, but I bet you 100/1 they haven't a clue what role the Muslim Brotherhood plays in our current situation. The British realised quite quickly what a profound threat Wahhabism was in India, and took strong and effective steps to destroy it before it could infect much of Hindustan and Bengal. It seems to me that to the portentious grand masters-of-the-universe at the State Department, none of these johnny foreigners is a genuine threat to the US, and who gives a toss which unpronounceable and fanatical group says what. Just leave us alone! How much do we have to bribe you to go away and let us do our business?
Guess what? There is no amount of money sufficient to bribe these people. There is nothing you can offer them that they want except your submission to Wahhabism and Allah. They want to erase you and your influence from the world, starting with countries where Moslems live, and then progressing on to everywhere else. They are implacable, suicidal and utterly impervious to persuasion. So what exactly are you going to discuss with these people, State Department chinless wonders? Terms of surrender? How is it that many ordinary Americans who have done their homework know exactly what the Muslim Brotherhood is, why it is a threat, and how they'd prefer to deal with it, but you don't? If you have a highly infectious disease, you don't go to the local gossip and have a chat about it. You go to the doctor, and he hits it with whatever drugs can totally annihilate it.
We can only be grateful that in the past, America's enemies did the equivalent of holding up huge signboards saying WE ARE YOUR ENEMIES. It seems that unless America's enemies do this, their useless governing class are oblivious.
'Today the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research will host a meeting with other representatives of the intelligence community to discuss opening more formal channels to the brothers. Earlier this year, the National Intelligence Council received a paper it had commissioned on the history of the Muslim Brotherhood by a scholar at the Nixon Center, Robert Leiken, who is invited to the State Department meeting today to present the case for engagement. On April 7, congressional leaders such as Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic whip, attended a reception where some representatives of the brothers were present. The reception was hosted at the residence in Cairo of the American ambassador to Egypt, Francis Ricciardone, a decision that indicates a change in policy.
The National Security Council and State Department already meet indirectly with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood through discussions with a new Syrian opposition group created in 2006 known as the National Salvation Front. Meanwhile, Iraq's vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, is a leader of Iraq's chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood. His party, known as the Iraqi Islamic Party, has played a role in the Iraqi government since it was invited to join the Iraqi Governing Council in 2003.
These developments, in light of Hamas's control of Gaza, suggest that President Bush — who has been careful to distinguish the war on terror from a war on Islam — has done more than any of his predecessors to accept the movement fighting for the merger of mosque and state in the Middle East.'
Defining categories and then assigning real life objects and events to those categories sounds like a boring philosophical exercise. But it isn't. So, State Department, we are at war with 'Terror' but not with 'Islam'. In the 'Terror' category we have Al-Qaeda, various rag-tag bands of Islamists in North Africa and Saddam Hussein (apparently). And in the 'Islam' category we have the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR, all those myriad of Saudi charities, virtually all the Moslems in India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Somalia etc. Using this analysis, we definitely should have 'won' by now. And in fact, all the accusations by lefty idiots in the US about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut would also pertain. Sadly, the categories which have been created by the US government and intelligence agencies do not correspond with reality. Try this: 'The world not controlled by Wahhabists, including all the Moslem societies not yet penetrated by the Wahhabist shock troops' and 'Wahhabists and their political paymasters'.
Our enemy is Wahhabism, and its infiltration of Moslem societies all over the world. The Muslim Brotherhood is the most important Wahhabist group in the world, certainly outside Saudi Arabia. Sayyed Qutb, its founder, was the most important Wahhabist of the twentieth century. It has lots of money, controls Al-Jazeera, and the largest US Islamic advocacy group, CAIR. It is present in every Moslem country in the world, and its tentacles grow every day, wherever there are poor, ignorant, frustrated Moslem boys.
I'm not sure what the goals of the State Department are, but I bet you 100/1 they haven't a clue what role the Muslim Brotherhood plays in our current situation. The British realised quite quickly what a profound threat Wahhabism was in India, and took strong and effective steps to destroy it before it could infect much of Hindustan and Bengal. It seems to me that to the portentious grand masters-of-the-universe at the State Department, none of these johnny foreigners is a genuine threat to the US, and who gives a toss which unpronounceable and fanatical group says what. Just leave us alone! How much do we have to bribe you to go away and let us do our business?
Guess what? There is no amount of money sufficient to bribe these people. There is nothing you can offer them that they want except your submission to Wahhabism and Allah. They want to erase you and your influence from the world, starting with countries where Moslems live, and then progressing on to everywhere else. They are implacable, suicidal and utterly impervious to persuasion. So what exactly are you going to discuss with these people, State Department chinless wonders? Terms of surrender? How is it that many ordinary Americans who have done their homework know exactly what the Muslim Brotherhood is, why it is a threat, and how they'd prefer to deal with it, but you don't? If you have a highly infectious disease, you don't go to the local gossip and have a chat about it. You go to the doctor, and he hits it with whatever drugs can totally annihilate it.
We can only be grateful that in the past, America's enemies did the equivalent of holding up huge signboards saying WE ARE YOUR ENEMIES. It seems that unless America's enemies do this, their useless governing class are oblivious.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Gods Terrorist's: A metaphor
While discussing Wahhabism with an aquaintance of mine, it struck me that it is like an infection of the body. It has been around for six hundred years, and for most of that time, its been a minor infection in a couple of places. A few times it has blossomed up, as it did in Arabia in the nineteenth century, and in India a few decades earlier. But for most of those six hundred years, the immune system of the Islamic world, the highly trained jurists whose learning and complex knowledge of Koran, hadith and precedent-making fatwas make them the bulwark against facile rip-off Islams, has successfully detected Wahhabism and neutralised it before it became anything more than a local nuisance.
But since the early twentieth century, three things have changed. The Ottoman empire ceased to be the Caliphate. The house of Saud, and minor and extremely backward clan from the backwoods of Arabia, created a nation on the Arabian peninsula. And thirdly, Oil became a world-wide commodity. These three things have conspired together to provide the first opportunity ever for Wahhabism to supplant the main branches of Islam, Sufi, Sunni and Shia. Saud money has gone out all over the world, like poisened spore, to promote what up until very recently was considered to be a disgusting and perverted non-Islam, and clothe it in respectability. Poverty-stricken youths all over the Muslim world are being 'educated' by Wahhabists trained in Saudi Arabia, and sent forth from madrassahs like Wahhabist shock troops. They go back to their communities, and immediately challenge the old Islams, using every mafia trick to destroy existing Mosque hierarchy and replace it with their own 'pure' Wahhabist Islam.
We, as in the western world, have been comically slow to put all this together. None of the old Islams were an existential threat to us, and if we had been able to cut off Saudi influence, and protect the old Islams from the Wahhabist onslaught, there would be virtually no worldwide jihad to talk about. Instead, a huge pool of Wahhabist footsoldiers exist in every Muslim country, and in many western countries too. All of them have been infected with this poisonous non-Islam, and seek to destroy everything in the world that isn't Wahhabist Islam. It is by definition a suicidal enterprise, as 99% of the world isn't Wahhabist Islam. That does not mean (see Wahhibisms history) that they will stop or in any way relent. First the Muslim world will be rent asunder, like a body desperately trying to stop the infection that is half-way to conquering it, and next we will be in the firing line. The Wahhabists can't win- at no point in their history have they done so for any length of time- but that doesn't matter to them. If they all die trying to destroy the Satanic evil that the whole world is bound up in, so be it.
But we had better start fighting this infection properly because there are millions and millions and millions of dirt-poor, ignorant Muslim youths all over the world, waiting for a fascistic death-cult like this to give them something to do, some reason to feel superior, some cause to ally with. I believe we've only seen the first 5% of the wave- the rest of it could cause world-wide devastation before it is halted and subsides.
A first step would be- get rid of the House of Saud, and hand back Islams holiest places to trustworthy husbandmen.
But since the early twentieth century, three things have changed. The Ottoman empire ceased to be the Caliphate. The house of Saud, and minor and extremely backward clan from the backwoods of Arabia, created a nation on the Arabian peninsula. And thirdly, Oil became a world-wide commodity. These three things have conspired together to provide the first opportunity ever for Wahhabism to supplant the main branches of Islam, Sufi, Sunni and Shia. Saud money has gone out all over the world, like poisened spore, to promote what up until very recently was considered to be a disgusting and perverted non-Islam, and clothe it in respectability. Poverty-stricken youths all over the Muslim world are being 'educated' by Wahhabists trained in Saudi Arabia, and sent forth from madrassahs like Wahhabist shock troops. They go back to their communities, and immediately challenge the old Islams, using every mafia trick to destroy existing Mosque hierarchy and replace it with their own 'pure' Wahhabist Islam.
We, as in the western world, have been comically slow to put all this together. None of the old Islams were an existential threat to us, and if we had been able to cut off Saudi influence, and protect the old Islams from the Wahhabist onslaught, there would be virtually no worldwide jihad to talk about. Instead, a huge pool of Wahhabist footsoldiers exist in every Muslim country, and in many western countries too. All of them have been infected with this poisonous non-Islam, and seek to destroy everything in the world that isn't Wahhabist Islam. It is by definition a suicidal enterprise, as 99% of the world isn't Wahhabist Islam. That does not mean (see Wahhibisms history) that they will stop or in any way relent. First the Muslim world will be rent asunder, like a body desperately trying to stop the infection that is half-way to conquering it, and next we will be in the firing line. The Wahhabists can't win- at no point in their history have they done so for any length of time- but that doesn't matter to them. If they all die trying to destroy the Satanic evil that the whole world is bound up in, so be it.
But we had better start fighting this infection properly because there are millions and millions and millions of dirt-poor, ignorant Muslim youths all over the world, waiting for a fascistic death-cult like this to give them something to do, some reason to feel superior, some cause to ally with. I believe we've only seen the first 5% of the wave- the rest of it could cause world-wide devastation before it is halted and subsides.
A first step would be- get rid of the House of Saud, and hand back Islams holiest places to trustworthy husbandmen.
Let 'em get on with it?
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=3286942&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
'The deadliest insurgent attack since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 destroyed a bus full of police instructors at Kabul's busiest transportation hub on Sunday, killing 35 people and wounding 52, officials said.'
Perhaps its just my mood today, but a very negative thought crossed my mind while reading this link I found at LFG. Perhaps what the Muslim world needs is Wahhabists to take over. Perhpas the best thing for all concerned would be for them to Have A Go. Let the Afghans, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Indonesians, Egyptians and Syrians have a few decades of Wahhabism. Let them suffer the catastrophic terminal decline guarunteed by the grotesque and inhuman ideology touted by the Muslim Brotherhood. Let the women be ground down into silent baby-factories, and the girls have their genitals chopped up into mincemeat, and the boys sit around with no video games and no MTV chanting crap from the Koran day an night. Let them all go back to the seventh century and see what happens- for a long long time. We'll just build a big wall around seventh-century land and let them behead each other till the cows come home.
Its a very negative and desperate thought, and quite unworthy really, but sometimes I get sick of trying to argue the obvious. Let people find out the hard way?
'The deadliest insurgent attack since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 destroyed a bus full of police instructors at Kabul's busiest transportation hub on Sunday, killing 35 people and wounding 52, officials said.'
Perhaps its just my mood today, but a very negative thought crossed my mind while reading this link I found at LFG. Perhaps what the Muslim world needs is Wahhabists to take over. Perhpas the best thing for all concerned would be for them to Have A Go. Let the Afghans, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Indonesians, Egyptians and Syrians have a few decades of Wahhabism. Let them suffer the catastrophic terminal decline guarunteed by the grotesque and inhuman ideology touted by the Muslim Brotherhood. Let the women be ground down into silent baby-factories, and the girls have their genitals chopped up into mincemeat, and the boys sit around with no video games and no MTV chanting crap from the Koran day an night. Let them all go back to the seventh century and see what happens- for a long long time. We'll just build a big wall around seventh-century land and let them behead each other till the cows come home.
Its a very negative and desperate thought, and quite unworthy really, but sometimes I get sick of trying to argue the obvious. Let people find out the hard way?
Friday, June 15, 2007
Musing on the Anti-War Drivellers
There is a piece in today's Times by Anatole Kaletsky soberly and reasonably titled "Why we must break with the American crazies". The tone of febrile caterwauling continues throughout the piece, making it quite difficult to read- the visual equivalent of listening to an anecdote being screamed directly into your ear. It touts itself as a vital message for Gordon Brown. I don't know what Mr Browns views on our alliance with America are, nor indeed of those on the Iraq situation, but I'm pretty sure that this stop-start, highly emotional, fact-lite tirade won't be figuring large in his decision-making process.
Especially as he starts out with by insulting Tony Blair, and also by implication Brown himself. Tony Blairs foreign policy has been 'backward-looking and self-deluding'. We are meant to just take this as self-evident, I guess, as there is no evidence proffered, nor terms defined. In what sense, might we ask, is Tony Blairs foreign policy 'backward-looking'? What delusions does Tony Blair have about the world which determine his foreign policy? Anatole?
Everywhere Anatole looks, he sees catastrophes. Apparently, the world is one mass of them. "...the parochial British obsession with WMD and 'sexed-up dossiers' bears no relationship to the catastrophes now unfolding in the Middle East and beyond- not only in Iraq, but also in Gaza, Lebanon, and Afghanistan, and soon maybe Syria, Iraq and Pakistan." Chicken Little talk about multitudes of catastrophes doesn't take us to any useful point. Iraq is a catastrophe in some ways and in some parts, but is it a catastrophe like Lebanon? Is Lebanon a catastrophe at all, or is it just a chronically disjointed, balkanised complex of problems perennially fighting with itself often violently? Every middle eastern country has problems, some of them critical and many others not so much. But are they comparable? Are they the same kind of 'catastrophe'? No. And that means the solutions will not be the same. Some might need the help/intervention of the US/UK, some won't. Some are gradually working towards a more sustainable and positive situation (Jordan, Libya, Iraq) and some are moving towards unsustainable and negative situations (Saudi, Egypt, Iran).
The shrivelled, impotent snivelling that passes for 'opposition' to the ongoing intervention in Iraq symbolically parallels the stunted and trivial role that Britain now plays on the world stage. At the end of World War 1, Britain had an army of over a million men in Syria/Lebanon. Although our 7,500 men in Iraq are excellent troops, there are just 7,500 of them. In part, our Iraq intervention critics are parochial because we have shrivelled as a nation.
As far as I can tell, Britain and America went into Iraq clear out a den of thieves and murderers, to protect British and American interests in Iraqi oil, and to give the Iraqi people the opportunity to have a free and prosperous society without the evils of dictatorship and murderous repression. Those all seem like perfectly valid reasons for an intervention from the point of view of a British or American person. Nowhere does Anatole mention any of these, and yet any opinion piece intended to persuade a politician to change a policy must surely consider 'why?' questions. Why did we embark on this intervention? Why is it necessary to continue with high force levels in Iraq? Why is it that the execution of any war will generate tactical and logistical errors? A sober consideration of those three questions, were the answers damning in relation to the Iraq intervention, might persuade Gordon Brown that the case for removing our forces from Iraq should be considered.
But this is no sober consideration: "There is now strong evidence that President Bush didn't even know the difference between Shia and Sunni moslems when he decided to attack Iraq." Tittle-tattle about How Stupid George W Is will not swing Gordon Brown's views on geopolitical issues we can safely assume. There is also a constant veering between two types of criticism about Iraq- what a complete botch-up the conduct of operations has been, and the 'crazy' nature of the current US Administration. Its tempting to wonder whether a superbly efficient US counter-insurgency would be getting praise from the people who currently castigate its cack-handedness? "OK, George W may be mad as an Ahmadinejad, but he sure does run one slick counter-insurgency operation"...
People like Kaletsky are moving on to Iran. They all want to able to say five years from now "I was the first to bewail the stupidity and insanity of an intervention in Iran".
I think there may well be some kind of regional war in the Middle East. Its a volatile mix, and with the intrusion of a very unwelcome democracy in the sea of dictatorships, oligarchies and Royal Kleptocracies. But what will the battle lines be? How much does Shia vs Sunni actually matter when the most vibrant and juiced-up beast in the Islamic jungle is the Wahhabis? As I pointed out not long ago, in the 1980's, Kurdish, Sunni Arab and Shia Arab Iraqis all fought against Shia Persians. If it weren't for Wahhabi Al-Qaeda operatives blowing up Shia shrines, how much Shia-Sunni violence would there have been by now? Does Wahhabi Saudi Arabia see itself as genuinely threatened by Iran? Does it care about the fate of the Arabs of Khuzestan any more than it does the Arabs of Gaza? How is it possible that Sunni Syria is an ally of Shia Iran? Doesn't that imply that politics and power-dealing are more important to both than religious scruple? My point is, nobody on the planet could guess who would line up with whom in a regional middle eastern war, including the protagonists.
Would a regional war in the middle east be America's fault? Yes, in at least one way. In the very short period of genuine nation-states in the middle east, there has never been an economically strong, equitably-governed, secular success story. Turkey? Sort of, but with strong undercurrents of fascism and the heavy hand of the military constantly in the background. Everywhere else, one, some or all of those conditions are not present. And I think its fair to say that if oil money ceases most of the economic success stories will evaporate. So the explosive entrance of an Iraq which has all three of those things would be a sore vexation for all the basket-cases around it. Jealousy is right at the top of motivations in the middle east. Arabs can't stand to see other Arabs succeeding (see Gamal Abdul Nasser, Saddam Hussein etc). I predict that some pretext would be found to try to 'prove' that Iraq was an aberration, a freak, and a threat.
But from Iraqs point of view, and from our point of view, it would be fantastic. Because it would prove that Arabs can run a perfectly good, viable, fully-functional state and the citizens of every Arab country would see that to be the case. And the reverberations of that fact would be huge, I suspect.
Especially as he starts out with by insulting Tony Blair, and also by implication Brown himself. Tony Blairs foreign policy has been 'backward-looking and self-deluding'. We are meant to just take this as self-evident, I guess, as there is no evidence proffered, nor terms defined. In what sense, might we ask, is Tony Blairs foreign policy 'backward-looking'? What delusions does Tony Blair have about the world which determine his foreign policy? Anatole?
Everywhere Anatole looks, he sees catastrophes. Apparently, the world is one mass of them. "...the parochial British obsession with WMD and 'sexed-up dossiers' bears no relationship to the catastrophes now unfolding in the Middle East and beyond- not only in Iraq, but also in Gaza, Lebanon, and Afghanistan, and soon maybe Syria, Iraq and Pakistan." Chicken Little talk about multitudes of catastrophes doesn't take us to any useful point. Iraq is a catastrophe in some ways and in some parts, but is it a catastrophe like Lebanon? Is Lebanon a catastrophe at all, or is it just a chronically disjointed, balkanised complex of problems perennially fighting with itself often violently? Every middle eastern country has problems, some of them critical and many others not so much. But are they comparable? Are they the same kind of 'catastrophe'? No. And that means the solutions will not be the same. Some might need the help/intervention of the US/UK, some won't. Some are gradually working towards a more sustainable and positive situation (Jordan, Libya, Iraq) and some are moving towards unsustainable and negative situations (Saudi, Egypt, Iran).
The shrivelled, impotent snivelling that passes for 'opposition' to the ongoing intervention in Iraq symbolically parallels the stunted and trivial role that Britain now plays on the world stage. At the end of World War 1, Britain had an army of over a million men in Syria/Lebanon. Although our 7,500 men in Iraq are excellent troops, there are just 7,500 of them. In part, our Iraq intervention critics are parochial because we have shrivelled as a nation.
As far as I can tell, Britain and America went into Iraq clear out a den of thieves and murderers, to protect British and American interests in Iraqi oil, and to give the Iraqi people the opportunity to have a free and prosperous society without the evils of dictatorship and murderous repression. Those all seem like perfectly valid reasons for an intervention from the point of view of a British or American person. Nowhere does Anatole mention any of these, and yet any opinion piece intended to persuade a politician to change a policy must surely consider 'why?' questions. Why did we embark on this intervention? Why is it necessary to continue with high force levels in Iraq? Why is it that the execution of any war will generate tactical and logistical errors? A sober consideration of those three questions, were the answers damning in relation to the Iraq intervention, might persuade Gordon Brown that the case for removing our forces from Iraq should be considered.
But this is no sober consideration: "There is now strong evidence that President Bush didn't even know the difference between Shia and Sunni moslems when he decided to attack Iraq." Tittle-tattle about How Stupid George W Is will not swing Gordon Brown's views on geopolitical issues we can safely assume. There is also a constant veering between two types of criticism about Iraq- what a complete botch-up the conduct of operations has been, and the 'crazy' nature of the current US Administration. Its tempting to wonder whether a superbly efficient US counter-insurgency would be getting praise from the people who currently castigate its cack-handedness? "OK, George W may be mad as an Ahmadinejad, but he sure does run one slick counter-insurgency operation"...
People like Kaletsky are moving on to Iran. They all want to able to say five years from now "I was the first to bewail the stupidity and insanity of an intervention in Iran".
I think there may well be some kind of regional war in the Middle East. Its a volatile mix, and with the intrusion of a very unwelcome democracy in the sea of dictatorships, oligarchies and Royal Kleptocracies. But what will the battle lines be? How much does Shia vs Sunni actually matter when the most vibrant and juiced-up beast in the Islamic jungle is the Wahhabis? As I pointed out not long ago, in the 1980's, Kurdish, Sunni Arab and Shia Arab Iraqis all fought against Shia Persians. If it weren't for Wahhabi Al-Qaeda operatives blowing up Shia shrines, how much Shia-Sunni violence would there have been by now? Does Wahhabi Saudi Arabia see itself as genuinely threatened by Iran? Does it care about the fate of the Arabs of Khuzestan any more than it does the Arabs of Gaza? How is it possible that Sunni Syria is an ally of Shia Iran? Doesn't that imply that politics and power-dealing are more important to both than religious scruple? My point is, nobody on the planet could guess who would line up with whom in a regional middle eastern war, including the protagonists.
Would a regional war in the middle east be America's fault? Yes, in at least one way. In the very short period of genuine nation-states in the middle east, there has never been an economically strong, equitably-governed, secular success story. Turkey? Sort of, but with strong undercurrents of fascism and the heavy hand of the military constantly in the background. Everywhere else, one, some or all of those conditions are not present. And I think its fair to say that if oil money ceases most of the economic success stories will evaporate. So the explosive entrance of an Iraq which has all three of those things would be a sore vexation for all the basket-cases around it. Jealousy is right at the top of motivations in the middle east. Arabs can't stand to see other Arabs succeeding (see Gamal Abdul Nasser, Saddam Hussein etc). I predict that some pretext would be found to try to 'prove' that Iraq was an aberration, a freak, and a threat.
But from Iraqs point of view, and from our point of view, it would be fantastic. Because it would prove that Arabs can run a perfectly good, viable, fully-functional state and the citizens of every Arab country would see that to be the case. And the reverberations of that fact would be huge, I suspect.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Staring into the Abyss
“What are the Arabs without Islam? What is the ideology that they gave, or they can give to humanity if they abandon Islam? The only ideology the Arabs advanced for mankind was the Islamic faith which raised them to the position of human leadership. If they forsake it they will no longer have any function or role to play in human history.”
Who said these words? Some horror-show fascist right-wing radio talk-show host? Er, no.
Sayyid Qutb http://www.islamicawakening.com/viewarticle.php?articleID=619 founder of Muslim Brotherhood, the first Wahhabist group based in Egypt, and touchstone for many present-day Wahhabist offshoots.
So I guess its ok for us to say it!
Who said these words? Some horror-show fascist right-wing radio talk-show host? Er, no.
Sayyid Qutb http://www.islamicawakening.com/viewarticle.php?articleID=619 founder of Muslim Brotherhood, the first Wahhabist group based in Egypt, and touchstone for many present-day Wahhabist offshoots.
So I guess its ok for us to say it!
New Media vs Old Media
http://billroggio.com/archives/2007/06/the_baghdad_order_of_4.php
This is a wholesale demolition job of a report in the New York Times which shows to superb effect the traction that the 'new' media is getting over its far-longer established rivals. By calling on a vast array of detailed knowledge and irreproachable fact, Bill Roggio et al reveal the NYT article for the limp frippery that it is. The New York Times had and still in some places has the reputation of being a Grand Newspaper from the Grand Tradition of Newspapers. Trouble is, when your reporting is as desultory as this, reputations can be lost in a very short of time. 'The Fourth Rail' is just so much better for accurate, nimbly-corrected-when-wrong, pertinent, up-to-date news about the frontlines of the war against world-wide Wahhabism (and Iraq). I will get around to sending your PayPal account some dough, Bill, honestly.
This is a wholesale demolition job of a report in the New York Times which shows to superb effect the traction that the 'new' media is getting over its far-longer established rivals. By calling on a vast array of detailed knowledge and irreproachable fact, Bill Roggio et al reveal the NYT article for the limp frippery that it is. The New York Times had and still in some places has the reputation of being a Grand Newspaper from the Grand Tradition of Newspapers. Trouble is, when your reporting is as desultory as this, reputations can be lost in a very short of time. 'The Fourth Rail' is just so much better for accurate, nimbly-corrected-when-wrong, pertinent, up-to-date news about the frontlines of the war against world-wide Wahhabism (and Iraq). I will get around to sending your PayPal account some dough, Bill, honestly.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
And as if by magic...
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?&id=9635
Thanks to a long-term source* of mine, virtually as I clicked 'post' on that last piece about 'God's Terrorists', I got this link. The article is full of useful facts, the forensic details which are missing from most of the mainstream reportage and therefore prevent rapid learning about what is going on in the communities where Wahhabism is seen as a highly viable option.
There is the occasional infelicity, 'In 1999, it seems that Sidique began to consider the step from Wahhabi fundamentalism to a form of jihadism actively committed to violence', ' The network starts operating like a cult' but lots of very useful detail 'Her family was from India, and she was a Deobandi Muslim—a South Asian Wahhabi-linked movement directly opposed to the Khan family's traditionalist Barelvi convictions'. The detail starts to paint the real picture of what is going on in British Islam. 'However, Fiaz's testimony reveals that Khan was plugged into a wider Islamist network well before the Iraq war, and even before 9/11.' I became aware of Al-Muhajiroun in 1993. Thats the year of the first Wahhabist attempt to blow up the World Trade Centre. What is clear from this article, and from 'God's Terrorists' is that the networks Wahhabists set up are very effectively hidden, and unless the authorities are extremely capable and alert, networks will be established under their noses.
The British authorities in India were superb at gathering intel, and by and large interpreted it well enough to paralyze potential groups of trouble-makers. Chapter five of 'God's Terrorists' narrates the story of how one District Commissioner, William Tayler, decapitated and paralyzed the Wahhabist networks in a huge swathe of northern India south east of Delhi (a highly crucial area) by taking into temporary custody three Maulvee's (the highest ranking Wahhabist Imams). Because he understood how the Wahhabist cult worked (extremely hierarchical and authoritarian), he disabled the network with one elegant action. Nobody died, and hundreds of thousands of British and Indian lives were saved consequentially.
Sadly, in 2007 we don't seem to have any William Taylers. As Mark Steyn constantly points out, what the British did as a matter of course in their imperial domains (getting down and dirty with local politics and religion), the top American echelons (many entry-level officers have got stuck in) seem highly loath to learn what makes other nations tick. This has been disastrous in Iraq, where apparently no attempt was made by Paul Bremer to understand the superstructure and disposition of Iraqi life, and he managed to alienate everybody except the Kurds. The latter, in fact, seem to have been gifted far too much for the future success of a united Iraq.
But back to Britain. 'There's an informal theory that states that 30 years after the establishment of any sizeable ethnic minority community, there will be riots' This article is full of useful additional information. I'm not sure where the authors got it, but it does add tremendously to the forensic detail about Beeston and the 7/7 bombers. 'This is why, over the last 50 years, Wahhabi authorities in Saudi Arabia have demolished more than 300 historical structures in the holy cities of Medina and Mecca.' Read about that in the Telegraph? Me either. But the destruction of Mohammeds tomb at Medina by Wahhabi's in 1804 prompted the Ottoman empire to send a series of armies to Arabia, so there is direct historical precedent. Over and over again, we can see that virtually nothing has changed in Wahhabism since its inception in the 1290's.
'It is estimated that over the last two decades, Saudi Arabia has set aside $2-3bn a year to promote Wahhabism in other countries.' Not only is the amount shocking, it could be seen by Moslems all over the world as a declaration of war on traditional Sunni and Shia Islam. Given that even in Saudi Arabia Wahhabism was considered until very recently as a perverted and dangerous cult, the fact the house of Saud is now promoting a world-wide corporate takeover of Islam by Wahhabism should shock even non-Moslems. If William Tayler were alive and sitting in Whitehall, I think he would know where to start to protect British Moslems and non-Moslems. Turn off the spouting fount of money from Saudi Arabia, and shut down its franchises here.
'The fourth school, Islamism, is a relatively recent offshoot of fundamentalism. It emerged in response to the final demise of Islamic authority with the fall of the Ottoman empire after the first world war, but harks back to the early days of the caliphate, when the Koran was the basis for law-making. It sees Islam not just as a religion, but as a socioeconomic system. The Koran is God's version of Das Kapital. Islamists pick and choose teachings from across the ages, and while they read script literally and share a religious zeal with the fundamentalists, they are more akin to an ideological movement than a religious one. Their style of work is often compared with the student far left of the 1960s and 1970s.'
This description I find somewhat obscure. Its not clear to me what the relationship is between Islamism and Wahhibism. At the moment, it appears that Islamism is 99% Wahhabism, with a few nods to historically recent political events in Turkey and Arabia. If Islamists see Islam as a socioeconomic system, I have yet to hear one pontificating about it, or attempting to explain how an Islamic socioeconomic system might differ from say Marxist state ownership of the means of production. Great swathes of industry owned and run by Mullahs, like in Iran? One family owning just about everything, like in Saudi? The only discussion of economic matters that Islamists partake in to any great extent that I'm aware of is pouring abuse on American capitalism (which I do think is straightforward parroting of 1960's left wing mantras), and harping on about which economic activities need to be banned because they are haram. I suppose that the latter could be seen at attempting a description of an economic system, but it seems much more like trying to stamp out commercial activities which are morally suspect regardless of the economic outcome. In fact, as a working description of Wahhabism, violently stamping out what Wahhabism believes Islam forbids, including rejecting Islam, is the sole purpose, to be pursued whatever the cost to society in terms of happiness, ease, wealth or diversity. I have yet to read a coherent explanation of the advantages of a Caliphate from the Islamists, but they do discuss attempting to recreate it a lot; If the Islamists have some positive economic model to replace our current one, they are keeping very quiet about it.
'...many British Muslim youths who had drifted towards fundamentalist or Islamist organisations were susceptible to the violent global jihadism that emerged in the mid-1990s. This is plain from the anti-traditionalist rhetoric of Sidique Khan's al Qaeda-produced video suicide note. The video is 27 minutes and 29 seconds long. Most of it is filled up by a speech from senior al Qaeda member Ayman al-Zawahiri, but the central feature is Khan's address, which runs to six minutes and 11 seconds. It has two parts, but it is only the first—about British foreign policy—that ever gets played in the mainstream media. Part two, which makes up three quarters of Khan's speech, is addressed to Muslims in Britain. Here is an excerpt: "Our so-called scholars today are content with their Toyotas and semi-detached houses. They seem to think that their responsibilities lie in pleasing the kufr instead of Allah. So they tell us ludicrous things, like you must obey the law of the land. Praise be God! How did we ever conquer lands in the past if we were to obey this law?… By Allah these scholars will be brought to account, and if they fear the British government more than they fear Allah then they must desist in giving talks, lectures and passing fatwas, and they need to sit at home and leave the job to the real men, the true inheritors of the prophets."'
Reading this, it struck me that embedded in this paragraph are most of the things which are wrong with both the intra-Moslem situation in Britain, and the response of the vastly influential mainstream media in Britain to it. I have seen the foreign policy excerpts of this video perhaps ten or twelve times, and I have never seen, nor read a transcript of, the three quarters aimed at other British Moslems. That is disgraceful and suspicious. As General Custer found out, good intelligence about your enemies is not negotiable. Talking about Beeston, home of the 7/7 jihadists, 'Many journalists who landed there after 7/7 saw its poverty and assumed that there must be a direct link to the bombings.' Remember folks, journalists these days are just not content with the facts. Shiv Malik explains 'In the end, the BBC drama was never made. The script was finished in good time, but the commissioners decided it wouldn't work as a drama. I was also told that the script was "anti-Muslim." But as we approach the second anniversary of 7/7, Beeston's story deserves to be told.' And the reason the most damning part of Siddique Khans video wasn't shown was presumably also because it was "anti-Muslim". Thanks BBC: ignorance and cowardice, neatly rolled into one incompetent bundle.
'I translated my usual question of whether he thought what his brother had done was "good" or "bad"—he had said that it was a terrible thing several times—and instead asked him whether he thought 7/7 was halal (permitted) or haram (forbidden) in Islam. Only when a look of stunned surprise come over Gultasab's face did I realise that I must have been asking him an entirely different question. After a brief pause, he replied. "No comment."
Here, it seemed, was the perfect example of the division between two worldviews—secular ethics and an embattled Islamic faith. How long had Gultasab managed to function with these two conflicting positions fighting within him? Everyday morality told him that his brother had committed a cold-blooded act of terror, while his own Islamic theology told him that there was no clear answer and maybe his brother was a hero. How many thousands of young British Muslims are similarly conflicted?'
This to me seems tenuous- Islamic theology is clear about where and by whom lesser jihad can be launched. It must be declared from the Dar-al-Islam by an authoritative source- ordinary joe's can't just declare jihad and wander off to murder random Kaffirs. Setting up cells of murderers in the Dar-al-Harb to carry out terrorist acts is definitely against the rules in Islam- as presumably every well-taught Moslem must know. Could it not be that the question posed here brought into sharp focus the dilemma for many Moslems in Britain: do you pander to the Wahhabist cult version of lesser jihad, or bravely hold out for the mainstream views of lesser jihad which rules out murder in the Dar-al-Harb? To me this seems much more likely. If the material in Charles Allen's book is correct, mainstream Islam is not likely to come into conflict with secular laws in the real world unless something extremely provocative comes into play. Nothing like that exists in Britain at the moment- Iraq is a fraud of an issue.
Lesser Jihad (jihad kabeer) teaching is crucial. The founder of Wahhabism, Sheikh Ibn Taymiyya, contradicted his own previous school of Islamic teaching, the Hanbali school, and all three other mainstream schools of Islamic thought in insisting that Mohammed was wrong and in fact had contradicted God by saying that Jihad Kabeer was to be replaced by Jihad Akbar (Greater Jihad). He was forced into this position though, because Wahhibism was birthed as a movement against other Moslems, namely the Mongols. And he had to find his way around both the issue of going to war in the Dar-al-Islam against other Moslems, and the issue of declaring Jihad Kabeer to be of superior worth to Jihad Akbar. For him, there was no possibility of allowing the happy-clappy Islam-lite of the Mongols to live alongside his own conception of Islam- his true Islam must annihilate the other. If Jihad Akbar was the mode in play, there was no scope for this kind of murderous warfare against practising Moslems. Hence the tortuous and plainly abusive 'interpretation' of Islamic teachings used to justify switching away from Jihad Akbar back to Jihad Kabeer. It never washed with most highly trained Moslem jurists, which is why Wahhabism is a cult, not a valid part of the Islamic panoply.
Of course, when a cult gets big enough, it can kill the religion from which it originally spawned. It seems to me that the approach most likely to succeed in destroying Wahhibism in Britain will be a combination of the methods used in Italy and the US to destroy the mafia, and the methods used by various bodies (like the Labour party in Britain) to divest themselves of cult-like attachments (Militant in Labours case). This may well be the case already, as the security services don't tend to post communique's on the internet to let us know how they are dealing with things. Maliks solution is definitely not viable '...the problem of Islamic extremism looks depressingly intractable. The government's first reaction following 7/7 was to consult with a wide range of Muslim opinion, including the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and similar bodies. The government now argues that the MCB and some of its affiliates are as much part of the problem as of the solution, and the new initiatives to tackle radicalism stress the promotion of British values at a grassroots level and working more closely with the few liberal modernisers in Britain's Muslim community. But maybe all that we can do now is remain vigilant and wait for the tide in the battle for Islam's soul to turn in the west's favour.' [my italics] In my estimation, new initiatives about anything is code for 'lets just sit around and see how things pan out'. As the British found in India, sitting around waiting allows the highly motivated and resilient Wahhabists the time and space they need to develop their networks, train their operatives and destroy any opposition from real Moslems.
Remember the Finsbury Park mosque? It was taken over by Wahhabists by force majeure. The Malik solution is no solution at all. As observers of any mafia could tell you, once the cancer starts to grow, only the most vigorous and tough action (like say forming the FBI and having them kill the mafia goons) will stop its spread.
Its a bit disappointing to read such a superbly fact-based and insightful article, and have it end with such a limp prescription. And the very last paragraph is extremely disturbing. Its a powerful sequence of images, but I'm not sure what purpose it serves. I'm very grateful to Mr Malik for such a bounty of research and thought, but if our only response to the Wahhabist infiltration of British Moslem life is to 'remain vigilant and wait for the tide in the battle for Islam's soul to turn in the west's favour' we will sorely regret it. William Tayler saved Patna from a bloodbath by using his knowledge and insight of the genuine threat of Wahhabism. We need a Tayler.
* and Friend obviously!!
Thanks to a long-term source* of mine, virtually as I clicked 'post' on that last piece about 'God's Terrorists', I got this link. The article is full of useful facts, the forensic details which are missing from most of the mainstream reportage and therefore prevent rapid learning about what is going on in the communities where Wahhabism is seen as a highly viable option.
There is the occasional infelicity, 'In 1999, it seems that Sidique began to consider the step from Wahhabi fundamentalism to a form of jihadism actively committed to violence', ' The network starts operating like a cult' but lots of very useful detail 'Her family was from India, and she was a Deobandi Muslim—a South Asian Wahhabi-linked movement directly opposed to the Khan family's traditionalist Barelvi convictions'. The detail starts to paint the real picture of what is going on in British Islam. 'However, Fiaz's testimony reveals that Khan was plugged into a wider Islamist network well before the Iraq war, and even before 9/11.' I became aware of Al-Muhajiroun in 1993. Thats the year of the first Wahhabist attempt to blow up the World Trade Centre. What is clear from this article, and from 'God's Terrorists' is that the networks Wahhabists set up are very effectively hidden, and unless the authorities are extremely capable and alert, networks will be established under their noses.
The British authorities in India were superb at gathering intel, and by and large interpreted it well enough to paralyze potential groups of trouble-makers. Chapter five of 'God's Terrorists' narrates the story of how one District Commissioner, William Tayler, decapitated and paralyzed the Wahhabist networks in a huge swathe of northern India south east of Delhi (a highly crucial area) by taking into temporary custody three Maulvee's (the highest ranking Wahhabist Imams). Because he understood how the Wahhabist cult worked (extremely hierarchical and authoritarian), he disabled the network with one elegant action. Nobody died, and hundreds of thousands of British and Indian lives were saved consequentially.
Sadly, in 2007 we don't seem to have any William Taylers. As Mark Steyn constantly points out, what the British did as a matter of course in their imperial domains (getting down and dirty with local politics and religion), the top American echelons (many entry-level officers have got stuck in) seem highly loath to learn what makes other nations tick. This has been disastrous in Iraq, where apparently no attempt was made by Paul Bremer to understand the superstructure and disposition of Iraqi life, and he managed to alienate everybody except the Kurds. The latter, in fact, seem to have been gifted far too much for the future success of a united Iraq.
But back to Britain. 'There's an informal theory that states that 30 years after the establishment of any sizeable ethnic minority community, there will be riots' This article is full of useful additional information. I'm not sure where the authors got it, but it does add tremendously to the forensic detail about Beeston and the 7/7 bombers. 'This is why, over the last 50 years, Wahhabi authorities in Saudi Arabia have demolished more than 300 historical structures in the holy cities of Medina and Mecca.' Read about that in the Telegraph? Me either. But the destruction of Mohammeds tomb at Medina by Wahhabi's in 1804 prompted the Ottoman empire to send a series of armies to Arabia, so there is direct historical precedent. Over and over again, we can see that virtually nothing has changed in Wahhabism since its inception in the 1290's.
'It is estimated that over the last two decades, Saudi Arabia has set aside $2-3bn a year to promote Wahhabism in other countries.' Not only is the amount shocking, it could be seen by Moslems all over the world as a declaration of war on traditional Sunni and Shia Islam. Given that even in Saudi Arabia Wahhabism was considered until very recently as a perverted and dangerous cult, the fact the house of Saud is now promoting a world-wide corporate takeover of Islam by Wahhabism should shock even non-Moslems. If William Tayler were alive and sitting in Whitehall, I think he would know where to start to protect British Moslems and non-Moslems. Turn off the spouting fount of money from Saudi Arabia, and shut down its franchises here.
'The fourth school, Islamism, is a relatively recent offshoot of fundamentalism. It emerged in response to the final demise of Islamic authority with the fall of the Ottoman empire after the first world war, but harks back to the early days of the caliphate, when the Koran was the basis for law-making. It sees Islam not just as a religion, but as a socioeconomic system. The Koran is God's version of Das Kapital. Islamists pick and choose teachings from across the ages, and while they read script literally and share a religious zeal with the fundamentalists, they are more akin to an ideological movement than a religious one. Their style of work is often compared with the student far left of the 1960s and 1970s.'
This description I find somewhat obscure. Its not clear to me what the relationship is between Islamism and Wahhibism. At the moment, it appears that Islamism is 99% Wahhabism, with a few nods to historically recent political events in Turkey and Arabia. If Islamists see Islam as a socioeconomic system, I have yet to hear one pontificating about it, or attempting to explain how an Islamic socioeconomic system might differ from say Marxist state ownership of the means of production. Great swathes of industry owned and run by Mullahs, like in Iran? One family owning just about everything, like in Saudi? The only discussion of economic matters that Islamists partake in to any great extent that I'm aware of is pouring abuse on American capitalism (which I do think is straightforward parroting of 1960's left wing mantras), and harping on about which economic activities need to be banned because they are haram. I suppose that the latter could be seen at attempting a description of an economic system, but it seems much more like trying to stamp out commercial activities which are morally suspect regardless of the economic outcome. In fact, as a working description of Wahhabism, violently stamping out what Wahhabism believes Islam forbids, including rejecting Islam, is the sole purpose, to be pursued whatever the cost to society in terms of happiness, ease, wealth or diversity. I have yet to read a coherent explanation of the advantages of a Caliphate from the Islamists, but they do discuss attempting to recreate it a lot; If the Islamists have some positive economic model to replace our current one, they are keeping very quiet about it.
'...many British Muslim youths who had drifted towards fundamentalist or Islamist organisations were susceptible to the violent global jihadism that emerged in the mid-1990s. This is plain from the anti-traditionalist rhetoric of Sidique Khan's al Qaeda-produced video suicide note. The video is 27 minutes and 29 seconds long. Most of it is filled up by a speech from senior al Qaeda member Ayman al-Zawahiri, but the central feature is Khan's address, which runs to six minutes and 11 seconds. It has two parts, but it is only the first—about British foreign policy—that ever gets played in the mainstream media. Part two, which makes up three quarters of Khan's speech, is addressed to Muslims in Britain. Here is an excerpt: "Our so-called scholars today are content with their Toyotas and semi-detached houses. They seem to think that their responsibilities lie in pleasing the kufr instead of Allah. So they tell us ludicrous things, like you must obey the law of the land. Praise be God! How did we ever conquer lands in the past if we were to obey this law?… By Allah these scholars will be brought to account, and if they fear the British government more than they fear Allah then they must desist in giving talks, lectures and passing fatwas, and they need to sit at home and leave the job to the real men, the true inheritors of the prophets."'
Reading this, it struck me that embedded in this paragraph are most of the things which are wrong with both the intra-Moslem situation in Britain, and the response of the vastly influential mainstream media in Britain to it. I have seen the foreign policy excerpts of this video perhaps ten or twelve times, and I have never seen, nor read a transcript of, the three quarters aimed at other British Moslems. That is disgraceful and suspicious. As General Custer found out, good intelligence about your enemies is not negotiable. Talking about Beeston, home of the 7/7 jihadists, 'Many journalists who landed there after 7/7 saw its poverty and assumed that there must be a direct link to the bombings.' Remember folks, journalists these days are just not content with the facts. Shiv Malik explains 'In the end, the BBC drama was never made. The script was finished in good time, but the commissioners decided it wouldn't work as a drama. I was also told that the script was "anti-Muslim." But as we approach the second anniversary of 7/7, Beeston's story deserves to be told.' And the reason the most damning part of Siddique Khans video wasn't shown was presumably also because it was "anti-Muslim". Thanks BBC: ignorance and cowardice, neatly rolled into one incompetent bundle.
'I translated my usual question of whether he thought what his brother had done was "good" or "bad"—he had said that it was a terrible thing several times—and instead asked him whether he thought 7/7 was halal (permitted) or haram (forbidden) in Islam. Only when a look of stunned surprise come over Gultasab's face did I realise that I must have been asking him an entirely different question. After a brief pause, he replied. "No comment."
Here, it seemed, was the perfect example of the division between two worldviews—secular ethics and an embattled Islamic faith. How long had Gultasab managed to function with these two conflicting positions fighting within him? Everyday morality told him that his brother had committed a cold-blooded act of terror, while his own Islamic theology told him that there was no clear answer and maybe his brother was a hero. How many thousands of young British Muslims are similarly conflicted?'
This to me seems tenuous- Islamic theology is clear about where and by whom lesser jihad can be launched. It must be declared from the Dar-al-Islam by an authoritative source- ordinary joe's can't just declare jihad and wander off to murder random Kaffirs. Setting up cells of murderers in the Dar-al-Harb to carry out terrorist acts is definitely against the rules in Islam- as presumably every well-taught Moslem must know. Could it not be that the question posed here brought into sharp focus the dilemma for many Moslems in Britain: do you pander to the Wahhabist cult version of lesser jihad, or bravely hold out for the mainstream views of lesser jihad which rules out murder in the Dar-al-Harb? To me this seems much more likely. If the material in Charles Allen's book is correct, mainstream Islam is not likely to come into conflict with secular laws in the real world unless something extremely provocative comes into play. Nothing like that exists in Britain at the moment- Iraq is a fraud of an issue.
Lesser Jihad (jihad kabeer) teaching is crucial. The founder of Wahhabism, Sheikh Ibn Taymiyya, contradicted his own previous school of Islamic teaching, the Hanbali school, and all three other mainstream schools of Islamic thought in insisting that Mohammed was wrong and in fact had contradicted God by saying that Jihad Kabeer was to be replaced by Jihad Akbar (Greater Jihad). He was forced into this position though, because Wahhibism was birthed as a movement against other Moslems, namely the Mongols. And he had to find his way around both the issue of going to war in the Dar-al-Islam against other Moslems, and the issue of declaring Jihad Kabeer to be of superior worth to Jihad Akbar. For him, there was no possibility of allowing the happy-clappy Islam-lite of the Mongols to live alongside his own conception of Islam- his true Islam must annihilate the other. If Jihad Akbar was the mode in play, there was no scope for this kind of murderous warfare against practising Moslems. Hence the tortuous and plainly abusive 'interpretation' of Islamic teachings used to justify switching away from Jihad Akbar back to Jihad Kabeer. It never washed with most highly trained Moslem jurists, which is why Wahhabism is a cult, not a valid part of the Islamic panoply.
Of course, when a cult gets big enough, it can kill the religion from which it originally spawned. It seems to me that the approach most likely to succeed in destroying Wahhibism in Britain will be a combination of the methods used in Italy and the US to destroy the mafia, and the methods used by various bodies (like the Labour party in Britain) to divest themselves of cult-like attachments (Militant in Labours case). This may well be the case already, as the security services don't tend to post communique's on the internet to let us know how they are dealing with things. Maliks solution is definitely not viable '...the problem of Islamic extremism looks depressingly intractable. The government's first reaction following 7/7 was to consult with a wide range of Muslim opinion, including the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and similar bodies. The government now argues that the MCB and some of its affiliates are as much part of the problem as of the solution, and the new initiatives to tackle radicalism stress the promotion of British values at a grassroots level and working more closely with the few liberal modernisers in Britain's Muslim community. But maybe all that we can do now is remain vigilant and wait for the tide in the battle for Islam's soul to turn in the west's favour.' [my italics] In my estimation, new initiatives about anything is code for 'lets just sit around and see how things pan out'. As the British found in India, sitting around waiting allows the highly motivated and resilient Wahhabists the time and space they need to develop their networks, train their operatives and destroy any opposition from real Moslems.
Remember the Finsbury Park mosque? It was taken over by Wahhabists by force majeure. The Malik solution is no solution at all. As observers of any mafia could tell you, once the cancer starts to grow, only the most vigorous and tough action (like say forming the FBI and having them kill the mafia goons) will stop its spread.
Its a bit disappointing to read such a superbly fact-based and insightful article, and have it end with such a limp prescription. And the very last paragraph is extremely disturbing. Its a powerful sequence of images, but I'm not sure what purpose it serves. I'm very grateful to Mr Malik for such a bounty of research and thought, but if our only response to the Wahhabist infiltration of British Moslem life is to 'remain vigilant and wait for the tide in the battle for Islam's soul to turn in the west's favour' we will sorely regret it. William Tayler saved Patna from a bloodbath by using his knowledge and insight of the genuine threat of Wahhabism. We need a Tayler.
* and Friend obviously!!
Friday, June 08, 2007
Is it Islamism or Wahhabism?
I'm reading an excellent book at the moment, 'Gods Terrorists' http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gods-Terrorists-Wahhabi-Hidden-Modern/dp/0316729973 by Charles Allen. Its a fascinating study of this murderous cult and the place it holds in the history of Islam. It makes clear that todays Al-Qaeda is not a novel phenomenon- it is a straightforward Wahhabist group, espousing exactly the same philosophy that has been around since the 13th century. It makes clear that both mainstream branches of Islam, Sunni and Shia, are distinct in a number of crucial way from the Wahhabists, and that many, maybe even most, Sunni and Shia over the centuries have considered Wahhabists apostates and kaffir (unbelievers).
It traces the origins of Wahhabist thought during the Mongol invasions of the middle east, and shows that it was a visceral reactionary response to the happy-clappy, freewheeling, easy-going (not to mention cultured) Islam that the Mongols brought with them. This will start to get surprisingly reminiscent... Many of the Arabs in Syria were not happy with this novel and to them extremely lightweight version of Islam- and a highly reactionary, intolerant and simplistic version of Islam was born in response. Allen makes clear that certain root elements of mainstream Islam have to be contradicted for Wahhabism to work- even the direct words of Mohammed have to be contradicted (in relation to the replacement as the highest ideal of lesser jihad {physical violence to promote Islam} by greater jihad {a spiritual war that occurs in the soul of man against sin} for instance). For this reason Wahhabists are not even considered Moslems by many Imams and seats of Islamic learning round the world.
The implications of this are very interesting. I have to consider Robert Spencer as misguided and harmful in light of this new information. According to Spencer, all branches of Islam are equally dedicated to extreme violence to pursue lesser jihad in non-moslem nations. I think that given the historical roots of the Wahhabist groups, that is plainly wrong. Whole groups of Wahhabists have been wiped out on numerous occasions by Moslem armies and tribal levees, in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, the old Ottoman empire, Northern India and Bengal. They were only to be allied with or tolerated under the most extreme conditions. Once you understand the almost demented intensity of the Wahhabist intolerance of other forms of Islam which they consider 'impure' and tainted by idol worship, you begin to understand why mainstream Islam has feared it, and should fear it now.
The only difference between Wahhabism in 2007 and in 1857 is that western Europe, especially Britain, in its crass ignorance of this particular strand of Islamic history, has incubated hundreds of thousands of Wahhabist recruits, and the wholesale takeover of Mosques in the west by Wahhabist ideologues. In 1857, the Wahhabists were a tiny and extremely unpopular cult, easily extinguished locally whether in Arabia or India, although always with a propensity to recreate itself in some new pocket of discontent and ignorance. In 2007, they are an enormous cult, bolstered hugely by their 'successes' like 9/11 and 7/7 and the mass bombings in Madrid. Instead of being rightly seen as the suicidal and perverted cancer of Islam, Wahhabism has come to be viewed by many Moslems living in the west as the last redoubt of 'real' Islam. This is very unfortunate for both them and us.
Probably, it will be much worse for the Moslems. I quote from Allen:
'By the end of September 1857 Delhi was a ghost town, entirely cleansed of Moslems, who were now increasingly viewed by the British as the real enemy. 'There has been nothing but shooting these villains the last three days,' wrote a young British officer in a letter home from the Delhi camp, 'some 3 or 400 were shot yesterday. All the women and children are of course allowed to leave the city and the old men. I have seen many young Mussulmen, who no doubt had a hand in murdering our poor women and children, let pass through the gates, but most of them are put to death.' Areas of the city believed to have given aid and succour to the rebels were flattened, including several mosques. Even the city's great Jumma Masjid [the largest and most historic mosque in Delhi] was threatened with demolition.'
I think this has direct relevance for us today. Mainstream Sunni and Shia Moslems have done a terrible job of defining for the public in Europe and America the crucial and highly consequential differences between their own beliefs and those of the Wahhabists. At least some of the British authorities in India knew exactly how crucial and fundamental these differences were, and therefore many mainstream Moslems were spared the wrath directed at the Wahhabists. And yet, as the quote above shows, once Islam becomes embroiled with these attacks on a powerful opponent, the danger is that ALL Moslems will become targets and not just the cultists. Perhaps the leaders of Islam in India were more knowledgeable and wise than their modern-day counterparts, but I do know that virtually nothing has been done to make us in the west aware of the doctrinal and political differences between themselves and the Wahhabists.
All down the ages, from the roots of Wahhabism in the thirteenth century, by far the greatest casualties of the cult have been Moslems, not Kaffirs. Once these guys get going, as they recently did in Afghanistan, its not long before millions of normal, relaxed Moslems start to feel the sharp edge of this cults anger against virtually everything in the world (forget modernity, these guys hate pretty much everything). I will have to consider the implications of this for my own views as I have been pretty much of the Robert Spencer school until recently. But it is clear from 'God's Terrorists' that we are by far not the first to notice the toxic and murderous nature of this resilient cult.
It traces the origins of Wahhabist thought during the Mongol invasions of the middle east, and shows that it was a visceral reactionary response to the happy-clappy, freewheeling, easy-going (not to mention cultured) Islam that the Mongols brought with them. This will start to get surprisingly reminiscent... Many of the Arabs in Syria were not happy with this novel and to them extremely lightweight version of Islam- and a highly reactionary, intolerant and simplistic version of Islam was born in response. Allen makes clear that certain root elements of mainstream Islam have to be contradicted for Wahhabism to work- even the direct words of Mohammed have to be contradicted (in relation to the replacement as the highest ideal of lesser jihad {physical violence to promote Islam} by greater jihad {a spiritual war that occurs in the soul of man against sin} for instance). For this reason Wahhabists are not even considered Moslems by many Imams and seats of Islamic learning round the world.
The implications of this are very interesting. I have to consider Robert Spencer as misguided and harmful in light of this new information. According to Spencer, all branches of Islam are equally dedicated to extreme violence to pursue lesser jihad in non-moslem nations. I think that given the historical roots of the Wahhabist groups, that is plainly wrong. Whole groups of Wahhabists have been wiped out on numerous occasions by Moslem armies and tribal levees, in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, the old Ottoman empire, Northern India and Bengal. They were only to be allied with or tolerated under the most extreme conditions. Once you understand the almost demented intensity of the Wahhabist intolerance of other forms of Islam which they consider 'impure' and tainted by idol worship, you begin to understand why mainstream Islam has feared it, and should fear it now.
The only difference between Wahhabism in 2007 and in 1857 is that western Europe, especially Britain, in its crass ignorance of this particular strand of Islamic history, has incubated hundreds of thousands of Wahhabist recruits, and the wholesale takeover of Mosques in the west by Wahhabist ideologues. In 1857, the Wahhabists were a tiny and extremely unpopular cult, easily extinguished locally whether in Arabia or India, although always with a propensity to recreate itself in some new pocket of discontent and ignorance. In 2007, they are an enormous cult, bolstered hugely by their 'successes' like 9/11 and 7/7 and the mass bombings in Madrid. Instead of being rightly seen as the suicidal and perverted cancer of Islam, Wahhabism has come to be viewed by many Moslems living in the west as the last redoubt of 'real' Islam. This is very unfortunate for both them and us.
Probably, it will be much worse for the Moslems. I quote from Allen:
'By the end of September 1857 Delhi was a ghost town, entirely cleansed of Moslems, who were now increasingly viewed by the British as the real enemy. 'There has been nothing but shooting these villains the last three days,' wrote a young British officer in a letter home from the Delhi camp, 'some 3 or 400 were shot yesterday. All the women and children are of course allowed to leave the city and the old men. I have seen many young Mussulmen, who no doubt had a hand in murdering our poor women and children, let pass through the gates, but most of them are put to death.' Areas of the city believed to have given aid and succour to the rebels were flattened, including several mosques. Even the city's great Jumma Masjid [the largest and most historic mosque in Delhi] was threatened with demolition.'
I think this has direct relevance for us today. Mainstream Sunni and Shia Moslems have done a terrible job of defining for the public in Europe and America the crucial and highly consequential differences between their own beliefs and those of the Wahhabists. At least some of the British authorities in India knew exactly how crucial and fundamental these differences were, and therefore many mainstream Moslems were spared the wrath directed at the Wahhabists. And yet, as the quote above shows, once Islam becomes embroiled with these attacks on a powerful opponent, the danger is that ALL Moslems will become targets and not just the cultists. Perhaps the leaders of Islam in India were more knowledgeable and wise than their modern-day counterparts, but I do know that virtually nothing has been done to make us in the west aware of the doctrinal and political differences between themselves and the Wahhabists.
All down the ages, from the roots of Wahhabism in the thirteenth century, by far the greatest casualties of the cult have been Moslems, not Kaffirs. Once these guys get going, as they recently did in Afghanistan, its not long before millions of normal, relaxed Moslems start to feel the sharp edge of this cults anger against virtually everything in the world (forget modernity, these guys hate pretty much everything). I will have to consider the implications of this for my own views as I have been pretty much of the Robert Spencer school until recently. But it is clear from 'God's Terrorists' that we are by far not the first to notice the toxic and murderous nature of this resilient cult.
Monday, June 04, 2007
We might as well just start selling flowers and taking it up the Khyber
'June 4, 2007: In West Java, Islamic terrorists have forcibly closed another Christian church. Typically, a mob of Islamic militants will invade a church, during services, and desecrate the place, drive the worshipers out, and attack any clergy, all the time shouting Islamic slogans. When the police investigate, none of the known Islamic militant groups will take credit for the attack. In the last three years, at least 30 Christian churches have been forced to close in West Java. '
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/indones/articles/20070604.aspx
Do you ever get the feeling that 'respect for religion' is a one way street?
Moslems: Respect for religion = Respect for Islam
The rest of us: Respect for religion = Respect for Islam
Or you're an Islamophobe Arab-hater crusader fascist bigot...
It really is time to start taking this stuff seriously. I am in Thailand at the moment, and during a conversation about why there were so many policemen and security details around a Thai mentioned the 'situation' in the south. Thats the 'situation' where Moslems are methodically murdering Buddhists so they can have a pure land to live in. How do Moslems get this free pass in the mainstream press? You just know that if Christian militias were murdering 25 Moslems a week anywhere in the world there would be vast column inches and voluminous huffing and puffing. Ok, for example, Serbia- where the US sent stealth bombers to kill Christian Serbs to protect Moslem Albanians because of exactly the outrage I'm talking about in the mainstream media. But I'm thinking that because the Thai's are a placid Buddhist nation, there's just no mileage in story where some of them get murdered by Islamic head-hackers. The story just lacks... real victims...
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/indones/articles/20070604.aspx
Do you ever get the feeling that 'respect for religion' is a one way street?
Moslems: Respect for religion = Respect for Islam
The rest of us: Respect for religion = Respect for Islam
Or you're an Islamophobe Arab-hater crusader fascist bigot...
It really is time to start taking this stuff seriously. I am in Thailand at the moment, and during a conversation about why there were so many policemen and security details around a Thai mentioned the 'situation' in the south. Thats the 'situation' where Moslems are methodically murdering Buddhists so they can have a pure land to live in. How do Moslems get this free pass in the mainstream press? You just know that if Christian militias were murdering 25 Moslems a week anywhere in the world there would be vast column inches and voluminous huffing and puffing. Ok, for example, Serbia- where the US sent stealth bombers to kill Christian Serbs to protect Moslem Albanians because of exactly the outrage I'm talking about in the mainstream media. But I'm thinking that because the Thai's are a placid Buddhist nation, there's just no mileage in story where some of them get murdered by Islamic head-hackers. The story just lacks... real victims...
7th Century dress campaign takes off
'June 1, 2007: Islamic militants in Gaza have threatened to kill women who read the news on television, unless these women wear "Islamic dress." This apparently means hiding their faces, as many of the women news readers already wear a headscarf. These same militants have been threatening stores that sell videos or what they consider "un-Islamic material." Some of these stores have been attacked and destroyed. '
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/israel/articles/20070603.aspx
A little while back, I mocked (http://westhuhal.blogspot.com/2007/04/pioneers-of-7th-century-dress.html) a BBC propagandist for touting Egyptian women who want to wear burquas on telly as gutsy civil-liberty campaigners. And now the Islamic militants in Gaza are getting behind their noble cause and putting some real 'lead' into it. Good for them!
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/israel/articles/20070603.aspx
A little while back, I mocked (http://westhuhal.blogspot.com/2007/04/pioneers-of-7th-century-dress.html) a BBC propagandist for touting Egyptian women who want to wear burquas on telly as gutsy civil-liberty campaigners. And now the Islamic militants in Gaza are getting behind their noble cause and putting some real 'lead' into it. Good for them!
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