Quote for the day

"If you stay in Iraq or leave Iraq, and Iran acquires nuclear weapons, you lose Iraq, you lose Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The Persian Gulf will become just that, a Persian gulf."

Benjamin Netanyahu

Standing up in Turkey

Thousands of nationalist Turks marched in the capital Saturday, vowing to defend the secular regime against radical Islamic influences and urging the government not to make too many concessions in order to gain European Union membership.

Some 12,000 people from more than 100 pro-secular associations waved Turkish flags as they marched to the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. "Turkey is secular and it will remain secular," they chanted during a march broadcast live on some TV channels. (source)

Perhaps there's the fact that in Turkey, Islam isn't wrapped up in Arab nationalism, but even amid the rising tide of Islamicist-Jihadi rhetoric, there are people there still willing to stand up for a different vision of what the government should be.

Voices from the Resistance

Apparently, as long as the nightly burning of Citroens and Peugeots by local "youths" remains at 200 cars or less, and only one woman receives burns covering 60 percent of her body when the bus she's traveling in is torched by a Molotov cocktail, France can be said to be “relatively calm"--at least by her interior minister. -- Ed Driscoll


Who would have thought centuries after the Enlightenment that sophisticated Europeans — in fear of radical Islamists — would be afraid to write a novel, put on an opera, draw a cartoon, film a documentary or have their pope discuss comparative theology? Victor Hanson

Multiculturialism's Achilles' Heel

Multiculturalism grew up in a time where people, unhappy with the behaviors of their forefathers, sought to find alternative role models in the cultures of other parts of the world, and used them, somewhat like a smorgasbord, to pick and choose things they would like to be part of their world view. It goes hand in hand with the repudiation of the older cultural norms and the longing to make something that seemed more fair, clean and perhaps holy in the eyes of the beholder. But an end result was something that could be easily exploited by those who had other agendas besides the merging of all that was good in a culture into a matrix that everybody would enjoy. Besides the destruction of the "old truths and verities," as William Faulkner used to say, contemplate this:

Resistance to integration and assimilation into the mainstream culture is the cornerstone of the Islamist agenda as it helps in the development of closed societies within the host societies. There is no doubt that a community that allows a number of closed communities to develop in its midst loses its social cohesiveness and becomes dysfunctional. It becomes a source of discontent and dissatisfaction, breeds conflicts and lives in a perpetual state of tension.

Knowing that a marginalized and disenfranchised youth serves as a never-exhausting source for terrorism and a divided society breeds such young men, the Islamist establishment has worked diligently and scientifically to sabotage social harmony in Europe. As a first step toward achieving this objective, Muslims are convinced that they will have to insist on maintaining their “Islamic” identity, as their culture is better than the host culture. To further divide the host societies along the religious lines, Muslims are encouraged to refuse to evolve in the culture in which they live. They are being forced to recede into closed societies by refusing to integrate into the mainstream culture. (source)

At best, this "celebration of diversity" has brought cultural weakness and social disruption everywhere where it's brand of intolerant "toleration" has become the norm, destroying the old fall back positions that gave people under pressure a way to bond together in strength until the danger has passed. And now, it is playing into the hands of those who wish to bring the entire ediface of Western civilization down.

Is it too late to stem the tide?
.

Voices of the Submitted

"I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.” Oscar Van den Boogaard

"The dominant ethos,is perfectly voiced by the stupid blonde woman author with whom I recently debated. She said that it is sometimes better to let yourself be raped than to risk serious injuries while resisting. She said it is sometimes better to avoid fighting than run the risk of death. " Henryk M. Broder

Not His Fault

Many as seventy-five percent of the women in prison in Pakistan are behind bars for the crime of being a victim of rape (source). How could this unjust reality be true?

Under Islamic concepts, rape is the woman's fault, almost exclusively. The fact that the culture demands women to swath themselves in long shape destroying fabric is because Islamic culture views sexual stimulation as something that does not have to be controlled by men. If they are stimulated, it is the woman's fault. In Saudi it's reached the situation of virtual sexual apartheid. Single men cannot go to many shopping malls. One artist group in that nation wants the 1/3 of the members who are women banned, so they don't have to deal with them standing by their art displays explaining them in public.

The Mufti of Australia, Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali, has gained international attention this week by saying that women are generally at fault if they are raped. Speaking to a Muslim audience in Sydney, he explained that rape (specifically, zina, sexual activity forbidden under Islamic law -- a word mistranslated in published accounts of the Sheikh’s words as “adultery”) is “90 percent the woman’s responsibility. Why? Because a woman owns the weapon of seduction. It’s she who takes off her clothes, shortens them, flirts, puts on make-up and powder and takes to the streets, God protect us, dallying. It’s she who shortens, raises and lowers. Then, it’s a look, a smile, a conversation, a greeting, a talk, a date, a meeting, a crime, then Long Bay jail. Then you get a judge, who has no mercy, and he gives you 65 years.”

Al-Hilali invoked another Islamic scholar in support of his views: “But when it comes to this disaster, who started it? In his literature, writer al-Rafee says, if I came across a rape crime, I would discipline the man and order that the woman be jailed for life. Why would you do this, Rafee? He said because if she had not left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn’t have snatched it. If you get a kilo of meat, and you don’t put it in the fridge or in the pot or in the kitchen but you leave it on a plate in the backyard, and then you have a fight with the neighbour because his cats eat the meat, you’re crazy. Isn’t this true? If you take uncovered meat and put it on the street, on the pavement, in a garden, in a park, or in the backyard, without a cover and the cats eat it, then whose fault will it be, the cats, or the uncovered meat’s? The uncovered meat is the disaster. If the meat was covered the cats wouldn’t roam around it. If the meat is inside the fridge, they won’t get it. If the woman is in her boudoir, in her house and if she’s wearing the veil and if she shows modesty, disasters don’t happen.” (source)

Since to prosecute a man for rape, a woman needs four male witnesses, or else she is admitting to fornication and thus guilty of a crime in a number of Islamic countries, such as Pakistan, she is in a situation where if a man decides to violate her, she has no redress, becasue the legal system is designed in a way that has nothing to do with how sexual crime is committed, and denies the reality of male responsibility.

And this is the type of justice they would like to impose on the West.

(check out this blog for an example of this type of behavior in Cairo: Forsoothsayer.blogspot)

POVs

A Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) poll (September 14-16) showed that more than two-thirds of Palestinian Arabs (67%) oppose Hamas recognizing Israel.

Another poll, conducted by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the PCPSR found that 57% of Palestinian Arabs support terrorist attacks upon Israeli civilians, three-quarters of Palestinian Arabs support the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers in a bid to obtain the release of jailed Palestinians terrorists and 63% are inspired by the Lebanese Islamist terror group Hizballah and seek to emulate it ( Jerusalem Post, September 26).

A poll produced by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center (JMCC) (September 19-22) showed that nearly half of all Palestinian Arabs (48%) support suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and 59.3% support copying Hizballah’s tactics.

Yet a further poll, conducted by Center for Opinion Polls and Survey Studies at An-Najah University (September 7-9), found that 61.3% of Palestinian Arab s support terrorist attacks upon Israeli civilians and 52.5% support rocket attacks upon Israeli population centers. (source)

Kind of hard to work out any permanent peace with points of view like this. Peace requires a desire to move beyond the conflict. The best one could hope for with these attitudes is truce, which is a far different critter

Witness

(AINA) -- According to the Assyrian website ankawa.com, a 14 year old Christian Assyrian boy, Ayad Tariq, from Baqouba, Iraq was decapitated at his work place on October 21.

Ayad Tariq was working his 12 hour shift, maintaining an electric generator, when a group of disguised Muslim insurgents walked in at the beginning of his shift shortly after 6 a.m. and asked him for his ID.

According to another employee who witnessed the events, and who hid when he saw the insurgents approach, the insurgents questioned Ayad after seeing that his ID stated "Christian", asking if he was truly a "Christian sinner." Ayad replied "yes, I am Christian but I am not a sinner." The insurgents quickly said this is a "dirty Christian sinner!" Then they proceeded to each hold one limb, shouting "Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!" while beheading the boy.

Translated from Arabic by AINA

Christian martyrdom - giving your all not to take out others in a war of hate that uses religion as an excuse, but to stand up and say "I follow Jesus." There is a world of difference between the two.

1984 Inshallah

George Orwell painted a nightmare image of a secular communistic world in his novel 1984, where all actions of the citizens were controlled in minute detail.

The truth is, around the world right now, the countries most guilty of this are not secular socialist regimes, but Islamic nations where the minutae of day to day life is controlled by religious authorities.

A recent example of this has taken place in Somalia:

MOGADISHU, Somalia An Islamic court says women are no longer permitted to swim at a beach in Somalia's capital.

The court's chair says allowing women to socialize with men contradicts Islamic teaching, especially when it comes to swimming.
The ban is the latest in a string of religious regulations that have sparked fears of a Taliban-style regime in Somalia. Islamists have gained power since June. The group has introduced public executions and has publicly lashed drug users. It has also banned movie viewing. (source)

In areas where this takes place, people's freedom to choose grows increasingly curtailed by the rulings of the religious establishment. Women were beaten in Afghanistan because religious police thought they were walking too loudly. Much is done to dehumanize them and create enclaves where those in control can live the life they want to without being reminded of the existance of those they don't want to be interfered with, whether it's women or non-Arabs or whatever the local predjudice is. And it's all done in the name of God.

Behavior like this, based on fear of insulting a capricious and constrictive image of God seems to reflect the image of Man who wants to control his fellow man and excuse the behavior he prefers more than Heaven. 1984 has arrived, Inshallah.

Walking Freedom's Tightrope, and Falling Off A Lot

IT is smaller than a 10 pence piece and all but invisible to people standing just inches away.

Yet Nadia Eweida's tiny white gold cross is at the centre of a huge legal row that has engulfed Britain's biggest airline and infuriated religious groups.

Check-in worker Nadia, 55, was forced to take unpaid leave by British Airways after refusing to remove the Christian emblem. But she claims it is a clear display of double standards as Muslims can wear head scarves and Sikh males their turbans.

"It seems that only Christians are forbidden to express their faith," she told the Mirror. "I am not ashamed to be Christian and shouldn't be made to feel that way. " (source)

There is a fine line in this debate. At what point is religion acceptable? Why should one faith's symbols be ok, while another's aren't? How far does one allow things before drawing the line?

There are multiple trends going on here. One is secular post-Christian society which wants to eliminate all outward marks of religion, but ESPECIALLY Christian markers. Sometimes it seems that there is favoritism at times towards anything not Judeo-Christian in the West - Islam, neo-paganism, and other spiritual walks. Islam demands standards that create news stories when denied, and is pretty aggressive at being taken seriously, to the point that in some places there are two standards - Post Christian secular multiculturalism and Islam. This situation has to be worked out. The rising tide of both anti-Christian/anti-Semitic attacks and the growth of anti-Islamic attacks are both symptoms of a society not perceived to be providing justice on this issue. One cannot have a state that is both secular and Islamic at the same time. The balance must be established, and trying to do it by denying all expressions of faith will not work either.

Interesting times.

Effects

Youssef Ibrahim noticed about Europe's Islamic communities:

...the OIC and its Saudi patrons train, fund, and influence to promote barricaded communities inside cultural ghettos, waging war against the societies that embrace them.

For decades, these interconnected webs of mosques, Islamic schools, and imported OIC imams have used the same freedom of speech they deny others to introduce the favored OIC concept of repressed societies to the heart of liberal Europe.

Their quest has not been limited to insulating their communities from a sea of democracy. They also have sought to reverse freedoms for Western citizens who want to publish, write, make films, and read. Witness the hounding of the British author Salman Rushdie and his books, the mayhem over the Danish cartoons of Prophet Muhammad, the upheaval over Pope Benedict's critical comments on Islam, and the far too numerous attempts to ban creative works on Islam.

Until recently, Muslims were close to achieving a separate status for Islam, contravening the very essence of the secular state that is Europe's foundation.

It has reached the point that it has become impossible not to be affected by it if you live in Europe. In the desire for diversity, Europe has created a land of cultural enclaves with very little room for mutuality, and the reactions are causing a variety of shockwaves across the continent.

In the UK, we find a tidal wave of reaction about the suggestion that there is a time and a place to wear the veil (not the hajib, mind you, but a face concealing veil), and some places are inappropriate.

First Jack Straw and now David Davis have made news by the sudden realization that not all is happy in multicultural land:

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, says that Britain risks social and religious divisions so profound that society's very foundations, such as the freedom of speech, will become "corroded" and that the perfect conditions for home-grown terrorism will be created.

His stark intervention, in an article for The Sunday Telegraph, represents a toughening of the Tory stance on the dangers of Islamic radicalism and follows calls from some leading ministers for Muslim women to remove their veils. It is also a departure from the "caring Conservatism" message laid out by David Cameron.

Mr Davis says he supports the stance on veils adopted by Jack Straw, the Commons Leader, but believes the wider issue is one of the "very unity of our nation".

"What Jack touched on was the fundamental issue of whether, in Britain, we are developing a divided society. Whether we are creating a series of closed societies within our open society. Whether we are inadvertently encouraging a kind of voluntary apartheid.

"At the starkest level, we may be creating conditions in the recesses of our society that foster home-grown terrorism."

Mr Davis's comments follow a series of events that highlight the reluctance among some Muslims to integrate fully into British society. Aishah Azmi, a 24-year-old teaching assistant, is taking legal action because her school in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, asked her to remove her veil in front of children. Madani High School, an Islamic school in Leicester, is ordering its non-Muslim girls to wear headscarves.

An ICM poll this weekend showed 57 per cent of voters want Muslims to do more to fit in and 53 per cent agree with Mr Straw that the full veil creates a barrier between Muslim women and other people. (source)

The recent cancelling of an opera in Germany has gotten a number of people thinking in that country, with a lot of unhappiness at the compromises the infliction of tiptoeing around Islamic values is causing in everyday life. Incidents against Moslems are on the rise, no doubt a symptom of public displeasure at the behavior of people who won't fit in. In the UK, there has been at least one Imam beaten up just for being an Imam, not something I condone, but it is a symptom of displeasure. Jack Straw's popularity has shot up since he made the comments about the veil.

Robert Putnam, Harvard professor and author of Bowling Alone, a book on the disintegrating social fabric in the US, told The Financial Times (“Harvard study paints bleak picture of ethnic diversity”) that “the more diverse a community is, the less likely its inhabitants are to trust anyone – from their next-door neighbour to the mayor.” The FT adds that “when the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, they showed that the more people of different races lived in the same community, the greater the loss of trust.” (source)

This is happening in Europe, and more unrest and disastisfaction, and most likely violence will be the result. The change in tone is being noticed.

This week, the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference decried what it called the "shrinking space" for tolerance toward Muslims in Europe.

"Muslims have noted with concern that the values of tolerance are eroding and there is now shrinking space for others' religious, social and cultural values in the West," the Saudi-based OIC, the world's largest Islamic association, said a statement sent to Reuters. (source)

Don't know where this will end, but awareness of the reality of self-censorship, accomodation, the reality of what multiculturalism leads to and the truth of the way things are is dawning. It may lead to interesting times.