A) Commit crimes against Muslims for no reason; i.e., no stabbing cabbies, etc
B) Burn Korans for no reason. Yes, it’s your right, but don’t be an ass with your freedom
C) Allow Islam to gain influence over American policy or law. The U.S. was founded by Christians for the freedom of everyone, whereas Sharia destroys freedom
D) All of the above.
What’s your choice?
Yeah, I have a question: Is a religion that denies Jesus’ divinity able to to provide a way live his way of life?
And another: Is the murder of so-called apostates who leave Islam an honest way to gain peace?
h/t Pam
Barack Obama has admitted that the homeland security apparatus failed in the case of Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. He had no choice, really – nearly 300 people are still alive only because passengers aboard the flight took matters into their own hands. He went on to say that he wasn’t going to tolerate any finger-pointing – another over-the-top assertion he cannot back up short of having feds arrest me and a few thousand other bloggers. Goes to show where the thought process is heading, I think.
Unfortunately, the Abdulmutallab case isn’t going to be the last of its kind. Not by a long shot. As Abdulmutallab himself said, Islamic terrorists will keep coming and coming and coming until they are given sufficient incentive to stay in their homelands.
As with any motivational question there are two ways to make that happen: make home a more attractive place to be and make America more dangerous for terrorists. Unfortunately religious zealotry is what motivates Abdulmutallab and his ilk rather than poverty or any misbegotten sense of entitlement. These causes liberal Democrats made their own long ago. But Islamic terror doesn’t fit the pattern Dems call their plays from and no amount of foreign aid or glad-handing – read “carrot” – will bring an end to the new Islamic jihad.
The other mechanism for discouraging terrorism – the stick – probably won’t work either for the same reason. What many Americans, including too many of our national leaders, fail to fully understand is that these young men truly want to die in the service of their so-called prophet. Certainly some of the weaker ones can be scared away, but not all and, in my opinion, not even most. They will keep coming until an end is made of the war they’ve declared on western society, one way or the other.
Understanding this is essential to formulating a response. It becomes clear, therefore, that the Democrats have not accepted this unpleasant bit of reality when one looks at their policies. Trying KSM, et al, in civilian court is a mistake because it legitimizes the actions of mass murderers and puts our national security community on the defensive while achieving precisely nothing in terms of a carrot/stick to terrorists. Neither KSM nor Abdulmutallab deserve to plead their case in a public courtroom. Their war crimes preclude this right reserved for civilian offenders.
The Obama administration got it partially right by slapping travel restrictions on Nigerians, albeit too late, though I have to wonder if it will do any good. Yes, Nigeria is one hotbed of Islamic terror, but radical Muslims there have largely confined themselves to murdering their own countrymen until now. It’s still more likely that terrorists will come from Saudi, Yemen, or Pakistan, this incident notwithstanding. Meanwhile, the traveling public feels safer because they are forbidden to pee during the last hour of their flights.
Alejandro J. Beutel, the government liaison with the Muslim Public Affairs Council, makes a good point when he says that Americans can’t allow themselves to lose trust in their Muslim countrymen. The U.S. has a sizable Muslim population, the vast majority of whom are willing to obey our laws and behave as responsible members of society. We must keep that fact firmly in the back of our collective mind.
Nevertheless, such generosity must be a two-way street. Muslim Americans must recognize that their sons, brothers, cousins, and uncles are disproportionately engaged in treasonous, anti-American acts when compared to the population at large. It therefore stands to reason that Muslim Americans must be subjected to scrutiny in proportion to the probability of terrorism emanating from their sliver of society.
Beutel doesn’t believe this. Instead he defends Muslim hostility toward recent police investigations of domestic terrorists, including Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, the young man who attempted to blow up a skyscraper in Dallas last year, claiming that local community and religious leaders would have stopped Smadi if they hadn’t been “worried that they, too, would become subjects of an investigation”.
Perhaps, though it’s speculative to say the least to claim either that Smadi could have been turned from his purpose or that any local leader would have answered the call even in a perfect circumstance. In the final analysis, Smadi did commit the act of terrorism he is accused of and no one save the FBI did anything to stop him.
Sarah Palin today identified the elephant in the room that the White House and other Democrats have been tiptoeing around as if hoping it would go away. It won’t.
We are at war with radical Islamic extremists and treating this threat as a law enforcement issue is dangerous for our nation’s security. That’s what happened in the 1990s and we saw the result on September 11, 2001. This is a war on terror not an “overseas contingency operation.” Acts of terrorism are just that, not “man caused disasters.” The system did not work.
…
There is a very serious downside to treating them as criminals: terrorists invoke their “right” to remain silent and stop talking. Terrorists don’t tell us where they were trained, what they were trained in, who they were trained by, and who they were trained with. Giving foreign-born, foreign-trained terrorists the right to remain silent does nothing to keep Americans safe from terrorist threats. It only gives our enemies access to courtrooms where they can publicly grandstand, and to defense attorneys who can manipulate the legal process to gain access to classified information.
Palin was been judged unworthy to be president in the last election cycle, but she’s reached the correct conclusion with regard to the right way to handle terrorism cases. We are in a war of attrition with a small but implacable enemy utterly unlike anything we’ve faced before and treating foreign enemies with respect they do not deserve only serves to lessen our security and long-term prospects for peace.
Moreover, it it long past time to move past political correctness and recognize that our national security depends on addressing foreign and domestic threats based on actual facts, without respect to whose feelings might be hurt. This means acknowledging the reality that most terrorist threats to this country originate from Islam and that our national counter-terrorism, immigration, and foreign relations policies must be shaped accordingly.
The story of the day is one of madness, for what other word can describe the actions of a man who guns down dozens of innocent people in a purposeless act of rebellion? Major Nidal Malik Hasan killed at least 12 of his fellow soldiers today at Fort Hood and no one really knows why.
Perhaps he was, as reported, fearful and resentful about an upcoming deployment to Iraq. Apparently Hasan’s loathing of the Army’s mission in that country was so great that he hired an attorney to help him get out of the military.
Frankly that explanation doesn’t pass muster. Anyone who works, in any line of business, has to do things that he or she doesn’t want to do, often for months at a time and under difficult circumstances. Although the stresses of most of our daily 8-to-5s can’t compare to those experienced by our deployed military personnel, the comparison is still a useful tool.
Considering it’s unlikely that a trained psychologist like Hasan would be put into a front-line situation, it seems that he would have had relatively little to fear in terms of his personal safety had he been sent overseas.
What then could Hasan’s motive been in attacking his fellow soldiers? Josh Marshall jumped in early on this point, noting that Hasan’s heritage contains Islamic elements. Scott McCabe confirms this assertion, writing:
Hasan attended the Muslim center for about six years and seemed like a good person, [Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring President Ishtiaq] Chughtai said.
Hasan exhibited a dark side at work, however, as noted while he was an intern at Walter Reed:
Hasan had some “difficulties” that required counseling and extra supervision, said Dr. Thomas Grieger, who was the training director at the time.
Grieger said privacy laws prevented him from going into details but noted that the problems had to do with Hasan’s interactions with patients.
Moreover, Hasan made anti-American, pro-Muslim statements to officers at Fort Hood, including now-retired Colonel Terry Lee:
“He was making outlandish comments condemning our foreign policy and claimed Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans,” Col Lee told Fox News.
“He said Muslims should stand up and fight the aggressor and that we should not be in the war in the first place.” He said that Maj Hasan said he was “happy” when a US soldier was killed in an attack on a military recruitment centre in Arkansas in June. An American convert to Islam was accused of the shootings.
Col Lee alleged that other officers had told him that Maj Hasan had said “maybe people should strap bombs on themselves and go to Time Square” in New York.
As Marshall says, things may get very dark indeed with regard to Hasan’s true motives if Lee’s assertions about Hasan’s Muslim sympathies prove true. Previous cases indicate that this is a line of questioning that should be scrupulously followed up on.
For if Hasan’s fear of being deployed to a war zone is, as I believe, insufficient to explain his cowardly, murderous actions, his motivations must have come from a deeply rooted personal sense of vengeance. While it is premature to conclude that Hasan’s religious and social beliefs caused him to commit mass murder, it’s nevertheless obvious that this should be a primary line of inquiry, wherever it leads on the path to the heart of darkness.
Darker still are the larger questions about whether followers of Islam can truly belong in a democratic society. Millions do fit in successfully, just as Nidal Hasan did, to all appearances, prior to today’s shooting spree.
There is a tension between religion and government in democratic societies. Despite founding the first modern democracy here in the United States, American Christians feel it. I suspect that Muslims feel it more keenly yet what with the demanding, legalistic nature of their path to salvation.
Can that tension be resolved to the benefit of democratic society? Or is Islam inherently detrimental to democracy? This is the darkest question of all: Must Islam always seek to undermine secular government in order to gain power, as it has in Turkey and, to a lesser extent to-date, in many European countries?
Certainly it has in the past and still does in the present. But must it? If the answer is Yes, that democracy and Islam are oil and water, never mixing, always distinct, constantly fighting, then hard times and hard choices lie ahead for the citizens of western democracies.
A man can only serve on master. One wonders what Nidal Hasan served.
Mike Adams says that Dr. Indrek Wichman is a First Amendment hero and proceeds to prove it using Wichman’s own words:
Dear Moslem Association: As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intend to protest your protest. I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey!), burnings of Christian churches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called “whores” in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris France. This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many, many of my colleagues. I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile “protests.” If you do not like the values of the West–see the 1st Amendment–you are free to leave. I hope for God’s sake that most of you choose that option. Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans. Cordially, I. S. Wichman, Professor of Mechanical Engineering.
Predictably, Wichman’s letter was followed by the expected coercion and legal threats against his free speech rights and his career.
Michigan’s CAIR Executive Director Mr. Dawud Walid said it was “unconscionable for a professor to use his university e-mail account to foster a hostile learning environment for Muslim students.” He added, “The University needs to take appropriate disciplinary action in this case to demonstrate through its actions that anti-Muslim bigotry will not be tolerated on campus.”
Adams had this to say:
CAIR and MSA’s public call upon MSU to take “disciplinary action” against Wichman’s “Islamophobic” email was a classic example of Muslim cowardice.
I’d like to agree, but I cannot. It’s important to realize that the Muslim groups’ actions, while cowardly, do not originate in cowardice. Rather, these strident demands for special treatment are carefully designed strategies intended to force outcomes favoring their special interests at the expense of ordinary Americans, including true heroes like Dr. Wichman.
It is therefore imperative that these groups be resisted at every turn, including the legal and electoral: Exercise your right to free speech, even when it’s inconvenient; refuse to let your jury give in to un-American demands; vote for judges and representatives who will uphold the existing rules of law, common sense, and American values; at all times remain vigilant in your defense of the American way of life.
Hillary Clinton has arguably done more to combat sexual violence in Africa in her short time as Secretary of State than the entire U.N. has in the last decade. Mrs. Clinton had this to say about visiting the Congo and witnessing the aftermath of the brutality of life there:
While I was in the DRC, I had very frank discussions about sexual violence with President Kabila. I stressed that the perpetrators of these crimes, no matter who they are, must be prosecuted and punished. This is particularly important when they are in positions of authority, including members of the Congolese military, who have been allowed to commit these crimes with impunity.
There are lessons that people in the U.S. and the rest of the civilized world can learn simply from reading this single paragraph. We do not have to visit Africa and see the mauled and maimed women first-hand to realize that, whatever our differences politically, we really have a minimal number of problems to deal with in our lives and that it is our general adherence to the rule of law, with all of its compulsions and flaws, that creates the sense – and more than that, the reality – of security most westerners enjoy day in and day out. Yet even here freedom and safety is not universal. I’ll discuss below the latest court case regarding the practice of Islamic honor killings.
Abdul-Latif Moussa leads an Islamic terrorist group called Jund Ansar Allah that as of now is literally fighting for its survival in the Gaza Strip. But their opponent isn’t the Israeli Defense Forces as one might expect; rather, Moussa’s group is holed up in a mosque surrounded by hundreds of armed members of Hamas. At least 10 members of the group, whose unlikely name means Army of the Helpers of God, have been killed already with dozens more still inside.
Details are sketchy. However, Moussa’s group is antagonistic toward Hamas because they feel that the latter are not radical enough in their opposition to Israel and the west. That’s saying something, obviously.
Moussa may have brought the attack on his people by declaring Gaza an “Islamic emirate” and denying Hamas’ leadership of the region. In doing so he has put his own people’s lives in harms way and risks going out in flames, the Gaza Strip’s very own David Koresh, he of Texas’ Branch Davidian infamy.
In typical terrorist leader fashion, Hamas leader Ismail Haniya resisted any stray impulses he might have had along the lines of taking the high road by blaming the radical Muslim group’s actions on Israel, saying:
“These declarations [of an Islamic emirate] are aimed towards incitement against the Gaza Strip and an attempt at recruiting an international alliance against the Gaza Strip.
“And we warn those who are behind these Israeli Zionist declarations: the Gaza Strip only contains its people.”
Incredible. Hamas has virtually no credibility on the international stage as it is and for good reason. As Haniya’s refusal to acknowledge reality and call out Moussa for what he is demonstrates, Hamas has no intention of dealing honestly and above boards with the civilized world.
At least 6 Christians – all but one women and children – have been killed in Gojra, Pakistan by a rampaging mob of Muslims. The reason? It was rumored that a Koran was damaged in a Christian wedding held in the town.
Not surprisingly, officials said the rumors which led to the murders and torching of homes were false.
I say not surprisingly because – and this may come across as overly blunt, for which I apologize – I don’t think that many Christians would bother vandalizing a Koran. I say this not because they respect the book or because they are afraid of the all-too-typical, too-violent Muslim reaction, but because they simply don’t consider it worth the effort. I could be wrong, of course, but that’s certainly how virtually all American Christians see the matter. I’m always suspicious of these so-called desecrations for that reason.
However, that’s not where I want to go with this article. The real issues are the reactionary, mindless, hateful violence that always seems to follow rumors about damage done to this Koran or the other and the seeming inability of young male Muslims to restrain themselves from participating in such pogroms of death.
(I know I’ve been over this before. Skip to the next article if you’ve been through it with me before, because evidently I must say it again.)
