Mark Steyn is no fan of Saudi Arabia and the theocracy that is the scourge of the earth

Mark Steyn recounts the history of Saudi Arabia

The Middle East Is Red With The Blood Of Christians

The Middle East Is Red With The Blood Of Christians. “The beheading of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya by forces sympathetic to Islamic State over recent days is sadly not an isolated case. On the contrary, it is the latest of countless outrages perpetrated against Christians in or near the Church’s Biblical heartlands over many years.”

Meet the honor brigade, an organized campaign to silence debate on Islam

How Islamofascists try to control the narrative.  When you hear someone described as "Islamophobic" it probably started in the Honor Brigade.

It was the first time a fellow Muslim had pressed me to refrain from criticizing the way our faith was practiced. But in the past decade, such attempts at censorship have become more common. This is largely because of the rising power and influence of the “ghairat brigade,” an honor corps that tries to silence debate on extremist ideology in order to protect the image of Islam. It meets even sound critiques with hideous, disproportionate responses.

The campaign began, at least in its modern form, 10 years ago in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, when the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — a mini-United Nations comprising the world’s 56 countries with large Muslim populations, plus the Palestinian Authority — tasked then-Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu with combating Islamophobia and projecting the “true values of Islam.” During the past decade, a loose honor brigade has sprung up, in part funded and supported by the OIC through annual conferences, reports and communiques. It’s made up of politicians, diplomats, writers, academics, bloggers and activists.

In 2007, as part of this playbook, the OIC launched the Islamophobia Observatory, a watchdog group based in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, with the goal of documenting slights against the faith. Its first report, released the following year, complained that the artists and publishers of controversial Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad were defiling “sacred symbols of Islam . . . in an insulting, offensive and contemptuous manner.” The honor brigade began calling out academics, writers and others, including former New York police commissioner Ray Kelly and administrators at a Catholic school in Britain that turned away a mother who wouldn’t remove her face veil.

“The OIC invented the anti-‘Islamophobia’ movement,” says Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and a frequent target of the honor brigade. “These countries . . . think they own the Muslim community and all interpretations of Islam.”

Alongside the honor brigade’s official channel, a community of self-styled blasphemy police — from anonymous blogs such as LoonWatch.com and Ikhras.com to a large and disparate cast of social-media activists — arose and began trying to control the debate on Islam. This wider corps throws the label of “Islamophobe” on pundits, journalists and others who dare to talk about extremist ideology in the religion. Their targets are as large as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and as small as me.

Were the Saudis Involved with 9/11?

There have been reports that Saudis were hustled out of the country following the attacks on 9/11/2001.  I have been dismissive of these reports because they were denied by the US government and because I believed that the Bush administration would not have been involved in nefarious activities surrounding the terrorist attack.

That may be an error on my part.

The NY Post article Inside the Saudi 9/11 coverup...

The Saudis deny any role in 9/11, but the CIA in one memo reportedly found “incontrovertible evidence” that Saudi government officials — not just wealthy Saudi hardliners, but high-level diplomats and intelligence officers employed by the kingdom — helped the hijackers both financially and logistically. The intelligence files cited in the report directly implicate the Saudi embassy in Washington and consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks, making 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war.

The findings, if confirmed, would back up open-source reporting showing the hijackers had, at a minimum, ties to several Saudi officials and agents while they were preparing for their attacks inside the United States. In fact, they got help from Saudi VIPs from coast to coast: ...

Read the whole thing.

There's also the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi.

Saudi Arabia acknowledged for the first time that 15 of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers were Saudi citizens, but said Wednesday that the oil-rich kingdom bears no responsibility for their actions.

The Saudis are also the sponsors and financial backers of numerous mosques being built around the country aligned with the Wahabi sect of Islam, the most ideologically oriented toward a hatred of the West. According to this article from the Islamist DAWN

It is not merely the faith or oil that flows out of Saudi Arabia. The oil-rich Arab state and its neighbours are busy financing Wahabi and Salafi militants across the globe.

A recent report by the European Parliament reveals how Wahabi and Salafi groups based out of the Middle East are involved in the "support and supply of arms to rebel groups around the world." The report, released in June 2013, was commissioned by European Parliament's Directorate General for External Policies. The report warns about the Wahabi/Salafi organisations and claims that "no country in the Muslim world is safe from their operations ... as they always aim to terrorise their opponents and arouse the admiration of their supporters."

What's in it for the Saudis to sponsor terrorism and to aid terrorists to attack America?  That's a very good question and I believe it requires a theological rather than a secular explanation.   Of course, it's also possible that there is an innocent explanation for much of this and these accusations are a way of destroying relations between our countries.  But it's definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia: there should be no churches in Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE

Sheikh Abdul-Aziz ibn Abdullah, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, created an implication with his assertion. Nettleton explains, "This was in a meeting with Kuwaiti officials who came to Saudi Arabia. They were asking this Islamic official, ‘What should we do about the churches?' His statement was, ‘There should be no Christian churches on the Arabian Peninsula.'"

According to the report, the delegation wanted to confirm Shariah's position on churches. Essentially, Nettleton says, "If you have churches in Kuwait, which they do, they should be destroyed. The interesting thing about this is that there are no churches in Saudi Arabia. There are no church buildings that are allowed to exist there. So he clearly wasn't talking only for his own country. He was trying to export this ideology to the surrounding countries."

This proclamation could affect churches in Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Nettleton observes that "in most of these countries, we're not talking about a lot of churches; we're talking about a few that are allowed to exist primarily to serve foreigners that are living in that country."

At this point in time, it is beginning to seem as if the US relations with Saudi Arabia are similar to our relations with the Soviet Union during World War II, that is, a alliance of convenience until we don’t need Saudi oil and can leave them to fester in their backwardness.

Saudi Arabia: 41 people arrested for "plotting to celebrate Christmas"

Our friends the Saudis.

Sharia Alert from the Kingdom of the Two Holy Places: "Saudi detains dozens for 'plotting to celebrate Christmas,'" from al-Akhbar, December 27 (thanks to Blazing Cat Fur):

 

I know people in the US, who comment regularly at Volokh, who hate Christians so much that they would not find the Saudi action objectionable.

The Saudis are bulldozing Islam's heritage. Why the silence from the Muslim world?

Via the Telegraph

The long-cherished ambition of Saudi Arabia’s ruling Wahhabi sect to smash up the ancient buildings of Mecca and Medina is nearing fruition.

In Mecca, the house of one of Mohammed’s wives has been demolished to make space for public lavatories. His birthplace may disappear, too, as part of King Abdullah’s scheme to complement the skyscrapers and shopping malls with a Grand Mosque fashioned from the same materials as a multi-storey car park in Wolverhampton.

As for Islam’s second holiest place, the city of Medina, a recent article by Jerome Taylor in the Independent revealed a megalomaniac plan to pull down three 7th-century mosques. Taylor added: “Ten years ago, a mosque which belonged to the Prophet’s grandson was dynamited. Pictures of the demolition that were secretly taken and smuggled out of the kingdom showed the religious police celebrating.”

Yale and Islamic money ... could it be connected to the decision to delete the Mohammad cartoons?

Roger Kimball find that Yale lied about the "unanimity" of experts recommending the cartoons not be printed. As usual, it's instructive to follow the money.

Sheila Blair, professor of Islamic and Asian art at Norma Jean Calderwood University and one of the authorities consulted by Yale about publication, said she had “strongly urged” the press to publish the images. “To deny that such images were made is to distort the historical record and to bow to the biased view of some modern zealots who would deny that others at other times and places perceived and illustrated Muhammad in different ways,” she wrote in a letter to the New York Times which is yet to be published.

So what's going on?

The story in the Times implied that in its appeal to experts the University and/or the YUP was exercising normal caution. But in fact, Professor Klausen’s book had already been throughly vetted.
...
“I strongly suspect . . . that the threats-of-violence trope was a pretext, or at most a subsidiary concern” for Yale. What was the real reason that Yale was anxious to bowdlerize Professor Klausen’s book? Even now, I know, energetic investigative reporters are looking into Yale’s financial relationships with some of the spots where Linda Lorimer, Vice President and Secretary of the University, told Professor Klausen she has often traveled recently: Saudi Arabia, for example.

I'll add another little fact. Yale's endowment lost 25% in the second half of 2008.

The value of the University’s endowment fell an estimated 25 percent, roughly $6 billion, between the end of June and December, University President Richard Levin announced Dec. 16.

The drop prompted the Universityto delay several planned capital projects and cap faculty and staff salary growth. But the endowment’s decline, though seemingly dramatic — the fund shrank to approximately $17 billion from $22.9 billion

Would Yale like to see a few billion roll in from the oil kingdoms? Do bears shit in the woods?

Lying as a cultural imperative

Captain’s Journal brings up the issue of the future of our forces in Iraq. He then focuses on a serious cultural issue that can drive us apart.

Are lies being told to obtain blood money payments? Some insight comes in this response to the collapse of the British trial by Stephan Holland, a Baghdad-based US contractor.

I’ve been in Iraq for about 18 months now performing construction management. It is simply not possible for me to exaggerate the massive amounts of lies we wade through every single day. There is no way - absolutely none - to determine facts from bulls*** ….

It is not even considered lying to them; it is more akin to being clever - like keeping your cards close to your chest. And they don’t just lie to westerners. They believe that appearances–saving face–are of paramount importance. They lie to each other all the time about anything in order to leverage others on a deal or manipulate an outcome of some sort or cover up some major or minor embarrassment. It’s just how they do things, period.

I’m not trying to disparage them here. I get along great with a lot of them. But even among those that I like, if something happens (on the job) I’ll get 50 wildly different stories, every time. There’s no comparison to it in any other part of the world where I’ve worked. The lying is ubiquitous and constant.

I have always been a supporter of what has been ineptly called “The War on Terror” which is really a war we are waging against Islamic Fascism. After Afghanistan, Iraq was the next logical battlefield. It appears that for the moment Iraq has been won.

We must be careful to understand what the original objective was. It was not to build as Iraq that was a democratic model. It was to remove Iraq from the list of countries aiding Islamofacism. I have been assuming that a pacified Iraq would be a staging area for the next objective in what has been termed the “Long War.” That would be either Iran or Syria. But if our cultural differences are too great, the use of Iraq for that purpose may not be the best approach.

We must also keep in mind that we are not fighting nation-states as such, but an ideology that is embedded in certain parts of the world where Islam is the official religion. It has no well defined borders and acts much like water seeping into cracks and crevices. In the case of Afghanistan and Iraq, the regimes there were actively aiding and abetting the Islamofascists and were our avowed enemies.

In the case of Saudi Arabia we have a more complicated situation. The rulers are both outwardly friendly to us and hostile to those – such as al Qaida – who wish to destroy them, while at the same time funding the extremist religion that breeds the Islamofascists who do the actual fighting killing. We must realize that such an internal contradiction cannot last and be prepared for the fall of the Saudi regime at the hands of the Islamofascists.

Meanwhile behind our lines we have the Islamization of parts of Europe. We have a long struggle on our hands and many on our side … are not on our side.

Implementing Sharia at Harvard

In the old days, Harvard would have laughed if some Catholic or evangelical mother urged “girls-only” campus workouts in the name of modesty. Today, Harvard happily implements Sharia swim times in the name of Mohammed.

At Harvard, that’s called progress.

Is that discrimination? Why no, says Harvard flack Bob Mitchell:

When I asked Harvard spokesman Bob Mitchell about this new Sharia-friendly policy, he denied that they were banning anyone. “No, no,” he told me, “we’re permitting women to work out in an environment that accommodates their religion.”

By banning all men from the facility, right?

“It’s not ‘banning,’ ” he insisted. “We’re allowing, we’re accommodating people.”

Of course academia always claims to be above greed. Just until someone offers the right incentive.

And then there’s that ultimate FOH (Friend of Harvard) Sheik Al Waleed bin Talal.

This Saudi sheik stroked a check for $20 million to promote the study of Islam. Harvard took the check, no questions asked.

They didn’t ask, for example, about bin Talal’s gift of nearly $30 million to a fund for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Knowing their kin will benefit financially is an inducement to young people planning to blow themselves up in Tel Aviv pizza parlors, and Sheik bin Talal made sure the money was there.

It reminds me of the story about a man who asked if a woman would go to bed with him for a dollar. She said no. Then he asked if she would for a million dollars. She agreed. He then lowered his offer and she asked "what do you think I am?" He replied "I know what you are, we're just haggling about the price.

For a campus with a Sharia-friendly record like Harvard’s, mandating single-sex pilates is no big deal.

It would be nice to think that there were still a few liberals or feminists with the good sense - or sense of decency - to be embarrassed by all this. This is, after all, the same college that sued to keep military recruiters off campus over the issue of gay rights.

Perhaps someone in the bin Talal Islamic Studies Program could let Harvard know what the sheik’s pals in Saudi Arabia actually do to gay people. It’s worse than just banning them from the weight room.

Saudi Rape Victim Tells Her Story

Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Justice is defending a sentence of 200 lashes for the victim of a gang rape, punished because she was in the car of a male who wasn't a relative when the two were attacked.

Read the rest as she tells her story.

American Moms Using Their Children as Human Sacrifice

Michelle Malkin has the story and the pictures.

Of course it's been done by other people and in other cultures, but women who will kill their unborn children for a whim will not shrink from subjecting their born children to threats of harm.

But of course this woman knows that in our culture the truck won't run over her and her children. What's ironic is that she is an ally of the people who would blow her up without a second's thought.

Other cultures, other rules:
Saudi punishes gang rape victim with 200 lashes

A court in the ultra-conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia is punishing a female victim of gang rape with 200 lashes and six months in jail, a newspaper reported on Thursday.
The 19-year-old woman -- whose six armed attackers have been sentenced to jail terms -- was initially ordered to undergo 90 lashes for "being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape," the Arab News reported.

But in a new verdict issued after Saudi Arabia's Higher Judicial Council ordered a retrial, the court in the eastern town of Al-Qatif more than doubled the number of lashes to 200.

A court source told the English-language Arab News that the judges had decided to punish the woman further for "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media."

The woman in the picture is totally unaware of how good she has it, or why she has it this good.

Saudi divorces wife for watching male TV host: report

Can't wait for Sharia law.

A Saudi man divorced his wife for watching alone a television programme presented by a male, an act he deemed immoral, the Al Shams newspaper reported on Saturday.
The man, whom the paper did not identify, ended his marriage on the grounds his wife was effectively alone with an unrelated man, which is forbidden under the strict Islamic law enforced in the ultra-conservative kingdom, the paper said.

Men in Saudi Arabia have the authority to divorce their wives without resort to the courts.

But that still allows them to watch The View.

Saudi Arabia: Friend Or Foe?

A new movie called "The Kingdom" shows Saudis fighting terrorism alongside FBI agents. That's certainly what we'd like to see. But like the flick, it's pure fiction.

Unfortunately, too true.

Is Saudi Arabia the Real Problem?

An interesting question. And then what?

Maybe if we cut off their supply of cocaine, whiskey and prostitutes, their heads would explode.

Sexual Segregation in Saudi Arabia: Et tu, Starbucks?

Naive me... I had assumed Starbucks - with its high-minded CEO who has received an award for "ethics in business" from Notre Dame and its general do-gooder, post-hippie ethos - was on the more progressive side of corporations and that they would never (heaven forfend!) engage in practices like segregation.

Yet they do. Sexual segregation. According to a fascinating front page article in the LAT today by Megan Stack, the Starbucks in Saudi Arabia have a small women's only section accessed through a back door. The full bore Starbucks that we all know and sort of love is for men only. And Stack knows of what she speaks. She spent months walking around that medieval center of psychopathic misogyny in a black abaya.

[...]

Starbucks and the others are enabling the system by allowing one half of Saudi society to live modern or semi-modern lives while treating the other half like chattel.

Starbucks has no problem with subjugating women as long as it's profitable.

Jimmy Carter Was Bought; Dershowitz on Arab Oil Money

The war with Islamofascism has made strange bedfellows. Alan M. Dershowitz is a very Liberal Harvard law professor. But he is also Jewish, and realizes that in this war if the West goes down, the Jews will go down first. America may be the “Great Satan” but Jews are “pigs and dogs” that need to be eradicated.

He understands that people often mean what they say. He knows that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a person who can hold two contradictory ideas in his head simultaneously: he denies the Holocaust while regretting that Hitler did not finish the job. He knows that Hitler told the world about his plans to eradicate the Jews years before he had the power to put his solution into effect. The Islamofascists are being equally open about their desires.

For that reason, he and the Right are on the same page regarding the war, or at least the need for the war.

He supported Jimmy Carter before anyone outside of Georgia had ever heard of him. In this article he tells us their history. He then lists the way the Jimmy has been bought and paid for by Arab oil money. Some has come from a foundation begun by

“…a Shiekh and run by his son, hosted speakers who called Jews "the enemies of all nations," attributed the assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks to the United States' own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a "fable."”

Click on the link for the whole article. He concludes:

No reasonable person can dispute therefore that Jimmy Carter has been and remains dependent on Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia. Does this mean that Carter has necessarily been influenced in his thinking about the Middle East by receipt of such enormous amounts of money? Ask Carter.

The entire premise of his criticism of Jewish influence on American foreign policy is that money talks. It is Carter, not me, who has made the point that if politicians receive money from Jewish sources, then they are not free to decide issues regarding the Middle East for themselves. It is Carter, not me, who has argued that distinguished reporters cannot honestly report on the Middle East because they are being paid by Jewish money. So, by Carter's own standards, it would be almost economically "suicidal" for Carter "to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine."

By Carter's own standards, therefore, his views on the Middle East must be discounted. It is certainly possible that he now believes them. Money, particularly large amounts of money, has a way of persuading people to a particular position. It would not surprise me if Carter, having received so much Arab money, is now honestly committed to their cause. But his failure to disclose the extent of his financial dependence on Arab money, and the absence of any self reflection on whether the receipt of this money has unduly influenced his views, is a form of deception bordering on corruption.

I have met cigarette lobbyists, who are supported by the cigarette industry, and who have come to believe honestly that cigarettes are merely a safe form of adult recreation, that cigarettes are not addicting and that the cigarette industry is really trying to persuade children not to smoke. These people are fooling themselves (or fooling us into believing that they are fooling themselves) just as Jimmy Carter is fooling himself (or persuading us to believe that he is fooling himself).

If money determines political and public views as Carter insists "Jewish money" does, Carter's views on the Middle East must be deemed to have been influenced by the vast sums of Arab money he has received. If he who pays the piper calls the tune, then Carter's off-key tunes have been called by his Saudi Arabian paymasters. It pains me to say this, but I now believe that there is no person in American public life today who has a lower ratio of real to apparent integrity than Jimmy Carter. The public perception of his integrity is extraordinarily high. His real integrity, it now turns out, is extraordinarily low. He is no better than so many former American politicians who, after leaving public life, sell themselves to the highest bidder and become lobbyists for despicable causes. That is now Jimmy Carter's sad legacy.

Undercover Mosque

What the Islamofascists are really teaching in their mosques.