The Tragedy of Islam

Michael Graham was suspended by WMAL for making the following comments:

I take no pleasure in saying it. It pains me to think it. I could very well lose my job in talk radio over admitting it. But it is the plain truth:


Islam is a terror organization.


For years, I've been trying to give the world's Muslim community the benefit of the doubt, along with the benefit of my typical-American's complete disinterest in their faith. Before 9/11, I knew nothing about Islam except the greeting "asalaam alaikum," taught to me by a Pakistani friend in Chicago.


Immediately after 9/11, I nodded in ignorant agreement as President Bush assured me that "Islam is a religion of peace."


But nearly four years later, nobody can defend that statement. And I mean "nobody."


Certainly not the group of "moderate" Muslim clerics and imams who gathered in London last week to issue a statement on terrorism and their faith. When asked the question "Are suicide bombings always a violation of Islam," they could not answer "Yes. Always." Instead, these "moderate British Muslims" had to answer "It depends."


Precisely what it depends on, news reports did not say. Sadly, given our new knowledge of Islam from the past four years, it probably depends on whether or not you're killing Jews.


That is part of the state of modern Islam.


Another fact about the state of Islam is that a majority of Muslims in countries like Jordan continue to believe that suicide bombings are legitimate. Still another is the poll reported by a left-leaning British paper than only 73 percent of British Muslims would tell police if they knew about a planned terrorist attack.


The other 27 percent? They are a part of modern Islam, too.


The Council on American-Islamic Relations is outraged that I would dare to connect the worldwide epidemic of terrorism with Islam. They put it down to bigotry, asserting that a lifetime of disinterest in Islam has suddenly become blind hatred. They couldn't be more wrong.


Not to be mean to the folks at CAIR, but I don't: Care, that is. I simply don't care about Islam, its theology, its history — I have no interest in it at all. All I care about is not getting blown to smithereens when I board a bus or ride a plane. I care about living in a world where terrorism and murder/suicide bombings are rejected by all.





And the reason Islam has itself become a terrorist organization is that it cannot address its own role in this violence. It cannot cast out the murderers from its members. I know it can't, because "moderate" Muslim imams keep telling me they can't. "We have no control over these radical young men," one London imam moaned to the local papers.


Can't kick 'em out of your faith? Can't excommunicate them? Apparently Islam does not allow it.


Islam cannot say that terrorism is forbidden to Muslims. I know this because when the world's Muslim nations gathered after 9/11 to state their position on terrorism, they couldn't even agree on what it was. How could they, when the world's largest terror sponsors at the time were Iran and Saudi Arabia — both governed by Islamic law.


If the Boy Scouts of America had 1,000 scout troops, and 10 of them practiced suicide bombings, then the BSA would be considered a terrorist organization. If the BSA refused to kick out those 10 troops, that would make the case even stronger. If people defending terror repeatedly turned to the Boy Scout handbook and found language that justified and defended murder — and the scoutmasters in charge simply said "Could be" — the Boy Scouts would have driven out of America long ago.


Today, Islam has entire sects and grand mosques that preach terror. Its theology is used as a source of inspiration by terrorist murderers. Millions of Islam's members give these killers support and comfort.


The question isn't how dare I call Islam a terrorist organization, but rather why more people do not.


As I've said many times, I have great sympathy for those Muslims of good will who want their faith to be a true "religion of peace." I believe that terrorism and murder do violate the sensibilities and inherent decency of the vast majority of the world's Muslims. I believe they want peace.


Sadly, the organization and fundamental theology of Islam as it is constituted today allows for hatreds most Muslims do not share to thrive, and for criminals they oppose to operate in the name of their faith.


Many Muslims, I believe, know this to be true and some are acting on it. Not the members of CAIR, unfortunately: As Middle East analyst and expert Daniel Pipes has reported, "two of CAIR's associates (Ghassan Elashi, Randall Royer) have been convicted on terrorism-related charges, one (Bassem Khafegi) convicted on fraud charges, two (Rabih Haddad, Bassem Khafegi) have been deported, and one (Siraj Wahhaj) remains at large."


But Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf admits what CAIR will not. He's called for a jihad against the jihadists. He's putting his life on the line (Islamists have tried to assassinate him three times) in the battle to reclaim Islam and its fundamental decency.


He remembers, I'm sure, that at a time when Western, Christian civilization was on the verge of collapse, the Muslim world was a bastion of rationalism and tolerance. That was a great moment in the history of Islam, a moment that helped save the West.


Let's hope Islam can now find the strength to save itself.

Michelle Malkin has much more HERE.

Mark Steyn: Wake up, folks — it’s war!

Excerpt (read the whole thing):

"The distinction between coarse blundering Israelis and subtle sophisticated Britons depends where you’re standing. If you happen to be the late Jean Charles de Menezes, for example, you might wish fate had selected you instead to be the Palestinian suicide bomber interrupted en route to Tel Aviv that same Friday. The Euro-reviled IDF managed to disarm the Fatah terrorist of his explosives belt, packed with nails, without harming a hair on his pretty little suicide-bomber head. If the demented anti-Zionism of the British and Continental media these last four years ever had a point, it doesn’t now, when you’re in the early stages of the Israelification of Europe — and, in one of fate’s better jests, in this scenario you’re the Jews."

[snip]

"On the Thursday of the second attacks, I happened to pass through London, which isn’t the easiest town to pass through these days. I am a Canadian subject of Her Majesty and, when I showed up at the ‘Fast Track’ lane at Heathrow, the immigration officer plonked down in my passport a big stamp saying ‘RECOURSE TO PUBLIC FUNDS PROHIBITED’. ‘Tosser,’ I sneered. Well, OK, I murmured it, very sotto voce, as I had no desire to miss my appointment because the zealots of HM Customs suddenly fancied an intimate cavity search. But honestly, what a pathetic example of pointless gesture politics: if you’re a fancypants North American business traveller in town for less than 24 hours and splashing a ton of hard currency around the West End, the Home Office goes through a big hoop-de-doo about saying you’ve no entitlement to welfare. But if you’re a Somali and you want to live in public housing at public expense for six years while you fine-tune your plot to blow up Warren Street Tube station, pas de problème!"

Priceless.

I Don't Care

This letter came to me by e-mail. It expresses the opinions of most Americans.

The lady who wrote this letter is Pam Foster of Pamela Foster and Associates in Atlanta. She's been in business since 1980 doing interior design and home planning. She recently wrote a letter to a family member serving in Iraq. Read it.

Subject: I don't care!

WHAT'S ALL THE FUSS?

"Are we fighting a war on terror or aren't we? Was it or was it not started by Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001? Were people from all over the world, mostly Americans, not brutally murdered that day, in downtown Manhattan, across the Potomac from our nation's capitol and in a field in Pennsylvania? Did nearly three thousand men, women and children die a horrible, burning or crushing death that day, or didn't they?

And I'm supposed to care that a copy of the Koran was "desecrated" when an overworked American soldier kicked it or got it wet? Well, I don't. I don't care at all.

I'll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in and repents for incinerating all those innocent people on 9/11.

I'll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East start caring about the Holy Bible, the mere possession of which is a crime in Saudi Arabia.

I'll care when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi tells the world he is sorry for hacking off Nick Berg's head while Berg screamed through his gurgling, slashed throat.

I'll care when the cowardly so-called "insurgents" in Iraq come out and fight like men instead of disrespecting their own religion by hiding in mosques.

I'll care when the mindless zealots who blow themselves up in search of nirvana care about the innocent children within range of their suicide bombs.

I'll care when the American media stops pretending that their First Amendment liberties are somehow derived from international law instead of the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights.

I'll care when Clinton-appointed judges stop ordering my government to release photos of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, which are sure to set off the Islamic extremists just as Newsweek's lies did a few weeks ago.

In the meantime, when I hear a story about a brave marine roughing up an Iraqi terrorist to obtain information, know this: I don't care.

When I see a fuzzy photo of a pile of naked Iraqi prisoners who have been humiliated in what amounts to a college hazing incident, rest assured that I don't care.

When I see a wounded terrorist get shot in the head when he is told not to move because he might be booby-trapped, you can take it to the bank that I don't care.

When I hear that a prisoner, who was issued a Koran and a prayer mat, and fed "special" food that is paid for by my tax dollars, is complaining that his holy book is being "mishandled," you can absolutely believe in your heart of hearts that I don't care.

And oh, by the way, I've noticed that sometimes it's spelled "Koran" and other times "Quran." Well, Jimmy Crack Corn and -- you guessed it – I don't care!"

Steyn: Mugged by Reality

Steyn is always good, but here he is spectacular. Read the whole thing (excerpt):

WITH hindsight, the defining encounter of the age was not between Mohammed Atta's jet and the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, but that between Mohammed Atta and Johnelle Bryant a year earlier.

Bryant is an official with the US Department of Agriculture in Florida, and the late Atta had gone to see her about getting a $US650,000 government loan to convert a plane into the world's largest crop-duster. A novel idea.

The meeting got off to a rocky start when Atta refused to deal with Bryant because she was but a woman. But, after this unpleasantness had been smoothed out, things went swimmingly. When it was explained to him that, alas, he wouldn't get the 650 grand in cash that day, Atta threatened to cut Bryant's throat. He then pointed to a picture behind her desk showing an aerial view of downtown Washington - the White House, the Pentagon et al - and asked: "How would America like it if another country destroyed that city and some of the monuments in it?"

Fortunately, Bryant's been on the training course and knows an opportunity for multicultural outreach when she sees one. "I felt that he was trying to make the cultural leap from the country that he came from," she recalled. "I was attempting, in every manner I could, to help him make his relocation into our country as easy for him as I could."

So a few weeks later, when fellow 9/11 terrorist Marwan al-Shehhi arrived to request another half-million dollar farm subsidy and Atta showed up cunningly disguised with a pair of glasses and claiming to be another person entirely - to whit, al-Shehhi's accountant - Bryant sportingly pretended not to recognise him and went along with the wheeze. The fake specs, like the threat to slit her throat and blow up the Pentagon, were just another example of the multicultural diversity that so enriches our society.

For four years, much of the western world behaved like Bryant. ...

Why Rhetoric Matters

Jeff Goldstein finds a connection between the Left’s ( and MSM) lies about Abu Ghraib and the London bombings.

Mr Saleem supported his cousin’s bombing at Aldgate station which killed seven people, saying: “Whatever he has done, if he has done it, then he has done right.” He recalled how Tanweer argued with family and friends about the need for violent retaliation over US abuse of Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

Since Abu Ghraib did not compare to the Holocaust, the Gulag, the Killing Filed of Cambodia, in fact, did not compare to anything that is remotely associated with the mass hysteria that it engendered, will there be any member of the MSM who will wash the blood from their hands.

Of course not. What a silly question. Next….

Read the whole thing

Robin Givhan Attacks Kids

Robin Givhan is the Washington Post’s Style Editor. In a recent article she criticizes the Roberts’ kids for the way they were dressed during their introduction by President Bush. You have to read the whole thing to appreciate how viciously she goes after Judge Roberts THROUGH HIS CHILDREN.



“His wife and children stood before the cameras, groomed and glossy in pastel hues -- like a trio of Easter eggs, a handful of Jelly Bellies, three little Necco wafers.”

Here is Givhan's picture.



Robin her own self—looking for all the world like a half-eaten chocolate cupcake from a Mary Kay store opening. (from Protein Wisdom)

Here's Michelle Malkin on Givhan's history:

Time and again, Washington Post Style reporter Robin Givhan hides behind fashion snarking and culture reporting to savage conservatives. She did it with Katherine Harris and Dick Cheney and John Bolton--and I'm sure you can remember many more examples of partisan mockery.

From Mary Katherine Ham at Townhall.com we have

"One final note for Robin: Referring to regular Americans as "light-up/shoe-buying hoi polloi" displays a much higher degree of upper-crusty condescension than dressing your kids in seersucker and gingham does."

All The Best Generals are Editing Newspapers

The Belmont Club has a good article on the Left and it’s assumption that there is really no War on Terror because there really is no “Terrorist Threat.” It’s an excellent read, as are all of Wretchard’s essays.

However, I found the following comment most appropriate, and it is a quotation from Robert E. Lee (yes, the Confederate General):

This is Robert E. Lee talking to a friend admitting that the south had made a huge mistake from the beginning:

"Why, it appears that we appointed all of our worst generals to command the armies and we appointed all of our best generals to edit the newspapers.

I mean, I found by reading a newspaper that these editor generals saw all of the defects plainly from the start but didn't tell me until it was too late. I'm willing to yield my place to these best generals and I'll do my best for the cause by editing a newspaper."

Basically what he is saying is that, you know, "It is amazing all these generals that write for the newspaper have no clue what they are doing. They are always telling me what I am doing wrong after the fact. Why don't they tell me what I'm doing wrong before I get started? In fact, let's trade places. You people in the media think you know what is best and run the war, you go ahead and do it and we'll take your jobs." That is Robert E. Lee.

The Press, Truthtelling and Plame

Here’s a good question for you: when two people give testimony and that testimony differs, isn’t it reasonable to ask WHICH ONE isn’t telling the truth? But the press in the Plame case has been reporting discrepancies between the testimony of Administration officials and reporters and asking only if the officials were making “false statements.” The operative assumption is that the members of the press corps are incapable of making false statements.

Well, we know that is not only untrue, it is so untrue that the truth telling ability of the press is ranked somewhat below that of used car salesmen. Take for example the following story from Bloomberg:

July 22 (Bloomberg) -- Two top White House aides have given accounts to a special prosecutor about how reporters first told them the identity of a CIA agent that are at odds with what the reporters have said, according to people familiar with the case.

Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from NBC News reporter Tim Russert of the identity of Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, one person said. Russert has testified before a federal grand jury that he didn't tell Libby of Plame's identity, the person said.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told Fitzgerald that he first learned the identity of the CIA agent from syndicated columnist Robert Novak, according a person familiar with the matter. Novak, who was first to report Plame's name and connection to Wilson, has given a somewhat different version to the special prosecutor, the person said.

These discrepancies may be important because Fitzgerald is investigating whether Libby, Rove or other administration officials made false statements during the course of the investigation. The Plame case has its genesis in whether any administration officials violated a 1982 law making it illegal to knowingly reveal the name of a covert intelligence agent.

My points are expanded and amplified by Just One Minute who smells a press cover-up.

He asks why more reporters who talked to the White House were not questioned. And also asks why reporters are not either verifying or denying discrepancies between stories. Why are reporters not reporting whether they have been interviewed by the FBI; surely that is a story. If they were interviewed, did they cooperate and if not, why not. This is, after all, a story about the White House’s relationship with the press, who said what to whom. Yet the press treats it as if they were not an integral part of the story, as if the only information that is available comes from grand jury leaks and lawyerly statements.

No, that’s not good enough. When the press is intimately involved in the story, they had damn well better be forthcoming about what they said and when they said it or THEY are conducting a cover-up. It’s time to end the conspiracy of silence by the press about their role in the Plame case.

The Blood on the Hands of the Media

Why are the deaths of the Vietnamese, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and the Cambodians, measured in the millions - after the US left - so seldom mentioned by the MSM? Could it be because those deaths can be laid at the doors of Walter Cronkite and the editors and columnists of the NY Times?

This is a long but intriguing article that addresses this issue. Well worth a read.

"During the latter half of the 15-year American involvement in Viet Nam the media became the primary battlefield. Illusory events reported by the press as well as real events within the press corps were more decisive than the clash of arms or the contention of ideologies. For the first time in modern history, the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield, but on the printed page and, above all, on the television screen. Looking back coolly, I believe it can be said (surprising as it may still sound) that South Vietnamese and American forces actually won the limited military struggle. They virtually crushed the Viet Cong in the South, the “native” guerrillas who were directed, reinforced, and equipped from Hanoi; and thereafter they threw back the invasion by regular North Vietnamese divisions. None the less, the War was finally lost to the invaders after the US disengagement cause the political pressures built up by the media had made it quite impossible for Washington to maintain even the minimal material and moral support that would have enabled the Saigon regime to continue effective resistance."

Link to News Organization Legal Brief claiming Outing Plame Was No Crime

Here's a link to the legal brief that 35 news organizations filed with the court supporting the claim that no crime was committed by outing Valerie Plame. So why are they pursuing the story?

We report ... you decide.

Did the CIA “Out” Valerie Plame?

From NRO (excerpt):

With each passing day, the manufactured "scandal" over the publication of Valerie Plame's relationship with the CIA establishes new depths of mainstream-media hypocrisy. A highly capable special prosecutor is probing the underlying facts, and it is appropriate to withhold legal judgments until he completes the investigation over which speculation runs so rampant. But it is not too early to assess the performance of the press. It's been appalling. ...

IowaHawk on John Roberts

Hilarious spoof of the Liberal Activist group talking points:

The Progressive Action Network For American Progress is extremely concerned by today's news that President Bush has selected ___JOHN ROBERTS___ as his nominee for the vacancy on the United States Supreme Court. Unlike outgoing Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the widely respected and admired moderate consensus-building sensible mainstream compromisist, ___JOHN ROBERTS___ has a shocking record of extremely extreme fringe legal positions that fill us with grave concerns about ___HIS___ fitness for this critically crucial office...

Reparations I could Support

Inner City Minister sues Democrats for repartions:

On December 10th 2004, inner-city minister, Rev Wayne Perryman, - filed a class action Reparation lawsuit (in the United States District Court in Seattle Case No. CV04-2442), alleging “that because of their racist past practices the Democratic Party should be required to pay African Americans Reparations.”

Scopes and Superior Monkeys

It's instructive to revisit our preconceptions about historical events. The "Scopes Monkey Trial" pitted William Jennings Bryan against Clarence Darrow with Bryan portrayed as the fundmentalist buffoon and Darrow as the enlightened modern man. How ironic then that an examination of the textbook that was at the heart of the trial should reveal something shocking to modern sensibilities.

What Mr. Scopes was teaching was not just evolution, but eugenics in the 1900s sense of selective breeding. His biology textbook was "Civic Biology." Bryan was not just disturbed by the teaching of evolution but more broadly by the whole social Darwinist agenda, including genetic superiority. "Civic Biology" was a vicious social Darwinist tract. Here are some excerpts from the book, courtesy of Eugenics Watch:

Hunter's Civic Biology, p. 195-196

The Races of Man. — At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; The American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.

In fact, the textbook Scopes was using would be roundly condemned by Liberals today as a virulenty racist tract. Read more by clicking HERE.

Profound Thoughts from Belmont Club

But not only has radical Islamism stirred up local mischiefs, it has also functioned as a bellows to fan the flames across other smoldering divides: the conservatives versus the Left; Europe versus America; the Third World versus the First World. It is almost as if the historical narrative, after seeming to settle into the smooth patch of the 1990s, had been reanimated across its entire spectrum by the Islamic disturbance, which shook things loose from their momentary stoppage and got things flowing again. Although the War on Terror is ostensibly a fight against the nihilism of radical Islam, it is probably much more: just how much more history will presently tell us. Radical Islam may find they are in the grip of larger forces whose power they have unleashed, which in their arrogance they sought to control only to find that events have acquired a dynamic of their own.

Is the Press Stupid or Evil?

This morning my wife turned on the news channel and we were greeted by a story on Karl Rove and Joe Wilson. The “correspondent” stated that Joe Wilson was dispatched to Niger to find out if Saddam was making nuclear weapons, a reason for going to war. Of course if you have been conscious during the last 2 years you would know that this is NOT what happened. How could someone who is presumably paid for passing on information get some basic facts on a story that has been in the headlines for years so wrong? Did they just fly this guy in from Mars and is he playing catch-up? No, he looked human.

The choices are a slip of the tongue, stupidity or deception. A slip of the tongue I do not believe. This was a straightforward statement. That leaves stupidity or deliberate lying. I think it’s a combination. By now, anyone who is interested in this story knows it by heart. So I think the reporter lied. But he is also stupid because … everyone who has any knowledge of this story would know he was lying. Its almost funny as in the old story of the man caught in bed with another woman saying: “Who are your going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

There is something suicidal about the MSM today. They continue to commit the same sins they once got away with – before the internet – yet now that they can be exposed as liars, they can’t seem to help themselves. Here is a wonderful example:

So today, when this blog takes the July 10, 2004 comments out of context from the September 30, 2003 comments (even though the latter clearly reference the earlier), it makes sense that their assertion is quite wrong (emphasis mine):
President Bush said Monday that if anyone in his administration committed a crime in connection with the public leak of the identity of an undercover CIA operative, that person will “no longer work in my administration.”
…
Bush said in June 2004 that he would fire anyone in his administration shown to have leaked information that exposed the identity of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame. On Monday, however, he added the qualifier that it would have be shown that a crime was committed.
Asked at a June 10, 2004, news conference if he stood by his pledge to fire anyone found to have leaked Plame’s name, Bush answered, “Yes. And that’s up to the U.S. attorney to find the facts.”
If that blog had the accuracy checks of, say, the Washington Post, careless invalid assertions like this would never have made it past the editors. Oh, wait a moment, that wasn’t a blog at all. That was the Washington Post!

Day By Day

Steyn on Lyin' Yellowcake Joe Wilson

This controversy began, you'll recall, because Wilson objected to a line in the president's State of the Union speech that British intelligence had discovered that Iraq had been trying to acquire ''yellowcake'' -- i.e., weaponized uranium -- from Africa. This assertion made Bush, in Wilson's incisive analysis, a ''liar'' and Cheney a ''lying sonofabitch.''

In fact, the only lying sonafabitch turned out to be Yellowcake Joe. Just about everybody on the face of the earth except Wilson, the White House press corps and the moveon.org crowd accepts that Saddam was indeed trying to acquire uranium from Africa. Don't take my word for it; it's the conclusion of the Senate intelligence report, Lord Butler's report in the United Kingdom, MI6, French intelligence, other European services -- and, come to that, the original CIA report based on Joe Wilson's own briefing to them. Why Yellowcake Joe then wrote an article for the New York Times misrepresenting what he'd been told by senior figures from Major Wanke's regime in Niger is known only to him.

Nadagate

By John Tierney in an Op-Ed in the NT Times.

For now, though, it looks as if this scandal is about a spy who was not endangered, a whistle-blower who did not blow the whistle and was not smeared, and a White House official who has not been fired for a felony that he did not commit. And so far the only victim is a reporter who did not write a story about it.

The Rise of Islam in Europe

Fascinating article from the WSJ relates how the Nazis, the CIA and other intelligence sevices helped build the Islamic threat in Europe.