Displaying posts published in

2012

Tackling the Totalitarianism of Islam By Eileen F. Toplansky: A Review of “Sharia vs. Freedom” by Andrew Bostom

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/10/tackling_the_totalitarianism_of_islam.html

As the Arab Spring model implodes in the Middle East, it is even more urgent that the West understand that behind this ongoing violence is the inexorable Muslim adherence to sharia law. Sharia is the unremitting lodestar for their actions.

In his latest magisterial work, entitled Sharia versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism, Dr. Andrew Bostom adds another enlightening tome to supplement The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims (2005) and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism (2008).

Honest scholarship in our politically correct world is a hard commodity to find. Thus, a debt is owed to Bostom for his continuing contributions as he give numerous examples to prove that it is the “centrality of Islamic jihadism” (26) that motivates, inspires, instigates, arouses, and stirs its adherents toward the unrelenting goal of a global caliphate. During the recent Ramadan, for example, there were 260 jihad attacks in 23 countries, with 1,209 dead and 1,910 critically injured. The so-called religion of peace is extraordinarily bloody, yet leaders of the free world prevaricate about its violence.

The culture of death, destruction, and deceit that is Islam is painstakingly exposed by Bostom. The deep and abiding anti-Jewish animus in Islam is shown to be integral to Islam. Neither a byproduct of Western anti-Semitism nor a result of alleged Western imperialism, to say nothing of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Muslim-inspired anti-Jewish sentiment actually dates back to before 869 A.D.

Bostom affirms that this legacy of “Muslim anti-Jewish hatred and violence” is not some aberrant vision of radical Islam, but rather is “rooted in mainstream, orthodox Islamic teachings” (83). Bostom explodes the oft-repeated idea that “Islam’s society’s hostility is non-theological” and “not related to any specific Islamic doctrine” (74). He proves that, a thousand years before any “serious colonial penetration of the region” (38) could influence views about Jews, there is evidence that Jews were hated by the Muslims because they stubbornly denied Muhammad’s message.

In fact, the Jews of the period even “coined their own terms for hatred directed at them by Muslims” (38). Jews used the terms sinuth for Muslim hatred of Jews and sone for the Muslim hater, thus confirming that Islamic anti-Jewish hatred existed a millennium ago.

Another myth central to the discussion of Islam is that Jews and Christians — i.e., dhimmis — were well-treated. Blasting the oft-repeated notion of cordial Muslim relations toward Jewish and Christian subjects in Muslim-dominated Spain, Bostom cites one pogrom after another within the Muslim world, and he underscores that Koran 9:111 “provides an unequivocal, celebratory invocation of martyrdom during jihad” (82).

Repeatedly, Bostom examines the “contract of the jizya” or “dhimma,” which “encompasses … obligatory and recommended obligations for the conquered non-Muslim” (70). In the last thirty years, Europe has not withstood the onslaught of Muslims, who deliberately do not assimilate into society, who demand that the countries in which they reside bend to Islamic will, who hysterically call for sharia-imposed judicial decisions, who have made sharia-controlled zones that even police are afraid to enter, who have relegated women to second-class status, and who intimidate and threaten their host governments with violence.

As Bostom emphasizes, each time that Islam gains ascendancy in an area, such transition to dhimmi status results in enslavement, forcible conversion to Islam, and death to the non-believer.

It is no exaggeration to state that there is an ongoing ideological war against the West. In only thirty years, European support for “common Euro-Arab positions” now finds itself in a perpetual state of “dhimmitude and rabid Judeophobia” (170). For example, Muslims living in Germany believe that the “German Constitution [is] irreconcilable” with the Koran (172). Muslim immigrants who demand European welfare benefits actually view these entitlements as a form of jizya to be paid by dhimmis, aka the host country (188).

Particularly revelatory is the chapter entitled “Sayonara Shari’a: Japanese Lessons, Lost?,” where Bostom relates that after World War II, “under stern American guidance” (440), Japan was forced to delegitimize its state religion of Shintoism. In other words, the state would no longer be able to impose religious belief; nonetheless, the practice of Shintoism as a “private, demilitarized, and depoliticized personal faith” was protected (441). Individual religious liberty was maintained but could not be imposed upon the general populace.

Sadly, this lesson, which produced a vibrant Japanese reconstruction while protecting individual rights, has been entirely ignored following the U.S.-led military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Rather than neutralizing the bellicose religious-political-economic creed of Islam, we have actually helped to promote sharia imposition.

How galling it is to learn that there is a tried and true antidote to counter the totalitarianism of state-imposed religion, but that the West ignores it? It is vital to note that there “has never been a sharia state in history that has not discriminated … against the non Muslims (and Muslim women) under its suzerainty” (447).

Islam refuses to reform. Thus, it consigns its followers as well as non-Muslims to an existence where no “freedom of conscience” can occur. The modern-day sermons of jihadists receive their script lines from the ideas of a thousand years ago. Islam, by its very nature, is unyielding.

Freedom of religion, freedom of press, freedom of speech, assembly, or petition — all of which are cardinal ideas enshrined in the American Bill of Rights — simply do not exist, will never be permitted, and are tantamount to sacrilege within the Islamic world. In fact, dhimmis possess no rights.

Islamic law and American law are antithetical. There can be no conciliation because sharia “compromises the tradition of equality for all under the law.” Sharia consists of draconian punishments such as stoning for adultery and homosexuality, death for apostasy, amputation of hands and feet for highway robbery, and lashing for drinking wine.

Lest one minimize the Koranic influence in the political Islamic world, it should be “noted that Koran 3:112 is featured before the preamble to Hamas’s foundational covenant” (76). This verse is related to Koranic verses 5:60 and 5:78, which describe the Jews’ transformation into apes and swine (5:60). And at Palestinian Media Watch, one can read about the demonization of Jews through these vicious canards. Furthermore, as Bostom points out, the Iranian theocracy sanctions Jew-hatred through its national teacher training programs (78).

11 Members of Indonesian Terrorist Group Arrested in Plot to Attack the U.S. Embassy

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2224230/11-members-Indonesian-terrorist-group-arrested-plot-attack-U-S-embassy.html Indonesian police arrested 11 people suspected of planning a series of terrorist attacks on targets in Indonesia, including the U.S. embassy, official announced Saturday. ‘We discovered some explosive materials, a guidebook to assemble bombs, some ammunition and detonators,’ police spokesman Suhardi. Alius toldreporters. The suspects were allegedly members of a new group called Haraqah […]

HEZBOLLAH PREPARES FOR A WIDER WAR THAN IT MAY WANT: RONEN BERGMAN

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-23/hezbollah-prepares-for-a-wider-war-than-it-may-want.html Hezbollah’s launching of a pilotless spy plane, which was shot down by Israel’s air force in the southern part of the country in early October, has been seen as more evidence that the Lebanese militia is preparing for war. Israelis assume that the drone was gathering visual intelligence to help Hezbollah in its goal […]

THE INNOCENCE OF OBAMA: DANIEL GREENFIELD ****

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

“The more people die of Muslim violence, the more the principle of the innocence of Muslims must be upheld, because it is no longer just the innocence of Muslims that is at stake, but the innocence of the political establishment that has looked away while the fires burned. And a political establishment determined to protect its innocence will go to any length, and political prisoners are the least of it.
After the Arab Spring and the Libyan War, it has become impossible to untangle the guilt of Obama from the guilt of Islamists. That is the dirty secret that the fire marshals of the establishment are determined to protect. The cover-up of Islam’s conduct has become their cover-up of their own conduct as well. So long as Islam can claim innocence, they can claim innocence as well, and those who challenge the innocence of Muslims and by extension the innocence of the political establishment will become the first political prisoners.”
Ten years ago most left-thinking liberals were constantly worried about the erosion of civil liberties under the War on Terror though they could rarely name an instance where an American citizen had actually experienced such an erosion.

This was after all before the days when naked scanners and drone strikes had entered the vocabulary and the best they could do was to haul out Jose Padilla, aka Abdullah al-Muhajir, ACLU’s choirboy of the month, a Brooklyn-born convert to Islam who was being held in jail for no reason at all except aiding terrorists and plotting to build a dirty bomb.

Ten years later the lefty civil liberties types were proven right. The War on Terror did erode our civil liberties and America’s first political prisoner in generations has spent a month in jail for making an inconvenient movie at an inconvenient time.

When Charles Woods, the father of Tyrone Woods, one of the Navy SEALS who died fighting in Benghazi, met with Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State assured him that, “We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video.” And they got him, officially on charges of violating parole, unofficially on charges of violently offending violent Muslims.

The woman whose policy had overthrown the Libyan government and then placed a barely defended consulate in the middle of a city of Jihadists, did not promise the grieving father that his son’s killers would pay. She promised him that the man who offended his son’s killers would pay. Not only would his son be the first casualty of that appeasement policy, but the Constitution that his son had sworn to support and defend would be the second casualty.

Mark Basseley Youssef is not the first filmmaker sent to prison by a Democrat in the White House for making the wrong kind of movie and interfering with his foreign policy. That would be Robert Goldstein who made the The Spirit of ’76, a movie about the American Revolution, at a time when Woodrow Wilson was trying to get Americans deeper into World War I.

THE EMIR IN GAZA: SARAH HONIG….SEE NOTE PLEASE

The emir in Gaza QATAR (PRONOUNCED AS “GUTTER” BY THE COGNOCENTI IS CONSIDERED ONE OF THE “MODERATE” ARAB STATES WHICH FORMER SEC. OF STATE MADELEINE ALBRIGHT PLUGS IN HER ALBRIGHT STONEBRIDGE GROUP…RSK If it did anything, the landmark visit to Gaza by the Emir of Qatar Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani on Tuesday exposed a slew of […]

ISRAEL’S MUSLIM POPULATION IS IN DECLINE: DANIEL GREENFIELD….SEE NOTE PLEASE

Israel’s Muslim Population is in Decline

AMBASSADOR (RET.) YORAM ETTINGER HAS BEEN ANALYZING DEMOGRAPHIC TREND FOR YEARS…PLEASE VISIT HIS SITE AND READ:

http://www.theettingerreport.com/Demographic-Scare/The-Arab-Demographic-Revolution.aspx

The Arab Demographic Revolution

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/israels-muslim-population-is-in-decline/print/

Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics has released its latest figures which show a marked decline in the growth of the Muslim population since 2000.

The Muslim percentage of the general population has dropped since 2000 indicating that the non-Muslim population is growing faster than its Muslim population and their population growth has dropped from 3.8 percent in 2000 to 2.5 percent. This growth rate however is still higher than either the Jewish population at 1.7 percent or the Christian population at 1.3 percent.

The average Muslim birth rate fell from 4.7 children per woman in 2000 to 3.5 children per woman now. That is still higher than the Jewish birth rate of 3.0 or the Christian birth rate of 2.0. The Israeli Muslim birth rate is higher than that of neighboring countries, Syria 3.0, Egypt 2.9, Turkey 2.0, Lebanon, 1.9, likely due to the superior economic situation in Israel for Muslims. A similar phenomenon occurs within the Muslim diaspora in the West.

OBMA THROUGH THE EYES OF THREE WOMEN EMIGRES ONTHE GLAZOV GANG

You don’t want to miss this new Blockbuster Glazov Gang: With freedom fighter Nonie Darwish from Egypt, author Susanne Reyto from Hungary and business strategist Jacqui Brandwynne from Switzerland:

Obama Through The Eyes of Three Female Émigrés:

Part 1. http://youtu.be/VWQEVEaisbM

Part 2. http://youtu.be/4bq6UwZcBSU

MARK LANGFAN: NEW CONGRESSIONAL REPORT SHOWS OBAMA AS A PAPER ADMIRAL

New Congressional Report Shows Obama as “Paper Admiral” From Mark Langfan http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12365 A newly published United States Congressional Research Service (CRS) report by Ronald O’Rourke exposes President Obama’s “horses and bayonets” debate insult to Romney in the last debate as uninformed tripe. Mr. O’Rourke is the CRS’s finest naval analyst and has published naval research […]

MELANIE PHILLIPS : A SICKENING GAME CHANGER

http://melaniephillips.com/the-game-changer Until now, such public attention as has been devoted to the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi on September 11, in which the US ambassador to Libya and three others were murdered, has dwelt upon whether President Obama had falsely blamed the attack on violent reaction to a film about Islam even though […]

MY SAY: BENGHAZI

Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, Canto vi. Stanza 17.
This issue is no peccadillo and Watergate and Contragate and Monicagate are small potatoes compared to this doozie, where Petraeus (CIA) Panetta (Defense) Clinton (Sec. of State) and Obama (the Prez-) are waltzing around compounding deception, prevarication and cover-up.