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May 2013

ANDREW BOSTOM: THE PEW REPORT CONFIRMS THE BROAD APPEAL OF TOTALITARIAN SHARIA

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/05/despite_a_number_of_deliberately.html

Despite a number of (deliberately?) mitigating biases, both methodological and interpretative, the latest Pew Research Forum report, “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society,” released April 30, 2013, confirms the broad appeal of the totalitarian Sharia, Islam’s religio-political “law,” across Islamdom.

The data were pooled from surveys conducted between 2008 and 2012, representing, as touted by Pew, “a total of 39 countries and territories on three continents: Africa, Asia and Europe.” Collectively, the surveys included “more than 38,000 face-to-face interviews in 80-plus languages and dialects, covering every country that has more than 10 million Muslims.” Pew did acknowledge this important caveat about Muslim populations not surveyed because, “political sensitivities or security concerns prevented opinion research among Muslims.” Notably excluded countries were Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, and Iran — all Islamic states, governed by the Sharia, Saudi Arabia and the Sudan under Sunni Islam, the third, Iran, being the world’s largest Shiite Muslim state.

Responses to four related questions on the Sharia, comprise the surveys’ salient — and pathognomonic — findings. The questions were, “Do you favor or oppose making sharia law, or Islamic law, the official law of the land in our country?”, and these three internally validating (and equally edifying) queries, “Do you favor or oppose the following: punishments like whippings and cutting off of hands for crimes like theft and robbery?”, “Do you favor or oppose the following: punishments like whippings and cutting off of hands for crimes like theft and robbery?”, “Do you favor or oppose the following: the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim religion?” Summary data from the nations with the five largest Muslim populations (as per 2010) surveyed, Indonesia (204 million), Pakistan (178 million), Bengladesh (149 million), Egypt (80 million), and Nigeria (76 million), revealed:

• 72% of Indonesian Muslims, 84% of Pakistani Muslims, 82% of Bengladeshi Muslims, 74% of Egyptian Muslims, and 71% of Nigerian Muslims supported making Sharia the official state law of their respective societies. (Composite regional data confirmed these individual country trends — 84% of South Asian Muslims, 77% of Southeast Asian Muslims, 74% of Middle Eastern/North African Muslims, and 64% of Sub-Saharan African Muslims favored application of the Sharia as official state law.)

• 37% of Indonesian Muslims, 85% of Pakistani Muslims, 50% of Bengladeshi Muslims, 70% of Egyptian Muslims, and 45% of Nigerian Muslims favored Sharia-based mandatory (“hadd”) punishments “like whippings and cutting off of hands for crimes like theft and robbery”

• 42% of Indonesian Muslims, 86% of Pakistani Muslims, 54% of Bengladeshi Muslims, 80% of Egyptian Muslims, and 37% of Nigerian Muslims favored the Sharia-based hadd punishment of stoning for adultery

• 16% of Indonesian Muslims, 75% of Pakistani Muslims, 43% of Bengladeshi Muslims, 88% of Egyptian Muslims, and 29% of Nigerian Muslims favored the Sharia-based hadd punishment of execution for “apostasy”

Furthermore, the Pew survey results confirm the abject failure of the U.S. midwifed Iraqi and Afghan “democracies” to fulfill the utopian aspirations of the much ballyhooed “(Bernard) Lewis doctrine.” Instead, the negative prognostications, epitomized by my colleague Diana West’s evocative description “Making the world safe for Sharia,” have been realized. Specifically, the Pew data indicated:

• 91% of Iraqi Muslims and 99% of Afghan Muslims supported making Sharia the official state law of their respective societies

P.DAVID HORNIK: ARE SECULAR ISRAELIS REALLY SECULAR?

http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/04/21/abraham-part-1-are-secular-israelis-really-secular/ Last year a study of Israeli Jews found that 84 percent of them believe in God. It came as a surprise to many. Israeli Jewry is commonly divided into “religious” and “secular” sectors, with the former making up only about 20 percent. It turns out, though, that a large majority of the “secular” are […]

ROGER SIMON: ISLAM…SILENCE PLEASE

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2013/05/03/islam-silence-please/?print=1

The United States is not yet so bad as France where, a few years back, Muslim thugs burning cars all over their country were called simply nameless “youths” [1] (les jeunes), as in “boys will be boys,” making all their mayhem just a — perhaps oversized — version of fraternity hijinks.

But we are getting there.

Here our political and media leaders take a more psychoanalytic tack, defining those who do violence to us as unfortunate neurotics unable to fit in — misunderstood failures ill-equipped to adapt to our fast-paced, licentious lifestyle.

So they are.

And so was (Godwin’s law alert) Hitler. Hitler was a failed painter. Tamerlan Tarnaev was a failed boxer. No wonder they sought vengeance on a heartless world, poor devils.

The problem with this psycho-drivel [2] is that practically every human being is a failed something or other. I know I am. And I don’t know anybody who isn’t.

Forget Hitler. If we all acted out on our failure only on the level of Tarnaev, civilization wouldn’t even last a day.

The real question should really be what most compels violence among the almost unlimited number of neurotic individuals in the world with some grievance or other.

In our time it is unquestionably Islam, exponentially more than anything else. It’s almost as if that religion were designed in its ideology to attract the disaffected and turn them into violent animals.

A website with the politically incorrect URL of thereligionofpeace.com [3] tracks these things. According to them, as of May 2, 2013, there have been 20,794 deadly attacks by Islamic terrorists since September 11, 2001. Here’s only the last three days via the same website:

ANDREW HARROD: SILENCING SPEECH ON ISLAM IN GERMANY….

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/silencing_speech_on_islam.html

Bavaria’s Interior Ministry announced April 12, 2013, that the provincial Office of Constitutional Protection (Verfassungsschutz) will monitor local chapters of the website Politically Incorrect (PI) and the small conservative Freedom Party (Die Freiheit). As reported in the media, Bavaria is the first province in Germany to take this step, an important German milestone in ostracizing criticism and/or condemnation of Islam.

As the ministry website explains, the Federal Republic of Germany is a “militant democracy [wehrhafteDemokratie].” The Verfassungsschutz hereby functions as an “early warning system” against threats to a free society. Verfassungsschutz offices at the federal and provincial levels “observe anti-constitutional efforts” (including with secret surveillance) across the political spectrum and report to authorities and the public.

The press release announcing the decision stated that a “hostility to Islam had developed outside of rightwing extremism that was significant for the Verfassungsschutz.” The press release thereby focused on the provincial chapter of Die Freiheit that “consisted, among others, of the hardcore of the local Munich PI group.” The “central leadership person” here was Michael Stürzenberger, the spokesman of the PI group and provincial Die Freiheit chairman since early 2012.The objective of these groups, Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann accused, was “to stoke general fears of Muslims and to defame them on the basis of their faith as enemies of a society of law. Freedom of religion, human dignity, and the principle of equal treatment as core elements of our underlying free democratic order are thereby harmed.”

THOMAS LIFSON: BLAMING OBAMA’S SYRIA DILEMMA ON ISRAEL?

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/05/obamas_problems_with_syria_chemical_weapons_could_be_israels_fault.html Obama’s problems with Syria chemical weapons could be Israel’s fault That is the proposition being cast into public discussion by Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson. Speaking on cable news about how President Obama should handle early evidence that Syria may have used chemicals weapons, he said:   “I think […]

DIANA WEST: KISSING THE ENEMY… WHY WASHINGTON IS A SWAMP

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2495/Why-Washington-Is-a-Swamp.aspx

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg ‘fesses up to having witnessed a loathesome event last week:

“a two-cheeked kiss, in public, between Qatar’s second-most powerful man, the prime minister (and foreign minister), Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani (photo above), and Haim Saban, the Israeli-American billionaire who funds, among other things, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

The kiss took place at a Brookings dinner last week in Washington that was convened to pay homage to Al Thani for his support — because, yes, in addition to pledging $400 million to Hamas, Qatar also supports Brookings, one of Washington’s premier research groups.

… And as the kiss on Saban’s two cheeks suggests, Qatar sees nothing incongruous about maintaining open contacts with Israelis while funding an organization whose declared goal is killing Israelis.

Much, much worse, neither do Israelis/Brookings.

Goldberg goes on to thumbnail a few of the poisonous little despotism’s noxious features: in addition to supporting Hamas, it also supports the Muslim Brotherhood and “possibly some of Syria’s jihadist rebel groups.” (“Possibly”?) It created Al Jazeera, Al Gore’s fave, and it also “may be the biggest exploiter of guest workers in the world.” Oh yes, since 2002, Qatar also hosts an immense American presence — the forward position of CENTCOM (thank you, GWB.)

DIANA WEST: MAKING ISLAM- NOT TERRORISM DISAPPEAR

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2496/Making-Islam-not-Terrorism-Disappear.aspx

The see-no-Islam FBI: On the case against “violent extremism.”

This week’s syndicated column:

We have met the enemy and he is “self-radicalization.” No, wait: We have met the enemy and he is the Internet. We have met the enemy and he is broadband video?

“But this is hard stuff,” President Obama tried to explain in this week’s press conference. “Because of the pressure that we put on al-Qaida’s core, because of the pressure that we’ve put on these networks that are well-financed and more sophisticated and can engage in and project transnational threats against the United States, one of the dangers that we now face are self-radicalized individuals who are already here in the United States – in some cases, may not be part of any kind of network, but because of whatever warped, twisted ideas they may have, may decide to carry out an attack. And those are in some ways more difficult to prevent.”

More difficult to prevent? Ridiculous. But this is also a disgraceful thing to say under these circumstances. What Obama describes is the Keystone-Cops-case because he decided, as a matter of “Muslim outreach,” to shut his eyes to the motivation of such attacks – Islam, jihad, Allah’s law (Shariah) – and ordered our security agencies and military to shut their eyes, too.

It is a fact that in concert with the Oct. 19, 2011, demands of an array of Islamic advocacy groups, including government-identified Muslim Brotherhood front groups (the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America, for example), the Obama administration subsequently ordered the “purge” of any training materials and trainers still teaching the history and doctrine of jihad at government security agencies and throughout the military. This unconscionable act of eliminating our first line of defense – in effect, shutting down national security’s eyes and ears, and, worse, logic itself – is what accounts for the successful cycle of jihad that marks our era of decline. To be fair, it is not all Obama’s fault. The current administration’s see-no-Islam policy is an extension and amplification of the see-no-Islam policy initiated by President George W. Bush.

When a handful of House Republicans led by Michele Bachmann of Minnesota last summer raised the see-no-Islam “purge” and related issues with justified alarm, these remnant patriots in Congress were crucified as “Islamophobes” and scorned as lunatics. And now? No one in that Bachmann lynch mob (Obama administration, media and, profiles in courage, GOP leadership) wants us to put things together now. They don’t want us to realize that those two vicious bombs that exploded in Boston last month might well have been prevented had Bachmann & Co.’s warnings been heeded.

How? On government order, the FBI doesn’t know – can’t know – that it is actually fighting Islamic jihad and Shariah subversion. The kind of review Bachmann hoped for could possibly have saved fact-based analysis at the FBI and related agencies. To grasp the stupefying impact of the see-no-Islam status quo, imagine the FBI of the Cold War era officially denying and suppressing the role Marxism played in animating subversives. No communist espionage rings would ever have been stopped.

“Different and Threatening”: Most Germans See Islam as a Threat by Soeren Kern

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3696/germany-islam-threat Muslim men in Germany take advantage of the social welfare system by bringing two, three, four women from across the Muslim world and then marrying them in front of an imam. Although polygamous marriages are not officially recognized — and are technically illegal and punishable by fines and imprisonment — government agencies are reluctant […]

SARAH HONIG: A CONVENIENT UNTRUTH

Another Tack: A convenient untruth US Secretary of State John Kerry may lack that mischievous twinkle ever-present in Vice President Joe Biden’s eyes, but, despite his seemingly earnest demeanor, Kerry is no less likely than Biden to put his foot in his mouth. Take, for example, the analogy that Kerry drew between the Boston bombing victims […]

RUTHIE BLUM: THE DISHONEST SEXUAL HARASSMENT DEBATE

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=4207 The dishonest sexual harassment debate Every time a case of sexual misconduct hits the headlines, the public is treated to yet another round of heated debates on the issue. The trouble is that nothing new is ever introduced into the discussion. The exposure this week of broadcast journalist Emmanuel Rosen’s alleged history of abusing […]