RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Barack Obama’s tirade on June 14 was filled with angry passion. His rhetoric was not directed against the perpetrator of the Orlando attack and his ilk, however, but against the (unnamed) GOP nominee and others who do not subscribe to Obama’s fundamental views on the nature of Islam and his “strategy” of confronting the threat.

With great passion Obama lashed at those who have called him soft on terrorism, alleging that “loose talk” about Muslims has been detrimental to the U.S. action against militant groups in the Middle East and elsewhere. It is clear that Obama’s understanding of “loose talk” covers all attempts at critical scrutiny of what he, Hillary Clinton, and countless others in the Duopoly still insist is a peaceful and tolerant religion which should not be tainted by the violent actions of a tiny, aberrant and unrepresentative minority.

It should be noted that the original meaning of “loose talk”—as the term was extensively used in both world wars—is disclosing accurate and operationally useful information to unreliable persons who may pass it on to the enemy. If Obama and his speechwriters knew English and history, they’d realize that the meaning of his “loose talk” remark is not exactly what he had in mind: yes, we know the ugly truth, but we should not talk about it openly, because we don’t want them to know that we do know what they are all about.

Obama derided the demand by his critics that he call acts of terrorism the result of “radical Islam”: “We can’t get ISIL unless we call them ‘radical Islamists.’ What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change? Would it make ISIL less committed to trying to kill Americans? Would it bring in more allies? Is there a military strategy that is served by this? The answer is, none of the above . . . ” Obama is spectacularly wrong. Calling a threat by its right name—which he dismisses as a mere “label”—is the key prerequisite to developing a meaningful strategy. His mandated label of long standing—“violent extremism”—he did not use in his address, however, thus implicitly acknowledging its irritating and politically damaging absurdity.

Obama’s deliberate attempt to create logical and semantic confusion about the nature of the threat is not immediately apparent to the unwary, and it is so dishonest as to bring into question his basic motives. He implicitly suggested that “the threat” is already clearly defined in all its key aspects, and that any debate over “the label” is therefore a mere “political distraction.” To understand the pernicious nature of Obama’s argument we need to revisit his address announcing his phony anti-ISIS campaign two years ago.

“ISIL is not Islamic,” Obama told the nation in September 2014. “No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim.” Since making this surreal statement Obama has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. Three weeks earlier earlier, in the aftermath of James Foley’s beheading by the Islamic State, he declared—also in the context of absolving Islam of any connection with the IS—that “no just God would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day.” Since they did murder Foley, this meant that—in Obama’s world—there is no God, or that God is not just.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/radical-islam-will-win-unless-part-i

Actually I think Radical Islam will win. The team unfettered by rules usually wins. A boxer fighting under the Marquis of Queensbury rules will get his ass kicked by a cage fighter, or someone employing street boxing rules. Jihad thinks it is the virtuous party, protected by Allah, and with a thousand year tradition of ‘all is fair’ in the service of Islam, e.g. no holds barred fighting, they are a formidable adversary. Against such an adversary, we must recognize pesky details like rules will not get in their way. Good can lose to evil, unless willing to pay the price necessary to win. And sometimes the price is steep. But the cost of losing to evil is even greater.

Before we get too far into this article, let me be clear – God is in all of us; whatever religion we opt in order to share His love, whether Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Wiccan or Islam – I value and respect. But when a faith, any faith, uses itself as a tool for bloodshed, then the faith has to own up to a responsibility to clean its own house, and demonstrate not only a remorse, but commitment to prevent future acts of hatred and violence. The non Jihadists in Islam’s case have a responsibility to act. If as Islamists state the Jihadists represent as small minority of Moslems, then clearly there is an overwhelming number of good guys, right? So act like good guys! Such is my stance on 21st century Islam. And were I alive several centuries ago, it would be my stance against the Catholic Inquisition. Lest anyone decide to misrepresent me, or devolve into media inaccuracy by distorting my views, let me reiterate my stated and lifelong belief that all religions in their best forms allow us to reach our higher angels, and this includes Islam – a faith that is based upon 5 tenets, not the least of which is charity. I’ve experienced the kindness and generosity of Moslems, and worked with them on various philanthropies. But for better or worse the bloodthirsty members of their faith need to be reined in and stopped by the decent members of the faith. Closing ranks for the sake of Islam, crying Islamophobia or denying the evil exists does everyone a disservice.

Fact remains radical Islam is a jihadist movement based upon Islam. There is no way around it. If Jihadists were claiming to kill in the name of John the Baptist, or North American Baptists, I would say their movement is based upon the Baptist faith. A distortion, but nevertheless still invoking it. If the moderate Moslems can get the Jihadists to name a different set of marching orders, I would gladly drop the term radical Islam, but until that occurs, we must familiarize ourselves with the very ideology that serves foundationally for the folks who are inspired to challenge our culture, and bring death into our communities from Paris and Brussels, to Glasgow and London, from San Bernardino to Boston, and NY, the Pentagon and Orlando.

American Muslims must use the time they have left to unleash a transformation within their community.

The despicable conduct of Omar Mateen’s wife, Noor Zahi Salman, is the latest example. The Orlando shooter’s wife allegedly knew of his plan and accompanied him to buy ammunition, yet did nothing to stop him.

Then there was Tashfeen Malik, the obedient jihadist Bonnie Parker, who helped her husband Syed Farook gun down fourteen in San Bernardino.

Days before the killing in Orlando, the Husseini Islamic Center in Sanford, Florida, hosted Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshfar. The Islamic scholar had previously preached to a crowd of American Muslims in Michigan about gays:

Death is the sentence. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about this. Death is the sentence.

For this? Skaleshfar earned invitations to speak elsewhere.

Time is running out for American Muslims. Mainstream America can connect the dots from Skaleshfar’s bloodlust to San Bernardino to Fort Hood to Seattle to Garland to an empty field in Somerset — and finally to Pulse. All of these murderers thought they were acting according to their professed Islamic faith.

I’ll leave it to others to debate the text of the Koran and what it says or does not say. But American Muslims are running out of time because Americans are running out of patience.

With each new slaughter by a jihadist, the American Muslim community exhausts a bit more patience and goodwill of Americans. No matter how many rainbow-colored burkas are posted on Instagram, or how much rhetoric comes from the diminishing president, the message does not match reality.

Goodwill and mercy is an ablative thing. When jihadist after jihadist destroys our treasured domestic tranquility, they will eventually awaken an American resolve that will sweep away these distractions and confront the problem head-on.

It’s why Donald Trump has tapped into a silent mainstream fury. If the attacks by jihadists continue against innocents, what Donald Trump is proposing might not go far enough to many Americans.

I’m not suggesting this is a good thing. This is merely the human condition. It’s what civilizations have done for thousands of years when faced with similar circumstances.

And contrary to the progressive utopian ideal, history hasn’t stopped.

All of those primal impulses can’t be extracted out by four years of Wellesley and the Sunday New York Times, especially when few Americans read the Times anymore. Hopefully any response from an exhausted America would manifest itself through law instead of pitchforks. But the American Muslim community needs to understand they lose support with every single attack, until they do something about it.

Speaking of Wellesley and the New York Times, it’s been predictable and boring to see the enablers attempt to compare the jihadists to Christians. Every religion has its extremists, they tell us:

CONTINUE AT SITE

I had planned to weigh in on the slaughter in Orlando right after it happened, but a sense of nausea intervened.

There was plenty of nausea to go around. You might think that the chief catalyst would be the scene of slaughter itself: the nearly fifty revelers at a gay nightclub dead, and scores more wounded by a single jihadist.

In a normal world, the spectacle of that carnage would have been the focus of revulsion. I confess, however, that the repetition of such acts of theocratic barbarism these past few decades has left me somewhat anesthetized.

The long, long list of “Islamist terrorist attacks” that Wikipedia maintains comes with this mournful advisory:

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness.

Indeed, and alas. Take a look at that list: one thing you will note — apart from the fact that the terrorist attacks are correctly denominated as “Islamist” terrorist attacks — is that most years include more attacks than the years before.

There were some 35 in 2014. I stopped counting at 100 for 2015.

So my initial reaction to the news from Orlando was a mixture of anger, outrage — and weariness. “Here,” I said to myself, “we go again.”

First came the casualty figures. Twenty dead. No, make that 30. Wait, it’s 40, no, 50 dead and scores wounded, many gravely. And the murderer? The world held its breath and the media prayed: Please, please, please make him a white Christian NRA member, or at least a crazed white teenager.

No such luck. Omar Mateen was the 29-year-old scion of Afghan immigrants. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Right off the bat his father assured the world that he was “saddened” by the massacre (wasn’t that nice?) and that Omar was “a good son.” Religion, he said, had “nothing to do with” his son’s rampage. He was just “angry” at gay people. So he suited up and headed down to the Pulse nightclub where he methodically shot some 100 people. Oh, and Mateen père has supported the Taliban, and claims to be running for the presidency of Afghanistan. (Cue the theme music from The Twilight Zone?)