RUTHFULLY YOURS

Unmasking Muhammad’s Dubious Existence

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/05/02/unmasking-muhammads-dubious-existence/print/

Author Robert Spencer, founder of the major website Jihad Watch, recently published a book with the provocative title Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam’s Obscure Origins.

The foreword was written by the eminent scholar Johannes J. G. (Hans) Jansen, an Arabist and a Professor of Modern Islamic Thought at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands until his retirement in 2008. Among his other accomplishments, he has translated the Koran into Dutch. Jansen points out that what sparse information and physical evidence we do have does not seem to confirm the traditional Islamic accounts of the sixth and seventh centuries.

In fact, archaeological findings contradict the traditional picture. Only further archaeological work in present-day Arabia and Greater Syria can shed more light on these issues. In Saudi Arabia, such excavations are forbidden, and Wahhabi hardliners have actively destroyed some sites. Furthermore, the religious authorities may not be interested in bringing to light findings that might contradict their religious views or undermine Saudi Arabia’s central status in Islam.

As Jansen states, “An Iraqi scholar, Ibn Ishaq (c. 760), wrote a book that is the basis of all biographies of Muhammad. No biographical sketches of Muhammad exist that do not depend on Ibn Ishaq. If an analysis of Ibn Ishaq’s book establishes that for whatever reason it cannot be seen as an historical source, all knowledge we possess about Muhammad evaporates. When Ibn Ishaq’s much-quoted and popular book turns out to be nothing but pious fiction, we will have to accept that it is not likely we will ever discover the truth about Muhammad.”

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/05/02/hating-america-at-the-new-york-times/print/ Recently, taking my daily masochistic glance at the New York Times website, I noticed a link to an article arrestingly entitled “Unexceptionalism: A Primer,” which, judging from the thumbnail description, was apparently a lament about the decline and fall of the U.S., presented in the form of a how-to guide. I clicked through. The […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

“On college campuses, Obama stretches out his hand, urging students to take it and make that great leap forward with him into the future. That is what this election is really about and that is what this year will decide. Do we leap forward with him off the cliff or do we turn back and try to find a better way ahead?”

The Obama slogan for 2012 is in and it’s “Forward”, which is a compact version of that old classic, “Don’t change horses in the middle of a stream” that every incumbent is forced to run on sooner or later. Forward implies that there’s no alternative but to go backward, which is a place that no right-thinking person wants to go.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/05/01/Obama-Afghanistan-Speech

Today, President Obama essentially declared victory in Afghanistan. Just in time for his re-election campaign, of course.

First, he blamed President Bush for us not winning the Afghanistan war sooner. “Despite initial success, for a number of reasons, this war has taken longer than most anticipated,” said Obama. What were those reasons? “America spent nearly eight years fighting a different war in Iraq.”

Then he claimed credit for President Bush’s goals: “The goal that I set – to defeat al Qaeda, and deny it a chance to rebuild – is within reach.” Only that was Bush’s goal, not Obama’s. Obama was late to the party; he was busy accusing American troops of air-raiding villages and killing civilians.

Obama couldn’t avoid playing politics. After all, that’s why he was in Afghanistan in the first place, just in time for the anniversary of Osama Bin Laden’s killing.

And Bin Laden played a crucial part in the speech. “Over the last three years,” Obama said, “the tide has turned.” Except for the massive increase in American deaths and loss of control in Afghanistan, of course. Hamid Karzai has been busily working with the Iranian regime to ensure that he has support once the United States leaves.

Obama’s main point is that if he’s left in charge – if he’s re-elected – he will withdraw all American troops by 2014. Once again, we get his reiterated timeline – a timeline he spelled out last year, and that has not changed. So he’s reiterating what we already knew. In primetime.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/05/01/Taliban-rebels-attacked-foreign-targets-in-Kabul-on-Wednesday–hours-after-US-President-Barack-Obamas-visit

Firefighters are seen extinguishing a burning car at the site of a suicide bomb attack in Kabul on May 2. Taliban insurgents claimed a suicide attack in the Afghan capital Kabul, shortly after US President Barack Obama left the city after an overnight visit.

Obama had used the “surprise” visit to deliver a speech marking the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, and to highlight his administration’s success in what the previous administration had called the War on Terror.

The Obama administration has opened negotiations with the Taliban, which sheltered bin Laden and Al Qaeda for years, and shows no sign of relenting in its terrorist campaign, even as U.S. forces continue to withdraw from the region.

AFPI wire services and Breitbart News contributed to this repor

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/peak-housing-peak-fraud-peak-suburbia-and-peak-property-taxes

Once again pundits are claiming that housing is “finally recovering.” But they’re overlooking three peaks: Peak Housing, Peak Financial Fraud, and Peak Suburbia, all of which suggest years of stagnation and decline, not “recovery.”

Here is the latest Case-Shiller index, which has traced out a nearly textbook bubble and a return to the mean that has been artificially restrained by trillions of dollars of Federal subsidies and backstopping of the housing market:

http://politicalmavens.com/

Two obituaries are prominently featured in the Times today (May 1). The first is for Ben Zion Netanyahu who is headlined as a “hawkish scholar,” an oxymoron that conjures up first fights in the library stacks; the second is for Fred Hakim, a Times Square hot dog vendor whose selection to share the page seems motivated less by the significance of the deceased than by an attempt to offset the importance of his page-mate’s accomplishments. Both articles feature pictures of a smiling father entwined with a smiling son. Can you see the editors deciding on their choices? “Let’s commemorate the man who penned a 1,300 page history of the Spanish Inquisition, was editor of the Encyclopedia Hebraica, the Encyclopedia Judaica and The World History of the Jewish People, the father of the current prime minister of Israel (whom we don’t like) and to balance that, let’s highlight the guy who sold hot dogs and knishes in a seedy 7 seat luncheonette on Times Square. Or maybe the editors saw equivalencies between the two men – after all, Hakim was a gym teacher at the Murray Bergtraum High School in lower Manhattan and Netanyahu taught at Cornell, another New York school. Or perhaps it was a case of free association – say the names Ben Zion and Netanyahu quickly 3 times, click your heels and what comes to mind is Hebrew National – a famous hot dog and a perfect segue.

In Netanyahu’s obituary, the Times would have us believe that “revisionist Zionism originally opposed creating the new Israel by dividing Palestine between Jews and Arabs. It wanted a bigger Jewish state, which would have included present day Jordan.” It goes on to stress that “The revisionists were led by Vladimir Jabotinsky, whose belief in the necessity of an ‘iron wall’ between Israel and its Arab neighbors has influenced Israeli politics since the 1930’s.” You don’t have to be a scholar to learn what has been omitted from these statements; just go to Wikipedia’s entry on Jabotinsky and read the following: ” In 1934, he (Jabotinsky) wrote a draft constitution for the Jewish state which declared that the Arab minority would be on equal footing with its Jewish counterpart ‘hroughout all sectors of the country’s public life.’ The two communities would share the state’s duties, both military and civil service and enjoy its prerogatives. Jabotinsky proposed that Hebrew and Arab should enjoy equal rights and that ‘in every cabinet where the Prime Minister is a Jew, the vice-premiership shall be offered to an Arab and vice versa.”

http://www.cjnews.com/index.php?q=node/89338

“It was the Arabs, not the Jews who rejected partition in 1948,” he said. “It was the Arabs who attacked the new Jewish state. While I have sympathy for the Palestinian people, you can’t take their expressions of peace seriously when they are constantly showing maps of the land of Israel as greater Palestine.”

He urged his audience to get the facts about Israel out, especially on university campuses, to be proactive rather than reactive. “Hold regular events that promote Israel in the best possible way,” he said. “And show people that Israel is much more than just the conflict. Show all the ways that Israel is helping humanity. Be proud of Israel, not apologetic.”

WINNIPEG — Kasim Hafeez has seen the truth and, in an address to a largely Jewish audience at the Asper Jewish Community Campus on Feb. 6, he pulled no punches.

Wahhabism, the Saudi Arabian version of Islam, is little different than Nazism, Hafeez said.Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas should be facing war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, he said.Anti-Zionism is code for antisemitism, he said.

The Islamic concern for Jerusalem is purely political, he said. Until the creation of Israel, Jerusalem was unimportant to most Muslims.

And often, he noted, those who claim to be pro-Palestinian are just anti-Israel.

Hafeez, 29, a British-born Muslim of Pakistani origin, knows of what he speaks.

http://www.the-american-interest.com/ I have written from time to time on this blog about the phenomenon of anti-Semitism — a vice that is far more widespread and insidious than many understand. I have written about it in Europe, and readers have replied that it is simply a matter of immigrants. “Real” Europeans don’t do that anymore.Not so, […]

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1809

“In a eulogy for Zionist leader Max Nordau in 1931, Benzion Netanyahu said, “With all the love he had for man and society, and with his active participation in public life, the truth of the matter is that he was lonely. When the people began to diverge from Zionism, again he remained lonely, now among his brothers. His big eye examined the events as they unfolded and he cried out in pain, but his cry was carried only by the wind. I am puzzled by his deep optimism, the optimistic serenity within this volcano of a man. He died in loneliness with a contented face.”

“So wrote Professor Netanyahu, from the bottom of his heart, and it appears that today, as we stand over his own grave, that he had actually delivered his own eulogy back then: “He died in loneliness with a contented face.”

When I learned of the death of Professor Benzion Netanyahu, a great sadness came over me. A great sadness came over Jerusalem.

One hundred and two years of man and spirit have left behind a huge void that, for me, represents the scenes of my childhood and evokes the feeling of my childhood home. In my parents’ house, where my late father toiled, together with Professor Netanyahu and Dr. Abba Ahimeir, on the ambitious endeavor of compiling the Hebrew Encyclopedia, Netanyahu’s name was said with the utmost respect and appreciation. With him gone, a giant in a generation of giants that lived among us, an entire world has disappeared. A world for which he served as a spokesman and a preserver.