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Smokescreens in Islam: Confusing the Public about the Facts by Denis MacEoin

Posted By on May 1st, 2017

Qadri’s admirable take on terrorism conceals another large elephant in the room. Islam has for centuries used violence against non-Muslims in what is considered a legitimate manner: through jihad. It is not simply that Muslim armies have fought their enemies much as Christian armies have engaged in war. Jihad is commanded in the later verses of the Qur’an, is endorsed in the Traditions and the biography of Muhammad, and codified in the manuals of shari’a law. Qadri knows this perfectly well, and at times inadvertently reveals as much in several ways.

Qadri does not just insist that Islam is a religion of peace and security. By tucking all references to jihad in footnotes in transliterated Arabic, he never has to explain what it is about and how it relates to his rulings on what is and what is not permissible.

It is hard to be a reasonably knowledgeable Muslim and not know that calls for violence pervade the Qur’an and sacred traditions, or that Islamic armies have been fighting European Christians, Indian Hindus, and others since the 7thcentury.

Islam, after all, conquered Persia, Turkey, North Africa and the Middle East, Greece, Spain and most of Eastern Europe — until its armies were stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683.

Following the terrorist attack outside Britain’s Houses of Parliament on March 22, 2017, it was not surprising or wrong that many Muslims denounced the attack and declared it to be un-Islamic. Two days afterwards, Dr. Mohammed Qureshi, chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Shropshire Islamic Foundation, said:

We need to be united in this situation.

We should not give any religion a bad name and these people need to be dealt with in full force and there should be zero tolerance when it comes to dealing with them.

My heart goes out to these victims. And my heart goes out to the people’s families and those who are injured. I pray they all have peace in their minds.

He added:

There is no place for these acts in the religion of Islam.

The people are being radicalised and the young and vulnerable people need to be protected.

We need to disassociate this with Islam, as Islam is a religion of peace.

This view was echoed in a press release by the Foundation, in which sympathy for the dead and their families was followed by a commitment to non-violence: “as a community, we need to come together to condemn violence and hatred and work towards cohesion and tolerance”.

More recently, a document about Islamophobia published by the Green Party of the United States affirmed the purportedly peaceful character of Islam:

The highest goal of the Islamic faith is Peace. Peace is pursued over all and for Muslims the world over, ‘holy war’ has nothing to do with the concept of jihad. The Arabic word translates as ‘struggle,’ and is used a handful of times in the Quran to speak of the struggle to stay on the righteous path, to fulfill obligations to family, community and Creator, what the Islamic scholars call a higher jihad.

These claims, however, seem innocent of the verses that say:

So when you meet those who disbelieve [in battle], strike [their] necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds…. And those who are killed in the cause of Allah — never will He waste their deeds. Surah Muhammad [47:4]

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The Middle East According to Madeleine Albright by Andrew Harrod see note please

Posted By on May 1st, 2017

Mme. Halfbright is runner up to John Kerry for the worst Sec. of State in recent history. rsk
Does the Middle East need to take responsibility for charting its own future? According to a recently released report from the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Strategy Task Force, the answer is yes. But critical analysis of that report reveals serious flaws that must be addressed.

MEST co-chairs former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley presented the report to a standing-room-only audience in Washington, D.C. Albright acknowledged that people around the world are all affected by the “toxic brew” of challenges centered in the Middle East – such as terrorism and refugee flows. In response, Hadley pointed out the report’s theme of a “different, smarter way of engaging with the Middle East that does not require a Marshall Plan or a 2003 Iraq invasion.”

Under the report’s Compact for the Middle East, nations that adopt reforms will gain greater diplomatic, economic and technical support from outside countries like the United States, according to Albright, who referenced the report’s extoling of “green shoots of citizen-based entrepreneurial and civic activity occurring throughout the region.

She added,

Across the region, civic activists are working to make their local communities stronger and more resilient. Entrepreneurs are building small and medium-sized businesses rather than relying on the government to be the employer of first resort. And some leaders are beginning to recognize that the region’s greatest resource is not its oil, but its people.

Hadley said that he believes future foreign assistance should encourage “governments acting more effectively, inclusively and justly in empowering their citizens to realize their full potential and to win their loyalty. Fundamentally, it is a bet on the people of the region and a strategy to empower them,” he said, analyzing the report’s strategy, which included proposals for a regional development fund for reconstruction and reform. It also features a regional framework for dialogue and cooperation akin to regional organizations like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Although it cites certain advances to living in the Middle East (e.g., the Arab world’s literacy rate, which surged from 58 percent to 80 percent between 1990 and 2010), the report does highlight the enormous hurdles hindering a peaceful and prosperous Middle East. “The Middle East crisis is the most difficult global challenge since the end of the Cold War,” Albright and Hadley wrote. “The world will be wrestling with this set of problems for a long time.”

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The Impact of the ISIS Terror Attacks on Europe By Dr. Tsilla Hershco

Posted By on May 1st, 2017

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The appalling terrorist assaults perpetrated by ISIS in Europe have led to significant changes in the European state of mind. By exposing the vulnerability of EU state borders, they have prompted rudimentary initiatives to secure those borders and increase counter-terror cooperation among EU member states, while also boosting the popularity of far-right parties. The attacks have given rise to a discreet cooperation between EU member states and Israel in dealing with the terrorist threat, but have not prompted the EU to change its critical position regarding Israel’s defensive measures against Palestinian terror. The moral double standard of the EU on this issue might undermine its own fight against Islamist terrorism.https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/isis-terror-europe/

The terrorist assaults perpetrated by ISIS in France, Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, and Sweden did not surprise the EU security authorities. They have often noted the threat that at least some of the thousands of Muslim youngsters who left Europe to fight for ISIS might perform acts of terror upon their return. They are also well aware that military intervention against ISIS increases the risk of terror attacks on European soil. The torrent of uncontrolled numbers of refugees from the Middle East has sharpened the warnings issued by the security authorities as well as by the media. The terror attacks have had significant repercussions, and have had an impact on EU-Israel relations.

The wave of terror has produced changes in the state of mind of many Europeans. In the past, though there were occasional terror attacks (such as in London in July 2005), Europeans felt relatively safe – so much so that they did not introduce basic security measures, such as checking bags and suitcases at train stations. The recent wave of attacks, however, has produced feelings of insecurity. Citizens of EU member states are now less hostile to security measures that had been perceived in the past as breaching their civil liberties.

The attacks exposed the vulnerability of EU state borders resulting from the Schengen Agreement, which opened borders among member states. In Brussels and Paris, the perpetrators of the November 2015 attacks crossed borders with impunity.
The EU did, in fact, take a major decision in November 2015 to strengthen control over its external borders in order to protect them from smugglers of firearms and illegal immigrants. It increased cooperation and coordination among EU member states, taking measures such as a Passengers Name Record (PNR) – not only for air travel, but for sea and train travel as well as hotel room and car rentals.

In addition, EU member state authorities took measures like decreeing a state of emergency (in France) and increasing security forces.

Another significant step was the launch in January 2016 of a new European counter-terrorism center, the ECTC, following the November 2015 decision of the Justice and Home Affairs ministers. The ECTC was designated as an enhanced central information hub through which member states can increase information sharing, bolster operational coordination, track terror financing, and detect online radicalization.

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The real collusion story : Richard Baehr

Posted By on May 1st, 2017

In the six months since last November’s U.S. presidential election, there has been a near ‎avalanche of innuendo-filled stories, based primarily on leaks from ‎‎”government or intelligence officials,” suggesting (while providing no actual ‎evidence) there may have been nefarious activity involving Trump campaign ‎officials or supporters and the Russian government and people connected to it, to influence the election.

One popular MSNBC cable TV host has given more ‎than half her airtime to weaving tales of how the two sides may have colluded, ‎proving mainly that a loyal left-wing audience can put up with repetition of material ‎utterly absent of substance for a long time, as long as it bashes the right ‎individual and political party. The conspiracy theory is that Donald Trump was bought by ‎the Russians, who got him elected and now he is doing their bidding. The fact that ‎the Trump administration has not behaved toward Russia or its proxies in a ‎fashion consistent with this conspiracy theory has done ‎little to quiet the true believers of the collusion litany. Neither is there any evidence ‎of Russians blocking Clinton voters from showing up in Wisconsin, Michigan, ‎Pennsylvania, or Florida, or providing troops to keep Hillary Clinton from making ‎campaign appearances in some of these states. ‎

In the last few weeks, there has been a counterpunch of sorts from Trump ‎supporters, alleging that former President Barack Obama’s officials in the Justice Department and intelligence ‎services launched a surveillance operation during the campaign to potentially ‎derail the Trump campaign, and after the election, to keep the Russian story alive ‎through leaks to eager journalists, to delegitimize his presidential victory and his ‎ability to govern. ‎

At this point, based on what is known as opposed to what is ‎believed or hoped for by partisans, it is highly likely that both themes are probably exaggerated, ‎and maybe even totally false, though the leaks from Obama loyalists still in ‎government seem to provide some support for the charge that there has been an ‎organized campaign to damage his successor.‎

In the meantime, a blockbuster story in Politico provides much new information on how far the Obama ‎team was willing to go to get a nuclear deal with Iran done, and then to please the ‎mullahs in any number of ways after the agreement was reached, to demonstrate ‎U.S. allegiance to their needs and demands. In any case, no journalist sympathetic ‎to the Obama narrative on the Iran deal would dare call it collusion. ‎

The Politico article revealed for the first time the extent of the trade the Obama ‎administration was willing to make with Iran to obtain the release of five American ‎prisoners. The U.S. announced the release of seven Iranians, ‎described by the administration as civilians, none involved with terrorism. In fact, ‎several were regarded by Obama’s Justice Department as clear national security ‎threats, involved in weapons procurement. The administration also dropped ‎charges and arrest warrants against 14 other Iranians, all of them fugitives, ‎several of them also involved in weapons procurement for Iran’s nuclear program, ‎‎. ‎

‎”Through action in some cases and inaction in others, ‎the White House derailed its own much-touted National ‎Counterproliferation Initiative at a time when it was ‎making unprecedented headway in thwarting Iran’s ‎proliferation networks,” the report said. “In addition, the Politico ‎investigation found that Justice and State department ‎officials denied or delayed requests from prosecutors ‎and agents to lure some key Iranian fugitives to friendly ‎countries so they could be arrested. Similarly, Justice ‎and State, at times in consultation with the White ‎House, slowed down efforts to extradite some suspects ‎already in custody overseas, according to current and ‎former officials and others involved in the counter‎proliferation effort.”‎

When critics of the Iran deal argued that despite the agreement, Iran was ‎continuing to develop and procure long-range missiles and spread havoc through ‎its expansionist aggression in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen and support of ‎terrorism, Obama officials always chimed in that the deal only dealt with ‎eliminating the nuclear threat, and not any other issues. Of course, the deal ‎eliminated nothing. Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was reduced, but not ‎eliminated (similar to Syria’s supply of poison gases after Obama wimped out on ‎enforcing his own red line), and Iran’s centrifuges, many of them now an enhanced ‎variety, continued to operate. In any case, every time a report surfaced about Iran ‎violating some term of the deal, the president’s team, led by then-Secretary of ‎State John Kerry, was quick to provide a legal brief on their behalf.‎

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MARINE LE PEN SAVAGES MERKEL, TO HER FACE IN EU PARLIAMENT

Posted By on May 1st, 2017

“Some will say I am the anti-Merkel. It is an honor for me.

I don’t agree with the entirety of Marine Le Pen’s party platform but I really do get a kick out of her oratorial bombast and watching her kick Angela Merkel’s butt – and those of the unelected EU technocrats who are on the US State Department’s “unofficial payroll”.

Here, she blasts how the EU maintains itself “With blackmail, threats and intimidation…Your model is to become a servant of the USA, austerity, disloyal competition, mass spying on citizens, ‘social dumping’, migratory submersion.

“I represent another model that unites Europe’s people. One of independence, of a Europe of nations in a multipolar world, of intelligent protectionism, of individual liberties…some will call me the ‘Anti-Merkel’. I accept that label with honor. I don’t acknowledge you, Madam Merkel!

“The ‘right of self-determination’, is a ridiculous attempt at the German domination of Europe. The defense of German interests does not justify the vassalization of the other peoples of Europe. I am the voice of sovereign Europeans. They thirst for the freedom of their nations. I represent the French people, who have turned their backs on you, Mr. Hollande, the same way they turned their backs on Sarkozy – because they thirst for a France that’s free!”

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Our Enemy Inside the Gates Revisited Edward Cline

Posted By on May 1st, 2017

Diana West’s seminal and exhaustive exposé of FDR’s betrayal of the U.S. deserves revisiting and re-reading by anyone who wants to grasp why the U.S. is now incrementally submitting to and allowing the invasion of this country by Islam.. This is the original Rule of Reason review, with some minor corrections, from June 8th, 2013.

Where to begin?

In American Betrayal *, Diana West begins in 1933.

In the name of establishing historical causo-connections, Iwould have begun in 1781, when Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant published his Critique of Pure Reason, a brain-cracking treatise which relied on reality to prove that reality was unknowable. That is, by reading his book, a real thing in your real hands, you were expected to agree with Kant that real things were only rough reflections of things whose “essences” existed were beyond the evidence of our benighted, warping senses, in some other realm. Kant counted on everyone not noticing the contradiction and not seeing the ease with which his elaborately constructed mare’s nest could be exploded.

No contemporary, I gather, ever confronted Kant and said, “Herr Professor! If what you say is true, then this book is just a shadow, and the print in it, and all your words, too! What could they mean? How could they be true? Are your words noumena, or mere phenomena?”

In 1781, the year of America’s decisive victory over Britain at Yorktown, there appeared in Europe a book of philosophy called the Critique of Pure Reason. When he read it, a friend of the author wailed and called his colleague “the smasher of everything.”

But no one ever did confront Kant with his contradictions, fallacies, and cerebral legerdemain, except for some Hegelian hair-splitters – except for Arthur Schopenhauer in 1818 after Kant’s death in 1804 – and the Western world has been the worse for it.

1781. Just as the American Revolution, a product of the Enlightenm

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NO POSTINGS ON APRIL 28, 29, 30

Posted By on April 28th, 2017

BACK ON MONDAY MAY 1

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Gorsuch Puts Down the Left’s Serial Rapist In his first vote, Justice Gorsuch stood with us. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on April 27th, 2017

A few months after lefty activists crowded Washington D.C. for the Women’s March, activists from many of those same organizations went to bat for a serial rapist and murderer.

Ledell Lee’s victims were all women. While he was on trial for the rape and murder of Debra Reese, the testimony of three of his rape victims was presented. Lee had made a habit of knocking on doors and asking to borrow some tools to see whether a woman’s husband might be home.

Debra Reese called her mother and told her that a strange man had tried to borrow some tools. A few minutes later, Ledell Lee had beaten her to death with a tire thumper. Marks on her neck showed that the former baby boutique worker had also been strangled.

Then Lee headed out to spend the $300 he had stolen from her.

Three years earlier, Ledell Lee had attacked a 17-year-old girl while she was rocking her 3-month old niece to sleep. Lee hit her, dragged her out of the house, held her head under water until she lost consciousness and raped her.

A year after that atrocity, Ledell Lee attacked a 50-year-old woman walking home from the grocery store. He strangled her repeatedly, dragged her to the back of a building and raped her.

When Lee was caught after murdering Debra Reese, the evidence tied him to these assaults and two murders. He was convicted of two rapes and sentenced to death for his crimes against Debra Reese. Justice would be done. But first justice had to elbow past the ACLU and the pro-crime lobby.

In a Supreme Court dissent written on April 20, 2017, Justice Breyer whined, “Why now?” “The state is rushing to put him to death,” complained Nina Morrison of the badly misnamed Innocence Project.

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Sharia, Arkansas Style A low block by the Razorbacks. Bruce Bawer

Posted By on April 27th, 2017

On April 13-15, the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas held a symposium on so-called “honor violence,” as exemplified by honor killings, forced marriage, and other such delightful acts. I’ll get back to this – but first of all, am I the only person who still finds it jarring to see words like “King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies” in the same sentence as words like “University of Arkansas”?

The Center, as its website informs us, “was founded with a $20 million endowment from the Saudi government in the mid-1990s. An initial endowment of $2 million, dedicated toward language, literary translation and publication was followed by a much larger $18 million gift designed to spark the foundation of a comprehensive Middle East Studies program at the undergraduate and graduate levels.”

Of course, this isn’t the only so-called “Middle East Studies” shebang based at a Western university, named for a Saudi royal, and funded by Saudi cash. Georgetown University famously boasts the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding – which, when you stop to think about it, is a strange name for a unit of a university, where you’d imagine that the idea would be not “understanding” in the touchy-feely sense suggested by the phrase “Muslim-Christian Understanding” but, rather, “understanding” in the sense of becoming informed about a subject. But anyway.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the regal moneybags behind Georgetown’s lavish propaganda operation (as of last year he was the 41st richest person in the world) is also responsible for the Alwaleed Centre at the University of Edinburgh, the Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard, and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Islamic Studies at Cambridge, plus centers for American Studies bearing his name in Beirut and Cairo. In addition, according to Wikipedia, he’s “Citigroup’s largest individual shareholder, the second-largest voting shareholder in 21st Century Fox, and owns Paris’ Four Seasons Hotel George V and part of the Plaza Hotel,” presumably the one in New York.

A quick look at the prince: he’s tweeted that he wouldn’t “visit Jerusalem…until its liberation from the Zionist enemy.” He’s the guy who, after fifteen of his fellow Saudis laid down their lives for their God on September 11, 2001, gave then New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani a $10 million check and a lecture about the terrorist attack’s supposed roots in U.S. policies. (Giuliani, to his everlasting credit, turned down the check, in response to which the prince suggested that he’d done so out of fear of “Jewish pressures.”)

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Our World: The agenda for the Trump-Abbas meeting : Caroline Glick

Posted By on April 27th, 2017

Israeli society was nearly torn apart in the one year and eight months between Sharon’s surprise announcement and the expulsion of Gaza’s Jews in August 2005.

The day after Israel celebrates its 69th Independence Day, US President Donald Trump will greet PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas at the White House. The date of their meeting, May 3, is notable not least for its timing.

The timing of the meeting presumes a linkage between the establishment of Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian state. This is not merely obnoxious, it is also blind to reality.

In reality, an independent state of Palestine has existed for the past 12 years in Gaza. Rather than build that up and declare independence, Abbas and his comrades surrendered Gaza to Hamas in 2007.

Hamas, in turn, transformed independent Palestine into a base for jihad.

Abbas’s failure to declare independence in 2005 – and the subsequent failure of his US-trained forces to defend their control over Gaza in June 2007 from Hamas terrorists – is generally overlooked. But it is critical that Trump understand the significance of his behavior before he meets with Abbas.

Since the inception of the peace process between Israel and the PLO in 1993, the professed goal of the PLO has been to establish an independent Palestinian state on any territory over which it was able to take control from Israel. Yet 12 years ago, when Israel withdrew its citizens and military from Gaza, the PLO refused to take responsibility for the area insisting ridiculously that Gaza was still controlled by Israel.

Then 10 years ago, US-trained PLO forces fled to Israel rather than defend their control of Gaza when Hamas took up arms against them.

There are, it seems, two main reasons for Abbas’s behavior. The first is directly related to how he understood Israel’s decision to withdraw.

In December 2003, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon stunned the country when he adopted the platform of the Labor Party – which he had just massively defeated in the general elections – and removed all Israeli communities and military installations from Gaza, including from the border with Egypt, by the end of 2005.

Israeli society was nearly torn apart in the one year and eight months between Sharon’s surprise announcement and the expulsion of Gaza’s Jews in August 2005. The media hemorrhaged with continuous propaganda that demonized the Israeli residents of Gaza and the religious Zionist community in general.

A reminder of that toxic period came earlier this month, when Haaretz published a column by veteran reporter Yossi Klein in which he alleged that religious Zionists posed a graver danger to the State of Israel than Hezbollah.

Abbas and his lieutenants viewed the domestic chaos that engulfed Israel at the time as proof of Israel being on its way off the stage of history.