RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://edwardcline.blogspot.com/2018/08/review-history-of-jihad.html

The initial three quarters of Robert Spencer’s The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS, is so packed with information about the 1,400-year jihad waged by Islam against the world that one can only read it with continuous, stunned astonishment. You wind up asking yourself: did so many millions die or become enslaved by the sword of Islam, AKA the “religion of peace”?

Well, yes, they did. Whole populations were slaughtered, cities were destroyed, and nations, on all four continents, were erased as though they had never existed (Persia, for example, was never Iran). Spencer meticulously traces the bloody depredations and history of Islam from the 19th century clear back to Mohammad’s time in the seventh century, citing current and contemporary works on the conquests and triumphs of Islam by both Western and Islamic writers and chroniclers. The jihad never stopped, and rarely lost steam, but if it lost impetus, it was only because of infighting between sects of Islam, which temporarily sapped and diverted its energy and appetite for conquest and dominance. But jihad was rarely forgotten.

It continues in our age of jet planes and nuclear power to wreck death and destruction. It guarantees more if the West does not reverse its ludicrously pacific and “tolerant” appraisal of Islam and condemn it as a power-hungry totalitarian “religion,” which it has always been, especially in the actions of the possibly fictive character of Muhammad. Spencer recreates and details Islam’s history as no writer in the past has done before or is likely to replicate. Spencer’s book should become required reading for any government policymaker or foreign affairs specialist committed to understanding our nemesis.

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-

Nationalism got a bad name after the First World War, and a worse one after the Second. Yoram Hazony now offers a defense of the concept consistent with the nationalist revival that began with Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, and the time is ripe for his book, The Virtue of Nationalism. After the fall of Communism, the conventional wisdom held that the liberal model would triumph around the world. The War on Terror presumed that nation-building through representative democracy would transform the unruly tribal states of the Muslim world into modern nations. The catastrophic failure of the liberal program opens the way for a new kind of political thinking, and Hazony offers a timely contribution to the debate.

Liberal political theory begins and ends with the enlightened self-interest of individuals, but that has poor explanatory power, as Hazony observes:

Many political theories assume that political events are motivated by the individual’s concern for his own life and property. … But human individuals are also capable of regarding the aims and interest of a collective or institution of which they are members as their own, and of acting upon these aims and interests even where such action will be detrimental to their lives and property.

Under extreme conditions, nations may destroy themselves, or fight until their manpower is close to exhaustion. That explains why so many wars end after a 30-percent attrition of the military-age population. Conversely, nations that feel themselves defeated or bereft of prospects simply die out through infertility. The historical norm is not liberal democracy; the norm, rather, is extinction, as I argued in my 2011 book, How Civilizations Die.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270983/wests-defeat-its-own-hand-anne-marie-waters

Last week I read a shocking statistic. It is not a surprising statistic, but a shocking one nonetheless. Figures now reveal that a staggering 40% of people under age five in Germany come from a migrant background. That is to say, almost half of young children in Germany are not ethnically German.

Some would argue that this doesn’t matter a great deal, people are people, and Germany will still be Germany. But even if we try to persuade ourselves that this is the case, deep down we all know it is not. Germany was German because of the German people. Now, in a couple of generations, it will be something else: the place formerly known as Germany. This will particularly be the case if, as I suspect is likely to be the case, many (if not most) of those under fives come from an Islamic background. That will change the face of Germany forever. Indeed it is already doing so.

In my book, Beyond Terror – Islam’s Slow Erosion of Western Democracy – I argue that it is immigration from Muslim societies that will defeat Western civilization. Terrorism will not. The West will not lose a military war against the Islamists, it only needs to lose the demographic war, and the culture war, and that has already been lost.

The UK, for example, has for decades seen massive immigration from the Muslim world, and this has changed the country beyond recognition. Female genital mutilation is now so widespread in the UK that specialist (taxpayer-funded) clinics have been established across the country to deal with the medical aftermath of this crime. There are eight such clinics in London alone, and a new one opened last year in Wales (attended by a Labour politician, who tweeted how pleased she was to have an FGM clinic in her area). While we build shiny new clini

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/isis-brutality-nazi-like-cruelty-yazidis/

“They took us to pits on the farm that were supposed to be our graves . . . They threw us down there in shifts. Every fifteen minutes they would lower down about a dozen men . . . and open fire on them. They arranged us into rows, telling us to line up next to each other so it would be easier for them to shoot us. My brother was in the first shift. My other brother was in the second shift. I was in the third. I knew everyone down there with me; they were my neighbours and friends.”

Up to this point, I imagine most readers will assume that the above passage is a quotation from a survivor of the Nazi atrocities. Only the end of this passage identifies that it is a more recent testimony that we are hearing.

“After they shouted Allahu Akbar, the sound of gunfire rang out, and once they had finished shooting us one by one, I was swimming in a pool of blood. They shot at us again, then a third time. I shut my eyes and prepared to die, as one must.”

“How long did you stay like that?”

“I was bleeding there for almost five hours.”

“Where were you shot?”

“In three different places. Once in my foot and twice in my hand.”

“And did everyone else die?”

“All except for one other man, Idrees, a childhood friend of mine. His feet were injured. I tried to drag him out of the pit with me but I couldn’t because half my body — the left side — was bleeding. I couldn’t lift him with just one hand. Idrees, I said to him, climb up on my bank, get on. But he couldn’t move. He was still alive but I wasn’t able to save him. I struggled to get out of the pit and walked away from the school. As I crossed the farm road, I heard the nonstop rattle of gunfire, and I dropped down onto the ground, which is where I stayed, hidden under the wheat and barley until the sun went down.”

The above is the account of a man called Khalid, a resident of the Nineveh plains who like many thousands of others tried to flee ISIS in August 2014 but was captured by them. His testimony is one of many collected in a remarkable new book by the poet and journalist Dunya Mikhail titled “The Beekeeper of Sinjar.”