RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/300131/uncovering-early-islam-daniel-pipes

The year 1880 saw the publication of a book that ranks as the single most important study of Islam ever. Written in German by a young Jewish Hungarian scholar, Ignaz Goldziher, and bearing the nondescript title Muslim Studies (Muhammedanische Studien), it argued that the hadith, the vast body of sayings and actions attributed to the Islamic prophet Mohammed, lacked historical validity. Rather than provide reliable details about Mohammed’s life, the hadith, Goldziher established, emerged from debates two or three centuries later about the nature of Islam.

(This is like today’s Americans debating the Constitution’s much-disputed Second Amendment, concerning the right to bear arms, by claiming newly discovered oral transmissions going back to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Obviously, their quotations would inform us not what was said 225 years ago but about current views.)

Since Goldziher’s day, scholars have been actively pursuing his approach, deepening and developing it into a full-scale account of early Islamic history, one that disputes nearly every detail of Mohammed’s life as conventionally understood — born in a.d. 570, first revelation in 610, flight to Medina in 622, death in 632. But this revisionist history has remained a virtual secret among specialists. For example, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, authors of the synoptic Hagarism (Cambridge University Press, 1977), deliberately wrote obliquely, thereby hiding their message.

Now, however, two scholars have separately ended this secrecy: Tom Holland with In the Shadow of the Sword, and Robert Spencer with Did Muhammad Exist? As their titles suggest, Spencer is the bolder author, and so is my focus here.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

Writing about Israel is a booming field. No news agency, be it ever so humble, can avoid embedding a few correspondents and a dog’s tail of stringers into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, to sit in cafes clicking away on their laptops, meeting up with leftist NGO’s and the oppressed Muslim of the week
At a time when international desks are being cut to the bone, this is the one bone that the newshounds won’t give up. Wars can be covered from thousands of miles away, genocide can go to the back page, but, when a rock flies in the West Bank, there had better be a correspondent with a fake continental accent and a khaki shirt to cover it.

Writing about Israel isn’t hard. Anyone who has consumed a steady diet of media over the years already knows all the bullet points. The trick is arranging them artistically, like so many wilted flowers, in the story of this week’s outrage.

Israel is hot, even in the winter, with the suggestion of violence brimming under the surface. It should be described as a “troubled land.” Throw in occasional ironic biblical references and end every article or broadcast by emphasizing that peace is still far away.

It has two types of people; the Israelis who live in posh houses stocked with all the latest appliances and the Arabs who live in crumbling shacks that are always in danger of being bulldozed. The Israelis are fanatical, the Arabs are passionate. The Israelis are hate-filled, while the Arabs are embittered. The Israelis have everything while the Arabs have nothing.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-middle-east-mess-2

I have a novel idea. Let’s just let the Middle East stew in its own Islamic juices. Along with the Maghreb, the northern tier nations of Africa, down into Nigeria, wherever you find an Islamic regime, you find millions of very unhappy people.
I am not the only one who feels that way, a Monday, May 14 Rasmussen Reports poll found that 63% “believe there is a conflict in the world today between Western civilization and Islamic nations, but most also think the United States should leave the Islamic world alone.”

Will the Muslims ever practice tolerance or accept peace with the West or anywhere else for that matter? No, never. The Koran-which Obama always refer to as the “holy Koran”-is replete with directives to fight for “Allah’s cause” (Koran: 9.88), to “fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them” (Koran: 9:5) and twenty other calls to war and murder. There is a reason why their weapon of choice is a Muslim man or woman who is willing to kill themselves in order to kill you.

It is just my opinion, but I believe the present “war on global terrorism” will best be fought covertly with a well-funded, covert intelligence and a counter-terrorism program, not by a massed army followed by a decade of “nation building.”

In the recent past, people throughout the Middle East forced out Tunisia’s despot, killed Libya’s despot, removed Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak from office, and are fighting and dying to get rid of Syria’s despot, Bashar Assad. Both Yemen and Somalia are basket cases with tribal warfare the order of the day. Even the Iranians have demonstrated their unhappiness, taking away Amadinejad’s majority in their parliament. He recently abandoned his usual bellicose talk of wiping Israel off the map.

You cannot point to a single Islamic nation from Morocco to Bahrain that has not had demonstrations intended to pressure their monarchs into granting greater freedom and what we would call democratic reform. As long as Sharia law is in the mix, that’s not a likely outcome.

It took just over seventy years from 1917 to 1991 to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union, but Islam’s grip on the Middle East goes back to the seventh century. The region is not going to change any time soon and those in power, like Assad, are going to be ruthless in their means to retain it.

The only reason that Saddam Hussein is not in control of Iraq is because the United States and its allies invaded in 2003 and brought his brutal regime to an end. Thank you, George W. Bush, but we should have left right after accomplishing that. Americans are tired of lengthy, inconclusive wars. We have been understandably unhappy with all the conflicts since Vietnam.

Afghanistan has been invaded many times since the days of Alexander the Great and the results have always been a disaster for those who did. Next door is Pakistan which like so many nations in the Middle East has never done anything but take our military and economic aid, and betray us at every opportunity. Egypt’s new leaders are getting ready to throw us overboard.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/gop-demands-answers-on-terror-leaders-release?f=puball Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/16/hill-gop-wants-answers-on-hezbollah-leader-tied-to-soldiers-killings-set-for/#ixzz1v7Ai7DNl Republicans on Capitol Hill are furious over the Obama administration’s handling of a purported Hezbollah commander, who was connected to the killing of five U.S. soldiers in 2007 and now is set for release by an Iraqi court. The most recent GOP lawmaker to express frustration and to demand answers from […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/border-security-reality-of-spillover-violence Whenever the issue of immigration is raised, almost invariably the discussion focuses on the border that is supposed to separate the United States from Mexico. Of course, the issue of the southern border of the United States is a serious matter. It has been said that this border is the only place on our […]

http://www.romirowsky.com/11697/academia-jew-haters In a recent lecture at the University of Oslo, Norwegian sociologist Professor Johan Galtung claimed there was a possible connection between the terrorist responsible for the massacre of youths in Norway last summer and the Mossad. “The Jews control US media, and divert for the sake of Israel,” he said. Galtung added that one […]

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/46721 As each day rolls on in this investigation of the claims made by Massachusetts Democrat Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren that she has Native American heritage in her background we are finding fewer and fewer reasons to believe her. Sadly, she is dragging down once well-respected groups with her unprovable claims and Boston-based New England […]

http://www.canadafreepress.com/ Both Christians and Jews were forced into the degrading status of dhimmis; second class citizens under Islamic dominance. I have never been an admirer of the CBS program, Sixty Minutes: Too liberal and left leaning for my taste. But, in particular, I have always felt that its veteran reporter, Bob Simon, had a problem. […]

http://www.timesofisrael.com/worth-submitting-to-this-dictator/

Worth submitting to this ‘Dictator’ Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest film, now playing in the US, offers an extra layer of jokes for viewers with knowledge about the Middle East

One of the more disingenuous claims you’re likely to see this year arrives during the final credits of “The Dictator,” in which Paramount Pictures declares that any resemblance between the film and real life is purely coincidental.
The claim is preposterous, of course, as anyone who’s seen a trailer can attest. Sacha Baron Cohen’s title character, the ruler of a made-up country called Wadiya, is a transparent hybrid of despots from the Muslim world — a tyrant who dresses like Muammar Ghadafi, approaches sports like one of Saddam Hussein’s sons, and enjoys the same grotesquely extravagant lifestyle as a Saudi prince. The similarities are the entire point of the film.

That absurd disclaimer aside, “The Dictator” is a jauntily amusing ride. Although a backlash against Baron Cohen has started to emerge in some quarters, the film reconfirms its star’s comic bona fides, delivering a largely successful stream of satire in its concise 83 minutes. Some Arab-Americans have protested the film’s portrayal of their Middle Eastern counterparts, and Jewish viewers may squirm during a scene involving a video game based on the terrorist massacre of Israelis at the Olympics. Many of the jokes aren’t terribly ambitious – figures like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-il (the film is dedicated to the latter) practically write the punchlines themselves.

The obstacle of world opinion http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1896 World opinion should not deter Israel from enhancing Jewish roots and national security, expanding the Jewish presence in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights, and pre-empting Palestinian and Hezbollah terrorism. Adverse world opinion and global pressure have always been an integral part of the Jewish people and the […]