‘Islamists Are the New Reality’?

According to a report in Sunday’s Detroit Free Press Western leaders are nervously watching the next phase of the “Arab Spring.” Writes Hannah Allam:

The U.S. and other Western powers -- along with Arab liberals and religious minorities -- are watching with alarm as conservative Muslim politicians have filled the power vacuums left by the rebellions in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. They fear that Taliban-style religious extremism will replace the old order's secular autocracy. (“Islamists' rise being closely watched”).

Is there alarm in the U.S.?,  because I haven’t detected it outside the blogosphere. On the other hand, continues Allam:

Supporters say the extremist threat is exaggerated and that no other political force is as trusted, disciplined or efficient to guide these scarred nations toward democracy.

They note that across north Africa, Islamists are forging alliances with political rivals, meeting with Western envoys, courting foreign investors and spending millions of dollars on sophisticated campaigns.

Which is exactly why I haven’t had much confidence in optimists about the “Arab Spring.”  If it’s true, and it probably is, that the Islamists are the most “trusted, disciplined,” and “efficient” political force in these countries, why is that any reason to assume they will use that force to “guide these scarred nations toward democracy”?   Especially when the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis are committed opponents of democracy?    Just because Islamists are running around, “forging alliances,” courting investors, and spending millions on “sophisticated campaigns” doesn’t mean democracy is their goal. Dictatorships need to consolidate power, too, and need to gain popular support (in the beginning) through “sophisticated campaigns.”

Why, then, would anyone conclude from all this that the Islamists just might want a free society?

As Allam herself writes, a year ago the Muslim Brotherhood leaders were carefully staging the Tahrir Square demonstrations, “making sure that their young activists weren't using religious chants or banners; they had issued strict orders not to make the revolution seem Islamist in nature.”

Why not let the revolution seem Islamist in nature?  Because the world knows that Islamism and democracy are incompatible.

Even Allam’s analysis treats it matter-of-factly:

So far, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Nahdah in Tunisia and other mainstream Islamists throughout the region have offered assurances to their many critics, treading carefully so as not to squander their newfound authority and freedom.

While they make little secret of their long-term goal of establishing Islamic nations, analysts said, for now they're willing to strike shrewd deals with non-Islamist blocs and focus on collective grievances such as unemployment, inflation and the lack of security.

Maybe if I were an “analyst,” I’d understand how the Islamists’ stated intention of establishing Sharia states is less worrisome because now they’re striking “shrewd deals” and focusing on “collective grievances.”  This is like an “on the one hand, on the other hand” kind of article where both hands are the same hand.  From what I can see, the Islamists aren’t even pretending any more that if we just wait and see we’ll soon behold free and open societies blossoming in North Africa. Muslim Brotherhood official Mahmoud Ghozlan said, “Islamists are the new reality.”

Whether all those protesters a year ago in Egypt, or Tunisia, or Yemen  were interested in democracy or not, I’m hardly in a position to say.

What I do know, and what I can say, is that the Muslim Brotherhood is not interested in democracy in Egypt, or Tunisia, or Yemen, or anywhere. They’re interested in gaining political power so they can impose Sharia states. They’re interested, as their leader said three weeks ago, in “establishing a righteous and fair ruling system, with all its institutions and associations, including a government evolving into a rightly guided caliphate and mastership of the world.”

That’s the new reality.

Saturday’s (Other) Election Results

CAIRO (AP) – Final results on Saturday showed that Islamist parties won nearly three-quarters of the seats in parliament in Egypt's first elections since the ouster of authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak, according to election officials and political groups.

The Islamist domination of Egypt's parliament has worried liberals and even some conservatives about the religious tone of the new legislature, which will be tasked with forming a committee to write a new constitution. Overseeing the process will be the country's Mubarak-era military generals, who are still in charge.

A coalition led by the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood won 47 percent, or 235 seats in the 498-seat parliament. The ultraconservative Al-Nour Party was second with 25 percent, or 125 seats.

The Salifi Al-Nour, which was the biggest surprise of the vote, wants to impose strict Islamic law in Egypt, while the more moderate Brotherhood, the country's best-known and organized party, has said publicly that it does not seek to force its views about an appropriate Islamic lifestyle on Egyptians. (“Egypt's Islamists secure 75% of parliament”).

As noted here recently, there’s no reason to take at face value the Brotherhood’s promises that Egypt’s liberty-loving Arab Springers won’t soon be groaning under government-enforced Sharia. Brotherhood supreme leader Dr. Muhammad Badi was commenting on the Brothers’ progress in Egypt only three weeks back:

When the Brotherhood started its advocacy [da'wa], it tried to awaken the nation from its slumber and stagnation, to guide it back to its position and vocation. In his message at the sixth caucus, the Imam [Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna] defined two goals for the Brotherhood: a short term goal, the fruits of which are seen as soon as a person becomes a member of the Brotherhood; and a long term goal that requires utilizing events, waiting, making appropriate preparations and prior designs, and a comprehensive and total reform of all aspects of life. The Imam [Banna] delineated transitional goals and detailed methods to achieve this greatest objective, starting by reforming the individual, followed by building the family, the society, the government, and then a rightly guided caliphate and finally mastership of the world.

Da’wa is all about incremental change. Not that “incremental” is necessarily synonymous with “glacially slow.”  As a case in point,  Egypt  has been going through its Islamizing stages fairly rapidly. The Tahrir Square demonstration only started a year ago this week. When they started, the Muslim Brotherhood was still outlawed, and had been for more than 60 years. Now the Ikhwan holds the majority of the Parliament. That’s how fast things can change.

All the transformations that Badi’s looking forward to -- from “reforming the individual” to crushing the whole planet under Islamic “mastership” – are to be accomplished through the rigid application of Sharia.

Don’t think for one second the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t intend to force an Islamic lifestyle on all Egyptians. Sharia is not imposed incrementally where Islamists hold most of the power.  (It’s only imposed bit by bit where Islamists are a minority, like in Dearborn). 

Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood chapter that controls Gaza, also pretended to “respect freedom” when they seized power there in 2007.

Gaza, a tiny sliver of land squeezed between Egypt and Israel, always had a significant Islamic flavour, but once tolerated bars and cinemas, especially during Egyptian rule from 1948 to 1967. A conservative religious movement began to take hold in the 1980s, as part of a larger, region-wide religious awakening.

The trend accelerated with the first Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation in 1987, which coincided with the founding of Hamas. In June 2007, Hamas seized control of Gaza after ousting forces loyal to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The trend toward religious fundamentalism preceded the Hamas takeover. In recent years, hardliners have burned down the cinemas. Their charred remains are still visible in Gaza City. Militants blew up the last bar in 2005. (“Gaza's elected Islamist rulers crack down on secular community”).

This past week, Hamas has banned Gaza residents from participating in “New Star,” the Palestinian version of “American Idol”:

The organizers said Hamas told them the program is “indecent,” in what appears to be a new attempt by the fundamentalist militant Muslim group to crack down on behavior it sees as contrary to its conservative interpretation of Islam.

In the past, Hamas has banned women from riding on the backs of motorbikes, women from smoking water pipes, and men from working in hair salons — saying such practices were immodest. (“Gaza’s Hamas rulers ban Palestinian singing competition, organizers say”).

According to the Telegraph, last February Hamas was saying “claims that they are trying to Islamise Gaza are meant to help deter the international community from recognising their rule. ‘This isn't true,’ said Yousef Rizka, a senior Hamas government official. ‘We respect freedom.’”

The point of all this is not that Islamists are moral reactionaries who won’t be happy until every woman on Earth is hidden inside an ugly black bag.

The point is that Islamists are lying to our faces about what they are trying to do.

Human Rights Conference in Dearborn this April

AFDI/SIOA, VAST to Host Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference in Dearborn, Michigan at Hyatt Regency

They Make Trash Bags for That

Here’s a fitting word from Mark Steyn on Alan Colmes’s recent remarks about the “crazy” response of Rick Santorum and his wife to the death of their newborn:

Santorum’s respect for all life, including even the smallest bleakest meanest two-hour life, speaks well for him, especially in comparison with his fellow Pennsylvanian, the accused mass murderer Kermit Gosnell, an industrial-scale abortionist at a Philadelphia charnel house who plunged scissors into the spinal cords of healthy delivered babies. Few of Gosnell’s employees seemed to find anything “weird” about that: Indeed, they helped him out by tossing their remains in jars and bags piled up in freezers and cupboards. Much less crazy than taking ’em home and holding a funeral, right? (“The Left’s So-Called Empathy”).

Afghanistan’s Number One Problem

According to the Washington Post, the emergence of the Internet video depicting four U.S. Marines going Number One on three dead Taliban jihadists “didn’t seem to immediately set back movement toward exploratory negotiations with the Taliban. Asked about possible implications for peace talks, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that the U.S. remained strongly committed to supporting Afghan efforts.” (“Marines name three-star general to decide what, if any, action to take in urination case”).

We’re so relieved.  (No pun intended).  We wouldn’t want the Obama administration’s efforts to hand Afghanistan back over to the Taliban ruined by the fighting men we sent there  to take it away from them in the first place.

Seriously, DU doesn’t approve of the desecration of human bodies.  But we don’t find this incident of particular gravity in the history of warfare.  A Washington Post poll shows that 82% of respondents reacted with, “It's not surprising -- things like this happen in war.”  (In contrast, over 48% of Americans think quarterbacks dropping to one knee after every completed pass say “It’s shocking – things like this should never happen in professional sports.”)

What is much more disturbing than the pissing Marines is that the United States government is participating in peace talks with the Taliban at all.  There can be no other outcome  to such talks than that the Taliban returns to  Afghanistan while we leave.  But the whole purpose of the war, (the war that even Obama and his fellow Democrats endorsed “the good war”) was to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban.  It was just about the only thing Americans agreed on through all this strife  and division since 9/11.

Just whose getting peed on here? 

From the ‘Peace in Our Time’ Department

Marc A. Thiessen makes the following appeal to common sense in the Washington Post.  Do you think anyone will listen?

Don’t let these Taliban leaders loose

President Obama is reportedly considering releasing several senior Taliban leaders from Guantanamo Bay as an enticement to get the Taliban to the peace table. If he does so, he will do tremendous harm to American national security — and to his prospects for reelection this fall.

To understand why, consider the individuals White House is considering setting free. Last year WikiLeaks released a trove of documents it dubbed the “Gitmo Files” with assessments of hundreds of Guantanamo detainees — including the five Taliban leaders reportedly under consideration for release. Here is the U.S. military’s assessment of them:

Mullah Mohammed Fazl, deputy defense minister. Fazl is “wanted by the UN for possible war crimes while serving as a Taliban Army Chief of Staff and … was implicated in the murder of thousands of Shiites in northern Afghanistan during the Taliban reign.” He has “operational associations with significant al-Qaida and other extremist personnel,” was “involved in Taliban narcotics trafficking,” and is so senior in the Taliban hierarchy that he once threatened the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Omar. Military officials assess that Fazl wields “considerable influence throughout the northern region of Afghanistan and his influence continued even after his capture” adding, “If released, [Fazl] would likely rejoin the Taliban and establish ties with anti-Coalition militias (ACM) participating in hostilities against US and Coalition forces in Afghanistan.”

Abdul Haq Wasiq, deputy minister of intelligence. Wasiq “was central to the Taliban’s efforts to form alliances with other Islamic fundamentalist groups to fight alongside the Taliban against US and Coalition forces.” He “utilized his office to support al-Qaida and to assist Taliban personnel elude capture…. arranged for al-Qaida personnel to train Taliban intelligence staff in intelligence methods” and “assigned al-Qaida members to the Taliban Ministry of Intelligence.” If released “he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.”

Mullah Norullah Noori, governor-general of Afghanistan's northern zone. Noori “is considered one of the most significant former Taliban officials detained at JTF-GTMO” who “led troops against US and Coalition forces” and “was directly subordinate to Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Omar.” He “is wanted by the UN for possible war crimes,” is “associated with members of al-Qaida,” and is assessed “to be a hardliner in his support of the Taliban philosophy.” He “continues to be a significant figure encouraging acts of aggression and his brother is currently a Taliban commander conducting operations against US and Coalition forces…. (Analyst note: Detainee would likely join his brother if released.”)

Mullah Khairullah Khairkhwa, Herat governor and acting interior minister. Khairkhwa is “directly associated to Usama Bin Laden (UBL) and Taliban Supreme Commander Mullah Muhammad Omar” and was “trusted and respected by both.” After 9/11 he “represented the Taliban during meetings with Iranian officials seeking to support hostilities against US and Coalition forces” and “attended a meeting at the direction of UBL, reportedly accompanied by members of HAMAS.” He is “one of the premier opium drug lords in Western Afghanistan” and was likely “associated with a militant training camp in Herat operated by deceased al-Qaida commander (in Iraq) Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.”

Mohammad Nabi, multiple leadership roles. Nabi is “a senior Taliban official” who was “a member of a joint al-Qaida/Taliban ACM cell in Khowst and was involved in attacks against US and Coalition forces.” He “held weekly meetings” with “three al-Qaida affiliated individuals” to discuss anti-coalition plans, “maintained weapons caches,” and “facilitated two al-Qaida operatives smuggling an unknown number of missiles along the highway between Jalalabad and Peshawar,” which intelligence officials believe contributed to the deaths of two Americans.

All have close ties to al-Qaeda and other extremist groups. All been assessed by our military as posing a “high risk” of returning to the fight if released. And we know from painful experience what happens when hardliners like these are released from Gitmo. In 2007, the Bush administration released a Taliban leader named Mullah Zakir to Afghan custody. Unlike these five, he was assessed by our military as only “medium risk” of returning to the fight. They were wrong. Today, Zakir is leading Taliban forces fighting U.S. Marines in Helmand province, and according to former intelligence officials I spoke with, he has provided the Taliban with an exponential increase in combat prowess.

Releasing more like him would be disastrous for national security. And it would also be politically disastrous for Obama. His likely opponent, Mitt Romney, has already blasted the administration for even considering such releases, declaring “We do not negotiate with terrorists. The Taliban are terrorists, they are our enemy, and I do not believe in a prisoner release exchange.”

If Obama goes through with these releases, expect Romney to make a major issue of it in the fall campaign. Every time the president has picked a fight over terrorist detention at Guantanamo during the past three years, he has lost. He will lose again if he raises it in 2012. The last thing Obama should want is to have Americans discussing his decision to release dangerous terrorists in November. If Obama won’t keep these brutal men locked up for the national interest, perhaps he will for his political self-interest.

Today Cairo, Tomorrow the World

CAIRO — The number two diplomat in the U.S. State Department met Wednesday with leaders of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the highest-level contact between Washington and the once-banned group poised to dominate the country’s first parliament chosen after the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.

Deputy Secretary of State William Burns met with the head of the Brotherhood’s political party, which has won more than 40 percent of the seats in elections that ended Wednesday. The parliament is scheduled to convene on Jan. 23.

Its main task is to appoint a 100-member panel to write a new constitution. With its election victory, the Islamist group could have significant influence over its content.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Burns’ meeting with the Brotherhood leaders was a chance to reinforce U.S. expectations that Egypt’s parties will support human rights, women’s rights and religious tolerance.  (“US holds highest contacts so far with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, shunned when Mubarak ruled”).

But there’s no basis for that optimism.  None.  In his weekly message on December 29, supreme leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Dr. Muhammad Badi laid out his view of the future.  Oddly, he nowhere mentions women’s rights or religious tolerance:

"The Brotherhood is getting closer to achieving its greatest goal as envisioned by its founder, Imam Hassan al-Banna. This will be accomplished by establishing a righteous and fair ruling system, with all its institutions and associations, including a government evolving into a rightly guided caliphate and mastership of the world. When the Brotherhood started its advocacy [da'wa], it tried to awaken the nation from its slumber and stagnation, to guide it back to its position and vocation. In his message at the sixth caucus, the Imam [Banna] defined two goals for the Brotherhood: a short term goal, the fruits of which are seen as soon as a person becomes a member of the Brotherhood; and a long term goal that requires utilizing events, waiting, making appropriate preparations and prior designs, and a comprehensive and total reform of all aspects of life. The Imam [Banna] delineated transitional goals and detailed methods to achieve this greatest objective, starting by reforming the individual, followed by building the family, the society, the government, and then a rightly guided caliphate and finally mastership of the world. In this Arab spring, the revolutionary people were determined to achieve particular, obvious goals. They were adamant and uncompromising about goals such as the end of unjust regimes and the ousting of unfair rulers, to rid our countries of all corrupt systems that usurped our resources and thwarted our progress. And today we are very close to achieving a major goal by establishing a righteous and fair ruling system with all its institutions and guiding principles. With the blessings of Shura we are on the path of achieving the goals of the nation and the revolution through a candid and genuine representation of the people in the parliament to start building the institutions of good governance and a rightly guided state."  (“The Brotherhood's True Itinerary”).

Not only is the Brotherhood going to turn Egypt into a much larger, armed, and more dangerous version of Hamas-ruled Gaza, but the Ikhwan make no bones about their divine right to rule the world.

What are our leaders thinking?

‘All-American Muslims–The Road Show’

 Pam Geller  gives us a subtotal of the week’s homegrown jihadist activity at American Thinker:

Three Jihadis

By Pamela Geller

It is almost every day now. Jihadi attacks in America. This past week there were three attempted jihad attacks. And what does the media consider the problem? Racistislamophobicantimuslimbigots, of course.

On Saturday, a Muslim named Sami Osmakac was arrested in Florida on charges of plotting to go jihad on nightclubs and the Tampa, Florida, sheriff's headquarters. "We all have to die," Osmakac said, "so why not die the Islamic way?"

Osmakac is from Kosovo, making his jihad another thank-you for U.S. involvement in Bosnia. And the U.S. still supports an independent Kosovo state, a militant Islamic state, in the heart of Europe. That is our policy. America refuses to own up to the terrible mistake we made in Europe -- worse still, we continue to prosecute the Christian Serbs.

Media reports said that Osmakac, a devout Muslim, was "self-radicalized." You have to wonder if Western dhimmis stay up nights thinking up new terms for jihad. Pathetic. Soon after his arrest, video emerged that showed how pious and violent Sami Osmakac really was, as he attacked and bloodied Christian street preachers. The pious Osmakac, who was completely the aggressor, then cried victim to the police, saying that he had been "insulted," the same fictitious narrative that we are bombarded with daily by Islamic groups and Muslim Brotherhood organizations like the Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The police, in what has become standard practice in dealing with Islamic supremacists, treated the perpetrator and the victim with equal contempt, actually charging the bloodied Christian with battery. This was in the same town, Tampa, that classified what was obviously an honor killing of a Muslim woman, Fatima Abdallah, as a "suicide."

Even worse, after the terrorism arrest, Hassan Shibly, director of the Florida chapter of CAIR, cried "entrapment." This is, of course, typical of jihadis, but what is really outrageous is that the FBI briefed Shibly prior to Osmakac's arrest. Hamas-CAIR was briefed? Was Qaradawi briefed, too?

"The weapons and explosives were provided by the government. Was he just a troubled individual, or did he pose a real threat?" Shibly asked. Hey, Shibly, he was a devout Muslim. Watch the videos: he is preaching the word of Allah in one and head-butting Christians in another.

Also on Sunday, a Muslim in Alabama named Luis Ibarra-Hernandez (the media did not release his Muslim name) shot out store windows and tried to get into a shootout with police officers. Gadsden, Alabama Police spokesperson Capt. Regina May said: "After the man was taken into custody, he reported that he knew he must do something extreme to draw attention to Islam and himself, so he planned to shoot police officers."

I think it is poetic that this Alabama Muslim wanted to call attention to Islam by shooting at police. He is right, of course. Such actions best illustrate the violent and true nature of jihad. He would have been richly rewarded in paradise, perhaps 73 virgins instead of 72. But as Islamic scholar Robert Spencer points out, "he did not, however, succeed in gaining the space that is guaranteed in Paradise for those who 'kill and are killed' for Allah (Qur'an 9:111)."

Meanwhile, the military jihad continues. Last Friday, a former U.S. Army soldier named Craig Baxam was arrested and charged with trying to join al-Shabaab, a jihad terror group in Somalia. Baxam converted to Islam while in the U.S. Military. He said he wanted to die defending Islam, and was "looking for dying with a gun in my hand."

So three jihads in one week, and an ongoing sharp increase in jihad activity in Obama's America. Yet this is never remarked upon. It is deliberately ignored. And it's astonishing. Is this what we can expect from our politicians and the media? We're under siege by the enemedia, and by craven politicians, and by the enforcers: CAIR, ISNA, ICNA, etc., that have these government agencies in their back pocket.

What's it's going to take? America, where are you on this?

Studies Show Your Pants Are on Fire

Charles C. Haynes, director of the Religious Freedom Education Project at the Newseum in Washington, has published an opinion column in The Tennessean that exemplifies the jarring dishonesty of the anti-anti-jihad mentality. (“In 2012, we must work to stem tide of Islamophobia”).

Disguised as a defense of religious freedom, Haynes’s article condemns the Lowe’s controversy as capping “a very successful year for the growing anti-Muslim movement in the United States,” successful, that is, “for its anti-mosque protests, anti-Shariah laws and anti-Muslim hate crimes.”

We’ve long since recognized citation to “anti-Muslim hate crimes” as a shibboleth for anti-anti-jihadists, unsupported by the facts.

Haynes’s sloppiness is telling, because he bolster his other points with appeals to unidentified “studies” and “scholarship.” For example, Haynes writes that “studies show high levels of opposition to radical Islam and extreme interpretations of Shariah law among Muslim Americans,” and “Muslim leaders and institutions in the U.S. help in the fight against extremism.”

Help?  Such as in the form of this poster that CAIR created, the one Corey Saylor had to try to explain away later as “not consistent with CAIR’s policy of constitutionally informed cooperation with law enforcement.”

Studies and scholarship aside, Haynes summarizes the message of counterjihadists this way: “Portraying Muslims as ordinary Americans is problematic, if not wrong and dangerous, because it may lull the rest of us into ignoring the stealth threat of Islam and Muslims to the freedom and security of the United States.”

He’s wrong again. Yes, we do want to raise the alarm about the stealth threat of Islam, but we couldn’t care less about portraying Muslims in America, especially if they’re ordinary. Ordinary Americans aren’t our focus. And if there are American Muslims who do catch our eye, you can be sure it’s not for behaving like ordinary Americans. Ordinary Americans don’t belong to the Muslim Brotherhood, they don’t chant in front of Dearborn City Hall that Hezbollah’s Secretary-General is “our leader!”, and they don’t preach that “The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."

As Orwell said once about what’s necessary in degraded times, “restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” So here it is. We were attacked on 9/11, and that attack was waged by Muslim jihadists who couldn’t have been any clearer that they and Allah are at war with us. Many Muslims in America, citizens and otherwise, are sympathetic with that war. Many are not sympathetic, but they’re not our subject. We don’t pull the fire alarm for the houses that aren’t bellowing smoke. Notwithstanding Haynes and his allies’ tiresome libels, the statement of the plain fact that there’s a jihad being waged against us does not “paint all Muslims with the terrorist brush.”    All we’re doing is restating the obvious, just like Orwell said we should.

But Haynes objects  that stating the obvious diverts “Americans from our shared goal of fighting extremism (of all varieties) and securing our safety and freedom.”

Why in hell would it?  Haynes never explains how we can all fight extremism “(of all varieties)”, when he and his friends shout down as bigotry anyone’s attempt to shed light on a particular variety of extremism.

Haynes likes the idea that we’re fighting an extremism with no name – or many names.  But even he can’t keep from mentioning the name that sticks out, admitting himself that the world is “plagued by extremists acting in the name of Islam.” Yes, I suppose a “pile of studies” makes that conclusion unavoidable even to Haynes. But while that part of the story is obvious to most Americans already, (even without a pile of studies to make it so), ever since 9/11 the country has been too afraid to have the perfectly reasonable discussion about why it is all these extremists are acting in the name of Islam.

That fear is the work product of a wrecking crew of jihadists, dhimmis, and liberal anti-anti-jihadists who’ve absolutely forbidden -- under pain of banishment from polite society -- the rest of us to examine the Religion of the Prophet any closer than we can make out in the embroidery of Karen Armstrong’s “Islam Is Peace” tea towel.  The thousands of terror attacks, plots, and threats carried out by jihadists as acts of their Islamic devotion have been a deadly Muzak piping into the nation’s historical consciousness, reaching on some level even the country’s most resolutely uninformed Pollyanas.  But if anyone dares to act as a clearinghouse for that data, or draw logical inferences from it, he’s condemned for engaging in the lowest form of immorality on one side, and threatened with legal action on the other.

Haynes describes “All-American Muslim” as “an innocuous television show created to fight stereotypes.” The Florida Family Association (who Lowe’s said anyway was not responsible for the decision to pull their ads), believed that the show wasn’t so innocuous, because it wasn’t so much fighting stereotypes as creating a partial – and dishonest -- picture of reality. For their concerns, the people at FFA (and anyone caught agreeing with them) have been condemned as bigots spreading hate speech and intolerance and, of course, “Islamophobia.” Haynes sounds determined to keep that hackneyed crutch-word term on life support for yet one more year.

A Reader’s Comments

A reader has shared this with us:

Good afternoon, Mr. Clancy,

I noticed the newspaper coverage of the anti-Lowe's demonstration last week in Allen Park. The article quoted several non-Muslims who joined the protest in good faith, believing the issue to be one of anti-Muslim bigotry. They were wrong, however, which the Free Press article actually stated. You may have noticed this, also.

The Free Press article stated that the Florida Christian group was NOT protesting the show 'All-American Muslim' because the people being shown were Muslim. The issue was that the show falsely claims that ALL Muslims in America are loyal Americans, and don't support terrorists. That is what the Arab-American college professor claimed on the 'Mitch Albom Show' , as well. Now, if the Free Press article quoted them accurately, and they surely meant to, then this issue is NOT one of bigotry. The issue is whether or not the show is honest about the loyalty of Arab-Muslims in America. Because you and I live in Dearborn and see what goes on here, we know that the show is NOT honest. We know that many Arab-Muslims in Dearborn support Hezbollah, a violent enemy of America. The 'last prisoner' turned over from American forces to Iraqi was a Hezbollah commander responsible for deadly attacks on American soldiers. According to our Military, Hezbollah has been supplying bombs and training to Iraqi insurgents for years in order to kill Americans.

Therefore, Lowe's is absolutely correct in dropping their support from the show. It would go a long way if someone in the media made this observation in public.

Also, have you seen the 'Doonesbury' comic strip the last couple of days? As our soldiers come home from Iraq, the author of 'Doonesbury' is pushing to have the creators of the war tried for war crimes. One of his points made this week is that, since the American invasion in 2003, 600 thousand of the 1 million Christians that lived in Iraq before the invasion have fled the country. The 'largest Christian diaspora in history' is the statement. The thing is, 'Doonesbury' blames GEORGE BUSH for the diaspora. 'Can you say ironic?' is the line.

'Doonesbury' somehow refrains from the obvious point that removing the violent despot Saddam Hussein from power allowed violent, murderous Muslims to attack and kill Christians. The Christians didn't leave the country because the Americans arrived. They left because they were being attacked by Muslims. Somehow, 'Doonesbury' didn't want to make this last statement, although it is obvious. American removed a despot from power. Like that or not, America did not then attack Christians. Blame George Bush for starting the war if you like, but the actions of the Iraqi populace belong to them.

Many of the Iraqi Christians fled to Syria and have been living in absolute poverty there. I wonder what has and will become of them in that violence-torn country.

Your reader,

John H.

An Obama-Qaradawi Treaty in Afghanistan?

Andrew McCarthy writes at NRO:

Obama Recruits Qaradawi

The surrender is complete now. The Hindu reports that the Obama administration has turned to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading jurist, to mediate secret negotiations between the United States and the Taliban.

I wrote about Qaradawi at length in The Grand Jihad and, here at NRO, have regularly catalogued his activities (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, and here; see also Andrew Bostom’s “Qaradawi’s Odious Vision”). For those who may be unfamiliar with him, he is the most influential Sunni Islamist in the world, thanks to such ventures as his al-Jazeera TV program (Sharia and Life) and website (IslamOnline.net). In 2003, he issued a fatwa calling for the killing of American troops in Iraq. As he put it,

Those killed fighting the American forces are martyrs given their good intentions since they consider these invading troops an enemy within their territories but without their will. . . . Although they are seen by some as being wrong, those defending against attempts to control Islamic countries have the intention of jihad and bear a spirit of the defense of their homeland.

Qaradawi urges that Islam must dominate the world, under a global caliphate governed by sharia. He maintains that Islam “will conquer Europe [and] will conquer America.” He sometimes qualifies that the conquering will be done “not through the sword but through da’wa,” but the qualification is a feint.

Da’wa sounds harmless — it refers to missionary work to spread Islam. Islam, however, is not like other religions. The idea is not to spread a set of spiritual principles but incrementally to impose a full-scale social system with its own authoritarian legal code, covering all aspects of life and instituting a caste system in which women and non-Muslims are subjugated. Nor is da’wa like other missionary work; it is the use of all available means of pressure — political campaigns, lawfare, infiltration of the media, control of the education system, etc. — to advance (a) the acceptance of Islamic principles and (b) the evisceration of principles (e.g., free speech, economic liberty) that undergird competitors, in particular, Western civilization. Moreover, the claim that da’wa is non-violent is frivolous. Much of the mission of da’wa is to rationalize terrorism as divinely mandated self-defense.

Thus does Sheikh Qaradawi champion Hamas, mass-murder attacks, and suicide bombings. “They are not suicide operations,” he brays. “These are heroic martyrdom operations.” Indeed, he elaborates, “The martyr operations is [sic] the greatest of all sorts of jihad in the cause of Allah.”

Thus does Qaradawi urge the destruction of Israel, rebuking clerics who dare counsel against killing civilians. “I am astonished,” he inveighs, “that some sheikhs deliver fatwas that betray the mujahideen, instead of supporting them and urging them to sacrifice and martyrdom.” As the Investigative Project on Terrorism recounts, when the imam of Mecca’s Grand Mosque issued guidance against the killing of civilians, Qaradawi upbraided him: “It is unfortunate to hear that the grand imam has said it was not permissible to kill civilians in any country or state, even in Israel.”

Not surprisingly, then, the sheikh is also wont to invoke what the West refuses to acknowledge: the Jew-hatred that is endemic in Islam because it is rooted in scripture — not in modern grievances that could be satisfied if only the West changed its policies and Israel had the good grace to disappear. As Qaradawi puts it, echoing the charter of Hamas (the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch):

This is what is told in the Hadith of Ibn-Omar and the Hadith of Abu-Hurairah: “You shall continue to fight the Jews and they will fight you, until the Muslims will kill them. And the Jew will hide behind the stone and the tree, and the stone and the tree will say: ‘Oh servant of Allah, Oh Muslim, this is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him!’ The resurrection will not come before this happens.” This is a text from the good omens in which we believe.

Qaradawi uses his al-Jazeera platform to preach this message to the Muslim masses. As the Middle East Media Research Institute and Robert Spencer document, in one memorable Friday “sermon” broadcast in 2009, he prayed that Allah would kill all Jews: “Oh Allah, take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people. Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers and kill them, down to the very last one.” He added that throughout history, Allah had imposed upon Jews “people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Adolph Hitler.”

After thousands of young Americans have laid down their lives to protect the United States from jihadist terror, President Obama apparently seeks to end the war by asking Qaradawi, a jihad-stoking enemy of the United States, to help him strike a deal that will install our Taliban enemies as part of the sharia state we have been building in Afghanistan. If the Hindu report is accurate, the price tag will include the release of Taliban prisoners from Gitmo — an element of the deal Reuters has also reported. The administration will also agree to the lifting of U.N. sanctions against the Taliban, and recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate political party (yes, just like the Muslim Brotherhood!). In return, the Taliban will pretend to forswear violence, to sever ties with al-Qaeda, and to cooperate with the rival Karzai regime.

It would mark one of the most shameful chapters in American history.

#

All-American Snow Job

Dearborn’s Muslim “civil rights” agencies, already a chunky cauldron of alphabet soup, have to make room for four more letters with the debut of the Arab American Civil Rights League (ACRL). (“Diverse group of supporters turns out for new Arab civil rights organization’s debut”). Clearly, CAIR, ADC, AAPAC, CAAO, and ACCESS were leaving too much slack. And, like Israelites assembling at the call of the shofar, the usual mob of politicos, law enforcement toadies, and grandstanding opportunists came a-runnin’ to the braying of the phrase “civil rights.”

The ACRL’s mission, boiled down, will be “combating defamatory material on the Internet and other forms of media.”

One of its initiatives discussed in depth was fighting individuals who spread false and misleading information about members of the Arab American community on the Internet. Often those targeted by hate bloggers can be at risk for not getting jobs because of inaccurate reports on the internet. The ACRL will help individuals get their names cleared. “The old ways of just writing a letter and making phone calls is simply not enough. We have to do better, we have to be smarter, we have to move faster, we have to back our position with strong legal advocacy,” ACRL founder, president, and civil rights Attorney Nabih Ayad said.

Stated another way, what ACRL intends to target is free speech, especially the free speech of bloggers. They’ll be joining CAIR, the ADC, and other groups in silencing outspoken bloggers, like Bare Naked Islam, and getting them thrown offline. The “Islam is peace” smoke-and-mirrors campaign can’t compete with an active alternative media armed with facts.

Ayad and his Canton law firm are handling the ACRL’s lawfare goals. We see Ayad’s name around here often. He sued the NSA in 2006 because the Terrorist Surveillance Program was interfering with his phone calls to “individuals abroad whom the United States government believes to be terrorist suspects or to be associated with terrorist organizations.” Debbie Schlussel has reported that Ayad has ties with Hezbollah, and, as was reported in the Detroit Free Press one of his former clients, “Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, was sentenced in June 2005 to 4 1/2 years in prison for raising money for Hezbollah inside his Dearborn home.”

The very idea of ACRL having an initiative for “fighting individuals” proves how badly shredded is the once-inspiring banner of civil rights. In the old days the phrase was synonymous with defending the liberties of individuals against unjust institutions using the law to destroy individual rights. Think of Governors Faubus and Wallace, think of the University of Mississippi against James Meredith, the City of Montgomery, Alabama against Rosa Parks, think of the Jim Crow laws, think of Separate but Equal, literacy tests and poll taxes. The phrase “civil rights” has suffered a terrible deflation since then. Now city and state officials jostle each other at the Fairlane Club to prove their support for a group transparently committed to squelching bad facts about area Muslim activists. These days “civil rights” is barely more than a euphemism for “shut up.”

According to ACRL, “those targeted by hate bloggers can be at risk for not getting jobs because of inaccurate reports on the internet. The ACRL will help individuals get their names cleared.”

Typical of reporting like this, no actual example is provided of any job-seeking victim of “false and misleading information.”   We can only hope that our blog, or similar ones, might have played any part in keeping a Muslim Brotherhood member or a Hezbollah supporter out of a sensitive position by posting details of his actual affiliations and public statements. But that’s not spreading false information. And when you see the phrase “misleading information” in this context, you can bet it means, “accurate information that we were really trying to keep under wraps.”

What we see now is consistent with a pattern we noted several years ago. In October 2006, we commented on the way then Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Abed Hammoud, miffed by a blog comment he didn’t think was fair about the Arab American Public Affairs Council (AAPAC), threatened to deploy police powers against the perpetrator:

“I do however like to remind everyone that we all live under the law and that writing and posting falshoods (sic) can be punished. We also know that the great technology that allows people to smear others while they hide under screen names allows us to find out who they are if there is a need for a legal action. Thank you.” (“Assistant Prosecutor Threatens Action Against Critics on Web Forum”).

Several months before that, CAIR had to eat dirt in its defamation lawsuit against the blog site Anti-CAIR. Among Anti-CAIR’s statements by that CAIR decided not to litigate as falsehoods were these: “CAIR is not in the United States to promote the civil rights of Muslims. CAIR is here to make radical Islam the dominant religion in the United States and convert our country into an Islamic theocracy along the lines of Iran.”

Defamation suits are helpless against truth, which is why CAIR dropped it as a tactic afterits failed lawsuit against Anti-CAIR. And I’m extremely skeptical that ACRL will go that route, either.  Ayad’s battle cry at Fairlane House, “[w]e have to do better, we have to be smarter, we have to move faster, we have to back our position with strong legal advocacy,” never mentions “backing their position” with either the truth or the facts.  The recent national attacks against Lowe’s over their decision to stop advertising on “All American Muslim” weren’t based on facts, and both Dawud Walid and the ADC defamed both Lowe’s and the Florida Family Association as “anti-Muslim bigots.” And CAIR, in their own account of the hit they did on the Bare Naked Islam blog, made no pretense they were defending against any false information posted on BNI; instead, CAIR used reader comments to cast a false light on BNI as urging “threats of violence targeting mosques.”

As every conscientious counterjihad blogger knows, posting articles critical of creeping Islamism and its enablers is all it takes to be painted as a “hate blogger.” This is exactly how ACRL is tarring us at its inception.

Expect a lot more of the same in the New Year.

U.S. Attorney Gets Involved in Zoning Decision

Via Pam Geller’s Atlas Shrugs:

PITTSFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. —

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Detroit is reviewing a religious discrimination complaint against a community for denying a zoning change request to allow construction of a Muslim school.

The Michigan Islamic Academy wants to build at a 26-acre site in Washtenaw County's Pittsfield Township.

"We are reviewing the matter and whether to proceed with a formal investigation," Assistant U.S. Attorney Judith Levy told The Detroit News  for a story Tuesday.

On Oct. 26, the township board rejected the request, following an earlier rejection by the township planning commission. School officials say the 200-student school is too big for its location in nearby Ann Arbor.

Township Supervisor Mandy Grewal said the decision isn't based on religion.

"We are an open, respectful and diverse community here in Pittsfield Township" Grewal said after the October decision. "We have a track record, most recently the planning commission approved a mosque."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said the decision violated the First Amendment right of religious freedom, and it asked the Justice Department to investigate.

"We believe this is a blatant violation of the (school's) constitutional right to open the school on their property," said Lena Masri, a lawyer for the group. (“US reviewing anti-Muslim school bias complaint”).

UK Infant Adopted To Save Her Life

From the Daily Mail Online last week is a story of a UK appeals court ordering a one-year-old girl to be adopted to save her from an honor killing: 

A baby girl born out of wedlock must be adopted to save her from the risk of being slaughtered in an ‘honour killing’, a court ruled yesterday.

If the unmarried Muslim woman’s father found out about the child, he would feel such ‘unimaginable shame’ he could unleash a vengeful bloodbath by killing the baby and his whole family, three senior judges agreed.

So they made the extraordinary order to have the one-year-old girl – known as Baby Q – adopted for her own safety.

She will now grow up with adoptive parents and, when she is older, they will explain to her why she could not have been brought up by her biological parents.

It is believed to be the first time an English court has ordered an adoption to prevent a murder.

The baby’s maternal grandmother told police that if her husband ever found out about the little girl, ‘he would consider himself honour-bound to kill the child, the mother, the grandmother herself and the grandmother’s other children’, the court heard.

The identities of all those involved have been kept anonymous to ensure the girl can grow up safe from her apparently murderous grandfather – who still has no idea his daughter was ever pregnant.

Please read the rest of this article here.

Blessed Is the True Judge

Christopher Hitchens died on what is being called the last day of the Iraq war. He was a bitter atheist, a ferocious debater, and an eloquent spokesman for the American action to depose Saddam Hussein, “a conflict that he brought his unparalleled eloquence to defend because of his hatred of tyranny in all forms.”

I found the atheist Hitchens’s latter-day crusade against all believers gloomy.  And unlike all those better-established conservative writers, the ones I can only envy from here underground, I can’t write of my personal friendship with the man, nor even that I ever met him.

But I am never going to forget the way I saw him describe, on C-SPAN or some such interview program, the way, in the wake of  9/11,  George W. Bush, undertook overthrowing the butcher of Baghdad “with a certain brio.” 

As Rabbi Shmuley Boteach says he prayed upon hearing of Hitchens’s passing, “Blessed is the true Judge.”

Troy Mayor Publicly Apologizes To Her ‘I Heart New York’ Tote Bag

 

We’re very sorry to see that Troy Mayor Janice Daniels (whom we incorrectly identified as mayor-elect in our previous post) did not stand her ground.

On Monday she gave her opponents an inch, and all week we’ve had to endure them gobbling up a mile of hypocritical high ground.   As we ought to have learned from the entire Obama term in office, this is what comes from giving in to bullies.

It’s only worse that it’s happening during a week when the governor signed an anti-bullying bill.

I’ll summarize briefly:

On Monday Daniels showed up unexpectedly at a Troy High School protest organized by the school’s Gay Straight Alliance. She attempted to apologize to 30 or 40 protesters. But, according to the kid who organized the protest, “it erupted into people screaming at her and calling her 'bully.' " (“Protesters urge Troy mayor Janice Daniels to quit over gay slur”).

On Monday night the hate-Daniels feast moved to the Troy City Council meeting, where Daniels had to sit through a lot of people (and I’m sure none of them coincidentally included her bitter political enemies) telling her they didn’t like her. When she didn’t resign, talk turned to a boycott of Troy businesses.

Then on Tuesday, proving that the Occupy Wall Streeters’ contempt of  businessmen for lacking all principles was at least  fair when applied to Troy businessmen, Troy Chamber of Commerce president Michele Hodges announced that the Chamber was turning to the “Michigan Round Table for Diversity Inclusion” for suggestions on how to escape the wrath of Big Rainbow.   (“Troy firms seek to avoid a boycott”).  She may as well have announced the Troy C of C had just voted unanimously to add a Lady GaGa wig to the Chamber’s logo.

She noted suggestions could range from a call for anti-discrimination laws in Troy to a request for Daniels' resignation.

"Our goal is to do the healthiest, most solution-oriented thing — whatever that may be."

Neither of the suggestions she mentioned was healthy, in fact they are shockingly stupid.  But I’m sure she was serious when she said she and her members will do anything – even support kicking out the new mayor -- to save their commercial establishments from pink picket lines.

On Thursday the Detroit Free Press let the prime ringleader of the Get Daniels Campaign, Denise Brogan-Kator executive director at Equality Michigan, write their guest editorial on the flap.  (“Troy mayor's choice of words reveals unacceptable prejudice.”)

After identifying herself “[a]s a member of the gay and transgender community,” she says, “I see every day how the use of anti-gay or anti-transgender slurs -- at school, at work, where we shop, or just walking down the street -- inflicts real harm on us.” 

Brogan-Kator knows perfectly well that Daniels’s reference to “queers” took place in none of those settings. Daniels’s Facebook post didn’t go hunting anyone down to hurt them. Brogan-Kator’s constituents had to hunt it down for themselves, and then be offended by what they had already been told they would find.

This is phony.

Brogan-Kator’s no fan of free speech, either. According to her, she can see into every last dark motive of a person using a word she doesn’t like. A slur against homosexuals, she writes, “is the outward proof of one's inner contempt for us, which also expresses itself in actions like bullying, harassment, job discrimination and often violence.”

Or, I say, it could just be a slur. Not every slur equates with violence.  Not every slur even equates with hatred.  If slurs equaled violence, the entire mainstream media and about half the American population would still be serving federal life sentences for all the contempt poured out on George W. Bush.

Nonetheless, Brogan-Kator recognizes no distinction between a word that offends her and an act of violence: “That is why anti-gay slurs must be intolerable in public discourse. It is not simply a matter of respect, which should be sufficient; it is also a matter of safety.”

By Brogan-Kator’s logic, Daniels’s “belief that marriage is between one man and one woman” is just “a familiar and dangerous” excuse for Daniels’s “deep animosity toward the gay community.” (I don’t know what these people imagine a mayor of a town of 80,000 can do to the gay community? – pass an ordinance prohibiting Troy bars from serving Cosmopolitans?)

The real tragedy of all this is that most of the people who turned out to call Mayor Daniels a bigot and demand her resignation after she apologized  were going to do all those things anyway if she hadn’t.  Such is ever the way with bullies. These bullies in particular are never going to accept an apology, because  they’d lose all excuse for blackmailing Troy into adopting laws that the Gay-Rights movement wants.

The truth of it is that Mayor Daniels was at her strongest when her vocabulary, forbidden word and all, was still her own.

Now she’s off balance and we don’t know how things will turn out.

 

P.S.     To round out the week’s hypocrisy, and to show that not all hard words will be banned in the Diversity Utopia, a couple of reasonably prominent Michiganians have shown their own inner contempt by applying the disgusting phrase “Tea Bagger” to Mayor Daniels, a double-standard repeated and repeated on the Internet.  Timothy R. Fischer, Deputy Policy Director at the Michigan Environmental Council, tweeted this last Saturday: “Troy Mayor, Tea Bagger Janice Daniels, wants to send $8.4 mill federal funds back to Wash, exposes anti-gay feelings.” It was re-tweeted by Hugh McDiarmid, Jr. McDiarmid is Communications Director at the Michigan Environmental Council, and a former Detroit Free Press reporter.  Need we even bother to ask if the Michigan Environmental Council needs to fear any repercussions?  Just kidding. 

And we have to mention a website named “Queerty,” with its tag line: FREE OF AN AGENDA. EXCEPT THE GAY ONE, (one of this week’s “Hot Topics” is “Bullying” ).  Queerty offered a piece Thursday under the headline, “How Should We Punish Janice Daniels, the NYC-Hating, Bigoted Mayor of Troy, MI?”

Among the article’s suggestions “from a bunch of Queerty queers” of “the most appropriate punishment for Daniels’ original transgression and her further transgression of not apologizing appropriately?”:

1. Let’s spam the bitch on Facebook. A campaign to mark her status as “Hate speech” has already succeeded, in a way: it aimed to get the offending Facebook status purged off her page, and it’s not there anymore, though she could have deleted it herself. I personally think flame-trolling her with messages is a little juvenile, but it could show her the sheer volume of people who are offended by her, nationally and internationally. Throw some foreign-language insults in there if you can… she’s probably xenophobic too.

By all means, you segment of America most satisfied your consciences are clean from all acts of hate, who see yourselves as most deserving of your “Mean People Suck” bumper stickers, who look down upon the rest of us with the meanest contempt because we still dare to question whether or not the homosexual lifestyle really is – as we’re told daily – completely normal, ineffably beautiful, and in many ways, preferable – by all means you ought to take the Queerty queers’ advice and spam the teabagging bitch on Facebook because she referred to homosexuals as “queers.”

Then try not to choke on the irony.

Justice Derailed

It’s been my opinion for some time that Attorney General for the United States Eric Holder, a self-effacing, witty, and pleasant man in person, is the most unfit person to hold the office in modern memory. By way of follow up to our recent unflattering comparison between Holder and former U.S. Michael Mukasey, I’d like to refer you to Ronald Kolb’s thorough examination of Holder’s history as an untruthful, unprincipled man.

This excerpt from American Thinker:

When Attorney General Eric Holder recently testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about his role in the Fast and Furious operation, where 2,000 rifles were deliberately "walked" from the United States into Mexico, his answers at times seemed incredible and stretched the limits of believability.

A few months earlier, on May the third, Holder had testified before the House that he had only recently learned of the deadly and disastrous operation.

But a series of memos was uncovered by CBS News last October showing that during 2010, Holder had received at least five different notices concerning Fast and Furious from Michael Walther, the director of the National Drug Intelligence Center. He also received another memo from Assistant Attorney General (and long-time associate) Lanny Breuer.

But at the recent hearing, Holder stated three times that he had learned of Fast and Furious only earlier this year, after the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in Arizona. Five times Holder testified that he never saw any of the damning memos.

Senator John Cornyn from Texas queried Holder. "Those are memos with your name on it, addressed to you, referring to the Fast and Furious operation. Are you just saying you didn't read them?"

"I didn't receive them," answered Holder. "They are reviewed by my staff and a determination made as to what ought to be brought to my attention."

Cornyn then asked Holder if he had apologized to Brian Terry's family. The exchange that followed showed a coldness and lack of sensitivity that was truly stunning.

Holder: I have not apologized to them, but I certainly regret what happened.

Cornyn: Have you even talked to them?

Holder: I have not.

But Holder continued. "It is not fair, however, to assume that the mistakes that led to Fast and Furious directly led to the death of Agent Terry."

The day following the hearings, the Terry family responded to Holder with a terse and angry statement. "Mr. Holder needs to own Fast and Furious ... the Attorney General should accept responsibility immediately. It is without question, the right thing to do."

That very same day, in an apparent attempt at damage control, Holder responded with a letter addressed to Terry's parents which he immediately leaked to the press before both parents had the opportunity to read it.

None of these events should be surprising considering Mr. Holder's controversial history.

The two events that Eric Holder is most defined by before becoming attorney general were his key roles while in the Clinton administration in obtaining freedom for members of the Puerto Rican nationalist terrorist group known as the FALN (also known as the Armed Forces of National Liberation). Holder would later follow that by facilitating a pardon for fugitive billionaire Marc Rich.

In looking back at both of those controversies, the similarities to Fast and Furious now seem eerie. Holder had proclaimed sympathy for the FALN victims, but only after the terrorists had been released. He also proclaimed ignorance of both Mr. Rich and the case against him, even though the facts clearly suggest otherwise.

Please read the rest of “The Ethics of Eric Holder.”

When It Comes to ABCs of Free Speech, LGBT Group Deserves an F

Homosexuality was once known as The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name.  No longer.

Now homosexuals never shut up about themselves and their predilections, and it’s the rest of us who dare not speak its name – unless you want to be called a lot of names yourself.

Mayor-elect of Troy, Janice Daniels, is getting pounded for a months-old comment on her Facebook page referring to homosexuals as “queers.”

The city's newly elected mayor on Friday said she won't apologize for a Facebook status update she wrote five months ago referring to gay people as "queers," saying she was speaking for herself when she wrote it and she has a First Amendment right to use the language she wants.

On June 25, the same day New York voted to legalize gay marriage, Janice Daniels posted an update on her wall, "I think I'm going to throw away my I Love New York carrying bag now that queers can get married there."

Even though the update was written in June, on Friday more than 205 people shared it on their own Facebook pages, many referring to Daniels as homophobic and bigoted. (“Troy mayor won't apologize for 5-month-old Facebook status”).

From what I’ve been able to gather most of the small brouhaha on Friday seems to be coming from a single source, a homosexual spokesgroup called Equality Michigan:

"We are shocked and appalled and call on the mayor to apologize, and to endorse a nondiscrimination ordinance in her city that protects gay and transgender residents of Troy from the harm that such language breeds," the group wrote on its Facebook wall Friday afternoon.

Good luck with that effort.

Daniels didn’t actually do anything to anyone, nor call for the doing of anything to anyone. What she did was express opposition to homosexual marriage, and use the term “queer” where most Americans, responsive to our decades of operant conditioning, would naturally use the adjective “gay.”

Daniels’s critics, such as the executive director of Equality Michigan Denise Brogan-Kator, aren’t finding it so easy to demonize Daniels for saying “queer” when, as Brogan-Kator had to admit, “many LGBT people do use the word ‘queer’ as ‘a way to reclaim a word that has historically been used to hurt us, by the majority.’”

I’ll say they use the word. In academia the term is quite at home. There’s “queer theory,” useful in the study of literature and philosophy for raising “questions about our ‘socially constructed’ categories of sexual identity.” There are also “queer studies,” available in all kinds of university “LGBT/Queer Programs,” both public and private. The Harvard Gazette proudly reported on the dean’s decision to appoint a director “to coordinate resources and develop programming in support of bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender, and queer (BGLTQ) undergraduates on campus.” Harvard also has a "Queer Resource Center."

The University of Central Arkansas, showing they’re just as smart as Harvard when it comes to stringing letters of the alphabet together, has a resource that “serves the GLBTQQA (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and allied) community.” We don’t know yet if UCA’s campus speech codes have been used yet to expel any rambunctious students for using the term “questioning” with ill motive towards a member of the GLBTQQA community.

But it’s clear enough that both the Q-word and the Q-letter are completely A-OK when used by the MSWs and PhDs catering to the LGBT, BGLTQ, and GLBTQQA communities in the USA.

In fact, on June 25, the very day of Daniels’s Facebook remark, an article appeared in New York’s Gay City News under the headline, “Queers Should Focus on Arab World and Iran, Not Israel.”

Then why is Daniels being called a homophobe, a bigot, and (the worst thing the Detroit Free Press can hurl at her), “a longtime activist in Michigan's tea party movement”? (“Troy mayor on defensive over gay slur”).

Because, as Brogan-Kator explains, when homosexuals use “queer,” they’re “reclaiming” the word “from the majority who have used it, historically . . . to hurt us.” That wasn’t Daniels’s intent, says Brogan-Kator, which apparently is how Brogan-Kator and her self-righteous friends  justify condemning Daniel’s use of the adjective as shocking and appalling.

And how does the LGBT community know what Daniels’s intent was? Well that’s simple: because she opposes same-sex marriage. Do you think any of these people would care if Daniels had written “Yippee! Now queers in New York can get married!”? Because Daniels opposes same-sex marriage she’s automatically defined by the LGBT community as a homophobe, a bigot, and probably a Christian religious nut. Saying “queer” has nothing to do with it. That’s just a handy excuse to go after her.

“Queer” is either a bad word or it isn’t. If the LGBT-BGLTQ-GLBTQQA community takes so much pride in reclaiming the word to define themselves, they have absolutely no business criticizing anyone for using it as a synonym for “homosexual”: that’s all Daniels used it for on her Facebook page.

I hope Daniels doesn’t apologize. She has done nothing to apologize for.

Mukasey on Islamism

If you still think it doesn’t matter which party is in the White House, compare the current Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, with his immediate predecessor, Michael Mukasey.

Mukasey was the third Attorney General under George W. Bush, after John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzalez, and in my view, the best of the three.

The current AG, Eric Holder, has become notorious for his willingness to reduce the Department of Justice to a political tool of the Obama White House. (Jessica Rubin provides an overview of Holder’s generalship in “Holder's Dept. of Retribution” at American Thinker.) And when it comes to counter-jihad, Holder’s refusal to even utter the phrase “radical Islam” is emblematic of how, since January 2009, the nation’s counterjihad efforts have had to manage as best they can under a chief law enforcement officer of the United States whose response to the country’s struggle against these enemies is to conduct an ideological boycott.

By way of a refreshing contrast, this September former Attorney General Mukasey gave a clear and wide-ranging speech on “Executive Power in Wartime” at Hillsdale College.

I won’t try to summarize all that Mukasey has to say on the topic, but I am impressed at the way Mukasey pulls no punches in naming the enemy:

What bin Laden stood for was Islamism, which—insofar as it holds the U.S. in a weird combination of awe and contempt—has been incubating for about as long as we have known about the other two “isms” that we successfully conquered in the last century. As a movement distinct from the religion of Islam itself, Islamism traces back to Egypt in the 1920s, when the loosely organized Muslim Brotherhood was established by a man named Hassan al-Banna. Al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood as a reaction to the modernizing influence of Kemal Ataturk, who dismantled the shell of what was left of the Muslim caliphate in Turkey, banned the fez and headscarves, and dragged his country into the 20th century.

Mukasey then offers a concise history of the Muslim Brotherhood, explaining how al-Banna’s principal disciple, educator Sayyid Qutb, while on a visiting fellowship to America, was shocked by the decadence of small-town America, (“the ‘animal-like mixing of the sexes, even in church”), and returned to Egypt and joined the Muslim Brotherhood. Based on what he saw of Americans’ numbness to spiritual values, Qutb decided “that Muslims must regard ‘the white man, whether European or American . . . [as] our first enemy.’” Adherents of Qutb, and his brother, who fled Egypt under Nasser and taught the doctrine in Saudi Arabia, included Ayman al-Zawahiri, Omar Abdel Rahman, “the so-called blind sheikh” (who was tried for his role in the first World Trade Center bombing in Mukasey’s courtroom when he was a U.S. District Judge in New York) -- and a young Osama bin Laden.

Through 2000 the WTC bombing and other Islamist attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and on the USS  Cole, were still being treated as crimes, said Mukasey, “despite the fact that in 1996, and again in 1998, Osama bin Laden declared that he and his cohorts were at war with the United States.”

Then came September 11, and to the call “bring them to justice” was added the call “bring justice to them.” We were told that we were at war more than 50 years after Sayyid Qutb determined that Islamists would have to make war on us, about 15 years after Islamists had made it clear that they were training for war with us, and five years after Osama bin Laden made it official with a declaration of war.

In fighting Islamism, we are handicapped at the strategic level by the refusal of those in authority to acknowledge the goals of our adversaries. Those goals are essentially political, and involve the recreation of an Islamic caliphate and the imposition of Sharia law over as broad a swath of the world as possible. This is a profoundly anti-democratic movement at its core, and it regards the whole idea of man-made law as anathema. Instead, we try to be inoffensive by using a term that originated in the administration in which I served, and we refer to a war on terror or terrorism. People who wish to quibble about what it is we are at war with take the discussion off into absurdity. One such person is the President’s Assistant for National Security, John Brennan, who, before an audience at the Center for Strategic Studies, ridiculed the idea of a war on terrorism or on terror, saying it is impossible to have a war on a means or a state of mind.

This lack of clarity also distorts the view of policy makers about what is happening in the Middle East, and so they daydream about democratic movements when the reality on the ground is more populist than democratic. The principal beneficiary of populism is more likely to be the Muslim Brotherhood than the local spokesman for Facebook. The credo of the Muslim Brotherhood is succinct and chilling: Allah is our goal, the Prophet Muhammad is our leader, the Qu’ran is our constitution, jihad is our way, and death in the way of Allah is our promised end.

Can you imagine that Eric Holder – or any other person likely to be appointed Attorney General in a second Obama administration -- would be remotely capable of this kind of forthrightness when it comes to Islam? Holder is so much a political creature that, over the objections of FBI agents and his own federal prosecutors in Dallas, Texas, Holder’s DOJ blew off an opportunity to prosecute a “substantial” case against Omar Ahmad and CAIR for illegally funneling money to Hamas. According to the Jim Kouri at the Examiner, “given the politicization of the Justice Department under Eric Holder, it certainly appears that Justice officials dropped this case in order to appease radical Islamic groups.” (“Holder allegedly protected Hamas-linked CAIR for political reasons”).

The presidential campaign has left a lot of us uninspired.

Maybe it would help to refocus on the achievable possibility, at a minimum, of a Chief Executive who actually knows there’s a war going on.