Author Archives: A

Islam and Communism: Against Buddhism

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I’ve been waiting for a good excuse to bring up Andrei Znamenski’s Red Shambhala: Magic, Prophesy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia. The coming exhibition of Buddhist art at New York’s Asia Society has provided one.

Published by Quest Books (the publishing house of the Theosophical Society), Red Shambhala is a serious work of scholarship, that explores attempts to co-opt and manipulate Buddhism in Tibet and Mongolia by Russian Bolsheviks after the October Revolution, as well as other curious characters. Not the least of these was Nicholas Roerich, a Russian immigrant in New York.

Today, Roerich is best known for his paintings (he was a painter as well as a mystic and political adventurer), which can be seen at the Nicholas Roerich museum in NY, where Znamenski condicted research into this little-known but highly intriguing figure. I like Roerich’s art, but, I must admit, reading Red Shambhala, I didn’t like Roerich. In Znamenski’s portrayal, he was a egomaniac, who manipulated his children, and dreamed of usurping the Dalai Lama, and instituting himself as head of a great… continue reading.

UK: Mixed Messages on Radical Islam

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From European Son (blog)

In 1993, the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a young Black man of 19, led to wide sweeping reforms within Britain’s police authorities. Mr. Lawrence had been waiting for a bus, minding his own business, when he was attacked by several other young men in an unprovoked attack. Criminal and civil proceedings were brought against five men, but no one was ever convicted of the crime, largely because of shortcomings in the police’s response and subsequent investigation. The press was rightly enraged by the response of the police, and, perhaps, the complicity of some of the investigating officers in the case in obscuring the facts. The case remained a focus of national attention for some time, and resurfaced periodically over the next few years, with the center-Right Daily Mail referring to the formerly accused as “murderers” in one 1997 headline, and challenging them to sue the newspaper in response.

It was widely believed that the crime was motivated by racial hatred. In 1999, after a lengthy investigation into both the murder and the police’s response and subsequent investigations, the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry report was drafted. The inquiry confirmed that there had been serious failings in the police’s actions, and concluded that Britain’s police forces were, in effect, institutionally racist. Continue Reading →

Goldstone Mea Culpa: Chickens Come to Roost at Leftist Nest

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From Arutz Sheva

“If I had known then what I know now,” Judge Richard Goldstone wrote on Friday in The Washington Post. “The Goldstone Report would have been a different document.”

“While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy,” Goldstone wrote.

The comment marks the recanting by Goldstone, who chaired the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, of charges that Israel deliberately targeted civilians during Operation Cast Lead. The operation, which commenced on 27 December 2008 and concluded on 18 January 2009, was aimed at stopping terrorist rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli civilians in southern Israel. Most military observers regard the operation as having had only limited, short-term success. Continue Reading →

UK Authoritarianism: “Terrified of People Thinking for Themselves”

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From Hudson New York

“Huge numbers of Britons would support an anti-immigration English nationalist party if it were not associated with violence and fascist imagery,” The Guardian reported last week.

In a certain sense, English nationalism has emerged in opposition to the “neo-imperialism” or “neo-colonialism” of a militant wing that refuses to allow minorities to be English, preferring to keep them “minorities” to be used as political pawns. However, the association of English nationalism with anti-Islamism causes the most alarm: in hoping that radical, anti-Western Muslims would prove useful in instigating revolution, the far-Left has long allied with Islamist organizations.

The UK actually does have such a party: the English Democrats. Founded in 1998 by former Conservative Party member, and its current chairman, Robin Tilbrook, it won its first mayoral election in 2009, with Peter Davies elected mayor for the city Doncaster. In line with The Guardian’s assertions, Tilbrook also believes his party has reached a “critical mass,” and is poised to make further electoral gains.

The sudden interest in, and concern about, the possible appeal of an English nationalist party was almost certainly provoked by a recent Daily Star front-cover story a few weeks ago, in which the tabloid claimed that the English Defence League, an increasingly visible anti-Islamist protest movement, was about to form itself into a political party.

The Daily Star’s reporting caused a considerable stir in the media and blogosphere, not least of all as the EDL’s leader was quoted as saying only that they were not ruling out becoming a political party – which may have been an off-the-cuff remark. Since then, one of the tabloid’s reporters has quit, claiming that the Daily Star peddled anti-Muslim bias and “hatemongering.”

The Guardian’s report on the potential appeal of an English nationalist party was based on… Read More.

Law in Austria: Guilty for Questioning Islam

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The European “elite” has increasingly asserted that any questioning of Islam is criminal.

A few weeks ago Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was fined 480 Euros for the “denigration of religious teachings of a legally recognized religion in Austria.” In a three-part seminar Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff had referred to Islam’s prophet Mohammed’s marriage to Aisha. According to generally-accepted Islamic textual tradition, Aisha was six at the time of the marriage, which was consummated when she was nine. Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff asked rhetorically “if this does not constitute pedophilia, what does?”

Defending the doctrines, beliefs, and figures of various “legally recognized” religions is liable to have unanticipated consequences. As Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff observes, “the judge didn’t deny that Mohammed had sex with a nine year old. It is actually now proven in court that Mohammed had sex with a nine year-old.” However, she says, “it’s just that I am not allowed to say that he was a pedophile.” Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff is not allowed to, because, in the words of the judge, as she passed sentence, “pedophilia is a sexual preference which solely or mainly is directed towards children. Nevertheless, it does not apply to Mohammad. He was still married to Aisha when she was 18.”

The fine – representing a sentence of 120 days – is deceptively low. It was reduced to the minimum allowed to take into account that Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff has no income. It is usually waived for first time offenders, however, the presiding judge claimed Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff was a “repeat offender” because she had, in her judgment, referred to Mohammed being a pedophile more than once.

Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff says she is stunned by the verdict, and determined to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary. “I was actually asking a question,” she says, “and for that I was convicted.”

The court did not find that she had made her comments maliciously: “I am the first Austrian never to have been convicted of the hate speech charge,” she notes, “I was not found guilty under the hate speech charge [paragraph 2, 83, section two].” Instead, the charge of… Read More.

Wikileaks, the Conspiracy Theorist, and the new anti-Semitic Myth of World Power

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From The Westminster Journal

Last week WikiLeaks’ former “no. 2” Daniel Domscheit-Berg said that Julian Assange, the organization’s chairman, “sought out” Israel Shamir for collaboration. Shamir, A Russian Jew who converted to Christianity, is best known as an anti-Semitic/anti-Zionist conspiracy theorist, and author of numerous articles and several books in this genre. According to Domscheit-Berg, Assange had read Shamir’s works and found them “compelling.”

A statement on Shamir’s website claimed that he “is NOR [sic] a member, NEITHER an employee of Wikileaks: he is a freelance writer covering the Cablegate for the Russian media.” Cablegate, a play on the so-called “Irangate” scandal, refers to the leaking, and the subsequent Wikileaks’ publishing, of tens of thousands of classified US diplomatic cables.

In the abstract, Shamir seems a highly unlikely figure to seek out for collaboration on such a project. An anti-Zionist conference, held by MAUP in the Ukraine, was attended by Shamir, former KKK leader David Duke, and others in this field of study. Hardly surprising, Shamir is highly praised by David Duke, although he also has friends on the far-Left of the political spectrum, most notably… Read More.

Book Review: Allah Is Dead: Why Islam is not a Religion

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Books on Islam is a saturated market, an editor friend of mine told a few months ago. At the time I though she might be right. I had only recently read a couple of works that, for want of a better description, read like second rate Bruce Bawers. Maudlin and self-absorbed, these books (which shall remain nameless) tell us more about the authors than they do about radical Islam. Former boyfriends, Holland in the Springtime, and hints that the Pulitzer Prize went to the wrong author, are punctuated with references to female genital mutilation, terrorist acts, and hook-handed radical preachers.

It is as if one were wandering around an Impressionist exhibition only to discover someone has scribbled images of Palestinian terrorists in thick black marker pen all over the Monets. Yes, the juxtapositions is jarring, but the average person living in the West is assaulted by contradictory messages every day, whether on the stream of billboard adverts he passes on the way to work or in an evening’s television-watching. Consequently, such books fail to shock, and, indeed, to force us to see the crisis of the West as an existential threat. Our jaded culture, and cultural relativism, allows us to believe that the graffiti might be the real art. And one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter anyway. So what’s the problem?

It’s this kind of cultural relativism, and cultural suicidal tendencies, that Rebecca Bynum confronts in Allah Is Dead: Why Islam is not a Religion (New English Review Press). At 152 pages, this work is slimmer than those like the aforementioned, but it is denser and far more challenging. Few, if any, will agree with everything that is said. But this book was not written to be agreed with. It was written to shake things up, and push the reader outside of his comfort zone. An engaged mind is more important to Bynum than a nodding head.

Western culture is in sharp focus throughout Allah Is Dead. Sometimes a crack in the dam of the West is spotlighted – from promiscuous notions of equality to churches that want to rethink Christ so as not to offend Muslims. At other times it is contrasted with Islam. As such, Allah Is Dead is in the vein of Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam by Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) and Marcello Pera, and, to a certain extent, Eric Voegelin’s Science, Politics and Gnosticism. But the pace is different.

More complex, more academic, more confrontational, drawing on the Bible, Tocqueville, and Milton, as well as contemporary intellectuals, reading Bynum’s work is like taking a white-knuckle ride with Jesus, drag racing against Islam and Western sell-outs, and slamming into any car with a politically correct bumper sticker. There are plenty of those on the road, it turns out. But there are no pleasant side roads to lead us from the ghettos, on fire with rioting, to that cozy wine bar off the Champs-Elysees. All escape roots are blocked. For Bynum, there is no Wahabi, Shiite, Sunni, or Sufi Islam. There is only Islam. People like me who insist on differentiating between Islam and Islamism are sissy learner-drivers who need to get off the road – I paraphrase, but you get the picture. Continue Reading →

UK Juggles Islam and Islamism

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From Hudson New York

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, co-Chairperson of the Conservative Party, the senior partner in the United Kingdom’s coalition government, in January gave the Sternberg Lecture Speech at Leicester University on the subject, “Islamophobia.” “For far too many people,” she said, “Islamophobia is seen as a legitimate – even commendable – thing. You could even say that Islamophobia has now passed the dinner-table-test.” This, she told The Telegraph, prior to delivering the speech, meant that: “It has seeped into our society in a way where it is acceptable around dinner to have these conversations where anti-Muslim hatred and bigotry is quite openly discussed.”

The “dinner-table” image is clever, suggesting not only that “Islamophobia” is respectable, but that whenever two or three non-Muslims get together the conversation surely turns to attacking Muslims. Despite rampant political correctness in the media and political class, the speech was almost universally attacked. The Prime Minister’s office also denied seeing the speech prior to its having been delivered, although the media had reported on it 24 hours earlier, and some reports suggested that it had, in fact, been seen there.

Among the critics was Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn, who reminded his readers that “In politics, as in comedy, timing is everything.” With the recent enquiry into the London 7/7 bombings and fresh revelations of Pakistani Muslim gangs raping and pimping White non-Muslim girls, Wari’s timing, he suggested, could not have been worse. According to reports, at least hundreds of girls, between the ages of 11 and 16 have been abused, raped, drugged, and prostituted by the gangs. There had been a history of the police authorities overlooking the gangs and their sexual crimes against children since they feared being branded “racist and, of course, “Islamophobic.”

However, in a certain respect, Littlejohn’s remark was unfair to the baroness. After all, when would have been the right time for the speech? If Warsi had given it a month earlier it would have been during the aftermath of the Stockholm suicide terrorist bombing (the perpetrator of which had been radicalized in the British city of Luton), and on the same day as 12 Islamist terror suspects were arrested for planning mass casualty attacks inside the UK.

If Warsi had waited until February… Read More.

Britain facing ‘unstoppable wave of home-grown suicide bombers’ warns MI6

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DAILY MAIL:

Secret Intelligence Service official claims new Jihadists will slip ‘under the radar’
The terrifying prospect of a wave of suicide bombings by home-grown terrorists unknown to authorities was revealed today.

The problem is set to blight Britain for a generation, an MI6 officer warned in secret intelligence documents.

The Secret Intelligence Service official warned that radicalised British Muslims who undertake training will become ‘suicide operatives’ who will target innocent civilians.

British-born terrorists were behind the July 7 2005 London bombings and the four men involved had been radicalised and received terror training abroad.

The warning came in a briefing of U.S. congressmen who visited the UK in 2008 and was contained in a cache of American diplomatic cables obtained by whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

The documents also reveal American concerns that British intelligence workers are failing to contain domestic terrororist because of budget cuts.

The warning was revealed by the Daily Telegraph as the independent reviewer of anti-terror laws claimed that European human rights rulings had made the UK a ‘safe haven’ for suspected terrorists.

In his annual review of legislation, Lord Carlile of Berriew backed the Government’s attempts to deport foreign suspects with assurances over their treatment once returned home.

According to the U.S. embassy’s record of the congressmen’s visit, the MI6 official told them that the UK was ‘wholly or largely dependent’ on help from the CIA and other American sources for monitoring terrorism. Continue Reading →

Islamists Face off with English Defense League in Canada

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By Christine Williams, News Real Blog

A Toronto rally signifying a push by the English Defence League(EDL) in Canada drew heated protests from placard-waving demonstrators hollering:  “EDL go to hell” and “neo-Nazi fascist thugs”.   Protesters blocked the street and 4 people were subsequently arrested with one police officer requiring medicaltreatment.

The EDL is an anti-Islamist group, whose leader– Tommy Robinson–was communicating with supporters over the internet outside the Toronto Zionist Center while protests smouldered. He was using a video feed over a movie screen which read:  “Canadians wake up.  The Islamicization of your country is on its way.”

The Canadian Jewish Congress opposed the efforts of the EDL with a statement from its CEO Bernie Farber:

Islamic fundamentalism is a real threat. But fighting it with generalized hatred against Muslims, as does the EDL, is only a recipe for fuelling more conflict.

We join with all the leading British Jewish organizations in condemning the intolerance and violence that the EDL represents. full story

Racism is a serious issue that needs to be battled.   Islamists recognize this and use it as a cover. They are adept at wielding the propaganda stick. One method is to rally against groups that stymie their cause by levying accusations of racism.  This includes opposition against the nation of Israel, deeming it to be a racist, ‘apartheid” state.

An open letter signed by two dozen activist organizations ‘warns’: “The English Defence League is a far-right extremist organization,”

Now take a look at the groups among these activist organizations: Continue Reading →

Europe On Trial: “What is the Judge Going to Find Me Guilty of, Quoting the Koran?”

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From Hudson New York.

When Austrian anti-sharia activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff stood in court November 28 to defend herself against the charge of “incitement of hatred,” her alleged “crime” was to have given a seminar on the subject of Islam in Europe, during which she quoted the Koran and several prominent Islamic scholars.

The case was suspended until January 18, when she will be back in court facing the possibility of receiving a sentence of up to three years in jail. In the meantime, although the Austrian media has largely refused to report the case, Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff has been garnering attention elsewhere for her activism. She recently visited Israel with a small delegation of European politicians. Sarah Palin has called the delegation to offer her support, and author Bat Ye’or has also sent a letter of support.

“It is so important to fight this fight,” Sabaditsch-Wolff said recently, “and not to give up. I feel if ever I have to be in court, this is a very worthy cause.”

Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff’s legal problems began when she presented a three-part seminar to the Freedom Education Institute, attached to the Austrian Freedom Party. Veronika Dolna, a young journalist for the Left-wingNews magazine attended the first two parts, recording the second part and about 30 minutes of the first.

Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff has since been studying Islam for about ten hours a day in preparation for her court case, although she says that “religion should not be in the courtroom. It does not belong there. How can you explain in court the gates of Ijtihad [questioning,]… that they have been closed.,” she said.

“What is the judge going to do with information… that there cannot be any change in Islam as long as the gates of Ijtihad are closed. What is she going to judge on? Is she judging me or is she judging the Koran? What is she going to find me guilty of? Of quoting the Koran?”

Neither Dolna nor any other journalist with the magazine attended the crucial third part: the then-editor of Newshad reported Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff to the authorities, and pressed for a prosecution.. The third lecture was subsequently delivered as planned, and Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff says that she “would have learned the most from it because that is the part on human rights, the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights, honor killings, and sharia law and how it affects us in Europe today. She basically missed the most important part.” Surprisingly Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff has no hard feelings towards Ms. Dolna, and says that “she’s just a young girl who was just used – and abused, in my opinion. I have no hard feelings towards her. I think she is just a victim of this game that the editor in chief was playing.”

The game, as far as Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff is concerned, is “lawfare.” – the malicious use of the courts to try to silence free speech about Islam: “We all know,” she said, “that lawfare is the name of the game.”

The EU recently issued the “Framework decision on combating racism and xenophobia,” which its member states were required to implement by November 28. This requires the punishment of “certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law,” and Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff believes that it will be used to silence critics of Islam and sharia.

She recently spoke of this at a conference in Paris, where she derided the EU as totalitarian like “the Nazis and the Fascists and the Communists,” but, she says, they are establishing their dictatorship “quietly and peacefully” through the use of lawfare rather than violence. Nevertheless, citizens of EU member states who fear Islamist terrorism, and violence or intimidation in “Muslim areas” are finding that this is backed up by EU law and political correctness.

“That is what’s so evil about the European Union”, Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff said. “Of course there is no violence coming from the European Union itself; it is just paving the way for the violence… Violence within the European Union is happening because the EU is making it possible. The uprisings in Paris, or Brussels, or Rotterdam – they are taking place because the EU is a conduit.”

Those who dare to stand up and be counted find themselves on the wrong side of the law. Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff runs off a list of prosecutions against those who have criticized Islam – Geert Wilders, Ezra Levant, Mark Steyn, and so on. They want “to silence us,” she says, “because what we are saying goes against the politically correct doctrine that is now being preached in Europe and the United States. It is there to silence us, but I for one will not be silenced.” That is certainly true: since Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff heard about her court case from the media – she was officially informed only later – she has been more active than ever, becoming the poster-woman for Europe’s “Counter-Jihad” movement.

At a recent speech in Paris Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff received a standing ovations from an audience of people of all ages and backgrounds. She says that there has been a notable change in Europe over the last year. People no longer accept the reassurances of the old political class; they are “hungry” for information. “The past year,” she notes “started with my story, and also with Thilo Sarrazin in Germany, and the Wilders trial in the Netherlands; and there is a movement starting because people are fed up – absolutely fed up. The political elite are telling them one thing, but what they see is a totally different reality.”

This unwelcome “different reality” of Europe is, at last, beginning to find a more coherent opposition in the form of what is being described as the “New European Right.” The term denotes the significant number of anti-immigration, anti-Islamist and, increasingly, pro-Israel parties in Europe. Dutch MP Geert Wilders is the best known of these, at least within the US; his Party for Freedom has undoubtedly served as something of a model for the movement.

Some of the other parties described as part of the “New European Right” are… Continue reading.

UK: Pretexts for a Marxist Revolution

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From Hudson-NY.org

Although a loose coalition of anarchist hooligans may have initiated the recent frenzy and violence in Britain, socialist organizations are now attempting to capture the student protests and use them as a pretext for wider social unrest. This, probably far more real threat has, however, gone unnoticed by the mainstream media.

The lack of official comment is far from unusual, and must be accredited in part to the sympathy of the Left-leaning media and politicians. Notably, two member of the “democratic socialist” Labour Party have lauded the rioters via Twitter. MP John McDonnell commented that it “just shows what can be done when people get angry. We must build on this;” while fellow party member MP Alex Cunningham tweeted: “Well done our students – thousands outside the office getting stuck into the LibDem / Tory government.”

Cunningham was referring to the first protest, in which anarchists attacked the Conservative Party HQ, Millbank Tower. Windows were smashed with hammers, metal bars, and sticks. Ceiling fixtures were pulled down. Walls were sprayed with graffiti. After which students poured into the building, with some reaching the rooftop. One of these protestors then threw a fire extinguisher, which missed a number of police by only a few feet as it crashed to the ground several stories below. By the end, seven police needed hospital treatment due to the sustained attack. Continue Reading →

UK Rundown 2010: Shaken but not Stirred

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From Hudson-NY

With an election having taken place in May, 2010 should have been the year in which politics took center stage. Instead, the pressing issues of the day were largely ignored during the campaign period, as they have been for the last decade. Partly as a consequence, 2010 turned into the year in which politics spilled over into the streets.

Welfare cuts were, perhaps inevitably, an issue that the parties somewhat tackled. Still, students – the base of Britain’s third party, the Liberal Democrats – expressed their outrage at the university-fees hike proposed by the coalition government (of which the Lib Dems are the junior partner). The students were also whipped up into rioting throughout November and December by various socialist organizations – a situation that appears to have remained off the radars of both the authorities and the media.

As former University College London student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up an airplane over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, the year also began with perhaps some unfortunately rhetorical questions about radicalization in the UK. Islamist extremism and terrorism, both attempted and actual, were more in evidence in 2010 than ever before, except of course for 2005, the year of the 7/7 London attacks: throughout this year, members of the banned extremist organization Islam4UK were especially visible. Islamist infiltration in the UK is less easy to detect, but the surface was scratched enough – especially by center-Right newspaper The Telegraph – for it to have been periodically exposed.

If the authorities were shaken by Abdulmutallab’s attempt to murder Americans, apparently they were not all stirred to grasp the extent of the problem in the UK. Others were: 2010 saw a rise in the number of anti-Islamist protests, held across the country, largely by the English Defense League movement – described by Prime Minister David Cameron as “terrible people.”

December 2010 brought yet fresh embarrassment, with a virtual repeat of December 2009: Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, a former student at the British city of Luton, carried out a suicide bombing in Stockholm, killing, however, only himself.

With special attention to radical Islam in Britain, some events are more dramatic than others, although they all tell us much about the broad state of the country. Other important events, such as the general election, occurred, as well as some that are minor, but which may give a more complete and nuanced picture of Great Britain today.

January:

The extremist group Islam4UK is banned. Former Islam4UK leader Anjem Choudary appears on BBC chat show the Daily Politics [video] following the ban, describing it as “a waste of time.” Continue Reading →

Britain Extends the White Flag of Surrender to Islamist Radicals

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From Hudson-NY.org

“If we know anything,” former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, once observed “we know that weakness is provocative.” Mired in political correctness, Britain’s “elites” apparently prefer to think of displays of weakness as “outreach.”

Britain’s “elites” seem not to notice Islamism, but prefer to believe that if those protesting against Islamism could be silenced, the problem of radical Islam would disappear. It was this mindset that saw parliament introducing a religious hate speech law, aimed at silencing criticism of Islam and Islamism, in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings. Britain’s establishment, in other words, has busied itself clearing a very large space in which the Islamists can operate.

Last month, the British coalition government unveiled The Strategic Defense and Security Review [pdf]. The defense budget will be slashed by 8% over the next four years. Britain’s flagship HMS Ark Royal, Harrier jump jets, replacement Nimrod spy planes will be axed, as will 42,000 jobs in the armed forces and the Ministry of Defense .

The cuts are so severe that top military officers are said to be considering threatening resignation if the budget cuts go ahead as planned. US Secretary if Stare Hillary Clinton has also aired the US administration’s concernover the size of the cuts.

The scrapping of the flagship aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal must surely have caused top navy brass to reflect on the decommissioning of the HMS Intrepid in 1982: only four months after decommissioning had begun, Argentina invaded the British territory of the Falklands Islands. In the ensuing 74-day war, Britain lost more than 250 servicemen, before reclaiming the territory.

Prior to the outbreak of conflict, it was almost universally believed that Britain could not defeat the Argentine forces. The HMS Intrepid had to be hurriedly brought back into commission, and sent to the Falklands to defend the islands.

Since British companies began oil exploration off the islands early in the year, Argentina has once again made clear its intention to bring them under Argentine sovereignty.

There is also the Spanish and British dispute over the British territory of Gibraltar.

Both are potentially serious situations, even if they do not rank very highly in the concerns of the British public. To them, unsurprisingly, terrorism is considered “a Tier One risk,” if not the major threat to British security.

In the words of the Strategic Defense and Security Review: “The most significant terrorist threat to the UK and its interests overseas comes from the Al Qaeda senior leadership based in the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and their affiliates and supporters.”

The risk sounds reassuringly far away.

It was, of course, intended to.

The sense that terrorism is a distant threat, however, is not only created by invoking the hinterlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan and “Al Qaeda senior leadership,” but by the complete absence of an acknowledgment of the ideology behind the threat. Nowhere in the report is Islamism, or political Islam, mentioned.

Much of Europe is now openly, if reluctantly, acknowledging the problems wrought by political multiculturalism, not least of all how it has facilitated the rise of Islamic radicalism in European states.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently said that multiculturalism has “utterly failed.” However, Britain’s “elite” – the government, media, and various protest groups – still insist on turning a blind eye to the new fascism. Rather than face down those calling for the destruction of Western civilization, their knee-jerk reaction appears to be to appease them.

Those who do speak up against Islamism are smeared. Some prominent anti-Islamist spokespeople claim also to have been threatened with arrest. With Britain’s establishment afraid to mention Islamism, Islam’s extremist radical adherents seem to have it easy in comparison to anti-Islamists.

Imagine what the group of Islamist radicals, calling itself Muslims Against Crusades, must have thought a few days ago. In Britain (as in Canada, New Zealand, and some other countries) it is a tradition to wear a poppy on November 11, to commemorate “Poppy Day,” or what the Americans call “Armistice Day.” The emblem comes from the poem In Flanders Fields by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae (1872-1918) of the Canadian army, when Flanders had been the site of continual warfare during World War I, and Lt. McCrae had invoked the poppies that grew wild in its fields to suggest the scale of the fatalities there. The poppy, with its red petals, and black center, is also reminiscent of a wound by a gunshot, and, as such, is worn with a certain mixture of pride and humility.

About 50 members of Muslims Against Crusades [MAC] turned up in central London carrying the black flag of Islam and banners reading “Islam will dominate,” “democracy go to Hell,” and “Allah is our protector; you have no protector.” They had come to burn a large poppy, a couple of feet square, and to disrupt the two minutes of silence for Britain’s fallen soldiers. Continue Reading →