Category Archives: Andrew Bostom

Nazis Vs. Nazi-ist-ism extremists

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There seems to be a vestigial debate taking place about the motive for islamic terror and islamic action for manifest destiny. The notion that there is an islam which is miscible with other ideologies and then a hijacked and modern version which is supremacist and violent. I say vestigial because as islam ramps up its full on attack on the rest of the world it really seems to matter less and less whether its islam or just the hundred million or so we see trying to take down world governments and implementing sharia as directed through pretty much all the mosques in the world.

Last night, Ottawa’s Free Thinking Film Society brought in probably the most important speaker for the first position, Daniel Pipes. The FTFS also brought in the main speaker for the other position in 2010, Geert Wilders. So whatever else one may think certainly the Free Thinking Film Society is doing excellent work no matter which side of the debate you may be on.

The video of Mr. Pipes speaking last night is here part 1 and here part 2

Interestingly and by coincidence Andrew Bostom published an article today where he directly takes on the position of Mr. Pipes, a segment of which is below.

The “Essentialism” Devil and Daniel Pipes

Said and Pipes: An “Essentialist” Harmonic Convergence?

Daniel Pipes’ 5/13/13 essay in The Washington Times derides “those who focus on Islam itself as the problem”—identifying Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, and Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders by name.

Most of his essay re-affirms (but never establishes by dint of hard doctrinal and historical facts) the same glib, tired arguments Pipes has discussed before: Islam’s prophet Muhammad was not an “Islamist,” and was not responsible for “Islamism,” which is a “modern extremist variant” of Islam; an “unbearable” discordance between “pre-modern accomplishment and modern failure” caused the (mass?) “psychic trauma” which engendered “Islamism” in the 1920s; and a mere 10-15% of Muslims support what Pipes terms “Islamism.”

Pipes concludes his latest iteration of “Islam Versus Islamism” by attacking those (such as Ali, Sultan, and Wilders) who reject its shoddy premises for their ostensibly uninformed “succumbing” to what he terms “a simplistic and essentialist illusion” of the Muslim creed. Ironically, Pipes’ latter claim of “essentialism” re-packages the post-modern incoherence of Edward Said, as demonstrated brilliantly by Philosophy Professor Irfan Khawaja. As Khawaja observed in 2007:

If Said thinks that Islam is different from other abstract nouns, he needs to tell us why… And yet, as we have seen, he often treats abstract nouns in an essentialist fashion. So it should follow that Islam can be treated the same way. And yet that is precisely what he takes to be the cardinal sin.

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I welcome the comments of those who have something to say on this sideshow debate on the issue of Islam Vs. Islamistism extremism. Or communism Vs. Communistismlamist extremists etc.

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COMMENT by TRUTHIOCITY:

Comment:
1. Islamists use islam to validate their stance and to inspire jihadism and supremicism. The core ideology is a tool for them and as such should be delegitimized – thus made a less effective tool.

2. The modernist changes that Mr. Pipes talks about come from fudging the original rules. It’s common sense and pragmatic but the core beliefs remain in place to be returned to in future. That’s just what the various fundamentalists have already done.

So if islamists are vanquished, the core beliefs are still there for future islamists to utilize again and jihadism can reemerge at any time in the future.

3. Furthermore even Islamic states that are motivated by state power rather than religion can still utilize islam’s core as a lever to inspire violence for the benifit of the state. This is pretty much what Iran does.

4. I recognize that it’s not nice but one part of warfare is to attack the enemies belief systems that are connected to it’s capacity to wage war. Islam is exactly that kind of belief system. By not attacking it as we would a weapons factory, we allow the enemy unhindered access to a weapon they use against us.

The Islamists KNOW this and their psychological attacks on our own belief systems (and personal psychology) is an integral part of their jihad. Attacking our belief systems that stand in the way of their conquest. That’s what all that muslim bitching about the flag of st George is really about. It’s psychological warfare meant to reduce resistance by making people feel neurotic about patriotism.

What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the heathen, pagan, devil worshiping, primitive, animal sacrificing, gander.

And no it’s not nice but not as mean as we are lead to believe. It doesn’t hurt peoples feelings- that’s a lie. It’s islamist bullshit meant to prevent us from doing to them what they are knowingly doing to us. It’s intellectual warfare strategy meant to help them win in the war of ideas. The analogy in kinetic warfare is when you fire at an enemy in order to hinder their ability to fire on your advance.

 

Magdi Allam Leaves Catholic Church Over Its Dhimmitude

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Andrew Bostom:

March 25th, 2013 (4 minutes ago) by Andrew Bostom |

In a profoundly symbolic gesture (hat tip Tundra Tabloids), which epitomizes the Catholic Church’s abject dhimmitude, high-profile Muslim convert to Christianity Magdi Christiano Allam, has renounced his Catholicism because of what he terms the Church’s weakness toward, and legitimation of, Islam.

Allam, who will remain a Christian, reiterated his belief that Islam is inherently violent, to both its own votaries, and non-Muslims, and criticized The Church for lacking “the vision and courage to denounce the incompatibility of Islam with our [Western] civilization and fundamental rights of the person.”

When Benedict XVI himself oversaw Magdi Allam’s public Easter 2008 conversion from Islam to Christianity, in St. Peter’s Basilica, the intrepid Mr. Allam clearly enunciated Islam’s defining bellicose intolerance, while extolling the Pope’s moral courage:

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Diana West and Andrew Bostom on the NY Times hit piece on Lars Hedigaard

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Diana West excerpt:

The NYT on the Would-Be, Might-Have-Been Assassination of Lars Hedegaard

Feb 28

Written by: Diana West
Thursday, February 28, 2013 4:12 AM 

The New York Times weighs in today (like a ton of bricks) on the attempted assassination of Lars Hedegaard, editor of Dispatch International.

“Danish Critic of Islam Attacked, and Muslims Defend His Right to Speak” (with links from the NYT original)

By Andrew Higgins (photo above):

COPENHAGEN — When a would-be assassin disguised as a postman shot at — and just missed — the head of Lars Hedegaard, an anti-Islam polemicist and former newspaper editor, this month, a cloud of suspicion immediately fell on Denmark’s Muslim minority.

This isn’t a newspaper lede, it’s a framework of Leftist attitude through which the pre-enlightened Timesreader is to view the event.

As such, it’s worth a closer look. Note how the emotional seesaw touches down, first, at the head of Lars Hedegaard — “just missed” by  a “would-be” (hapless) assassin– before lifting again as if burnt by the heat emanating from the “anti-Islam polemicist” (bad) and “former newspaper editor” (what good is he now?). It falls again through a troubling “cloud of suspicion” (cliche evokes *prejudice*) to land, thud, at “Denmark’s Muslim minority.”

Excerpt from Andrew Bostom:

Times Demonizes Hedegaard, Lionizes Danish Muslim Instigator of Murderous Cartoon Riots

February 28th, 2013 (6 hours ago) by Andrew Bostom |

walter_duranty-2

Reporting “worthy” of this man, Walter Duranty

Andrew Higgins’ “inspirational” muse must be the ignoble New York Times reporter Walter Duranty, who deliberately concealed Stalin’s campaign of mass starvation and murder (or “dekulakization”) of 14.5 million in the Ukraine, from 1930-1937 (see Robert Conquest’s magisterial Harvest of Sorrow, pp. 299-307). This travesty was compounded when Duranty was awarded a 1932 Pulitzer prize for his despicably whitewashed, agitprop “reporting”.

Eight decades later, ostensibly reporting on the recent failed assassination attempt against Danish journalist and historian Lars Hedegaard for the New York Times (or more appositely, the New Duranty Times, since the “paper of record” has never denounced Duranty’s illegitimate receipt of the Pulitzer), Higgins demonizes Hedegaard as a purveyor of “ anti-Muslim bile and conspiracy-laden forecasts,” while lionizing Copenhagen’s Islamic Society, in particular, its current leader, Imran Shah.

Please click headlines for whole articles

Lars Hedegaard and the Enemies of Truthfulness

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Andrew Bostom:

Last week I noted how Michael Coren of Canada’s Sun TV was far bolder than any of his US television network colleagues in dealing with Islam’s threat to Western free speech, epitomized by Coren’s interview of Danish journalist and historian Lars Hedegaard, who survived an assassination attempt by a likely Muslim assailant, still at large. No such interview with public airing on television was conducted by any major US television network-ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, CNN-not even the self-proclaimed “alternative” to “stultifying political correctness,”  and “champion” of free speech, The Blaze TV.

Emphasizing, yet again, the ongoing, complete dereliction of duty of not only the mainstream legacy media, but so-called conservative outlets such as Fox News and The Blaze, Michael Coren opened his follow-up interview  of Lars Hedegaard, yesterday (2/15/13), with this observation:

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American Hostages to Jihad in Algeria: 1640 to Present

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Andrew Bostom:

January 18th, 2013 by Andrew Bostom |
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Early Wednesday (1/16/13) jihadists seized a gas field in Amenas, eastern Algeria, near the border with Libya, taking hostage just under 200 workers, predominantly Algerians, but also some forty foreigners, among them an undisclosed number of Americans. Speaking to France 24, an unnamed hostage claimed the prisoners were being forced to wear explosive belts. The hostage added that their captors were heavily armed and had threatened to detonate the base should the Algerian army attempt to storm it.

The jihadist attackers, in a statement sent to ANI, a Mauritanian news agency, claimed “the operation was a response to flagrant interference of Algeria, [which] opened its airspace to the French Air Force [who] bombed areas of northern Mali,”  and demanded the “immediate halt of the aggression against our own in Mali.” Reference was also made to “the participation of Algeria in the war with France,” as “being a betrayal of the blood of the martyrs of Algerians who were killed in the fight against French colonialism.” Al Mulathameen (“The Masked Brigade”), who apparently prepared the announcement, is associated with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of Al Qaeda. The group insisted it was holding more than 40 “crusaders” —a prototypical jihadist reference to non-Muslims — “including seven Americans, two French, two British as well as other citizens of various European nationalities.” Algeria’s interior minister, Daho Ould Kablia, maintained the raid was orchestrated by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian who fought Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s and has reportedly established his own group in the Sahara

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Why Is America Midwiving a Muslim Brotherhood-Ruled Syria?

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PJ Media

Andrew G Bostom

Following significant military successes and diplomatic gains by Syria’s anti-Bashar Assad Sunni Muslim insurgency over recent weeks, Moscow, a key Assad regime ally, announced Tuesday 12/18/12 its preparations for an evacuation of Russian citizens living in Syria.

While the Assad regime’s ruling Alawite minority sect retained a firm hold on their indigenous base in the coastal Syrian provinces, the predominantly Sunni Muslim Syrian rebels have seized the northern and eastern border zones, near Turkey and Iraq, respectively, and dominate wide swathes of rural Syria. The continued rebel assault is even advancing on Assad’s seat of power, Damascus, near the western frontier of Lebanon, having just seized the pro-Assad Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, on the southern edge of the Syrian capital.

By Wednesday, the rebels had reportedly captured at least six towns in the central Hama governorate (Latamneh, Helfaya, Kfar Naboudah, Hasraya, Tibat al-Imn, and Kfar Zita), with skirmishes erupting in the city of Hama itself. As of Friday, the Sunni insurgents were besieging Morek, an Alawite stronghold in Hama governorate, a province which contains dozens of Alawite and Christian villages among Sunni towns, igniting fears of increased sectarian violence.

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Interview–Sharia versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism, an Interview with Dr. Andrew Bostom

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From Front page via

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October 19th, 2012 (10 hours ago) by Andrew Bostom |
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The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (formerly Organization of the Islamic Conference; OIC), living embodiment of Islam’s Sharia-based Caliphate dreams, and a modern “Islamintern,” reminiscent of the 20th century Soviet Comintern.

Posted at Frontpage Magazine.com

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Andrew G. Bostom, the editor of the highly acclaimed The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims and of The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History. He has published articles and commentary on Islam in the Washington Times, National Review Online, The New York Post, The New York Daily News, Frontpagemag.com, American Thinker, Pajamas Media, The Daily Caller, Human Events, and other print and online publications. He is the author of the new book, Sharia versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism. Visit his blog at andrewbostom.org/blog/.

FP: Andrew G. Bostom, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Congratulations on your new book, Sharia versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism.

What inspired you to write this book about Sharia Law and how is it different from other books?

Bostom: Thanks Jamie! I became fascinated (if alarmed) by some excellent polling data reported in the Spring of 2007 resulting from a collaboration between the University of Maryland, and World Opinion Dynamics (and wrote about it here). The survey sample was quite extensive (encompassing some 4000 individuals) and comprised of face to face interviews in local languages of Muslims from Morocco, Egypt, Indonesia, and Pakistan. Data from two questions jumped out at me. The first asked about the strict implementation of Sharia law in Islamic countries. Sixty-five percent of Muslims were moderately or strongly in favor of this proposition. The second was about desire to establish/re-establish the Caliphate (i.e., a transnational Muslim superstate, consistent with the borders established by the jihad conquests across Asia, Africa, and Europe, from the 7th through 17th centuries). Again, 65% of the Muslim sample was supportive of this goal. I began to ask myself a series of questions. How has the idea of the Caliphate been actualized in the past? Why has it survived to this day? Why is the notion of a Caliphate so popular among Muslims, and what are implications of its popularity, for Muslims, and non-Muslims? These questions lead inevitably to Islam’s quintessence, and at the same time far reaching set of guidelines, the Sharia, or Islamic law.

Thus I began to research and write additional essays on many broad themes related to the Sharia,  which, when combined with other introductory materials written specifically for the book, including Andrew C. McCarthy’s elegant Foreword, eventually became Sharia Versus Freedom—The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism. But the final and perhaps most important inspiration proved to be a patient, careful reading of Whittaker Chambers’ autobiographical opus, Witness.  I discovered that much could be gleaned from Chambers’ witness-martyrdom in the struggle against Communism, sacrificing himself, as he put it, “a little in advance to try to win for you that infinitesimal slightly better chance,”  and applied to the modern threat of resurgent Islamic totalitarianism. As described in the book, Chambers’ own brief 1947 comparison of Communism and nascent Islam comported with more extensive, independent contemporary characterizations (i.e., made from 1920-2001) by Western scholars and intellectuals who similarly juxtaposed these ideological systems. I also elucidate in Sharia Versus Freedom Chambers’ understanding that faith in the Judeo-Christian God was conjoined to Biblical freedom. The antithetical conceptions of modern atheistic totalitarianism—epitomized by Communism—and equally liberty-crushing Islamic doctrines are compared. Specifically, with regard to Islam,  I discuss “hurriyya,” Arabic for “freedom as perfect slavery to Allah,” and how the God of Islam, the unrelenting autocrat, Allah, engendered, in Palgrave’s words, Islam’s “Pantheism of Force.”

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Most people don’t bring RPG’s to a demonstration

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BOSTOM - What do you bring to a demo?     

Army Report Buried Islamic Motivations For Afghan Murders of US Troops

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Andrew Bostom at

American Thinker:

Aug 26 2012:

On May 12, 2011 a US Army “Red Team” issued an unclassified report which purported to explain the burgeoning rash of murderous attacks (which have since escalated even further, still) by Afghan National Army (ANA) members on US and other NATO troops.

Although the report is dominated by apologetic, cultural relativist drivel which attempts, in vain, to explain away these acts of murder committed against the US and NATO troops by their by ANA “allies,” it also includes a crudely buried, sub rosa truthful narrative.

This latter discussion is all that matters, and bears full, clear exposure — particularly in light of the morally dubious excuse for the most recent spate of such killings of US troops. Specifically,  General Allen in a pronouncement for which he should be forced to resign, maintained that Ramadan fasting, combined with operational tempo during the summer heat, were the drivers of these most recent killings of his own troops by Muslim ANA soldiers.

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Andrew Bostom:

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Andrew Bostom:

 

Ernest Gellner (1925-1995) was a British-Czech philosopher and social anthropologist. His anthropological interests extended to Islamdom, notably the 1981 study Muslim Society. In 1995, an obituarist described Gellner as a “defender of positivism, empiricism and rationalism,” who,   “with cold clarity” and “sternness” critiqued “…religious and leftist seekers after umma…linguistic philosophy, relativism, psychoanalysis, and post-modernism.”

 

Here are Gellner’s apposite, and characteristically unapologetic observations on the unique, striking resistance of Islamic societies to secularization, circa 1991, ever more relevant, two decades later as the Spingtime for Sharia in Araby proceeds apace:


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Andrew Bostom makes short shrift of the myth of a ‘tolerant Islamic Spain’

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Gates of Vienna:

The Cordoba House and the Myth of Andalusian “Ecumenism”

In response to yesterday’s video about the “Andalusian Spring”, Andy Bostom sends the following article adapted from his forthcoming book Sharia Versus Freedom — The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism.

The Cordoba House and the Myth of Andalusian “Ecumenism”
by Andrew G. Bostom

Feisal Abdul RaufImam Feisal Rauf, “founder and visionary” of the Cordoba Initiative, [1] apparently sees the construction of a triumphal mosque within the 9/11 World Trade Center attack’s zone of destruction [2] as a fulfillment of his vision for Islam in America. As Rauf stated in his 2004 What’s Right with Islam, a work limited to treacly Islamic propaganda: [3]

For many centuries, Islam inspired a civilization that was particularly tolerant and pluralistic. … Great philosophers such as Maimonides were free to create their historic works within the pluralistic culture of Islam.

Rauf envisions this invented past as a model for the future “Sharia-compliant” America he desires. [4]

Cordoba Initiative

The late self-proclaimed “contrarian,” Christopher Hitchens, asserted his distaste for those in charge of the Cordoba Initiative, especially Rauf, characterizing the imam’s utterances about the 9/11 atrocities as “shady and creepy.” [5] Yet even Hitchens upheld the Andalusian myth of Cordoba, calling it: [6]

The site of an astonishing cultural synthesis, best associated with the names of Averroes ibn-Rushd and Moses Maimonides …

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Andrew Bostom: Iran’s Final Solution for Israel

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Persian Shiite anti-Semitism is deep-seated and points to genocide.

By Andrew Bostom

 

Reza Khalili (pseudonym), a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, has reported the latest restatement of the Iranian Shiite theocracy’s Jew-annihilationist jihadism:

Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a ‘jurisprudential justification’ to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

The article, written by Alireza Forghani, an analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.

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Andrew Bostom on the events in Libya

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Please click through to Dr. Bostom's site     
to hear this radio-interview with him here.