Category Archives: Andrew Bostom

Tunisia, Epi-Center of the “Arab Spring”, Rejects “Any Form of Normalization With the Zionist State”

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From Andrew Bostom’s site

July 3rd, 2011 by Andrew Bostom |

“Reformist” Yadh Ben Achour made the announcement rejecting “any form of normalization with the Zionist State,” …Yadh-a, Yadh-a, Yadh-a….

Res ipsa loquitur, from ANSA Med:

Tunisia’s commission of political reform announced that it adopted (by majority) a “republican pact’” that will be the basis of the future new Constitution, and in particular it states the rejection of any normalization with Israel. While announcing the pact the president of the commission, Yadh Ben Achour, did not offer any details, but the Arab speaking Tunisian press published its content, which defines Tunisia as a free and democratic country, whose official language is Arab and whose religion is Islam.

The pact, that will serve as the basis of the future Constitution, categorically rejects “any form of normalization with the Zionist State’”, and supports the Palestinian cause.


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Mosques as Barracks in America

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As promised, and a day early.

From Andrew Bostom:

June 5th, 2011  by Andrew Bostom |

The Islamic Center of Toledo Mosque and Minarets

Cross-posted at The American Thinker

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan represents the triumphant Janus-faced approach to the fundamentalist global “Islamic revival.” He and his pious forbears have now completed dismantling Turkey’s secular experiment, and achieved the full-throated re-Islamization of Turkish society, an insidious process begun already within the decade after Ataturk’s death, in 1938.  When currying favor with gullible Western audiences, Erdogan burbles disingenuous ecumenical platitudes about the “Alliance of Civilizations.” But in reality, this is an Islamization campaign promoted by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, notably Saudi Arabia, which rewarded Erdogan, for his role in the Alliance, specifically, as “services to Islam,” with the “King Faisal International Prize,” considered the “Nobel prize” of the Arab world. Regardless, Erdogan has always aroused his Muslim constituencies by brazenly appealing to their deep-seated jihadist sentiments as he did while mayor of Istanbul, in 1997, delivering a fiery speech that reminded the masses of these words from the  poem “The Soldier’s Prayer,” written (in 1912) by Turkish nationalist poet Ziya Gokalp:

The minarets are our bayonets, the domes our helmets, the mosques our barracks and the faithful our army.

Cited appropriately by successful opponents of minaret construction in Switzerland, such rhetoric should now resonate uncomfortably in America with the online release Monday June 6, 2011 of alarming survey data from a representative national sample of US mosques.

During August 2007, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) released “Radicalization in the West — The Homegrown Threat.” This insightful 90-page report evaluated the threat that had become apparent since 9/11/2001, analyzing the roots of recent terror plots in the United States, from Lackawanna in upstate New York to Portland, Ore., to Fort Dix, NJ. Based upon these case-study analyses of individuals arrested for jihadist activity, the authors concluded that the “journey” of radicalization that produces homegrown jihadists began in so-called “Salafist” (“fundamentalist” to non-Muslims) mosques characterized by high levels of Sharia—Islamic Law—adherence. The landmark study just published, “Sharia and Violence in American Mosques” (Kedar M, Yerushalmi D. The Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2011, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 59-72) sought to expand considerably upon the NYPD’s post-hoc, case study approach—systematically gathering objective survey data, with much greater methodological rigor—and address these two a priori questions: I) Is there a robust association between observable measures of religious devotion, coupled to Sharia-adherence in US mosques, and the presence of violence-sanctioning materials at these mosques?; and II) Is there a robust association between the presence of violence-sanctioning materials at a mosque, and the advocacy of jihadism by the mosque’s leadership via recommending the study of these materials, or other manifest behaviors?

Full details of the sampling methodology, extracts of representative jihad promoting materials (texts), and specific Sharia-compliant behaviors recorded, are provided in the accompanying appendices, reproduced from the full study (which will be available here 6/6/11). In brief, survey data were collected from a nationally representative, random statistical sample of 100 US mosques, covering 14 states, and the District of Columbia. This concise overview of the basic data collection procedures—including a self-critical, honest caveat by the authors about “completeness” of the available information on US mosque locations—is reproduced verbatim from the report (p. 68):

A surveyor visited a subject mosque in order: (a) to observe and record 12 Sharia-adherent behaviors of the worshipers and the imam (or lay leader); (b) to observe whether the mosque contained the selected materials rated as moderate and severe; (c) to observe whether the mosque contained materials promoting, praising, or supporting violence or violent jihad; and (d) to observe whether the mosque contained materials indicating the mosque had invited guest speakers known to have promoted violent jihad. Thus, the survey only examined the presence of Sharia-adherent behaviors, the presence of violence positive materials in mosques, whether an imam would promote the study of violence-positive materials, and whether a mosque was used as a forum to promote violent jihad. Since there is no central body to which all mosques belong, it was difficult to ascertain that the sampling universe list was complete. This may have introduced bias into the sampling although the authors find no evidence of any systemic distortions.

The study’s results provide clear—and ominous—affirmative answers to the a priori questions posed. Sharia-adherence was strongly associated with the presence of jihad-violence sanctioning materials, and the presence of jihad-violence sanctioning materials was in turn robustly associated with advocacy of jihadism by mosque imams—religious leaders. This key summary finding was highlighted by the authors:

…51 percent of mosques had texts that either advocated the use of violence in the pursuit of a Shari‘a-based political order or advocated violent jihad as a duty that should be of paramount importance to a Muslim; 30 percent had only texts that were moderately supportive of violence like the Tafsir Ibn Kathir and Fiqh as-Sunna; 19 percent had no violent texts at all.

Thus 81% of this statistical sample representative of US mosques were deemed as moderately (30%) to highly (51%) supportive of promulgating jihad violence to impose Shari’a.

Additional profoundly troubling findings emerge when the data are explored in depth beyond these summary observations. For example, only 4.7% of Muslim worshippers attended mosques where jihadist materials were not provided because Sharia-compliant mosques promoting jihad were the most heavily attended. The authors also describe these specific details indicating that the preponderance of US mosques sanction jihad terrorism and its ultimate goal of a Caliphate (i.e., the transnational imposition of strict Islamic law in current Muslim nations, and ultimately global imposition of Islamic Law, including in the US), if one includes advocacy of financial support for this sacralized violence (from pp. 67-69).

For the rest please click over to Dr. Bostom’s website:

Andrew Bostom: The Libyan “Not Worthy Zone”—Recalling Qadaffi’s “Offer” to “Arab Jews”

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March 3rd, 2011 by Andrew Bostom |


Albert Memmi

The unaddressed questions (from November, 1973) of Albert Memmi still address the unworthiness of Libya

**

The most predictable outcome of Libya’s violent internecine struggle-cum-latest-Arab- “democracy movement” was aptly characterized by Andrew McCarthy: “The Libyan people are no more our ally than Qaddafi.”

McCarthy expanded upon these views with refreshingly singular honesty:

[I]t had been the swift military rout of Saddam Hussein that induced Qaddafi to renounce (or claim to renounce) his ambition to develop weapons of mass destruction in late 2003. But once the hard-power promise of the Bush Doctrine gave way to the belief that thugs could be democratized into submission, the wily old terrorist found a system he could game. And game it he did. I didn’t buy the remaking of Qaddafi then, and I don’t buy the remaking of Libya now. That puts me among a breed that, if news accounts are to be believed, is increasingly rare: I don’t care about the Libyan people — I’m sorry, I mean the “brave Libyan freedom fighters.”

Beleaguered, bizarre, and brutal Libyan dictator Muammar Qadaffi defiantly insisted during a delusional Monday 2/28/11 interview with ABC, BBC, and The Times of London that he remains beloved by his people.

They all love me, all my people [are] with me. They will die to protect me.

The bloody despot Qaddafi’s most recent counterfactual pronouncement echoes in its wicked lunacy his November 1973 statements about another “beloved” audience of his—so-called “Arab Jews”—inviting them to return to their former Libyan and other Middle Eastern Islamic homelands.  Moreover, the seething Jew-hatred now openly expressed by the protesting “brave Libyan freedom fighters”— directed in the absence of the liquidated Jewish community of Libya at Qadaffi himself—justifies, or certainly it should, McCarthy’s lack of concern for the anti-Qaddafi Libyans.

Before describing Qadaffi’s November 1973 “proposal”—highlighted by a surreal “press conference”—an historical overview of the plight of Libyan Jewry under Islam is in order.

Mordechai Hakohen (1856-1929) was a Libyan Talmudic scholar and auto-didact anthropologist who composed an ethnographic study of North African Jewry in the early 20th century. Hakohen summarizes the overall impact on the Jews of the Muslim jihad conquest and rule of North Africa, including Libya, as follows:

They [also] pressed the Jews to enter the covenant of the Muslim religion. Many Jews bravely chose death. Some of them accepted under the threat of force, but only outwardly…Others left the region, abandoning their wealth and property and scattering to the ends of the earth. Many stood by their faith, but bore an iron yoke on their necks. They lowered themselves to the dust before the Muslims, lords of the land, and accepted a life of woe—carrying no weapons, never mounting an animal in the presence of a Muslim, not wearing a red headdress, and following other laws that signaled their degradation.

Hakohen’s study (pp.74,76) includes this mid-19th century description of the Jews fate as Berber Muslim chattel slaves in the Atlas Mountains of Libya:

The Berber [Muslim] Lord passed his Hebrew slave down to his children as an inheritance. If the Berber lord had many sons, each inherited a share in the slave. Each could also sell his share in the slave…if the Hebrew slave met his obligation in giving homage to his lord and was able to acquire money, he could redeem himself by paying a sum agreeable to both parties. With this deed he could acquire a deed of manumission for that portion of the rights held by the seller.…[T]o this very day [1865]..there is no Israelite family without an Ishmaelite master to whom the Israelite must make a token payment every year. The Ishmaelite may sell him to another, and this arrangement persisted until only six or seven years ago.

Nahum Slouzschz (1871-1966), a scholar, writer, archeologist, historian and translator, travelled amongst the Jews of North Africa from 1905 to 1916, including a trek through the remote Atlas mountain region, collecting information on their lives and customs. Below are excerpts from two of Slouzschz’s accounts regarding Libyan Jews published in 1906 (p. 660) and 1908 (pp. 660-61).

Jews, Berbers, and Arabs (Libya, 1906)

Until the middle of the last century, the Jews were treated as the serfs of the Berber lords. While abolishing this humiliating institution, Turkey has not yet had the time of curb the moral vexations that the Muslims inflict on their Jewish neighbors. One example out of a hundred: the rabbi of the region [Djebel Nefussi], having journeyed to Nalut, was attacked by local inhabitants who ordered him to get down from his mule, since a Jew may not straddle a mount in the presence of Muslims. Should he dare to complain, he would run the risk of seeing his family massacred by the Arabs.

For the rest of this article please click on over to Dr. Bostom’s site.

A Guide for the Perplexed Parent—Countering Public School Indoctrination on Islam (Updated)

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Andrew Bostom

A Guide for the Perplexed Parent—Countering Public School Indoctrination on Islam (Updated)

September 25th, 2010 by Andrew Bostom |

As parents, we have a moral obligation to our children and our Western heritage to combat the corrosive indoctrination on Islam that currently passes for “Islamic education” in public school curricula. That effort must begin by providing our children ready home access to objective, unapologetic Western scholarship on Islam, such as the Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam.

The Texas Board of Education issued a press release, Friday 9/24/10, which included a self-described “most debated item on the board’s Friday agenda”—a non-binding resolution that barely passed by a 7-6 vote, with two members absent. The resolution concludes with the statement that the board,

…will look to reject future prejudicial social studies submissions that continue to offend Texas law with respect to treatment of the world’s major religious groups by significant inequalities of coverage spacewise and/or by demonizing or lionizing one or more of them over others.

Additional media reports of the resolution adopted Friday maintained it cited “…politically-correct whitewashes of Islamic culture and stigmas on Christian civilization…” in current textbooks, while warning that, “…more such discriminatory treatment of religion may occur as Middle Easterners buy into the US public school textbook oligopoly.”

But defenders of the textbooks in question, such as the Rev. Bobbi Kaye Jones, superintendent of the Austin District of the United Methodist Church, representing the Texas Freedom Network, an interfaith group of religious leaders, insisted,

Realistic information takes a back seat to religious intolerance [in Texas], and education suffers a blow.

And Imam Islam Mossaad of the North Austin Muslim Community Center, affirming the “objectivity” of the textbooks in question,  stated,

Our children’s textbooks must treat all religions accurately and fairly.

Gilbert Sewall, although critical of the reasoning in the Texas School Board resolution, was favorably inclined toward its intent. Sewall is founder of the American Textbook Council, a nonprofit that reviews history and social studies textbooks utilized in U.S. schools. His organization issued a comprehensive, evidenced-based 2008 report entitled,  “Islam in the Classroom—What the Textbooks Tell Us”.

This 2008 report observed, prominently, that the deficiencies in Islam-related lessons were uniquely disturbing, with history textbooks presenting, “ an incomplete and confected view of Islam that misrepresents its foundations and challenges to international security.” Among textbooks copyrighted before 2001, “deficiencies” regarding Islam, “ persist and in some cases have grown worse.” Sewall also maintained that publishers and editors in lieu of making corrections or adjusting contested facts,

…defend misinformation and content evasions against the record. Biases persist. Silences are profound and intentional. Particular fault rests with the publishing corporations, boards of directors, and executives who decide what editorial policies their companies will pursue. Publishers have learned of contested facts and have had the time to correct imbalances. But instead of making changes, they have sustained errors or, in deliberate acts of self-censorship, have removed controversial material.”

And Sewall concluded the 2008 report with this appropriate, but as yet unaddressed warning:

Islamic activists use multiculturalism and ready-made American political movements, especially those on campus, to advance and justify the makeover of Islam-related textbook content.

Responding to the current Texas Board of Education resolution controversy, Sewall opined,

My complaint is the misinformation and selected information that attend chapters on Islam. The resolution is correct that textbooks routinely doctor the meaning of jihad (or fail to cover it) and that Muslim intolerance/military aggression, (is) soft-pedaled or excised.

And Sewall reiterated his 2008 concerns about the corrosive impact of cultural relativism, which he argued undermines the ability to defend ourselves against jihadism. The publishing industry, he stated,  …

…[R]esists ugly facts about Islam…From what they read in history textbooks, students and teachers are not likely to grasp why the United States and its allies consider militant Islam an enemy.

The raging textbook controversy in Texas, because of the Lone Star State’s purchasing power, will ultimately affect textbooks distributed across the country. But regardless of which side prevails, and the content of such textbooks, revised or not, I suggest a modest proposal to help resolve this dilemma for concerned parents. As a small investment in our children’s (and their parents’) objective education about Islam, purchase your household a copy of the Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam (used from $30.00; new at $140.00 to $143.20).

Originally published in 1953, and edited by the eminent scholars of Islam, H.A. R. Gibb and J.H. Kramers, this single volume includes all the articles contained in the first edition and supplement of the nine-volume classic Brill Encyclopedia of Islam, pertaining, in particular, to the religion and law of Islam. The Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam remains an unequalled—and unbowdlerized—reference work.

Consider the Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam entry on jihad (spelled “djihad”)—arguably the most important single subject today’s students must grasp about Islam. The concise discussion of jihad was written by Duncan B. MacDonald (1863-1933), a very sympathetic scholar of Islam, renowned for his seminal analyses on the development of Muslim theology and jurisprudence. Here are MacDonald’s key observations about the nature and conduct of jihad, which he defines with doctrinal and historical accuracy, as “holy war”:

[H]oly war. The spread of Islam by arms is a religious duty upon Muslims in general…This position was reached gradually but quickly. In the Meccan Suras [chapters] of the Koran patience under attack is taught; no other attitude was possible. But at Medina the right to repel attack appears, and gradually it became a prescribed duty to fight against and subdue the hostile Meccans. Whether Muhammad himself recognized that his position implied steady and unprovoked war against the unbelieving world until it was subdued to Islam may be in doubt. Traditions [especially the hadith, the canonical collections of Muhammad’s words and deeds recorded by his most pious Muslim companions] are explicit on the point; but the Koranic passages speak always of the unbelievers who are to be subdued as dangerous or faithless. Still, the story of his writing to the powers around him shows that such a universal position was implicit in his mind, and it certainly developed after his death, when the Muslim armies advanced out of Arabia. It is now a fard ala l-kifaya, a duty in general on all male, free, adult Muslims, sane in mind and body and having means enough to reach the Muslim army, yet not a duty necessarily incumbent on every individual but sufficiently performed when done by a certain number. So it must continue to be done until the whole world is under the rule of Islam…

The people against whom the jihad is directed must first be invited to embrace Islam. On refusal they have another choice. They may submit to Muslim rule, become dhimmis and pay jizya and kharadj [specific taxes imposed on the vanquished non-Muslims—the former, in lieu of being slain] or fight. In the first case, their lives, families and property are assured to them, but they have a definitely inferior status, with no technical citizenship, and a standing only as protected wards. If they fight, they and their families may be enslaved and all their property seized as booty, four-fifths of which goes to the conquering army. If they embrace Islam…they become part of the Muslim community with all its rights and duties. Apostates must be put to death. But if a Muslim country is invaded by unbelievers, the Imam [Muslim sovereign] may issue a general summons calling all Muslims there to arms, and as the danger grows so may the width of the summons until the whole Muslim world is involved. A Muslim who dies fighting in the Path of Allah (fi sabil Allah) is a martyr (shahid) and is assured of Paradise and of peculiar privileges there [a genteel reference to the willing virgins awaiting jihad martyrs]. Such a death was in the early generations, regarded as the peculiar crown of a pious life. It is still, on occasions, a strong incitement….

MacDonald concludes his Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam entry on jihad—published in the mid-1930s—with this warning, relevant then, and now:

Even yet, however, any war between Muslims and non-Muslims must be a jihad with its incitements and rewards…[T]he Muslim masses still follow the unanimous voice of the canon lawyers [Muslim clerics]. Islam must be completely made over before the doctrine of jihad can be eliminated.

Two obituaries (published in the New York Times, and Yale News) from 2003 for Yale Professor Franz Rosenthal—the Sterling Professor Emeritus of Arabic—highlighted his escape from Nazi totalitarianism. Rosenthal’s work included lucid, timeless analyses of Islamic “martyrdom” vs. suicide, and the antithetical Islamic and Western conceptions of “freedom.” Franz Rosenthal also wrote an obituary for the Austrian-born US scholar Gustave E. Von Grunebaum (1909-1972) which included these observations about von Gruenbaum’s seminal contributions, and uncompromising standards:

For the rest of this article please click over to Andrew Bostom’s website here:

Mainstream Islam Rejects Freedom of Conscience

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The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) will be meeting in Chicago later this month, sponsoring a program promoting values antithetical to the U.S. Constitution.
September 23, 2010 – by Andrew G. Bostom

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On September 28-30, 2010, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), in cooperation with the American Islamic College (AIC), is sponsoring a program at the AIC’s Chicago campus titled “The Role of the OIC and the scope for its relations with American Muslims.”

Founded in 1969, the OIC is now a 56-state collective which includes every Islamic nation on Earth. Currently headed by Turkey’s Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the OIC thus represents the entire Muslim umma (or global community of individual Muslims) and is the largest single voting bloc in the United Nations.

John Laffin, the late (d. 2000) military historian and prolific writer on Islam, warned in 1988 that the Jedda-based OIC, under Saudi Arabia’s patronage, was persuading Muslim nations to jettison even their inchoate adoption of “Western models and codes,” and to revert to pre-colonial era (pre-Western) retrograde systems of Sharia, or Islamic law. The Saudis proffered sizable loans and grants from their institutions in return for the more extensive application of Sharia in these targeted OIC countries. Laffin also noted the unprecedented Saudi distribution of media and print materials which extended to non-Muslim countries, including tens of millions of Korans, translated into many languages for the hundreds of millions of Muslims (and non-Muslims) who did not read Arabic. He concluded at that time:

Propaganda is carried on from Riyadh on a scale comparable to Moscow’s effort to spread communism.

Fast forward 22 years, and two special U.S. envoys to the OIC later (both the former, Sada Cumber, and current envoy, Rashad Hussain, will be in attendance at the Chicago OIC program), and one must seriously consider the extent of OIC propaganda efforts aimed at the Islamization of our country. Perhaps in Chicago some intrepid (and informed) mainstream media reporter — underscoring how the OIC’s agenda is diametrically opposed to the U.S. Constitution — will ask the representatives of this avatar of mainstream Islam about its blatant rejection of freedom of conscience, described below.

Elizabeth Kendal, in a recent commentary about the plight of brutalized Egytpian Muslim “apostates” Maher el-Gowhary and Nagla Al-Imam, made a series of apt observations which illustrate the most salient aspect of Islam’s persistent religious totalitarianism: the absence of freedom of conscience in Islamic societies. Egypt, Kendal notes, amended its secular-leaning constitution in 1980, reverting to its pre-colonial past and designating Sharia (Islamic law) as “the principal source of legislation” — an omnipresent feature of contemporary Muslim constitutions, including the new constitutions of Afghanistan and Iraq — rendering “constitutional guarantees of religious liberty and equality before the law illusory.” This is the inevitable outcome of a Sharia-based legal system, because:

Sharia’s principal aim concerning religious liberty, is to eradicate apostasy (rejection of Islam) through the elimination of fitna (anything that could tempt a Muslim to reject Islam) and the establishment of dhimmitude — the humiliation and subjugation of Jews and Christians as second class citizens [or non-citizen pariahs]; crippling systematic discrimination; violent religious apartheid …

In Egypt, as in virtually all Muslim states, a person’s official religion is displayed on their identity card. According to Sharia, every child born to a Muslim father is deemed Muslim from birth. According to Sharia, a Muslim woman is only permitted to marry a Muslim man. (This is the main reason why Christian men convert to Islam, and why female converts to Christianity will risk life and liberty to secure a falsified/illegal ID, for without a Christian ID they cannot marry a Christian.)

Thus Kendal concludes:

There is no religious liberty in Islam, for Islam survives as religious totalitarianism that refuses rejection.

Islam’s refusal to abide rejection by its votaries — the global Muslim umma’s strident rejection of freedom of conscience — is now openly codified, and has been for two decades. The 1990 Cairo Declaration, or so-called “Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Islam,” was drafted and subsequently ratified by all the Muslim member nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Both the preamble and concluding articles (24 and 25) make plain that the OIC’s Cairo Declaration is designed to supersede Western conceptions of human rights as enunciated, for example, in the U.S. Bill of Rights and the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The opening of the preamble to the Cairo Declaration repeats a Koranic injunction affirming Islamic supremacism (Koran 3:110; “You are the best nation ever brought forth to men … you believe in Allah”), and states:

Reaffirming the civilizing and historical role of the Islamic Ummah which Allah made the best nation …

The preamble continues:

Believing that fundamental rights and universal freedoms in Islam are an integral part of the Islamic religion and that no one as a matter of principle has the right to suspend them in whole or in part or violate or ignore them in as much as they are binding divine commandments, which are contained in the Revealed Books of God and were sent through the last of His Prophets to complete the preceding divine messages thereby making their observance an act of worship and their neglect or violation an abominable sin, and accordingly every person is individually responsible — and the Ummah collectively responsible — for their safeguard.

In its last articles 24 and 25, the Cairo Declaration maintains:

[Article 24] All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Sharia. … [Article 25] The Islamic Sharia is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification to any of the articles of this Declaration.

These statements capture the indelible influence of the Islamic religious law Sharia: the Cairo Declaration claiming supremacy based on “divine revelation,” which renders sacred and permanent the notion of inequality between the community of Allah and the infidels. Thus we can see clearly the differences between the Cairo Declaration, which sanctions the gross inequalities inherent in the Sharia, and its Western human rights counterparts (the U.S. Bill of Rights; the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights), which do not refer to any specific religion or to the superiority of any group over another, and stress the absolute equality of all human beings.

Enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights is the guarantee that laws may not be made that interfere with religion “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Absent the right to freedom of thought, or conscience, other rights such as the right to freedom of speech are rendered meaningless. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo reasoned elegantly in Palko v. Connecticut (1937):

Freedom of thought … is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. With rare aberrations a pervasive recognition of this truth can be traced in our history, political and legal.

This principle of freedom of conscience is also upheld in Article 18 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which further makes explicit the fundamental right to change one’s religion:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance.

For the rest of Dr. Bostom’s excellent article, please click here to go to page 2 of Pajamas Media Blog:

A few links for Monday Sept 20 2010

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I have been quite busy and still am, trying to improve the audio and editing the Ayaan Hirsi Ali speech from Denmark Sept. 18 2010 so I have not been able to post as many stories as I would have liked to, not to mention the number of stories that actually need the attention. Here is a set of links that has crossed my desk in the past few days. By the way, congratulations to the SD party in Sweden that met and exceeded their expectations with something like 20 new members of the Swedish Parliament and especially congratulations to Kent Eckeroth, someone who Vlad has been subtitling speeches for, and promoting for quite a while now. Sweden is lucky to have him.

Eeyore for Vlad

Here is an audio-only interview with a man who wrote a book explaining how Obama has flagrantly violated his constitutionally limited powers in a variety of ways. He does not advocate impeachment and is not an extremist in any way but does detail how Obama is limiting individual liberties in the US and transforming America as he promised he would, but in ways he simply is not allowed legally to do.

Andrew Bostom sent me this from American Thinker:

Halal to the Queen? Britain’s Stealth Halal-ization

Andrew G. Bostom
Creeping Sharia has already extended to the dietary practices of British dhimmis, who are involuntarily consuming meats ritually slaughtered and prayed over in good Islamic practice.

Although this Daily Mail investigation of the stealth Islamization of the British meat industry is largely fixated on the “animal cruelty” aspect of the story, the findings provide another disturbing example of Britain’s steady Islamization, as evidenced by its “stealth halal-ization”:
….[S]chools, hospitals, pubs and famous sporting venues such as Ascot and Twickenham are controversially serving up meat slaughtered in accordance with strict Islamic law to unwitting members of the public. All the beef, chicken and lamb sold to fans at Wembley has secretly been prepared in accordance with sharia law, while Cheltenham College, which boasts of its ‘strong Christian ethos’, is one of several top public schools which also serves halal chicken to pupils without informing them. Even Britain’s biggest hotel and restaurant group Whitbread, which owns the Beefeater and Brewers Fayre chains, among many others, has admitted that more than three-quarters of its poultry is halal.

Rest of article is linked here

Here is one of my favourite examples of selective tiflosis. Israelis are frequently called racist for not allowing themselves to be subjected to sharia law and destroying themselves as a state, while the PA affirms the death penalty for selling land to Jews. To be clear, if a Muslim Arab sells property to a Jewish person or an Israeli in the west bank, he will be killed for this crime. PA has affirmed it. Yet oddly, this is not racist and does not seem to catch the attention of the west’s secular left. As Mr. Spock was wont to say, ‘facinating’.

PA affirms death penalty for land sales to Israelis

The PA says the land law is necessary to prevent the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority on Sunday reaffirmed the death penalty for any Palestinian found guilty of selling land to Israelis.

The decision came in response to a ruling by a Palestinian court according to which such acts were only a “minor offense.”

RELATED:
PA to ban work in settlements

PA Prosecutor-General Ahmed al-Mughni appealed against the ruling to a higher court, arguing that the sale of land to Israelis was a “major offense” punishable by death.

The appeal was accepted.

More later.

Eeyore

Imam Feisal Rauf and the Genocidal Hamas Covenant

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Thanks to Andrew Bostom for sending me this:

Imam Feisal Rauf and the Genocidal Hamas Covenant

August 25th, 2010 by Andrew Bostom |

From a Hamas poster glorifying the martyr who drowns the Zionists in blood (used as part of the cover art for Raphael Israeli’s seminal “Islamikaze”)

As reported by the New York Post’s Tom Topoussis on June 19, 2010, Imam Feisal Rauf repeatedly declined to acknowledge, unequivocally, that Hamas is a terrorist organization, despite its formal designation as such by the US State Department, in these words:

Hamas terrorists, especially those in the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, have conducted many attacks, including large-scale suicide bombings, against Israeli civilian and military targets

Asked by WABC radio interviewer Aaron Klein whether he agreed with the State Department’s assessment, Imam Rauf stated, “Look, I’m not a politician. The issue of terrorism is a very complex question.” When Klein persisted, asking Rauf again for his view on Hamas, the imam, now exasperated, still refused to agree openly with the State Department’s apt designation.

I contend that Rauf’s repeated refusal to acknowledge that Hamas is indeed a terrorist organization—jihad terror being Hamas’ specific abiding ideology—is entirely consistent with his own documented lionization of well-known fundamentalist Muslim jurists such as Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328), and the founder of modern Wahhabism, Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab (d. 1792). Moreover, Rauf praises the contemporary cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi—Spiritual Leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, immensely popular Al-Jazeera television savant on the Sharia, and in whose name the government of Qatar recently created the Al-Qaradawi Centre for Islamic Moderation—as “…probably the most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim world today.” But perhaps most importantly, Rauf’s continued close association with, and nurturing by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Muhammad, also comports with the imam’s  adamant refusal to acknowledge Hamas’ ethos of jihad terror. Continue Reading →

Andrew Bostom: (UPDATED) NYC’s Insane Capitulation to Islam, Circa 1955—Past as Prologue?

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August 5th, 2010 (2 hours ago) by Andrew Bostom |
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Past as Prologue, 55 years ago?—Elegant statue of Muhammad “quietly” removed from the roof of the Appellate Division Courthouse on Madison Square, New York City in 1955, when seven feckless appellate judges, “encouraged” by the US State Department, needlessly submitted to Islamic supremacist dictates regarding “Tawsir,” or statuary.

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Mindless, craven cultural relativism—sadly pervasive in 2010—has lead NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg to capitulate to Islamic supremacism and support the odious Ground Zero mosque project of the cultural jihadist Imam Faisal Rauf, and his coterie. The rather witless Bloomberg, of course, cynically recasts his moral and intellectual cretinism as championing bedrock American values, notably freedom of religion. However, the ultimately self-destructive Islamic correctness we are witnessing vis a vis the Ground Zero mosque, may be an endemic phenomenon amongst Manhattan elites, dating back to at least 1955.

Please click over to Andrew Bostom’s site for the rest of this important article.

Andrew Bostom: Understanding the Islam in Muslim Jew Hatred

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Here is an excellent lecture by Dr. Andrew Bostom, author of many books on Islam and it’s history and frames of reference, as well as co-author with Bat Ye’or. This one deals specifically with his new book on Islamic antisemitism, currently the topic of several new books by authors such as Sam Solomon etc. For those who prefer to read rather than watch and listen, the text of the speech is below the fold.

Eeyore for Vlad with special thanks to Dr. Bostom for giving me the opportunity to edit this video. The second lecture by Dr. Bostom on Jihad, will be posted sometime here in the next few days.

Andrew Bostom: Understanding the Islam in Muslim Jew Hatred from Vlad Tepes on Vimeo.

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BOSTOM: John Brennan: Witless for the defense

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By Andrew Bostom published first in The Washington Times:

By Andrew Bostom

7:54 p.m., Monday, July 12, 2010

MugshotIllustration: John Brennan by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times

A dry pun asks, “When is a door not a door?” – the answer being, “When it is ajar.” But dry humor is clearly preferable to the deluded warping of the lexicon by the Obama administration‘s lead counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, which leads to this question, and requisite answer, “When is jihad not jihad?” – “When it is bloodless, spiritual struggle.” Mr. Brennan vociferously advocates an exclusive, bowdlerized definition of jihad in the public discourse as “to purify oneself or one’s community,” lest the tender sensibilities of Muslims be offended. He further claims that, somehow, self-described jihadists “have truly just distorted the whole concept” of jihad. But it is Mr. Brennan who, irrespective of whatever flimsy, ahistorical rationale he provides, thoroughly misrepresents jihad – a living, bellicose Islamic institution that dates from the advent of the Muslim creed almost 14 centuries ago.

The dangerous absurdity of Mr. Brennan‘s jihad denial is self-evident: More than 15,600 jihad terror attacks have been committed by Muslims worldwide since the cataclysmic acts of jihad terrorism committed against the United States itself on Sept. 11, 2001. These data should remind us that there is just one historically relevant meaning of jihad, despite contemporary apologetics. Jahada, the root of the word jihad, appears 40 times in the Koran. With four exceptions, all the other 36 usages in the Koran, as understood by both the greatest jurists and scholars of classical Islam (including Abu Yusuf, Averroes, Ibn Khaldun and Al Ghazali) and ordinary Muslims – meant and mean “he fought, warred or waged war against unbelievers and the like.” Continue Reading →