And the winner is...

What’s in a name?

A whole lot, actually.

Radical Islamists deliberately blur the distinction between “Judaism” and “Zionism”, and between “Jew” and “Israeli”.

They do so as part of their focused drive to demonise the Jewish faith and Jewish ethnicity and to engender an atmosphere in which all Jews everywhere are regarded as legitimate prey. It is not because of the existence of the Jewish state of Israel that they hate the Jews – it is because of the country’s Jewish ethnicity and religion that they hate Israel. Radical Islamists are, quite simply, anti-Semites.

Either way, Jews the world over pay the price for Islamist anti-Semitism.

In the civilized world there is also a corresponding need to draw an important distinction. The terms “Muslim”, “Islam” and “Islamism” are often used interchangeably. That is inappropriate.

The term “Muslim” refers solely to a follower of the Muslim faith. The word speaks volumes about the person’s religion but nothing about his or her political affiliations.

“Islam” is the religion that Muslims follow. Here too there is no qualifier, it is simply a statement about the person’s religious adherence.

“Islamism”, on the other hand, is a political movement clothed for tactical reasons in the religious symbols of Islam. It represents hunger for worldly power and all the trappings of that power, disguised and indeed shielded behind a veneer of religion – Islam.

It is always necessary to draw a distinction between on the one hand Muslims/Islam, and on the other hand the international movement to hijack both the people and their religion for political power – Islamism.

Few countries are today immune from the parasitic outgrowth from Islam that is Islamism. It is a violent, aggressive political movement that protects itself from criticism through the tried and trusted human-shield approach, by labelling all resistance to political Islamism as “anti-Muslim sentiment” or “Islamophobia” – a word coined specifically to give a sheen of pseudo-academic credibility to the animosity prompted by Islamism itself. Nobody likes being regarded as a bigot so Islamists are largely left to get on with their agenda. Political Correctness has emerged as the new religion of the West, and it is blinding the West to the rise of Islamism, an aggressive political ideology clothed for protection in Islam.

Remarkably, few interlocutors in the West seem to question why Muslims always seem to be represented by Islamists.

Islamism has a subversive agenda whose aim is the establishment of the “Caliphate” – the global spread of a particular brand of Islam that demands forcible conversion to Islam and the utter subservience of all who at their personal peril remain non-believers. Read "The Restoration of the Caliphate" on DallasCarter.net if you want to find out more about what a Caliphate entails - this article in turn has many very useful links.

No country is immune, and no society is immune.

The view from the quiet backwater of Sweden is a case in point. What happens in Sweden today will be happening in your home tomorrow.

In fact, in many countries, it already is. Read on.

Start off by reading the following article from Islamist Watch (http://www.islamist-watch.org/blog/2010/02/muslims-confront-islamism-get-targeted-by)

Muslims Confront Islamism, Get Targeted by Islamists

by David J. Rusin • Feb 14, 2010

French imam Hassen Chalghoumi recently learned firsthand that Islamists despise non-Islamist Muslims as much as they do anyone else. Chalghoumi attracted their ire by coming out strongly in favor of a ban on face-covering veils, a prohibition that is moving closer to reality. Echoing President Nicolas Sarkozy, he described the niqab as a "prison for women, a tool of sexist domination and Islamist indoctrination" that "has no place in France." Moreover, he explained:

Having French nationality means wanting to take part in society, at school, at work. But with a bit of cloth over their faces, what can these women share with us? If they want to wear the veil, they can go to a country where it's the tradition, like Saudi Arabia.

Islamist reaction to his comments was swift and fierce, with a gang of nearly a hundred men storming his Paris mosque during a meeting of an organization focused on interfaith relations:

"They started to cry 'Allah akbar' and 'God is great,'" recounted Chalghoumi. "Then they insulted me, my mosque, the Jewish community, and the [French] republic. They left after an hour and a half."

According to a member of the Conference of Imams, the mob condemned Chalghoumi as an apostate and threatened him with "liquidation, this imam of the Jews."

Chalghoumi is not the only moderate risking "liquidation." Abadirh Abdi Hussein, a Muslim rapper in Sweden, had his head slashed by attackers displeased with his outspoken opposition to al-Shabaab, which has been recruiting young men to join the jihad in Somalia. And, as IW noted in January, Majed Moughni received a death threat after organizing a demonstration by Detroit-area Muslims to denounce the attempted Christmas Day airplane bombing.

Undeterred by this atmosphere of intimidation, many other Muslims have gone on offense against radicalism in recent months. Among them:

•The Muslim Canadian Congress called on lawmakers to ban the niqab, declaring it a "political issue promoted by extremists" that "has absolutely no place in Canada."

•A plan, now canceled, by the radical group Islam4UK to march through an English town known for honoring fallen soldiers earned the very public wrath of numerous Muslims.

•The liberal Norwegian Muslim group LIM (which stands for "equality, integration, diversity" in that nation's language) challenged fellow Muslims to rally in defense of free speech after Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard's home was attacked.

•Minhaj-ul-Quran, a Sufi Muslim organization operating in the UK, issued a fatwa against suicide bombings, labeling them "totally un-Islamic" and "violations of human rights."

As the above examples suggest, at the core of the resurgent jihad is a conflict between an authoritarian interpretation of Islam and a more spiritual, secular interpretation. The fate of two worlds — the Western and the Islamic — will be shaped profoundly by the outcome.

Interesting links:
Daniel Pipes:
The danger within: Militant Islam in America
Militant about Islam
Islamism 2.0
Telling Friend from Foe
Fighting Militant Islam, Without Bias
 
Melanie Phillips:
London still a hub of Islamic terror
Londonistan is still the weakest link
Beware the new axis of evangelicals and Islamists
 
Islamist Watch
Phil Dickens - Dissecting political and militant Islam
Free Republic
Jihad Watch
Europe News
 
MSNBC
Israel Insider - Militant Islam plays for keeps
American Diplomacy - Problems, Problems and the Real Problems
ABC News
 
Barry Rubin: Radical Islamism - an introductory primer
Barry Rubin on The Race to Militancy
Israpundit - Barry Rubin: Turkey
MERIA - Islamism in Sudan
Global Politican - Sweden learns that appeasement doesn't pay
 
Boston.com
Newsmax.com - G Russel Evans: Militant Islam is still enemy no. 1
Examiner.com
The Local - Swedish publication in English with a range of articles on various aspects of Islamism in Sweden
Islamization Watch
 
 
Relevant articles from this blog:
The Muslim view of Islamists
Code red in Malmö
Humanity, human rights and contempt for fellow human beings
Swedish democracy falters in Malmö
Moderation through the eyes of Islamists
 
 

2922 is less than 22

In December 2008, Operation Cast Lead saw Israel finally respond to 2922 days of constant missile barrages from the Gaza Strip – up to 50 missiles a day – aimed at Israeli towns, villages, hospitals, schools, power stations and factories.

The Israeli response to these 2922 days of Palestinian Arab aggression lasted 22 days. Much of the outside world – led by UN-funded judge and jury Richard Goldstone – lamented the disproportionate nature of the Israeli response.

This wasn’t exquisite sarcasm – they genuinely felt that 22 days of Jewish response to 2922 days of Islamist aggression was disproportionate.

The Goldstone Commission – paid for by our tax dollars – roundly condemned the Jewish state for its response to the existential attacks it suffered from right across its border. The US and the UK governments were among the countries most vociferous in their condemnation of Israel’s violent armed response.

Today the US and UK are involved in a massive war. Not on their own borders like Israel was and still is, but thousands of kilometres away.

In fact on a totally different continent. Afghanistan is in Asia, for heaven’s sake.

There is, however, no condemnation by the US and UK governments of the violence in which their own troops are engaged – in a conflict which is far removed from their own shores. On the contrary, President Barack Hussein Obama, who came to power pledging to end US involvement in foreign conflicts, added a further 30,000 US troops to the overseas force to continue a US war far removed from US borders.

Like the US, the UK has a huge troop presence not only in Afghanistan but in Iraq too. It needs to be reiterated: neither of these countries has a border with either the US or UK.

The sheer hypocrisy, the glaring insincerity, the inconsistent double-standards are staggering.

Has Richard Goldstone been brought in to investigate US and UK violence on a country far removed from US and UK shores? He was, after all, brought in to investigate Israel’s response to the 10,000 missiles fired by the Islamist regime in Gaza at civilian Israeli communities over a period of eight long years.

It isn’t going to happen.

Meantime, we continue paying for America’s and Britain’s wars far from home – while Israel is routinely condemned for protecting itself at home.

Useful links:
Jerusalem Post
CNN
Independent
Independent
Washington Post
Washington Times
Boston.com
Huffington Post
Xinhua.net
Reuters
BBC
ABC
Economist
Telegraph
CBS
New Kerala
Sindh Today
The Statesman/India
Big News Network
Cleveland.com
VOA
Yahoo News
Hispanic Business
Guardian
 
 
Related links from this website:
What's in a phone call?
Sweden on its way to becoming the first Islamic republic in Europe
The UN Human Rights Council: the best purchase the Arab world has ever made
Operation Rescue Sweden: a legal precedent
The music dies out as the West stumbles towards its destiny
Put an end to UNRWA's occupation of Palestine
UNRWA versus UNHCR - a revealing comparison

The music dies out as the West stumbles on towards its destiny

It’s OK to play music and dance in the streets to celebrate the massacre of civilians on 9/11, but illegal to play music and dance at your own wedding.
Hamas, the government of the Gaza Strip

This is no joke, and no exaggeration. Watch this video, made by a Palestinian Arab, which documents how Hamas kills a bridegroom for playing music at his own wedding.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_OGhj43GAE&feature=fvw

Hamas abuse of civilians and children as part of its racist war against the Jews is well-known, thoroughly documented – and largely ignored.

Read here to find out just how it is that Hamas terrorists are masqueraded as “civilians” – even after they are dead. The deception comes alive even after their death, in the statistics that Hamas and their willing collaborators in the West spread as part of their US- and European government-funded propaganda operations.

Richard Goldstone, in his whitewash of Hamas culpability and his publicly funded targeting of Israel’s self-defense measures, noted that there was “no evidence” that Hamas waged war against Israel from civilian areas and with its fighters dressed in civilian clothing.

Bloggers Elder of Ziyon and Solomonia beg to differ. And they have the video and other evidence to back their claims of Hamas abuse of the Geneva Conventions.

Read Augean Stables for a highly lucid comment on the subject and further video evidence of Hamas tactics.

Of course, Hamas does not only use adult civilians in its propaganda war. Here is a video clip from MEMRI that shows what passes for children’s entertainment on Hamas TV. Raw indoctrination of vulnerable minors, racism of the most brutal sort. It needs to be remembered that the Palestinian Arabs – in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – rely exclusively on the West for their financial well-being. Agriculture, industry and trade have zero priority, it is the West that funds the Palestinian Arab war and propaganda budget.

For a further analysis of just what Hamas is up to, to understand the racist Islamist mindset that drives this and countless similar organisations, and to understand how close the West is to committing collective suicide in the face of the Islamist onslaught, read another piece from Augean Stables.

And there’s more. Bret Stephens, renowned from his senior writing and editorial positions at highly reputable publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the Jerusalem Post, raises the question of whether the West is competent to safeguard its own civilization in a climate in which Political Correctness has replaced organized religion as the key aspiration for politicians keener to preserve their jobs in the short term than they are to protect their citizens in the long term.

While continuing to routinely ignore human rights abuses in the Arab and Muslim worlds, the West continues to do what is most convenient – kowtow to the threats issuing from the Arab and Muslim worlds and focus instead on delegitimisation and demonisation of the sole democracy in the Middle East. Israel. As many keen observers and analysts have pointed out, it's remarkably like dropping your car keys by mistake and then searching for them under the street light because that's where it's bright and most convenient to search, rather than in the pools of inky darkness in between - where you actually dropped them.

Turning a blind eye to Islamist aggression has become such second nature in the West that few question where we are headed. Fewer still recognize that this is a problem. One of the exceptions to the rule showed itself in Der Spiegel where an editorial by Henryk M Broder pointed out with the utmost clarity that the West is indeed choked by fear. Spiegel also has another highly interesting article entitled “Fears of Eurabia: How Much Allah Can The Old Continent Bear?” Well worth a read for its cool, objective analysis.

The question that begs an answer, of course, is whether the politicians will ever wake up to the occasional clarion calls being sounded by the media. Or whether they will continue to insist that we do not have a problem with any given religion, just with certain nationalities.

In the wake of the attempted terror attack on the civilian airliner in Detroit last Christmas, President Barack Hussein Obama has announced restrictive travel measures for 14 nations.

All are Muslim nations.

But he continues to deny that the US faces a Muslim or Islamist threat.

Either his eyesight is failing, or his intelligence is. And I mean his intelligence, not his intelligence agencies.

They’re never given the chance to do their job. Political Correctness has higher priority than national well-being.

Of course, Obama isn't the only politican suffering from SES - Selective Eyesigt Syndrome. Has-been US President Jimmy Carter has made a name for himself - particularly in the Arab world - for his constant baracking of the world's sole Jewish state. Now he has apologised for hurting the feelings of Israelis and Jews worldwide, apparently in the belief that his scant apology buys him sufficient breathing-space to continue his attacks on the Jewish state. While at the same time continuing to ignore the legion human rights abuses throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds. Read what CAMERA writes in its response to Jimmy Carter.


Read also:
Daniel Pipes: Security Theater Now Playing At Your Airport
Barry Rubin: The Suicidal Rules of Arab Political Debate

Question: Where is radical Islam heading?

Answer: Straight for you.

And for how long will the civilised world continue to persist in seeing no evil and hearing no evil and, above all, doing nothing to stem the onslaught?

A couple of days ago a gigantic conspiracy was unravelled in Egypt, aimed directly at that state’s apparatus. The attack on Egypt was planned and financed by Iran via the range of proxies it has at its disposal, primarily Hizbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and various other terrorist organisations. The focus of the plan was to attack Egypt along a broad front, targeting civilian and state infrastructure, sabotaging the Suez Canal lifeline and crushing the nation’s democratic institutions. The Teheran ayatollahs’ fundamentalist Islamist revolution was to be exported the world over, cost what it may.

The Arab world is very concerned over this latest development and hopes that the USA and/or Israel will do something drastic about the mounting threat from Teheran. The Arab world does this while at the same time continuing to publicly criticise both the USA and Israel in a variety of contexts.

Much of the Arab world continues to posture in idiotic parlour games of domestic politics while its doorstep is being engulfed in flames. Politics is truly a dirty game.

But it is ultimately just a game. The threat from the ayatollahs in Iran, led by the intractable and increasingly Quixotic Ahmadinejad, is anything but a game. That is reality – tragic reality. A reality faced not just by the USA and Israel but now also the entire Arab world and ultimately also the rest of the world.

Today the most radical and extremist tendencies in the Muslim world are to be found outside the Arab world – it is non-Arab entities such as Iran and Pakistan that account for the most extreme radicalisation and the most active export of religious fundamentalism, religiously inspired violence and human rights abuses on religious grounds.

The people abused and discarded like so much trash, mere disposable counters in the strategic game planned by the Iranian masters of global Jihad, are however very much found within the Arab world – primarily among the populations who fall under the unforgiving Hizbollah and Hamas regimes. Sweden, for instance, exhibits an embarrassing propensity for closing its eyes to the truth – recently this Scandinavian nation chose to continue its participation in a conference despite the attendance of Hamas, branded internationally as a terrorist organisation. And this comes a mere few weeks after the Davis Cup debacle in which the Swedish city of Malmö’s ruling body decided to play foreign politics by first trying to ban Israelis from playing tennis in Sweden, then decided that the match would be played without spectators even though this cheated Malmö’s hard-pressed city coffers out of millions in potential earnings from ticket revenues and hotel bookings.

From Sweden on the weekend of 7-8 March 2009 when the slaughter of Jews was being encouraged on the streets of Malmö:


The tennis tournament turned instead into a raw and violent anti-Semitic and anti-democratic rampage which the excellent Swedish police did all they could to control. Unfortunately however, the decision was not in the hands of the police but rather in the hands of politicians – more than a quarter of Malmö’s population is Muslim and that is what carried the day. Sweden appears happy to tango with terrorists at international conferences and is happy to ban Jews from playing tennis to appease fanatical Islamist opinion, even as the fundamentalists advance and keep their sights firmly trained on conquering ever larger swathes of territory.

An insider's view of Malmö in Sweden, in the eyes of the city's police oficers and its hard-pressed ambulance and fire rescue services.


Blindness, deafness and inaction are no solution when under attack. What is needed is a proactive approach – not just reaction which usually and by definition means responding too late. What is needed is to act while there is still the chance of seizing the initiative.

This naturally does not always or only mean military action. However, signals indicating that military action will never be adopted are interpreted quite rightly by extremists for what they are: devastating weakness and an invitation to regional, national and global rape.

Act – or lose. Egypt has seen the light. In Egypt, Hamas and Hizbollah are regarded as terrorist organisations. In Sweden, they are seen as valid partners for discussion. In Egypt, Iran is regarded as the source of regional, even global, evil and instability. In Sweden, Iran is regarded as a valuable trading partner.

Money before all else. Short-sighted gain before strategic security. A paralysed inability to label things correctly.

Egypt has woken up. Sweden still slumbers.

English-language articles:
Zvi Mazel, AlJazeera, AlArabiya, ArabianBusiness, Egyptian Copts, Haaretz, News24, StarTribune, TurkishWeekly, WSJ, Times of India, FoxNews, Forbes, CBS, ABC, WashingtonPost,

From this website, in English:
Ilyameyer1, IM2, IM3, IM4,

For more English articles from this website, click on "English" at top right of the starting page.

Humanity, rights and contempt for fellow human beings

Demands for “human rights” and against “Islamophobia” are being shouted ever louder and ever more hypocritically across broad swathes of today’s society.

The Arab League rolls out the red carpet for a Muslim mass-murderer, Sudan’s strongman Omar al-Bashir. His genocide of black Africans is roundly ignored throughout the Arab and wider Muslim worlds. At the same time, Muslim organisations, institutions and countries are raising their voices in a strident call for legislation to ban criticism of religion. The only religion they name is Islam.

Are all Muslims mass-murderers? Do all Muslims sympathise with genocide as a strategy for achieving political superiority? Obviously ridiculous notions. However, the fact is that the only religion in whose name murder, genocide and honour killings take place in today’s society – with official sanction either tacit or open – is Islam.

It is frequently contended that Islam as it is reflected in today’s media has been hijacked by a relatively small clique of highly active and particularly violent adherents. But the fact is that when the rest of its practitioners choose for whatever reason to remain silent and by default allow Islam to be represented by fanatics with an anti-democratic agenda and a violent strategy, then it is only natural for a shadow to fall on the entire religion.


Blatant anti-Semitism in Muslim society.

Islam is worthy a far better fate than to be intricately linked with the dark evil that a mere few represent. Having said that, no change happens of itself – if you want to nurture a reputation, you have to work at it. If you want to safeguard your good name, you have to ensure that your record is clean. If you want to guarantee your rightful role in modern society, you have to earn the right. None of this is served on a silver platter to passive bystanders – these are rights that have to be earned and, once secured, have to be cultivated.

Anyone who does not safeguard his own good name risks losing it. Muslim organisations and countries that demand society’s silence on Muslim abuses, while spreading or allowing the spread of vicious anti-Semitism and insulting views on Christianity, Bahaism, Hinduism and Buddhism, for instance, are guilty of double standards.

Double standards do not lead to constructive solutions for a better future.

If we are to attain a world where religion is no longer abused as a source of inspiration for terrorism, we are going to have to come up with constructive solutions for dealing with abusers of religion.

Silence is not a solution. Silence simply covers up continued demonisation and segregation.

Precisely what modern society does not need.


Wafa Sultan: The Arab and Muslim worlds need more self-criticism.


UN Watch: Spotlighting Durban II and Muslim states' systematic racism and human rights abuses.

Newspaper articles:
WSJ, INN, Southtownstar,

From this website, related, English:
Ilyameyer3, IM4, IM5,