I am late to the party blogging on this extremely clever video that riffs on the Obama phenom. It's been out for several weeks (you can tell because there are no pictures of Jeremiah Wright), but it's a fun sendup of the candidate and his minions.
Obama's more recent, er, religious problems notwithstanding, there is no question that he is the most electrifying candidate in the race.
On Jihad Watch/Dhimmi Watch, Hugh Fitzgerald offers an interesting thought experiment in response to the question: "If the Israel/Palestinian conflict were exactly the same as it is, only the roles of the two warring parties were exactly reversed, would you then switch allegiances to the Palestinian side?"
Let's see.
If there were 22 Jewish states, and only one tiny Arab state, and if in those 22 Jewish states every other group was denied anything like equality (see the various groups of Christians all over the Muslim Arab world, or for that matter see the various groups of non-Arab Muslims -- such as Kurds, Berbers, and black Africans in Darfur), and if those 22 Jewish states also possessed fantastic oil reserves and the one tiny Arab state possessed nothing but the intelligence of its populace, and if those 22 Jewish states were the size of the 22 members of the Arab League, with 14,000,000 square miles of territory, and the one tiny Arab state had less than 1/1,000th of that, or about 10,0000 square miles, and if those 22 Jewish states were possessed of an ideology that required them to move heaven and earth in order to eradicate that one tiny Arab state...
Read the whole thing.
Daniel Pipes conjures a grim near-future scenario that deftly mixes speculative fiction with recent history and current events:
Just as the 7/7 bombings had revealed in Great Britain, Islamist sleepers in substantial numbers lived quietly and unobtrusively in the United States. The violence became daily, ubiquitous, endemic, and routine, occurring in rural towns, upscale suburbs, and metropolitan centres, targeting private houses, restaurants, university buildings, gas stations, and electricity grids. As its frequency increased, terrorists became less cautious, leading to many arrests and bulging prisons. Some terrorists avoided this ignominious fate by engaging in suicide attacks, usually accompanied by boastful Internet videos. In all, roughly 100,000 incidents meant an average 10,000 deaths and many times more injuries each year.
Jihadis for Justice laid siege to Capitol Hill and the White House, inspired by three prior terrorist assaults on symbols of sovereignty: the attack on Trinidad's Red House in 1990, on India's Parliament House in 2001, and the failed plot to storm Ottawa's Parliament Hill in 2006. Despite massive security in Washington, sniper attacks picked off some legislators and presidential aides. Jihadis for Justice relied on Iranian and Saudi patronage but no U.S. retaliation followed because, before acting, President Obama required proofs that would pass muster in a U.S. court of law, something the intelligence agencies could not provide.
As in other countries – Israel offering the most obvious comparison – major changes in American life followed. Whoever wished to enter supermarkets, bus stations, malls, or campuses had to produce identification, show his bags and perhaps submit to a search of his person. Cars routinely underwent inspections at road blocks. As airline passengers had to arrive four hours before flight time to run the gauntlet of security questions about their travels, airports emptied and airline companies went bankrupt. Local public transportation went through similar upheavals, as commuters took up bicycling rather than submit to interrogations and near-strip searches on their way to work. Telecommuting finally took off.
FrontPage Magazine has an excellent and thought-provoking interview with Bruce Bawer, author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within. Bawer, who is gay and had previously written Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity, had moved to Amsterdam in 1998, looking forward to living in a tolerant, secular country that embraced gay rights and other liberal values. Instead, he ran headlong into far more virulent form of fundamentalism:
Bawer: In 1998 I moved from New York, where I’m from, to Amsterdam. I loved the Netherlands – its tolerance, its secularism, its heritage of freedom and learning and culture. But in early 1999, living in a largely Muslim area called the Oud West, I saw another side of the Netherlands, and of Europe, that I hadn’t seen before, or even been particularly aware of. The Oud West seemed less a neighborhood than an enclave – a piece of another society that had been dropped down into the city and that lived apart from it and its values. Just to walk from downtown Amsterdam into the Oud West was to experience a staggering contrast.
I soon came to realize that Amsterdam wasn’t unique – virtually every major city in Europe had Muslim enclaves like this one. The people outside of them were living in a democracy, but the people in them were living in a theocracy, ruled by imams and elders who preached contempt for the host society and its values. They were against secular law, against pluralism, against freedom of speech and religion, against sexual equality. Husbands believed it was their sacred right to beat and rape their wives. Parents practiced honor killings and female genital mutilation. Unemployment and crime rates were through the roof.
Most remarkable of all, nobody was saying or doing anything about any of this. European politicians took a hands-off attitude. Journalists sang the praises of multicultural society. With very few exceptions, nobody in a position of authority seemed willing to stand up for basic democratic values.
Later in the interview, Bawer examines the dark side of European multiculturalism that has resulted in the emergence of fundamentalist Islamist enclaves in virtually every country on the continent. He contrasts it with the American ideal of assimilating immigrants into the larger society:
In Norway there’s a comedienne named Shabana Rehman whose parents brought her to Norway from Pakistan when she was a baby. On her website, she writes: “I speak strikingly good Norwegian. But most native Norwegians I meet wish that it was a little broken.” I’ve seen this attitude. Americans are delighted to hear immigrants speaking English. By contrast, many Norwegians are uncomfortable when they hear a Pakistani speaking Norwegian. One thing I still find remarkable in Norway is the frequency with which people use the expression “Like barn leker best.” It’s a very common expression and it means something like “Children play best with other children who are like themselves.” I’ve heard it being said a thousand times by people who think of themselves as devout multiculturalists.
The most successful immigrant group in the history of the world is American Jews. Why? Because they integrated enthusiastically into the mainstream of American society. They rejected the ghetto and embraced American pluralism. In Europe, this same eagerness to belong, to contribute, and to thrive – and not remain segregated and ghettoized – led to the Jews’ near-extermination. It seems to me that part of the reason why anti-Semitism is so widespread in Europe while Islam is often treated with kid gloves is that the European elite has a reflexive contempt for a group that blends in and a reflexive respect for a group that holds itself proudly apart and resists assimilation. That’s a formula for disaster.
Bawer's book is a compelling and disturbing read, and a wake-up call not only for Europe, but for the entire Western world.
(Hat tip: Roger L. Simon)
So much has been written about the Danish cartoon controversy that it seems almost pointless to chime in with another me-too post. However, it has become clear that this is not just a minor flap but an event that marks a turning point in the struggle between the liberal West and fundamentalist Islam - and, it is not yet clear which way things will turn.
First of all, there are the cartoons themselves, originally published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which commissioned them as an experiment in countering self-censorship when it came to depicting the Prophet Mohammed. Not all were offensive in nature, in fact most would not strike the average Western reader as anything more than mildly so. Some, like the much-referenced image of Mohammed with a bomb-shaped turban made satirical points associating the Prophet with the worst of his violent adherents. But others were mere renderings of the Prophet with no other comment, and a couple of them poked fun at the paper itself for its "publicity stunt". One was not even of the Prophet but of a student named "Mohammed" who jeered the paper's editors as "a bunch of reactionary provocateurs". If you haven't seen the actual cartoons, you are in no position to judge for yourself. You can find them at Jihad Watch as well as many other sites. Overall, they strike me as relatively mainstream by the standards of societies who uphold the right of the press to poke fun at religious figures including Jesus, the Pope and indeed the very concept of God.
But I am a liberal Westerner, and not a Muslim, so my opinion is only half the story. Are these cartoons indeed offensive to Muslim sensibilities? Based on the reaction throughout the Muslim world, the answer would have to be "yes". Here is a take from Seema Munir, an American Muslim writing in an op-ed piece for the Arizona Republic:
I think it fair to say that each of the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world feels personally offended by the cartoons. But not every one protested. A small percentage demonstrated and an even smaller percentage reacted violently. Probably all, however, were hurt.
Not surprising - as has now been pointed out ad nauseum, Christians frequently take offense at works of artistic expression that they see as denigrating their beliefs, the most blatant examples being "Piss Christ" in which artist Andres Serrano immersed a crucufix in a jar of his own urine, and the image of the Virgin Mary smeared with elephant dung by Nigerian Catholic artist Chris Ofili. (An aside: Ofili has also used elephant dung as an African symbol of fertility/reverence in pieces honoromg African-American icons such as Miles Davis, and some have countered that his rendering of the Virgin Mary is not quite the slap at Christianity the critics frame it as). To this add the recent Rolling Stone cover featuring rapper Kanye West as a crucified Jesus, complete with crown of thorns, and Corpus Christi, the controversial 1998 off-broadway play that featured a gay Jesus having anal sex with Judas. Christians protested these works as sacreligious and insulting to their faith, just as they had protested "The Last Temptation of Christ" and "Jesus Christ Superstar" in their day. At best, in their view, these artistic works insulted or belittled their faith - at worst, they were seen as outright blasphemy.
So to Muslims who now take offence at cartoons depicting their Prophet, I say, "Welcome to the club." A free press by its nature will question those in power, question received wisdom, and yes, question religious doctrine. And cartoonists (as well as artists, musicians, playwrights, filmmakers and comedians) do occasionally take shots at religious figures and sacred cows. It comes with the territory in any free society. And yes, sometimes lines are crossed and sensibilities are offended. When that happens, people write angry letters, cancel subscriptions, organize protests and boycotts, and otherwise attempt to attract media attention to their grievances. But only extremists burn down buildings, make death threats and advocate for mass murder as retribution for the perceived offense.
And extremists are the ones fanning the flames in the current controversy. When the cartoons first appeared last October, largely as a challenge to the extent of self-censorship in the media, they went relatively unnoticed and created little stir. They were even published in the Egyptian newspaper Al Fagr with nary a peep from the Islamic street, a fact that only recently came to light. Nothing else happened until January when all hell broke loose. What happened in the meantime? A group of Danish imams circulated the cartoons, adding three additional images that were highly offensive to Muslims (one showed a Muslim being raped by a dog, another purported to depict Mohammed wearing a pig snout). The intent was to incite Muslim rage against the cartoons, an effort that has by and large been effective.
This underground campaign by Islamist groups went undetected for several months, during which time groups all over the Middle East apparently acquired quantities of Danish flags for the "spontaneous" angry mobs to burn in January for the cameras. The Islamists have repeatedly shown their sophistication in media manipulation in what many are pointing out is actually an information war.
What about the charge that even if the cartoons were not really that offensive per se, the key issue is the reproduction of images of Mohammed, which is forbidden in Islam. Well, two issues with that: first, if we think it prudent that Western newspapers should abide by such restrictions, why not other aspects of Islamic sharia law? This slope becomes slippery quite rapidly, as Christopher Hitchens observed:
The prohibition on picturing the prophet—who was only another male mammal—is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent. This current uneasy coexistence is only an interlude, he seems to say. For the moment, all I can do is claim to possess absolute truth and demand absolute immunity from criticism. But in the future, you will do what I say and you will do it on pain of death.
Secondly, it turns out that the ban on images of Mohammed in Islam is not absolute, at least in the historical sense. It's true that in the present era Islam is strongly opposed to depictions of not just Mohammed but sees as idolatrous images of Jesus and other prophets. But that wasn't always the case. You can find depictions of Mohammed in early Islamic art (search on "Mohammed image archive") . In some cases, his face is blank or veiled, in other cases he is fully realized. In the current era, depictions of Mohammed can be found in many unexpected places, from the Supreme Court to South Park. That there has been no reaction in the Muslim world to these prior Western depictions of Mohammed are further indications that much of the furor is the result of a deliberate campaign of incitement.
I would agree with commentators like Hugh Hewitt that the media should should not play into the hands of the radicals, and in general should show more sensitivity across the board when it comes to treatment of religion and religious figures. Censorship or even self-censorship is not called for here -- more like common sense and good taste. And if Western journalists choose to apologize to the Muslim world for failing to show sensitivity and respect for Islam, we should be prepared to demand that newspapers across the Islamic world demonstrate their good faith by denouncing and refusing to publish hateful cartoons like these, which appear in government-controlled papers throughout the Middle East on a daily basis. For too long, we have allowed the press in these countries to play a double-game, fanning the flames of religious incitement at home while claiming victimhood at the hands of the West.
In fact, a call for a consistent moral standard is not just a good idea but is essential. Here's Victor Davis Hanson:
The deluded here might believe that the divide is a moral one, between a supposedly decadent secular West and a pious Middle East, rather than an existential one that is fueled by envy, jealousy, self-pity, and victimization. But to believe the cartoons represent the genuine anguish of an aggrieved puritanical society tainted by Western decadence, one would have to ignore that Turkey is the global nexus for the sex-slave market, that Afghanistan is the world's opium farm, that the Saudi Royals have redefined casino junketeering, and that the repository of Hitlerian imagery is in the West Bank and Iran.
The entire controversy over the cartoons is ludicrous, but often in history the trivial and ludicrous can wake a people up before the significant and tragic follow.
The matter is far from trivial. Islamist organizations whose goal is to establish a foothold for sharia law in European societies have engineered this crisis as a means of intimidating the West and deflecting attention away from Iran's nuclear ambitions and Syria's perfidy in Lebanon. Their strategy has thus been highly effective and they can see the writing on the wall. The Danish cartoonists are now in hiding, in fear for their lives. News editors who chose to run the cartoons in France, Egypt and Jordan have been sacked. Britain and the US are issuing soothing apoligetics. The Prime Minister of liberal Holland refuses to stand in solidarity with either his counterpart in Denmark, or one of his own Ministers of Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Dutch citizen and ex-Muslim who has been marked for death by the radicals for speaking out on the treatment of women and gays under Islamic law. Hirsi Ali is herself unequivocal as to where she stands -- with Denmark and against the economic boycott targeted at punishing the entire country for the actions of a single newspaper:
Liberty does not come cheap. A few million Euros is worth paying for the defence of free speech. If our governments neglect to help our Scandinavian friends then I hope citizens will organise a donation campaign for Danish companies.
We have been flooded with opinions on how tasteless and tactless the cartoons are -- views emphasising that the cartoons only led to violence and discord. What good has come of the cartoons, so many wonder loudly?
Well, publication of the cartoons confirmed that there is widespread fear among authors, filmmakers, cartoonists and journalists who wish to describe, analyse or criticise intolerant aspects of Islam all over Europe.
Hirsi Ali warns us that the radicals who are committing violence and threatening lives must be defied, not appeased. We may be appalled at the intensity of the reaction, and wish to not provoke it further but capitulating to the violence and death threats has the effect of rewarding that behavior, leading to more, not less, as Glenn Reynolds recently pointed out. And their rage is not reserved for Denmark - it is free-floating, turning now against France, now against Norway, and routinely invoking death to Israel and the United States, countries which have in this case stayed on the sidelines.
On that basis alone, however we feel about the cartoons themselves, all free-thinking people should stand with Denmark. Those of us who value freedom of expression should not capitulate to the demands and threats of any one religion that it is off-limits to question tenets of their doctrine. Were we to go down that route, there are a great many questions we would be forbidden to ask; someone will always be offended, if not by cartoons of the prophet, then by Valentine's Day or statues of the Buddha, or women as clergy or same-sex marriage, or for that matter, The Da Vinci Code. These topics cannot be avoided or suppressed merely because they run counter to orthodox religious teachings, whether they originate in Islam, Christianity or Judaism. We must always be able to question our faith in the face of those who would impose it on us, and we must always be able to defend our faith in the face of those who would attempt to take it away.
So - let's agree that the Danish cartoons are offensive to the religious sensibilities of Muslims, and further agree that Jyllands-Posten has the right to print them, as an independent publication in a country with a free press. Let's agree that it is the responsibility of journalists to weigh the consequences of printing any provocative image - whether it be a cartoon of Mohammed, a snapshot from Abu Ghraib, a political cartoon of a wounded soldier, or a grisly image of a terrorist beheading a hostage - the public's right to be informed vs. the overall public good; and let's also agree that the standard has to be high. Finally, lets agree that we will apply that standard across the board to all journalism, and that those who publish an image to incite rather than to inform will face public opprobrium for their actions.
Press freedom is guaranteed in open societies. But with freedom always comes responsibility. The publication has to ask, "Are we printing this to titillate, to be provocative for its own sake, to incite public outrage in relation to an agenda? Or are we honestly presenting a piece of information essential to the public debate?" The former is abuse of a free press, the latter is the reason we must defend freedom of the press, even when we don't like what we see in the newspaper.
Tashbih Sayyed, the California-based Editor In Chief of Muslim World Today visits Israel and ponders how it can be so different from the way it is portrayed in the media:
There are many things that I wanted to talk about with Israelis, the foremost among them being their reluctance to do something about the bad press that continues to paint them as villains. Although I understand why the media, which reasonably covers most events accurately, chooses to ignore all rules of ethical journalism when it comes to Israel, I could not fathom Israel's reluctance to challenge the negative press effectively. Media bias against Israel reminded me of the Nazi-era German press that was recruited by Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, who picked every hate-laden word against the Jews. Just like the German press that refused to print the truth about the gruesome atrocities in Europe's death camps, or claimed that it was all an exaggeration, the media today also ignores Arab terrorism.
I wanted to see if there was any truth in the media allegations that Israel was an apartheid state, undemocratic and discriminatory.
What he found was, well, Israel:
The very first day in Caesarea introduced us to Israeli democracy. The air was full of political debate and discussion. Ariel Sharon's decision to leave the Likud and form a new political party dominated the hotel halls and underlined the problems caused by the necessity of having democratic coalitions. Someone commented: "The object of a free and democratic Israeli society is to reach satisfactory compromise, but often the conclusions are less than satisfactory - especially for the majority. It involves coalitions and unity, which are also checks and balances on any potential abuse of minority rights. It is a better system than the American representative Republican system - which is really a representation of power and special interests. In the US, you get a democracy for the few. In Israel, you have a democracy for everyone."
I tried very hard to find any Muslim state that has true democracy and where religious minorities are accorded equal democratic rights, but failed. The map of the Muslim world is too crowded with kings, despots, dictators, sham democrats and theocratic autocrats, and the persecution of minorities is an essential part of Islamist social behavior. But here, protected by Israel's democratic principles, the Muslim Arab citizens of Israel are afforded all the rights and privileges of Israeli citizenship. When the first elections to the Knesset were held in February of 1949, Israeli Arabs were given the right to vote and to be elected along with Israeli Jews. Today, Israel's Arab citizens are accorded full civil and political rights, entitled to complete participation in Israeli society. They are active in Israeli social, political and civic life, and enjoy representation in Israel's parliament, foreign service and judicial system.
Sayyed is also president of the Council for Democracy and Tolerance and an adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute. He is an opponent of radical Islam, terrorism, and organizations that act as fronts or apoligists for jihad. I think it's safe to say that his view of Israel is far from representative of mainstream Muslim opinion. Or for that matter, the mainstream media in most parts of the world. But I wish it were.
(Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch)
Joy Renee comments on the ongoing riots by Muslim youths in the suburbs of Paris, now in their eighth straight day:
There’s no one who can’t say they really haven’t seen this coming. Chirac & his trusty sidekick Pepe Le Pew de Villepin have ignored the looming threats to freedom in France by playing the politically correct cards of the socialist party. While Jews were being murdered & driven from Paris and France, the courts and the government chose instead to pay attention to hate speech directed against Muslims. If the Jews were leaving the country, eh bien, who really cares? If the rights of conservatives and moderates were being trampled in ridiculous attempts to appease the growing immigrant population, no problem.
But now, after five [now eight] days and nights of unrest in Paris, the government has failed to contain the situation and the lives of the French may never be the same. The painful lesson the French are learning right now should be a lesson to the rest of Europe and the world. The French have catered to radical Islam in every way possible and still they are attacked. While they called us too hard, too much the cowboy, they said understanding was all that was needed. Where has that understanding gotten them? Five nights of rioting by mainly North African muslims.
England is trying very hard to curb this wave of anti-western terror and succeeding somewhat. According to the police, they have stopped several other attempts at terror and are arresting and expelling those who would try to destroy England. Will the French do the same?
Wretchard of the Belmont Club elaborates on the deep undercurrents of the problem:
At least one nation has been born in the last week, that of immigrants who once colloquially referred to themselves as "Arabs" but who now prefer to call themselves "Muslims". While the riots will start to abate at some point, from exhaustion and the onset of cold weather as much as anything else, the sense of identity forged at the barricades will not so easily fade. A new meme has been born which neither Sarkozy's rubber bullets nor de Villepin's appeasement can bring under control.
The only question is whether another nation has been reborn under the events of the last week; a nation once called France. There is in a sense, something magnificent about the stirrings of identity among the Muslims in the Parisian ghettos; all the grander in comparison to the tentativeness, doubt and reflexive abasement of the officials of the Fifth Republic. The riot police, fire department and public order apparatus may have been present in the rioting banlieus, but the Idea of France was conspicuously absent. The Idea of France, not the hodgepodge of welfare benefits, Marxist obscurantism and world-weariness that that is palmed off as sophistication, is what has to present itself as an alternative to the Green Banner of Islam. Otherwise it will be a contest between something and nothing.
The Muslim uprising of the last week is a challenge to the half century of policy that has brought France to this point. Polices which deprecated European culture, frowned on a national identity, lowered the birthrate, created a welfare state, imported 'guest workers', promoted mindless multiculturalism and relied on 'international' treaties for protection -- all articles of Leftist faith -- are now facing the judgment of history; and worse, the verdict of Islam. It would be supremely ironical if the European Left, the 'vanguard of history', required for its future survival the very things it had set out to destroy.
Imagine if riots of this nature broke out in the suburbs of New York or Washington DC. It would be headline news 24/7, and proof positive of the racist nature of the US under the failed Bush administration. But this is France, the country that opposed the Iraq war and which has a long history of cultural ties and rapprochement with the Muslim world, with all the "correct" beliefs and the nuanced and sophistcated world view Americans should aspire to. Yet the banlieues are in flames. Best to ignore it on this side of the pond, turn our heads away and distract ourselves with our own internal politics and scandals while Paris burns.
I have long feared seclar Europe was on the brink of a religious civil war with its immigrant population. Now it seems to be tipping into the abyss. Events in Spain, the Netherlands, the UK, and now France are adding up to a grim pattern of homegrown terrorists willing to tear down the societies they grew up in but do not feel part of. Europe will have to stand and fight to defend the secular liberal values that it claims to hold so dear against an aggressive radical religious movement that sees it as decadent and destined to be colonized. Appeasement, diplomatic niceties and anti-American rhetoric won't save the continent from its fate.
UPDATE: More background via Betsy Newmark and Michelle Malkin.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Don't miss Mark Steyn's piece, "Wake up Europe, you've a war on your hands" in which he notes:
The notion that Texas neocon arrogance was responsible for frosting up trans-Atlantic relations was always preposterous, even for someone as complacent and blinkered as John Kerry. If you had millions of seething unassimilated Muslim youths in lawless suburbs ringing every major city, would you be so eager to send your troops into an Arab country fighting alongside the Americans? For half a decade, French Arabs have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc. The concern of the political class has been to prevent the spread of these attacks to targets of more, ah, general interest. They seem to have lost that battle. Unlike America's Europhiles, France's Arab street correctly identified Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war for what it was: a sign of weakness.
He alos points out that, "it turns out finally that there really is an explosive 'Arab street,' but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois."
Daniel Pipes reports that in the birthplace of Christianity, Christians are being persecuted, murdered and driven out:
This assault fits a larger pattern. According to the Catholic Custodian of the Holy Land, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Christians in the Bethlehem region alone have suffered 93 cases of injustice in 2000-04. In the worst of these, in 2002, Muslims murdered the two Amre sisters, 17 and 19 years old, whom they called prostitutes. A post-mortem, however, showed the teenagers to have been virgins – and to have been tortured on their genitals.
"Almost every day – I repeat, almost every day – our communities are harassed by the Islamic extremists in these regions," Mr. Pizzaballa says. "And if it's not the members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, there are clashes with … the Palestinian Authority." In addition to the Islamists, a "Muslim land mafia" is said to operate. With PA complicity, it threatens Christian land and house owners, often succeeding to compel them to abandon their properties.
The campaign of persecution has succeeded. Even as the Christian population of Israel grows, that of the Palestinian Authority shrinks precipitously. Bethlehem and Nazareth, historic Christian towns for nearly two millennia, are now primarily Muslim. In 1922, Christians outnumbered Muslims in Jerusalem; today, Christians amount to a mere 2% of that city's population.
Where are the mainline Christian churches? Apparently too busy bashing Israel to raise their voices over the destruction of their own religious community in the birthplace of Jesus.
Meanwhile in Gaza, Palestinians are celebrating the end of the Israeli occupation by torching synagogues.
UPDATE: On the other hand, they do have a rather thriving industry in Gaza - manufacturing consent. All in a day's work in "Pallywood". Follow the link and watch the movie. More background here. (Hat tip: Power Line and LGF)
No, the title of this post is not a typo. My morning paper (the Minneapolis Star-Tribune) made it clear that we are so over 9/11 and have moved on. After all, there haven't been any other terrorist attacks on the US (gee, I wonder why?) and we no longer get apprehensive about congregating in places like the Mall of America, which at one time seemed like the obvious next logical taget after the World Trade Center. But no, thankfully that's all behind us now:
Four years ago today, communications Prof. Edward Schiappa wrote "September 11, 2001," on the chalkboard in his classroom at the University of Minnesota. He told his students they would never forget the day, which would become a watershed moment just as President Kennedy's assassination was for their parents.
Four years later, Schiappa wonders whether all the talk of a pre-9/11 and post-9/11 mentality is hype.
"It took a long time for us to evolve to where we are in terms of our mindsets," he said. "Even something as dramatic as this is not going to change that. Once you get over the emotional impact, this is new information and you adapt as humans and animals have been doing for thousands of years."
As a longtime shoeshine manager at the airport, Jessie Perez has watched that shift from fear to calm firsthand.
"You can tell the difference big-time," he said. "After 9/11, people were kind of hinky about getting on the plane, keeping an eye on things and watching people. Now it's more relaxed and it actually seems like prior to 9/11 right now."
What a difference a year makes! At this time last year, I posted about my own 9/11 wake-up call, and now increasingly, I see confirmation that I'm behind the curve. After all, if Hurricane Katrina showed us anything, it's that people can die from all sorts of causes, natural and man-made, and that the federal government continually demonstrates it is not prepared (a fair point, to which I can readily agree, though most media accounts let state and local officials off the hook much too easily).
True, the article does not entirely gloss over the possibility of another attack. It allows that while complacency is a natural tendency, too much of it is not a good thing, and it is more than likely we'll be hit again at some point. And it does mention, almost in passing, the role of radical Islam, albeit indirectly in connection with everyday Muslims worried about guilt by association and trying to keep their heads down:
"It's back to normal to the extent that we've had less people vandalizing our mosques," said Maple Grove attorney Sumbal Mahmud.
She remembers trading her traditional Islamic hijab head scarf for a beret in the days after 9/11. She wore her University of Minnesota Law School sweatshirt "to prove I fit in." She wanted to distinguish herself from those who had hijacked her faith along with the jumbo jets.
She remembers when her cousin visited from Pakistan a few months before 9/11 and then came back last summer wearing traditional clothes.
"Our walks around Lake Calhoun were different," she said, saying curious glances had turned into suspicious looks.
As an American Jew I sympathize, and I'm not being at all ironic here. This past August, I attended the opening ceremonies for the Maccabi Games, an international sports event sort of like a mini Jewish Olympics, with Jewish youth competing from all over North America, as well as Great Britain, Poland, Venezuela and Israel. St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly was in attendance. So was St. Paul Police Chief William Finney, along with a good number of his force. Security around the St. Paul Excel Center was very tight. The marquee did not announce the event, and all attendees were credentialed. This tight security was true in other cities, not just St. Paul.
Why you ask? Well first of all, numerous kids from all over the world were involved so it only makes sense that access would be restricted to their families, supporters and community. But the other factor was that it was an assembly of Jews, which for some sick people would have made it a target-rich environment. Anti-semitism is never far away in the world, not when within the past year I saw the words "Die Jew" scrawled on the wall of the Jewish Day school in St. Paul. And anti-semitism is less a problem in the US than it is in the rest of the world, where it has been a scourge for centuries, well before the founding of the state of Israel, or even the publication of Mein Kampf or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Mostly it stemed from the refusal of Jews to accept the majority belief that a first century radical rabbi was in fact the Son of God and the Messiah, clinging instead to the apparently misbegotten notion that God had made a lasting covenant with Moses and the people of Israel at Mount Sinai. For centuries, Christians said to non-Christians, including both Jews and Muslims: "Follow our loving God and worship his son as your only true savior -- or die." Eventually, they got over it for the most part. But a great number of prominent imams still preach hatred of both Jews and Christians, even though Islam is said to honor its fellow monotheistic faiths as "people of the book".
So Muslims do have a huge challenge ahead of them, to take back their faith from the fundamentalist fanatics who claim the headlines by flying planes into buildings, murdering school children, and blowing up buses and discos, not to mention churches and synagogues, in the process claiming the lives of countless Muslims as well as non-Muslims. While it is unfair to say that such monsters represent the totality of Islam, they represent an extreme edge of a strain of thinking within Islam that needs to be repudiated, not for Western consumption, but within the Muslim community.
Leaders in Western countries are now making explicit statements regarding their disposition towards those who would advocate abandoning democratic rule of law in favor of Islamic sharia law. In the process, they are showing Islamists the door:
The British shadow education secretary and one of the Conservative Party's bright prospects, David Cameron, defined Britishness as "freedom under the rule of law," adding that this expression "explains almost everything you need to know about our country, our institutions, our history, our culture - even our economy." The treasurer of Australia, Peter Costello, who is regarded as heir apparent to Prime Minister Howard, said, "Australia expects its citizens to abide by core beliefs – democracy, the rule of law, the independent judiciary, independent liberty."
Mr. Cameron spoke with a bluntness unique in four years of politicians' discourse since September 11, 2001: "The driving force behind today's terrorist threat is Islamist fundamentalism. The struggle we are engaged in is, at root, ideological. During the last century a strain of Islamist thinking has developed which, like other totalitarianisms, such as Nazi-ism and Communism, offers its followers a form of redemption through violence."
Most striking are the growing calls to extrude Islamists. Two politicians have advised foreign Islamists to stay away. Quebec's international relations minister, Monique Gagnon-Tremblay, retracted the welcome mat from those "who want to come to Quebec and who do not respect women's rights or who do not respect whatever rights may be in our Civil Code." The premier of New South Wales, Australia, which includes Sydney, Bob Carr, wants would-be immigrants to be denied visas if they refuse to integrate: "I don't think they should be let in," he said.
Mr. Costello went further, observing that Australia "is founded on a democracy. According to our Constitution, we have a secular state. Our laws are made by the Australian Parliament. If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you." Islamists with dual citizenship, he suggests, could be asked "to exercise that other citizenship," i.e., leave Australia.
Likewise, Australia's education minister, Brendan Nelson, also on August 24 urged immigrants to "commit to the Australian constitution, Australian rule of law." If not, "they can basically clear off." Geert Wilders, head of his own small party in the Dutch parliament, similarly called for the expulsion of non-citizen immigrants who refuse to integrate
But it was the British shadow defense minister, Gerald Howarth, who went the furthest, suggesting in early August that all British Islamists must go. "If they don't like our way of life, there is a simple remedy: Go to another country, get out." He directed this principle even to Islamists born in Britain, as were three of the four London bombers): "If you don't give allegiance to this country, then leave."
Please note that they are absolutely not telling Muslims to leave, only Islamists who, by definition, seek to replace secular laws with Islamic law. In the US, this would amount to abolishing the Constitution and replacing it with the Quran (which is, by the way, the official constitution of Saudi Arabia).
It is one thing to cite religious morality as the inspiration for laws made by human beings. This is the foundation of much of the legal tradition in the West. But once a society chooses to be governed explicitly by religious edict, those laws cannot be contested since they come by definition, directly from God.
As the old Monty Python line goes, "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition." But when Church doctrine was synonomous with the law, that's exactly what we got and anyone who strayed from the True Way was tortured and burned as a heretic. Why would we expect anything different in the case of Islam, particularly when we can see first-hand examples of life under sharia law in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, not to mention Nigeria and more recently Gaza and parts of Southern Iraq. We must not only battle over terrorism from Islamic radicals, but resist the efforts of false "moderates" whose intent is to use our own religious pluralism as a Trojan Horse for eventual religious rule.
UPDATE: Add Kenya to the list on sharia watch.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Here's an update from the Belmont Club on the efforts of left-wing women's groups in Canada to prevent sharia from becoming part of that country's family law:
One of websites coordinating opposition is NoSharia.Com, which sees the proposed Canadian as part of a "universal attempt" by "political Islam" to gradually foist its principles on the West -- eroding the gains which the Left believes it has won. NoSharia.Com has found a clever way to prevent their position from cascading through their whole ideological system, and escalating into a wholesale opposition to "political Islam" by generalizing their argument as opposition to all "faith based" types of arbitration. Resistance to sharia becomes a special case of their general struggle against conservative and bigoted behavior.
Comment: The international Left has made common cause with Islamists in opposition to the Iraq war and Bush's policies, both domestic and foreign. But the imposition of sharia law on a secular society is one place where the Left and the Islamists should rightly part company. It should be obvious to anyone paying attention that in practice, sharia is incompatible with women's rights (as well as gay rights), and its introduction to Western cultures would allow multiculturalism to trump gender equality.
UPDATE: Thankfully, Ontario had decided against sharia and will ban other forms of relgious family law already in practice.
Bernard Goldberg: Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News
John Mace: Beginner's Arabic Script: An Introduction to Reading and Writing Arabic
Robert Baer: Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude
Christopher Hitchens: Love, Poverty, and War : Journeys and Essays
Malcolm Gladwell: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Hugh Hewitt: Blog : Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World
Mark Steyn: America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It
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