McChrystal Unclear

I think it's best if you keep it shut, Stan

In this article at the Washington Post, we are treated to the "wisdom" of Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan.

McChrystal's willful blindness to the hard realities of Islam is painfully clear. Having originally decided that the best course of action was to win the Afghans' "hearts and minds", which didn't work because Islam teaches hatred of non-Muslims and the Afghans are particularly devout in their Islam, Stan The Man Without A Plan has now turned his dull eyes to giving the people "'trust and confidence' in themselves and their government." Which means, in essence, nothing at all.

Then - and this is the real corker - McChrystal seeks to expose what he calls the jihadists' "flagrant contravention of the principles of the Koran", including indiscriminate use of violence and terrorism, and attacks on schools and development projects.

One can only assume that this fool hasn't actually read what the Qur'an says about violence against unbelievers, or what Islamic law teaches about terroristic acts such as the slaughter of civilians and suicide bombing.

This is what our troops are fighting and dying for?

Israeli Snake Strikes On The Way?

Argh! Jewish snake assassin!

Here's what Islam does to your brain:

Palestinian Muslims believe that Israel is training snakes to attack them as assassins.

No, really.

And nor is this the first time those crafty Zionists have utilised animal power to attack Muslims. The Palestinians have previously accused Israel of using rats to drive Palestinians out of their homes. Meanwhile, Iran has actually arrested peeping pigeons and secret squirrels for being Israeli spies. And don't forget the wild boars.

Such conspiracism is funny, but it also represents a festering Muslim hatred for Jews which goes back to the inception of Islam. Long before the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which many in the Muslim world still take as gospel truth, Jews have been accused of engaging in conspiracies to either take over/corrupt the world or, more specifically, destroy Islam.

It begins in the Qur'an, where Jews are accused of "spreading corruption" in the land (5:64), and most notably murdering or attempting to murder prophets (2:61), including Jesus (4:157). This theme culminates in the allegation that Muhammad's final illness and death in 632 AD were caused by his poisoning by a Jewess at Khaybar two years earlier. For example, Ibn Sa'd, a noted biographer of the Prophet, wrote the following about this incident:

“She poisoned the goat putting more poison in the forelegs…The Apostle of Allah took the foreleg, a piece of which he put into his mouth...The Apostle of Allah sent for Zaynab Bint al-Harith [the Jewess] [and]…handed her over to [those] who put her to death…The Apostle of Allah lived after this three years, till in consequence of his pain he passed away. During his illness he used to say: I did not cease to find the effect of the poisoned morsel I took at Khaybar.”

Since then, the conspiracy theories have kept coming. The famous Muslim historian Tabari (d.923) was influential in spreading the allegation, still believed by some Muslims today, that the entire Sunni/Shi'ite divide was created by a renegade Jew as part of a larger plot to destablise and destroy Islam. Later, when the Jew Sa'd ad-Daula was appointed as vizier to the Mongol Emperor in thirteenth-century Iraq, outraged Muslims (outraged because sharia law forbids infidels from obtaining positions of power over Muslims), levelled all kinds of calumnies and libels against him. One of these accusations was that he was planning to cut down ancient trees in Baghdad and use them to build a fleet so he could attack Mecca and convert the Kaaba into a heathen temple. This incitement led eventually to Sa'd's murder.

Anti-Jewsh conspiracism serves to justify the fiercest and most murderous kind of hatred towards Jews, and it is vital to remember that the sources for it pre-date non-Islamic sources of antisemitic hate by over a thousand years.

An Islamic State In Palestine

Official Palestinian TV broadcasts an image of Israel coloured with the Palestinian flag

Leftists frequently insist that the Palestinians sincerely want peace in their conflict with Israel. And they are right, of course, because many of those Palestinians, such as "moderate" PA Prime Minister Salam Fayad, want to turn the entire region into an Islamic state, governed by sharia law, with Jerusalem as its capital.

So the Leftists are indeed correct. Because once Israel is an Islamic state, the Palestinians wouldn't have any need to fight it anymore.

And then there would be "peace".

Absurd Britannia

Sharia courts may be actively functioning in Britain now, but it seems that sharia is no longer confined to the four walls of the courtroom.

Consider the following: A Christian couple have been charged with a criminal offence after taking part in what they regarded as a reasonable discussion about religion with guests at their hotel. Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang were arrested after a Muslim woman complained to police that she had been offended by their comments. They have been charged under public order laws with using ‘threatening, abusive or insulting words’ that were ‘religiously aggravated’.

And what did they say that was so "aggravating"? Although the facts are disputed, it is thought that during the conversation the couple were challenged over their Christian beliefs. It is understood that they suggested that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was a warlord and that traditional Muslim dress for women was a form of bondage.

The latter is a matter of opinion and the former is an indisputable fact - Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad's earliest and most esteemed biographer, records that the Prophet “took part personally in twenty-seven (T. six) raids...He actually fought in nine engagements”. But criticism of Islam, no matter how firmly grounded in truth, is prohibited under sharia. Was the anonymous Muslim complainant one of the approximately 40% of British Muslims who would like to see Islamic law become the law of the land in this country? To ask such a question is rapidly becoming "threatening, abusive and insulting" to Muslims.

Protect Rifqa Bary Against The Slanderers

Over the last few weeks, I have looked on in complete disbelief (and controlled fury) as the media and criminal investigators betray an innocent young girl.

I am referring to Rifqa Bary, the American Muslim girl who fears for her life after converting to Christianity, and angering her family in the process. Previously, I have dealt with the Islamic death penalty for apostasy and its implications for Rifqa here, as well as focusing on why it would be lethal to send the girl back to her home in Ohio.

But investigators and the media have ignored voluminous evidence of the threat to Rifqa's life, using every excuse in the book just so they can say that there is no problem with Islam or sharia law. See, for example, this post at Diana West's blog dissecting a hopeless piece of "coverage" of the Rifqa Bary story in TIME magazine.

At FrontPage today, Jamie Glazov interviews Dave Gaubatz, the first U.S. civilian Federal Agent deployed to Iraq in 2003. He is currently conducting a 50 State Counter-terrorism Research Tour (CTRT), and is collecting a huge amount of evidence relating to the extent that Muslims in America support the death sentence for apostasy. "I have visited over 200 Islamic Centers throughout America," he says. "The vast majority teach the worshippers ‘Apostates should be killed’ because it is a major sign of disrespect to Allah, the family of the Apostate is dishonored, and it may lead others to leave Islam."

Gaubatz is promising detailed documentation of his findings in the near future, but he provides one example during the interview:

Over the last three years I have conducted extensive research at Dar Al Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church, Va. Islamic leaders and some of their worshippers provided me materials to understand ‘Pure Islam’. One such manual is “The Hudud” (Mandatory Punishments for specific crimes). The Arabic word for Apostasy is ‘Riddah’. Below are a few quotes from the manual recommended to me to study Islam and how to be a good and pure Muslim. Note: In 2007, I went through a ‘pseudo’ conversion (revert) to Islam at Dar Al Hijrah in order to obtain more in depth first-hand intelligence. A popular Islamic leader Yusef Estes was visiting Dar Al Hijrah and was my witness to the conversion. My complete discussion with Estes will be made available on my site as well.

From the Hudud:

[1] “Death for hudd punishment for riddah (apostasy).

[2] “Whoever renounces his religion, kill him.”

[3] “The Muslim who converts his religion, kill him.”

Nowhere in the manual obtained in Virginia does it inform a Muslim father to not kill their daughter in America if she were to leave Islam (as Rifqa Bary did). No where does it inform the Muslim reader to not seek death for the Islamic sin of apostasy. Contrary, the manual does state there is no “obedience due to” any state or ruler who contradicts the laws of Allah.

Real, honest investigative reporting is uncovering this sort of thing all over the place. Here is another example from none other than Harvard University. The mainstream media should be utterly ashamed of themselves for their failure to uncover and comprehend such obvious truths.

Voting For More Islam

During the recent Afghan elections, most Western media outlets focused on allegations of electoral fraud. But considerably less attention was paid to the reasons that people voted in the first place. Naive and simplistic journalists in the West have expressed hope that voters turned out in defiance of the Taliban, or that the voting represents the successful "democratisation" of Afghanistan.

Now, a new report from the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit shows that these conclusions do not take into account the whole picture.

As the report makes clear, Afghan voters had a number of reasons for turning out, one of the key ones being Islamic identity. A common view of voters was, “We vote for a candidate who is first a Muslim, second an Afghan and finally, someone who can serve his people.”

This placing of religious identity above national and societal values exemplifies the way that, for many Muslims, their being a Muslim is more important to them than anything else, even their own nationality. Under such a worldview, there can never be hope for a secular outlook towards morality and law - religious principles always come first. Such tendencies are expressed even by supposedly secular Muslim "reformers" such as Tariq Ramadan, who has said: “I accept the law, provided it does not force me to do something in contradiction with my religion.” And: “If, to be a good citizen, you must be a bad Muslim, the answer is no.”

This religious fanaticism is also evident in the fact that, according to the report, "among older, more rural voters, democracy was condemned as embracing western values and moving away from tradition, reflecting more widespread concerns with the meaning of democracy in Afghanistan." Now, I thought it was only greasy Islamophobes who said that democracy is incompatible with Islam!

Actually, that's an important point. As, once again, the report notes, "Participation in elections does not necessary mean a wholehearted endorsement of democracy or democratisation in Afghanistan." A true democratic state would require the jettisoning of Islamic sharia law, which denies individual freedom and human rights to women and non-Muslims, and amounts to a theocratic, totalitarian regime akin to the Taliban's.

Polls in the Islamic world, most notably this one, have shown that the majority of Muslims actually support the implementation of strict sharia law in all Islamic countries. Afghanistan is not likely to be an exception. That means that whatever the Afghan people have been voting for, it certainly isn't real freedom.

And that's ultimately the reason why the US-led war in Afghanistan has, from the start, been so misguided. This is not to say, of course, that the Taliban should not have been ousted from power; but Bush and company never understood that their democratisation project in the country was doomed to fail, because they made no attempt to deal with the fundamental Islamic identity and values that would serve as barriers to such a project. Had they known what they were doing, they would not have allowed the Afghans to put in place a Constitution which states that "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam." The practical implications of this were the fact that Abdul Rahman was put on trial for apostasy after converting to Christianity and, more recently, a law was passed making it legal for men to starve their wives if they refuse to have sex with them.

Any attempt to transform an Islamic country into a Westernised democracy must begin with a confrontation of Islamic law and values, and a thorough re-education of the people. It is a shame that neither Bush nor, now, Obama understand this. The price for their ignorance has been the pointless blood of our soldiers fighting the wrong enemy.

It's not the Taliban; it's Islam.

Indonesia Becomes a Target For "Fascists"

Textbook anti-fascism

Indonesia's province of Aceh has passed a new law making adultery punishable by stoning to death, a member of the province's parliament has said. The law also imposes severe sentences for rape, homosexuality, alcohol consumption and gambling.

The basis for stoning to death in Islamic countries is Muhammad's own example. On one occasion he encountered a group of Jews in Medina who had arrested an adulterous couple. The Prophet of Islam asked them what the prescribed punishment was for adultery in the Torah. They tried to dissemble, claiming that the Torah prescribed only lashes, an indication that the Jews of Muhammad's day no longer took the judicial proscriptions of Mosaic law literally – and indeed, Islam is the only religion which has continued to practise this punishment for thousands of years. One of Muhammad's followers challenged them on this, so one of the Jews began to read from the Torah, but he deliberately covered the part about stoning with his hand. On exposing this deception, Muhammad said, “Woe to you Jews! What has induced you to abandon the judgement of God which you hold in your hands?” Then he had the couple stoned to death (Bukhari v.4, b.61, no.3635; see also Ibn Ishaq). On another occasion, a woman came to him and admitted that she had committed adultery, and asked for his forgiveness. He forgave her – and then had her stoned to death. (Muslim b.17, no.4206)

Muhammad's example, or Sunnah, is a major criterion for determining right and wrong in Islam. For this reason, stoning is considered a legitimate method of punishment under Islamic law to this day, even though it isn't actually mentioned in the Qur'an.

Anyway, the BBC article says that "[t]he governor of Aceh, a former rebel with the Free Aceh Movement, is opposed to strict Sharia law. He had urged more debate over the bill."

Which means, if you believe John Denham, that he must be a fascist.