Let Islam Prove It's a Religion of Peace

Great piece by Tawfik Hamid in the Wall Street Journal

Scholars in the most prestigious Islamic institutes and universities continue to teach things like Jews are "pigs and monkeys," that women and men must be stoned to death for adultery, or that Muslims must fight the world to spread their religion. Isn't, then, Mr. Wilders's criticism appropriate? Instead of blaming him, we must blame the leading Islamic scholars for having failed to produce an authoritative book on Islamic jurisprudence that is accepted in the Islamic world and unambiguously rejects these violent teachings.

Read it all. It's pretty short.

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Jihadists in their own words: How Islam will take over the UK

UK jihadist Anjem Choudary describes the ways in which the UK could become a Muslim country, and in doing so makes these ominous statements:

Who else has an ideology...that believes to overthrow any government? Nobody does. The Buddhists don't, the Hindus, Sikhs, nobody...Nobody has this agenda on them, to implement the shari'a and remove regimes. Only the Muslims.

[...]

There are three types of Muslims: those who are in prison, those on their way to prison, and those who are not practicing. Really. If you abide by the shari'a in your life, you are in one of those categories, one of the first two. Must be. Otherwise, you're doing something wrong.

Watch it all.



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Rick Santorum at Stanford

Former senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum spoke at Stanford today about the War on Terror and his views on the best way to proceed in the current conflict with what he called "aggressive, expansionist Islam." He was invited by the Stanford Review and Stanford College Republicans.

One highlight was when Senator Santorum took issue with those who say we are at war with terrorists who "just happen to be Muslims," exclaiming, "That's false! It has everything to do with Islam!" These are people who are trying to impose their values an their culture on us, which "is antithetical to Western culture," he explained.

Overall, it was an excellent speech. Senator Santorum has clearly done his research on this topic, and it's a shame more elected officials don't share his views on this.

A reporter from the Stanford Review was there, so expect a full-length article on the event about a week and a half from now.

There were a handful of protesters hanging around outside the entrance, apparently expecting the senator to speak about his "reprehensible" views on gay rights and abortion.

Hey, guys! The election was 4 months ago! Get over it!

There was actually an excellent turnout. About 150 people showed up.

Former Senator Rick Santorum

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Anne Bayefsky on Durban II

Anne Bayefsky, who we recently brought to speak at Stanford, has released an excellent piece on the Obama administration's decision to attend the Durban II conference in April.

"A Foreign Policy of Obsequiousness":

Yesterday in Geneva, President Obama unveiled the new look of America’s foreign policy — obsequiousness. It was Day One for his emissaries to the U.N. planning committee of the Durban II conference. This is the racist “anti-racism” bash to be held in Geneva in April. The U.S. and Israel walked out of the first go-round in Durban, South Africa in September 2001. Ever since, the U.S. government has refused to lend any credibility to the Declaration adopted after they left. That is, until yesterday.

U.S. representatives were addressing a human-rights negotiating committee with an executive consisting of a Libyan chair, an Iranian vice-chair, and a Cuban rapporteur. Russian Yuri Boychenko was presiding over Monday’s “human rights” get-together. Before them was a draft document which participants plan to adopt in finished form at the conference itself. The draft now contains mountains of offensive references to limits on free speech, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish provisions, and incendiary allegations of the victimization of Muslims at the hands of counter-terrorism racists.

Here is how the American delegates responded to a proposal they understood was incompatible with U.S. interests (“Brackets” denote withholding approval at any given moment in time.): “I hate to be the cause of unhappiness in the room . . . I have to suggest this phrase remains in brackets and I offer my sincere apologies.”

Read it all, at the link above.

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Europe in decline

Mark Steyn proves once again that he is the most insightful and valuable pundit out there on this issue.

The Children's Crusade:

In the next few years, Brussels, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Rotterdam will become majority Muslim. Let’s say you work in an office in those cities: One day they install a Muslim prayer room, and a few folks head off at the designated time, while the rest of you get on with what passes for work in the EU. A couple of years go by, and it’s now a few more folks scooting off to the prayer room. Then it’s a majority. And the ones who don’t are beginning to feel a bit awkward about being left behind.

What do you do? The future showed up a lot sooner than you thought. If you were a fundamentalist Christian like those wackjob Yanks, signing on to Islam might (pace Mr. Ferrigno) cause you some discomfort. But if you’re the average post-Christian Eurosecularist, what’s the big deal? Who wants to be the last guy sitting in the office sharpening his pencil during morning prayers?

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Judea Pearl in WSJ

Judea Pearl (father of Daniel Pearl) has a piece in today's Wall Street Journal on the terrible road the world has taken since the murder of his son in 2002.

Those around the world who mourned for Danny in 2002 genuinely hoped that Danny's murder would be a turning point in the history of man's inhumanity to man, and that the targeting of innocents to transmit political messages would quickly become, like slavery and human sacrifice, an embarrassing relic of a bygone era.

But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of "resistance," has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words "war on terror" cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.

I believe it all started with well-meaning analysts, who in their zeal to find creative solutions to terror decided that terror is not a real enemy, but a tactic. Thus the basic engine that propels acts of terrorism -- the ideological license to elevate one's grievances above the norms of civilized society -- was wished away in favor of seemingly more manageable "tactical" considerations.

Read it all.

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The Right of Return

In the latest issue of Commentary magazine, Michael J. Totten writes on "the mother of all quagmires" (i.e. the Arab-Israeli Conflict) including the so-called "right of return":

Fatah Party leader Mahmoud Abbas is clearly more moderate and reasonable than the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but even he can't compromise on the “right of return,” the so-far non-negotiable demand that all Palestinian refugees and their descendants from the 1948 war be allowed to return to settle in Israel. Israel would become an Arab-majority country if that were to happen, and most of the would-be arrivals have been radicalized in politically toxic refugee camps. The “right of return” would ignite a civil war worse than Lebanon’s.

Listen to Ran Cohen, Member of the Knesset for the left-wing Meretz Party and former leader of the Left Camp of Israel peace movement. “Even I refuse the right of return,” he said. “It's impossible. It's the opposite of a solution. Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] and the others know our position on the right of return. Who are they going [to] negotiate this with? Not me, not Meretz, not Peace Now. Who? The Communist Party? Not even the radical left supports this."

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