Tag: Islamism

Another Attack on Free Speech

 

Apparently, things have been too quiet for Rep. Ilhan Omar. And we’ve been free of Islamist attacks for a long time. So, it’s time to stir things up on behalf of Muslims. Omar has decided to stand up for Muslims by creating a position in the Department of State (without consulting the department) to protect beleaguered Muslims everywhere. She submitted a bill that passed in the House to establish the Office to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia. According to CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, there have been 500 documented complaints of “anti-Muslim hate and bias” this past year in the U.S. Given that CAIR is an outgrowth of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, I tend to be skeptical of this data. The bill passed in the House on a party-line vote on Dec. 14.

So why do I care? This bill isn’t intended to protect Muslims worldwide from acts of violence. Instead, I believe Omar plans to further destroy our already debilitated commitment to freedom of speech.

The incentive for this bill was probably a response to the “rude and ill-advised” reference to the “jihad squad” made by Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado. But the implications of this bill are much more far-reaching. Essentially, the bill targets those people who use “hate speech”; these statements are elevated into the category of “hate crimes”:

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I’m amazed at how little has been made of the Islamist angle to the David Amess murder.  I don’t scan the British publications regularly, but here in the United States I have seen very little, either in direct news or in commentary, even commentary from conservative circles.  Have we become so accustomed to jihadist attacks […]

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Attacks on Jews, and a Leftist’s Attempt to Speak a Bit of Inconvenient Truth

 

I read Bari Weiss’s new book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism out of curiosity. I wondered if she would really speak truth to power and slap the hand that pays her salary, the New York Times. She did not. She is a woman of the left and a talented columnist, both of which come across in this small, easily read volume. I do not envy her the task she set for herself. I do not know if anyone could write an approachable appeal, that would both address the prominent sources of anti-Semitism and keep the ear of even one major faction on either side of the great political divide.

This is a lengthy and critical review, arranged with the following section headers: “A few administrative details,” “Book outline,” “Too far right?” “Not far enough left?” “Naming radical Islam,” “Review of reviews,” and finally some closing thoughts under “Civility?” Fair warning: this ended up being a very critical review. For balance, you should go read Cathy Young’s review, and Melissa Langsam Braunstein at the Federalist, both of which I link and excerpt in the “Review of reviews” section.

A few administrative details:

Quote of the Day: How Jews Harm Other Jews

 

“Dare I say it? I must. I implore Jews to stop fighting with one another. Even if we disagree, we must try to do so respectfully, soulfully. I am psychologically very sensitive to Jewish self-hatred and anti-Semitism within the Diaspora. I fear it may very well function as a fifth column. I do not, however, think that other Jews are my enemies. It is important for Jews to remember this. Even if all Jews saw eye-to-eye on everything, we would still have real enemies whose goal in life is to kill us and to drive a Jewish presence out of the Middle East.” — Phyllis Chesler, The New Anti-Semitism

I saw Phyllis Chesler give a talk at a conference in St. Petersburg, FL, several years ago. It was a conference on Islamism; unfortunately, they haven’t held the conference again. Some great people were there, whose warnings were prescient, many of which have manifested in the years since.

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Before you try to Google “American Muslim Party,” don’t bother. These Islamists are not bold enough–yet– to tell everyone how they are vying for the halls of power. M. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy has once again alerted the American public that political Islam is alive and well. Under the guise […]

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Why I Left Facebook

 

Four years ago a cartoon contest was held in Garland, Texas. Organizers encouraged contestants to draw political cartoons in response to a terrorist attack by Islamic supremacists on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a Parisian newspaper, in January of 2015, in which a dozen people, including the newspaper’s publishing director Stéphane Charbonnier, were murdered.

This is the winning cartoon, drawn by a fellow named Bosch Fawstin.

Achilles’ Heels, or Am I Being a Heel?

 

[Updated upon considering some comments. Deletions noted by strike-through; italics annotate additions.]

The conservative media space, social and otherwise, is abuzz with another woman of the left speaking truth we wish to hear to the power of Big Media. Lara Logan is a woman of immense physical courage and moral courage. She has spoken hard truths to real power. She is a real, old-fashioned reporter. Kudos to Lara Logan are warranted. And. Lara Logan is human, like all of us, and we may choose to overlook parts of her humanity that complicate our preferred narrative.

At the height of the Arab Spring, the Muslim Brotherhood drove the Egyptian military’s geriatric President Hosni Mubarak from office with massive street protests, as a prelude to parliamentary election victory for the original Islamist movement. Lara Logan led an unarmed reporting team into a large Egyptian public square to capture the people’s story. The crowd of men turned into a mob, gang-raped, and nearly tore her limb-from-limb with their bare hands.

Quote of the Day: Anti-Semitic or Anti-Israel—or Both?

 

“Now, it isn’t inherently anti-Semitic to be critical of Israeli political leadership or policies. The Democratic Party antagonism toward the Jewish state has been well-established over the past decade. But [Ilhan] Omar used a well-worn anti-Semitic trope about the preternatural ability of a nefarious Jewish cabal to deceive the world.

“It’s something you would expect to read in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or hear from a professor of comparative literature at Columbia University, not a US congresswoman.

“Omar had a chance to retract, or at least refine, her statement. Instead, she doubled down. ‘These accusations are without merit,’ she claimed, blaming Jewish Islamophobia for the backlash. ‘They are rooted in bigotry toward a belief about what Muslims are stereotyped to believe.’” — David Harsanyi, The New York Post

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I guess this shouldn’t surprise but when I saw it in my Sunday NY Post I think it got elevated in my mind.  This wasn’t from FrontPage or Jihad Watch or one of those stalwarts that keep an eye on radical Islam, but from a major newspaper from a city and region that has a […]

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Jerusalem and Islamism

 

Sometimes one comes across an article that provides such insight that one is startled into understanding.  This article at Crisis magazine, “Jerusalem in the Islamic Imagination” by Derya Little, is just such an article.  It provides an understanding of why Jerusalem has any importance in the greater Islamic world.

First, a short bio on Derya. She was born in Turkey and raised Muslim, fell into atheism, and had a conversion experience that took her into Christianity, ultimately settling on Catholicism. She has a Ph.D. in politics, so is quite learned and scholarly, and I’ve come across a number of her articles in the past year. Her insight and knowledge of the Islamic world and mindset are invaluable. She has a book out on her religious journey, From Islam to Christ: One Woman’s Path through the Riddles of God, which I have bought and intend to read shortly.

Historical Parallels of Terrorism

 

Pankaj Mishra.

What if we are looking at the phenomenon of terrorism through the wrong lens? The vast majority of terrorism in the world today is coming from Muslims, that much is clear. But this observation must be tempered with its corollary that the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists. Is it right, then, to look at modern terrorism strictly through the lens of Islam? Or are there perhaps prior historical patterns and precedents that hold up a warped mirror to our own predicament? Does modern terrorism stem directly from Islam, or is modern terrorism just an Islamic spin on another expression of deeper problem of modernity, a problem whose prior manifestations we might recognize? This is just a short post as I don’t have time for a more in-depth one and would need to read this book to have a fuller response.

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In response to that horrendous terrorist bombing in Manchester yesterday, done in the name of Islam, UK Prime Minister had the usual boiler plate response: “cowardly acts,” committed by “warped and twisted mind.” Why do people think such language is so productive? To those that support the Islamists it’s actually dissonant. Cowardly? It takes great […]

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This Sunday, Turkish people all over the world will be voting, whether to change the country’s constitution to allow its budding dictator, Mr. Erdogan, to extend his term in office, and his powers.  It suddenly occurred to me that this Sunday just happens to be Easter Sunday.  My question is, is the timing of this […]

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There’s an on going issue of marketing Islam to non-muslims and how western countries try to market their concerns to the Islamic world. I’ll try to describe part of it… Former President George W Bush recently gave an interview on the Today Show with Matt Lauer. W was there to promote a book, but Matt […]

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On Wednesday, Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic wrote that Obama realizes and grapples with the fact that American civilians are sometimes ‘collateral damage’ when dealing with that-which-should-not-be-named. On Thursday, James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal rebutted semantically that ‘collateral damage’ is the incorrect term because any American civilian victims are the ‘intended target.’ At least Taranto uses the term […]

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Yesterday, as I ate dinner at a roadside cafe, I watched as the television news featured tweets from Colorado locals. The response to the latest Islamist terrorist attack, this time in Florida, proceeded with the regularity of an obsessive-compulsive routine: the pollyannas tweeted hashtag virtue signals in lieu of any substantive action, the news outlets […]

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Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy has proven himself to be a credible moderate Muslim. He’s hated by the supposedly reliable groups, such as CAIR and other groups that are in one way or another supported by the Muslim Brotherhood. Jasser sponsored a summit that I think is noteworthy and promises to […]

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There’s more to Clock Boy’s lawsuit than a demand for taxpayer money, although that is what is getting the headlines. There are also demands that public officials prostrate themselves before CAIR and their lawyers: A written apology from Mayor Van Duyne acknowledging that she has never  been presented with any evidence that Ahmed was a “pawn” […]

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I sure cannot understand what is going on with Claire and her desire to talk down to us dumb Americans. Her post on the main feed, Dear Governors Who Oppose Syrian Refugee Resettlement, is really reprehensible and a little vile at the present time. We are perfectly capable of viewing things from across the Atlantic and […]

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