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For Eternity we have taught our children to believe this or that, to follow a certain religion, or Nationalism, or Racism... or we condemn them to hell. For Eternity. Perhaps instead we should do the opposite. Tell them to get together for all of our differences, and then face hell later on.

JIHAD IN NUMBERS
By arabracismislamofascism

ISLAMIC JIHAD IN NUMBERS

Tears of Jihad
These figures are a rough estimate of the death of non-Muslims by the political act of jihad.

Africa

Thomas Sowell [Thomas Sowell, Race and Culture, BasicBooks, 1994, p. 188] estimates that 11 million slaves were shipped across the Atlantic and 14 million were sent to the Islamic nations of North Africa and the Middle East. For every slave captured many others died. Estimates of this collateral damage vary. The renowned missionary David Livingstone estimated that for every slave who reached a plantation, five others were killed in the initial raid or died of illness and privation on the forced march.[Woman’s Presbyterian Board of Missions, David Livingstone, p. 62, 1888] Those who were left behind were the very young, the weak, the sick and the old. These soon died since the main providers had been killed or enslaved. So, for 25 million slaves delivered to the market, we have an estimated death of about 120 million people. Islam ran the wholesale slave trade in Africa.

120 million Africans

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Christians

The number of Christians martyred by Islam is 9 million [David B. Barrett, Todd M. Johnson, World Christian Trends AD 30-AD 2200, William Carey Library, 2001, p. 230, table 4-10] . A rough estimate by Raphael Moore in History of Asia Minor is that another 50 million died in wars by jihad. So counting the million African Christians killed in the 20th century we have:

60 million Christians

-

Hindus

Koenard Elst in Negationism in India gives an estimate of 80 million Hindus killed in the total jihad against India. [Koenard Elst, Negationism in India, Voice of India, New Delhi, 2002, pg. 34.] The country of India today is only half the size of ancient India, due to jihad. The mountains near India are called the Hindu Kush, meaning the “funeral pyre of the Hindus.”

80 million Hindus

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Buddhists

Buddhists do not keep up with the history of war. Keep in mind that in jihad only Christians and Jews were allowed to survive as dhimmis (servants to Islam); everyone else had to convert or die. Jihad killed the Buddhists in Turkey, Afghanistan, along the Silk Route, and in India. The total is roughly 10 million. [David B. Barrett, Todd M. Johnson, World Christian Trends AD 30-AD 2200, William Carey Library, 2001, p. 230, table 4-1.]

10 million Buddhists

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Jews

Oddly enough there were not enough Jews killed in jihad to significantly affect the totals of the Great Annihilation. The jihad in Arabia was 100 percent effective, but the numbers were in the thousands, not millions. After that, the Jews submitted and became the dhimmis (servants and second class citizens) of Islam and did not have geographic political power.

This gives a rough estimate of 270 million killed by jihad.
http://www.politicalislam.com/tears/pag ... -of-jihad/

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Islam has killed as many as 200 million Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, and Hindus. (Nov. 2000)
http://www.sullivan-county.com/nf0/nov_ ... _chris.htm

_____________

Muslims massacred in 1146 over 100,000 Jews in Fez and in Marrakesh 120,000.
http://books.google.com/books?id=mYjc8HHWDxMC&pg=PA123
http://books.google.com/books?id=iKBwZ9Y8j8QC&pg=PA49

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Negationism in India: concealing the record of Islam
Koenraad Elst – [Voice of India, 1992] 1992 – 176 pages [Page 27]
Every new invader made (often literally) his hills of Hindu skulls. Thus, the conquest of Afghanistan in the year 1000 was followed by … The Bahmani sultans (1347-1480) in central India made it a rule to kill 100000 Hindus every year. In 1399, Teimur killed 100,000 captives in a single day…
http://books.google.com/books?&id=mBEcA ... ni+sultans

_____________

The Ikhwan waged a jihad against other Muslims in Arabia, including Sharif Hussein of Mecca, who established the Hashemite dynasty that ruled first in Arabia and then in Syria, Iraq and Transjordan. As many as 400,000 Arabs were killed or wounded in these campaigns.
http://www.jcpa.org/art/nypost-dg6apr03.htm

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In the second half of the 19th century Moslems began to feel the force of the Western colonial threat. In the 1860 massacre in Damascus, Moslems slaughtered more than 10,000 Christians. In Aleppo, Christians were butchered as well.
http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/Show ... i-Semitism

_____________

Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction – Page 150
 Adam Jones – [Taylor & Francis] 2010
[ISBN 041548619X, 9780415486194] 680 pages
A “Christian genocide” framing acknowledges the historic claims of the Assyrian and Greek peoples, and the movements now … In Thea Halo’s estimation, “Armenian deaths were estimated at 1.5 million. According to figures compiled by by the Greek government in collaboration with the Patrirachate…
http://books.google.com/books?id=BqdVudSuTRIC&pg=PA150

Congressional Record – Page 6450
 - (April 22, 1998)
In addition to those killed, an estimated 500000 Armenians were deported from the Ottoman Empire. … Mr. Speaker, today we remember the Armenian Genocide, and honor the memory of the 1.5 million Armenians who died between 1915 and 1923 …
http://books.google.com/books?id=956nQAD4DZAC&pg=PA6450

Encyclopedia of war crimes and genocide – Page 26
 Leslie Alan Horvitz, Christopher Catherwood – 2006 – 582 pages – Preview
Estimates of the total number of Armenians who died as a result of the massacres and deportations vary, ranging up to 1.5 million out of a prewar Armenian population estimated at 1.8 million. An Ottoman interior minister has …
 http://books.google.com/books?id=AHpFp2nsGyUC&pg=PA26

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A lethal combination of labor brigades, internal deportations and massacres conducted throughout Anatolian Turkey resulted in the death of 1,400,000 Greeks.
The Annihilation of the Anatolian Greeks
…The Ottoman Empire, famed by its harems and janissaries, was founded at the start of the fourteenth century and at its zenith occupied Anatolia, the Middle East and much of south-eastern Europe to the Caucasus. By the end of the 15th century, the considerable Greek population of Asia Minor was under Ottoman rule…
http://www.greek-genocide.org/index1.html

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Despite massive photographic and documental evidence and substantial corroborative personal testimonies, the Turkish government has never acknowledged its genocide of approximately 2.75 million Christians from 1894 to 1923. The victims were predominantly Armenians but included many Greek and some Protestant believers as well.
http://www.ashevilletribune.com/ashevil ... %20RTF.htm

_____________

 

1971 – Sheikh Mujib arrested and taken to West Pakistan. In exile, Awami League leaders proclaim the independence of the province of East Pakistan on 26th March. The new country is called Bangladesh. Just under 10 million Bangladeshis flee to India as troops from West Pakistan are defeated with Indian assistance. [...]
2000 December – Bangladesh expels Pakistani diplomat for comments on the 1971 war. The diplomat had put the number of dead at 26,000, whereas Bangladesh says nearly three million were killed. Bangladesh wants Pakistan to apologise for alleged genocide it says Pakistani forces were guilty of during the war.  
Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League was defeated in 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_ ... 160896.stm

_____________

 

Arafat and the PLO plunged Lebanon into massacres, rape, mutilation, rampages of looting and killings. Out of a population of 3.2 million, some 40,000 or more people had been killed, 100,000 wounded, 5,000 permanently maimed.
http://www.free-lebanon.com/LFPNews/hob ... amour.html

Syria and the Palestinians have destroyed Lebanon. Syria and the Palestinians are responsible for the death of 300,000 Lebanese.
http://www.free-lebanon.com/Editorials/ ... ives2.html

_____________

Fear God and the Shadow of the Muslim Sword – Page 20 Pat MR Pat – [AuthorHouse,] 2008 – 208 pages

The Iran-Iraq War is a lesson in the brutality of the Muslim Sunni-Shiite conflict. The religious leaders of Iran rounded up more than 10000 Sunni children and walked them barefoot in the front lines of their armies in order to clear the mine fields. Saddam Hussein, a member of the minority Sunni sect that ruled Iraq, moved hundreds of thousands of Arab Shiite men and boys to the front lines with little or no arms, to face the onslaught of the Persian Shiite army of Iran. Estimates of casualties on both sides of the war place the figure above 2 million.
http://books.google.com/books?id=LTHa-xlVcZ4C&pg=PA20

The Iran-Iraq War
No one is sure of the total casualties during the Iran-Iraq war, but estimates range from 500,000 to 1 million dead, 1-2 million wounded, and more than 80,000 prisoners. There were approximately 2.5 million refugees, and whole cities were destroyed. The financial cost is estimated at a minimum of $200 billion.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... niraq.html

_____________

 

Indonesia: 700 churches attacked in past decade
  October 26, 2010
Some 700 Catholic and Protestant churches have been attacked in Indonesia over the past decade, according to the Indonesian Christian Communication Forum. Between October 12 and October 17, a Catholic parish was attacked, another was threatened with attack, and a Protestant church was burned down.
http://www.catholicculture.org/news/hea ... oryid=8057

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FRONTLINE/WORLD .  Sudan – The Quick and the Terrible . Facts and …Since the 1983 start of the civil war, more than 4 million people have been displaced, and an estimated 2 million have died.
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stori ... facts.html

Fragile peace may unravel in Southern Sudan
By David McKenzie and Ingrid Formanek, CNN | December 8, 2009
…A rare sense of optimism enveloped Walgak and other southern parts of Sudan after a 2005 treaty ended a 21-year-long north-south civil war that killed 2 million people and forced about 4 million others from their homes.
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-12-08/worl ... s=PM:WORLD

Interview With George Clooney – CNN.com – Transcripts
Oct 14, 2010 … There was a war here that ended in 2005, with a peace agreement …. Well, 2.5 million people died in the last war between the north and south that ended in 2005. ….. CLOONEY: Take two minutes. It’s amazing the effect of one person’s voice. …. KING: George, we think of Darfur, we think of you. …
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ ... kl.01.html

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Insurgents kill two in Thai south October 31, 2009

Oct. 31, 2009
AFP
SUSPECTED Islamic insurgents shot and killed two people and wounded three others in a bomb blast in Thailand’s troubled Muslim-majority south, police said.
Gunmen broke into a house in Yala province and shot dead a 16-year-old Buddhist girl, also wounding her 29-year-old husband, they said….

More than 3900 people have died in shootings, bomb blasts, beheadings and crucifixions since a separatist insurgency erupted in Thailand’s southern provinces bordering Malaysia in January 2004.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-wo ... -hqpd.html

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Hannity – Monday, Sep 13, 2010 – mReplay Livedash TV Transcript:
Judith Miller: 00:29:05 >> With the small minority are the extremists.
Ilario Pantano 00:29:09 >> Islam minority has been responsible for 500,000 deaths since nine 11 — since 9/11.
00:29:17 Egypt, spain, bali to baghdad, radical islamists have been blowing themselves.
http://www.livedash.com/transcript/hann ... 10/297258/

The Election and the Muslim Controversy | FoxNews.com
Oct 25, 2010 … By Bill O’Reilly.
[...]
Listen to these stats: Since the attack on Sept. 11, 2001, more than 40,000 people have been killed by Muslim extremists worldwide, the result of more than 17,000 attacks. And we’re not even counting the American troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Forty thousand human beings dead because of Muslim terror activity.

In addition, since 9/11, the USA has spent more than $1 trillion combating Muslim terror threats, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. $1 trillion in less than 10 years. And you’re telling me there isn’t a Muslim problem in the world?

Many Americans also remember celebrations after the 9/11 attacks. To be fair, they were brief and mostly Palestinian-driven, but the images are indelible.

So there is no question that most Americans are a bit uneasy about the turbulence in the Muslim world. That may not be fair, but it’s reality.
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/t ... ontroversy

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Mansur: Ignoring Muslim-on-Muslim Violence Undercuts U.S. …
Jun 15, 2010 …Muslim-on-Muslim Genocide

Few Americans realize that the most victims of Islamism have been Muslims, Mansur argues. As an example, the Algerian civil war that began in 1992, killed more than 150,000 people in a fight pitting the nation’s military regime against Islamist radicals. In Darfur, estimates range from 200,000 to 500,000 dead and millions more driven from their homes.

In East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), an estimated 500,000 to 1 million people were slaughtered in 1971 by the rampaging Pakistani Army. Mansur refers to it as “one of the great genocides that Muslims committed against Muslims.”

In this case, “the Pakistani military was killing their own citizens, and none of these people, by the way, have been brought to [judgment.]” The perpetrators of these crimes are “still running around in the West,” Mansur said. “So you see the barbarity…the savagery, with which a Muslim state treats its own population.”

In Mansur’s view, The East Pakistan genocide bears disturbing similarities to today’s events in Darfur. “Half a million or more people have been killed in western Sudan, and there is not a peep about that,” Mansur said. “There’s a preoccupation, whenever the issue of violence or ethnic cleansing and war crimes…are talked about – the West is focused on the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

But groups like CAIR show little interest in discussing the mass murder of Muslims in Darfur, Pakistan or anywhere else. According to Mansur, when the topic is raised, Islamists typically assert that the figures have been “inflated” by “enemies of the Muslims” such as Hindus or Zionists.

“In all of these cases, there is not a whit of taking responsibility, ” Mansur said. Instead of using the Arab-Israeli conflict as a way to put pressure on Israel, the international community should take action to bring to justice “these criminals who were responsible for the genocide, whether it is in Darfur or Pakistan.”

“There is no statute of limitation…for crimes against humanity,” he noted.

Mansur said he sees some signs of positive change in Islamabad’s response to the recent wave of terrorist attacks by the Taliban. The reality of suicide bombings in Pakistan’s major cities is making it increasingly difficult for government officials and intellectuals to argue that terrorism results from India’s machinations or “blowback” from the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Pakistani elites are coming to the realization that their jihadist terror problem is homegrown. A growing number of voices are acknowledging “that we have to take responsibility, that [jihadism] is what we have nurtured and created,” Mansur said. “I see that as a hopeful sign. I think that if Pakistan is going to be saved from its own tendency to self-destruction, that these voices have to be reinforced and given support, which means the building of a civil society and the downgrading of the military side.”
http://www.investigativeproject.org/200 ... m-violence

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July 3, 2008
Jihad by the Numbers

Edward Cline

In his masterful second volume study of Hitler, Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis, Ian Kershaw discusses a phenomenon called “working towards the Führer,” in which every Nazi Party organization, member and office automatically, with little or no prompting or prodding by Hitler or his inner circle, worked to realize the ends and policies articulated by Hitler before and after he rose to power in 1933. It was automatic, because to disagree with or have reservations about a single, even minor aspect of Nazi ideology was to court reprimand, censure, dismissal, or even death. Agreement with those ends and policies was nearly a secondary motivation behind any Party member’s actions. He was compelled to act, regardless of the consequences. The ideology commanded it, and the Führer’s will and vision were irresistible, because there was little or no self to resist them.

As Party members who disagreed or expressed reservations were dismissed, or abandoned the Party, fled, committed suicide, or were murdered, monsters of the first rank filled the vacuum to formulate and enact policies that more completely “worked towards the Führer,” monsters such as Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Joseph Goebbels. When all the checks within the Party against total irrationality in domestic and foreign policies were removed or fell into disrepute, total irrationality took over totally.

But the average Party member strived to satisfy Hitler, regardless of how minor or major the action and regardless if it stood to be acknowledged or rewarded. To be a true, loyal, above-suspicion Nazi meant the near total surrender of one’s ego, mind and self, and to substitute them with Hitler’s own.

Of course, an Ellsworth Toohey might say that the joke was on the rank-and-file Nazi: he would claim that Hitler was essentially selfless, and that what little mind Hitler possessed was founded on what he thought his followers and “the people” wanted and expected of him as prophet and dictator. Ayn Rand, in The Fountainhead, describes that phenomenon through Toohey:

    “…A world of obedience and of unity. A world where the thought of each man will not be his own, but an attempt to guess the thought in the brain of his neighbor, who’ll have no thought of his own but an attempt to guess the thought of the next neighbor who’ll have no thought – and so on…around the globe. Since all must serve all. A world in which man will not work for so innocent an incentive as money, but for that headless monster – prestige. The approval of his fellows – their good opinion – the opinion of men who’ll be allowed to hold no opinion. An octopus, all tentacles and no brain….An average drawn upon zeroes….” (1).

It is no accident or fluke of history that Islamists – Hamas, Hezbollah, Ahmadinejad, Saudi Wahhabists, the whole ménage of Islamists and Jihadists — admire both Hitler and Nazism. Their hatred of Jews and Israel is merely one facet of that pathology. As Nazism required the complete submission of the individual to Party ideology and an unthinking, unwavering deference to Hitler, Islam requires the complete submission of the individual to Islam and an unthinking, unwavering deference to Allah and Mohammed. Islamists have long recognized that both the method and the ends of Nazism were in complete agreement and practical accord with their own. The “mechanics” of a functioning Islam differ in no fundamental way from the “mechanics” of a functioning Nazism or any other brand of total collectivism, as described by Toohey above. (2)

(One historical note: Kershaw points out that Hitler once entertained the idea of solving the “Jewish Question” by helping to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, where all German and other European Jews would be forcibly “relocated” and presumably – hopefully – perish in a wasteland of desert and hostile Arabs. He dismissed the idea because he feared that such a state could possibly become a political adversary dedicated to destroying Germany. Historically, the ironic joke is on Hitler. He destroyed Germany and the Jews turned the wasteland into a productive, prosperous garden.)

With that in mind, here is a set of significant statistics forwarded to me by a friend. It charts the progression of Islamic Jihad, both soft and hard methods, whose purpose is to establish a global caliphate, especially in the West.

It begins by stating:

    “Islam is not a religion nor is it a cult. It is a complete system.”

I would disagree. It is definitely a religion and a political system combined. Any attempt to “separate” mosque and state would emasculate Islam. I have argued this point in past commentaries and will not dwell on it here. And cults, if not opposed by reason and kept by it on the far fringes of a civilized society, have a tendency to become religions that may become state policies. Ecology was once a “cult.” Today we have the Environmental Protection Agency.

It goes on to state:

    “Islam has religious, legal, political, economic and military components. The religious component is a beard for all the other components.”

Or a mask, or a ruse. But no one should doubt how seriously Islamists and Muslims in general take the religious component. Islam is a barbaric but fully integrated system, perhaps more lethally integrated than was Nazism.

    “Islamization occurs when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their so-called ‘religious rights.’”

I would defend anyone’s right to believe in Islam. The question is: How could one truly practice Islam without declaring Jihad on others? After a Muslim has won the “internal struggle” or Jihad within himself, the next step is to wage it against all others. To refrain from that part of Jihad is to risk the accusation of being a slacker or pseudo-Muslim. From the first stage to the last, all such effort constitutes “working towards the Prophet and Allah.”

    “When politically correct and culturally diverse societies agreed to ‘the reasonable’ Muslims demands for their ‘religious rights,’ they also get the other components under the table. Here’s how it works (percentages source: CIA: The World Fact Book, 2007).

    “As long as the Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country it will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone….”

Here is where it becomes interesting. Note throughout the exponential scale of Islamic influence as the percentage of Muslim population per country increases. Comments in square brackets are my corrective interjections.

United States: 1.0
Australia: 1.5
Canada: 1.9
China: 1.0-2.0
Italy: 1.5
Norway: 1.8

    “At 2% and 3% they [Muslims] begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs.”

Denmark: 2.0
Germany: 3.7
United Kingdom: 2.7
Spain: 4.0
Italy: 4.6

    “From 5% on they [Muslims] exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. They will push for the introduction of halal (“clean” by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves – along with threats for failure to comply (United States).”

France: 8.0
Philippines: 5.0
Sweden: 5.0
Switzerland: 4.3
The Netherlands: 5.5
Trinidad & Tobago: 5.8

    “At this point, they [Muslims] will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, or Islamic law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the world but to establish Sharia law over the entire world.

    “When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions (Paris – car burning). Any non-Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats (Amsterdam, Denmark – Mohammed cartoons, murder of Theo van Gogh).”

Guyana: 10.0
India: 13.4
Israel: 16.0
Kenya: 10.0
Russia: 10.0-15.0

The one anomaly in this set of statistics is Israel, which has not experienced uprisings and threats of violence. Its Arab or Muslim population enjoys equal political rights with Jewish Israelis. The suicide bombings and rocket attacks that have killed hundreds have been perpetrated by outsiders.

“After reaching 20% [of a population] expect hair-trigger rioting, Jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning:

Ethiopia: 32.8

    “After 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:”

Bosnia: 40.0
Chad: 53.1
Lebanon: 59.7

    “From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and jizya, the tax placed on [conquered] infidels:”

Albania: 70.0
Malaysia: 60.4
Qatar: 77.5
Sudan: 70.0

“After 80%, expect state-run ethnic cleansing and genocide:”

Bangladesh: 83.0
Egypt: 90.0
Gaza: 98.7
Indonesia: 86.1
Iran: 98.0
Iraq: 97.0
Jordan: 92.0
Morocco: 98.7
Pakistan: 97.0
Palestine: 99.0
Syria: 90.0
Tajikistan: 90.0
Turkey: 99.8
United Arab Emirates: 96.0

I question the inclusion of “Palestine” in this set. “Palestine” simply means space occupied by stateless “Palestinians” in Gaza and the West Bank, and is the name of the state which Islamists wish to replace Israel, once it is destroyed. Turkey, after decades of having a secular, non-religious government, is beginning to turn “religious,” and seems to be yearning for the kind of Muslim government that cleansed the country in 1915 of non-Muslim Armenians in a genocide that predates the Holocaust.

    “100% will usher in the peace of ‘Dar-es-Salaam’ – the Islamic House of Peace’ [more correctly, dar-al-Islam, or Land of Islam]. There is supposed to be peace because everybody is a Muslim.”

Afghanistan: 100.0
Saudi Arabia: 100.0
Somalia: 100.0
Yemen: 99.9

“Of course, that’s not the case. To satisfy their blood lust, Muslims then start killing each other for a variety of reasons.

    “‘Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world and all of us against the infidel.’ Leon Uris, The Haj.

    “It is good to remember that in many, many countries, such as France, the Muslim populations are centered around ghettos based on their ethnicity. Muslims do not integrate into the community at large. Therefore, they exercise more power than their national average would indicate.

    “Adapted from Dr. Peter Hammond’s book, Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat.”

Hammond’s book is sponsored by the Frontline Fellowship, a Christian organization, and the book itself was published by Christian Liberty Books. The Frontline website contains several endorsements of the book by clerics and missionaries. The quoted paragraphs above were “adapted” from Hammond’s book (by whom, is unknown), and not very professionally. The statistics themselves were compiled by the CIA and used in the book.

The first paragraph of the Frontline ad for the book reads:

In his masterful second volume study of Hitler, Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis, Ian Kershaw discusses a phenomenon called “working towards the Führer,” in which every Nazi Party organization, member and office automatically, with little or no prompting or prodding by Hitler or his inner circle, worked to realize the ends and policies articulated by Hitler before and after he rose to power in 1933. It was automatic, because to disagree with or have reservations about a single, even minor aspect of Nazi ideology was to court reprimand, censure, dismissal, or even death. Agreement with those ends and policies was nearly a secondary motivation behind any Party member’s actions. He was compelled to act, regardless of the consequences. The ideology commanded it, and the Führer’s will and vision were irresistible, because there was little or no self to resist them.

As Party members who disagreed or expressed reservations were dismissed, or abandoned the Party, fled, committed suicide, or were murdered, monsters of the first rank filled the vacuum to formulate and enact policies that more completely “worked towards the Führer,” monsters such as Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Joseph Goebbels. When all the checks within the Party against total irrationality in domestic and foreign policies were removed or fell into disrepute, total irrationality took over totally.

But the average Party member strived to satisfy Hitler, regardless of how minor or major the action and regardless if it stood to be acknowledged or rewarded. To be a true, loyal, above-suspicion Nazi meant the near total surrender of one’s ego, mind and self, and to substitute them with Hitler’s own.

Of course, an Ellsworth Toohey might say that the joke was on the rank-and-file Nazi: he would claim that Hitler was essentially selfless, and that what little mind Hitler possessed was founded on what he thought his followers and “the people” wanted and expected of him as prophet and dictator. Ayn Rand, in The Fountainhead, describes that phenomenon through Toohey:
“…A world of obedience and of unity. A world where the thought of each man will not be his own, but an attempt to guess the thought in the brain of his neighbor, who’ll have no thought of his own but an attempt to guess the thought of the next neighbor who’ll have no thought – and so on…around the globe. Since all must serve all. A world in which man will not work for so innocent an incentive as money, but for that headless monster – prestige. The approval of his fellows – their good opinion – the opinion of men who’ll be allowed to hold no opinion. An octopus, all tentacles and no brain….An average drawn upon zeroes….” (1).

It is no accident or fluke of history that Islamists – Hamas, Hezbollah, Ahmadinejad, Saudi Wahhabists, the whole ménage of Islamists and Jihadists — admire both Hitler and Nazism. Their hatred of Jews and Israel is merely one facet of that pathology. As Nazism required the complete submission of the individual to Party ideology and an unthinking, unwavering deference to Hitler, Islam requires the complete submission of the individual to Islam and an unthinking, unwavering deference to Allah and Mohammed. Islamists have long recognized that both the method and the ends of Nazism were in complete agreement and practical accord with their own. The “mechanics” of a functioning Islam differ in no fundamental way from the “mechanics” of a functioning Nazism or any other brand of total collectivism, as described by Toohey above. (2)

(One historical note: Kershaw points out that Hitler once entertained the idea of solving the “Jewish Question” by helping to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, where all German and other European Jews would be forcibly “relocated” and presumably – hopefully – perish in a wasteland of desert and hostile Arabs. He dismissed the idea because he feared that such a state could possibly become a political adversary dedicated to destroying Germany. Historically, the ironic joke is on Hitler. He destroyed Germany and the Jews turned the wasteland into a productive, prosperous garden.)

With that in mind, here is a set of significant statistics forwarded to me by a friend. It charts the progression of Islamic Jihad, both soft and hard methods, whose purpose is to establish a global caliphate, especially in the West.

It begins by stating:
“Islam is not a religion nor is it a cult. It is a complete system.”

I would disagree. It is definitely a religion and a political system combined. Any attempt to “separate” mosque and state would emasculate Islam. I have argued this point in past commentaries and will not dwell on it here. And cults, if not opposed by reason and kept by it on the far fringes of a civilized society, have a tendency to become religions that may become state policies. Ecology was once a “cult.” Today we have the Environmental Protection Agency.

It goes on to state:
“Islam has religious, legal, political, economic and military components. The religious component is a beard for all the other components.”

Or a mask, or a ruse. But no one should doubt how seriously Islamists and Muslims in general take the religious component. Islam is a barbaric but fully integrated system, perhaps more lethally integrated than was Nazism.
“Islamization occurs when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their so-called ‘religious rights.’”

I would defend anyone’s right to believe in Islam. The question is: How could one truly practice Islam without declaring Jihad on others? After a Muslim has won the “internal struggle” or Jihad within himself, the next step is to wage it against all others. To refrain from that part of Jihad is to risk the accusation of being a slacker or pseudo-Muslim. From the first stage to the last, all such effort constitutes “working towards the Prophet and Allah.”
“When politically correct and culturally diverse societies agreed to ‘the reasonable’ Muslims demands for their ‘religious rights,’ they also get the other components under the table. Here’s how it works (percentages source: CIA: The World Fact Book, 2007).

“As long as the Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country it will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone….”

Here is where it becomes interesting. Note throughout the exponential scale of Islamic influence as the percentage of Muslim population per country increases. Comments in square brackets are my corrective interjections.

United States: 1.0
Australia: 1.5
Canada: 1.9
China: 1.0-2.0
Italy: 1.5
Norway: 1.8
“At 2% and 3% they [Muslims] begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs.”

Denmark: 2.0
Germany: 3.7
United Kingdom: 2.7
Spain: 4.0
Italy: 4.6
“From 5% on they [Muslims] exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. They will push for the introduction of halal (“clean” by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves – along with threats for failure to comply (United States).”

France: 8.0
Philippines: 5.0
Sweden: 5.0
Switzerland: 4.3
The Netherlands: 5.5
Trinidad & Tobago: 5.8
“At this point, they [Muslims] will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, or Islamic law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the world but to establish Sharia law over the entire world.

“When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions (Paris – car burning). Any non-Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats (Amsterdam, Denmark – Mohammed cartoons, murder of Theo van Gogh).”

Guyana: 10.0
India: 13.4
Israel: 16.0
Kenya: 10.0
Russia: 10.0-15.0

The one anomaly in this set of statistics is Israel, which has not experienced uprisings and threats of violence. Its Arab or Muslim population enjoys equal political rights with Jewish Israelis. The suicide bombings and rocket attacks that have killed hundreds have been perpetrated by outsiders.

“After reaching 20% [of a population] expect hair-trigger rioting, Jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning:

Ethiopia: 32.8
“After 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:”

Bosnia: 40.0
Chad: 53.1
Lebanon: 59.7
“From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and jizya, the tax placed on [conquered] infidels:”
Albania: 70.0
Malaysia: 60.4
Qatar: 77.5
Sudan: 70.0
“After 80%, expect state-run ethnic cleansing and genocide:”
Bangladesh: 83.0
Egypt: 90.0
Gaza: 98.7
Indonesia: 86.1
Iran: 98.0
Iraq: 97.0
Jordan: 92.0
Morocco: 98.7
Pakistan: 97.0
Palestine: 99.0
Syria: 90.0
Tajikistan: 90.0
Turkey: 99.8
United Arab Emirates: 96.0

I question the inclusion of “Palestine” in this set. “Palestine” simply means space occupied by stateless “Palestinians” in Gaza and the West Bank, and is the name of the state which Islamists wish to replace Israel, once it is destroyed. Turkey, after decades of having a secular, non-religious government, is beginning to turn “religious,” and seems to be yearning for the kind of Muslim government that cleansed the country in 1915 of non-Muslim Armenians in a genocide that predates the Holocaust.
“100% will usher in the peace of ‘Dar-es-Salaam’ – the Islamic House of Peace’ [more correctly, dar-al-Islam, or Land of Islam]. There is supposed to be peace because everybody is a Muslim.”

Afghanistan: 100.0
Saudi Arabia: 100.0
Somalia: 100.0
Yemen: 99.9

“Of course, that’s not the case. To satisfy their blood lust, Muslims then start killing each other for a variety of reasons.
“‘Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world and all of us against the infidel.’ Leon Uris, The Haj.

“It is good to remember that in many, many countries, such as France, the Muslim populations are centered around ghettos based on their ethnicity. Muslims do not integrate into the community at large. Therefore, they exercise more power than their national average would indicate.

“Adapted from Dr. Peter Hammond’s book, Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat.”

Hammond’s book is sponsored by the Frontline Fellowship, a Christian organization, and the book itself was published by Christian Liberty Books. The Frontline website contains several endorsements of the book by clerics and missionaries. The quoted paragraphs above were “adapted” from Hammond’s book (by whom, is unknown), and not very professionally. The statistics themselves were compiled by the CIA and used in the book.

The first paragraph of the Frontline ad for the book reads:
“Dr. Peter Hammond’s new book…is a fascinating, well illustrated and thoroughly documented response to the relentless anti-Christian propaganda that has been generated by Muslim and Marxist groups and by Hollywood film makers….”

For a detailed exposé of Islam’s Marxist affiliation – as distinguished from its symbiosis with Nazism – see Daniel Pipes’ “[The Islamist-Leftist] Allied Menace,” of July 15th.

So, regardless of the book’s Christian orientation, the statistics Hammond uses to cite the various Muslim populations in each country can be taken as reliable, as well as the prefatory remarks before each set of percentages. There is certainly a demonstrable and observable corollary between a country’s Muslim population and the influence it begins to have or has had on its government, politics and culture.

The Islamists are coolly “working towards the Prophet and Allah” as shown in the numbers above. Meanwhile, our policymakers appear to be a succession of compliant, pragmatic, non-judgmental zeroes blindly working towards the conquest and extinction of the West.

(1) The Fountainhead, pp. 667-668, Plume-Penguin Centennial Edition.
(2) “During the 1930s, Palestinian Arabs under the leadership of the Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, had embraced a great deal of Nazi ideology.” From Denis MacEoin’s “Tactical Hudna and Islamist Intolerance,” Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2008.

Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Edward Cline is the author of a number of novels, and his essays, books reviews, and other nonfiction have appeared in a number of high-profile periodicals. Feedback: http://arabracismislamofascism.wordpres ... n-numbers/

Dutch anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders goes on trial

The Dutch anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders has gone on trial in Amsterdam accused of inciting hatred against Muslims.

From the BBC

 4 October 2010 Last updated at 11:55 ET


Mr Wilders, whose statements have included comparing the Koran with Hitler's Mein Kampf, told the court freedom of expression was on trial.

If found guilty, he faces a maximum sentence of a year in jail.

Mr Wilders' Freedom Party is the third biggest in the Netherlands after June's elections, and is expected to play a key role in the next parliament.

Prosecutors have brought five charges of inciting hatred and discrimination, and the trial will scrutinise statements he made between 2006 and 2008.

Geert Wilders is defending his right to freedom of speech, which lies at the heart of the Dutch constitution. He believes he's said nothing offensive. He says his trial is a political process.

And he says it will not deter him from his mission, which is to stop the "Islamisation" of the Netherlands.

This trial is setting a precedent - judges said that in a democratic system, it is in the general interest to draw a clear line on the limits of hate speech.

And it comes at a time when Geert Wilders occupies a more crucial role, and enjoys a higher-profile, than ever. He is set to become a shadow partner in the next coalition government - giving tacit support to a minority cabinet.

But the three parties, including Mr Wilders', would only control 76 of the 150 seats in parliament, so any MPs who break ranks threaten the coalition. And two Christian Democrats say they are opposed to the deal.

In one such statement, in an opinion piece for the De Volkskrant newspaper, he wrote: "I've had enough of Islam in the Netherlands; let not one more Muslim immigrate.

"I've had enough of the Koran in the Netherlands: Forbid that fascist book."

In 2008, he released a short film called Fitna which infuriated Muslims by juxtaposing images of suicide bombings with verses from the Koran.

Mr Wilders, in a bright blue tie and with his trademark shock of blond hair, waved to supporters as he entered the court complex in Amsterdam.

A small group of protesters had gathered outside court and riot police were on duty nearby.

In an opening statement, he told the court that he was being persecuted for "stating my opinion in the context of public debate", adding: "I can assure you, I will continue proclaiming it."

His lawyer, Bram Moszkowicz, then told the presiding judge that Mr Wilders would thereafter exercise his right to silence and not answer questions during the trial.

When presiding judge Jan Moors said it appeared Mr Wilders was "avoiding discussion" Mr Moszkowicz accused him of bias and moved to have him substituted.

The trial was adjourned and a separate hearing arranged to decide whether Judge Moors could continue on the trial. The panel is expected to decide on the issue on Tuesday.

Earlier, Mr Wilders gave his views via his Twitter account, calling it a "terrible day".

"The freedom of expression of at least 1.5 million people is standing trial together with me," he wrote, in what seemed to be a reference to the number of voters who backed the Freedom Party in June.

The coalition deal that emerged last week joins two centre-right parties in a minority government, which will seek the backing of parliament this week.

But, holding only 52 of the 150 seats in parliament, they will depend on the support of 24 Freedom Party MPs to pass legislation.

In return for that support, he has already extracted policy concessions. The new government has said it will try to ban the Islamic face veil, and curb immigration.

It is not clear whether a conviction for Mr Wilders would affect the government's willingness to deal with him.

Mr Wilders has infuriated opponents not just with his opinions, but with language they see as inflammatory, such as stating that Muslim headscarves, which he referred to as "head rags", ought to be taxed for "polluting" the Dutch landscape.

Mr Wilders was briefly refused entry to Britain last year, after being invited to show his film in the House of Lords.

Having received numerous death threats, he is usually surrounded by bodyguards.

A verdict in the trial is expected on 4 November.

BBC © MMX

Christians in Gaza Fear for Their Lives as Muslims Burn Bibles and Destroy Crosses


Published June 18, 2007
Kimberly West


After defeating their rivals in Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement, Muslim extremists are focusing their attacks on Christians in Gaza City. Christians in Gaza City have issued an appeal to the
 international community and a plea for protection against the increased attacks by Muslim extremists.

Father Manuel Musallem, head of Gaza's Latin church, told the AP that Muslims have ransacked, burned and looted a school and convent that are part of the Gaza Strip's small Romany Catholic community. He told the AP that crosses were broken, damage was done to a statue of Jesus, and at the Rosary Sister School and nearby convent, prayer books were burned.

Gunmen used the roof of the school during the fighting, and the convent was "desecrated," Mussalem told the AP.

"Nothing happens by mistake these days," he said.

Father Musalam additionally told The Jerusalem Post that the Muslim gunmen used rocket-propeled grenades (RPGs) to blow through the doors of the church and school, before burning Bibles and destroying every cross they could get their hands on.

Catholic Online reports that the heads of Christian churches in the Holy Land have urged both sides to put aside their weapons, noting that the infighting diverted international attention from the national goal of Palestinian independence.

"This domestic fighting where brother draws his weapon against brother is detrimental to all the aspirations of achieving security and stability for the Palestinian people," they said. "In the name of the one and only God as well as in the name of each devastated Palestinian, many of whom are still dying, we urge our brothers in the Fatah and Hamas movements to listen to the voice of reason, truth and wisdom."

One young woman told the Catholic News Service that she was concerned the Islamic extremists would "enforce a strict dress code, forcing women to wear veils and robes." One Christian teenager spoke to the Catholic News Service on the condition that her name not be used. She said the days of fighting had been "very difficult" but they were "OK now."

"We all hope it will be better, but it will never ever be good with Hamas," she said.

Approximately 2,500 Christians live in Gaza.


CBN Reports--

Leaders of the Christian community in the Strip expressed deep concern over the fate of the Christians living under Hamas. They said most of them wanted to leave Gaza out of fear for their lives.

[Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas condemned the attack as barbaric and despicable and blamed Hamas militiamen.

'The torching of the church is one of the fruits of the bloody coup that Hamas staged in the Gaza Strip,' he said.

Several Christian institutions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have been targeted by masked gunmen over the past few months.

Sources:

Gaza's Christians fear for their lives, The Jerusalem Post, June 18, 2007, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite? ... 1813061916 (Christians, Muslims, Islam, Palestine, Hamas, Israel, Terror, Terrorism, Jihad, Gaza)

Catholic compound ransacked in Gaza, The Associated Press, June 18, 2007, http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/internat ... ernational (Christians, Muslims, Islam, Palestine, Hamas, Israel, Terror, Terrorism, Jihad, Gaza)

Israel Today, Hamas turns on Gaza Christians, June 18, 2007, http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.as ... &nid=13149 (Christians, Muslims, Islam, Palestine, Hamas, Israel, Terror, Terrorism, Jihad, Gaza)

Christians in Gaza Strip express concern about their future, Catholic News Service, June 18, 2007, http://www.catholic.org/international/i ... p?id=24422 (Christians, Muslims, Islam, Palestine, Hamas, Israel, Terror, Terrorism, Jihad, Gaza)

http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... html?cat=9

 :jamin:


That was in 2007... Of course we all remember it. That was when Americans protested Islam in the streets and some of us exploded?

Oh wait, that's right... that never happened.

American's don't act that way... we just excuse those who do.

Luckily we don't have an Islamic Celebration Day, we might have to strap bombs to ourselves.

The Muslim Hijacking of Ground Zero


Islam doesn't just hijack planes, it hijacks the things that mean something to people. The great cities of the world are littered with relics of the Muslim occupation of their sacred places. Jerusalem, Delhi, Constantinople and Alexandria all testify to the Muslim predilection for taking over other people's sacred places, and turning them into mosques. It wasn't enough for Muslims to conquer Jerusalem and subjugate its inhabitants. No, they also had to take the holiest place in Judaism and build a mosque on top of it. Similarly it wasn't enough for them to conquer and rename Constantinople, they also had to turn the Hagia Sophia into a mosque. These are not exceptions to the rule. In Asia, the Middle East and Europe, there are numberless examples of the same thing.

To this day, Muslims continue seizing other people's places of worship and turning them into mosques. It's going on in Egypt today. It's going on in Yugoslavia where churches are being destroyed and turned into mosques, day by day. It's went on in Israel, in Joseph's Tomb, burial spot of the biblical Joseph, which was seized by Muslims in September of 2000, a year before 9/11.

Why do Muslims this? It's not just about seizing territory, though that is part of it. It's also about hijacking something more vital, identity. By Islamizing sacred sites, they also take control of other people's history and culture. As they have done throughout the world. Hijacking the Temple Mount, has allowed Muslims to claim Jerusalem as a holy city of theirs. Hijacking churches in Egypt and Yugoslavia, eliminates the religious history of non-Muslims from the area. Hijacking the Hagia Sophia, was part of the recreation of Constantinople, into Istanbul.

The common denominator is that Muslims do not just make war on lands or bodies-- but on memory itself. Their goal is to make people forget what came before their colonization. To distort the history and traditions that are meaningful to them, and replace them with a distorted Islamized version of history. The Muslim "tolerance" in Spain, the Palestinian Arab "refugees" and the Muslim "contributions" to science, are all examples of that revisionist history, in which oppression becomes tolerance, repression becomes knowledge, and the oppressors become the victims.

Ground Zero is not only the central point of the Muslim massacre of 3000 people. It is also the central point of the memory of that massacre. The area is the place where people come to remember what happened. To see, to hear and to pay tribute to the dead. Which is exactly why Muslims are determined to hijack it for their own purposes, with a highly visible mosque and their own 9/11 museum that will feature a radically altered version of history. What they are after is the equivalent of putting up a Holocaust Revisionism museum outside the Holocaust museum.

There is no legitimate reason for the Cordoba House. As I have already documented, the current mosque draws most of its worshipers from outside the area. There is no significant Muslim population in Downtown Manhattan that needs to have its own 100 million dollar community center. The only reason for building something on this scale, is because of its proximity to Ground Zero. The Ground Zero mosque is aimed at the hijacking of memory, not of Muslims, but of non-Muslims. It is meant to serve as part of the Muslim narrative spread after 9/11 that exonerates Muslims from all blame, while pointing the finger at America and the Jews instead. Which is why the ADL and the Wiesenthal Center have both come out against the Ground Zero Mosque, regardless of the vicious attacks directed at them by liberals for daring to stand up to Muslim colonization and bigotry.

At Ground Zero, all Americans realized that Islam was an inescapable question that they must grapple with. It is a powerful symbol. And symbols are dangerous. People will fight and die for symbols, as they will not for cold hard facts. It is why the left has tried to hijack it using the IFC. They failed. Now where they failed, the Islamists intend to succeed. And just as the IFC was backed by Bloomberg, so too the Ground Zero mosque is being backed by Bloomberg. It's why the media and liberals are shouting down all criticism of the Ground Zero mosque. Islam and the left both want to suppress the real history of September 11. They want Americans to forget who did it, and instead feed them excuses about "American foreign policy" and of course those omnipresent Jews, who are really to blame for it all.

The name Cordoba House is entirely appropriate for the Ground Zero mosque, because it too represent a false history. The story of Cordoba and Ground Zero are linked, in that they are both stories of Muslim terror, covered up with lies about Muslim tolerance. And the Cordoba House is part of a comprehensive effort to pervert the history of September 11, as comprehensively as that of Cordoba or Jerusalem. To replace it with their narrative, in which they are the victims, and we are the oppressors. And to allow that history to stand, is to destroy the meaning of our own culture and accept our subjugation, in history, if not yet in fact.

The Great Lie told and retold over and over again for the last 9 years, is that Islam was not responsible for 9/11. That lie has been repeated over and over again. It has permeated our culture. It has filled our media. The politicians have echoed it. Books and articles are written that treat it as something every reasonable person understands. Islam had nothing to do with 9/11. Not a damn thing.

The Ground Zero mosque is that lie made flesh. It is that revisionist history given physical form, turned into brick and mortar, steel and cement, raised up to the sky, to look down mockingly on the Ground Zero construction site itself, and the people who come there to reflect and remember. It mocks their memories. It mocks the dead. Its arrogance is the same as that of the Muslim burners of the Great Library of Alexandria, of Hanan Ashrawi claiming there was no Jewish connection to Joseph's Tomb, or Anwar Al-Awlaki, who had advised the 9/11 hijackers, telling reporters after the attacks that Islam opposes terrorism. It is an act of beheading, not of flesh, but of identity. It takes a blade and saws at the neck of a culture, cutting off its head through lies and deceit.

When Muslims conquer, they begin with massacres and end with colonization. The building they bought, had its value destroyed by their own attack on September 11. Now having bought the building at a loss, they intend to demolish it and turn it into a monument to the very ideology responsible for that massacre. As they have done before in Constantinople and Jerusalem. As they have done throughout the world. First they bomb. Now they occupy. First they kill, then they solicit converts. First they invade, then they rule. It is an ugly and bloody pattern that has held true for over a 1000 years of history. And here it is again.

When the Sudanese Muslim Janjaweed militias go out and rape non-Arab women, this was what they said to their victims. "The government gave me permission to rape you. This is not your land anymore." That is the Ground Zero mosque, with Bloomberg giving his permission to allow Islam to declare that this too is not our land anymore. It is the rape of a place that has equal stature in American memory to Gettysburg or Arlington. It is a calculated act of cultural brutality, disguised with a fake smile. Its message is that this is not our land anymore. That these are not our memories anymore. That these too have been hijacked by the murderers.

 Islam does not just destroy bodies, it destroys souls. It plots to rob entire peoples of their culture, their history and their identity. In order to make them into Muslims or Dhimmis, slaves of Muslims. Mohammed began the process by taking the existing belief systems in the region, combining them into a distorted ideology that he called Islam, which gave him the power to do anything he wanted, that exploded into massacres, ethnic cleansing and a wave of brutality and conquest that covered the globe. But the armies of Islam did not just kill or enslave, they robbed their victims of their culture and history-- and replaced it with Islam. Ground Zero is their target once more. A hijacking not of planes, but of memory. And their targets are no longer just 3,000 people-- but us all.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

Chances dim for swift 9/11 decision

By: Josh Gerstein
June 20, 2010 07:07 AM EDT

Attorney General Eric Holder said the decision over where to hold the trial for alleged 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was “weeks away” — three months ago.

Now advocates on both sides of the issue say they expect the Obama administration to punt the decision until after the November midterm elections— when the controversial plan could do less damage to the political fortunes of endangered Democrats and might face less resistance on Capitol Hill.

Holder last week explicitly denied the midterms had anything to do with the timing but would only say discussions are continuing. The White House had no comment.

Any further stalling could pose a serious political problem for President Barack Obama on the left – where advocates cheered his administration’s plan to break from the Bush administration and give top al-Qaida figures trials in American courtrooms, a sign to the country and the world that U.S.-style justice was enough to try to men accused of the worst crimes in the nation’s history.

The White House already signaled that it's dumped Holder's plan for a 9/11 trial in Manhattan after a firestorm of local opposition. But it's still unclear whether Obama will OK a civilian trial elsewhere – or move toward recently revamped military commissions, where the rules of evidence are different and the legal procedures largely untested.

To many, such a move would make Obama’s approach largely indistinguishable from President George W. Bush's handling of the 9/11 cases.

Advocates say the signs of foot-dragging are evident. The Democrats’ political fortunes have dipped further, talks on the broader issue of Guantanamo closure have ground to a halt and the House took a little-noticed vote to block transporting any Gitmo detainees to the United States, for any reason.

That measure passed last month by an overwhelming majority, a clear warning shot that Republicans – and even some Democrats – are prepared to fight Holder’s plan if he continues to push for civilian trials, a roadblock that by itself could be enough to squash any short-term announcement.

“The worst possible outcome is not making a decision….There’s a genuinely weird paralysis I would not have predicted,” said Ben Wittes, a Brookings Institution scholar who has urged Obama to announce that there will be no trials for the 9/11 suspects. “It’s disgraceful and they should be embarrassed by it. There are pros and cons of any approach you take, but there is no good argument to let this fester indefinitely.”

Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch, an advocate for civilian trials, said a delay until November or later now seems almost inevitable. “I have assumed for some time that that’s the decision,” Malinowski said. “There was a period earlier this year where they were indeed struggling to make this decision—and the sounds of struggle have ceased.”

While “swift and certain justice” once was a regular part of the White House lexicon on Guantanamo and detainee trials, that catchphrase has now vanished along with the prospect of anything swift happening to most of the prisoners slated for continued detention or trial.

“Both the 9/11 and the Cole families had the president look them in the eye and say, ‘We’re going to close Gitmo, move forward with this process, and hold people accountable,’ ” said Commander Kirk Lippold, a proponent of military trials who was the commanding officer aboard the U.S.S. Cole when it was attacked in Yemen in 2000.

“When does an unfulfilled political promise become a lie?” Lippold asked.

Defense sources say a military commission for the alleged mastermind of the Cole bombing, Saudi Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, put on hold by Obama after he took office could ramp up again at Guantanamo late this summer.

In November, Holder announced his plan to try KSM and four other accused 9/11 plotters in Manhattan. However, when local leaders backed away from that idea in January, the White House pulled the plug and announced it would review other options for resolving the cases.

In March, Holder expressed optimism that a resolution would be arrived at quickly.

“I think that we are weeks away from making that determination. I don't think we're talking about months,” Holder told a House appropriations subcommittee on March 16. White House officials also endorsed the “weeks” frame.

Asked last week if a decision had been made to put off the issue until after the elections, Holder said: “No decision has been made with regard to where the trials will be held, but the conversations that we are having are ongoing, and the political thing that you mentioned, the fact of the elections, is not a part of the conversations at all.”

However, the political attractiveness of delay for Democrats is pretty straightforward.

“It deprives [Republicans] of a cheap 30-second spot about moving the most dangerous people in the world to U.S. soil. On the other hand, it makes Democrats look like they can’t handle the issue,” Malinowski said.

Part of the delay on 9/11 trials has been caused by the White House’s desire to explore what some call a “grand bargain”— one bill or a series of measures that would bring about Guantanamo’s closure by providing money for a prison at Thomson, Ill.; authorize bringing current Gitmo inmates there; overhaul the rules for detaining the prisoners; and likely involve green-lighting a military commission trial for the 9/11 prisoners and civilian trials for others.

Earlier this year, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and White House Counsel Bob Bauer had detailed talks with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) about such a compromise. But in the last couple of months the White House has “gone dark,” a Congressional source close to Graham said.

“They [the White House] can’t figure out what they want to do,” the source said.

Some reports have suggested that most White House officials have sided with Emanuel, who is said to favor military trials. However, at meetings with human rights and civil liberties groups earlier this year, White House Office of Public Engagement Director Tina Tchen strongly hinted that Obama is inclined to back civilian trials if the practicalities can be worked out, a source said.

While there is clearly significant resistance in Congress to civilian 9/11 trials, lawmakers haven’t tied Obama’s hands on the issue—at least not yet. When Graham forced a Senate vote last November on blocking such trials, the measure failed, 54-45. But then there was the underwear bomber, Scott Brown’s victory in his Massachusetts Senate campaign in part on an anti-civilian trial message, and, last month, the Times Square car bombing attempt.

Of course, Obama could veto any legislation sent to his desk that ruled out civilian trials for the 9/11 suspects or anyone else at Gitmo. But that would put the terrorism issue at the center of national political debate—something the White House has assiduously tried to avoid. Since delivering a speech on the issue of terrorism suspects at the National Archives 13 months ago, Obama has been nearly mum on the issue.

Still, the House bill may prove a significant obstacle. As members rushed to leave for the Memorial Weekend, the House adopted a motion by Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) that would effectively bar the transfer of any Gitmo prisoner to U.S. soil. In the 282-131 vote, Democrats defected en masse, with 114 backing Forbes’s motion.

The plan to close Gitmo also is stalled. At a press conference in Chicago last month that received little national attention, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who favors moving Gitmo detainees to Thomson, Ill., seemed to concede that movement on the issue wouldn’t come anytime this year.

“We have to resolve that Guantanamo issue at another time,” Durbin said, according to a video posted on the Fox News website. Asked if that meant “a non-election year,” Durbin replied: “Well perhaps it’ll be easier. That’s a pretty cynical view—and very accurate.”

Others say that while a delay lowers the profile of the issue of a trial for KSM and his cohorts, it doesn’t sweep it off the table. “I think they want to take it off the table in the election, then they want to sneak it in or think we’ll have a different playing field or people will have softened on this,” said Debra Burlingame, who strongly opposes a civilian 9/11 trial. Her brother was an airline pilot killed aboard one of the 9/11 flights. “We are not going to go away," she insisted.

Some analysts, such as Malinowski, surmise that the protracted delay signals that the White House may well opt for civilian trials in the end, since there would be little political downside to announcing a move to military commissions now if that were the decision. Others say that after eight years of frustration another six months of delay isn’t a big deal.

“I think a civilian trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is in the best interests of the United States and I’m prepared to wait for it,” said Ken Gude of the Center for American Progress.

© 2010 Capitol News Company, LLC

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm? ... ED28F9D7E6



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I always thought it a bad idea to hold civilian trials for Al Qaeda. Or, Taliban leaders.

They should be tried as war criminals in a military tribunal.