Christmas in Eurabia

'Your religious values are not superior to the laws of the republic.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2077529/French-Muslim-jailed-punching-nurse-tried-remove-wifes-burqa-childbirth.html#ixzz1hHJl22HF

Steyn on Egypt:

If you’re going to turn your country into a squat of theocratic totalitarianism, a stupid population is indispensable

Islam is a Grand Delusion

Excellent article by Amil Imani, seen at Tulisan Murtad (excellent blog as well)

The Power of Cartoons...

Followers of the Religion of Peace are up in arms against a cartoon...again, but this time with a twist: the cartoon is actually anti-Islamophobic, if that's how we can call Pastor Terry Jones.

The whole thing here, I loved some of the comments, witty and very precise:

I think this comment nails it:

HT: Blazing Cat Fur

Maybe the answer to your question is...

...that we Westerners don't do stuff like that, and if somebody does it it's not cloaked in tradition-religion-honour-however the hell you want to call it, but rather because of insanity or crime.


Now, if the trick of pretending those crimes are comited by Muslims and non-muslims alike fails, we can conjure up another trick:

Yes, blame it on patriarchy - sexism:

Now, that's a real piece of bull shite!! Do the Jews, Christian, Mormons, Buddhist kill teen age girls over so called "family honour"?


We shouldn't hesitate to call honour killings barbaric, says Farzana Hassan


HT: http://www.cireport.ca

Hopeless

Barbaric and primitive to the point of surrealism.

There is a new weapon in Afghanistan's dog-eat-dog war. It is invisible and omnipresent. The Afghan intelligence service, NDS, has authorized the use of firearms against the force of this weapon, but this has already led to deaths. In their Friday sermons, the imams condemn it as a diabolical instrument of infidels.

It is the number 39.

From Herat in the west, through Kabul and all the way to Kunduz in the north, it is a number associated with prostitution and evil. Car dealers, who always sell vehicles complete with license plates, must give customers large discounts if the number 39 appears on the plate number. Mullah Tarakhel, a Pashtun member of parliament listed as member No. 39, ordered his bodyguards to open fire when Tajik colleagues scoffed at him. Two men were killed in the gunfire. At the grand council, or loya jirga, held in mid-November, the delegates argued less passionately over a strategic agreement with the United States than over who was to be appointed to the 39th of 40 committees -- until they decided to simply skip the number. "In Afghanistan, the number 39 has a very strange meaning which it is not fair for me to tell you," said jirga spokeswoman Safia Sediqi.

The NDS announced that insulting someone by referring to them as a "39" is such a serious crime that the injured party is entitled to defend his honor with a weapon. The clergy sees the devil at work and surah 39 of the Koran in danger.

The belief in the evil significance of the number 39 reportedly began in Herat at the beginning of the year and spread around the country from there. As the story goes, there is a pimp living in Herat whose address begins with 39, and the loathsome digits also appear in his telephone number and on his license plate.

No one knows this pimp. And no one really cares whether the legend is even true. But almost everyone fears this unlucky number. As a result, a country that is being plagued by the Taliban and robbed by its politicians is also being held hostage by another calamity, one for which there appears to be no antidote. This begs the question of whether such cabbalistic nonsense can reveal the core of Afghanistan's plight.

HT: Blazing Cat Fur

Billion Men To March Against Islamization of Mecca

http://zillablog.marezilla.com/2011/11/billion-men-to-march-against.html

Excellent historical analysis of The Cult of Death and why it is intrinsically inimical to Western Civilization.

Muslims in Spain Declare Jihad on Dogs

As reported by Hudson New York

Don't you love their hutzpah?
"two Islamic groups based in Lérida asked city officials to regulate the presence of dogs in public spaces so they do not "offend Muslims."
"Muslims in Lérida say the presence of dogs violates their religious freedom and their right to live according to Islamic principles"


I happen to find those principles incompatible with Western Civilization.

Spanish authorities are investigating the recent deaths by poisoning of more than a dozen dogs in Lérida, a city in the northeastern region of Catalonia that has become ground zero in an intensifying debate over the role of Islam in Spain.

All of the dogs were poisoned in September (local media reports here, here, here, here and here) in Lérida's working class neighbourhoods of Cappont and La Bordeta, districts that are heavily populated by Muslim immigrants and where many dogs have been killed in recent years.

Local residents say Muslim immigrants killed the dogs because according to Islamic teaching dogs are "unclean" animals.

Over the past several months, residents taking their dogs for walks have been harassed by Muslim immigrants opposed to seeing the animals in public. Muslims have also launched a number of anti-dog campaigns on Islamic websites and blogs based in Spain.

In response to the "lack of sufficient police to protect the neighbourhood," 50 local residents have established alternating six-person citizen patrols to escort people walking their dogs.

In July, two Islamic groups based in Lérida asked city officials to regulate the presence of dogs in public spaces so they do not "offend Muslims." Muslims are demanding that dogs be banned from all forms of public transportation including all city buses as well as from all areas frequented by Muslim immigrants.

Muslims in Lérida say the presence of dogs violates their religious freedom and their right to live according to Islamic principles.

Dogs are not the only Islam-related controversy in Lérida, where 29,000 Muslims now make up around 20 percent of the city's total population.

In December 2010, Lérida became the first municipality in Spain to ban the burqa head covering in all public spaces. Women found violating the ban will be fined up to €600 ($750). One day before the ban took effect, the Catalonian Supreme Court turned down an appeal from the Watani Association for Freedom and Justice, a local Muslim group, which had argued that the ban constitutes religious discrimination.

In September 2010, Watani president Mourad El-Boudouhi submitted a letter to the Lérida city council in which he asked the mayor to provide him with free land so that he can build a mosque in downtown Lérida. The mosque would be financed by Morocco.

The Moroccan mosque would compete with another mosque project in Lérida that is being financed by Saudi Arabia. The imam at the Saudi mosque is Abdelwahab Houzi, a Salafi jihadist preacher who adheres to the radical Wahhabi sect of Islam.

Salafism is a branch of revivalist Islam that calls for restoring past Muslim glory by forcibly establishing a universal Islamic empire (Caliphate) across the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Europe such as Spain, which Salafists view as a Muslim state that must be re-conquered for Islam.

Much of Spain was ruled by Muslim conquerors from 711 and 1492; Salafists believe that the territories the Muslims lost during the Spanish Reconquista still belong to them, and that they have a right to return and establish their rule there – a belief based on the Islamic precept that territories once occupied by Muslims must forever remain under Muslim domination.

The Salafist Houzi has called on Muslims who are eligible to vote in Spain to support Catalan separatist parties as a means to firmly establish Islamism in Catalonia.

"Muslims should vote for pro-independence parties, as they need our votes. But what they do not know is that, when they allow us to vote, we will all vote for Islamic parties because we do not believe in left and right. This will make us win local councils and as we begin to accumulate power in the Catalan autonomous region, Islam will begin to be implemented," Houzi said.

The Catalan independence movement supports the independence of Catalonia from Spain. Catalan separatism is based on the idea that Catalonia is a nation with its own unique history, culture and language.

In an effort to promote the Catalan language, Catalonian pro-independence parties have traditionally favored immigration from non-Spanish-speaking countries, especially from Arabic-speaking Muslim countries, in the belief that these people would speak Catalan rather than Spanish.

The end result of this decades-old policy is that Catalonia is now home to a huge concentration of hard-line Islamist groups including Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami and the Salafists.

Salafi preachers in Catalonia do not believe in democracy and teach that Islamic Sharia law is above Spanish civil law. They also promote the establishment of a parallel Muslim society in Spain.

Salafi imams have set up Sharia tribunals in Catalonia to judge the conduct of both practicing and non-practicing Muslims in Spain. They also deploy Islamic "religious police" in Lérida and other Catalan municipalities to monitor and punish Muslims who do not comply.

In one case, nine Salafists kidnapped a woman in Reus, tried her for adultery based on Sharia law, and condemned her to death. The woman just barely escaped execution by fleeing to a local police station.

In another case, a Salafi imam in Tarragona was arrested for forcing a 31-year-old Moroccan woman to wear a hijab head covering. The imam had threatened to burn down the woman's house for being an "infidel" because she works outside the home, drives an automobile and has non-Muslim friends. In an effort to prevent "a social conflict," in August a local court absolved the imam of all wrongdoing.

The Salafi movement in Spain is based in the Catalonian city of Tarragona, but Salafi Islam also has a major presence in the Catalan municipalities of Badalona, Calafell, Cunit, El Vendrel, Girona, Lleida, Mataró, Reus, Roda de Bara, Rubí, Salt, Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Sant Boi, Torredembarra, Valls, and Vilanova, not to mention Barcelona, which hosts five Salafi mosques.

Meanwhile, the Catalan regional government says that during the first six months of 2011, it prevented 14 forced marriages and the genital mutilation of 24 Muslim girls.

Catalan police say they prevented forced marriages in metropolitan Barcelona (6), Girona (4), central Catalonia (2), the western Pyrenees (1) and Tarragona (1). The girls at risk from genital mutilation were in metropolitan Barcelona (19), Girona (4) and Lérida (1).

Not surprisingly, some Catalans are having second thoughts about Muslim immigration. The Catalan nationalist party Plataforma per Catalunya (PxC), which has some 70,000 active members, is opposed to any further Muslim immigration.

PxC is also leading opposition to the construction of a Salafi mega-mosque in the Catalan town of Salt. PxC spokeswoman María Osuna says the party does not want Salt to become "the new Mecca of the most radical Islamism."

For its part, the Catalan regional government has discovered that Muslim immigrants are not all that interested in learning the Catalan language. In an effort to promote Catalan, the Catalonian Bureau of Religious Affairs recently published a guidebook in Arabic and Catalan called "Salam al Català."

The guide aims to bring the Catalan culture to Muslims to "show the bonds that historically have existed between both realities, and bring the [Catalonian] language to the Arabic-speaking Muslim population."

The Brave and the Dhimmi

Two different approaches:

Tajikistan: the Brave


http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Asia/Story/A1Story20110803-292605.html

Canada: the Dhimmi
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/08/08/protest-against-muslim-prayer-services-in-schools

Canadians, what are you doing to your country?

T.C.F.K.U.K

The Country Formerly Known as United Kingdom

The Camel Corps

Yesterday I read an article that describes the workings of the Arabist Lobby in the British Foreign Office, already sabotaging British and Western interests since the First World War. Here's another example of that lobby. 

The Western World refuses to follow logic and practice "profiling", which can be summed up as: not all Muslims are terrorists, but at least 99% of terrorists are Muslims.
So instead, they adopt a particularly out of place and perverse "equality" principle: anybody can be a threat, so everybody has to be searched, patted, groped. Kids, old folks.
The TSA has lost sight of who the enemy is, of whence is the threat coming from. They take it out on regular folks. Instead of protecting them, they torture them. The video below just makes my blood boil:

Why Do They Slaughter?

To understand whence comes their beastly mindset.
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=51448
HT: Closet Conservative


What is common to Daniel Perl, Nick Berg, the Jews of Hebron in 1929 and the
Fogel family? They were butchered. They were not simply stabbed to death,
but were killed by an act designed to decapitate them or to cause fatal
bleeding by severing their carotid artery. Another common denominator: all
were slaughtered by Moslems. An endless list of Moslem girls and women can
be added to them, those who were similarly slaughtered by their brothers,
fathers or other relatives for “violating the family honor”. A question
that arises automatically is where does this Moslem tendency to this kind of
slaughter come from?
The answer is simple: Slaughter is a routine, widespread practice among
many Moslem families. Many children see how their fathers slaughter sheep
when celebrating an important event, and the whole family is present at the
sacrificial slaughter during Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice, when
the slaughter is part of the holiday ritual.
In modern societies, the slaughter of animals for meat consumption takes
place in slaughterhouses, far from the eyes of the public and children, who
generally get their meat free of blood and hair and ready for cooking or
eating. This sterile arrangement spares the public the sight of the
slaughter, the blood and the accompanying cries. In the West, many of those
who witnessed animal slaughter become vegetarian.
In many Islamic societies, slaughter generally occurs at home, in front of
the children, and is part of the routine of life. They are immunized
against the sight of slaughter, are not moved by the blood dripping from the
animal’s neck and are not frightened by its snorts and struggles. In many
cases, the children hold the legs of the lamb in order to immobilize it
during slaughter; they sense very well its frantic reactions as the knife so
painfully slices through its neck. The presence and participation of the
children in the act of slaughter immunizes them emotionally against its
influence; when they are older they perform the custom of sacrifice with
their own hands and knives, and in front of their own children.
The emotional immunity to the act of slaughter allows a Moslem to utilize it
whenever he feels he must employ radical methods to rid himself of someone.
The slaughter of sheep during the Festival of Sacrifice is accompanied by
the recitation of “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful”,
and the butchering of girls who do not behave properly is conducted as a
kind of execution ceremony. The slaughterer feels that he is doing
something important and worthy, acting in a way to which he is inured since
early childhood.
In western societies, slaughter seems barbaric, while members of Moslem
societies view it as proper and commendable when carried out within the
proper context. Therefore, slaughtering a Jew, a Christian or anyone seen
as an enemy is not considered unusual in traditional Islamic societies.
This is what professional jargon calls a “cultural difference”.

Ghouls and the Death Cult

Yes, they are ghouls...

HT: BlazingCatFur

How the UK Lost to Islamo-Fascism

HT: BlazingCatFur

The pinnacle of incompetence

http://www.meforum.org/2856/pinnacle-of-incompetence
by Efraim Karsh

It is commonplace for the views of people in power to receive widespread exposure. Having presumably won their stripes in an arduous climb to the top, they are believed to know best what's going on.

This presumption, however, is not only wrong, but is often the inverse of the truth. Given bureaucracy's predilection for conformity, it is rarely the best and brightest who reach the top, but rather the yes-men sycophants – whether by rising to their level of incompetence, as the Peter Principle famously asserts, or by stumbling upward through successive failures, or by simply "being there" long enough.

Thus we have England's national soccer team manager, Sven Goran Eriksson, putting Wayne Rooney on a par with soccer's best-ever player, the legendary Pele. Yet rather than have his professional judgment questioned, the overpaid manager was allowed to lead his under performing team for three more trophy-less years.

Or take US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's astounding description of the Muslim Brotherhood as a "largely secular" organization.

Shouldn't he know what countless newspaper readers know full well – the Brotherhood is probably the world's foremost Islamist organization, committed to the establishment of a worldwide caliphate. How else is one to interpret its motto – "Allah is our objective. The prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope"? Now Baroness Eliza Manningham- Buller, former director of MI5 (Britain's FBI equivalent), has joined the march of folly. In her first television interview since leaving her job four years ago, she argued that the "war on terror" is unwinnable, and urged the British government to "reach out" to al-Qaida. "It's always better to talk to the people who are attacking you than attacking them, if you can," she explained.

This gives the idea of appeasement a whole new meaning. Even the most notorious incident – the Anglo- French surrender of Czechoslovakia to Hitler in the 1938 Munich agreement – took place prior to any German military aggression. Once the Nazis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, London and Paris attempted no further talks, but declared war on Germany.

In contrast, by the time Manningham-Buller made her startling suggestion, al-Qaida had massacred tens of thousands in the name of Islam – from the 9/11 attacks, to the ongoing slaughter in Iraq, to bombings in Yemen, Bali, Sharm e-Sheikh and Madrid. Yet neither these atrocities, nor the July 2005 London bombing, which took place under her watch, seem to have shaken the former director's belief that outreach to the Islamist group would curb its murderous zeal: "If we can get to a state where there are fewer attacks, less lethal attacks..., fewer young people being drawn into this, less causes – resolution of the Palestinian question, less impetus for this activity, I think we can get to a stage where the threat is thus reduced."

THIS JUDGMENT of al-Qaida's worldview is as delusional as Clapper's take on the Muslim Brotherhood. It is true that during the 1970s Western Europeans bought partial immunity from Palestinian terrorism by indulging the PLO. But then, the PLO's goal has always been limited to the "liberation of Palestine" (that is the destruction of Israel), while al-Qaida seeks nothing short of worldwide triumph. As such, the idea that Israeli-Palestinian peace will take away one of Islam's primary gripes against the West totally misreads history and present-day politics.

It is not out of concern for a Palestinian right to self determination, but as part of a holy war to prevent the loss of part of the "House of Islam" that Islamists inveigh against Israel. In the words of the covenant of Hamas, the Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood: "The land of Palestine has been an Islamic trust [wakf] throughout the generations, and until the day of resurrection... When our enemies usurp some Islamic lands, jihad becomes a duty binding on all Muslims."

In this respect, there is no difference between Palestine and other parts of the world conquered by Islam throughout history. To this day, for example, many Muslims unabashedly pine for the restoration of Spain, and look upon their expulsion in 1492 as a grave historical injustice, as if they were Spain's rightful owners. Small wonder that Osama bin Laden evoked "the tragedy of Andalusia" after the 9/11 attacks, and the perpetrators of the March 2004 Madrid bombings, in which hundreds of people were murdered, mentioned revenge for the loss of Spain as one of the atrocity's "root causes."

Indeed, even countries that have never been under Islamic rule have become legitimate targets of Islamist fervor. Since the late 1980s, various Islamist movements have looked on the growing number of French Muslims as a sign that France, too, has become a potential part of dar Islam, the house of Islam.

In Britain, even the more moderate elements of the Muslim community are candid about their aims. As the late Zaki Badawi, a doyen of interfaith dialogue, put it, "Islam is a universal religion. It aims to bring its message to all corners of the earth. It hopes that one day the whole of humanity will be one Muslim community."

This goal need not necessarily be pursued by the sword; it can be achieved through demographic growth and steady conversion to Islam. But should peaceful means prove insufficient, physical force can be brought to bear.

Nor is this vision confined to an extremist fringe. This has been starkly demonstrated by the overwhelming support for the 9/11 attacks throughout the Islamic world, in the admiring evocations of bin Laden's murderous acts during the 2006 crisis over the Danish cartoons, and in the poll indicating significant sympathy among British Muslims for the "feelings and motives" of the London suicide bombers.

To deny this reality is the height of folly, and to imagine that it can be appeased or deflected is to play into the Islamists' hands.

Looks Quite Promising...

BlazingCatFur posts what seems to be a self-fullfilling promise:

http://www.facebook.com/Palestinian.Intifada#!/Palestinian.Intifada

Well, I'd say we are well on our way to a Muslim-free Facebook then, judging from the content posted on their page...

I'm hoping for the moment not only Facebook will be free from this ilk of infra-human scum...

News from the Death Cult

Aweys: Shabaab recruits 'underage children to fight for us'

http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2011/03/aweys_shabaab_recruits_underag.php

By BILL ROGGIOMarch 20, 2011 8:01 PM

It isn't every day that you get a terrorist leader to freely admit what an awful human he really is. Late last week, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a Shabaab commander and Specially Designated Global Terrorist with links to al Qaeda, proudly told how his organization recruits children to wage jihad. From Garowe:

"We recruit underage children to fight for us, the children are ready to die for their country and religion" said Sheikh Aweys while addressing people in a mosque at Elasha Biyaha camps in outskirt of Mogadishu, the restive capital of Somalia. He adds they will continue recruiting underage children to fight against Somali government forces and African Union troops. "There was an incident where 13 year fighter shocked when he heard the loud sounds of the artillery while he was fighting and he said the fighting is terrible but the Jihad is sweet and later he was dead in the clashes," said Aweys.

Keep in mind that some people think it would have been a good idea to have kept the Islamic Courts Union, which Aweys co-led, in power: the premise being that the ouster of the Islamic Courts Union in 2006 resulted in the rise of Shabaab. (I've addressed this false argument back in December 2008 and again in December 2009).

Also note that despite the ongoing African Union and Somali government offensive, top Shabaab leaders like Aweys are still able to hold press conferences and address worshipers at mosques in and around the capital.

Canada: shaking de chains of dhimmitude

HT: BlazingCatFur

Charter Not Excuse For Degrading Canadian Culture

http://www.nugget.ca/Community/NewsDisplay.aspx?c=132513

Posted By gsmith1

4 days ago

The most poignant comment I have read on the topic of having primitive religious practices forced on our Canadian culture was written by Ezra Levant recently in the Toronto Sun. Mr. Levant pointed out that there have been 154 Canadian soldiers die and hundreds injured in Afghanistan. This Canadian sacrifice has been made not just to bring democratic freedom to Afghanistan but to ensure that girls, have a right to go to school, to listen to music and as human beings be treated as equals in a civilized world.

At the same time in Winnipeg a few Muslim immigrant families are demanding changes to the public school curriculum to accommodate their fundamentalist view of Islam. They don’t want their boys and girls to be in the same classes. They don’t want their children to hear music or singing in music classes. They are demanding these accommodations now. How long before they demand that there are no female teachers teaching their children?
Last fall the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that Muslim women can ask for a courtroom to be cleared of all men (even the judge) before taking off their veils to testify. This accommodation of primitive religious practices is not the result of democratic legislation passed by the Canadian government and representing the democratic will of the Canadian people. The accommodation is being forced on Canadian culture by an over zealous judiciary that has no right in a democratic society to create law.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been used as an excuse by the judiciary in forcing the accommodation of primitive religious practices, however, the Charter only guarantees freedom of religion. The first right in the Charter states “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” To me this would suggest that it would be reasonable not to allow the carrying of knives in our society. There is no justification for accommodating primitive religious practices that detract from the rights and freedoms already enshrined in our culture. In fact #27 says exactly that, “This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians. Doesn’t that say that we will preserve the culture we have and enhance not detract from it. In conclusion #28 of the Charter states, “Notwithstanding anything in this Charter, the rights and freedoms referred to in it are guaranteed equally to male and female persons.”
Immigrants from many nations with diverse cultures have contributed to building the democratic, enlightened society we enjoy in Canada. There is no need for an advanced, civilized culture such as exists in Canada to be degraded in order to accommodate immigration. 

The Trouble with Islam.

This news item embodies what is, in my view, the trouble with Islam. Let's see:
A Muslim, Muzzammil Hassan, sets up a TV station (Bridges TV) "to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims". Fine. Let's set aside that the TV station used to attack and defame Israel and the jews. 
In 2009 Muzzammil beheaded his wife, Aasiya Zubair. And then he went on to alleged that he was the victim of domestic abuse, and in fact acted in self-defense.
He wanted to portray the positive side of Muslims awhile living up to its darker side.
Hipocrisy, lies, deceit, cowardice, brutality. That's the trouble with Islam. A primitive, barbaric Death Cult.

Great Sentence of the Week

If you want to live under sharia law, go back to the hellhole country you came from, or go to another hellhole country that lives under sharia law" Mahfooz Kanwar
HT: BCF

Justice in Australia: Lying Burka-Clad Bitch Gets 6 Months

Brilliant Comment of the Day

Seen at: http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2011/02/cairo-million-man-march-underway/

Obama: like Carter, only worst

The Obama administration has stabbed Mubarak in the back: while propping it up with aid, at the same time it was encouraging the opposition. El-Baradei, considered the "leader" of the democratic oposition, is the man that helped the Iranians advance with their nuclear ambitions. And now this.
As Carter lost Persia to Khomeini, Obama is bent on loosing Egipt to the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been the real inspiration for Hamas, Al-Qaeda and the Iranian Revolution.
The difference is that back then, as Persia was lost to Islamic Fundamentalism, Egypt left Soviet patronage and became the West's partner. Now with Iran consolidated in its role as an exporter of Islamic Revolution, and Turkey, an old ally of the West sliding gradually toward Islamofascism, Egypt's joining them would mean an emboldening for the Islamofascist Supremacy movement worldwide and a sure escalation of the belic conflict in the Middle East.

Violence Against Women and its Collaborators: Political Correctness and Multiculturalism

HT: Five Feet of Fury



HT: Blazing Cat Fur

Political Correctness: cultural auto-castration.

"One of the inevitable consequences of political correctness is an unwillingness on the part of the politically correct to recognize  truth that does not conform to the poetically correct version adopted. In fact the intrusion of truth or reality is so threatening that attempts are severely censored and ultimately punished. This leads to privilege on the part of the politically correct subject. And it is usually not long before the privileged become abusers, knowing the leeway they will be given by society will be great. "

HT: Blazing Cat Fur

Crippled by conspiracies

 By Leonard Stern, The Ottawa Citizen June 26, 2010

The Toronto 18 trials wrapped up this week, as the final two accused were found guilty of plotting to commit violence in the name of militant Islam. 

Originally, many people assumed the allegations were exaggerated. These were just a bunch of angry young men fantasizing out loud, more stupid than dangerous. In the end, however, it turned out to be the real deal, a textbook example of self-radicalization and homegrown terrorism. 

Now that 11 of the original 18 suspects have been convicted, you'd think there would be a sense of relief. Not really. As the Toronto Star reported, focus groups organized by McGill University indicate some 90 per cent of Muslim youth believe the Toronto terrorism case was a government conspiracy, concocted to make Muslims look bad. 

It's hard to overstate how depressing this is, even though we've seen it before. The most disheartening event surrounding the 9/11 attack, other than the attack itself, was the mass denial among Muslim communities right here in the West. 

  

The tradition of conspiracy-thinking in the Muslim world is entrenched and quite fascinating. My first exposure to it was back in journalism school at Carleton University. It was 1993, and I was part of a student television crew sent to cover, as a class assignment, an anti-Israel protest outside the Ottawa Congress Centre, where then-Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres was speaking. 

As we walked into the crowd lugging our TV equipment, an Arab demonstrator pointed to our camera and screamed "Mossad!" Other demonstrators, wearing Yasser Arafat-style kafiyas, became very agitated and started jostling us, yelling "Mossad! Mossad!" We showed our university student IDs. The mob grew angrier, convinced the cards were fake. 

Now it's true that all cultures have conspiracy industries. Here in the industrialized West, there are people who believe in alien abduction, that pharmaceutical companies orchestrated the H1N1 vaccination campaign, and that Bobby Kennedy killed Marilyn Monroe. 

In the West, however, this stuff is relegated to the fringe. Conversely, the culture of conspiracy in the Arab and Muslim world is mainstream, promoted in mass-circulation media and by influential intellectual, religious and political leaders. 

Earlier this year, the daily Iranian newspaper Jomhouri-ye Eslami reported that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are secret arms of the U.S. government. Whenever the Americans want to justify imperial aggression, they simply order up another "terror" attack from their ally Osama bin Laden. Another daily Iranian newspaper, Kayhan, reported that the U.S. and Israel used secret technology to trigger the Haiti earthquake, to provide an excuse for western governments to station troops in Haiti and destabilize nearby Cuba and Venezuela. 

Last month, a prominent Pakistani columnist wrote in the Peshawar daily Frontier Post that the attempted bombing in Times Square was actually a CIA-Mossad plot. The purpose? To provide an excuse for the U.S. to attack and invade Pakistan. 

Just this month, the head of the Palestinian Writers' Union in Gaza, Abu Al-Subh, published a series of articles explaining how Jews are planning to take over the planet by brainwashing future leaders and corrupting the education systems of countries around the world. Al-Subh is an important figure not just because he heads up the writers' union, but also because he has also served as culture minister in the Hamas government. 

The above examples come courtesy of the Middle East Media Research Institute, an invaluable organization that provides English translations of what is being said in the mainstream Arab and Muslim press -- again, not the fringe, but mainstream. (If you check it out at memri.org, you'll see that it translates liberal and moderate Muslim voices, too, where it can find them.) 

So why has a culture of conspiracy and paranoia come to be institutionalized in the Muslim Middle East? There is a growing academic literature on the subject, but two principal explanations stand out. 

One is that conspiracy theories are a tool by which illiberal Muslim leaders preserve power. Conspiracy theories allow corrupt autocrats to deflect criticism and blame outsiders -- Zionists, the CIA and so on --for all the poverty, illiteracy and suffering in their own mismanaged societies. 

The second explanation is that Muslims willingly embrace conspiracist thinking as a collective defence mechanism, a way of rationalizing the gap in human development between the West and Islam. 

In many Muslim societies, honour is paramount. The collision between Islam and modernity has led to chronic underachievement in the Muslim world, and that, some scholars say, is a profound humiliation. Conspiracy theories help ease the shame, by explaining how Islam, once a glorious empire, came to this sorry state. 

Conspiracist thinking is a symptom of total dysfunction. An obsession for external enemies, especially invented ones, means there will never be an imperative to look for the real enemies within, and to embrace the long, painful reforms that ultimately must begin at home. 

Conspiracies

Tin Foil Turbans: The 6 Stupidest Conspiracy Theories that Millions of Muslims Believe

By Kathy Shaidle
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/11/07/tin-foil-turbans-the-6-stupidest-conspiracy-theories-that-millions-of-muslims-believe/

“But the biggest problem with conspiracy theories is that they keep us not only from the truth but also from confronting our faults and problems. …This way of thinking relates any given problem to external elements, and thus does not [lead] to a rational policy to confront the problem. He who speaks of ghosts [as the reason behind any given problem] can do nothing to solve it.”
“Anyone, who adopts the conspiracy theory becomes so helpless that he ends up surrendering or committing suicide. The thinking of conspiracy theorists shifts between surrender and suicide, between helplessness and passivity, between negligence and failure.”
– Dr. Abd Al-Mun’im Sa’id, 1999

During the Q&A at Mark Steyn’s recent “controversial” speech burlesque song-and-dance routine (no, really…) in London, Ontario, a young man rose to ask Steyn a question.
“I am Iranian,” he began — leading our gang ensconced in “bloggers row” to turn in unison to the Iranian ex-pat in our group for his verdict. After the questioner got out another sentence, our friend rolled his eyes and muttered, “Idiot…”
The Iranian up at the mic had asked a reasonable question about how much the U.S. had armed Iraq before they decided Iraq was their enemy and invaded them. (Steyn’s answer: according to a Stockholm “peace research institute”, only 1% of arms sales to Iraq since the 1970s had come from America. Most came from France and Germany. Ooops.)
What came next led everyone else in the hall to roll their eyes.
Just as, in the famous phrase of Abba Eban, “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” it seems that Muslims never miss an opportunity to toss out some pointless, idiotic conspiracy theory.
In this case, Steyn’s questioner was particularly agitated about the “fact” that Saddam Hussein had once been awarded the “key to the city of Kansas City.” To this young man, this naturally proved conclusively that… well, I’m not sure, but Steyn managed to get some comic mileage out of it.
As it turns out (and this too is typical), the Iranian questioner was half-right about the facts, and wrong about his conclusions. According to Wikipedia and other sources, Saddam Hussein was honored with the Freedom of the City of Detroit — write your own jokes in the comments — for donating a huge sum to a local church.
I think it was Canadian journalist Robert Fulford who called conspiracy theories “history for stupid people.” Given the level of illiteracy in the Muslim world, this is as good an explanation as any for why millions of Muslims, even “educated: ones, believe crazy stuff. I recently heard Canadian Muslim author Tarek Fatah relate stories of his latest visits to the Middle and Near East; he said he was most often regaled with 9/11 “troother” nonsense by relatively wealthy Pakistanis with university degrees.
Of course, the unpleasant fact is that the Muslim world has been in decline for centuries. Since this decline contradicts their self-image as a superior people, there must be some other explanation for their backwardness. Conspiracy theories provide that explanation, while short circuiting the very self-criticism that international Islam desperately needs to get itself out of its hole.
It’s easy to laugh at these conspiracy theories, and maybe watch Jesse Ventura’s new show about them, “just for laughs.” However, as memorably laid out in one of my favorite books — The Cost of Deception: The Seduction of Modern Myths and Urban Legends, by John A. Williams — conspiracy theories, far from being harmless fun, actually pollute the public square. Misinformation undermines civil society by making trust in one’s fellow man a mug’s game. Paranoid cynicism becomes the default “sophisticated” worldview.
Indulging in conspiracy theories isn’t healthy, whether or not those indulging are on the right or the left.  And when those theories are being spread by millions of people who have the potential and the will, to kill, they can be fatal.
And now, on to the 6 stupidest conspiracy theories that millions of Muslims believe:
#6  “Cockroach Lady Diana had 700 Boyfriends!”

“Lady Diana is called, Cockroach Diana, because, Britain is humiliatingly called, Cockroach Britain & all English, Scottish & Welsh are known with the indignant remark of, “Shakespeare Cockroaches”. London is called, Cockroach London, Birmingham as, Cockroach Birmingham, Manchester as, Cockroach Manchester etc.etc. All British media is called, Cockroach Media & BBC, which is the most notorious liar of the world, is called Cockroach BBC & its lies are called, Cockroach Lies. In short, everything to do with Britain is called, with the humiliating description of, ”Cockroach ———- “.”

My husband, blogger BlazingCatFur, spends a lot of time researching radical Muslim weirdness. (Too much?) So I owe him a Coke for making my assignment a little easier by passing along a links to two Muslim conspiracy theory blogs:
There you will discover that “Cockroach Lady Diana was an International Prostitute of Cockroach Shakespeare Britain,” the alarming truth about President Abe “Lincoln, Terrorist of Mickey Mouse America” and, well, this:

Nope, me neither…
#5  The Incredible Shrinking Penis

Last month mass hysteria apparently swept the capital city, Khartoum, after reports that foreigners were shaking hands with Sudanese men and causing their penises to disappear. One victim, a fabric merchant, told his story to the London Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi. A man from West Africa came into the shop and “shook the store owner’s hand powerfully until the owner felt his penis melt into his body.”
I know the feeling. The same thing happened to me after shaking hands with Sen. Clinton.
– Mark Steyn, 2003

On Twitter last night, I asked my followers to play “unpaid intern” and DM me links to the weirdest Muslim conspiracy theory they’d ever heard. Most mentioned the “shrinking penis” urban legend that was, er, big in the Muslim world a few years back.
Needless to say, the Jews were blamed for this imaginary phenomenon.
As Steyn remarks, this primitive ignorance is being spread by modern technology, which pours cold water on the notion that if only Muslims are dragged from the past into the present and exposed to 21st century ways, they’ll give up their unenlightened mass hysteria:

The telling detail of the vanishing penis hysteria is that it was spread by text messaging. You can own a cell phone, yet still believe that foreigners are able with a mere handshake to cause your penis to melt away.

And come to think of it: if you own a cell phone, it probably runs on Israeli technology.
Of course, even that’s all part of the Jews’ evil plan!!
#4  Allah’s name taken in vain

Many devout Muslims believe that “Allah can write his name on everything he wants,” as the title card of the video below shows.
Like foolish Christians who get excited by “apparitions” of Jesus or Mary on grilled cheese sandwiches, these Muslims may be indulging in harmless wishful thinking.
However, this proclivity for seeing the word “Allah” everywhere makes it easy for Muslims to claim offense at every accidental squiggle rendered by an unsuspecting infidel. And so it was that, in 2005, Burger King capitulated to complaints about an optical illusion:

THE fast-food chain, Burger King, is withdrawing its ice-cream cones after the lid of the dessert offended a Muslim.
The man claimed the design resembled the Arabic inscription for Allah, and branded it sacrilegious, threatening a “jihad”.
The chain is being forced to spend thousands of pounds redesigning the lid with backing from The Muslim Council of Britain. It apologised and said: “The design simply represents a spinning ice-cream cone.”
The offending lid was spotted in a branch in Park Royal last week by business development manager Rashad Akhtar, 27, of High Wycombe.
He was not satisfied by the decision to withdraw the cones and has called on Muslims to boycott Burger King. He said: “This is my jihad. How can you say it is a spinning swirl? If you spin it one way to the right you are offending Muslims.”
A Muslim Council spokesman said: “We commend the sensitive and prompt action that Burger King has taken.”

As Daniel Pipes noted, NIKE was hit with a similar complaint back in the 1999s.
And who can forget the great “Sex Toy Outrage” of 2008, when Muslims complained about the British sex shop selling a male blowup doll named “Mustafa Shag.” (Get it?) “Mustafa” is one of the honorary titles of Mohammed, you see. (Irony and puns are not really a big “thing” in Islamic culture, which makes their mass immigration to England, of all places, all the more confusing.)
Seeing things that aren’t there is second nature in any culture that takes conspiracy theories seriously.
Rewarding idiots for doing so has, alas, become second nature here in the West.

#3   Israeli Sex Gum and the Sodas of Doom

Given strict Islamic rules about food consumption, it isn’t surprising that a number of conspiracy theories concern food, drink — and even chewing gum:

Hamas suspects that Israeli intelligence services are supplying its Gaza Strip stronghold with chewing gum that boosts the sex drive in order to “corrupt the young,” an official said on Tuesday.

Last time I checked, sex was still, you know, where babies come from. Are more Palestinians really in Israel’s best interest? (Silly me: even that “side effect” must be part of the Jews’ cunning plan. I’m just too stupid to understand the nuances.)
Many Muslim conspiracies involve big brand names, like Coke and Pepsi. In some cases, these theories hold that these soft drinks contain forbidden pork products:

According to a report published in Jordanian magazine, the head of Delhi University’s Science and Technology Center , Dr. Mangoshada scientifically proved that the key element in Pepsi and Cola contains extract from the intestines of Pig which causes cancer and other deadly diseases.
The Indian university conducted tests on the impact of drinking Pepsi and Coca Cola which proved that drinking them lead to more rapid heart rate and low pressure. Also drinking 6 bottles of Pepsi or Cola at a time causes instant death.

(What until they hear about the whole “Mentos” thing…)
Other conspiracy theories take advantage of the habit mentioned above, of seeing things that aren’t there, in this case in the products’ logos: some Muslims believe “Pepsi” is an acronym for “Pay Ever Penny Save Israel” or that “Pepsi” really spells “Israel.”
And then there’s the “secret backwards Coke logo,” pictured above.
It doesn’t stop there. According to this report aired on Iranian TV, pretty much every major brand name product contains an insult to Islam. (For example, Disney is bad because “Walt Disneys [sic] Millennium exhibition at the Epcot Centre in Florida depects [sic] Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.” And who says “nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee“?)
I guess if you haven’t invented anything important in the last thousand years, the next best thing is to slander those who have:

#2  The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

I haven’t much to add to the thorough debunking of the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Here’s some background, on the off chance you aren’t familiar with this book:

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a forgery made in Russia for the Okhrana (secret police), which blames the Jews for the country’s ills. It was first privately printed in 1897 and was made public in 1905. It is copied from a nineteenth century novel by Hermann Goedsche (Biarritz, 1868) and claims that a secret Jewish cabal is plotting to take over the world. (…)
The Protocols were published in 1920 in a Michigan newspaper started by Henry Ford mainly to attack Jews and Communists. Even after they were exposed as a forgery, Ford’s paper continued to cite the document. Adolf Hitler later used the Protocols to help justify his attempt to exterminate Jews during World War II.

Alas, news of the debunking hasn’t reached many areas of the Muslim world.
And even if the facts were presented there, the Protocols are such a handy tool I doubt it would make any difference. The book is so popular that it has been adapted as a TV mini-series for broadcast in various Muslim countries.
#1:  9/11 was a Mossad operation

Not long after September 11, it wasn’t uncommon to encounter Muslims chatting on the internet and proclaiming, with apparent sincerity, that Muslims couldn’t possible have pulled off the attacks because, well, Muslims weren’t that smart.
Only one group of people were, and those people were… the Jews!!
The good news is, some Muslim commentators have condemned 9/11 conspiracy theories. One asked rhetorically:

Didn’t Arabs try to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993? Aren’t Arabs capable of flying planes? Aren’t Arabs responsible for suicide operations in Southern Lebanon and in occupied Palestine? Didn’t Arabs come up with the idea of hijacking and blowing up civilian planes in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and then give it up after it turned out that this method failed abysmally in achieving their political goals…?’”

Another wrote with palpable exasperation:

“The Arabs keep insisting on their innocence and accusing the Mossad of planning the deed with the aim of launching an aggressive war against the Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq… But this tale clashes with the fact that Jews are cowards and do not commit suicide. So the theory was amended, and it was claimed that the Mossad had planned and funded [the operation], and a group from among our innocent young people was deceived and ensnared by the Mossad, and that it was they who carried out [the operation].
“I do not know how long this [Muslim] arrogance will continue. Why don’t we want to acknowledge that these young people were the sons of a culture that is hostile toward the world, not idiots or mad. No one enticed them, and they did not suffer from oppression, repression, or poverty. They carried out the operation because of their belief that it was Jihad and martyrdom. They were our young people and our sons, and they were our responsibility.”

The bad news is that these condemnations were more frequently heard in the years following the attack. If anything, belief in “9/11 conspiracies” has increased in the intervening years.
That doesn’t mean we should give up debunking these theories at every opportunity. However, we have to acknowledge that we are trying to educate people who, in many respects, either cannot or will not change their minds, no matter how much evidence we present or how much mockery we employ.