Excellent Article: The Lessons From Denmark

Lessons From Denmark

by Ann Snyder  

Molly Norris was right, initially at least. The original idea behind "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" was simple. It was a message about the importance of solidarity in defense of something of great value—the cornerstone of our individual liberties—freedom of expression.

Comedy Central, Norris charged, had "cooperated with terrorists" when it censored an episode of South Park. If instead, everyone drew an image of Mohammed, Islamists couldn't possibly silence all of us. Her message echoed Benjamin Franklin's statement at the signing of the Declaration of Independence: "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

Recent news reminds us that capitulation is a failed strategy. We need to stand together with those who value individual rights (Muslims and non-Muslims, alike) against the onslaught of Islamists who would destroy those very freedoms.

On December 29, 2010 police arrested five suspects in a terror plot apparently targeting the newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Over five years ago, the Jyllands-Posten published cartoons depicting Islam's prophet, Mohammed. The newspaper and the cartoonists have been the targets of numerous threats and thwarted attacks ever since. Interestingly, the worst violence actually followed an apology by Jyllands-Posten. An attempt to appease had failed. (Norris learned the same lesson after attempting to apologize. Radical cleric Al-Awlaki still called for her murder, and she was forced to "go ghost" when authorities were unable to protect her.) The death toll from the anger fomented over the cartoons is estimated at over 200 with many more injured.

But why, after five years, has this controversy not gone away? Perhaps the reason is that the cartoons are merely an excuse being exploited by Islamists as a justification for their actions.

According to Jakob Scharf, head of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service, in a press conference following the foiled plot, "Obviously, the cartoons have been used very efficiently by militant Islamist groups worldwide in targeting Denmark, specifically, and trying to explain why the violent extremism is necessary." Egyptian-born, Muslim journalist, Mona Eltahawy, agrees that the cartoons have been exploited for political ends. In an article criticizing Yale University Press' cowardly decision to pull images of the cartoons from what was supposed to be a scholarly exploration of the cartoon controversy, Eltahawy asserts that the cartoons were used by some to stir anti-immigrant sentiments and by "right wing" Muslims to "silence [other] Muslims and fuel anti-Western rhetoric."

It is precisely because the cartoons are simply today's excuse for an Islamist tantrum that appeasement cannot work as an effective strategy to stop future violence. You won't halt attacks by prosecutingpoliticians and journalists for saying things that might offend the Islamists or by settling absurd lawsuits. Islamists will simply trump up a new pretext tomorrow. Further, the strategy of appeasement has grave consequences beyond being merely ineffectual. By appeasing, we are, as Norris suggested, cooperating with terrorists.

By silencing critics or those who might offend, we weaken the resistance to Islamists and each time, hand them a mini-victory. By giving in to the demands of extremists, we give credence to the faulty idea that there is a monolithic voice of the "Muslim world," and that the Islamists speak for it. (This is the idea the OIC would like you to buy into. This self-appointed Muslim-Lorax audaciously claims to speak for the entire "ummah." If we are interested in hearing the voices--note the plural--of Muslims perhaps we should start by talking to a few of these individuals who signed a petition in support of Norris, South Park, and freedom of expression. ) Finally, by capitulating in the face of every threat or whimper, we show Islamists that their approach works. And, like a schoolyard bully or petulant child, they will use the same strategy tomorrow.

This is why standing together with all lovers of individual liberty and resisting Islamist pressure is the first step in diffusing the threat. Capitulation has failed. We need to recognize that now, or assuredly we will all lose our heads.

http://www.legal-project.org/blog/2010/12/appeasement-will-not-stop-islamists

The Religion of Peace™

JONAH GOLDBERG
Who Are the Real Hijackers of Islam?
Maybe the hijackers are the peaceful ones.

For years, we’ve heard how the peaceful religion of Islam has been hijacked by extremists.

What if it’s the other way around? Worse, what if the peaceful hijackers are losing their bid to take over the religion?
That certainly seems to be the case in Pakistan.
Salman Taseer, a popular Pakistani governor, was assassinated this week because he was critical of Pakistan’s blasphemy law.
Specifically, Taseer was supportive of a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, who has been sentenced to death for “insulting Muhammad.”
Bibi had offered some fellow farm laborers some water. They refused to drink it because Christian hands purportedly make water unclean. An argument followed. She defended her faith, which they took as synonymous with attacking theirs. Later, she says, a mob of her accusers raped her.
Naturally, a Pakistani judge sentenced her to hang for blasphemy.
And Governor Taseer, who bravely visited her and sympathized with her plight, had 40 bullets pumped into him by one of his own bodyguards.
“Salmaan Taseer is a blasphemer and this is the punishment for a blasphemer,” Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri said to the television cameras as he was being arrested.
Now, so far, it’s hard to say who is the hijacker and who is the hijackee. After all, Taseer the moderate was a prominent politician, Qadri a mere bodyguard.
A reasonable person might look at this tragic situation and say it is indeed proof of extremists trying to hijack the religion and the country.
Except, it was Taseer who wanted to change the status quo and Qadri who wanted to protect it. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have been on the books for decades, and while judicial death sentences for blasphemy are rare, the police and security forces have been enforcing it unilaterally for years.
And what of the reaction to the assassination?
Many columnists and commentators denounced the murder, but the public’s reaction was often celebratory. A Facebook fan page for Qadri had to be taken down as it was drawing thousands of followers.
And what of the country’s official guardians of the faith?
A group of more than 500 leading Muslim scholars, representing what the Associated Press describes as a “moderate school of Islam” and the BritishGuardian calls the “mainstream religious organizations” in Pakistan not only celebrated the murder, but warned that no Muslim should mourn Taseer’s murder or pray for him.
They even went so far as to warn government officials and journalists that the “supporter is as equally guilty as one who committed blasphemy,” and so therefore they should all take “a lesson from the exemplary death” of Salman Taseer.
If that’s what counts for religious moderation in Pakistan, I think it’s a little late to be talking about extremists hijacking the religion. The religion has long since been hijacked, and it’s now moving on to even bigger things.
Pakistan isn’t the only troubled spot. In Egypt, Coptic Christians were recently slaughtered in an Islamist terrorist attack. The Egyptian government, which has a long record of brutalizing and killing its own Christian minority, was sufficiently embarrassed by the competition from non-governmental Islamists that it is now offering protection. How long that will last is anyone’s guess.
But Pakistan is special because it has nuclear weapons and is inextricably bound up in the war in neighboring Afghanistan and the larger war on terror. U.S. relations with the Pakistani military remain strong, but — as we’ve seen with Turkey — good relations with a military don’t make up for losing support from an allied government as it goes Islamist. And it seems unlikely that a government can long stay secular when the people want it to become ever more Islamist.
Sadanand Dhume, a Wall Street Journal columnist (and my colleague at the American Enterprise Institute), writes that even “relatively secular-minded Pakistanis are an endangered species.”
While most of the enlightened chatterers remain mute or incoherent as they struggle for a way to blame Israel for all of this, the question becomes all the more pressing: How do we deal with a movement or a nation that refuses to abide by the expiring cliché, “Islam means peace”?
— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. © 2010 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/256550/who-are-real-hijackers-islam-jonah-goldberg

It Never Ceases to Amaze Us...

Well, at least it's not about bombings and stonings and beheadings...

The comments are very funny

Brilliantly put

Over at Harry's place they touch on  the subject of Britain's Pakistanis groming underaged White British girls, a British understatement for: abducting underaged girls from vulnerable homes, plying them with alcohol and drugs and gang-raping them. The subject arouses the expected amount of politically correctness. I rescue the following comment:

Islam: the Bad Trip of the Masses

If religion is The Opium of People, what kind of drug would Islam be?


Bad trip:


"At times, users have a frightening, unpleasant or disturbing experience when using LSD – this is known as a ‘bad trip’. This may involve hallucinations which can be emotionally upsetting to extremely uncomfortable physical sensations."


Former Inmate: "Guantanamo Jews Used Witchcraft on Prisoners, Made Me Feel a Cat Was Trying to Penetrate Me"

Excerpts from transcript:

Walid Muhammad Hajj: "There were, of course, Jews among the [staff of] the Guantanamo base, and they would set traps for the guys."

Interviewer: "Give me an example of witchcraft."

Walid Muhammad Hajj: "Witchcraft was used on most of the guys."

Interviewer: "They would cast a spell on them?"

Walid Muhammad Hajj: "Yes, but by the grace of Allah, through frequent reading of the Koran and invocation of the names of Allah, they managed to withstand this."

(...)

Interviewer: "Did they ever use witchcraft on you?"

Walid Muhammad Hajj: "There was one attempt."

Interviewer: "How did they do it?"

Walid Muhammad Hajj: "Once, when I was sleeping – on the floor, not on a bed – I suddenly felt that a cat was trying to penetrate me. It tried to penetrate me again and again. I recited the kursi verse again and again until the cat left."

Interviewer: "But there wasn't really any cat there?"

Walid Muhammad Hajj: "Absolutely not." [...]

Methanfetamines:



"Increased use commonly results in compounding paranoia, psychosis and extreme mood swings. This in turn can lead to violence and violent offending such as serious assault and even homicide, especially when the intense craving for the drug often leads to repeated use for days on end, without sleep or food.
Eventually the constant "high" cannot be sustained and the user starts to come down in a steep crash. This overwrought state, often referred to as "tweaking", is when the user is in their most violent and unpredictable state."


As Tom Trento puts it at the end of this video, after the Imam led the prayers, at minute 6:00, a fervor descended upon the multitude, and they went across towards the counter-demonstrators and, had it not been by the Police presence, they would have attacked them.

Islamo-nausea

Because:
"none of us is as “fearful” of Islam at this point, we are just plain sick of it."
That's a brilliant definition from Kathy Shaidle. And here's another:
"Letting Muslims immigrate to the West is like hiding Nazis in your attic during World War II"

The Moral Bankruptcy Of Feminism

Excellent article by Caroline Glick

Hat tip: Closet Conservative