by Amitai Etzioni*

The 2001 attacks on the United States have intensified the debate that has existed since the dawn of Islam: How is the West to respond to the followers of Muhammad? Some — most famously Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington — held that the contest is between two rather monolithic civilizations that are bound to clash. In a 2007 award acceptance speech at the American Enterprise Institute, Lewis described a history of clashes between Islam and the West. He stated that at first Muslims sought to spread their nascent faith through conquest throughout the then-Christian world; then the Christians invaded the Muslim world (the Crusaders); then the Muslims pushed back into Europe (the Golden Age of Islam); then the West retaliated by colonizing the Muslim world; and now the Muslims are again rising against Christendom by terrorism and flooding Europe with immigrants.[1] Huntington argued that “Islam’s borders are bloody, and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”[2] By contrast, President George W. Bush stated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that “Islam is peace,”[3] while British prime minister Tony Blair argued that the problem was not Islam but “extremists trying to hijack it for political purposes.”[4]

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by Jonathan Schanzer*

In its final report of July 22, 2004, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (commonly known as the 9/11 Commission) charged that Congress had failed America. In the commissioners’ judgment, Congress had “adjusted slowly to the rise of transnational terrorism as a threat to national security. In particular, the growing threat and capabilities of [Osama] bin Laden were not understood in Congress … To the extent that terrorism did break through and engage the attention of the Congress as a whole, it would briefly command attention after a specific incident, and then return to a lower rung on the public policy agenda.” Indeed, the commission was unequivocal about “Congress’s slowness and inadequacy in treating the issue of terrorism in the years before 9/11.”[1]

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by Daniel Pipes*

With trumpets and drum rolls, the White House in early August released a policy paper on methods to prevent terrorism, said to have been two years in the making. Signed personally by Barack Obama and with rhetoric vaunting “the strength of communities” and the need to “enhance our understanding of the threat posed by violent extremism,” the document looks anodyne.

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by Daniel Pipes*

The White House engaged in two furtive gambits last week that painfully exposed the Obama administration’s amateurish, deceitful Middle East-Islamic policies.

The first case concerned the thorny issue of Jerusalem’s legal status in American law. In 1947, the United Nations ruled the holy city to be a corpus separatum (Latin for separated body) and not part of any state. All these years later and despite many changes, U.S. policy holds that Jerusalem is an entity unto itself. It ignores that in 1950 the Government of Israel declared western Jerusalem to be its capital and in 1980 declared the whole of Jerusalem to be the capital. The Executive Branch even ignores U.S. laws from 1995 (requiring a move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem) and 2002 (requiring that U.S. documents recognize Americans born in Jerusalem as being born in Israel). Instead, it insists that the city’s disposition be decided through diplomacy.

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By Gary Gerofsky

The far left of center Canadian New Democratic Party (NDP) has been an option that a minority of voters in Canada considered seriously. Federally, they have never been in power and, of the three main parties (Conservative, Liberal and NDP), the NDP always came in third. Provincially they have held power in Ontario, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Nova Scotia and partially in the Yukon.

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by Steven J. Rosen*

In a few weeks, an overwhelming majority in the United Nations General Assembly will likely vote for collective recognition of a Palestinian state. But which Palestinian state? Of the three Palestinian states the assembly could recognize, two are real and arguably could meet the requirements for statehood. But it is the third, purely imaginary one that the assembly will endorse, one that neither has a functioning government nor meets the requirements of international law.

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By David North, CIS.org

Recent news reports reminded me that all higher education immigration fraud, through the massive F-1 visa program, is divided into three parts:

1. There are the individual students who drop out of legitimate universities to become illegal aliens on their own;
2. There are visa mills which are distinctly illegitimate establishments; they recruit would-be illegal aliens, and, in effect, charge them substantial fees for their F-1 visas; or they operate marginal operations more keyed to profits than to education; and
3. There are more rarely, or more rarely caught, employees of legitimate universities who misuse their positions to facilitate the conversion of legitimate foreign students into illegal aliens.

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

Things are looking good for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the grandfather of all Islamist groups. Despite the organization’s hegemonic aspirations — which include “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization … so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions” — the Obama administration recently announced that it “welcomes dialogue” with the Brotherhood; so did the European Union. And under Egypt’s military regime, the Islamist organization just “became a legal political party for the first time since President Gamal Abdel Nasser banned it more than half-a-century ago.”

Why Nasser banned the Brotherhood — and tried to decimate it — is instructive.

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by Daniel Pipes*

How should Western governments deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which Washington labels “the most active state sponsor of terrorism”?

Iranian aggression began in 1979, with the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and the holding of some of its staff as hostages for 444 days. Major subsequent attacks included two bombings in Beirut in 1983: at the U.S. embassy, killing 63, and at a U.S. Marine barracks, killing 241.

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by Sterling Jensen*

The Middle East political storm of early 2011 has had an interesting impact on Iraq. Though the government was confronted with almost daily demonstrations, which led to a number of high profile resignations and the use of force to suppress political dissent, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki felt sufficiently confident to boast that “Iraq has become the most stable country in the region.”[1] While this may seem a bold claim given the recent past, Maliki is not alone in showing confidence in Iraq’s prospects. The Sadrists, Kurds, and leaders of the primarily Sunni Iraqiya bloc have been equally upbeat about the country’s prospects while many Iraqi insiders believe that their battle-torn country will not only weather the instability but will also serve as a model for democracy.

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We live in ominous times. Our government embraces false “allies” while betraying true ones; our right to be armed is threatened; our religious freedoms are threatened by unethical political dogmas and nefarious foreign funding; our entertainment is dominated by a depraved group of money-hungry, unethical anthopomorphs; our primary and secondary schools are poisoned with political correctness that teaches that no one is responsible for his/her own actions; our academia is dominated by anti-Semitic, Islamo-philic bigots; and, our government is filled with self-serving, lying, unethical thieves. It is time to remember the sacred words penned by this great nation’s Founding Fathers, the American Declaration of Independence:

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By Jerry Kammer, CIS.org

For at least two years now, Arizona journalist Leo W. Banks has been writing and speaking about the strange silence of the federal government on the connection between forest fires in southern Arizona and the smugglers of drugs and human beings.

Banks has contrasted the widespread public belief that the fires are caused by the smugglers — either accidentally or in an effort to distract the Border Patrol — with the refusal of federal officials to address the issue.

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By David North, CIS.org

You have heard all about sanctuary cities, and some states’ refusal to cooperate with the Secure Communities program, and state-sanctioned tuition breaks and driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, but there is a new wrinkle in state-sabotage of immigration enforcement.

It comes to us from Washington State, one of three states that still issue driver’s licenses to illegals.

I find it devious; others may find it creative.

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By Fern Sidman

“Our mood is not one of celebration. Our mood is one of caution and concern. Unease sits heavily on our shoulders”, declared US Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) at the 2011 AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC. Expressing concern about the security of Israel he said, “At no time in Israel’s history has her future faced such tension and such serious tests. Uncertainty awaits us on many fronts.”

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By Barry Rubin

Remember when we were told that the Muslim Brotherhood was moderate and weak? Why it was so benign that the Brotherhood had even promised only to contest one-third of the seats. And a revolutionary Islamist, antisemitic and genocide-oriented, anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Christian organization would never lie to us, right?

I mean you can call for all of the Jews in the world to be wiped out; demand a jihad against America; and work day and night for decades to bring to power a totalitarian Islamist state that would chop off limbs, stone people, and murder anyone who didn’t want to be a Muslim any more. But you would never, ever deceive an American reporter!

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