We talked for 30 minutes but historian and political analyst Daniel Pipes’ core message came quickly: The civilized world is at war. And American Jews are engaged on two distinct fronts: against Islamists who hate the West and against Jew-haters who despise Zionism.
Pipes helped crystallize why there’s something to the belief that diplomacy doesn’t end wars - victory by one side over the other does. I’m not willing to scuttle hope that compromise won’t resolve America’s war against Iraqi insurgents or Israel’s conflict with Palestinian terrorists. But I understand that if you don’t win a war, you lose it by default.
I am not a Muslim nor am I a religious Muslim. I am certainly not a Qur’anic scholar. But I am a religious Jew. As such, I want to respect peoples of faith, including those who are secular fundamentalists. One does not have to agree with one’s neighbors in order to respect them and one does not have to disagree with others in a verbally uncivil or physically violent way. I applaud all efforts to “reform” or re-interpret ancient religions in accordance with our contemporary understanding of human and women’s rights.
I have also been drawn to the Islamic East for almost sixty years and count many Muslims and ex-Muslims as friends and political allies. I have lived in or traveled to Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan but now, I can no longer visit most of the countries that once called out to me (except in books).
Last week, in a letter, 138 Muslim clerics sought to find “common ground” but only with Christians. In my view, they did so because Christians are the only religious group that outnumbers the Muslims demographically, by about six to seven hundred million.
In a sense, from a psycho-analytic point of view, this is an example of “literal” or “concrete” thinking. The World Trade Center and the Pentagon are symbols of American might. Hence, destroying these structures is “literally” the same as destroying American infidel power.
Conservative commentator and prolific author, Ann Coulter can be called a lot of things, but the shy, retiring type she is definitely not. Neither is she timid or taciturn. Since her emergence on the political commentary scene, she has assumed the position of the darling of the neo-cons and die hard right-wingers as she is a most vocal and outspoken cheerleader for the Republican party. She is a ubiquitous presence on the television talk show circuit and can always be counted on to raise the ire of Democrats, liberals and leftists of all stripes with her predilection for spewing forth a seemingly endless foray of acerbic jibes and over the top controversial analyses. In the past she has fired her salvos at women, ethic minorities, gays, Supreme Court Justices, Democratic presidential candidates, the widows of 9/11 victims, the New York Times and anyone else that does not subscribe to Coulterism.
Towards the end of Ramadan, (October 11th, 2007), a group of 138 Muslim clerics released a letter which called for peace between Muslims and Christians. Jews (my people), Hindus, Buddhists, other non-Christian denominations, secularists, and atheists were not included in this theologically-based appeal.
Already, I’m worrying. Why are they only talking to Christians? Although Jews represent less than 1% (.003%) of the world’s population, (there are perhaps 14 million of us), why not talk to Jews — since Jewish scripture is cited in the letter; and because we are also viewed as so very powerful?
“We are all Keynsians now,” Richard Nixon famously asserted just as the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes fell into disrepute. Likewise, one could have said with similar confidence in 1989, as Israel’s existence reached wide acceptance, “We are all Zionists now.” No longer.
Count the ways Israel is under siege: from Iranians building a nuclear bomb, Syrians stockpiling chemical weapons, Egyptians and Saudis developing serious conventional forces, Hizbullah attacking from Lebanon, Fatah from the West Bank, Hamas from Gaza, and Israel’s Muslim citizens becoming politically restive and more violent.
Let me state what is painfully obvious. Despite our most hopeful illusions, people are not really “good” nor do they really practice “peace”. While power corrupts, absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely and there is no safe place, neither high nor low, for the most vulnerable of our citizens.
The world is always at war. People fight, it’s what we do. We quarrel, often in deadly ways with other family members and we fight bitter, brutal battles with anyone who is “different” in terms of gender, class, race, ethnicity, tribe, religion, and ideology. The planet is perpetually plagued by civil and national wars. Not to be outdone, persecuted peoples internalize the prejudice and hatred leveled against them and unleash it against others like themselves.
In her three part series, Amanpour is far more combative and confrontational with both Jewish and Christian religious leaders than she is with Muslim leaders. She is warmer, softer, more “at home,” with even the most extreme of Islamist leaders, perhaps even more respectful, than she is with their allegedly Jewish or Christian counterparts.
Amanpour completely fails to make the distinction between Islamists who teach hatred of infidels and women and who blow infidel and Muslim civilians up (as well as honor-murder their own women); Israelis who are under perpetual terrorist siege and who are trying to defend themselves against Islamist attacks; and conservative Christians who are trying to mobilize votes, change laws, or win hearts and minds with words, not bombs (although she certainly has lots of footage of the bloody bombings at abortion clinics–bombings I personally abhor and mourn–as do many Christians).
Dhabah Almontaser, the nearly anointed principal of Brooklyn’s madrassa and CNN’s fully anointed Christiane Amanpour both agree that in Arabic, “Intifada” means a “shaking off.” Amanpour gave an example of how to use the word by saying that “Palestinian (terrorists) were (merely) shaking off the Israeli Occupation;” Almontaser, when challenged about the infamous tee-shirts bearing the words “Intifada NYC,” said that they referred to young Muslim girls “shaking off oppression.”
In November of 2005, Fox’s O’Reilly showed live footage of the French Intifada as it raged in Paris. According to WorldNetDaily, Saudi billionaire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, (aka Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin AbdulAziz AlSaud), who owns 5-6% of the Fox News Channel, personally called Rupert Murdoch and asked him to change the offensive (but accurate) caption: “Muslim Riots” to the less offensive (and less accurate) “Civil Riots.” Within thirty minutes, the Prince had his way.
To paraphrase New York Post columnist Cindy Adams: Only in America kids, only in America.
In a recent article in the British Guardian newspaper, Ed Husain, a former member of the radical Islamist Hizb ut Tahrir organization [which aims to bring about a worldwide Muslim state], sought to draw a parallel between Zionism and radical Islam. The movements were, Husain claimed, “both political perversions of ancient Abrahamic faiths of Judaism and Islam.” Husain’s simplistic claim was made possible by his near-total lack of knowledge of Zionism, the issue of Jewish peoplehood, the vexed issue of secular and religious Jewish identity, and so on. However, the claim is an interesting one, and closer observation of it offers clues as to the dynamics governing the current clash between Israel and radical Islamism, and the likely outcome of the contest.
Both Zionism and radical Islam are, self-consciously, movements of “revival.” They have the following aspect in common, which underlies the tremendous strength of the loyalties to which both have been able to inspire in their followers: They have been able to reach back to motifs, stories and beliefs preceding modernity, which were at the core of the identities of the people to whom they wished to appeal. Here lies the difference between these two movements and, for example, the communism and radical socialism of the 20th century on the other. The latter two preached a radical break with the past, and celebrated an unfamiliar, imagined future. Zionism and Islamism, by contrast, both draw on the deep currents of identification and loyalty felt by Jews and Muslims to their respective traditions and history.
Saudi Arabian Airlines declares on its English-language website that the kingdom bans “Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings, items with religious symbols such as the Star of David.” Until the Saudi government changes this detestable policy, its airline should be disallowed from flying into Western airports.
Michael Freund brought this regulation to international attention in a recent Jerusalem Post article, “Saudis might take Bibles from tourists,” in which he points out that a section on the Saudia Web site, “Customs Regulations,” lists the forbidden articles above under the rubric “Items and articles belonging to religions other than Islam.”
Is Islamo-fascism the greatest threat to civilization today? Or does the threat really lay in those people in Western nations who are afraid to oppose the Islamo-fascists, who are too lazy or disinterested, and/or are befuddled by political correctness? Today, Aish.compublished a lesson from the times of the Holocaust for those idiots who would sit by as our freedoms are threatened by Islamic zealots. The story is about a righteous gentile who saved Jewish children — a person who knows that opposing evil is a duty, not an option:
Many Muslim mullahs, imams and terrorist chiefs have been igniting their followers by the word “Jihad” – Holy War. Even the leaders of some Muslim countries are not able to resist temptation. Their true intent is a war against everything that is un-Islamic. Any infidel, not just Jews, any non-Islamic country is a target. Even Muslim countries that allow some flexibility, freedom and personal rights that are not in line with hard-core Islamic doctrine are considered as blasphemous and also are targeted.
Farrakhan in his own words: European Jews are not Semites, are “misbehaving,” and are “Johnny-come-lately’s” to Israel. Farrakhan must be spending time with that other hate-monger, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. From YouTube:
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