View Full Version : Newsweek: Surrender to Islam Now...
Warrior-Mentor
03-01-2009, 12:55
Newsweek's cover is written in Arabic, with this parenthetical translation:
'Radical Islam Is a Fact of Life. How To Live with It.'
Who wants to live with it? Who wants to submit? Who will refuse to convert?
Radical islam is a misnomer. There are moderate muslims...there's no such thing as moderate islam.
I remain committed to educating the American public about what we can do to maintain our great heritage.
It's a challenge to educate the naive fools with the "coexist" bumper stickers fail to understand ...
Ret10Echo
03-01-2009, 12:59
Newsweek's cover is written in Arabic, with this parenthetical translation:
'Radical Islam Is a Fact of Life. How To Live with It.'
Who wants to live with it? Who wants to submit? Who will refuse to convert?
Radical islam is a misnomer. There are moderate muslims...there's no such thing as moderate islam.
I remain committed to educating the American public about what we can do to maintain our great heritage.
It's a challenge to educate the naive fools with the "coexist" bumper stickers fail to understand ...
You should reprint the "COEXIST" bumper sticker with a bloody crescent moon lopping off the letter 'C'....
I believe it is still too high-level for most people to understand it as being a real threat.
Now that Newsweek has it on the cover I guess that it IS a fact....baaaaaa
einherjar
03-01-2009, 13:57
Learning to Live With Radical Islam
part 1 of 3
We don't have to accept the stoning of criminals. But it's time to stop treating all Islamists as potential terrorists.
By Fareed Zakaria | NEWSWEEK
Published Feb 28, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Mar 9, 2009
Pakistan's Swat valley is quiet once again. Often compared to Switzerland for its stunning landscape of mountains and meadows, Swat became a war zone over the past two years as Taliban fighters waged fierce battles against Army troops. No longer, but only because the Pakistani government has agreed to some of the militants' key demands, chiefly that Islamic courts be established in the region. Fears abound that this means women's schools will be destroyed, movies will be banned and public beheadings will become a regular occurrence.
The militants are bad people and this is bad news. But the more difficult question is, what should we—the outside world—do about it? That we are utterly opposed to such people, and their ideas and practices, is obvious. But how exactly should we oppose them? In Pakistan and Afghanistan, we have done so in large measure by attacking them—directly with Western troops and Predator strikes, and indirectly in alliance with Pakistani and Afghan forces. Is the answer to pour in more of our troops, train more Afghan soldiers, ask that the Pakistani military deploy more battalions, and expand the Predator program to hit more of the bad guys? Perhaps—in some cases, emphatically yes—but I think it's also worth stepping back and trying to understand the phenomenon of Islamic radicalism.
Existing with Extremism
It is not just in the Swat valley that Islamists are on the rise. In Afghanistan the Taliban have been gaining ground for the past two years as well. In Somalia last week, Al-Shabab, a local group of Islamic militants, captured yet another town from government forces. Reports from Nigeria to Bosnia to Indonesia show that Islamic fundamentalists are finding support within their communities for their agenda, which usually involves the introduction of some form of Sharia—Islamic law—reflecting a puritanical interpretation of Islam. No music, no liquor, no smoking, no female emancipation.
The groups that advocate these policies are ugly, reactionary forces that will stunt their countries and bring dishonor to their religion. But not all these Islamists advocate global jihad, host terrorists or launch operations against the outside world—in fact, most do not. Consider, for example, the most difficult example, the Taliban. The Taliban have done all kinds of terrible things in Afghanistan. But so far, no Afghan Taliban has participated at any significant level in a global terrorist attack over the past 10 years—including 9/11. There are certainly elements of the Taliban that are closely associated with Al Qaeda. But the Taliban is large, and many factions have little connection to Osama bin Laden. Most Taliban want Islamic rule locally, not violent jihad globally.
How would you describe Faisal Ahmad Shinwari, a judge in Afghanistan? He has banned women from singing on television and called for an end to cable television altogether. He has spoken out against women and men being educated in the same schools at any age. He has upheld the death penalty for two journalists who were convicted of blasphemy. (Their crime: writing that Afghanistan's turn toward Islam was "reactionary.") Shinwari sounds like an Islamic militant, right? Actually, he was appointed chief justice of the Afghan Supreme Court after the American invasion, administered Hamid Karzai's oath of office and remained in his position until three years ago.
Were he to hold Western, liberal views, Shinwari would have little credibility within his country. The reality—for the worse, in my view—is that radical Islam has gained a powerful foothold in the Muslim imagination. It has done so for a variety of complex reasons that I have written about before. But the chief reason is the failure of Muslim countries to develop, politically or economically. Look at Pakistan. It cannot provide security, justice or education for many of its citizens. Its elected politicians have spent all of their time in office conspiring to have their opponents thrown in jail and their own corruption charges tossed out of court. As a result, President Asif Ali Zardari's approval rating barely a month into office was around half that enjoyed by President Pervez Musharraf during most of his term. The state is losing legitimacy as well as the capacity to actually govern.
Consider Swat. The valley was historically a peaceful place that had autonomy within Pakistan (under a loose federal arrangement) and practiced a moderate version of Sharia in its courts. In 1969 Pakistan's laws were formally extended to the region. Over the years, the new courts functioned poorly, with long delays, and were plagued by corruption. Dysfunctional rule meant that the government lost credibility. Some people grew nostalgic for the simple, if sometimes brutal, justice of the old Sharia courts. A movement demanding their restitution began in the early 1990s, and Benazir Bhutto's government signed an agreement to reintroduce some aspects of the Sharia court system with Sufi Muhammed, the same cleric with whom the current government has struck a deal. (The Bhutto arrangement never really worked, and the protests started up again in a few years.) Few people in the valley would say that the current truce is their preferred outcome. In the recent election, they voted for a secular party. But if the secularists produce chaos and corruption, people settle for order.
part 1 of 3
Source: http://www.newsweek.com/id/187093 (http://www.newsweek.com/id/187093)
It's a challenge to educate the naive fools with the "coexist" bumper stickers fail to understand ...
Sir, I admire your efforts.
Perhaps one of the challenges is that liberal multiculturalism seems to take the view that people all want the same thing, and hence that difference in cultures is limited to cuisine, music, and clothing. Such a view is inculcated in many college students. The possibility that Islam might be oriented toward domination does not exist within that world view, so far as I can tell.
The True Believer mindset exemplified within NDD's signature is, perhaps, simply inconceivable to a substantial number of people.
einherjar
03-01-2009, 14:01
Learning to Live With Radical Islam
part 2 of 3
We don't have to accept the stoning of criminals. But it's time to stop treating all Islamists as potential terrorists.
By Fareed Zakaria | NEWSWEEK
Published Feb 28, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Mar 9, 2009
The militants who were battling the Army (led by Sufi Muhammed's son-in-law) have had to go along with the deal. The Pakistani government is hoping that this agreement will isolate the jihadists and win the public back to its side. This may not work, but at least it represents an effort to divide the camps of the Islamists between those who are violent and those who are merely extreme.
Over the past eight years such distinctions have been regarded as naive. In the Bush administration's original view, all Islamist groups were one and the same; any distinctions or nuances were regarded as a form of appeasement. If they weren't terrorists themselves, they were probably harboring terrorists. But how to understand Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the countries "harbor" terrorists but are not themselves terrorist states?
To be clear, where there are Qaeda cells and fighters, force is the only answer. But most estimates of the number of Qaeda fighters in Pakistan range well under a few thousand. Are those the only people we are bombing? Is bombing—by Americans—the best solution? The Predator strikes have convinced much of the local population that it's under attack from America and produced a nationalist backlash. A few Qaeda operatives die, but public support for the battle against extremism drops in the vital Pashtun areas of Pakistan. Is this a good exchange?
We have placed ourselves in armed opposition to Muslim fundamentalists stretching from North Africa to Indonesia, which has made this whole enterprise feel very much like a clash of civilizations, and a violent one at that. Certainly, many local despots would prefer to enlist the American armed forces to defeat their enemies, some of whom may be jihadists but others may not. Across the entire North African region, the United States and other Western powers are supporting secular autocrats who claim to be battling Islamist opposition forces. In return, those rulers have done little to advance genuine reform, state building or political openness. In Algeria, after the Islamists won an election in 1992, the military staged a coup, the Islamists were banned and a long civil war ensued in which 200,000 people died. The opposition has since become more militant, and where once it had no global interests, some elements are now aligned with Al Qaeda.
Events have taken a different course in Nigeria, where the Islamists came to power locally. After the end of military rule in 1999, 12 of Nigeria's 36 states chose to adopt Sharia. Radical clerics arrived from the Middle East to spread their draconian interpretation of Islam. Religious militias such as the Hisbah of Kano state patrolled the streets, attacking those who shirked prayers, disobeyed religious dress codes or drank alcohol. Several women accused of adultery were sentenced to death by stoning. In 2002 The Weekly Standard decried "the Talibanization of West Africa" and worried that Nigeria, a "giant of sub-Saharan Africa," could become "a haven for Islamism, linked to foreign extremists."
But when The New York Times sent a reporter to Kano state in late 2007, she found an entirely different picture from the one that had been fretted over by State Department policy analysts. "The Islamic revolution that seemed so destined to transform northern Nigeria in recent years appears to have come and gone," the reporter, Lydia Polgreen, concluded. The Hisbah had become "little more than glorified crossing guards" and were "largely confined to their barracks and assigned anodyne tasks like directing traffic and helping fans to their seats at soccer games." The widely publicized sentences of mutilation and stoning rarely came to pass (although floggings were common). Other news reports have confirmed this basic picture.
Residents hadn't become less religious; mosques still overflowed with the devout during prayer time, and virtually all Muslim women went veiled. But the government had helped push Sharia in a tamer direction by outlawing religious militias; the regular police had no interest in enforcing the law's strictest tenets. In addition, over time some of the loudest proponents of Sharia had been exposed as hypocrites. Some were under investigation for embezzling millions.
We have an instant, violent reaction to anyone who sounds like an Islamic bigot. This is understandable. Many Islamists are bigots, reactionaries and extremists (others are charlatans and opportunists). But this can sometimes blind us to the ways they might prove useful in the broader struggle against Islamic terror. The Bush administration spent its first term engaged in a largely abstract, theoretical conversation about radical Islam and its evils—and conservative intellectuals still spout this kind of unyielding rhetoric. By its second term, though, the administration was grappling with the complexities of Islam on the ground. It is instructive that Bush ended up pursuing a most sophisticated and nuanced policy toward political Islam in the one country where reality was unavoidable—Iraq.
part 2 of 3
Source: http://www.newsweek.com/id/187093/page/2 (http://www.newsweek.com/id/187093/page/2)
einherjar
03-01-2009, 14:03
Learning to Live With Radical Islam
part 3 of 3
We don't have to accept the stoning of criminals. But it's time to stop treating all Islamists as potential terrorists.
By Fareed Zakaria | NEWSWEEK
Published Feb 28, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Mar 9, 2009
Having invaded Iraq, the Americans searched for local allies, in particular political groups that could become the Iraqi face of the occupation. The administration came to recognize that 30 years of Saddam—a secular, failed tyrant—had left only hard-core Islamists as the opposition. It partnered with these groups, most of which were Shiite parties founded on the model of Iran's ultra-religious organizations, and acquiesced as they took over most of southern Iraq, the Shiite heartland. In this area, the strict version of Islam that they implemented was quite similar to—in some cases more extreme than—what one would find in Iran today. Liquor was banned; women had to cover themselves from head to toe; Christians were persecuted; religious affiliations became the only way to get a government job, including college professorships.
While some of this puritanism is now mellowing, southern Iraq remains a dark place. But it is not a hotbed of jihad. And as the democratic process matures, one might even hope that some version of the Nigerian story will play out there. "It's hard to hand over authority to people who are illiberal," says former CIA analyst Reuel Marc Gerecht. "What you have to realize is that the objective is to defeat bin Ladenism, and you have to start the evolution. Moderate Muslims are not the answer. Shiite clerics and Sunni fundamentalists are our salvation from future 9/11s."
The Bush administration partnered with fundamentalists once more in the Iraq War, in the Sunni belt. When the fighting was at its worst, administration officials began talking to some in the Sunni community who were involved in the insurgency. Many of them were classic Islamic militants, though others were simply former Baathists or tribal chiefs. Gen. David Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy ramped up this process. "We won the war in Iraq chiefly because we separated the local militants from the global jihadists," says Fawaz Gerges, a scholar at Sarah Lawrence College, who has interviewed hundreds of Muslim militants. "Yet around the world we are still unwilling to make the distinction between these two groups."
Would a strategy like this work in Afghanistan? David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency expert who has advised Petraeus, says, "I've had tribal leaders and Afghan government officials at the province and district level tell me that 90 percent of the people we call the Taliban are actually tribal fighters or Pashtun nationalists or people pursuing their own agendas. Less than 10 percent are ideologically aligned with the Quetta Shura [Mullah Omar's leadership group] or Al Qaeda." These people are, in his view, "almost certainly reconcilable under some circumstances." Kilcullen adds, "That's very much what we did in Iraq. We negotiated with 90 percent of the people we were fighting."
Beyond Afghanistan, too, it is crucial that we adopt a more sophisticated strategy toward radical Islam. This should come naturally to President Obama, who spoke often on the campaign trail of the need for just such a differentiated approach toward Muslim countries. Even the Washington Institute, a think tank often associated with conservatives, appears onboard. It is issuing a report this week that recommends, among other points, that the United States use more "nuanced, noncombative rhetoric" that avoids sweeping declarations like "war on terror," "global insurgency," even "the Muslim world." Anything that emphasizes the variety of groups, movements and motives within that world strengthens the case that this is not a battle between Islam and the West. Bin Laden constantly argues that all these different groups are part of the same global movement. We should not play into his hands, and emphasize instead that many of these forces are local, have specific grievances and don't have much in common.
That does not mean we should accept the burning of girls' schools, or the stoning of criminals. Recognizing the reality of radical Islam is entirely different from accepting its ideas. We should mount a spirited defense of our views and values. We should pursue aggressively policies that will make these values succeed. Such efforts are often difficult and take time—rebuilding state structures, providing secular education, reducing corruption—but we should help societies making these efforts. The mere fact that we are working in these countries on these issues—and not simply bombing, killing and capturing—might change the atmosphere surrounding the U.S. involvement in this struggle.
The veil is not the same as the suicide belt. We can better pursue our values if we recognize the local and cultural context, and appreciate that people want to find their own balance between freedom and order, liberty and license. In the end, time is on our side. Bin Ladenism has already lost ground in almost every Muslim country. Radical Islam will follow the same path. Wherever it is tried—in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in parts of Nigeria and Pakistan—people weary of its charms very quickly. The truth is that all Islamists, violent or not, lack answers to the problems of the modern world. They do not have a world view that can satisfy the aspirations of modern men and women. We do. That's the most powerful weapon of all.
part 3 of 3
Source: http://www.newsweek.com/id/187093/page/3 (http://www.newsweek.com/id/187093/page/3)
Bronze Bruce--whose left boot is atop a rock under which a snake is pinned--symbolically represents my world view on this issue. Period.
Richard's $.02 :munchin
Once the worlds stage has completely accepted the teachings of Islam as a rubric for conducting our daily lives; 'honor killings' will become a bit more tolerable and frankly i just can't wait until I can engage in some gub-mint sanctioned beheadings.
Who needs guns...
Warrior-Mentor
03-01-2009, 16:34
Sir, I admire your efforts.
Perhaps one of the challenges is that liberal multiculturalism seems to take the view that people all want the same thing, and hence that difference in cultures is limited to cuisine, music, and clothing. Such a view is inculcated in many college students. The possibility that Islam might be oriented toward domination does not exist within that world view, so far as I can tell.
The True Believer mindset exemplified within NDD's signature is, perhaps, simply inconceivable to a substantial number of people.
Exactly. Maslow doesn't work for these folks...their idea of self-actualization is a suicide belt...
Dozer523
03-01-2009, 20:43
Exactly. Maslow doesn't work for these folks...their idea of self-actualization is a suicide belt...
Nothing to add, just bears repeating, Sir.
...their idea of self-actualization is a suicide belt...
And business is booming! Sorry, I couldn't resist the obvious with that one. :rolleyes:
people are just dying to get a job in that field....
And the children blow up so quickly. :(
Pat
I have an image of Vince, the ShamWow guy, selling these belts on the MHSN (Mud Hut Shopping Network) for only $19.95...and if you call in the next 20 minutes, they'll give you 2 belts for only the additional shipping costs. :rolleyes:
Richard's $.02 :munchin
I have an image of Vince, the ShamWow guy, selling these belts on the MHSN (Mud Hut Shopping Network) for only $19.95...and if you call in the next 20 minutes, they'll give you 2 belts for only the additional shipping costs. :rolleyes:
Richard's $.02 :munchin
Ah, yes! Shaboom (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR_ds7ZF8Xg&feature=related)! :D
Pat
Detonics
03-02-2009, 03:20
Newsweek's cover is written in Arabic, with this parenthetical translation:
'Radical Islam Is a Fact of Life. How To Live with It.'
Who wants to live with it? Who wants to submit? Who will refuse to convert?
Radical islam is a misnomer. There are moderate muslims...there's no such thing as moderate islam.
I remain committed to educating the American public about what we can do to maintain our great heritage.
It's a challenge to educate the naive fools with the "coexist" bumper stickers fail to understand ...
"Radical islam is a misnomer. There are moderate muslims...there's no such thing as moderate islam."
Thank you for that. Perfectly and succinctly put.
AngelsSix
03-02-2009, 16:14
Bronze Bruce--whose left boot is atop a rock under which a snake is pinned--symbolically represents my world view on this issue. Period.
Richard's $.02
Well said, sir, I agree!!:lifter
Warrior-Mentor
03-07-2009, 09:37
March 6, 2009
Recognizing the Reality of Radical Islam
Frank Salvato
Newsweek recently ran an article by Fareed Zakaria titled, Learning To Live with Radical Islam. In this article Mr. Zakaria contends that in our quest to prevail over the virulent factions within the fundamentalist Islamic culture we in the West must learn to discern the radical Islamist from the jihadi; the fundamentalist from the terrorist.
Although Mr. Zakaria touches on a few noteworthy points – specifically the West's need to engage in the war of ideas – his thesis that, “We can better pursue our values if we recognize the local and cultural context, and appreciate that people want to find their own balance between freedom and order, liberty and license,” ignores the fact that jihadis rule by force and that their “cultural context” and “license” is no less than totalitarian.
That the United States and the Western nations engaged in the violent struggle against radical Islamist aggression were delinquent in engaging in the war of ideas goes without saying. In reaction to the act of war perpetrated on the United States on September 11, 2001, our government reacted to secure the nation, to strike at the heart of the governments and terrorist organizations that executed the slaughter of 3,066 innocents at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Shanksville, PA. This response was immediate for the simple fact that it was within our government's purview; it was something that could be executed with an order.
Additionally, it was easy for the West to engage violent jihadist organizations and the countries that abetted them both economically and diplomatically through the use of sanctions and diplomacy. In the weeks and months after September 11th, there was a great outpouring of cooperation from countries sympathetic to our plight and position. Through this cooperation was forged Operation Enduring Freedom in which fifty-one (51) countries contributed to the liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban, the totalitarian figurehead government that provided safe haven to al Qaeda. This cooperation also gave birth to economic sanctions against terrorist organizations and the individuals and state sponsors that aided them. Financial institutions around the world froze bank accounts that provided the financial fuel for the violent jihad.
But the United States and the West were delinquent in understanding the war of ideas, the ideology behind aggressive Islamofascism. Almost immediately after the attacks of September 11th, President Bush took to the airwaves and decried that Islam was a “religion of peace.” Many understood this action to have emanated from a two-fold need:
▪ The need to circumvent any reactionary or vigilante aggression against the Islamic community here in the United States
▪ The need to keep from alienating Middle Eastern allies the West would certainly need to partner with in the upcoming battles to be waged
The repercussions of this declaration were many, with many of them being detrimental to the mission of defeating radical Islamist aggression here on the home front.
An honest examination and understanding of the Quran and the Hadith (understand that both must be read in context to one another to accurately understand the teachings of Muhammad) present some extremely disturbing revelations where violence, anti-Semitism and global conquest are concerned. These revelations, documented in a plethora of scholarly writing, lay waste to the notion that Islam, traditionally, is a religion of peace. Accurately depicted, fundamentalist Islam – exampled by Wahhabism, the prevalent form of Islam in Saudi Arabia – is an aggressive ideology that subjugates women, oppresses societal interaction, institutes the death sentence for apostasy and which has, over the centuries, been spread by the sword.
This declaration led to the widespread dissemination of propaganda at the hands of the American Fifth Column, who took the opportunity to exploit the naiveté of the American people. In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks so-called civil rights groups in the West launched a full-scale re-education campaign that completely disavowed the violent history of Islam.
Organizations such as CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, were courted to provide “sensitivity training” to government agencies and law enforcement. CAIR has since suffered the exposure of truth in its designation as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial regarding the funding of the terror group Hamas. Its leadership has also been the target of myriad terror related prosecutions. And recently, the FBI cut off contacts with the CAIR “amid mounting concern about the Muslim advocacy group's roots in a Hamas-support network.”
This declaration also led to a rash of instances where school children in the United States and the West were subjected to curriculum designed to portray Islam as a “religion of peace.” In at least one instance, a California school had grade school children take on the task of being “Muslim for a day,” transgressing their own contrived institution of separation of church and State.
To say that the attacks perpetrated by fundamentalist Islamists – and by definition the nineteen (19) hijackers of September 11th, 2001, were fundamentalist Islamists – produced a contrecoup effect where the factual understanding of Islam is concerned would be an accurate assessment. This artificial understanding of Islam by the West, especially here in the United States, has been facilitated by an unengaged, apathetic and perhaps sympathetic Islamic community.
That Mr. Zakaria expresses his desire for the West to discern between the fundamentalists that literally call for our conquest and those who violently act upon that call is akin to asking a bleeding man stranded in the ocean to discern between the aggressiveness of a great white shark and a tiger shark; while one is more aggressive they will both eat you.
But perhaps the biggest flaw with Mr. Zakaria's contention stems from his lack of understanding of the philosophy that exists as the cornerstone of Western culture as well as the US Constitution: Natural Law.
From the philosophy of Natural Law was derived the following:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...”
This defining tenet of Americanism is not unique to the American citizenry. It does not recognize geological borders. It applies to every man, woman and child who exists on the face of the earth. It has been the catalyst for war and charity. It has deposed dictators, tyrants and despots.. It has jailed the corrupt and freed the virtuous. It stands as the promise of hope; as the shining beacon of liberty that cuts through the darkness of totalitarianism. It stands steadfast in the face of atrocity seeking out avenues through which the innocent can be rescued and the tyrannical would be vanquished.
True Americans embrace this honor, this commitment to humanity, this responsibility. They have sacrificed blood and treasure and in many cases made the ultimate sacrifice to provide “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” to the oppressed, all in the quest for a more humane and equitable world.
That Mr. Zakaria would have us discern between two vicious ideological factions within the fundamentalist Islamic community, only to cavort with the lesser of two evils, flies in the face of Americanism's adherence to Natural Law. It cannot be, especially within the context of confronting the totalitarianism of fundamentalist Islam, that the end justifies the means.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Frank Salvato is the managing editor for The New Media Journal. He serves at the Executive Director of the Basics Project, a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(C)(3) research and education initiative. Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.