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From Islamabad To Bradford (The New Spirit Of Appeasement Grips The West Alert)
National Review ^ | 12/21/2009 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 02/21/2009 6:05:54 AM PST by goldstategop

It is hard to understand this deal,” said Richard Holbrooke, President Obama’s special envoy. And, if the special envoy of the so-called smartest and most impressive administration in living memory can’t understand it, what chance do the rest of us have?

Nevertheless, let’s try. In the Swat Valley, where a young Winston Churchill once served with the Malakand Field Force battling Muslim insurgents, his successors have concluded the game isn’t worth the candle. In return for a temporary ceasefire, the Pakistani government agreed to let the local franchise of the Taliban impose its industrial strength version of sharia across the whole of Malakand Region. If “region” sounds a bit of an imprecise term, Malakand has over five million people, all of whom are now living under a murderous theocracy. Still, peace rallies have broken out all over the Swat Valley, and, at a Swat peace rally, it helps to stand well back: As one headline put it, “Journalist Killed While Covering Peace Rally.”

But don’t worry about Pakistani nukes falling into the hands of “extremists”: The Swat Valley is a good hundred miles from the “nation”’s capital, Islamabad — or about as far as Northern Vermont is from Southern Vermont. And, of course, Islamabad is safely under the control of the famously moderate Ali Zardari. A few days before the Swat deal, Mr. Zardari marked the dawn of the Obama era by releasing from house arrest A. Q. Khan, the celebrated scientist and one-stop shop for all your Islamic nuclear needs, for whose generosity North Korea and Iran are especially grateful.From Islamabad, let us zip a world away to London. Actually, it’s nearer than you think. The flight routes between Pakistan and the United Kingdom are some of the busiest in the world. Can you get a direct flight from your local airport to, say, Bradford?

Where?

Bradford, Yorkshire. There are four flights a week from Islamabad to Bradford, a town where 75 percent of Pakistani Britons are married to their first cousins. But don’t worry, in the country as a whole, only 57 percent of Pakistani Britons are married to first cousins.

Among that growing population of Yorkshire Pakistanis is a fellow called Lord Ahmed, a Muslim member of Parliament. He was in the news the other day for threatening (as the columnist Melanie Phillips put it) “to bring a force of 10,000 Muslims to lay siege to the House of Lords” if it went ahead with an event at which the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders would have introduced a screening of his controversial film Fitna. Britain’s Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, reacted to this by declaring Minheer Wilders persona non grata and having him arrested at Heathrow and returned to the Netherlands.

The Home Secretary is best known for an inspired change of terminology: Last year she announced that henceforth Muslim terrorism (an unhelpful phrase) would be reclassified as “anti-Islamic activity.” Seriously. The logic being that Muslims blowing stuff up tends not to do much for Islam’s reputation — i.e., it’s an “anti-Islamic activity” in the same sense that Pearl Harbor was an anti-Japanese activity.

Anyway, Geert Wilders’s short film is basically a compilation video of footage from various recent Muslim terrorist atrocities — whoops, sorry, “anti-Islamic activities” — accompanied by the relevant chapter and verse from the Koran. Jacqui Smith banned the filmmaker on “public order” grounds — in other words, the government’s fear that Lord Ahmed meant what he said about a 10,000-strong mob besieging the Palace of Westminster. You might conceivably get the impression from Wilders’s movie that many Muslims are irrational and violent types it’s best to steer well clear of. But, if you didn’t, Jacqui Smith pretty much confirmed it: We can’t have chaps walking around saying Muslims are violent because they’ll go bananas and smash the place up.

So, confronted by blackmail, the British government caved. So did the Pakistani government in Swat. But, in fairness to Islamabad, they waited until the shooting was well underway before throwing in the towel. In London, you no longer have to go that far. You just give the impression your more excitable chums might not be able to restrain themselves. “Nice little G7 advanced western democracy you got here. Shame if anything were to happen to it.” Twenty years ago this month, Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative ministry defended the right of a left-wing author Salman Rushdie to publish a book in the face of Muslim riots and the Ayatollah Khomeini’s attempted mob hit. Two decades on, a supposedly progressive government surrenders to the mob before it’s even taken to the streets.

In his first TV interview as President, Barack Obama told viewers of al-Arabiya TV that he wanted to restore the “same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago.” I’m not sure quite what golden age he’s looking back to there — the Beirut barracks slaughter? the embassy hostages? — but the point is, it’s very hard to turn back the clock. Because the facts on the ground change, and change remorselessly. Even in 30 years. Between 1970 and 2000, the developed world declined from just under 30 percent of the global population to just over 20 percent, while the Muslim world increased from 15 percent to 20 percent. And in 2030, it won’t even be possible to re-take that survey, because by that point half the “developed world“ will itself be Muslim: In Bradford — as in London, Amsterdam, Brussels, and almost every other western European city from Malmo to Marseilles — the principal population growth comes from Islam. Thirty years ago, in the Obama golden age, a British documentary-maker was so horrified by the “honor killing” of a teenage member of the House of Saud at the behest of her father, the king’s brother, that he made a famous TV film about it, . The furious Saudis threatened a trade boycott with Britain over this unwanted exposure. Today, we have honor killings not just in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, but in Germany, Scandinavia, Britain, Toronto, Dallas, and Buffalo. And they barely raise an eyebrow.

Along with the demographic growth has come radicalization: It’s not just that there are more Muslims, but that, within that growing population, moderate Islam is on the decline — in Singapore, in the Balkans, in northern England — and radicalized, Arabized, Wahhabized Islam is on the rise. So we have degrees of accommodation: surrender in Islamabad, appeasement in London, acceptance in Toronto and Buffalo.

According to ABC News, a team of UCLA professors have used biogeographic theories to locate Osama bin Laden’s hideout as one of three possible houses in the small town of Parachinar, and have suggested to the Pentagon they keep an eye on these buildings. But the problem isn’t confined to three buildings. It ripples ever outwards, to the new hardcore sharia state in Malakand, up the road to nuclear Islamabad, over to Bradford on that jet-speed conveyor-belt of child brides, down to the House of Lords and beyond.

Meanwhile, President Obama has removed Winston Churchill’s bust from the Oval Office and returned it to the British. Given what Sir Winston had to say about Islam in his book on the Sudanese campaign, the bust will almost certainly be arrested at Heathrow and deported as a threat to public order.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; Philosophy; United Kingdom; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: appeasement; bho44; bhogwot; fitna; geertwilders; honorkillings; islam; jacquismith; londonistan; lordahmed; marksteyn; melaniephillips; nationalreview; obama; pakistan; steyn; taliban; uk; winstonchurchill
We live in a time when the West is gripped by a new spirit of appeasement. From living with a Taliban theocracy in the Pakistani hinterlands, the defining bookends of this new era is the British surrender to the howling Islamist mobs in London by deporting Geert Wilders for warning about the danger from Islam in his film Fitna and in President Obama's return of a bust of Winston Churchill back to the UK. In our time, no one wants to be bothered to fight for the truth and freedom. Its just better to die by slow degrees of a sort. And if that is the way it is going to go out, its in small incidents like this that will one day reveal it having finally expired. I'm not sure whether the smarter than thou liberals really grasp what is at stake now.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

1 posted on 02/21/2009 6:05:55 AM PST by goldstategop
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To: goldstategop

Hope and Change.


2 posted on 02/21/2009 6:12:05 AM PST by livius
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To: goldstategop
Photobucket

“THERE SHALL BE PEACE IN OUR TIME. OR IS IT TIME TO SMASH AMERICA TO PIECES? I get sooo confused any more…”


3 posted on 02/21/2009 6:20:00 AM PST by Dick Bachert
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To: Dick Bachert

the sad thing is that my family emigrated from bradford, dewsbury and batley. i always wanted to go back until i found it it’s over run by pakis no thanks mum


4 posted on 02/21/2009 6:32:07 AM PST by She hits a grand slam tonight
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To: She hits a grand slam tonight; goldstategop; Dick Bachert
Between 1970 and 2000, the developed world declined from just under 30 percent of the global population to just over 20 percent, while the Muslim world increased from 15 percent to 20 percent. And in 2030, it won’t even be possible to re-take that survey, because by that point half the “developed world“ will itself be Muslim (emphasis supplied).

If it were not so frightening it would be a curiosity to observe that the Western world has pretty much decided to ignore the threat of fanatical, fundamentalist Islam to death. Marc Styne identifies a demographic waypoint, 2030, but the tipping point obviously will occur well before 2030. That means that as early as 2015 or 2020 the moral energy of the democratic world to resist sharia will have been exhausted.

But you say, the United States does not have this demographic problem and will be able to resist the tsunami of Islam and, after all, America is still world' s superpower with weapons equal to its presumed determination to keep America the shining city on the Hill.

What will America look like after eight years of Obama, that is, assuming that we can expect him to retire from the scene after his constitutional terms are exhausted?

The initial understandable reaction to that question is to take into account Obamas record of appeasement in his first 30 days in office. Implicit in that reaction is the assumption that Obama is a typical Leftist motivated by a genetic disposition toward appeasement. Under this understanding, Obama can be expected to engage in appeasement as rank as that seen in Europe leading to surrender differing only in that it will occur a decade or so behind the Euroweenie's pusillanimity. This assumption might not be valid. Obama' s DNA might be very different.

Those of us who entertain a darker assessment of Obama believe that he is not truly an appeaser, and he is truly a Manchurian Marxist who welcomes chaos as a means, Saul Alinsky style, to invest his world with Marxism. We are conditioned since Neville Chamberlain and the shameful Democratic administrations in our own country during the Cold War to see liberalism as afflicted with incurable appeasement. What might be true for a liberal might not be true for a radical, for a Saul Alinsky marxist. Obama might not need chaos, having already achieved his ends.

Radical leftists throughout history have shown themselves to be not at all squeamish about inflicting casualties so long as it is calculated to advance their own power. Thus, Stalin would mercilessly push his troops into suicide attacks, Mao Tse Tung deliberately sacrificed hundreds of thousands of his soldiers to improve his position in the Communist Party, and sacrificed perhaps a million in the Korean War to draw the West into killing fields. So there is no doubt that a committed communist will not shrink from making war or even in sustaining mind numbing casualties of his own people in the advancement of his ideology.

The implications of this article are stark. On the one hand we have an inexorable demographic march of Mohammedens determined to impose a faschistic sharia upon democratic man. On the other hand we have the potential of our last best hope for that democratic man to be subverted by a Manchurian Marxist well before Islam is in a position ultimately to confront us.

If this scenario should play out, war is absolutely inevitable and it would be to the death. I have been preoccupied by some time now that the election of Barak Obama has actually elevated probabilities that we will be engaged in serious war rather than, as the slaphappy Euro weenies and leftists in America assume, Obama, as opposed to Bush who was rushing toward Armageddon, will somehow lead the world in singing kumbaya.


5 posted on 02/21/2009 7:06:50 AM PST by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: goldstategop

btt


6 posted on 02/21/2009 9:03:58 AM PST by Cacique (quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat ( Islamia Delenda Est ))
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To: goldstategop

OUTSTANDING Steyn!

WINSTON CHURCHILL ON ISLAM - SPEECH IN 1899!

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!
Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as
hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The
effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly
systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity
of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement;
the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law
every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property either
as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of
slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among
men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of
the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being
moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has
already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at
every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the
strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly
struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the
civilization of ancient Rome.”

Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition,
Vol. II, pages 248-50


7 posted on 02/21/2009 6:41:23 PM PST by PGalt
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To: goldstategop

No idols allowed in Islam. After all Allah knows best, eh?

With regard to the excuse that these statues are part of the legacy of mankind, no attention should be paid to such words. Al-Laat, al-‘Uzaa, Hubal, Manaat and other idols were also a legacy for those who worshipped them among Quraysh and the Arabs.

This is a legacy, but it is a haraam legacy which should be uprooted. When the command comes from Allaah and His Messenger, then the believer must hasten to obey, and the command of Allaah and His Messenger cannot be rejected on the grounds of this flimsy excuse. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

More...here...

http://www.islam-qa.com/en/ref/20894


8 posted on 02/21/2009 6:42:12 PM PST by PGalt
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To: goldstategop
...Lord Ahmed, a Muslim member of Parliament. He was in the news the other day for threatening (as the columnist Melanie Phillips put it) “to bring a force of 10,000 Muslims to lay siege to the House of Lords” if it went ahead with an event at which the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders would have introduced a screening of his controversial film Fitna. Britain’s Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, reacted to this by declaring Minheer Wilders persona non grata and having him arrested at Heathrow and returned to the Netherlands.

The UK is now an islamic nation in all but name only.

9 posted on 02/25/2009 1:42:55 AM PST by Rummyfan (Iraq: it's not about Iraq anymore, it's about the USA!)
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To: nathanbedford
If this scenario should play out, war is absolutely inevitable and it would be to the death.

On gloomier days, I think it's inevitable and it will be a bloodbath on such a scale that WW II will look like a skirmish.

10 posted on 02/25/2009 1:48:52 AM PST by Rummyfan (Iraq: it's not about Iraq anymore, it's about the USA!)
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To: Rummyfan
When will Rummy's book come out?


11 posted on 02/25/2009 2:20:31 AM PST by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat attack!" Bull Halsey)
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