Posted on 04/26/2005 7:55:09 AM PDT by jan in Colorado
What steps should Western border agencies take to defend their homelands from harm by Islamists?
In the case of non-citizens, the answer is simple: Don't let Islamists in. Exclude not just potential terrorists but also anyone who supports the totalitarian goals of radical Islam. Just as civilized countries did not welcome fascists in the early 1940s (or communists a decade later), they need not welcome Islamists today.
But what about one's own citizens who cross the border? They could be leaving to fight for the Taliban or returning from a course on terrorism techniques. Or perhaps they studied with enemies of the West who incited them to sabotage or sedition. Clearly, the authorities should take steps to find out more about their activities, especially given the dangerous jihadi culture already in place in many Western countries, including Canada.
This question arose in late December 2004, after a three-day Islamist conference, "Reviving the Islamic Spirit," took place in Toronto. The event, boasting a host of high-profile Islamist speakers such as Bilal Philips, Zaid Shakir, Siraj Wahhaj, and Hamza Yusuf, alarmed the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), America's new border agency..
Excerpt... Read more at http://www.JewishWorldReview.com
(Excerpt) Read more at JewishWorldReview.com ...
Amen. This should be shouted from the rooftops constantly. I'm not a bit afraid to be totally and vociferously politically incorrect, when I say that we should terminate any further immigration into this country of any more Muslims from anywhere! Some who are already here should also be "encouraged" to leave.
Talk about who is offending whom. I was offended when I heard Colin Powell's speech in Louisville, KY in Jan or Feb of 2003, when he made references to ".....our Muslim brothers and sisters...." Sorry, Colin, but I can tell you here and now, that I have no affinity whatsoever, as an American, with any so-called "American Muslims." They are NOT my "brothers and sisters." I can do very well without them.
They are not here, as you rightly point out from their own official declarations, to assimilate, but to take over, little by little. What they are after is "The Islamic States of America." I don't see how every thinking American can't see that. It's as plain as day, and it is very frightening.
I did not need to "anoint" CAIR...they have virtually anointed themselves - as have the media and the (gagging noises) ACLU, as well as no small number of our elected political leaders who would treat with them if they themselves had the authority. The mass media seems to pay attention to CAIR's every whimsy - responding oh-so readily at the slightest squeal about unfavorable Muslim portrayals in movies, television programming, news magazine exposes, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
They have become the de facto spokespeople/organisation for American Islamists, and the frequent public face of Islamic P.R. in America. To date, NOT ONE major Islamic organisation of any recognisable authority has repudiated CAIR, nor contested their right to that role, nor the statements made in filling that role. Hell - not even any minor Islamic organisation of any note has had the temerity to confront them in a broad public forum! In fact precious few individual Muslim leaders within the US have commented at all - let alone passed any sort of judgment. There seems to be a collusionary silence in which they will speak no ill of any fellow Islamist - regardless of the bad acts or their consequences.
The ACLU backs them up carte blanche in everything they do and say, offering not the slightest criticism of their medium nor their message. Unfortunately as avowedly anti-American as they are, that is no surprise at all.
Even if CAIR were not the primary de facto mouthpiece, that does not undo the countless other incidences across the US of known Islamists who either openly badmouth the US, conspire against this country while living here and enjoying all the benefits our social care system has to offer (scrupulously avoiding assimilating into our culture as opposed to what all other major immigrant groups have willingly done in the past), or earn money expressly for sending to, or otherwise supporting organisations outside the US that they know are terrorist groups or groups who desire to take over the US and create an Islamic Republic governed by Sharia law. Then there are those who have traveled outside the US to join with Islamist militia groups in order to fight against and hopefully kill, US troops.
Sorry but setting ME up as the straw man who has asserted CAIR's role speaking for Islamists in America doesn't work.
Especially not when the leadership and teachers of over 75% of the mosques in America are MEMBERS OF CAIR THEMSELVES. Who's kidding who?
As to the issue about Constitutionality...this nation was founded by men who were primarily Christians of one denomination or another, and one of the primary authors - Thomas Jefferson - is often mistakenly misidentified by revisionist historians as a more neutral "Deist". Jefferson himself was a non-denominational Christian, who knew and believed in exactly who Jesus Christ was and is, and T.J. said so repeatedly in private correspondence, once inscribing a flyleaf of a bible to a friend with a very specifically Christian greeting.
Moreover, above 97% of all the colonists were devoutly practising believers late into the 1700's. The Constitution and the Declaration as documents were based upon principles which were presumptively of a Christian Orthodox nature (with understanding of and respect for Judaic traditions) This is all to say that our nation was founded with protections in place for the free practice of the Christian religion, (with protections for the Jews, since it was believed they served the very same G_d), not the Islamic practice. One of the founders went so far as to assert that the Constitution was intended to govern only such as a G_dly people and that it was wholly unsuited for the governance of any other.
Based upon the long history of behavior of Islamists, I exclude them from such a grouping, and concur with that knowledgeable founder.
The founders had to be quite familiar with muhammadism - its violent history was no more distant from them in their failiarity with European history than is the American Revolutionary war from us in our present context. They knew that Vienna had almost fallen to the marauders from the South...In fact, let's digress for a brief survey lesson in the history of muhammadism that our founders had to have been well aware of, while noting that they made no mention of it in our founding documents...
Islam was...
Founded by a camel driver in the Arabian desert after he married the woman who hired him. She was 15 years his senior. After marriage he gave up his work and studied religion. In 622AD he had to flee from Mecca to the city of Yathrib in the Arabian Peninsula because of his teachings, of which he had denounced all other forms of religion. This is known as the official year of the founding of Islam. In Islam their calendar year begins here with 0 (zero)AH.
He became magistrate of the city and renamed it Medina, meaning "City of the Prophet". He acquired 12 wives while there, some as young as 9 years old. He took in many followers and combined the religion into the politics. When the Jews rejected his calls to convert, he turned against the Jews in Medina and elsewhere.
He plundered and looted all caravans passing anywhere within his reach. With this loot, he and his followers built a large treasury for the city, which was used to increase his army of followers. Of which he was able to ever-increasingly gain more and more territory. Eventually leading to war with the city of Mecca, which he defeated, and then he easily took the rest of the Arabian Peninsula. He was in constant warfare from the time he became magistrate of Yathrib(Medina), in 622AD, until his death in 632AD. In that time period of 12 years, Mohammed had conquered the whole of the Arabian Peninsula.
In the next 12 years, under the next two caliph's or leaders of Islam, the religion would go on to take Jerusalem, Syria, Egypt, Persia, and Mesopotamia! ALL BY FORCE AND WARFARE! Let's see that's 24 years of Islam and 24 years of warfare! This would put the year at 644AD or 24AH.
The next two caliph's continued the same ways as their predecessors. They took the areas/regions of North Africa, parts of India, and Spain. The caliph's line continues, and the wars continue unabated. If it had not been for Charles Martel's victory in 732AD at the Battle of Tours; France, Germany and the rest of Europe would have surely fallen. So we have 110 years of Islam and we have 110 years of Islamic warfare against the rest of the world. We have all the lands from Turkey to India, to North Africa to Spain, all in the hands of Islam! Oh, don't the Arabian Peninsula, Mid-east and Persia! But finally Islam has been slowed down, but only temporarily.
Now instead of large areas conquered in the name of Islam, it is smaller areas. Still Islam's drive for land and conquering people does not stop. By mid 1050AD, a period of 318 years, Islam has gained more ground, driving north towards Russia, northeast towards the Caspian Sea and Kazakhstan, Central Asia, and northeast towards the Balkans and Greece. Constantinople, a main center of Catholicism was being threatened.
Something must be done to stop Islam again, or else Constantinople itself would fall, and then Greece! Roman Popish armies fought off Islam armies alone until 1096AD, with armies of up to 50,000 men each, battling one Muslim front. Pope Urban II in 1096AD, because of deteriorating conditions, and the threat to Constantinople, called upon all of Christendom to contribute armies, men and material to once and for all drive the Muslims back out of Asia Minor, and maybe back, just past Palestine.
This was the first call of the "Crusades". A series of wars that would last almost another 450 years, with only small lapses in time between major wars, between another Holy Jihad and another Crusade! It would be correct to state for all practical purposes, that the war was constant until approximately 1550AD!
It should be noted, this includes Suleiman's infamous siege of Vienna in 1529, wherein he amassed an army reminiscent of the Mongol invasions three centuries before, with hundreds of thousands of troops and deadly janissaries supported by conscripted Balkan infantrymen, as well as thousands of war camels, horse-mounted cavalry, and the most advanced firearms munitions of the time. The spring and summer rains of that year were unexpectedly intense and provided the Austrians with a desperately-needed respite and some time to prepare and reinforce the Viennese defenses. Many of the walled city’s leaders had fled in apprehension, and the defense of Vienna—and, to a substantial extent, of Europe in general—lay in the hands of a resourceful old German mercenary named Nicholas Salm (Nicholas, Graf von Salm), who had been hastily appointed to supervise the response to Suleiman’s looming threat. Perhaps never before or since has a hired gun been so pivotally instrumental in the course of events, for had Salm failed (and there were many places where he could have), the history of at least southern and central Europe would have been radically altered. Austria, the southern German principalities, and the Low Countries may well have fallen under Ottoman hegemony, and the Papal States themselves would have been rendered vulnerable to attack.
The siege of Vienna is historically remarkable not only for its high stakes, but also for the historically unprecedented settings of the major clashes. Suleiman commenced a cannonade against the city walls, but this bombardment was in fact a clever diversion for Suleiman’s shrewd plan to undermine Viennese defenses: surreptitiously constructing a network of tunnels to enable the placement and detonation of gunpowder keg mines beneath the Viennese gates and the bastion towers surrounding them. The result of this was the world’s first and perhaps only recorded instance of a pitched underground battle.
Most mines were detected and defused, but the Ottomans were eventually able to breach a crucial Viennese gate with a well-placed mine and topple the defensive tower in its vicinity, charging the urban center with cavalry and the lethal janissary vanguard. Von Salm, however, had prepared well for this eventuality, and his well-trained German/Spanish/Italian defensive garrison cut down the Ottoman attackers with deadly pike thrusts and grapeshot, forcing them back.
Even that was not the final instance of Islamist aggression against Europe.
(In fact, in 1683, yet another Ottoman invasion force under Kara Mustafa laid siege to Vienna much like Suleiman 150 years prior. But this time, a combined force of German, Austrian, and Polish soldiers, ably led by the cunning Polish king and cavalry commander John Sobieski, established a pincers on the Ottoman invasion force from three sides, occasioning a devastating defeat that would permanently halt Ottoman attempts to conquer central Europe. The Turks then turned their interests elsewhere, to central Asia and southern Russia, and central and western Europe were finally free of the onus of defending against Europe’s nemeses from Constantinople.)
This was only 87 years prior to our American D.O.I.! Do you think our Founders were unaware? 87 years ago for us was 1918 - around the time of WW I.
Okay,just for the sake of argument let's use only the 1550 end date for the Crusades: fast forward 226 years to 1776 when our declaration of independence from Great Britain came about.
We are right now the very same 226 years of historical distance from them in 2002, as they were from the end of 450 years of Crusades fighting Islamist aggression in Europe.
Do you think they failed to recall the lessons of history, just because it was between 87 and 226 years removed? I sincerely doubt it.
Also, the Constitution was most certainly NOT designed to protect minorities' rights as you wrongly assert. That is a modern fable spun by some factions of the P.C. left wing - of which such statements make it appear you are a willing part. The Constitution was intended to protect the rights of all - to particularly insure the rights of landowners be respected, and to keep any government from acting outside the bounds of moral behavior, from acting to oppress it's people. Majority rule was the intention, with some sense of security for the "little guy". Islam in this case is no "little guy" needing our protection - they are over a billion strong in number worldwide, and pose a larger threat than at any time in their bloody, violent and domineering history.
If we afford them the chance to use it against us, our Constitution - even our country, will cease to exist, and our Declaration of Independence will pass into memory.
They are right now in our country, figuratively digging the soil from underneath us after the fashion of Suleiman, and they are laying their groundwork of deception and normal appearances on the surface to later explode our doom and destruction upon us. It is how they wage war. This is what they have done - all they have done since muhammad's magistracy in 622 AD. Theirs is a 1,381 year long history of violently aggressive proselytization, murder, rape, butchery, and land seizure.
I'm NOT suggesting emptying every mosque into a cattle car bound for a WWII style Japanese internment camp, NOR opening fire on random Muslims walking American streets, but I AM strenuously endorsing maintenance of a higher level of vigilance than has yet been effected in the US!
That includes, by necessity, being somewhat discriminatory in surveying the Islamists among us. The actions of their compatriots, and their own deafening silence in the wake of too many bad acts has earned them the right to expect no less.
I do not deal in conjecture, hyperbole, emotionalism, and wishful thinking - I deal in historical facts, including discernibly repeated patterns of behavior which offer object lessons. Don't presume to make me responsible for the Islamist's choice of spokespersons, and don't you dare presume to lecture me about the U.S. Constitution. I have forgotten more about it than you have apparently yet learned!
A.A.C.
Full P.R.O.P. list ping!
Thought for the day:
Fighting for our freedom begins at home. Our troops abroad know their mission and believe in it. Support the troops; support their mission!
Don't support the mission? Then don't claim to support the troops, because you're nothing but a two-faced liar.
"I wouldn't use muslims in the military as a talking point. Not with the islamic slime who fragged his officers so recently making the news with his conviction. "
... and the list of the religion or ethnicity of the slime that fragged their fellows in 'Nam is where ?
"And it's about time Jews stopped tolerating people who would gladly see them dead."
Yaeh, Don't you just hate those Jews who won't learn to hate a person because of their religion... when will they learn to be more like the fanatic Islamists ?
"I did not need to "anoint" CAIR...they have virtually anointed themselves - as have the media and the (gagging noises) ACLU,...."
Oh, OK, so this was not an original thought - it's the media and the ACLU who make you think that .... Ya'know, I think there is a 12 step program that can help you learn to think for yourself ....
Terrorism: Growing Wahhabe Influence in the US: (snip)
"At the present time, Shia and other non-Wahhabi Muslim community leaders estimate that 80 percent of American mosques are under Wahhabi control. This does not mean 80 percent of American Muslims support Wahhabism, although the main Wahhabi ideological agency in America, the so-called Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has claimed that some 70 percent of American Muslims want Wahhabi teaching in their mosques.1This is a claim we consider unfounded.
Rather, Wahhabi control over mosques means control of property, buildings, appointment of imams, training of imams, content of preaching — including faxing of Friday sermons from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — and of literature distributed in mosques and mosque bookstores, notices on bulletin boards, and organizational solicitation. Similar influence extends to prison and military chaplaincies, Islamic elementary and secondary schools (academies), college campus activity, endowment of academic chairs and programs in Middle East studies, and most notoriously, charities ostensibly helping Muslims abroad, many of which have been linked to or designated as sponsors of terrorism.
The main organizations that have carried out this campaign are the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which originated in the Muslim Students' Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA), and CAIR. Support activities have been provided by the American Muslim Council (AMC), the American Muslim Alliance (AMA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, its sister body the International Institute of Islamic Thought, and a number of related groups that I have called "the Wahhabi lobby." ISNA operates at least 324 mosques in the U.S. through the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). These groups operate as an interlocking directorate.
Both ISNA and CAIR, in particular, maintain open and close relations with the Saudi government — a unique situation, in that no other foreign government directly uses religion as a cover for its political activities in the U.S. For example, notwithstanding support by the American Jewish community for the state of Israel, the government of Israel does not intervene in synagogue life or the activities of rabbinical or related religious bodies in America.
According to saudiembassy.net, the official website of the Saudi government, CAIR received $250,000 from the Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank, an official Saudi financial institution, in 1999, for the purchase of land in Washington, D.C., to construct a headquarters facility.2
In a particularly disturbing case, the Islamic Development Bank also granted US$295,000 to the Masjid Bilal Islamic Center, for the construction of the Bilal Islamic Primary and Secondary School in California, in 1999.3 Hassan Akbar, an American Muslim presently charged with a fatal attack on his fellow soldiers in Kuwait during the Iraq intervention, was affiliated with this institution.
http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8715
>... and the list of the religion or ethnicity of the slime that fragged their fellows in 'Nam is where ?<
And the relevance of dragging the old liberal standard canard of anything to do with Viet Nam into this is what?
Hasan Akbar's motives for the brutal hand grenade murders were demonstrably intertwined with his Muslim faith and conflicted feelings about possibly fighting other Muslims on the field of battle, feelings he allowed to control and overpower his reason and better judgment. At least according to his own statements...
>"And it's about time Jews stopped tolerating people who would gladly see them dead."
Yeah, Don't you just hate those Jews who won't learn to hate a person because of their religion... when will they learn to be more like the fanatic Islamists ?<
This is not an unexpected knee-jerk response from one of the few people I've come into contact with who apparently has a "snooze" button for his brain. Where in any forensic debate class were you ever taught that you win a discussion or an argument if you take someone else's words and twist them to effect a slanted meaning which suits your own purposes?
Moreover, where is it written that we as Americans (or the Israeli Jews for that matter) have to suffer tolerance of anyone their unfettered religious practices - if those practices have as their eventual goal the murder of our people, the abridging of our freedoms, or the destruction of our way of life?
The difference between Jews, Americans and militant Islamists? They hate all Jews unreservedly, and any Americans who support Israel or Jews in general. Concurrent with that hatred, they want to murder, destroy, and take over. We, on the other hand, do not necessarily hate them all, so much as we abhor the threat of death and violence which seems to inexorably follow in their wake. Concurrent with the identification of that threat, we are willing to kill all of them who pose such a threat.
Stated differently, in the words of a famous Israeli: "We may someday forgive you for killing our sons, but we will never forgive you for making us have to kill yours!"
You seem to be tone deaf (about the meaning of people's words), and "motive blind" (as to what it is that moves them). Frankly, I would not trust your judgment in a foxhole to have anybody's back.
A.A.C.
"And the relevance of dragging the old liberal standard canard of anything to do with Viet Nam into this is what? "
I'm sorry, you seem to have made a point of using the religion of that piece of slime to somehow degrade the service of the over 4,000 Muslims serving in our military, so perhaps the religion of other pieces of slime should be used to degrade other soldiers of their faith also.
You might be interesting in this Fatwa issued regarding these soldiers -
http://www.omarmasry.net/american_muslim_soldiers.htm
"Where in any forensic debate class were you ever taught...."
ZZZ Huh, did you say something ?
Let's see what you say that might merit a response...nope....nope...nope...
Aha !
" Concurrent with the identification of that threat, we are willing to kill all of them who pose such a threat."
Please elaborate - and to keep somewhat on topic, could you specifically address America Citizens who are Islamic ?
I presume it's Adams you are misquoting. Why not throw in a spurious Madison quote while you're at it?
Jefferson himself was a non-denominational Christian
Perhaps. And he was WELL aware of Islam (or do you think he just missed that part of his studies, and didn't really know where the Barbary Pirate captives went?)
OH, but wait...you're the one suggesting that they were well aware of it! Yet, funny thing, Jefferson and the other Founders didn't suggest banning Islam in America.
In fact, one of his three proudest creations, by his own account, was The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom. Therein, he wrote: "...truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them."
Quite clearly, Jefferson--and those who passed this--felt that FREEDOM was right, and they had more faith than you that truth would prevail. And heck, you made it quite clear they were not unaware of Islam's potential threat.
Too bad so many FReepers are anti-American these days and want to silence dissenters, ban those they can't shout down, exile those who believe differently, etc.
Also, the Constitution was most certainly NOT designed to protect minorities' rights as you wrongly assert. That is a modern fable spun by some factions of the P.C. left wing - of which such statements make it appear you are a willing part.
Oh, that pesky second person pronoun... singular or plural "you"?? Tough to tell, considering you pinged a bunch of people here or not here. I suppose I'll answer as if you wrote to me.
And ask you to learn to read...try starting with Federalist X, for example. It's quite clear that the Constitution was created to prevent a mobocracy. Majority rights are also protected by it, but that would have been the case in a pure democracy anyway. And it protects against takeover by the majority or a minority.
I do not deal in conjecture, hyperbole, emotionalism, and wishful thinking - I deal in historical facts, including discernibly repeated patterns of behavior which offer object lessons.
Misquotes and logical fallacies seem to be in your playbook, though. ;-)
How about the discernibly repeated pattern that when there's not a strong protection against majority or minority takeover, such a takeover is bound to occur, and as such we must be vigilant against weakening any protection of citizens' rights? Or have you missed that one?
Don't presume to make me responsible for the Islamist's choice of spokespersons, and don't you dare presume to lecture me about the U.S. Constitution. I have forgotten more about it than you have apparently yet learned!
Yes, you seem to have forgotten nearly all of it, and I admit that I might not have learned a full 100% of it. I'll try to go slowly for you. ;-)
Bottom line: militant Islamists are a very strong threat to the US, moreso if we give in to fear and weaken that which protects us most--our Constitutional committment, moral high ground, resolve, vigilance, etc. I agree with you that we must be vigilant, but we must STRENGTHEN our concept of citizenship, not weaken it! You might not be advocating internments, but note how the post before yours puts encouraged in quotes in discussing Muslims leaving the US.
And you do know don't you, that any fatwa issued by a cleric is as good as worthless if the 'learned opinion' is opposed by a competing sect of islam such as the wahabbe who seek to dominate islam.
May I draw your attention to the last paragraph of my previous comment:
"In a particularly disturbing case, the Islamic Development Bank also granted US$295,000 to the Masjid Bilal Islamic Center, for the construction of the Bilal Islamic Primary and Secondary School in California, in 1999.3 Hassan Akbar, an American Muslim presently charged with a fatal attack on his fellow soldiers in Kuwait during the Iraq intervention, was affiliated with this institution."
http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8715
While the muslims in the US can't reach agreement between themselves as to where their loyalty lies, caution might be wise.
Hey Fred...
I noticed that also - I can't figure out what the Saudis would want to do with this, they don't want the Imans taking their country away from them, so why would they want them running ours and if they want to screw up the world, all they need to do is turn off the wells.
$300 grand for a primary and secondary school ?
The median home price in LA in 1999 was $223,000 so a 300K donation dosen't buy much.
Terrorism: Growing Wahabbi Influence in the US: (snip)
"Financing Radical Islam
Saudi financing of Islamic extremism plays such a huge role in its emergence as a global phenomenon that a proper understanding of it is impossible without coming to terms with its dimensions. Simply put, without the exorbitant sums of Saudi money spent on supporting extremist networks and activities, the terrorist threat we are facing today would be nowhere as acute as it is.
While the Wahhabis have always been sympathetic to Sunni Muslim extremists and evidence exists that they have supported such people financially as early as a century ago,8 the real Saudi offensive to spread Wahhabism aggressively and support kindred extremist groups world-wide began in the mid-1970s, when the kingdom reaped an incredible financial windfall with rocketing oil prices after Riaydh's imposition of an oil embargo in 1973.9 "It was only when oil revenues began to generate real wealth," says a government publication, that "the kingdom could fulfill its ambitions of spreading the word of Islam to every corner of the world."10
There are no published Western estimates of the numbers involved, which, in itself, is evidence of our failure to address this key issue, but even the occasional tidbits provided by official Saudi sources, indicate a campaign of unprecedented magnitude. Between 1975 and 1987, the Saudis admit to having spent $48 billion or $4 billion per year on "overseas development aid," a figure which by the end of 2002 grew to over $70 billion (281 billion Saudi rials).11 These sums are reported to be Saudi state aid and almost certainly do not include private donations which are also distributed by state-controlled charities. Such staggering amounts contrast starkly with the $5 million in terrorist accounts the Saudis claim to have frozen since 9/11. In another comparison, it is instructive to put these figures side by side with the $1 billion per year said to have been spent by the Soviet Union on external propaganda at the peak of Moscow's power in the 1970s.
Though it is claimed that this is "development aid" it is clear from the Saudi media and government statements alike that the vast majority of these funds support "Islamic activities", rather than real developmental projects. For example, a report on the yearly activities of the Al Haramain Foundation described as "keen on spreading the proper Islamic culture" are listed as follows: "it printed 13 million (Islamic) books, launched six internet sites, employed more than 3000 callers (proselytizers), founded 1100 mosques, schools and cultural Islamic centers and posted more than 350,000 letters of call (invitations to convert to Islam)" while the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), another key "charity," completed 3800 mosques, spent $45 million for Islamic education and employed 6000 proselytizers.12 Both of these organizations have been implicated in terrorist activities by U.S. authorities and both operate directly out of Saudi embassies in all countries in which they do not have their own offices..."
See Link provided in previous comment.
Sure, that's what the article says all right, but it dosen't say anything about the upside for the Sauds.
The Sauds are the politicians, not the religious end of their alliance with the Wahabis.
Perhaps they are setting the Wahabis up for a fall, figuring it would be good for them if the Islamic world turns to more secular leaders.
From what I can gather through reading and research, it seems that the 'royal family' of Saudi is 'somewhat' divided amongst themselves. Your comment may apply to some but others are fervent supporters of the wahabbi. I'll provide a link when I come across one.
>"I presume it's Adams you are misquoting. Why not throw in a spurious Madison quote while you're at it?"<
If anyone desires to look up the quote, I can assure you they will find I was not far off the mark. In any event I did not claim to be exactly quoting his words, but rather citing the general intent of his remarks. If I quote, you will know it, and I never quote spuriously.
>"Yet, funny thing, Jefferson and the other Founders didn't suggest banning Islam in America."<
With an ocean between them, it likely did not strike them as necessary, but rather as a forgone conclusion that readers would understand if it ever became an issue.
>"unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them."<
This is precisely the point; debate and free argument seem sorely lacking, as the dominant paradigm in the media and the political marketplace appears to insist to us that we accept Islamists at their word - virtually blindly with hands bound - despite reams of historical evidence, and both distant and recent precedent to suggest we should NOT TRUST them.
Tell you what, as soon as countries like Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, et al will allow other religions to build churches and practice their faith with freedom from persecution and prosecution, I'll consider the playing field to have been levelled significantly. Until then, I feel wholly justified in regarding them with a jaundiced eye because the simple fact is: wherever Islam is practiced without enforced limits or strictures, it becomes the predominant religion, to the detriment and destruction of all other religions. Islam empowered does not permit "free argument and debate"; it is not permitted to contradict the Imams, the mullahs, the greedy, murderous paedophile false prophet muhammad, or the false moon-rock god, alla-uzza/satan. To contradict them is to invite death and/or dismemberment
When ALL of Islam (and I mean ALL) begins to respect women rather than dominate, brutalise, enslave, objectify, and terrorise them as they have done for 1,381 years, then I will give it some more thought. Until then, neither I nor my neighbors should afford ourselves the luxury of being much more open-minded than we are right now.
>"And ask you to learn to read...try starting with Federalist X, for example. It's quite clear that the Constitution was created to prevent a mobocracy. Majority rights are also protected by it, but that would have been the case in a pure democracy anyway. And it protects against takeover by the majority or a minority"<
Spare us all your ill-founded attempts at analysis. The U.S. is not now, nor has it ever been, a democracy. We have always been a representative Republic. I grant that this is, by Greek standards, a form of a democracy - but a balance of power was presumptive in the design of the three branches of government. In every society where Islam could grow unchecked, and gain as much power as it has a will toward, they take over, or leave blood in the streets in the wake of trying. To contend otherwise is to willfully ignore the repeated lessons of 1,381 years of history, and insist that those lessons do not apply to us here and now, that things will be different this time, because this time we can take their word for things...really really really.
>"Misquotes and logical fallacies seem to be in your playbook, though. ;-)"<
I'll see your winking smiley face and raise you with a (repeated) request to cite any misquoted lines which I had presented as accurate full quotes. Logical fallacies? Hardly. Unless one considers it a fallacy that,"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it".
>"Bottom line: militant Islamists are a very strong threat to the US,<"
Try this bottom line instead: Islamists are a very strong threat to the US...because they are virtually indistinguishable from militant Islamists. This is owing to the fact that imams in their mosques tell them to live their daily lives among the "infidel" as if they are in a time of war behind enemy lines, therefore they have carte blanche to lie, cheat, dissemble, and tell the infidel anything they want, so long as their own minds are of a purpose to serve allah.
>"moreso if we give in to fear and weaken that which protects us most--our Constitutional committment, moral high ground, resolve, vigilance, etc. I agree with you that we must be vigilant, but we must STRENGTHEN our concept of citizenship, not weaken it!"<
We already have the moral high ground, and a very long way to go before we are in any danger of losing it. Vigilance is exactly what I am suggesting, along with resolve. "Strengthening our concept of citizenship" is bull-hockey, however. That sounds to me like a euphemistic way of suggesting that we do not already offer immigrants enough opportunity, or that US citizenship does not have enough benefits already.
Let me alternatively insist that it is the Islamists who must move in OUR direction; that they must become proactive in turning in their own for disloyalty to America, that they must begin to stringently, aggressively pressure their own to assimilate into our language, customs, and culture in America. Thus far they simply have not done so - not in America, nor in any other non-muslim host country that I can name. Their chief distinction is actually that they do not do that.
Buddhists have done it, Hindus, countless others, but the Muslims stubbornly refuse to. Curiously they also seem to have trouble "playing nice" in the sandbox with these other religions in other countries (India, Pakistan, Philippines)
Sorry to restate the obvious, but the ones who are religiously intolerant everywhere they go as a matter of course are the ones who have their butts in the air five times a day, bowing to Mecca.
>"You might not be advocating internments, but note how the post before yours puts encouraged in quotes in discussing Muslims leaving the US."<
So what? That's not MY quote, is it? Even so, as delineated in my previous paragraphs, if Islamists are not going to blend in and exhibit the same tolerance towards others which they agitate for, maybe they SHOULD leave. They will NOT be permitted to turn the US into an Islamic state theocratic 'paradise', except for over my (and several others', I imagine) dead body.
They began their influx into the Netherlands very much the same way they have embarked into the US. As if the news accounts of Theo Van Gogh's murder, the daily assaults, muggings, rapes, and other petty crimes, the in-classroom intimidations of Dutch teachers for not teaching about Islam... are not enough, I have many friends who live there. In Amsterdam, in Huizen...all across the country Dutch folk live in fear of this formerly benign, innocuous minority.
Should this begin now? No, but if they do not mend their ways and immediately begin making nice in all of the ways I stated, it should not be off the table whatsoever.
The concept of citizenship in America is quite strong enough, thank you. What needs to be strengthened is the concept that would-be American citizen aspirants should be prepared to bring something to the table - that they must like all other immigrants before them, forswear other loyalties, and freely give the US their allegiance with an honest heart. What needs to be reiterated is that there are responsibilities which accompany the privileges, and it is past time for them to show that they mean to honor that.
For a comparable idea of the meaning of being a loyal American citizen, let's look at the first and second generation of "Ellis Island" Italians. In WWII, against the Axis powers - Germany and Italy - more than 40% (yes that number is correct) of all enlisted men in the US Army WERE ITALIAN.
They went to war fighting to demonstrate their loyalty for their "new" country, and in part to 'free' their old country. I hear of no such numbers of Muslims signing up for the military now - not even .25%. The Muslim contribution to American cultural life, is in fact, rather negligible to this point, and too much, it could be argued is detrimental.
I will not intern them, not even encourage them to leave, but if they don't shape up as a group, I won't miss them one bit.
A.A.C.
3 words for the islamo-fascists suffice:
Six DAYS, Bitch!
This would wash except for the fact that the chief minister of Justice in Saudi Arabia, a member of the house of Saud, is a Muslim and a Wahaabi sympathizer, and was within the last month, encouraging Arab muslims to travel to Iraq and join in war against American forces, saying it was quite permissible befor Allah. NBC contacted him, and questioned him about the audio tape recording of this statement (made in Arabic, obviously), and he admitted that the voice on the recording, and the statements were his.
Seems to me like he is playing the political and the religious ends of the spectrum!
Some ally in the W.O.T.!
A.A.C.
"...encouraging Arab muslims to travel to Iraq and join in war against American forces, saying it was quite permissible befor Allah."
Plays right in - send the militant wacko fringe out of your country somewhere else to get killed ....
Sorry, twisting the words of someone who disagrees with you so that they are unrecognizable is a poor debating point and hardly advances your argument (which is weak enough). Come RS, you have become rusty. You are not even trying not to sound like typical leftist DU'er.
Love this border thread..its like old times!
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