Posted on 09/20/2001 7:33:13 PM PDT by SlickWillard
Everyone in the US is bending over backwards to marginalize the type of Islam that Bin Laden's followers embrace. They want to give us the impression that they are a fringe group with few takers, other than madmen. But this is errant nonsense. You cannot have hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of adherents and still be called a fringe group. I would bet Bin Laden has more following him than the Mormons follow Smith. We may not like his Islam, but we must recognize that it is a very real pernicious form, but hardly a cult of a few zealots. Wherever there is Islam there will be a goodly number attracted to his message of PURE Islam. Do not be fooled; he has his Mullahs who are saying that every move he makes is godly. I would be willing to wager that he seeks the guidance of his personal Mullah prior to acting. This is one formidible enemy. He has planted seeds all over the world. He has nurtured his garden of terror with liberal influx of crucial funds.
We must search back very carefully into the agenda o fevery Muslim convention that has been held during the past ten years. Were there speakers having a connection to Bin Laden? How was he received? Was the speaker successful in setting up a cell?
A well trained, well financed, very determine, and anonymous enemy is a very scary force to confront.
I wish the US and the rest of the world well. But as much as we perceive themas evil, they see as infinitely more evil. We are the decadent devils, the spawn of Shaitana.
Shops in Peshawar and most other cities were closed -- some in support of the strike but many fearing protesters if they were seen to be ignoring the call. Karachi, the commercial hub of Pakistan, was virtually a ghost town. An armoured personnel carrier, 14 police vans and five trucks of paramilitary rangers ringed the U.S. consulate. Some 15,000 police had been put on duty to maintain law and order in the city of 11 million. "The city looked lifeless," said one resident of sprawling industrial port city of Karachi.
Chief Saudi spy fired before attack: 25-year official failed to deliver bin Laden to U.S.
Saudi Arabia's King Fahd fired his intelligence chief for suspected ties to alleged Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden, just days before hijacked U.S. airliners were flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Only about two weeks before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Ab'd Al-Mun'im Murad, a columnist in Al-Akhbar, a daily newspaper sponsored by the Egyptian government, wrote: "The conflict that we call the Arab-Israeli conflict is, in truth an Arab conflict with Western, and particularly American, colonialism. The U.S. treats [the Arabs] as it treated the slaves inside the American continent. To this end, [the U.S.] is helped by the smaller enemy, and I mean Israel."
Nor was this unusually candid acknowledgment the end of it. "The issue," declared the same writer in another piece, "no longer concerns the Israeli-Arab conflict. The real issue is the Arab-American conflict--Arabs must understand that the U.S. is not 'the American friend'--and its task, past, present, and future, is [to impose] hegemony on the world, primarily on the Middle East and the Arab world."
Then, in a third piece, also published in late August, Mr. Murad gave us an inkling of the reciprocal "task" he had in mind to be performed on America: "The Statue of Liberty, in New York Harbor, must be destroyed because of . . . the idiotic American policy that goes from disgrace to disgrace in the swamp of bias and blind fanaticism. . . . The age of the American collapse has begun."
As a policy debate rages at top levels in the Bush administration over attacking the regime of President Saddam Hussein, Egypt is moving to improve relations with Iraq ... Egypt has refused to participate in a U.S.-led military coalition against any Saudi billionaire fugitive Osama Bin Laden or any of his government sponsors.
We also need to revisit the myth of the "moderate" Arab countries. Most are moderate in only a relative sense, the way an opportunist like Franco was a moderate fascist in comparison to Hitler, or a wily Tito a moderate Communist as opposed to Stalin. We must accept the bitter truth that states like Palestine, Egypt, Syria, and others — despite American deference and occasional aid — are not our friends, much less our allies ... One of the more frustrating facets of the American media has been their reluctance (or inability) to show the grassroots celebration — going on in the streets of Palestine, Pakistan, Egypt, and other countries — of 6,000 American deaths.
Sales of T-shirts bearing the picture of Muslim militant Osama bin Laden have surged in Indonesia, home of the world's largest Islamic population, since Washington named him as its chief suspect in last week's attacks. ``Today, we sold twice as many as usual. It has been like this since (the U.S. accused bin Laden),'' Andi Cut Muthia, a 30-year-old mother of three who prints and distributes the shirts, told Reuters on Friday ... The $3 T-shirts come in three styles, one with the words ''Islam is my blood.''
One problem evident among the American public being the confusion between social thinking and political thinking. Social thinking is based upon emotions e.g. they are warm fuzzy, work hard, have proper relations with their families and are kind to their animals . "How can we harm them?"
Political thinking is based upon two factors, 5 % of the Moslems will hurl bombs; there is no known way to discriminate between the "Good Moslems" and the "Bad Moslems." The next great attack and Moslems must go. Mass expulsions must come. This course of action is naughty but necessary.
[T]hey come from 14 mostly Middle Eastern nations, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Iran and Israel — and entered the United States on various kinds of visas and from all sides of the U.S. border. Others are from Algeria, India and Britain.
Arab League chief Amr Mussa warned here on Sunday after meeting with King Abdullah II that US strikes against any Arab states in retaliation for the September 11 terrorist attacks would be "unacceptable."
Trying to find our bearings, my husband and I went into an American-style cafe in the Hamra district, near Rue Verdun, rated as one of the most expensive shopping streets in the world. Here the cognitive dissonance was immediate, and direct. The café's sophisticated clientele was celebrating, laughing, cheering and making jokes, as waiters served hamburgers and Diet Pepsi. Nobody looked shocked, or moved. They were excited, very excited.
Ziad Samir Jarrah was born May 11, 1975, the only son in a prosperous, educated family. His father, Samir, 62, is a local government official; his mother, Nasisa, 57, is a schoolteacher ... he attended a technical university ... the young engineer would have had to live a double life worthy of a first-rate spy - concealing from his family, girlfriend, and friends that he was a Muslim extremist, not the religiously moderate, pro-American, fun-loving person they knew him to be ... Jarrah's family says they sent him $2,000 each month to pay for flight lessons. But last month, Jarrah did something unusual - he asked his parents for an extra $700, ''for fun.'' When he called home Sept. 9, he confirmed he had received $2,700. His family believes he wanted to use the extra cash to go to California, possibly to visit friends.
Among top lieutenants to Osama bin Laden, several are Egyptians, including a surgeon from Cairo who ranks second in the hierarchy of Mr. bin Laden's organization, Al Qaeda, and is seen by some intelligence experts as his most likely successor.
Many of the accounts lead back to one man - Mustafa Ahmed - an elusive character who is emerging as a crucial link between the Saudi exile Osama bin Laden and the perpetrators of the worst act of terrorism on American soil. FBI investigators believe Ahmed was the banker who helped distribute the finances for the operation, which is now believed to have cost $US200,000 ... CIA intelligence has established that Ahmed is operating out of the United Arab Emirates.
Pakistan said on Tuesday it would retain diplomatic ties with Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, the only country in the world still to do so, in order to give them a window to the outside world. "We should maintain contact, at least there should be one country who ought to be able to have an access to them, to be able to engage them," President Pervez Musharraf told reporters.
Before this attack, I would have said that America can only tolerate a small Islamic or Hindu population. Once they become a sizable minority, they will begin to militate for their own governments.
At the very least we should deport all on visas and halt the immigration of Muslims.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.