Free Republic

When Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicated the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., in June 1957, his 500-word talk effused good will ("Civilization owes to the Islamic world some of its most important tools and achievements") even as the American president embarrassingly bumbled (Muslims in the United States, he declared, have the right to their "own church"). Conspicuously, he included nary a word about policy. Exactly 50 years later, standing shoeless, George W. Bush rededicated the center last week. His 1,600-word speech also praised medieval Islamic culture ("We come to express our appreciation for a faith that has enriched civilization for centuries"), but...

<p>Recently, neo-conservative analyst Daniel Pipes wrote an article ("Can the IAF take out Iran's nukes?", June 13) that, in essence, advocates for the Jewish state to carry out pre-emptive military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.</p> <p>Although Pipes has many justifications for his reasoning, this time he specifically alludes to the recently published article in International Security entitled “Osirak Redux” by security scholars Whitney Raas and Austin Long. Now Pipes makes it clear that Raas and Long do not take into account the diplomatic, strategic, and political fallout of such an action, but only focus on the question of “Can it be done”? To Pipes, the answer is a resounding “yes”, however, for those who too often take the Middle Eastern analysis of western academics as gospel, I would urge you to carefully read Raas and Long before forming any definitive conclusions. In rehashing “Osirak Redux”, Pipes clearly cherry picks certain points that the article makes that support his assertion that bombing Iranian nuclear facilities is the only method of keeping the Islamic Republic from attaining nuclear weapons. Yet he also manages to maneuver around critical points that the authors make that undermine the neo-conservative mantra that Pipes so eagerly defends.</p>

A tribute to our fighting men & women

Yes, there is a moderate Islam - let's support it Daniel Pipes THE JERUSALEM POST Apr. 17, 2007 'What moderate Muslims?" is the near-inevitable retort to my stating that radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam the solution. Where are the anti-Islamists' demonstrations against terror, their combating of Islamists, their reassessments of Islamic law? I am asked. Moderate Muslims do exist, I reply. Admittedly, they do not constitute a movement but represent mere wisps in the face of the Islamist onslaught. This means, I argue, that the US government and other powerful institutions should give priority to locating, meeting...

"Moderate Unicorns," huffed a reader, responding to my recent plea that Western states bolster moderate Muslims. Dismissing their existence as a myth, he notes that non-Muslims "are still waiting for moderates to stand and deliver, identifying and removing extremist thugs from their mosques and their communities."It's a valid skepticism and a reasonable demand. Recent events in Pakistan and Turkey, however, prove that moderate Muslims are no myth.In Pakistan, an estimated 100,000 people demonstrated on April 15 in Karachi, the country's largest city, to protest the plans of a powerful mosque in Islamabad, the Lal Masjid, to establish a parallel court...

Dr. Pipes Comes to Brandeis By Linda Keay April 24, 2007 A metal detector and police outside the lecture hall doors aroused curiosity by students at Brandeis University. A young woman walking by the apparatus frowned and shook her head in disapproval. Two young men stopped and watched as people cued up at the hall door. “What’s going on?” asked one. “Pipes,” said the other. “Oh,” said the first. The two got in line. One said he thinks Pipes is a racist. The other said, “But he’s right about a lot of things,” adding, “but maybe he is a racist.”...

I am mirroring this from LittleGreenFootballs.com. Daniel Pipes sent it out on his list. I just can't be there, but if anybody is in the Los Angeles area, make it a point to be there. Remember, the video from US Irvine went global. Help support point-man Daniel Pipes in the ARENA OF THE WAR OF IDEAS! Leftists/Islamists Preparing to Disrupt Daniel Pipes at UCLA As we noted yesterday, there’s a panel discussion at UCLA tomorrow night featuring Daniel Pipes, Wafa Sultan, and Yaron Brook, on the subject: “Totalitarian Islam’s Threat to the West.” Today the moonbats and Islamic student groups...

As a silver member of "Hilton HHonors," I receive the odd discount from the hotel chain but today's offer really caught my eye. It was not to swing in Las Vegas or spend April in Paris, but to go on pilgrimage to Mecca. I've posted the webpage here. Some salient excerpts: Between February 1 and March 31, 2007, GCC nationals who stay a minimum of two consecutive nights at the Makkah Hilton & Towers earn double Hilton HHonors® Base points. Please note: During this period, Makkah is accessible only to Muslims and visas are issued to nationals of Bahrain, Oman,...

Finally being able to meet Daniel Pipes in person was a great opportunity, with his visit to University of California, Irvine (UCI). He was hosted by Hillel at UCI and the Hillel Foundation of Orange County. A forty-five minute trip through rare light traffic brought me early for the event to UCI and the Physical Sciences Lecture Hall on the sprawling campus. I was anticipating some sort of protest by Islamist interests, which always appear when Professor Daniel Pipes speaks at a California University campus. The exterior of the lecture hall was peaceful as a few elderly Jewish men and...

Last night at the University of California Irvine, the Muslim Students Union staged a threatening, thuggish disruption of a talk by Daniel Pipes. UC Irvine is a hotbed of Muslim radicalism, as we’ve documented many times at LGF, but you may not have understood how bad it is until you see this. (Watch out for a burst of white noise near the middle.)

An effective counterterrorism strategy must focus on the fact that terrorism by Muslims in the name of Islam presents the strategic threat today to civilized peoples, whether Muslim or non-Muslim. On the low end, this threat involves lone individuals seized by the Sudden Jihad Syndrome who unpredictably set off on a murder spree. At the high end, it involves an outlaw organization like Hamas running the quasi-governmental Palestinian Authority, or even Al Qaeda's efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. In all, were terrorism by Muslims halted, this would be a major advance toward winning what some call World War...

The political columnist and cultural critic Mark Steyn has written a remarkable book, "America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It" (Regnery). He combines several virtues not commonly found together — humor, accurate reportage, and deep thinking — and then applies them to what is arguably the most consequential issue of our time: the Islamist threat to the West. Mr. Steyn offers a devastating thesis but presents it in bits and pieces, so I shall pull it together here. He begins with the legacy of two totalitarianisms. Traumatized by the electoral appeal of fascism, post-World War II...

Soldiers, sailors, and airmen once determined the outcome of warfare, but no longer. Today, television producers, columnists, preachers, and politicians have the pivotal role in deciding how well the West fights. This shift has deep implications. In a conventional conflict like World War II, fighting had two premises so basic, they went nearly unnoticed. The first: Conventional armed forces engage in an all-out fight for victory. The opposing sides deploy serried ranks of soldiers, lines of tanks, fleets of ships, and squadrons of aircraft. Millions of youth go to war as civilians endure privations. Strategy and intelligence matter, but the...

Soldiers, sailors, and airmen once determined the outcome of warfare, but no longer. Today, television producers, columnists, preachers, and politicians have the pivotal role in deciding how well the West fights. This shift has deep implications. In a conventional conflict like World War II, fighting had two premises so basic, they went nearly unnoticed. The first: Conventional armed forces engage in an all-out fight for victory. The opposing sides deploy serried ranks of soldiers, lines of tanks, fleets of ships, and squadrons of aircraft. Millions of youth go to war as civilians endure privations. Strategy and intelligence matter, but the...

This is an expansion on debg's summary of Adam Gadahn's Al Qaeda videotape, available for download at http://www.lauramansfield.com/j/nnnnmn-1.rm. debg: He spent a long time saying we are ignorantGadahn did indeed spend a long time calling us "ignorant." After Zawahiri's introduction, he also accused us of "rapturously applause" when Israel wages war, of assenting to our governments' "atrocities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Muslim world." He also accuses us of "voicing our approval" of the so-called desecration of the Koran at Gitmo, and of our "yellow press and tele-evangelists insulting the 'Prophet' Muhammad [piss be upon him - my...

RAMAT RACHEL, Israel (Reuters) - Archaeologists in Israel have unearthed an ancient water system which was modified by the conquering Persians to turn the desert into a paradise. The network of reservoirs, drain pipes and underground tunnels served one of the grandest palaces in the biblical kingdom of Judea. Archaeologists first discovered the palace in 1954, a structure built on a six-acre (2.4 hectare) site where the communal Ramat Rachel farm now stands. Recent excavations unearthed nearly 70 square metres (750 square feet) of a unique water system. "They had found a huge palace ... even nicer than the palaces...

Last night WRTI-FM's Bob Perkins announced the death of a Philly original. Rufus Harley is credited as the first jazz musician to pick the Scottish bagpipes as his instrument. You might have heard his distinctive drone on CDs by The Roots (Do You Want More?!!!??!) and Laurie Anderson (Big Science). If you ever saw a picture of him, it would stick. He cut a distinctive swath. So did his music. I talked to his son, Messiah Harley, the trumpeter, this morning. He said his father had prostate cancer, but never let on to anyone that he was hurting. "He...

All, as noted in the thread Prayer requested for Sionnsar's family, I have a new, quite significant, and high priority pull on my time that will continue for an indefinite period of time. I will do what I can, and newheart and Huber long ago volunteered to help out with posting and pinging the Traditional Anglican ping list during my times away (traveling). Unfortunately I think these two are even busier than your truly --- but we'll do what we can to keep the Traditional Anglican ping list going. For the Washington State ping list I have mostly been pinging...

Omnipresent expert in television studios and regular commentator of American mainstream newspapers, Daniel Pipes has become the world theorist of the Islamphobia. The son of Richard Pipes, the Sovietologist that resumed the arms race during the Ford Administration, and spiritual son of Robert Strausz-Hupé, the visionary of the new world order, Daniel Pipes, directs a lot of strategic institutes. He is the founder of currently common concepts such as «new anti-Semitism», «militants of Islam» and «conspiracy theories». An advocate of the annihilation of Palestinians, he has been appointed by George W. Bush director of the US Institute of Peace. Between...

I've spent the last three or four days drowning myself in websites filled with Celtic music midis and learning to play O'Carolan's Ramble to Cashel. My music library is a strange collection of 80s compilation albums, collections of Celtic music, works by Steel Eye Span, Moya Brennan, Pentangle, Clannad, Dougie McClean, and Bluegrass. I can sometimes tell you which Child Ballad a song is a variation of, and might know how to sing two or three different major variations. Tis a sickness. Wonder if anybody else had picked up this bug besides me....And I am logged in, my beeper is...