A symbol of Islamic gloating and mockery in New York 84

Are  Muslims to be allowed to erect a victor’s monument at Ground Zero? A permanent symbol of Islamic gloating and mockery? That is what a huge mosque next to the site of  9/11 would be.

Surely it would be intolerable! Will New Yorkers tolerate it?

From Hudson New York (read it all here):

An identified group with unknown sponsors has purchased building steps away from where the World Trade Center once stood — to turn it into potentially one of the largest New York City mosques.

At the moment the building, the old Burlington Coat Factory, already serves as a mini-mosque: an iron grill lifts every Friday afternoon for a little known Imam leading prayers a few yards away from where Osama Bin Laden’s airborne Islamist bombers killed nearly 3000 people back in 2001.

The Imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, told the New York Times — which put the story on its front page Wednesday — that he has assembled several million dollars to turn it into ‘’an Islamic center near the city’s most hallowed piece of land that would stand as one of ground zero’s more unexpected and striking neighbors.’’

Posted under Commentary, Islam, Muslims, Terrorism, United States, War by Jillian Becker on Saturday, December 19, 2009

Tagged with , , , , ,

This post has 84 comments.

Permalink

Jihadists advise the Pentagon 200

What is going on in the US Defense Department? There are people in it who seem to be positively on the side of the enemy.

From Investor’s Business Daily, by Paul Sperry:

The internal threat from Muslim extremists in the military extends to high-level Defense Department aides who have undermined military policy. In fact, one top Muslim adviser pushed out an intelligence analyst who warned of the sudden jihad syndrome that led to the Fort Hood terrorist attack.

An honored guest of the Ramadan dinner at the Pentagon this September was Hesham Islam, who infiltrated the highest echelons of the Ring despite proven ties to U.S. terror front groups and a shady past in his native Egypt.

As senior adviser for international affairs to former deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Islam … persuaded brass to sack a Pentagon analyst, Stephen Coughlin, after he advised cutting off outreach to ISNA, which he accurately ID’d as part of a covert terror-support network in the U.S. — something the Justice Department recently confirmed in a major terror finance trial.

Islam invited ISNA [Islamic Society of North America] officials to lunch with the avuncular England, known by insiders as Gullible Gordon, who in turn spoke at ISNA confabs. Islam also helped set up a Pentagon job booth at one recent ISNA convention to recruit Muslim chaplains and linguists.

Most disturbing, Islam met regularly with Saudi and other embassy officials lobbying for the release and repatriation of their citizens held at Gitmo. He in turn advised England, who authorized the release of dozens of Gitmo detainees. Some have resumed terrorist activities.

No one really knew who Islam was when he was promoted — in fact, the Pentagon removed his bio from its Web site after reporters noted major inconsistencies in it — yet he was allowed to get inside the office of the Pentagon’s No. 2 official.

“In effect,” a senior U.S. Army intelligence official told me, “we’ve got terrorist supporters calling the shots on our policies toward Muslims from the highest levels.”

Meanwhile, politically incorrect prophets like Coughlin have been frozen out. …

Coughlin … warned that by using ISNA and other radical [Muslim] Brotherhood fronts to endorse Muslim chaplains and recruit Muslim soldiers, they were courting enemies of the U.S. — and courting disaster. But they were too drunk with political correctness to listen. …

The Fort Dix terrorists …  talked about joining the U.S. Army so they could kill U.S soldiers from the “inside.” …  Some of them [like Nidal Malik Hasan, the Muslim terrorist of Fort Hood -JB] were inspired by al-Qaida preacher Anwar Awlaki, who on his Yemen-based Web site calls for jihad against U.S. military targets inside and outside the U.S.

But so do so-called moderate American clerics like Zaid Shakir. … Frequently booked by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a guest speaker at its events, Shakir tells his Muslim audience: “Jihad is physically fighting the enemies of Islam to protect and advance the religion of Islam. This is jihad.”

Acceptable targets of jihad, he says, include U.S. military aircraft. “Islam doesn’t permit us to hijack airplanes filled with civilian people,” he said, but “if you hijack an airplane filled with the 82nd Airborne, that’s something else.”

The 82nd Airborne is based out of Fort Bragg, which is part of North Carolina state Sen. Larry Shaw’s home district. Shaw is CAIR’s new chairman. He is also a minority contractor who operates Shaw Food Services Co. near Fort Bragg. According to the legislator’s financial disclosure form, Shaw Food customers include the Defense Department. …

CAIR, like ISNA, is an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator. The FBI says CAIR is a terrorist front group and has cut off formal ties to it. So should the military. …

This enemy is hiding behind a religion, making it easier for them to infiltrate our sensitive security agencies. Communist spooks did not have such an advantage. …

Military command must stop currying favor with suspect Muslim groups and start beefing up counterintelligence activities. It must institute a policy of zero tolerance for Jihad Joes in the ranks.

And while we’re trying to digest that, here’s another piece of information we must swallow to make the heartburn worse – an Obama program making it easy for foreign Muslims to join the US armed forces:

Illegal aliens with “special skills,” such as speaking Arabic, Dari, Pushti and other languages are now allowed to enlist in the U.S military. There is NO requirement that these people be in the United States legally. No background check! A Muslim Pushti speaker could sneak across the Rio Grande today and be getting 3 hots and a cot (meals and a place to sleep) in the U.S. Military tomorrow! Even worse, he would be on a path to get citizenship in less time than any other naturalized citizen in history! Special “citizenship expediters” at military bases across the country rush their citizenship papers through in as little as 10 weeks.

Does Obama mean to pack the army with potential traitors?

Heaven and Hell (3) 77

Islam’s Paradise is a free brothel, with luxurious accommodation, full continuous restaurant and bar service, and outdoor leisure facilities maintained to a high standard.

When Muslims die, they pass over as-Siraat, the Bridge of Hell, whether they are going to Heaven or Hell itself. Those destined for Heaven, or Paradise, remain on the bridge while they are purified by the setting right of any wrongs that existed between them and others in this world. (The bridge idea is reminiscent of the Zoroastrian belief in the bridge that the dead have to cross to get to their afterlife destination, and on which they are confronted with their earthly record.)

It is not clear (as it is also not clear in Zoroastrianism and Christianity) whether the destination of Heaven or Hell will be attained only after the Day of Judgment or immediately after death. Some authorities say that at least the ash-Shuhadaa (the martyrs) will enter Heaven without having to wait for the Day of Judgment. ‘Their souls are in the bellies of green birds, and they have lights suspended from the Throne.’  Whether as pilots of the green birds or in some sort of bodily existence, they ‘wander about Paradise wherever they wish’, and are granted anything they want.

Some authorities say that Heaven has a hundred levels. Others say there are two Heavens, each having two rivers. In the first, better Heaven the water of the rivers flows. In the second, lesser Heaven, it gushes and bubbles.

One hadith says that the first three to enter Paradise are: The shaheed (the martyr); the chaste and proud; and the slave who worships Allah by carrying out his duties and is faithful to his master.

Heaven, Iannah, is a garden with two rivers flowing through it. The garden is called Adn (Eden). It is very green. The trees have gold trunks. There is one tree so vast that it takes a hundred years to cross its shadow. There are tents and houses of gold, studded with pearls. The highest dwellings [highly placed, or built high?] are reserved for martyrs. If they need coal for anything [?], it will be ‘from aloe-wood’.

Every happy male resident, whatever his stature, appearance, and age were on earth when he died, is here six cubits tall (the ideal height, which was that of Adam, the first man, after whom ‘people shrank’), thirty-three years old, and in perfect shape aesthetically and organically, his eyes surrounded by black as though outlined with kohl, and with no body hair.

He reclines on green cushions, on couches of silk brocade, and is served drinks in gold and silver cups on a gold tray by pretty young boys with long eyelashes. They are as beautiful as pearls. Maidens also attend him. They too are forever young, and as beautiful as rubies, coral, and pearls, with breasts firm and full, and with large slanting eyes, of which the whites are very white, and the pupils very black. They are virgins forever, even though enjoyed on the silk couch and green cushions, for their virginity is renewed every morning. While there is no night and day as such, the light from the Throne is adjusted to create the look and feel of evening and morning by the opening and closing of curtains. ‘The people of Paradise do not sleep.’

Are the eternal virgins the happy men’s wives?  There are different and contradictory teachings on wives in Heaven. While it is said that a woman who goes to Heaven will there be the wife of her last husband, husbands are said to be unencumbered by their earthly wives. Apart from the permanent staff of stripling lads and maidens, Heaven’s population consists mostly of men. Authorities speak of them as having wives but not the women they were married to in their earthly existence, and the smallest number of wives that any man will have in Paradise is seventy-two. The shaheed will have seventy-two young virgins ‘from among the al-Hoor al-Eeyn’ – the houris with the ‘wide, lovely eyes’.  They will be so finely beautiful as to be transparent; ‘the marrow of their leg-bones will be visible through the flesh’.  They will not menstruate, they will have no post-natal bleeding [does this imply that they will or will not give birth?], and have no spittle, mucous, urine or feces. They will be ‘purified mates’, creatures made by Allah especially for Paradise.

The drinks are pure water, milk, honey, and wine, watered wine, and wine with ginger. The wine will not intoxicate or cause a hangover. There are ‘seas’ of water, wine, milk, and honey.

Food is also on continuous offer, fruit and chicken specified, but anything can be ordered according to the heart’s desire. On entering Paradise the new arrival will be given the extra, or ‘caudate’, lobe of a fish liver, and a bull, and any fruit he yearns for.

The happy one will never again excrete, or spit, or need to blow his nose. Substances that necessarily pass out of his transformed body will do so as a gentle sweat that will smell of musk. If he burps, that will smell of musk too.

The fabric for clothes in Paradise comes from a huge tree called ’Tooba’. The happy one’s clothing never wears out and he may deck himself in whatever and as much jewellery as he likes.

When the company are not reclining on couches, they loll on thrones, rank on rank facing each other. It’s not known what they talk about, if they talk. Perhaps they reminisce about their lives on earth. If so, there would inevitably be much repetition through the unending ages. But new arrivals would bring fresh stories, and new ears.  The ranks will multiply forever, but Heaven can never become overcrowded.

Jillian Becker  December 17, 2009

Posted under Articles, Islam, Miscellaneous, Muslims, Religion general by Jillian Becker on Thursday, December 17, 2009

Tagged with , ,

This post has 77 comments.

Permalink

The phony compassion of the left 94

Roger Scruton sets out the opposing ethical-political views of conservatives and liberals in his article Totalitarian Sentimentality in The American Spectator. It is well worth reading in full.

In part he writes:

The USA has descended from its special position as the principled guardian of Western civilization and joined the club of sentimentalists who have until now depended on American power. In the administration of President Obama we see the very same totalitarian sentimentality that has been at work in Europe, and which has replaced civil society with the state, the family with the adoption agency, work with welfare, and patriotic duty with universal “rights”. The lesson of postwar Europe is that it is easy to flaunt compassion, but harder to bear the cost of it. Far preferable to the hard life in which disciplined teaching, costly charity, and responsible attachment are the ruling principles is the life of sentimental display, in which others are encouraged to admire you for virtues you do not possess. This life of phony compassion is a life of transferred costs. Liberals who wax lyrical on the sufferings of the poor do not, on the whole, give their time and money to helping those less fortunate than themselves. On the contrary, they campaign for the state to assume the burden. The inevitable result of their sentimental approach to suffering is the expansion of the state and the increase in its power both to tax us and to control our lives.

As the state takes charge of our needs, and relieves people of the burdens that should rightly be theirs — the burdens that come from charity and neighborliness — serious feeling retreats. In place of it comes an aggressive sentimentality that seeks to dominate the public square. I call this sentimentality “totalitarian” since — like totalitarian government — it seeks out opposition and carefully extinguishes it, in all the places where opposition might form. Its goal is to “solve” our social problems, by imposing burdens on responsible citizens, and lifting burdens from the “victims,” who have a “right” to state support. The result is to replace old social problems, which might have been relieved by private charity, with the new and intransigent problems fostered by the state: for example, mass illegitimacy, the decline of the indigenous birthrate, and the emergence of the gang culture among the fatherless youth. We have seen this everywhere in Europe, whose situation is made worse by the pressure of mass immigration, subsidized by the state. The citizens whose taxes pay for the flood of incoming “victims” cannot protest, since the sentimentalists have succeeded in passing “hate speech” laws and in inventing crimes like “Islamophobia” which place their actions beyond discussion. This is just one example of a legislative tendency that can be observed in every area of social life: family, school, sexual relations, social initiatives, even the military — all are being deprived of their authority and brought under the control of the “soft power” that rules from above.

This is how we should understand the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama. … The prize is an endorsement from the European elite, a sigh of collective relief that America has at last taken the decisive step toward the modern consensus, by exchanging real for fake emotion, hard power for soft power, and truth for lies. What matters in Europe is the great fiction that things will stay in place forever, that peace will be permanent and society stable, just so long as everybody is “nice.” Under President Bush … America maintained its old image, of national self-confidence and belligerent assertion of the right to be successful. Bush was the voice of a property-owning democracy, in which hard work and family values still achieved a public endorsement. As a result he was hated by the European elites, and hated all the more because Europe needs America and knows that, without America, it will die. Obama is welcomed as a savior: the American president for whom the Europeans have been hoping — the one who will rescue them from the truth.

The West on trial 109

Robert Spencer writes about a forthcoming trial – a trial, in effect, of the willingness of the West to uphold its values and defend freedom:

Free speech goes on trial in the Netherlands on January 20, when Dutch politician Geert Wilders appears before the Amsterdam District Court on charges of having “intentionally offended a group of people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion,” as well as having incited to hatred and discrimination.

What did Wilders do to warrant such charges? He told the truth about the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, and their roots in Islamic texts and teachings, in his film Fitna and elsewhere. But nowadays truth-telling is at such a premium that those who still dare to engage in it are threatened, harassed and prosecuted.

But Wilders is defiant: “On the 20th of January 2010, a political trial will start. I am being prosecuted for my political convictions. The freedom of speech is on the verge of collapsing. If a politician is not allowed to criticise an ideology anymore, this means that we are lost, and it will lead to the end of our freedom. However I remain combative: I am convinced that I will be acquitted.”

The very idea of trying someone for offending someone else is absurd – especially when the offended group is known to traffic in the PC multiculturalist coin of wounded feelings, so as to gain the political power that comes from victim status. That the Amsterdam District Court would aid and abet this absurdity and obvious manipulation unmasks the Wilders trial – even before it starts – as what it really is: an attempt by the nation’s political elites to silence one of their most formidable critics. The one who has the power to decide what is an actionable offensive statement or prosecutable incitement has the power to control the discourse – and that’s what the prosecution of Wilders is all about. If offending someone is a crime, can those who find hate speech laws offensive bring suit against their framers?

The action against Wilders is taking place, moreover, against the backdrop of the 57-government Organization of the Islamic Conference’s ongoing efforts at the United Nations to silence speech that they deem critical of Islam — including “defamation of Islam” that goes under the “pretext” of “freedom of expression, counter terrorism or national security.”

If they succeed in doing this, Europeans and Americans will be rendered mute, and thus defenseless, in the face of the advancing jihad and attempt to impose Sharia on the West …

The stakes are so high in the Wilders case also because the OIC has a new, powerful ally as it moves against the freedom of speech. In October the Obama Administration actually co-sponsored an anti-free speech resolution at the United Nations. Approved by the U.N. Human Rights Council, the resolution, cosponsored by the U.S. and Egypt, calls on states to condemn and criminalize “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.” …

But Geert Wilders, and all those who stand with him, have a responsibility … to bear witness to the world that the freedom of speech is a cornerstone of any free society, and that once it is gone, there is no defense against tyranny, no safeguard against the encroaching power of a protected class against whom there is no appeal, and from whose rulings there is no dissent. If Geert Wilders is found guilty, tyranny and authoritarianism will have won a huge victory in Europe, and in the world in general.

The stakes are as high as they can possibly be. Geert Wilders must prevail. If he does not, Europe, and America, and the world, are in for a long, dark night.

Figure this out 27

Apparently the war we are fighting against them is not the same war they are fighting against us.

This story from Investor’s Business Daily may contain a clue to help answer the question we ask in the post immediately below concerning the kid-glove treatment of a Muslim terrorist in Britain:

The Pentagon has launched a 45-day probe into the Fort Hood massacre, promising to find answers to why it happened and how it can be prevented from happening again. But the investigation may prove an exercise in futility, judging from PC remarks by military brass.

“My message to all those in uniform — including Muslims in uniform — is how much we appreciate their service. The diversity of our force is one of its greatest strengths,” said the Joint Chiefs chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, who appeared alongside the defense secretary to announce the inquiry, which reports say will focus on mental health services for troubled troops. …

Military brass appear to be doubling down on the political correctness that blinded them to warning signs telegraphed by the Quran-waving Muslim officer accused of the worst mass killing on a domestic military base in U.S. history and the bloodiest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.

The breakdown in security stems from “fears over offending a member of a religious minority,” finds a report by the Westminster Institute, a security think tank. So worried about conveying any notion that it’s at war with Islam, the Defense Department has deluded itself into believing that the enemy is bereft of religious motivation.

Though the enemy clearly states that it’s waging “jihad,” or holy war, against us, it’s now taboo to use the term because it risks reinforcing the idea that the U.S. is at war with Islam itself. “We are not at war with jihad,” a high-ranking Pentagon official said at a recent conference. “Jihad is a legitimate component of Islam” — no worse than fasting or bowing to Mecca.

Even defining the enemy as “jihadist” is no longer acceptable, leaving GIs to fight an enemy their own commanders refuse to name. The 2009 U.S. National Intelligence Strategy, which takes into account Pentagon priorities, uses the term Islam zero times, Muslim 0, jihad 0 and jihadist 0. In sharp contrast, the 9/11 Commission Report, released in 2004, used the word Islam 322 times, Muslim 145, jihad 126 and jihadist 32. It took five short years to completely whitewash the Islamist threat. Any wonder [Nidal Malik] Hasan was treated with kid gloves?

Posted under Britain, Commentary, Defense, Islam, Muslims, United Kingdom, United States, War by Jillian Becker on Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Tagged with , , ,

This post has 27 comments.

Permalink

British justice is a joke 75

Could anyone explain why a jailed al-Qaeda terrorist deserves to have his every wish gratified, every demand for his greater comfort and convenience supplied?

From The Sun:

Hate preacher Abu Hamza has got huge new wardrobes in his prison cell – after he whinged about his robes getting creased.

Taxpayers paid hundreds of pounds for the Ikea-style furniture after he moaned a lack of storage was crumpling his Islamic prayer garments.

Belmarsh prison staff ordered and built the flat pack just days after the request by hook-handed Hamza, who is wanted in the US over al-Qaeda-linked terror charges.

A source at the South East London nick said: “Once again, Hamza demands special treatment and the authorities cave in. Everyone’s joking about what they’ll do next for him – perhaps a butler.”

Hamza, 51, jailed in 2006 for inciting hatred, had £650 lever taps put in his cell this year.

Posted under Britain, Islam, Muslims, Terrorism, United Kingdom by Jillian Becker on Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Tagged with , , ,

This post has 75 comments.

Permalink

A surge of restraint 1

Again it is Diana West who says what needs to be said about the war in Afghanistan.

From the Washington Examiner:

Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s long-awaited testimony before Congress on the Afghanistan “surge” was, according to one account, “uneventful.” The general himself, another story noted, was “a study in circumspection.” And questioning from lawmakers was, said a third, “gentle.”

“Ineffectual” is more like it. Throw in “callous,” too, given House members’ obligations to constituents in the war zone, operating under what are surely the most restrictive rules of engagement in U.S. history.

But not a single lawmaker appears to have ventured one question about these dangerously disarming ROEs, which, in McChrystal’s controversial view, are key to the success of his “counterinsurgency” strategy. What kind of a commander puts his forces’ lives at increased risk for a historically unsuccessful theory that depends not on winning battles against enemies, but on winning the “trust,” or, as we used to say (and as Gen. David Petraeus put it in Iraq), the “hearts and minds” of a primitive people immersed in the anti-Western traditions of Islam?

That would have made a nice icebreaker of a question for any lawmaker troubled by the Petraeus-McChrystal policy of elevating Afghan “population protection” over U.S. “force protection” to win “the support” of this 99 percent Islamic country, and the rules that American forces must follow to do so. If, that is, there were any lawmakers so troubled.

Things really tightened up back in July, when McChrystal essentially grounded air support for troops except in dire circumstances. … The McChrystal counterinsurgency rules now include: No night searches. Villagers must be warned before searches. Afghan National Army or Afghan police must accompany U.S. units on searches. Searches must account, according to International Security Assistance Force headquarters, “for the unique cultural sensitivities toward local women.” (“Islamic repressiveness” is more accurate, but that’s another story.) U.S. soldiers may not fire on the enemy unless the enemy is preparing to fire first. U.S. forces may not engage the enemy if civilians are present. U.S. forces may fire at an enemy caught in the act of placing an improvised explosive device, but not walking away from IED area. And on it goes.

Here’s another ROE that McChrystal should have been asked to justify to all Americans who hope to see their loved ones return home in one piece. The London Times recently reported that Marines, about to embark on a dangerous supply mission, were shown a PowerPoint presentation that first illustrated locations of IEDs along the way and then warned the Marines “not to fire indiscriminately even if they were fired on.”

The Times story went on to note: “The briefing ended with a projected screen of McChrystal’s quote: “It’s not how many you kill, it’s how many you convince.”

Another question: How many you convince of what, general? Of the depravity of child marriage? Of the injustice of Shariah laws that subjugate women and non-Muslims? Of the inhumanity of jihad?

Of course not. In an oblique reference that likely took in Islam, McChrystal told Congress: “I think it’s very important that from an overall point of view, we understand how Afghan culture must define itself, and we be limited in our desire to change the fundamentals of it.”

Fine. I don’t want to change Afghan culture, either. But acknowledging its roots in an ideology that is anti-Western is crucial to devising strategy for the region. That’s obvious. But not to any of our leaders.

Final question: Are such leaders, civilian and military, doing their duty when they send the nation to war with a strategy that totally ignores jihad, the war doctrine of the enemy?

Posted under Afghanistan, Commentary, Islam, jihad, Muslims, Terrorism, United States, War by Jillian Becker on Sunday, December 13, 2009

Tagged with , , , , ,

This post has 1 comment.

Permalink

Freedom and religion 76

Among free people there will always be many who hold absurd beliefs, such as those of Christianity. Some will hold beliefs that are not only absurd but cruel, such as those of Islam. The beliefs should be argued against. The people who hold them should not be persecuted, though they must be stopped from harming others. That remains in any case the most important function of law.

From an article by Luke Goodrich, Director of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, in the Wall Street Journal:

The view of religion as a threat is, of course, common. “New atheists,” such as Richard Dawkins, are one manifestation of that view; he dubs the Catholic Church a “disgusting institution,” one of the “greatest force[s] for evil in the world.” But new atheists are not the only ones. Others cite a history of religious wars, Muslim oppression of women, or Christian skepticism of science as proving the dangers of religion. Backward, superstitious, and bigoted, a threat to science and progress: religion is a divisive, intolerant force that governments should tame.

There are two possible responses to this view. One is to attack the premise, arguing that, no, religion really is a force for social good. Religion motivated 19th century abolitionists; religion gave us Mother Teresa; religion permeates the Louvre.

But might there be reasons to protect religious freedom even assuming religion is harmful? I offer three.

First, a practical one: suppressing religion may exacerbate the very problems it is designed to solve. History shows that religion does not disappear when governments try to suppress it. It goes underground, sometimes erupting more violently than if it were not suppressed.

Second, empowering governments to deem religion harmful, and therefore suppress it, opens the door to tyranny. Freedom of religion and freedom of expression are inextricably linked. If the government can deem religion harmful and suppress it in the name of public order, it can do the same to other ideas. It is no coincidence that many of the 20th century’s most tyrannical governments—Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia—made suppression of religion a centerpiece of their administration.

[Third] Finally, suppressing religion—even when done in the name of freedom and equality—strikes at the heart of human dignity, which is the foundation of all human rights. Every human being is born with a “religious” impulse—the urge to seek truth, to embrace the truth as one finds it, and to order one’s life accordingly. As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says, “All human beings are born free” and are “endowed with reason and conscience.” Absent a serious threat of violence or imminent harm, suppressing religion interferes with people’s ability to be fully human, to seek and embrace the truth as they understand it. A serious commitment to human rights requires governments to respect the religious impulse—even if much of society thinks religious beliefs are wrong, silly, or even harmful. If the European Court of Human Rights cannot get past its fear of religion, its jurisprudence will only become more incoherent, and all human rights more fragile.

On the second and third points we agree. They are in defense of freedom.

To the first point – that persecution can strengthen an undesirable movement – we would add this maxim from our own Articles of Reason:

Many a belief can survive persecution but not critical examination.

Israel alone 83

The great British historian Andrew Roberts made an illuminating and accurate speech, a speech so good that it is hard to find a word strong enough to praise it as it deserves, to the Anglo-Israel Association on December 8, 2009, the 60th anniversary of its founding. In it he traced the relationship between Britain and Israel from the time a ‘national home’ for the Jewish people was brought into existence by the Balfour Declaration at the end of the First World War, to the present day when Israel is under threat of annihilation by Iran. He laid stress on the consistently hostile attitude of the British Foreign Office to the Jewish State, and its unremitting [and emotionally-charged] support for the Arabs. You can find the whole speech here.

This is how he concluded it, speaking of the danger posed by Iran to Israel’s very existence, and why Israel would be justified in making a pre-emptive strike against the Islamic republic:

None of us can pretend to know what lies ahead for Israel, but if she decides pre-emptively to strike against such a threat – in the same way that Nelson pre-emptively sank the Danish Fleet at Copenhagen and Churchill pre-emptively sank the Vichy Fleet at Oran – then she can expect nothing but condemnation from the British Foreign Office. She should ignore such criticism, because for all the fine work done by this Association over the past six decades – work that’s clearly needed as much now as ever before – Britain has only ever really been at best a fairweather friend to Israel.

Although History does not repeat itself, it’s cadences do occasionally rhyme, and if the witness of History is testament to anything it is testament to this:

That in her hopes of averting the threat of a Second Holocaust, only Israel can be relied upon to act decisively in the best interests of the Jews.

We hope that his words might encourage Israel – if Israel needs encouragement – to make such a strike in the very near future.

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »