It seems that the chance of Israel’s survival is about to be considerably diminished.

For some time it has been all too predictable that a small beleaguered democratic Jewish state in the midst of hostile Arab tyrannies would be existentially threatened when Europe became dominated by its Muslim populations in the middle of this century. It will be a tiny strip of dry land in a rising Islamic ocean covering a large part of Asia, north Africa, and all Europe.

Now it seems that its doom is much nearer, as European foreign ministers have declared that their countries are willing to recognize a self-declared State of Palestine. The information comes hot on the heels of announcements by Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay that that’s what they intend to do.

What this means in effect is that Europe will be joining in the war of annihilation the Arabs have been waging against Israel ever since it was legally established in 1948.

Israel can win a war against the Arabs, and probably against a nuclear armed Iran, but not against Europe, and especially not when America is under the leadership of an anti-Israel, pro-Islam president.

Melanie Phillips writes about this in the Spectator. Even she, to our mind, does not seem fully to comprehend the significance of what this EU policy – if it becomes policy, which it probably will – would be. Her analysis, however, is spot on:

Europe’s foreign ministers have threatened to recognise an independent Palestinian state to punish Israeli refusal to halt ‘illegal’ Jewish settlements. …

So let’s get our heads round this.

Israel, the victim of six decades of Arab aggression, is to be punished for frustrating ‘peace’ talks with its aggressors in which it is prepared to take part, on the grounds that it refuses to halt building homes which are said to be illegal but are not; while no punishment is to be meted out to the Arab aggressors who refused to take part in negotiations during the ten months that Israel did halt building these homes — within territories which during these past nine decades it has been entitled to settle under international law – even though these Arabs are the belligerents in the Middle East conflict and continue repeatedly to assert that they will never accept Israel as a Jewish state and who accordingly teach their children to grow up to hate and kill Israelis in order to achieve their never-renounced aim of destroying Israel; nevertheless these genocidal belligerents who have repeatedly turned down a state of their own ever since this was first offered to them more than seven decades ago because they wanted to wipe out Israel instead are to be rewarded by the EU while their victim is to be punished; and all to realise the creation of a state of Palestine which will surely turn in short measure into part of greater Iran, to the terrible cost of the Arabs living in such a state of Palestine and placing the free world in even more danger.

Question: are these morally bankrupt European politicians evil, or just very, very stupid?

Our answer is that they are evil, of course, since their intention is so intensely unjust as to be nothing less than evil – though we don’t rule out the high probability that they’re stupid too.

We see no suggestion that Europe will demand any concessions from Palestine on Israel’s security – or even that Palestine recognize Israel – in exchange for European recognition of Palestinian statehood. We can see no suggestion that in exchange for recognition of another Arab state within designated borders, the Europeans will demand that Arabs forfeit the “inalienable” right of over 1million of their number to reside in Israel (whatever its borders). Understandably. In making those demands, Europe would be putting itself in Israel’s place negotiating “peace” on the same terms. And will get nowhere, just as every Israeli government has got nowhere.

So, Europe, by recognizing Palestine, will also be tacitly supporting the ongoing war of Palestine against Israel. There is nothing to suggest that Palestine – led by the PA or by Hamas – will stay happily behind any borders. The “right of return” will still fuel resistance, as will Islamic fundamentalism. Israel will not cede Jerusalem, even if chunks of Judea and Samaria are handed over to a Palestine. The fighting will continue.

Will Europe put its money where its mouth is? Will it boycott and sanction Israel economically? Will it, in fact, implement the Arab boycott – which is part of the 60-year-old Arab war against Israel?

In other words, will Europe’s tacit support of Palestine by recognizing it as a de jure state become an active war alliance against Israel – economically and militarily? Does Europe propose to field an army at the Palestine borders – through the UN or under its own colors? Will the Europeans fight a border contest on behalf of Arabs? Will they fight the Israelis’ self-defense on behalf of Arabs? Will they, in effect, continue their unfinished business against Jews, in alliance (again) with Arabs?

Unless Europe is prepared to impose sanctions and fight Israel when Israel takes action against Palestinian rocket-launchers and terrorist acts, we cannot see how the European recognition of Palestine along stated borders (1948 armistice lines?!) will change the situation at all, except in one very important respect: peace will have been decoupled from statehood. The dangerous delusion that peace and Palestinian statehood can simultaneously be reached after negotiations – direct, indirect, Likud or Labor, mediated by quartets, or soloists – will be shattered, finally and forever. The Europeans will awaken to the fact that national self-determination for Palestine is defined as war with Israel (whether the nation has real or imaginary borders), for as long as Israel exists within any borders at all.

With the land-for-peace delusion gone, and Europe actively siding with the Arabs against Israel, it may be harder for Europe to pretend – even to itself – that it is motivated by compassion for a select group of Arabs, or justice, or the wish for peace, or even, as we hear so often, the best interests of Israel and Jews. The only mighty international law principles Europe will vindicate is that mighty principals make international law. Sadly, it will be the Jews who will (again) pay the price for the revelation of this banal truth.

What Israel should urgently do – in anticipation of any declaration of Palestinian statehood – is declare and secure the borders it is prepared to defend. That would at least put an end to the negotiability of that territory under the futile “land for peace” formula and place it firmly under the protection of the “war for war ” formula. If Israel defends its borders in war, she keeps them. Peace, should it ever come, will be for peace, and only for peace.

Which Israel might at last enjoy for a few remaining decades.

C. Gee   December 15, 2010

“Three months after 9/11, every major Taliban city in Afghanistan had fallen – first Mazar-i-Sharif, then Kabul, finally Kandahar. Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar were on the run. It looked as if the war was over, and the Americans and their Afghan allies had won,”  ABC news reminded America on May 31, 2010. The war was then in its 104th month, and had become America’s longest, if the Cold War isn’t counted. (Vietnam, the next longest, lasted 103 months.)

ABC did not add that that was when America should have got out; which it should have, with a warning that if any American or American interest were attacked again by terrorists based in Afghanistan, all hell would be loosed on it – a threat that should of course have been carried out if the warning had not been heeded.

The war is now in its 110th month. It’s been dragging on for more than 9 years.

Yesterday, December 14, 2010, the New York Times reported, under the headline Intelligence Reports Offer Dim Views of Afghan War:

The findings in the reports [one on Afghanistan and one on Pakistan], called National Intelligence Estimates, represent the consensus view of the United States’ 16 intelligence agencies, as opposed to the military, and were provided last week to some members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees.

They were described to the NYT “by a number of American officials who read the reports’ executive summaries”.

The military objects to the findings.

Pentagon and military officials …  say the reports were written by desk-bound Washington analysts who have spent limited time, if any, in Afghanistan and have no feel for the war. …

The dispute “reflects the longstanding cultural differences between intelligence analysts, whose job is to warn of potential bad news, and military commanders, who are trained to promote ‘can do’ optimism”, and it also “reflects how much the debate in Washington over the war is now centered on whether the United States can succeed in Afghanistan without the cooperation of Pakistan”.

After years and billions spent trying to win the support of the Pakistanis, [military commanders] are now proceeding on the assumption that there will be limited help from them. The American commanders and officials readily describe the havens for [Taliban] insurgents in Pakistan as a major impediment to military operations. … American officials say Pakistan supports the insurgents as a proxy force in Afghanistan, preparing for the day the Americans leave.

But the US continues to send Pakistan about $2 billion in military and civilian aid each year.

“You’re not going to get to the point where the Taliban are gone and the border is perfectly controlled,” said Representative Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat who serves on the Armed Services Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in an interview on Tuesday.

Mr. Smith … predicted that Democrats in Congress would resist continuing to spend $100 billion annually on Afghanistan.

“We’re not going to be hanging out over there fighting these guys like we’re fighting them now for 20 years,” Mr. Smith said.

Fifteen years? Ten? Five? One? Why even one more day?

“Suddenly, it’s not about secret information anymore, or diplomatic relations. It’s about control. The atmosphere chills.”

So Diana West writes on the continuing Wikileaks affair in a Townhall article which needs to be read in full. (We have quoted her before on this subject in our post Thanks to WikiLeaks? December  3, 2010.)

WikiLeaks is exposing the way our government conducts “business.” It is not a pretty process. …

The rock-bottom worst of the revelations … shows Uncle Sam patronizing the American people, lying to us about fundamental issues that any democracy catastrophically attacked and supporting armies abroad ever since doesn’t merely deserve to know, but needs to know. Our democracy demands it, if it is to remain a democracy.

Most pundits, certainly on the Right, disagree. As Commentary editor Gabriel Schoenfeld wrote in the WSJ this week: WikiLeaks “is not informing our democracy but waging war on its ability to conduct diplomacy and defend itself.”

Funny, but I feel more informed — and particularly about what a rotten job the government knows it’s doing in conducting diplomacy and waging war on democracy’s behalf. I know more about the government’s feckless accommodation of incomparable corruption in Afghanistan; its callousness toward Pakistani government support for the Taliban and other groups fighting our soldiers in Afghanistan; its inability to prevail upon “banker” China to stop facilitating the military rise of Iran … and its failures to prevail upon aid-recipient Pakistan to allow us to secure its vulnerable nuclear assets.

One running theme that emerges from the leaked cables is that the U.S. government consistently obscures the identity of the nation’s foes, for example, depicting the hostile peoples of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States as “allies.” It’s not that such hostility is a secret, or even constitutes news. But the cables reveal that our diplomats actually recognize that these countries form the financial engine that drives global jihad … But they, with the rest of the government, kept the American people officially in the dark.

Then came WikiLeaks, Internet publisher of leaked information, prompting the question: What is more important — the information theft that potentially harms government power, or the knowledge contained therein that might salvage our national destiny? …

The body politic should be electrified by the fact, as revealed by the leaked cables, that nations from Pakistan to Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia are regularly discussed as black holes of infinite corruption into which American money gushes, either through foreign aid or oil revenue, and unstaunched and unstaunchable sources of terror or terror-financing. If this were to get out — and guess what, it did — the foreign policy of at least the past two administrations, Democrat and Republican alike, would be unmasked as a colossal failure.

And maybe that’s what behind the acute distress over WikiLeaks. Last week, I put it down to political embarrassment; this week, a new, more disturbing factor has emerged. The state power structure, the establishment more or less, believes itself to be threatened. Its fearful response has been quite startling. First, there were calls for WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange’s execution; these have simmered down to calls for trial. Amazon and PayPal cut off service to the WikiLeaks website. Then, in a twist or kink perhaps beyond even Orwell’s ken, Assange was arrested without bond this week on an Interpol warrant over very fishy-sounding charges about “unprotected” sex in Sweden — a country, we may now ironically note, of draconian laws governing sexual intercourse and no laws whatsoever governing violent Islamic no-gone-zones.

Those two harpies – a pair of celebrity groupies? – who conspired together to get a man they’d chased after arrested on absurd charges under ridiculous Swedish sex laws, are contemptible, and the Swedes who made and enforce such laws are beneath contempt.

Assange has not committed an act of treason since he is not an American citizen or resident in the US. If he is guilty of espionage for publishing the cables someone stole, then so is the New York Times, and if he is extradited and prosecuted for it, the responsible NYT people should be too.

We have yet to hear if any person has been exposed to danger or actually harmed by the leaks, and no cables that we have read could so expose anyone. We have been told by a commenter, CEM, that we “lack understanding as to the seriousness of the Wikileaks release of classified documents and information”, that “there  does not have to be a direct leaking of names to expose agents and sources”, as “often, the information alone can be innocuous”, but “the content and context of the data alone can provide clues to counter agents and governments as to the identities of agents and sources that can place them in grave danger”. He may be right. Some of us have, however, had some years of experience dealing with organizations concerned with international affairs and have learnt something from them (enough to state confidently that by far the greater part of “secret information”, about 95%, is from open sources, and of the remaining 5% very little is ever useful). In our judgment, the claim that these cables could harm the United States’ foreign relations, implicate secret friends among enemies, or dissuade any foreign power from dealing with the US if it needs to, would be hard to substantiate.

We respect the views of those who think otherwise. We share their patriotic instincts. We have thought long and hard about the whole affair (giving special consideration to the reasonable points made by Fernando Montenegro – see our post More on Wikileaks, December 4, 2010). From what we can discover about Julian Assange we do not think he would be on our side of most issues. If the publication of the cables really harms any individual, we wouldn’t think of defending it. If it has damaged the United States in any way that we would recognize as damage, we would be as angry as the angriest. But as far as we can see now, and knowing that we risk the disagreement of some of our highly valued readers, we line up with Diana West. Our libertarian instincts have been strongly roused. We wonder if some of our more libertarian readers feel and think the same way. We hope all our readers will consider our arguments as carefully as we try to consider theirs.

The WikiLeaks operation could be put to permanent good effect – if only our fellow conservatives who hold liberty to be the highest value would learn the real lesson from it, and let the information they have been given make a difference in the future to the sort of people they trust to steer the ship of state.

It should ensure that never again is there another captain like Obama.

And that no administration and Department of State goes on treating citizens like kids who must be kept from knowing what they’re doing.

Michael Gerson, a conservative writer, fulsomely praises the Obama administration and the State Department for what he considers a triumph of US foreign policy, a referendum to be held in southern Sudan on its secession.

The Obama administration … is on the verge of a major diplomatic achievement in Sudan. Barring technical failures that delay the vote, or unexpected violence, South Sudan will approve an independence referendum on Jan. 9. Six months later, a new flag will rise, a new anthem will be played. It is a rare, risky, deeply American enterprise: midwifing the birth of a new nation. …

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been pushing to elevate the issue to the presidential level, demanding, according to one official, “one team, one fight.” In August, President Obama declared that Denis McDonough, then the chief of staff on the National Security Council and now deputy national security adviser, would coordinate a unified government response. The administration’s common approach, dubbed “the road map,” publicly promised the regime in Khartoum a series of carrots — reviewing its status on the state sponsors of terrorism list, beginning the lifting of sanctions and starting discussions on debt relief — in exchange for allowing the south to go quietly. …

Elements of the regime in Khartoum seem prepared for sullen acceptance of southern independence …

Every diplomatic achievement is rewarded by new complexities. Between the independence referendum in January and full independence on July 9, 2011, a variety of issues — concerning borders, citizenship, security and the distribution of oil revenues — will need to be resolved. …  South Sudan will require considerable help to avoid the fate of a failed state — particularly to build its capacity to govern and fight corruption. … 

But even partial diplomatic successes are worth celebrating — and this is less partial than most. Assuming the last lap of a long race is completed, southern independence will allow these long-suffering people to govern and defend themselves … And southern sovereignty will permanently limit the ability of Khartoum to do harm in a vast region it has harmed for too long.

The most timely message sent by this achievement concerns the nature of the diplomatic task. It was the intention of recent WikiLeaks disclosures to reveal the names of American diplomats and expose their malign influence in the world. Well, here is a leak of my own. People such as McDonough, Michelle Gavin and Samantha Power [see here and here]  in the White House, along with Johnnie Carson, Scott Gration [see here] and Princeton Lyman at the State Department, are employing American power to noble purpose. I mention their names (none of them secret) because they represent how skilled, effective government officials can shape history, improve the lives of millions and bring honor to the country they serve.

This is not only counting chickens before they’re hatched, but celebrating their surpassing excellence before the eggs are even laid.

True, Gerson touches on possible problems and set-backs, some of them potentially disastrous, but his delight overcomes all doubt.

It would be highly desirable for the Christian and animist south to separate from the Muslim north, but will it really be achieved bloodlessly? We should wait to see. And if the south’s independence is achieved, will it be safe from the terrible persecution by the north that it has suffered from for centuries? Will “southern sovereignty  … permanently limit the ability of Khartoum to do harm in a vast region it has harmed for too long”, as Gerson so confidently asserts?

And the question should be asked, is it just – or sound policy – for Sudan, ruled by the blood-soaked tyrant President Omar Bashir, to be taken off the list of countries that sponsor terrorism when he himself is one of the most monstrous and persistent terrorists, persecutors, and mass murderers in the world?

One might say that it is worth doing, even if unjust, if it is the price that must be paid for the safety of the southern Sudanese. But will Bashir stick to the deal?  The answer is bound up with the question of whether or not the International Criminal Court’s warrant for his arrest, for crimes against humanity and war crimes, will be cancelled. A cancellation is not one of the carrots he’s been offered, and it may not be in the power of the US administration to offer it. But it is what Bashir wants more than anything else.

It’s worth listening to an opinion very different from Gerson’s. Here’s a regional Islamic view, from the current internet issue of the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram:

The ICC arrest warrant on Al-Bashir is taking its toll on Sudan on more than one level. It has …  impeded a possible solution of the Darfur crisis, for the Darfur insurgents are in no mood to negotiate with a president who’s been indicted as a war criminal. Even before the warrant was issued, Khartoum was having trouble reaching a deal on Darfur. Now the prospects are indeed dire.

As for the self-determination referendum, slated for 9 January 2011, no happy ending is likely to develop. Incensed by the warrant, Al-Bashir’s government may try to disrupt the referendum. Why? Because if they allowed the south to secede, the international community may be emboldened and press harder for the implementation of ICC rulings, or try to coerce the Sudanese government into resolving the problems in Darfur …

The hardliners with Al-Bashir’s party, the National Congress, believe that the secession of the south would be the thin end of the wedge. …

Sudanese Vice-President Ali Osman Taha, who took part recently in discussions concerning Sudan’s future in New York, says that the ICC warrant on Al-Bashir should be rescinded. He also calls for sanctions to be removed and Sudanese debts to be written off.

The international community has so far declined to make such sweeping concessions, but it has offered smaller gestures. … Sudan was told that it may be removed from the terror list within months. But, for now at least, there doesn’t seem to be much hope for the ICC warrant to be cancelled.

There is always the possibility that Sudan may offer concessions on the south in the hope of getting the warrant removed. …

What makes the warrant such a delicate issue is not just that Al-Bashir’s future is at stake. Two other Sudanese have been indicted by the court: Humanitarian Affairs [sic] Minister Ahmed Haroun and Janjaweed leader Ali Abdel-Rahman. … Many other Sudanese officials fear that they would be next. If they allow Al-Bashir to fall, the chances are more heads are going to roll.

Sudanese presidential advisor Ghazi Salaheddin is dismissive of what the international community has so far offered Sudan. …

Sudan is being asked to hold the elections on time without much regard to the referendum’s crucial repercussions or the fact that it may lead to secession and war simultaneously …

In return (for helping with the referendum), Sudan was promised “six export licences for American companies working in agriculture and health,” Salaheddin noted. Then, once the country is divided, the president will still have to turn himself in to the ICC. Not exactly the arrangement Sudan was hoping for.

Salaheddin said that such offers debase the referendum, for they turn it from a matter of principle into a business proposition or worse, a bargaining chip in US foreign policy. …

Sudanese writer Tharwat Qassem maintains that the abrogation of the warrant on Al-Bashir is the sole concern for Sudan’s National Congress. Removing Sudan from the terror list doesn’t mean much. And the lifting of sanctions for Khartoum is beside the point. Also, allowing Khartoum to import agricultural equipment and computers, as Washington did recently, is a joke.

The cancellation of the warrant is the “only carrot the National Congress craves,” Qassem said. But the price for revoking the warrant would be high. For starters, Khartoum will have to promise to facilitate the birth of a new state in south Sudan.

Al-Bashir may be willing to do just that, according to Qassem. “The statements in which Al-Bashir says that the loss of the south is not the end of the world is a step in this direction.”

It is true that the loss of the south may not be the end of the world. But it may mean that Al-Bashir would tighten his hold on power indefinitely. This is something that many lobbyists in the West, including human rights groups, don’t want to see happen. …

So nothing is cut and dried, not even the carrots. The referendum may well go ahead in January, and – just as in Afghan and Iraqi elections – there may be a huge and excited turn-out for it; but what then results is not predictable. There’s too much ominous doubt in Khartoum to allow bragging confidence in Washington, D.C., and Gerson’s applause is premature.

[See also this article at PajamasMedia: the iniquitous rulers of Sudan are already reacting by intensifying the jihad.]

From Mere Rhetoric

Many of our readers are as fascinated by the Stuxnet worm as we are, and as happy that it is sabotaging Iran’s nuclear program.

For those who would like to know more about what it does and how it does it, Ed Barnes at Fox News goes into some detail. Here are quotations from his report:

The target was seemingly impenetrable; for security reasons, it lay several stories underground and was not connected to the World Wide Web. And that meant Stuxnet had to act as sort of a computer cruise missile: As it made its passage through a set of unconnected computers, it had to grow and adapt to security measures and other changes until it reached one that could bring it into the nuclear facility.

When it ultimately found its target, it would have to secretly manipulate it until it was so compromised it ceased normal functions.

Barnes explains more about how it works, and comes to this:

Masking itself from the plant’s security and other systems, the worm then ordered the centrifuges to rotate extremely fast, and then to slow down precipitously. This damaged the converter, the centrifuges and the bearings, and it corrupted the uranium in the tubes. It also left Iranian nuclear engineers wondering what was wrong, as computer checks showed no malfunctions in the operating system.

Time passed, the Iranian nuclear engineers and computer experts continued to be baffled, and the worm grew stronger and stronger, proliferated, and became ever more effective.

Estimates are that this went on for more than a year, leaving the Iranian program in chaos. And as it did, the worm grew and adapted throughout the system. As new worms entered the system, they would meet and adapt and become increasingly sophisticated.

Servers were traced to two unexpected places:

During this time the worms reported back to two servers that had to be run by intelligence agencies, one in Denmark and one in Malaysia. The servers monitored the worms and were shut down once the worm had infiltrated Natanz. Efforts to find those servers since then have yielded no results.

This went on until June of last year, when a Belarusan company working on the Iranian power plant in Beshehr discovered it in one of its machines. It quickly put out a notice on a Web network monitored by computer security experts around the world. Ordinarily these experts would immediately begin tracing the worm and dissecting it, looking for clues about its origin and other details.

But that didn’t happen, because within minutes all the alert sites came under attack and were inoperative for 24 hours.

The Iranian technicians labor on in an atmosphere of dread, fearing for their very lives which have become “a living hell“.

As Iranians struggled with the setbacks, they began searching for signs of sabotage. From inside Iran there have been unconfirmed reports that the head of the plant was fired shortly after the worm wended its way into the system and began creating technical problems, and that some scientists who were suspected of espionage disappeared or were executed. And counter intelligence agents began monitoring all communications between scientists at the site, creating a climate of fear and paranoia.

Even harder to find, and perfectly invulnerable, is the nameless Mind that made the Worm and sent it to do its work.

All praise to it!

Islam dare not reform or modernize for fear of destroying itself, Barry Rubin conjectures.

He writes that first the Reformation, and then the nineteenth century attempt to adapt Christianity to the modern age, worked a disenchantment among Christians resulting in an irreversible decline of the faith itself, and that in the light of this history Islam fears to change.

Scholars in the Age of Science hoped to reconcile science and religion but found them irreconcilable. Others went  in search of the historical Jesus, and the more they discerned of that dim figure, the more effectively they disentangled him from the Christian religion.

By the time this process was finished, huge numbers had fallen away from belief, while what remained in many churches, especially among the elite, is a sort of pious-flavored combination of social justice and social-climbing without much presence of divinity. Such arid religion is not particularly successful in inspiring, much less retaining, members. …

Western political, cultural, and intellectual elites today are, whatever patina of hypocrisy remains, overwhelmingly atheist. I’m not saying this is a good or bad thing. It’s simply my observation and analysis.

We see it as a distinctly Good Thing.

Rubin goes on to say the churches are aware that the more their members know  about science and history, the more likely they are to defect:

Evangelical churches retain their enthusiasm, but they have a difficult choice: do they try to shield their members, deeming knowledge unsafe for them, or can they really create an alternative elite that remains steadfast? The unpalatable alternatives often seem to be ignorance or defection.

To be conventional rather than consciously hypocriticial, politicians pretend t0 believe.

Still, it is necessary for at least those members of the elite engaged in politics to pretend they have some religious faith….

Then he goes on to suggest that Islam, seeing what happened to religion in the West, fears to start a process of reform which could be similarly lethal:

My interest is how this affects Islam and the Middle East. In light of this Western history, how strong is the motive to reform Islam?

The answer is that it is far less strong than outside observers may think. The year is 2010, not 1517 when Martin Luther proclaimed his revolt against the Catholic Church and could in full confidence believe his reform would strengthen Christianity, as it arguably did for several centuries. Can Muslims believe the equivalent of that idea today?

It is 2010, not the 1820s or 1830s when [scholars] could believe that a thorough critical inquiry into Christianity would preserve its hegemony in European society. Can Muslims believe the equivalent of that idea today?

Islam suffers not due to any military or economic aggression of the West, but from the pervasiveness of apparently Western — but really more generically modern — ideas. For the great majority of believing Muslims, any serious reform of their religion is risky, probably too risky, to undertake and still expect the patient will survive. …

Here, then, is the paradox. Only massive social change, secularizing intellectuals, open debate, a critical examination of the most basic religious beliefs, a transformation of the role of women, and similar things can open up a modern society in Muslim-majority societies. Yet … the 2010 Muslim would see [such change] as suicide…

He thinks that fighting to preserve and spread their religion is a “logical response” on the part of Muslims who fear change, and the jihad  we are being subjected to is a struggle against modernity.

Conversely, to dig in, kill the critics, raise the walls higher, try to shut out (or severely constrain) modernity, and demagogically stoke the fires of jihad really is a logical response for those who want to preserve their religion and society as it has existed for centuries.

And he pessimistically expects that the fight could be continued for centuries, since there are “many in the Muslim-majority world ready to die trying” to avoid adaptation to the modern world.

Many who would rather cling to their belief in the unknown than trust themselves to the known!

But we ask, what if the secular world fights back?

We think that when the West comes round (as surely it must?) to recognizing that Islam is its enemy, and uses its political, military, economic, and above all intellectual resources to beat it, that old time religion will soon shrivel, and  eventually, along with all irrational beliefs dating back thousands of years, fade away.

Scott Johnson of PowerLine wonders how Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who tried to detonate a bomb at a Christmas tree-lighting in Portland, Oregon, became an American citizen:

Today’s Los Angeles Times features a profile of the would-be Portland bomber named Mohamed Mohamud. Those of us wondering how the Mohamud family was admitted to the United States, or how Mohamud came to swear fealty to the United States and become a naturalized citizen, will have to look elsewhere for an answer. The best the Times’s two reporters could come up with is this: “He and his parents, Mariam and Osman Barre, came to America when he was 5 as part of a diaspora that brought tens of thousands of Somali refugees to U.S. cities. About 6,500 Somalis are said to live in the Portland area.” Well, thanks.

Here we found a part of the answer:

Mohamud’s family fled Somalia in the early 1990s, and his father, Osman Barre, a well-educated engineer, worked to establish them in Oregon.

“Osman was very sophisticated,” said Chris Oace, a former refugee worker for Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon who helped the family resettle here in the early 1990s. “Some refugees are afraid of having Christian churches help them. But it wasn’t an issue with his family at all.”

What a menace the well-meaning are! They do so much harm.

Stupid benevolence, which characterizes contemporary Christianity, is a serious fault, always dangerous and often damaging or even fatal.

How often can we know enough about other people’s wants and needs to be certain that our interference will do good? How often and how accurately can we foretell the consequences of our actions?

As a moral goal, trying not to do harm, though unambitious, is at least respectful of our fellow human beings, and difficult enough to achieve.

Jillian Becker   November 29, 2010

The Muslims who want to build a mosque at Ground Zero have applied for a federal grant of $5,000,000 to help them realize their psychologically sadistic scheme.

They apparently see no reason why American tax-payers should not contribute to a building that would, in the eyes of most Americans, and of Muslims all over the world, celebrate the Islamic triumph of 9/11 when Muslims murdered some 3,000 people in a variety of horrific ways in the name of their nasty religion.

Investor’s Business Daily comments in an editorial:

Having taxpayers foot the bill would be the ultimate insult … a slap in the face to the victims of terror.

The application was submitted under a “community and cultural enhancement” grant program administered by the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corporation (LMDC). The agency oversaw the $20 billion in federal aid allocated in the wake of 9/11 and is currently doling out millions in remaining taxpayer funds for community development.

Developers hope to get around the “nonreligious activities” requirement in their application by mentioning only the cultural, educational and community development aspects of the 13-story facility and not the prayer room and other areas where Shariah law, which is diametrically in conflict with Western values and freedoms, will be preached and advocated. …

There is some comfort for most of us in the IBD’s assurance that “the grant is unlikely to be approved since such grants go commonly to finish or assist ongoing projects, not start them.” And the would-be developers do not have funds enough, as yet, to start their taunting project.

But impatient to see the mosque built, and the Muslims victorious, is the Left in general; and its media supporters are pushing the project hard in numerous direct and indirect ways.

Example 1

NBC names Sharif al-Gamal, who owns part of the Ground Zero property that he and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf want to develop into the mosque and “community center”, a “Person of the Year“.

Atlas Shrugs here and Jihad Watch here report and comment on what sort of man this NBC hero is.

From Atlas Shrugs:

Sharif El-Gamal racked up at least seven run-ins with the law …

His most recent arrest was for a Sept. 10, 2005, assault on a barber who sublet a Manhattan apartment from El-Gamal’s brother, Sammy.

The brothers and another man went to the apartment that afternoon to retrieve back rent from Mark Vassiliev …

El-Gamal … cursed at Vassiliev, called him the Arabic curse word “sharmouta” and punched him in the face, breaking his nose and cheekbones.

When he was arrested, El-Gamal denied he socked Vassiliev, but conceded, “[Vassiliev’s] face could have run into my hand,” court papers say.

From Jihad Watch:

The thug Sharif el-Gamal has been sued for an unpaid loan, and faced eviction from his SoHo office over $39,000 in back rent. He was found to owe $21,000 in fines on a property with 13 violations. …

El-Gamal has also threatened a Muslim opponent of the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero; spoken at an event for Hamas-linked CAIR; and has a history of thuggishness, including a recent comment about how beating people up is “exercise & stress relief.”

So why is NBC honoring this thug? Because the mainstream media is avid to get this Islamic supremacist mosque built, and the will of the people be damned. You see how the chips are stacked against the 70% of Americans who oppose the mosque: if the media reflected their concerns at all, Pamela Geller would be Person of the Year for her leading the effort to stop the mosque.

Example 2

Recently, on November 12, 2010, the New York Times featured an admiring profile of Imam Rauf’s wife, Daisy Khan.

Creeping Sharia comments:

When the New York Times ran a profile of Daisy Khan in its “Style” section last week, they clearly meant to create flattering portrait. Instead, the piece, at least to me, revealed the woman’s true priorities and intentions – and why she must be stopped.

Khan, wife of imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his partner in creating the Cordoba House Islamic center on the edges of Ground Zero, has (if this profile is to be believed) one true goal: Islam uber alles. The organization she presides over seeks to glorify Muslims, not (as she claims) to promote interfaith projects. Her focus is Islam, not America. …

Though she insisted to the Times that she and her husband are “law-abiding citizens,” an apartment building they own in New Jersey has been cited for numerous health and fire violations. Moreover, just last week, a Hudson County, N.J. judge placed the building in custodial receivership, putting a local realtor in charge of correcting the violations using monies from October rents, since Khan and Rauf had failed to act themselves. The couple has also been cited for tax violations regarding the non-profit statuses of their various organizations, including Khan’s own American Society for Muslim Advancement. …

It’s not entirely clear what that organization actually does, other than solicit (and receive) grants and various donations. Last year, for instance, ASMA received a one-year, $150,000 endowment from the Henry Luce Foundation “to develop a graduate program in Islamic law for Muslim women.” Would someone please explain to me why ASMA needs $150,000 a year to plan a program that is not even listed among the organization’s projects, goals, or activities?

ASMA’s web site describes a mission to “elevate the discourse on Islam and foster environments in which Muslims thrive.” (“Muslims,” not “Americans.” Not “young men and women.” “Muslims.”) ASMA’s mission statement continues, “We are dedicated to strengthening an authentic expression of Islam based on cultural and religious harmony through interfaith collaboration, youth and women’s empowerment, and arts and cultural exchange.”

But again – notwithstanding the obvious fact that there is nothing “interfaith” about any of this — what, exactly, have they done? Click on “events,” and you’ll find a list of places that Daisy Khan has been invited to speak, or the fact that she was present at the 2007 Frankfurt Book Fair. Click on “programs,” and you get links to various articles about Islam. Click on “arts” and you find listings of exhibitions others have presented and organized, with no funding or other involvement from ASMA itself. Click on “shop,” and you can buy any one of three books – all by Khan’s husband, Imam Rauf.

But nowhere is there an indication of what the organization actually accomplishes, of the activities it has initiated and developed. It is hard to decipher quite what gives the organization legitimacy as a “non-profit” – or, for that matter, where the donations it receives are actually going.

The real and contemptible intention behind the Ground Zero mosque plan is not hard to discern, but for those who can’t see it, some Muslims have spelt it out.

From the IBD editorial:

The mosque at Ground Zero is not about outreach. Its name, Cordoba House, was picked in honor of the bloody Muslim conquest of Cordoba, Spain, in 711. Canadian Muslims Raheel Raza and Tarek Fatah, who sit on the board of the Muslim Canadian Congress, write in the Ottawa Citizen of Aug, 7: “We Muslims know that the idea behind the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation to thumb our noses at the infidel.“

NBC and the New York Times are thumbing their noses hard in sympathy with their country’s ruthless enemy.