Cracking the Code of Civilization

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
27 June '10

Civilization is a code, and while we easily fall into the habit of assuming that civilized norms are universal, they are limited to the civilized. Kindness, humility and reaching out to the enemy are valid behaviors only when they are likely to be reciprocated. Practicing that code toward nations and cultures which markedly refuse to be civilized, is the same thing as painting a target on your own back.

Because civilized codes of conduct only work when they are reciprocal. They allow us to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves and permit us to find common ground based on underlying principles. But to those who choose to be outside the code, such concessions are a weakness. Not a sign of moral strength, but physical cowardice. To the Muslim who has been raised on the tales of the Koranic conquests of Mohammed and his successors, only force represents moral truth. In the Koran, the infidels negotiate in good faith, while Muslims negotiate in bad faith. That is because Islam was meant to supersede the old tribal codes with a superior moral system, based not on honor, but on submission to Allah and Mohammed.

What we might consider foul treachery, was to the Muslim only a means to an end. Because moral behavior no longer had anything to do with trust, only with forcing more victims to submit to Islam. Negotiating in good faith was itself a symptom of a lack of faith. For the true Muslim could never honestly accept any enduring compromise with an infidel that would lessen the temporal power of Islam. He could only do so as a stratagem for weakening the infidel. To do otherwise would be blasphemy and heresy, two charges still commonly raised in the Muslim world against their own leaders who make even the appearance of honest negotiations with Western leaders. Meanwhile the willingness of the infidels to negotiate in good faith, in the Muslim worldview only demonstrated their lack of faith.

Paradoxically the willingness to negotiate in bad faith, to betray and assassinate shows a commitment to something greater. While negotiating in good faith and treating your enemy kindly shows a lack of confidence and principles. This attitude is not unique to Muslim fanatics, it is just as ubiquitous the left of our own cities, which considers radicalism and ruthless terrorism the mark of a true revolutionary conscience. From Lenin to Mao to Che, Communists ridiculed and murdered those who were not willing to be as ruthlessly amoral as them.

(Read full article)

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Swedish Meatballs

The story according to Reuters, as quoted by the Daily Times ( a Pakistani Site)

JERUSALEM: "A proposal before the European Union to endorse the division of Jerusalem would risk closing off half the city to non-Muslims, according to a think tank close to the Israeli government. The Israel Project said the plan could be backed at a regular meeting of the bloc’s 27 foreign ministers on Monday, as part of what it called a bid to “forge a high-profile role” in resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Diplomats in Brussels said the EU meeting was likely to discuss the stalled Middle East peace process, but no radical new policy change was in the works. East Jerusalem has been seen for years as prospective capital of a future Palestinian state. The think tank singled out current EU president Sweden and its foreign minister Carl Bildt, saying he aimed to sideline the EU’s more balanced existing policy. Relations between Sweden and Israel have been irritated recently by what was seen in Israel as an anti-Semitic story in the Swedish press and Israel’s refusal to let a Swedish minister visit Palestinians in the blockaded Gaza Strip." -more

Cold turkey on Turkish Delight

Sarah Honig
Another Tack/JPost
04 December 09

'Turkey has a very special place in my heart and special relationship with Israel... Turkey can bridge the gaps between us and our neighbors and help promote normalization and coexistence in the region" - Trade and Industry Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer in Turkey last week.

No wonder Rahat Lokum, that delectable Istanbuli confection marketed since the 19th century as Turkish Delight, conquered Europe without any resistance. If anything, there was willing cheerful surrender to the jelly-like starchy cubes, flavored with rose water and nuts and liberally dusted with icing sugar. There's an unquestionable exotic whiff to these pale-pink mouthfuls, accentuated by repeated suggestions that they are an addictive pleasure (to which, for instance, the untrustworthy Edmund succumbs in C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe).

The soft candy is almost emblematic of the land in which it originated. Of all the world's Muslim powers, Turkey appears the most accessible. A negligible corner of it even protrudes into what's arbitrarily defined as Europe. The founder of its post-World War I republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, seemed to transform the abolished Ottoman sultanate with political, cultural, social, economic and legal reforms. Despite the occasional resort to military coups to protect its threatened secular quasi-democracy, Turkey became a NATO stalwart and for decades held radical Islam at bay.

It's enticing to relish this political confection, smacking with traces of alien seduction, even if excessive indulgence guarantees indigestion.

Bigger players on the international arena have very realpolitik motives to suck up to Turkey. For Israel the attraction is overpowering. An outcast in its neighborhood, Israel yearns for Muslim friends. It fell headlong for the vision of the region's non-Arabs banding together in a comradeship of self-preservation. This made particular sense in the heyday of nationalist pan-Arabism. It was bound to erode as jihadist fervor supplanted nationalist zeal, and Arabs could theoretically welcome Iran and Turkey into their club rather than shun their coreligionists as rank outsiders.

(Continue article)
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PLO Problem (1989)

Today's Golden Oldie is a Dry Bones cartoon done 20 years this month. Back then the handwriting was on the wall and the rise of Islamist fascism was evident to all. Now, twenty years later Arafat's heir, Mahmud Abbas, head of the PLO faces the same grim reality.

As a cartoonist I must confess that Arafat was a dream to draw!!

NYT derisive over Jewish claims to Temple Mount

Leo Rennert
American Thinker
15 November 09

In its Nov. 15 edition, the New York Times features a lengthy article by Jerusalem correspondent Isabel Kershner about publication of a book by Israeli and Palestinian scholars of Jewish and Muslim claims to Temple Mount. Kershner notes that this is the site that "Jews revere as the location of their two ancient temples, and that now houses the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam."

What interests me about the article is not so much the contents of the book, which I have yet to read, as Kershner's own derisive and dismissive view of Jewish claims to Temple Mount, coupled with a more deferential attitude to the Muslim side.

Putting aside the various views expressed in the book, here's Kershner's -- and the New York Times' -- own verdict on which side appears to have the stronger claims:

"The lack of archaeological evidence of the ancient temples has led many Palestinians to deny any real Jewish attachment or claim to the plateau," Kershner writes.

Nothing in Kershner's article about archaeological finds that point the other way, especially about the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 of the current era.

Nothing in Kershner's article about evidence of the Second Temple in the writing of the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus.

Nothing in Kershner's article about the frieze on the Arch of Titus in Rome showing the triumphant return of Roman soldiers carrying the Menorah from the Second Temple.

Nothing in Kershner's article about Jesus's presence in and around the Temple.

Nothing in Kershner's article about specific refrerences in the Koran to both Jewish temples. Yes, in the Koran!

As far as Kershner is concerned, Jews may revere Temple Mount because they believe the temples existed, but her own spin is that there's no empirical evidence to substantiate such a belief.

As for the current status of the Temple Mount amid sporadic tensions and clashes, Kershner is much harder on Jewish behavior on Temple Mount than on Muslim outrages which she glosses over or totally ignores.
(Read full article)
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Non Believers

The focus of today's cartoon is the Western "Non Believer".

These folks are committed to not believing what is happening before their eyes. Their ability to maintain their non-belief in the Islamist war that is being waged against them is astounding!

Sudden Jihad or "Inordinate Stress" at Ft. Hood?

by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
November 9, 2009

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Ft. Hood jihadi, in a picture from 2000.

When a Muslim in the West for no apparent reason violently attacks non-Muslims, a predictable argument ensues about motives.

The establishment – law enforcement, politicians, the media, and the academy – stands on one side of this debate, insisting that some kind of oppression caused Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, to kill 13 and wound 38 at Ft. Hood on Nov. 5. It disagrees on the specifics, however, presenting Hasan as the victim alternatively of "racism," "harassment he had received as a Muslim," a sense of not belonging," "pre-traumatic stress disorder," "mental problems," "emotional problems," "an inordinate amount of stress," or being deployed to Afghanistan as his "worst nightmare." Accordingly, a typical newspaper headline reads "Mindset of Rogue Major a Mystery.".

Instances of Muslim-on-unbeliever violence inspire the victim school to dig up new and imaginative excuses. Colorful examples (drawing on my article and weblog entry about denying Islamist terrorism) include:

• 1990: "A prescription drug for … depression" (to explain the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane)
• 1991: "A robbery gone wrong" (the murder of Makin Morcos in Sydney)
• 1994: "Road rage" (the killing of a random Jew on the Brooklyn Bridge)
• 1997: "Many, many enemies in his mind" (the shooting murder atop the Empire State Building)
• 2000: A traffic incident (the attack on a bus of Jewish schoolchildren near Paris)
• 2002: "A work dispute" (the double murder at LAX)
• 2002: A "stormy [family] relationship" (the Beltway snipers)
• 2003: An "attitude problem" (Hasan Karim Akbar's attack on fellow soldiers, killing two)
• 2003: Mental illness (the mutilation murder of Sebastian Sellam)
• 2004: "Loneliness and depression" (an explosion in Brescia, Italy outside a McDonald's restaurant)
• 2005: "A disagreement between the suspect and another staff member" (a rampage at aretirement center in Virginia)
• 2006: "An animus toward women" (a murderous rampage at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle)
• 2006: "His recent, arranged marriage may have made him stressed" (killing with an SUV in northern California)
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Sgt. Hasan Karim Akbar, convicted of the 2003 murder of two fellow soldiers.

Additionally, when a Osama bin Laden-admiring Arab-American crashed a plane into a Tampa high-rise, blame fell on the acne drug Accutane.

As a charter member of the jihad school of interpretation, I reject these explanations as weak, obfuscatory, and apologetic. The jihadi school, still in the minority, perceives Hasan's attack as one of many Muslim efforts to vanquish infidels and impose Islamic law. We recall a prior episode of sudden jihad syndrome in the U.S. military, as well as the numerous cases of non-lethal Pentagon jihadi plots and the history of Muslim violence on American soil.

Far from being mystified by Hasan, we see overwhelming evidence of his jihadi intentions. He handed out Korans to neighbors just before going on his rampage and yelled "Allahu Akbar," the jihadi's cry, as he fired off over 100 rounds from two pistols. His superiors reportedly put him on probation for inappropriately proselytizing about Islam.

We note what former associates say about him: one, Val Finnell, quotes Hasan saying, "I'm a Muslim first and an American second" and recalls Hasan justifying suicide terrorism; another, Col Terry Lee, recalls that Hasan "claimed Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans"; the third, a psychiatrist who worked very closely with Hasan, described him as "almost belligerent about being Muslim."

Finally, the jihad school of thought attributes importance to the Islamic authorities' urging American Muslim soldiers to refuse to fight their co-religionists, thereby providing a basis for sudden jihad. In 2001, for example, responding to the U.S. attack on the Taliban, the mufti of Egypt, Ali Gum'a, issued a fatwa stating that "The Muslim soldier in the American army must refrain [from participating] in this war." Hasan himself, echoing that message, advised a young Muslim disciple, Duane Reasoner Jr., not to join the U.S. army because "Muslims shouldn't kill Muslims."

If the jihad explanation is overwhelmingly more persuasive than the victim one, it's also far more awkward to articulate. Everyone finds blaming road rage, Accutane, or an arranged marriage easier than discussing Islamic doctrines. And so, a prediction: what Ralph Peters calls the army's "unforgivable political correctness" will officially ascribe Hasan's assault to his victimization and will leave jihad unmentioned.

And thus will the army blind itself and not prepare for its next jihadi attack.

Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

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Dare to dream of a rebuilt Temple

Michael Freund
JPost
28 October 09

Something astonishing, even alarming, is taking place in the battle over the future of Jerusalem. Even as Palestinian rioters run amok on the Temple Mount, egged on by the radicals of the Islamic Movement, much of the anger and dismay in the Israeli and international press is being directed, ironically enough, at Jews who merely wish to visit the site.

Mustering all the righteous indignation at their disposal, the media have been filled in recent days with all kinds of pejoratives to describe them, ranging from "extremist" to "fringe" to "ultra-right-wing,' as though a Jew's desire to exercise his basic, fundamental rights somehow constitutes an act of provocation.

Local pundits and commentators alike have also joined the fray, going to great lengths to justify the restrictions imposed by the police on Jews wishing to visit the Mount, even accusing the would-be pilgrims of seeking to trigger a firestorm of Islamic fury. It does not seem to bother them one whit that the policy in place today is entirely discriminatory in nature, as the followers of Muhammad are allowed to visit and pray where Solomon's Temple once stood, but not the followers of Moses.

Indeed, all the enlightened defenders of civil rights, and the champions of equality before the law suddenly fall silent when capitulation to Muslim threats is given preference over respecting vital Jewish rights.

And why not, you might be asking. After all, if it is just a bunch of kooks who want to ascend the Mount, why go to all this trouble on their behalf? Needless to say, this approach plays straight into the hands of our foes, whose ultimate goal is to wrestle the holy site away from us by denying its historical and spiritual connection with the Jewish people.

AND WHAT a sad and pitiful sight this is to behold. Before our very eyes, we are witnessing a concerted effort to delegitimize and even demonize our people's most cherished dream: the longing for the Temple. The very aspiration that was born in the moments when Roman flames engulfed the Second Temple more than 1,900 years ago, and which was carried in Jewish hearts throughout centuries of exile, has now become an object of scorn, mockery and ridicule.

Make no mistake: This is nothing less than an unbridled assault on Judaism itself, and it is time for the derision and name-calling to stop.

Opine all you want about how to "solve" the Jerusalem issue, but don't
belittle the place of the Temple in Jewish eschatology or belief. Like it or not, the longing for a rebuilt Temple is no less central to Judaism than the desire for peace or social justice. And dreaming of a time when the Temple will stand again is no more fanciful or fanatical than hoping for the day when poverty and hunger will be eliminated.

Just open any prayer book and you will see what I mean. Every day, three times a day, Jews conclude the Amida prayer, which is central to our liturgy, with the following plea: "May it be Your will, O Lord our God and the God of our forefathers, that the Holy Temple be rebuilt, speedily in our days."

Does this mean that every Jew who prays daily is a wild-eyed extremist? And just a few weeks ago, in the Musaf prayer recited on the festival of Succot, we implored God to "be compassionate to us and to Your Temple with great mercy, and rebuild it soon and magnify its glory."

Is this utterance the province merely of the "ultra-right-wing"?

The Temple and its sacrificial rites are a core component of our faith, and they play a central role in the Jewish vision of a better world. Vilifying those who uphold this belief is simply an act of small-minded intolerance and bigotry, and it has no place in the current debate.

And denying Jews the right to visit the Temple Mount is no less objectionable, for it tramples upon the principal constitutional values which underpin our democracy.

As Thomas Jefferson pointed out some two centuries ago, "The most sacred of the duties of a government is to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens." That means that when Palestinian Arabs try to prevent Israeli Jews from visiting the Temple Mount, it is the responsibility of the powers that be to come to the defense of the latter, rather than to capitulate to the former.

So let's stop bad-mouthing those who want to visit or pray where our forefathers once stood. And let's bear in mind one very important rule: The real extremism is not to dream of a Temple, but to attempt to silence those who do.
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Positive Thinking

Yale Intimidated

1. Yale University Press announced that they are censoring a book that they are about to publish. And they said that they had been coerced into taking this action because of having been intimidated by fear and threats of violence.

2. The Department of Defense Dictionary of Military Terms defines terrorism as:

"The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological."

3. According to that definition, Yale and other American Universities are victims of terrorism. They are being intimidated by the threat of violence. They are being coerced into aiding in the pursuit of the political, religious, and ideological goals of Islamists.

4. When will the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI take action?

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Idea: If Yale is afraid to publish the Danish cartoons (in a scholarly work about the Danish cartoons) why don't they put the cartoons up on a website and print the web address in the book?

If you haven't seen the 12 innocuous Danish cartoons click here.

If you haven't seen my previous posting about Yale, click on "Dry Bones at Yale?".

* * *Your thoughts?