Free Republic

It is beginning to sink in that what happened on September 11 was not a single terrorist attack on a single country, but the Pearl Harbor of Islamism in its war against the West. In 1941, Americans were surprised by the Japanese attack, but at least knew what and where Japan was. In retrospect, the great defeated "isms" of the last century, Nazism and Communism, are well understood. Now we are groping for an understanding of the new "ism" that has declared war on us. The first shocker, of course, is that someone is out to get the West in ...

How to balance military needs, international humanitarian law, and the reality of facing an enemy whose tactics are not restrained by accepted conventions are challenges to which Israel and other Western nations need to devote serious thought. The asymmetry of battle that Israel faces requires a rethinking of strategy to deal with threats from forces whose ideologies allow them not just to frustrate many Western military advantages but to use the openness of Western societies—especially their print and image media, and the organizations through which the Western penchant for self-criticism is expressed—to their own advantage. Ideology, including the perception of...

Herb Denenberg: The Advocate As Europe Yields To Islamofascism, Is U.S. On The Same Path? By Herb Denenberg, The Bulletin 02/13/2008 The once mighty, the once invincible, the once courageous and brave-beyond-belief Britain is in the process of surrendering to Islamofascism without firing a shot. Here are the latest examples indicating how far along that process has gone: British government ministers have declared that Islamic terrorism will no longer be so described. In the future, Muslim fanatics, murderers and suicide bombers will be referred to as pursuing "anti-Islamic activity." This new language, turning the truth on its head, was announced...

Professor Gwyn Prins, one of the authors of the RUSI report made a most important point on the Today programme (0830) when he observed that 'we are at war', although we are behaving as if we are in peacetime. This is undoubtedly true and is the source of so much of the current confusion (Guantanamo, 42 days, etc) and wholly inadequate government and establishment response to the Islamist threat. As the report asks:Is there any longer a clear distinction between being at war and not being at war? A declaration of war is almost inconceivable today, and yet both our...

This links to an outstanding commentary (and a brief attempt at refutation) by a lucid, articulate woman who now, no doubt, has a price on her head. http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=nul

No mystery as to why Christian missionaries might be having their greatest success in the Kabyle. In Algeria, that remains the Berber heartland. It is where the Berbers, that is those who were not forcibly transformed, during the centuries of Arab rule (interrupted by 132 years of French rule) into "Arabs" (how many of those "Arabs" who now persecute the Berbers realize that they themselves are a generation, or two, or five removed from their clearly Berber origins?) The cause of the Berbers is hardly known in this country. The writer Kateb Yacine, a Berber who refused to write in...

Muslim Councillor Tells Rotterdammer: 'Shut Up, Minority' ROTTERDAM, 17/01/08 - Labour (PvdA) politician Bouchra Ismaili has reviled a citizen of Rotterdam in an e-mail. The man was told that as a member of the white minority in his district, he should not complain about the Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir. Ismaili, who has Moroccan nationality, is a council member for PvdA in the Rotterdam district council of Charlois. "You are the immigrants here!!!", she wrote to the white man who drew her attention by e-mail to statements by the controversial Muslim organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir. Ismali also wrote in her e-mail reply...

JEDDAH, 15 January 2008 — The history of science and civilization, as taught by many institutions in the West, often fails to include more than 1,000 years of Islamic heritage and civilization, according to Dr. Salim Al-Hassani of the UK-based Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilization. “The Renaissance couldn’t have happened out of nothing,” said Al-Hassani while speaking at Dar Al-Hekma College here yesterday. “In the West, there’s total ignorance of the contributions of other civilizations. Did modern civilization really rise from nothing?” Al-Hassani explained how many Western discoveries are of Muslim origin. There was a lost age of Muslim...

Reacting to the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson told WND, "This is a war, a clash of civilizations." Thompson, commenting at the FAIR talk radio row in Des Moines, Iowa, said he suspected al-Qaida was responsible for the attack. "The chance that a secular woman had a possibility of ascending to power in Pakistan drove the more radical Islamic elements in the country to violence," Thompson said. The former Tennessee senator said the Bhutto assassination was "part of a much larger picture." "This is an international war we are engaged in," he...

With the ouster of the Taliban and eradication of the al-Qaida in Afghanistan, Islamic extremism has sustained a crushing defeat. But what continues to unsettle Americans is that film of Arab and Islamic people, wildly cheering the barbaric atrocities of Sept. 11. Is a war of civilizations coming? Clearly, not a few in the Islamic world and the West so believe, and ardently desire. And, with the War Party cawing for an attack on Iraq, with Sharon unleashed after the atrocities in Jerusalem and Haifa, with the U.S. press calling for a reappraisal of our ties to Saudi Arabia and ...

A global Islamic revival is creating conflicts that go beyond the War on Terrorism. Much of the civil unrest around the world—in Indonesia, East Timor, the Philippines, Sudan, among others—has to do with Muslims attacking Christians. Meanwhile, in tribal villages from Asia through Africa, Islam and Christianity are competing for the souls of the people. Even the jihadist assaults against America and Europe may be seen as a Muslim war on the civilization that Christianity produced. Though the secularists cannot imagine such a thing, the world is convulsed in a religious war. The Washington Post's Phillip H. Gordon recognizes that...

In WORLD's pages we often describe man's desperate need for the saving grace brought by Christ's sacrifice. But theologians also talk about common grace, the grace that, like rain, falls on nonbelievers as well as believers. When the cravenness of some Christians shames us, it's a good time to look for evidence of God's mercy in unlikely places. Last month's largest cowardice report came from the Netherlands, where a Catholic bishop said that Christian-Muslim animosity could be reduced through one simple measure: "Shouldn't we all say that from now on we will call God Allah?" Sure—and shouldn't we also wear...

Radical Islam’s Goal is Global Conquest By Andrew G. Bostom FrontPageMagazine.com | July 2, 2007The largely failed (and/or thwarted) acts of jihad terrorism at the end of this past week in London and Glasgow show once again that the aim of the current Islamic crusade against the West is global in scope, is not about Iraq and is not a fringe development in Islam itself. What Samuel Huntington aptly termed “Islam’s bloody borders” around the globe—flow from the timeless logic of jihad. Franz Rosenthal, the late (d. 2002) Yale University scholar of Islam, who, 50 years ago, translated Ibn...

What is your most lofty aspiration? Death for the sake of Allah!" That is the charming verse kindergarteners in a Hamas classroom chanted last week during their graduation ceremony. The girls dressed in butterfly costumes. The boys donned camouflage, black masks, green bandanas and toy semi-automatic rifles. The video aired by the Middle East Media Research Institute (www.memritv.org) features the children wielding swords and guns while mimicking paramilitary exercises. And how are we preparing the children of the West to defend themselves against these little soldiers of Allah? Scene 1: In New York City, one nursery school dragged 3-year-old toddlers...

By now, dozens of critics have weighed in on the massive box office success of 300, but not one I’ve read has figured out the reason for it. I have: it’s a terrific picture, one of the best in years. When I compare it to the movies that were nominated for Best Picture Oscars last year, it makes them seem to be exactly what they were: watered-down warm milk for liberal baby boomers who want to close the curtains on World War III, and snuggle down under their tie-dyed covers for a long winter’s nap full of tangerine dreams. They...

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today that any effort to stop growing violence between Islamic and Western societies must include an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Annan spoke after receiving a report from a high-level group of experts on ways to alleviate Muslim-Western clashes and misunderstandings. "We may wish to think of the Arab-Israeli conflict as just one regional conflict amongst many," said Annan, who leaves his post at the end of the year. "It is not. No other conflict carries such a powerful symbolic and emotional charge among people far removed from the battlefield." Annan said he would work...

Pope Benedict's comments last week that sparked such a furor have united the Muslim world. But the bigger story is the effect those comments are having among Catholics. Anger toward Pope Benedict xvi is unifying Muslims, but a growing sense of sympathy and loyalty to the pontiff is rousing Catholics and Europeans to his defense. We have all seen the images of rage-ridden Muslims rioting in the streets, torching churches and demanding and re-demanding an apology from the pope. Largely underreported, however, is the growing number of Catholics and Europeans surging to Benedict’s defense. Islamic rage is igniting a deeper...

JERUSALEM – Pope Benedict XVI's apologies for worldwide reaction to his remarks about Islam and his invitation today for Muslim leaders to meet with him next week are "mere diplomatic acts" and prove the pontiff does not really regret his words, a prominent Gaza Strip preacher told WND. Sheik Abu Saqer, leader of Gaza's Jihadia Salafiya Islamic outreach movement, which seeks to make secular Muslims more religious, called for holy war against the pope. He said Christian leaders such as Benedict are "afraid" because they realize Islam is Allah's favorite religion and they are going to hell unless they convert....

Dr Koenraad Elst, one of Belgium’s best orientalists and an occasional contributor to this website (if I had time I would translate more of his Dutch-language contributions into English), told me last week that he thinks “Islam is in decline, despite its impressive demographic and military surge” – which according to Dr Elst is merely a “last upheaval.” He acknowledges, however, that this decline can take some time (at least in terms of the individual human life span) and that it is possible that Islam will succeed in becoming the majority religion in Europe before collapsing. I am not a...

LET US SUPPOSE, for the sake of argument, that the war declared by al-Qaeda and other Islamists is under way. Let us further suppose that thousands of “terrorist” attacks carried out in Islam’s name during the past decades form part of this war; and that conflicts that have spread to 50 countries and more, taking the lives of millions — including in inter-Muslim blood-shedding — are the outcome of what Osama bin Laden has called “conducting jihad for the sake of Allah”. If such war is under way, there are ten good reasons why, as things stand, Islam will not...