Anne Applebaum wrestles this morning with the recent ban on the construction of minarets on mosques in Switzerland. Applebaum sees the Swiss move as a preemptive strike against extremist Islam while at the same time proactively dealing with the integration problem facing Europe. The Swiss, Applebaum observes, have welcomed a significant number of Muslims into their country, but they are of the more moderate bent, with few, if any wearing burqas, and most integrating into daily Swiss life. There are no “muslim ghettos” as, say, in France or Germany. The Swiss strike against minarets hopes to prevent exactly that separation and non-integration prevalent in other European nations.

Having lived in Switzerland for some time, I know the Swiss are relatively fanatical about the vistors “not rocking the boat.” Swiss immigration policies basically force you to radically integrate, if you wish to stay permanently, or at minimum, stay and lay low, or just plain get out. In fact, to become a Swiss citizen, the  local town in some cantons has the right to vote on whether or not you get citizenship after a public examination. The Swiss, in this instance, aren’t banning mosques or the practice of Islam, but simply the construction of minarets.

Truthfully, minarets and church bells are different. Both are calls to prayer. But I have to say, the tonality and drone of minarets is a piercing and from my experience, it can’t be ignored. Church bells echo gently into the air, after a short, sharp snap. I don’t know why they are different to the ear, but they are different. For what it’s worth, I understand that in Michigan zoning restrictions against minarets have been upheld in federal court. At some point, religious liberty versus cultural identity are going to clash. Is it so wrong to fall on the side of preserving centuries long identity over a recently arrived groups demands? Why can or cannot the political community say, “no thanks”?

At UberCommenter Joe’s suggestion, here’s a piece from ‘our favorite atheist’ Christopher Hitchens:

I wrote some years ago that the three most salient characteristics of the Muslim death-squad type were self-righteousness, self-pity, and self-hatred. Surrounded as he was by fellow shrinks who were often very distressed by his menacing manner, Maj. Hasan managed to personify all three traits—with the theocratic rhetoric openly thrown in for good measure—and yet be treated even now as if the real word for him was troubled. Prepare to keep on meeting those three symptoms again, along with official attempts to oppose them only with therapy, if that. At least the holy warriors know they are committing suicide.

When tolerance becomes a one way street it certainly leads to cultural suicide. We are on that street. Liberals cannot be trusted to defend our Republic, because their sympathies obviously lie with their perceived victim, Major Nidal Malik Hasan.

I make no apologies for these words, and anyone angered by them, please, go to Ft Hood and look into the eyes of the real victims. The tragedy at Ft Hood Texas did not have to happen. Consider now the feelings of those there and on every military installation in the world. Consider the feelings of the Warriors deployed into combat zones who now are concerned that their loved ones at home are in a combat zone.

Ft Hood suffered an Islamic jihadist attack, stop the denial, and realize a simple point.

The reality of your enemy must become your own.

More here. A must read.

His blog post reads:

Nidal Hassan Did the Right Thing
November 9, 2009 –  by Anwar alAwlaki

Nidal Hassan is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people. This is a contradiction that many Muslims brush aside and just pretend that it doesn’t exist. Any decent Muslim cannot live, understanding properly his duties towards his Creator and his fellow Muslims, and yet serve as a US soldier. The US is leading the war against terrorism which in reality is a war against Islam. Its army is directly invading two Muslim countries and indirectly occupying the rest through its stooges.

(more…)

Within hours of Maj. Hasan’s gunning down dozens of his unarmed US Army comrades, National Public Radio was on the air with the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD] explanation for his murders, a well-acknowledged psychological syndrome.

And although Instapundit gives NPR good marks for digging into the actual facts of the murders yesterday, this morning NPR returned to its usual fare [I heard it myself, from some "reporter"], what a wise man once called the “dictatorship of relativism”: that there are two theories:

a) That this had something to do with Islam, or

b) That the murderer “snapped” at the prospect of being shipped with his unit to Afghanistan on Friday.

The beauty of NPR-ish relativism is that truth is subjective. If

a) doesn’t float your boat because it raises untidy questions about the nature or modern practice of Islam,

you can pick

b), which makes you all warm and fuzzy and as a bonus makes the Major a victim of the American war machine.

Who’s to say?

NPR [and the New York Times and CNN] presented these as equal possibilities. Hmmm. Let us reason together, as a somewhat less wise man once said:

Maj. Nidal is a psychologist, not a combat officer. So what did he have to fear in Afghanistan, then?

Getting his ass blown up by some homicidal or suicidal [probably both] Muslim maniac, mostly. That’s just a fact. I can feel that.

So if he suffered from Pre-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder [PPTSD], suffering PTSD in advance, it was related to fear of Muslims who kill indiscriminately, of which there are many. Such a fear is not unfounded, because there are a lot of such folks in the Afghanistan area, which is WHY THE UNITED STATES IS IN THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE!

[Sorry for shouting. But geez, ipso facto.]

So then, the only explanation is that Maj. Hasan’s Pre-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was Pre-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder By Proxy [PPTSDBP]: the fear of counseling the actual US combat troops who actually would get blown up by Muslim murderers.

So he just cut to the chase and wasted them all himself back in Texas before they even deployed?

OK, thanks, NPR, NYT, CNN, Chris Matthews, et al.

I realize that makes sense in your reality, where there is no reality, only the opinion that makes you feel OK, makes you feel best about yourself.

And that’s why I’m miffed about all this—not that something relatively predictable happened, but that the media, applying the moronic standard of relativism, can’t tell the difference between the remotely possible and the reasonably probable.

As NPR posed the question, both get equal standing, and it insults their intelligence far more than mine, and even their listeners and contributors.

What, do they think we’re stupid?

Unfortunately, they do. Some of us don’t mind and NPR calls them “members,” meaning they give NPR stations money. Other of us do mind, I guess. We’re what NPR fundraisers call “freeloaders,” who listen but don’t contribute.

I can occasionally bear my intelligence being insulted, but damned if I’ll pay for the privilege.

The answer is a) That this had something to do with Islam. Truth is not a matter of subjectivity, nor is it up for a vote.
__________
CNN: So the first moments of Thursday afternoon, can you tell our viewers, you know, where you were, what happened, how it all unfolded?

PVT Joseph Foster: I was sitting in what they call station 13, it’s where we get, basically, our final outs of our RSP (ph) system and I was sitting in about the second row back when the assailant stood up, screamed and yelled Allah Akbar (ph) in Arabic and he opened fire.

[Via Mudville Gazette, transcribing a CNN interview with one of the actual victims. He got shot.]

From the AP:

Homeland chief warns against anti-Muslim backlash
(AP) – 8 hours ago
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The U.S. Homeland Security secretary says she is working to prevent a possible wave of anti-Muslim sentiment after the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas.

Janet Napolitano says her agency is working with groups across the United States to try to deflect any backlash against American Muslims following Thursday’s rampage by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim who reportedly expressed growing dismay over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The shootings left 13 people dead and 29 wounded.

Napolitano was in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday for talks with security officials and a meeting with women university students in Abu Dhabi.

Now, let’s change the cast of characters:
(more…)

Reading and seeing almost everyone tiptoeing around the fact that the Ft. Hood shooter was acting out his Muslim beliefs made me think: what if the shooter was a devout Southern Baptist who had vocally opposed the war based on his understanding of the Bible and shouted “in the name of Jesus Christ” before opening fire? Would the MSM and our President be so reserved about attaching significant to those facts?

I highly doubt it.

From Powerline:

Yesterday, Obama warned us against jumping to conclusions. Now, as we predicted, it’s pretty clear that Obama has no intention of coming to any conclusions, ever. He ponders the deep mystery of why Malik Nadal Hasan, whom he refers to only as “an Army psychiatrist,” thought it was a good idea to murder American soldiers:

We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing.

There may be some cosmic sense in which that sentence is true; who can ever plumb the depths of the human heart? But we didn’t elect Obama our novelist in chief. He is our commander in chief, and as such his prime responsibility is to protect and the defend the Constitution. And us. We make judgments about other people’s motivations all the time; to take just one obvious example, juries in both civil and criminal cases are frequently required to decide “what leads a man to do such a thing.”

Good as Obama was on the state of Africa speaking from Ghana, the obvious question is why he can’t say many of the same things in speaking of the Arab world.  Anne Bayfskey from The Australian:

Christian Africa was to be treated to no such self-flagellation. In a rare tongue-lashing for Africans from any US president, he chastised: “It’s easy to point fingers and to pin the blame of these problems on others. Yes, a colonial map that made little sense helped to breed conflict … but the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy … or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants … tribalism and patronage and nepotism … and … corruption.”

He might equally have said to the Arab and Muslim world: “It’s easy to scapegoat Israel and blame your problems on the presence of Jews — albeit on a fraction of 1 per cent of the territory inhabited by the Arab world — but Israel is not responsible for poverty, illiteracy, torture, trafficking, slavery and oppression rampant across your countries.” But he did not.

Read the whole thing.

Reihan Salam, of the Atlantic and the American Scene, had a short piece at the Daily Beast on conspiracy theories in American politics and focused especially on the relatively wide-spread belief that President Obama is a closet Muslim.  This paragraph, unfortunately, got cut from the article:

So despite the fact that Obama has been a church-going Christian for most of his adult life, more than a tenth of the country believes that while roaming the streets of Jakarta as an elementary schooler, Obama met some wily bearded imam who lured him into his roving Muslim-mobile with delicious minaret-shaped candies and converted him to radical Islam. Dazzled by his obvious intelligence, and convinced long before David Axelrod that Americans were itching to elect a half-Kenyan youth as president, he also sold young Obama on the idea of keeping his Islamic zealotry under wraps. That way he could transform America into a radical Islamic caliphate without anyone ever noticing.

I don’t have particularly strong feelings on President Obama’s religious beliefs (or lack thereof), other than I have no reason not to take him at his word that he’s an adherent of some bland, liberal form of Protestantism.  I am, however, highly intrigued by the concept of “minaret-shaped candies.”  Too funny.

Hat tip: Daniel Larison.

In the invaluable Mark Steyn’s column, “Islamic Radicalism is on the Rise,” we find the following nuggets.  It’s the kind of news I classify as BTO or Beyond the Onion.  

From Islamabad, let us zip a world away to London. Among the growing population of Yorkshire Pakistanis is a fellow called Lord Ahmed, a Muslim member of Parliament. He threatened “to bring a force of 10,000 Muslims to lay siege to the House of Lords” if it went ahead with an event at which the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders would have introduced a screening of his controversial film “Fitna.”

Britain’s Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, reacted to this by declaring Wilders persona non grata and having him arrested and returned to the Netherlands.

Smith is best known for an inspired change of terminology: last year she announced that henceforth Muslim terrorism (an unhelpful phrase) would be reclassified as “anti-Islamic activity.” Seriously. The logic being that Muslims blowing stuff up tends not to do much for Islam’s reputation – i.e., it’s an “anti-Islamic activity” in the same sense that Pearl Harbor was an anti-Japanese activity.

FoxNews has this AP story about Muslim gangs, the increasing violence they are producing in France, and the growing re-assessment of post-modern multiculturalism occuring there and elsewhere. The particular incidents are awful, but the resulting “awakening” might be the best thing to happen to France and many other European nations in a long time.  Modern man (who does not think that mere “ideas” are worth dying for — little is) just cannot understand why or how people would fight for such notions, especially religious notions (we are now Enlightened folks — wars were for the medeival Church barbarians who just wanted to plunder and control, right?).  He had better wake up. 

A portion from the article:

The recent ambush was emblematic of what some officers say has become a near-perpetual and increasingly violent conflict between police and gangs in tough, largely immigrant French neighborhoods that were the scene of a three-week paroxysm of rioting last year.

One small police union claims officers are facing a “permanent intifada.” Police injuries have risen in the year since the wave of violence.

….

More broadly, worsening violence in France testifies to Europe’s growing struggle to integrate its ethnic minorities. Some mainstream European politicians — adopting positions previously confined largely to far-right fringes — are suggesting that the minorities themselves are not doing enough to adapt to European mores.

In Britain, former Foreign Minister Jack Straw, now leader of the House of Commons, this month touched off a wide debate about the rights and obligations of Muslims by saying that he asks devout Muslim women to remove their veils when visiting his office. Prime Minister Tony Blair said Islam needs to modernize.

In France, a high school teacher received death threats, forcing him into hiding, after he wrote a newspaper editorial in September saying Muslim fundamentalists are trying to muzzle Europe’s democratic liberties.

Ethnic integration and violence against police are both becoming issues in the campaign for the French presidency. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the leading contender on the right, said this month that those who do not love France do not have to stay, echoing a longtime slogan of the extreme-right National Front: “France, love it or leave it.”

Michel Thooris, head of the small Action Police union, claims that the new violence is taking on an Islamic fundamentalist tinge.

“Many youths, many arsonists, many vandals behind the violence do it to cries of ‘Allah Akbar’ (God is Great) when our police cars are stoned,” he said in an interview.

In the latest in the totally irrational response to the Pope’s “remarks,” a large group of Muslim clerics has recently demanded the Pope’s removal. Obviously, this group does not understand the nature of the Papacy, the Church or its governance. The group says:

Benedict “should be removed from his position immediately for encouraging war and fanning hostility between various faiths” and “making insulting remarks” against Islam, said a joint statement issued by the clerics and scholars at the end of their one-day convention.

The “pope, and all infidels, should know that no Muslim, under any circumstances, can tolerate an insult to the Prophet (Muhammad). … If the West does not change its stance regarding Islam, it will face severe consequences,” it said. (more…)

More treasure from the comments to this post at The Belmont Club, this time from “whit“, who links to this article at FrontPageMag.com by Mark D. Tooley, which in turn quotes from this story by Sharon Sheridan of the Episcopal News Service. Of those, the thing to read is Tooley’s article. In it, he compares and contrasts the ridiculous self-flagellation of the outgoing chief bishop of the Episcopal Church in America over the United States’ bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 61 years ago to the remarkably clear-eyed understanding of the import of that same event expressed by another Episcopal bishop, one Joseph Noriaki Iida. As between the two bishops’ reactions, that of Bishop Iida’s is probably entitled to just a tad more respect, as Iida wasnot only an eyewitness to the event but was a student at the imperial Japanese naval academy when it happened.

Bishop Iida’s reaction has, I believe, tremendous relevance to the current geopolitical situation. Read the following, and you’ll find it impossible not to see the analogy between imperial Japan and the Iranian theocracy:

In contrast to the surreal observations of the American bishop, a retired Japanese bishop spoke of Hiroshima with greater historical and spiritual perception. Bishop Joseph Noriaki Iida, as a teen-age naval academy student, was a witness to the atomic blast and understood what caused it.

“At that moment, I felt I deeply understood that we had chosen the way of death three years ago,” when Japan declared war on America, Bishop Iida recalled to the Episcopal News Service. Viewing a charred Hiroshima from atop a hill 61 years ago, he remembered the Scripture: “Today I lay down two ways: the way of life and the way of death; the way of blessing and the way of curse.” The glowing mushroom cloud over Hiroshima also reminded him of the pillars of cloud and fire that protected and guided the Hebrews out of ancient Egypt.

Iida said the atomic blast at Hiroshima was a cause of jubilation for the Koreans, Southeast Asians and American soldiers whom the Japanese were killing. But even for the Japanese themselves, the bombings provided freedom from totalitarianism, militarism, colonialism and racism, he said. The bomb “was God’s judgment and God’s mercy at the same time.”

Remembering a blackened Japanese history textbook at the time, in which only sentence fragments remained, Bishop Iida compared it to his realization that what he had been told about his country by Japan’s militarist dictators was “totally wrong.” After learning of Japan’s atrocities and of the Nazi Holocaust, and absorbing the Japanese Emperor’s denial of his own previously professed deity, Iida considered turning to communism.

Iida read the Bible so that he could refute Christianity. But instead he succumbed to the “love of God.” While communism had urged hatred of the bourgeoisie, he said, the “Bible said unconditional love, love against those who persecuted you, who hate you.” The Japanese bishop concluded: “Christianity is superior. That’s why I became a priest of the Anglican Church.”

Christianity is superior over communism? Do not look for such triumphalism from any U.S. mainline church official, least of all from an Episcopal bishop. Unlike the U.S. bishop, the Japanese bishop has no multiculturalist illusions or inflated notions about humanity. In a fallen world, where choices are often between bad and worst, the U.S. chose to end World War II and Japanese fascism with an atomic weapon. “God can use not only the good thing but also bad things to do his will,” Bishop Iida observed.

Amen, Bishop Iida.

If you’re not reading The Belmont Club, the online home of blogger wretchard, then you’re not as informed as you should be about Islam’s war against the West. While you’re there, don’t skip the comments, as they are frequently as interesting as the posts themselves. Today’s post by wretchard, in which he traces the connections among and between many of the events of the past 36 hours, illustrating one of his conclusions with a reference to, of all things, The Great Gatsby, drew this comment from “allen”:

I don’t know about you, but I’d feel more secure if Muslims were barred from flights instead of toiletries.

Obviously, if we just must permit travel by Muslims, other than by foot to concentration camps, how about installing special screening for admitted Muslims and stereotyping the scofflaws. Stereotyping!? You bet. Stereotyping has impeccable evolutionary credentials.

The pictures I’m seeing are more of the same nonsense. Perfectly harmless European, American, and Western travelers are discarding their person property, docilely, so the governments of the West don’t have to admit the obvious: Muslims are not to be trusted unattended in airports any more than an uncaged Rottweiler.

Security should be looking for young men of obvious Muslim descent. And if we really want to be diverse, add young Muslim women to the mix as well.

Some will immediately scream, “That’s not fair!!!”

They are so right – so what?

And did I say “concentration camps”? Yes, I did. What I did NOT say was death camps.

Since Muslim families and the Islamic “community” cannot police themselves, society must take up the burden. These people have to be constantly watched and supervised. I’d prefer that happen somewhere other than in the airport, freeway, mall, and arena.

For those unwilling to accept Western accommodations, I suggest a mega-garage sale and a return to place of origin.

What do you think?

A New York Sun editorial points out that the recent arrest of 17 Canadian terror suspects flies in the face of the theory that Islamic fundamentalists target America primarily for our support of Israel and our involvement in Iraq.  The editorial points out that:

“Canada sent no troops to liberate Iraq. Our neighbor to the North so opposed the Iraq War that at least one American deserter fled there for safe harbor, as draftdodgers did during the Vietnam War.  And while Canada is mildly pro-Israel, and more so under its new conservative government, its arms sales to the Jewish state are peanuts compared to America’s, and at the United Nations on key votes it’s likely to abstain rather than join the America, Micronesia, and Palau in voting with Israel.” 

ME:  So why did these radicals want to target a liberal country like Canada?  The fact is that Islamic extremists hate us (the West) for our freedom, prosperity, and religious diversity.  They will always hate us and there is nothing we can do about it other than to hunt down those that commit acts of terrorism against us and to punish severely those nations that support such terrorists.  Hat tip to James Taranto at Best of the Web.

I always enjoy running across something that reminds me of my true identity in Christ…..that is, reminded of those things that are supposed to make Christians different from pagans, democrats (just kidding) and (for the purposes of this post) Muslims. We know that God met Hagar in her distress and was promised a blessing…a line of people from Abraham that God also promised would be a pain in everyone’s butt. Now, I’m not a theologian, I just play one on the internet….but, the two lines of Abraham do seem to stand in stark contrast as a cosmic lesson as to the identity of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom.

In an essay, “Jesus and Muhammad on Wealth”, James Arlandson says, in part, at The American Thinker ….

…Muhammad is the one who promised his jihadists heaven if they died, and plunder if they lived. If anyone had the “love of desires,” it was the Prophet of Islam.

This slippery path sets the genetic code of Islam. Muhammad and his successors conquer the known world, plunder its wealth, and impose its politics of an authoritarian Caliphate, modeled after the Prophet’s own authoritarianism. ….

…Jesus never chased women and then claimed revelations about having them. He was never a slave trader, even though it was a lucrative business. Finally, He never spent his whole life searching for and accumulating as many material things as he could grab by bloody wars.

This good path set the genetic code for Christianity, established at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and follows freedom from worldly entanglements. He turned down Satan’s big offer to conquer the world. Christians are in the world, but not of it (John 17:14-18). Jesus and his Apostles offer freedom.

So, what is a Western nation to do if it is going to engage Muslim culture? Is secular engagement hopeless? Perhaps not if you think the Muslim world will soon embrace secularism in its governance. How about Judeo-Christian engagement? Hmmm….In that scenario prepare to send waves of martyrs into a tough missionary field.

At a minimum our diplomacy must engage the religion and with our system of seperation of church and state we have no model for that. Islam will not yield to secularism. Yes, they may adopt our market systems, media and fashion but their fundamental view of the world will stay the same unless it is transformed. Religion can only be answered by a better religious answer. Religion is at the core of the Arab identity. [Recommended--"The Diplomacy of Religous Freedom" by Thomas Farr, First Things, May '06]

This speech is the most sobering thing I’ve read lately about the War on Terror. Its theme of the weakness of the relativistic West in facing militant Islam is familiar, and Murray’s point of view is distinctly European, but in reading it I could not help but worry about just how far relativism has eroded the self-confidence of America’s elites, and their willingness to defend American values over the long term. Certainly the recent actions of their European counterparts, as explained by Murray, has been cowardly and appalling. An arresting excerpt:

Relativism has one over-riding consequence, and that consequence is the history of Europe over the last forty years. Giving equal attention and respect to all-comers, not only can relativists (the politically correct) not defend their own, they end up drawing a parity across cultures, faiths and behaviours which diminishes the good, and elevates the malignant. When we stare in disbelief at tolerance of the intolerable and the slow turning of that tolerance into acceptance and then acquiescence in evil, we are seeing Europeans acting out the last stages of nihilist philosophy. It is a way of looking at – and acting in – the world which will ruin Europe if we do not rid ourselves of it. Ridding ourselves of our rotten thought-world is the first step (and one in which everyone can take part) towards protecting ourselves from the threats which face us. It is one of the practical ways in which citizens can fight a war which is so far waged and triumphed in only by our military.

Murray closes with some recommended changes in European public policy, including this: “All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop.”  Here’s a question for discussion: What would be the reaction to such a proposal in terms of immigration into the US?

(If you’d like to read more of Murray, click here for a short talk on neo-conservatism he gave last fall to the Manhattan Institute.)

The media reports that Austrian prosecutors have indicated that they have to act over a fresh denial of the Nazi Holocaust by jailed British historian David Irving.  The new denial came in interviews with several British journalists in his Austrian prison cell, where he is beginning a three-year sentence.

On February 20, Irving was jailed for three years in a one-day trial in which he was accused of falsifying history and claiming there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz.  The Austrian law makes denial of the Holocaust–or even minimizing its magnitude–a crime.

There’s not much good one can say about David Irving.  Denying the Holocaust is foolish, stubborn, and just plain wrong.  However, imprisoning someone for holding a view or for voicing an opinion about a historical matter makes a mockery of liberty.  European defense of free speech in the wake of the cartoon riots in Muslim lands seems less than sincere when men are jailed for beliefs.  The market place of ideas has more than demolished the revisionism of Irving and his ilk.  The marketplace is not perfect, but there is absolutely no need to give the Irvings of the world more attention in 2006 by jailing them for denying historical events. 

To quote Holmes, defending free speech is never more important than when it is ”the speech that we hate.”

The Choice of a New Generation (of Jihadists).

(via Andrew Coyne)