Monday, February 20, 2006

Muslim Deception and our
Government and Media


Recently the US Under Secretary of State Karen Hughes gave a speech in Doha, Qatar, for the U.S.-Islamic World Forum.


Most of the speech was pretty good, but there was one part where she said:
"...In my country certain racial and ethnic slurs are no longer used by civil people even though there is no law prohibiting it – and while newspapers would be free to publish them most would never do so – just as many American newspapers chose not to reprint the cartoons depicting the Prophet because they recognize they are deeply offensive, even blasphemous to the precious convictions of our Muslim friends and neighbors..."

I find it disquieting that she compares the innocuous Danish cartoons with racial and ethnic slurs. I disagree, there is a world of difference, but then how are any of us to judge the cartoons for ourselves or even discuss the issue intelligently if we are not allowed to see them? It would seem that Karen Hughes prefers that we don't. She needs to develop a backbone, and read the article by Flemming Rose, culture editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, defending his decision to commission and publish the Mohammed Cartoons. A brief excerpt:
...Has Jyllands-Posten insulted and disrespected Islam? It certainly didn't intend to. But what does respect mean? When I visit a mosque, I show my respect by taking off my shoes. I follow the customs, just as I do in a church, synagogue or other holy place. But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy...

It's worth noting that only the fanatical Wahhabi sect (who control 80 percent of the Mosques in the US, with Saudi money) are against all images of Mohammed. It would seem that Karen Hughes is helping to perpetuate the erroneous view that this applies to all Muslims. Why encourage extremists to think they have a right to insist that
WE SUBMIT to their taboos?

The orginal Danish cartoons were published in an Egyptian newspaper months ago, without any riots occuring. No riots occured when the comics were originally published in the Danish newspaper last September. The riots are happening now because of a deliberate POLITICAL propaganda campaign, with false comics being circulated in the middle east that are much more offensive than the orginials, along with lies such as the Danish goverment controls the newspaper, and is going to ban and burn the Koran, the Danes are going to make a blasphemous movie about the life of Mohammed, etc. THAT sort of crap has got the masses all riled up, NOT the Danish cartoons. And since everyone is forbidden to publish the cartoons, nobody is exposing the lies. Most of the people rioting haven't even seen the cartoons, they have HEARD about them.

This isn't about the cartoons! It's politics masquerading as religion. Karen Hughes touches on that briefly in her speech, but then she goes into the politically correct BS, about how it is important to not publish cartoons that offend "our Muslim friends and neighbors". Once again, she is buying into the trap and making it about the cartoons. Karen, you dupe, WAKE UP: IT IS NOT ABOUT THE CARTOONS.

I am angry with Karen Hughes. Why? Because it is HER JOB to confront and discredit propaganda. She has incredible resourses available to her for this purpose, and yet she is doing way too much butt kissing of the very people we ought to be confronting, which only adds to the confusion. Playing the game on their terms just insures that we will lose.

There is a "good cop,/bad cop" dynamic going on with radical Muslims right now. The bad Muslims riot and threaten, and even kill. Then the so-called "good", "moderate" Muslims, (represented by groups like CAIR in the United States), step in and say "We condem the violence, but you must stop the publishing of things that Muslims find offensive." But they are just playing the "good" cop to the rioters "bad" cop. They are in fact the same people, on the same side, with the same agenda. So what does our government do? They cave-in to this strategy, and respond with all the multi-cultural politically-correct BS. Forget about OUR right to have all the facts and discuss this intelligently; we can't even see the cartoons to even guess what it's supposed to be about, because Muslims find that offensive.

Am I the only one to notice that these Muslims find a LOT of things offensive, including any examination and critical evaluation of themselves? They find it offensive? Well I got news for them, and for our government. I AM OFFENDED BY THAT. No one and nothing is beyond critisism. And there is a lot about political Islam hiding behind religion that NEEDS a great deal of critisism.

There actually are truely moderate Muslims, who are not "deeply offended" at an image of Mohammed, people who came to our country to get away from fanatics like the people our government is now bending over backwards to accommodate. Instead we should be supporting REAL moderate Muslims who want to be free to make choices about how they worship. People who wish to live in harmony with non-Muslims, without being "deeply offended" by EVERYTHING they don't agree with. But they have no voice, and they won't have one, as long as we keep playing the game that organiazations like CAIR play by asserting themselves (with Wahhabi Saudi money) as the "voice" of moderate Muslims. The so-called moderates like CAIR are the same people as the cartoon rioters, just showing a different face. It's a good cop/bad cop schtick. Don't fall for it. And lets not tolerate our government buying into it either.

(P.S. I don't doubt that Karen Hughs is a fine person in many ways, and I'm sure too that what she says reflects not just her views, but those of the President and his Administration. And to me, THAT is cause for concern. As non-Muslims we are infidels, and are by defintion not required or expected to act like Muslims. While it is true that we are dependent on Saudi Oil, and that our relationship with the Saudis is ... difficult, I do not see that we need to be submissive to their religion, or let our decent impulses to be considerate be used disingenuously against us.)


Related links:

Why American Muslims Stay Silent
By Stephen Schwartz.

Four years after September 11, 2001, numerous non-Muslim Americans repeatedly ask, “Why do American Muslims stay silent in the face of extremism and terrorism? Why do they not act to cleanse their religion of the reputation it has acquired?”

Paradoxically, Muslims in the US and Great Britain are, today, far more dominated by Islamist extremism than their counterparts in various Muslim countries. In many lands where the majority follows Islam, a struggle is underway between mainstream moderates and radicals inspired by the ultra-Wahhabi preachers of Saudi Arabia, the agitators of the Muslim Brotherhood in various Arab countries, and the virulent and volatile adherents of Pakistani jihadism. In some places, from Bosnia-Hercegovina to Indonesia and from Morocco to Mozambique, the moderates are winning. Yet the Islamic communities of the U.S. (dominated by the Saudis) and Britain (run by radical Pakistanis) suffer under a totalitarian regime of thought-control.

What happens when ordinary Muslims rebel against radical domination in America? They are ostracized, thrown out of mosques, and subjected to extraordinary public insults and threats. I myself was harassed in a Long Island mosque in 2003, as noted in this article. Shia mosques are excluded from “Sunni,” i.e. Wahhabi-controlled bodies, and numerous incidents of expulsions of individual Shias from Sunni mosques in the U.S. have been reported to the Center for Islamic Pluralism, which I have established.

The “Wahhabi Lobby” -- an assemblage of groupings, headed by the Hamas- and Saudi-backed Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) -- controls the public life of many American Sunnis. It demands certification as moderate, but not in recognition of real moderation or loyalty to the American constitutional tradition. Instead, their demand for recognition and respect is a preemptive strike to shield them from a proper understanding and appreciation of their tactics and aims...


Bold emphasis mine. This article is a Must Read. You see the rest HERE.


Muhammad Caricatured
Journalists and Wahhabis alike are
distorting the Islamic tradition

By Stephen Schwartz.

THE UPROAR IN EUROPE AND some Muslim countries over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper last September has once again dramatized several dismal aspects of the conflict between radical Islam and the culture of the West. One is that the so-called Arab or Muslim street comprises little more than a rent-a-mob available to burn, loot, and kill whenever Muslim demagogues attack political institutions and media anywhere in the world. Another is the ignorance Western media bring to their reporting on the issues that disturb the global Muslim community...


You can read the whole article HERE.


The "Islamophobes" That Aren't
By Stephen Schwartz
Tech Central Station | April 28, 2005

A continuous propaganda of grievance emanates from the Wahhabi lobby in America - the range of organizations that make up the country's "Islamic" establishment. Backed by Saudi Arabia and its state cult, which is the most extreme form of the religion of Muhammad, as well as by the Muslim Brotherhood (based in Egypt), and the jihadist Jama'ati movement in Pakistan, these groups have benign names: the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Students' Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA), the Arab American Institute (AAI), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the Muslim American Society (MAS), and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA).

Such entities complain, above all, about "profiling" -- the alleged practice of selecting American Muslims for particular governmental scrutiny as potential terrorism suspects. "Profiling" has become a politically-correct cliché equated with stereotyping and discrimination, to such an absurd degree that in January, during the elections in Iraq, I was confronted by an Iraqi Sunni advocate who accused me of "profiling" Iraqis because I pointed out the differences between Sunnis and Shia Muslims over the future of the Baghdad government.

American governmental "profiling" of Arabs and Muslims has been a trivial phenomenon at worst. U.S. federal investigators have in most cases been extremely cautious, notwithstanding hysterical claims and rumors fostered by the Wahhabi lobby. This blather focuses on accusations of wholesale injustice and supposed preparation of internment for Arabs and Muslims, comparable to the wartime relocation of the ethnic Japanese in the Western U.S. during the second world war.

It is seldom noticed, however, that the Wahhabi lobby engages in its own forms of profiling, which mainly consist of branding every opponent of Islamist radicalism an "Islamophobe." In addition, the charge often includes labeling of such critics as Jews, Zionists, and Israeli agents...


You can read the entire article HERE.

H.T. to The Chatterbox Chronicles for the Karen Hughes profile.

H.T. to Partamian Report for the link to www.freemuslims.org/.

H.T. to Michelle Malkin for the Hughes photo and the link to Flemming Rose's defense statement.

4 comments:

Dionne said...

Thanks for the link.

This would be an area where I would have to disagree with Karen and agree with you. I am not happy about how W is bending over backwards to appease muslims on things like this. But in some ways I understand why they have to so as not to cause unnecessary problems. To be honest I don't really think Islam is a religion of peace but understand why W has to say that it is.

Chas said...

I agree with you. I know that we are in a very difficult situation with the Saudis. The ruling Saudi family is in a volatile situation domestically, and I know the Bush Administration has to tread carefully. I just think they are a little TOO accomodating, which only encourages the Saudi Royal family to continue in their present ways.

The Saudis have a habit of telling us whatever they think we want to hear, then telling their own people, in Arabic, something quite different. They squelch democracy at home, then encourage their people to blame us for their problems, which leads to support for terrorists like Bin Laden.

We ought to pay more attention to GENUINE Muslim moderates, and stop playing this game of with the Saudi Wahhabis, The Egyptian Mulim Brotherhood and the Pakistani Jihadists. The game is "respecting" their religion, which is just a cloke for their extreme totalitarian ambitions. I see no reason to encourage them in this, and every reason to call them on it.

It's easy to respect a religion of peace. Let these militant groups start to DEMONSTRATE that they are practicing one, or be treated like the facist totalitarians that they are.

I know that W. has a reputation of trying to build coalitions of concensus between groups who disagree. It's what he did in Texas, and what he is trying to do in Washington. But with the Saudis, we have to be so very careful. I fear we are just being their "enablers", enabling them to just continue on as they always have. That led to Bil Laden, and if it continues unchallenged, well, I would not like to see where that goes.

They can give the Bush family all the private assurances they want to, which they have been doing for years, but it's just not good enough anymore. They need to start making real changes, or lose our respect and experience diminising support from us.

Dionne said...

Chas:

I wholeheartedly agree. To be honest I think Bush is too accomodating but if I were President it would be hard. Ann Coulter and you and I can criticize Muslims all we want without fear of consequences but with the President its a much different deal.

Love your blog. I'm adding you to my blogroll.

Chas said...

Tammy Bruce has been asked if she would run for political office. She said no, because a politician must make compromises, and she didn't think she could do it; that she could be more effective doing what she is doing, publishing and speaking, and hosting her radio talk show.

I understand that President Bush has to compromise (I admire him for it at times; it's an ability most of the Democrats seem to have forgotten). But those of us who are not elected officials can be more outspoken, and when any of our elected officials go too far in a bad direction, we need to speak up. And blogs are one good way to do that!

Thank you for the link, I've added you on my blogroll too.