By: Resa LaRu Kirkland

…he shall scatter among them the prey, and spoil, and riches: yea, and he shall forecast his devices against the strong holds, even for a time….. Daniel 11: 24

FORECAST–1 a: to calculate or predict (some future event or condition) …2: to serve as a forecast of : intransitive verb: to calculate the future

DEVICE—1: something devised or contrived: as a (1): plan, procedure, technique (2): a scheme to deceive : stratagem, trick b: something fanciful, elaborate, or intricate in design c:…f: a piece of equipment or a mechanism designed to serve a special purpose or perform a special function.

(more…)

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Right Truth Blog

A call for America’s churches to step up as witnesses for the truth about the Flight 93 memorial, blogburst, thanks to Error Therapy:

Three segments of American society get paid to investigate and report facts: academia, the press, and government. For two and a half years, all three have been spinning desperately to avoid and suppress the facts about Islamic and terrorist memorializing symbolism in the Flight 93 memorial.

Full Article …

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By Joanne Mandel

Rosie O’Donnell’s outlandish claim that radical Christianity is just as much a threat as radical Islam drew a pointed response from one British columnist.

“While evangelists may say that gay people are wicked, damned to hellfire or the like, I don’t know of any internationally renowned Christian leaders who are calling for the imprisonment and killing of gay people,” he wrote, whereas the supposedly ‘moderate’

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, says they should all be killed “in the worst manner possible.”

Ms. O’Donnell’s alternative reality, a fixture in popular culture, creates a broad opening for militant Muslims ready to impose a frightful existence on all of us. Undermining support for Christianity and Western culture may not be in Ms. O’Donnell’s best interest, either.

Two popular sentiments work in tandem to open the door to Islamic infiltration: an aversion to Christianity and a warm reception to Muslims who demand special treatment. Our ignorance of 1300 years of Islamic jihad, which brought death, destruction and despair to three continents is one explanation for our tolerance of their encroachment. Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, has written Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t to build awareness of this threat to liberty.

Mr. Spencer lists eight prominent anti-Christian books churned out by major New York publishing houses in 2006 alone. But without opening a book you are likely to receive a similar, if more subtle message on the nightly news, in Hollywood films and in classrooms and lecture halls. The message is that Christianity is intolerant and has brought violence and exploitation and will continue to do so if not kept in check. In the past, badmouthing America and its religious heritage was primarily the occupation of Marxists and others inspired by the Soviet example. Today, it is a mainstream phenomenon.

According to the current multicultural mindset, all cultures are morally equivalent and equally worthy of respect but for ours, because we are, after all, oppressors. Non-Western cultures are celebrated while traditional Western culture and its achievements are not. To regard this country as superior because it offers individual freedom and opportunity to all is offensive. At the heart of this dismissal of Western civilization, Mr. Spencer detects contempt with Christianity and the Jewish tradition from which it arises. To self-loathing Americans, biblically based opposition to gay marriage, legalized drugs and unrestricted abortion is intolerant, hateful, oppressive and evil. This over-the-top attitude toward those with traditional views rules out debate on any topic, just when serious discussion about Islam is needed most.

Muslims and their apologists enjoy the privileges of non-Western outsiders. They do not have to censor their speech to avoid being hit with a costly lawsuit.
Using intimidation and the protection of our legal system, proponents of Sharia [Islamic law] are gradually inserting it into the American political framework. How else would we explain that not a single major US publication printed the Danish cartoons? And there will be no real opposition to Muslim encroachment as long as we are tied down like Gulliver by the cockeyed notion that Christianity, not Islam, is the paramount threat to our liberty.

Mr. Spencer looks into the false arguments about Christianity and Islam that prevent us from countering the growing influence of the Muslim political agenda in the US. But he sees that a defense against jihadists is not enough. People must be striving for something. Preserving our heritage can serve that purpose admirably when its nobility and exceptionalism are not distorted or trashed. Replacing fantasy and myth with reality might give “self-loathing” Americans reason to reconsider the legacy they take for granted.

Religion of Peace? draws our attention to the chasm that separates Christianity and Judaism from Islam and to our woefully inadequate understanding of the differences. Mr. Spencer shows the reader that the Crusades were prompted by centuries of Islamic jihad conquests of large tracts of Christendom, a view confirmed by noted historian Bernard Lewis. We are now expected to believe that the Crusades were an unwarranted act of aggression against a peaceful Muslim world. Hardly. Likewise, Bruce Thornton, classicist at California State University, tells us in a City-Journal.com essay that the Crusades were fought to liberate the lands that had been Christian for six and a half centuries before Islam burst forth from the Arabian Peninsula.

While news and commentary about the spiraling Islamic threat to non-Muslim are in short supply, distortions of the “threat” posed by Christians abound. Barbara Walters appearing on ABC’s “Our View”
demonstrated the nonsense that passes for commentary.
Talking about the English school teacher imprisoned in Sudan and sentenced to 40 lashes for allowing her students to name a teddy bear “Mohammed” Ms. Walters said that she could see a similar reaction by Christians here in the US if someone were to name a teddy bear “Jesus.” In Sudan enraged crowds ran through the streets calling for the woman’s execution.
Ms. Walters’ vision of a similar Christian menace in the US is an indication of collective dementia.
Unfortunately, gullible viewers buy into the “insight”
of opinion leaders like Ms.Walters. Our continued existence as non-Muslims is on the line because far too many viewers have been convinced that the War on Terror is a ruse.

The US cannot afford to give Islamists the benefit of the doubt. It is high time that we recognize the mind-boggling difference between the Judeo-Christian and the Islamic understanding of what G-d expects of us. The Muslim answer is shocking to Western sensibilities. Consider the unrepentant murderer of Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, explaining at his trial why he tried to behead van Gogh by slitting his throat in 2004. He told the court that “he acted out of conviction, moved purely by his faith, by the law that commands me to cut off the head of anyone who insults Allah.” This Muslim did what Allah requires of him. The distance between Netherlands and the US will not protect us from similar attacks here in America.
Nor do the passing years insulate us from their unfaltering desire for conquest and conversions.

The 14th century Christian emperor quoted by Pope Benedict XVI last year concluded that Mohammed brought only evil and inhumanity to the world by commanding that the faith he preached be spread by the sword. The pope’s remark in an address in 2006 sparked international riots and killings, and countless death threats. To a Western mind, the savage response was an outburst of irrational, often sadistic rage. But, seen through Muslim eyes the fury of the response fulfilled their duty to restore the honor of Allah. The meaning of “duty” cannot be relaxed by a new, modern interpretation. What does change is Islam’s strategic position and ability to subjugate non-Muslims to the faith. With the aid of Western technology and a multicultural mania neutralizing our will to resist, their ability has grown exponentially. Confirmation comes from the head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who declared that adopting Sharia law in Britain seems “unavoidable.”

No group is more likely to mourn the loss of their freedom when they are required to submit to Sharia statutes than Western women and girls. In countless enclaves scattered throughout European cities, even non-Muslim women and girls are forced to dress in conformity to Islamic dictates to avoid brutal attacks. Modesty in appearance is enforced by gangs of young men.

Muslim women are also at a disadvantage within their own families. Commentator Janet Levy gets to the heart of the difference when she says: “If a Jewish or Christian man beats his wife, or otherwise abuses her, he does so against his religion, and his worship community. When a Muslim man does likewise, he does so in full obedience to the Prophet himself. It’s in the Koran.” Christianity supports the wife while Islam supports the wife-beater thereby upholding family values. Another family practice sanctioned by Sharia allows Muslims to take child brides following the example of the prophet, Mohammed. Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, who married a ten-year-old girl when he was twenty-eight, called marriage to a young girl “a divine blessing” and advised others to do likewise.

The Religion of Peace? provides a reality check.
The more of us who know the nature of Islam, the less likely it will be that our daughters will, among far more ghastly experiences, have to suffocate in a full-length burka on a summer afternoon. Those who refuse to see militant Islam as an existential threat are aiding and abetting the destruction of our Judeo-Christian civilization by a culture that will give new meaning to the words “intolerance,” “hatred,”
“oppression” and “evil.” How does it happen that so many in our midst are swayed by the likes of Rosie O’Donnell?

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A 4-year-old victim of Islam in India, where 80 innocents in
Jaipur were added to the list of 80 million other Hindus
taken out by the Religion of Peace in the last 1000 years.

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By Western Resistance

Bad news on the American public education front. The American Textbook Council has put out their 2008 Report: Islam in the Classroom. According to the report, there has apparently been no progress in eliminating the politically correct airbrushing of history and promotion of Islam in the junior and high school level text books since I last reported on it two and a half years ago.

Gilbert T. Sewall, the author of the report reviews the nation’s ten most widely used textbooks for junior and senior high seems well aware of the multicultural and politically correct bias that pervades textbooks today.

Full Article here …

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By Roger W. Gardner. (Originally posted at Radar Site)

cross posted from Jihad Du Jour.com
http://jihadidujour.blogspot.com/

There are deluded Jews and Christians who believe that the barbaric attacks against non-Muslims and even fellow Muslims alike throughout the world are being perpetrated by members of a small, extreme, perverted brand of Islam and that “true” Islam is probably just like modern Christianity or Judaism; that all that is needed is for moderate Muslims to take back their religion from the radicals. Then there are the deluded Jews and Christians who have actually read the Quran for themselves and realize that the barbarity of Muslim terror we see today is indeed rooted in the very essence of Islam and argue that we must not condemn the religion when all that is needed is for Islam to go through a reformation and modernization as Christianity and Judaism has done.

But an expert in religion disagrees:

The QandO Blog, 11 Jan 2006, Pope says Islam can’t reform
Now Pope Benedict XVI has let it be known that he does not believe Islam can reform. This we learn from the transcript of a January 5 US radio interview with one of Benedict’s students and friends, Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, the provost of Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida, posted on the Asia Times Online forum by a sharp-eyed reader. For the pope to refute the fundamental premise of US policy is news of inestimable strategic importance, yet a Google News scan reveals that not a single media outlet has taken notice of what Fessio told interviewer Hugh Hewitt last week. No matter: still and small as Benedict’s voice might be, it carries further than earthquake and whirlwind.

There are Muslims who believe that Islam can reform but they too are deluded:

FaithFreedom.org Why Can’t Islam be Reformed?
This is the position of many modern Muslims, including Irshad Manji the author of “What Is Wrong with Islam, Today”. A great number of Muslims realize there is something wrong with Islam, but they erroneously believe the problem can be solved through the miracle of reinterpretation; and that they can keep the Quran and believe in Muhammad but somehow do the opposite of what he did and said and still call themselves Muslims….You ask: “Can Islam be reformed?” No, it can’t! To reform Islam you have to first get rid of Muhammad and second get rid of the Quran. You have to take out a great portion of that book which is violent. The rest is nonsense and absurdity. But this you can’t do, because you have no authority to do such a thing. Muhammad said that he has perfected his religion (Q. 5:3). How can you improve something, which is perfect? You can’t change the Quran. You can’t reform it. All you can do is to reinterpret and, for example pretend, “slay the unbelievers wherever you find them” means something else.

Then there is the website Muslims Against Sharia who argue that the Quran is not the literal word of Allah; that Islam, in its present form, is not compatible with principles of freedom and democracy; that Muslims must remove all the evil passages from Islamic religious texts; that there is no one religion that is superior to another; that Sharia Law must be abolished; that Seventh Century practices such as stoning, cutting off body parts, marrying and/or having sex with children or animals must be condemned; and hundreds of other suggestions to make Islam more like Christianity or Judaism.

If somehow one could actually change one letter of a book whose wording letter for letter was fixed by no one but Allah, and dutifully followed the advice of Muslims Against Sharia and actually purged Islam of all of its barbarity then we would have in our hands a slim book with the Title “The Quran” and a sole, blank page bound in leather.

But this would not be enough, the other leg of Islam, the Sunnah is the second source of Islamic jurisprudence without which one cannot practice Islam. The Sunnah: the way of the prophet, his sayings, deeds, etc. One could compare these two legs of Islam to Christianity: the Quran, or the word of God, is like the Old Testament, and the Sunnah, or the deeds and sayings of Mohammed, are like the Gospels: the sayings and deeds of Jesus.

But while the deeds and sayings of Jesus are of humility, love, and peace, the deeds and sayings of Mohammed are of narcissism, hate, and military conquest. While the message of Jesus is “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” the message of Mohammed is “Stone all those who disbelieve.” No, I’m afraid that all of the Sunnah must be purged as well.

“But,” you may protest, “if we remove all the evil from the Quran and excise all that is vile in the Sunnah, then there will be nothing left to follow in Islam!”Precisely.As to what happens to Muslims who try to practice even the slightest deviation from the absolute written word of Allah:

Reuters, 28 Apr 2008, Hardliners torch “heretical” Indonesian mosque-police
Hundreds of hardline Indonesian Muslims burnt a mosque early on Monday belonging to a sect that has been branded heretical by most Muslims, police said.The attack in West Java’s Sukabumi district came after a government team recommended this month the Ahmadiyya sect be banned because its teachings deviate from the central tenets of Islam.I believe that the government in Indonesia has a perfect right to ban a religious group because its teachings deviate from the central tenets of Islam. I believe we in America and Europe should follow their example and likewise ban all of Islam because its teachings deviate from the central tenets of modern civilization.

Cross-Posted at Planck’s Constant

A final note: It would be great sin of omission on the part of Radarsite to post an article such as this without acknowledging the tireless efforts of our good friend and Islamic scholar Ben from A Newt One, who has been proclaiming these same warnings of the enormous dangers that this cult of Islam presents to the West. Hopefully our present and future leaders will come to these same conclusions and protect our vulnerable nation from this evil onslaught. We shall see…

http://anewtone.com/
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As is now common knowledge that in many western democracies freedom of speech as under assault from Islam (as well as from the PC Left, but that’s a separate matter). This must be stopped.

It has become painfully obvious that Islam seeks to end any and all comedic, satirical or critical display of its way and prophet. A growing number of western democracies have begun caving in to these demands.

As free men and women we may satirize, criticize, insult, make fun of any and all of our leader, institutions groups and icons.

By their own doing, Islam has given us another weapon with which to resist their insidious assault on western culture - humor, comedy an satire.

Below I’m posting an email from a Norwegian gentleman (I assume - could be a lady) named John Smith who requests Mohammed cartoon submission for a a compilation he’s assembling.

So those of you who can put pencil to paper and come up with a picture, consider taking a shot at the prophet of the Religion of (join or die) Peace. 

I am a Norwegian University College student, and I’m more or less done with writing the manuscript for my book; “1001 caricatures of Mohammad as a defense, for the right to ask the critical questions and make caricatures. As you understand from the books title, I need contributions in the form of 1001 caricature drawings of Mohammad.  It would be helpful for me and the book project if you could write an article about this in your site.

Yours sincerely

Alias John Smith

Contribution request 

1001 caricatures of Mohammad

What should the answer of the freedom loving peoples of the west be ageist the fascist forces in Islam who threatens with violence to stop critical opinions and caricatures of Islam?

If you are one of many who share my beliefs that we have to fight this totalitarian ideology, you now have the possibility to participate.

I am writing a book called “1001 caricatures of Mohammad as a defense, for the right to ask the critical questions and make caricatures. As you understand from the books title, I need contributions in the form of 1001 caricature drawings of Mohammad.

I am writing this book under a fictional name because of the dangers combined with expression critical views of Islam. Any contribution will be protected in the same manner as my self.

Make history; defend the freedom to many take for granted. With a pen you can stand up and fight for the right to be free in the battle of liberty for all the peoples of the world.  Send your contribution to:

1001.muhammed@gmail.com

Yours sincerely

Alias John Smith

 

Blog:

http://1001muhammed.blogspot.com/

Parameters for the caricatures:

JPEG, GIF and tiff form:

size:

black/white 1200 piksler/dpi
Gray 300 piksler/dpi
color 300 piksler/dpi 

 

 

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A Proposed Constitutional Amendment
(Note the need for this Amendment at the end)

Background and justification to Amendment 28
(self-defense/survival measure)

Whereas; Religion is defined as an institution dedicated to improving social conscience and promoting individual and societal spiritual growth in a way that is harmless to others not participating in or practicing the same;

Whereas; the United States of America was founded on the ideals of individual rights, including the individual right to practice one’s religion of choice, or no religion, and that there would be no compulsion of religion, nor state sanctioned religion, nor a ‘religious test’ for participation in the body politic;

Whereas; Islam includes a complete political and social structure, encompassed by its religious law, Sharia, that supercedes any civil law and that Islam mandates that no secular or democratic institutions are to be superior to Islamic law;

Whereas; Islam preaches that it and it alone is the true religion and that Islam will dominate the world and supplant all other religions and democratic institutions;

Whereas; Saudi Arabia , the spiritual home of Islam does not permit the practice of any other religion on its soil and even ‘moderate’ Muslims states such as Turkey and Malaysia actively suppress other religions;

Whereas; Islam includes as its basic tenant the spread of the faith by any and all means necessary, including violent conquest of non-believers, and demands of its followers that they implement violent jihad (holy war) against those un-willing to convert or submit to Islam, including by deception and subversion of existing institutions;

Whereas; on 9/11/2001 19 Muslim hijackers acting in the name of Islam killed 3,000 Americans, and numerous other acts of terrorism have been directed at the American people around the world;

Whereas; representatives of Islam around the world including Osama Bin Laden (architect of 9/11), the government of Iran including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, HAMAS, Hezbollah, and other Islamic groups have declared jihad (war) on America, and regularly declare that America should cease to exist;

Whereas; there is no organized Islamic opposition to violent proponents of Islam;

Therefore: Islam is not a religion, but a political ideology more akin to Fascism and totally in opposition to the ideals of freedom as described in the United States Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights.

Be it resolved that the following Amendment to the Constitution be adopted:

Article I

The social/political/ideological system known around the world as Islam is not recognized in the United States as a religion. The practice of Islam is therefore not protected under the 1st Amendment as to freedom of religion and speech.

Article II

As representatives of Islam around the world have declared war, and committed acts of war, against the United States and its democratic allies around the world, Islam is hereby declared an enemy of the United States and its practice within the United States is now prohibited.

Article III

Immediately upon passage of this Amendment all Mosques, schools and Muslim places of worship and religious training are to be closed, converted to other uses, or destroyed. Proceeds from sales of such properties may be distributed to congregations of said places but full disclosure of all proceeds shall be made to an appropriate agency as determined by Congress.

No compensation is to be offered by Federal or State agencies for losses on such properties however Federal funding is to be available for the demolishing of said structures if other disposition cannot be made.

The preaching of Islam in Mosques, Schools, and other venues is prohibited. The subject of Islam may be taught in a post high school academic environment provided that instruction include discussion of Islam’s history of violence, conquest, and its ongoing war on democratic and other non-Islamic values.

The preaching or advocating of Islamic ideals of world domination, destruction of America and democratic institutions, jihad against Judaism, Christianity and other religions, and advocating the implementation of Sharia law shall in all cases be punishable by fines, imprisonment, deportation, and death as proscribed by Congress.

Violent expressions of these and other Muslim goals, or the material support of those both in the United States and around the world who seek to advance these Islamic goals shall be punishable by death. Muslims will be denied the opportunity to immigrate to the United States .

Article IV

Nothing in this amendment shall be construed as authorizing the discrimination against, of violence upon, nor repudiation of the individual rights of those Americans professing to be Muslim. The individual right of conscience is sacrosanct and the practice of Islam within the privacy of home and self is strictly protected to the extent that such individuals do not violate the prohibitions described in Article III.

THE REASON THE AMENDMENT IS NEEDED

I walked down the street in Barcelona, and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz.

We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims.

In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.

The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned.

And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.

They have turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime.

Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.

And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition.

We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for hoping for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.
What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe.

(Found Here)
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(Satire).

Of all the bloody cheek!

No longer content with just ramming airplanes into skyscrapers, devotees of the “Religion of Peace” have raised the terror bar another couple of notches.

Now these neurotic stowaways from the 7th century have flexed their financial muscle by threatening to boycott Northwest Airlines. It seems as though agents at Northwest had the audacity to demand that Muslim travelers follow international and airline rules by checking in least one hour before scheduled departure time.

It had something to do with security, 9/11, terrorism threats, etc. Nothing that would concern any card-holding Jihadist, right?

In any event, travelers returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, allegedly arrived just twenty minutes before departure, rather the required hour.

That is when Northwest Airlines personnel acted responsibly and refused to allow 40 of Allah’s best and brightest to board the plane.

Of course, lawyers from CAIR subsequently gathered to address the issue in the spirit of fairness, reasoned logic, and common sense.

When all of those approaches failed, CAIR resorted to their standard policy book and screamed Racism! blah, blah, blah. And they then threatened to boycott the company, meaning that Muslims would get even by not flying Northwest Airlines.

Excuse me, did I read that correctly? The Muslims threatened to stay away from Northwest Airlines?

Good grief, how lucky can any airline get?

Immediately after confirming this report, I checked the itinerary for my Hawaii vacation in May and dispatched the following letter to the San Francisco branch of CAIR:

Dear CAIR:

Knowing how racist and belligerent some airlines can be, I thought it my civic duty to inform you of a situation that is untenable for any ax-wielding Jihadist.

I refer to XXX Airlines, Flight XX, on May 15,2008 This flight is non-stop from San Francisco to Hana, Maui, and leaves at 730 am, PDT. Gate 2a, Terminal 3.

In addition, please make note of the return flight from Hana to San Francisco on May 31, 2008.

Both of these flights are to be avoided by Muslims at all costs. The pilots, stewardesses, security personal, bartenders, and Red Caps at these airports are all bigoted, anti-Islam racists. Some are even rumored to be closet Jews.

Please confirm receipt of this advisory and CAIR’s firm commitment to boycott the identified flights.

Praise be to Allah,
JWL
Infidel, Second Class

johnlillpop@yahoo.com

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If it is true that, upon death, Muslim men have immediate access to 72 voluptuous virgins, why would any Muslim ever resist?

In fact, one wonders why Musab Zarqawi tried to crawl off his death-stretcher in Iraq?

Given the promise of all that free love, why not just lay back, relax and croak?

Perhaps Zarqawi understood that if he stayed on the stretcher he risked being taken and kept alive by American medical people.

He was also shrewd enough to know that dimwit liberals at the ACLU and DNC would demand that he receive a full slate of “Terrorist Rights,” including a civilian jury trial, thereby delaying his demise/reward by a decade or two.

So Zarqawi did what any sane Muslim about to lose out on 20 years of unfettered virgin sex would do: He tried to escape in order to die immediately!

In the end, though, Zarqawi was a beneficiary of superior American technology as that 500 pound buster- bomb blasted the jihadist killer out of this level of consciousness.

Zarqawi’s last words on that bloody stretcher reflected his gratitude when he stole a direct quote from GW Bush:

Bring them on! said the dying jihadist, with a twinkle in his still-horny eye.

And remember the weasels who committed suicide at Guantanamo Bay? One would assume that by now they have also snaked their way up to Islamic heaven and are reunited with Zarqawi.

So, again I ask: With 72 virgins in the offing, why in the name of Allah would any Muslim ever resist death?

johnlillpop@yahoo.com

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Seven years passed 9/11 and five years passed the invasion of Iraq, Americans are still trying to figure out what makes Arabs behave the way they do. There is a vast cultural difference between those in the West and those in an Arab world that fills the Middle East and stretches across the northern tier of Africa. Indeed, military conflict with Arabs goes back to the days of Thomas Jefferson.

In writing about Arabs, it must be acknowledged that one must use generalizations. No group is unanimous in all respects. All have their conservatives, their moderates, and starry-eyed liberals. Every group, however, has widely shared cultural and religious views, and as history teaches us, it is the silence of good people that permits the bad actors among them to dominate events.

In her new book, Sandra Mackey uses the calamity that is Lebanon to provide some useful insights to the Arab world she knows well. “Mirror of the Arab World” is well worth reading with the caveat that Mackey has bought into the view that Israel does not have any right to exist. For her it is always “Zionist” Israel in much the same way Arab news media always refers to “occupied Jerusalem.”

Even with her sympathy for Arabs, she does a pretty good job of showing them at their worst. Granted, this does not take a lot of effort. Is there a day that goes by when the civil war in Iraq does not produce more Shia and Sunni dead bodies? The Kurds, isolated and armed to the teeth, have managed to keep other Iraqis from destroying their hold on a significant portion of that nation’s oil.

In fact, one eventually comes to see the problems of the Middle East as stemming from a seventh century schism that occurred shortly after the death of Mohammad. Fourteen centuries later, the Shias or Shiites, are still held in contempt by the majority Sunnis. You can find a majority population of Shias in two nations, Iraq and in Iran.

The Iranians, descended from Persians, are not Arabs. While they may be linked by religion to the Shias, they reportedly take a dim view of Arabs. You might feel the same way if Saddam Hussein had made war on your nation for eight years or if Pakistan and Afghanistan was a neighbor.

Lebanon’s problems reflect the Arab world because its population has always been sharply divided between the Christian Maronites, the Muslims, who include both the Druze sect and the Shias whose population has been growing due to the influx of Palestinians. The latter is the result of failed wars against Israel as well as those driven out of Jordan after they attempted to overthrow the monarchy there.

The result has been the rise of Hezbollah, an armed militia of Palestinians, backed by Syria and Iran, who intend to rule Lebanon for the purpose of continuing their war against Israel. By destroying the delicate balance of power between Lebanon’s confessional groups, the Palestinians precipitated a fifteen-year civil war in Lebanon. From 1975 to 1990, the war destroyed the nation and left what remained under the control of Syria.

The 2006 conflict with Israel precipitated by Hezbollah saw vast portions of Beirut leveled to rubble by the Israelis who do not take kindly to having their soldiers kidnapped and their cities rocketed.

If Arabs stopped making war on Israel the whole region could begin to modernize, make peace with the West, and begin to enjoy improved lives. The presence of Hezbollah in Lebanon and, in Gaza, Hamas, makes that impossible. Even the quiet diplomatic efforts of the Saudis have failed to bring about any reduction in bloodshed.

The problems of the Middle East, sitting atop one of the world’s greatest concentration of oil, have required military intervention by the United States for the strategic reason that the West depends on the free flow of oil. It is the reason the United States has not only had to invest blood and treasure there, but the reason the cost of oil has increased. Since the days of World War II, the United States has been the guarantor of the flow of oil from there to the rest of the world.

One might be tempted to blame Lebanon’s problems on the existence of Israel since recognition of its right to exist, first by the British and later by U.S. support since 1948, but what it reveals is (1) the endemic hatred of Jews that reflects the Muslim Arab mindset, (2) the failure of Arabs to exist peacefully with one another due to theological schisms, (3) their family and tribal mentality, and (4) the anti-Western attitudes of Arabs that literally date back centuries to the Crusades.

As Mackey puts it, “Spasms of change grip every Arab society. Long-festering wounds on the inside and new influences invading from the outside are eating away at ageless certainties, time-honored traditions, and venerable relationships within families, clans, and tribes.”

If there is one thing Arabs have fought against it has been change and, in the last century, they had a lot of change thrust upon them. At the end of World War I, the Ottomans who had ruled for centuries had their empire divided and colonized by the British and the French. They drew lines on the map of the Middle East to create what can only be called imaginary nations.

One of them was Lebanon that was ceded to the French. The other was Iraq that became the property of the British, along with a protectorate called Palestine. No “nation” of Palestine has ever existed. There were no “Palestinian” people until the late Yassir Arafat, the father of modern terrorism, invented them.

Syria, who had always regarded Lebanon as part of “Greater Syria”, resented then and now having the Levant that bordered the Mediterranean taken from them. Finally, the British drew lines to create Jordan as a sop to the Arabs who had fought with them against the Turks.

What few in the West have understood is that Islam is political entity. It may have the trappings of religion, but it existed from the beginning to assert control over territory and peoples as a form of government. This is most obvious in Iran where all decisions are made by a small band of ayatollahs, men learned in Sharia or Muslim law. It can be seen as well in Saudi Arabia where a pact between its founder and the Wahabi sect of Islam created that desert nation.