Valentine’s Day suggestions by DL Adams

One of the most common criticisms of the Republican Party is that it doesn’t have a sense of humor. Humor is an important part of politics, everybody knows this! Even Islam has a sense of humor! Check it out!!

Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humour in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun or joy in whatever is serious. (Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, radio sermon, 1979.)

Well, that’s not so funny. Try this one.

‘Asim b. ‘Umar b. Qatada told me that ‘Auf b. Harith-his mother was ‘Afra’-said ‘O apostle of God, what makes the Lord laugh with joy at His servant?’ He answered, ‘When he plunges into the midst of the enemy without mail.’ ‘Auf drew off the mail-coat that was on him and threw it away: then he seized his sword and fought the enemy till he was slain. (Sira, Ishaq, 446) 

Ok, not really funny, try this one:

Sira/al Tabari (Battle of the Ditch):T1440 On the road, the leader saw two Meccans who were enemies of Islam. He shot one and captured the other and marched him to Medina. When they got to Mohammed with the captive and told him the whole story of the killing, Mohammed laughed so hard they could see his back teeth. Then he blessed them.

Ok, well, it’s not exactly the kind of humor that most people in the West would consider “funny”, but there is one source of humor for Americans that is most unexpected – the Republican Party!

So mix some humor with your upcoming Valentine wishes to your favorite guy or gal! These cards are particularly great for your multiculturalist post-modernist friends! Your liberal friends will laugh uproariously, too! Imagine the glee and hilarity when all your friends who love Saul Alinsky get one of these excellent and hilarious cards! Utopians have a great sense of humor! They’ll love it. If there’s one thing that Utopians, Liberals and fans of eugenics everywhere love it’s parody!

You can get your GOP Valentine email cards here!

Let’s remember during this special time of loving and well, … loving, that we are one humanity people race group  – you know, a “special interest group” of love. The world is all about love and getting along. Our common humanity and appreciation for one another will always bring us together, and if we’re really, really, really nice, and maybe even have a bake sale – we can all get along. Not.

Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyah (may Allaah have mercy on him) said in Majmoo’ al-Fataawa (10/129):

Love is a psychological sickness, and if it grows strong it affects the body, and becomes a physical sickness, either as diseases of the brain, which are said to be diseases caused by waswaas, or diseases of the body such as weakness, emaciation and so on. End quote. (courtesy of VladTepes)

Introduction

There was some concern on the part of the SIOA editorial staff (Kendra) that this article would somehow be seen by all four readers as a shift to the left on my part; it’s not. Admittedly, it’s a bit strange that commentators on the political left have suggested a renewed WPA in similar fashion but it’s entirely coincidental in this case and of little philosophical concern (except perhaps to the editorial department).

The following article is presented because we are in dangerous times. This site exists because we are in dangerous times. If our economy fails, we will be in a far diminished capacity to defend ourselves from and oppose hateful and cruel ideologies whose purpose is to destroy our country and civilization; recovery of the economy is a national imperative for many reasons. 

We are not very good at learning from our history, our leaders appears almost entirely ignorant of it. It is often said that the bailout and the “stimulus” (that has yet to show any positive benefit to the families of America unless they are affiliated with formerly insolvent financial institutions now reborn with taxpayer dollars) and the new massive national debt are necessary but painful treatments to “fix” our crisis economy. Our leaders have said on many occasions that if they did nothing, our economy would have collapsed and the Great Depression repeated. Yet they ignore the great public works and jobs program of that era, the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

As our unemployment rate sits at a staggering 10% (and likely higher in real numbers) the need to help families is critical. No program of the academic stars of Washington has of yet helped at this level.

A new WPA may well be the program to give rapid help to families and individuals in crisis because they cannot find work. So much public monies have already been squandered in the attempt to find a way back from the economic brink.

This article discusses a proven program that could be a model for recovery today. I take no political position with this article but present it to you for your consideration. The WPA was a successful jobs creation and national improvement program from our not-so-distant past that put millions to work and improved the infrastructure and culture of the nation. Ignoring our history at this time of national crisis upon crisis, especially a program from our past that brought millions to work and assisted materially in bringing the nation out of the Depression, is simply irresponsible.

[This article appears today on FamilySecurityMatters.org]

Applying the Lessons of History: A New WPA

by DL Adams

During times of national crisis leaders are called upon to lead; they are expected to lead. We now enter the second year of the administration of “hope and change” but there appears to be a deep disconnect between the governed and the governing.

It was with growing dismay and disillusion that all politics at the nation’s capital were subsumed by the failed “Health Care Insurance Reform” thrust upon the country by the ruling party. Even now as the stock market teeters just above 10,000 on bad news and more to come, and the recent election of Scott Brown to represent that formerly all “blue state” of Massachusetts in the Senate signaled the rejection of the Health Care Reform and of the tunnel vision and denial coming from Washington, the message from the White House and the Congress is not one of recovery but more of the same.

“Health Care Reform” appears to be dead to the entirety of the country but for the executive branch at Washington and their supporters in the Congress. This is a dangerous disconnect and leaves more critical and pressing matters unaddressed and unresolved.

The unemployment situation and the economic decline of our country (but for some bailed-out incompetent institutions on Wall Street) are signals to the president that drastic action must be taken (and rapidly) to alleviate the suffering of the people. Instead we continue to hear the president talking again about “health care reform”; this is sham leadership. This failure on the part of the administration to effectively lead the country out of these crises will likely have devastating consequences.

Leadership has always been about character, not academic experience or accolades (be they earned or not). The foundation of American leadership has always been based on the ability to listen, to weigh alternatives, and guide the nation on the most effective course – characteristics now shown to be absent in the present administration. In times past our leaders guided the nation through worse crises than the ones we currently face – a seemingly perfect storm of difficulties and disappointments, dangers and deceits. We should look to our past once again for guidance.

The staggering inability of the Obama administration only one year into its rule to deal with these numerous crises, even with control of both houses of Congress, may say more about our higher education system than anything else but that lesson has yet to be verified.

What is sure is that our executive branch leaders and their sycophants in Congress, most with expensive and formerly impressive academic degrees from once respectable institutions whose import and effectiveness are now all in doubt, have failed in the fundamental concern of education itself. The academic credentials of the present administration are most impressive, yet the holders of these degrees fail to impress with resolutions and resolute leading-by-example. There is no “follow me!” rhetoric of leadership to victory, only the dull thuds of “obey”, and “well, you folks don’t know what is good for you, but I sure do!”

For centuries it has been understood and accepted as valid, only to be questioned in recent decades, that a command of history and the ability to learn its lessons is a fundamental mark of an “educated person”. Now, we no longer have standards by whichto determine if a person is properly and thoroughly educated or if they are rather merely “degreed”. This abandonment of educational standards carries a serious price which we are now paying and will continue to pay long past the resolution of this crisis-after-crisis period in our history.

Perhaps there are no formal courses in our institutions that instruct our students how to apply the lessons of history once high office is attained. However, there once was held the common belief that with wisdom, (which formerly was expected to be a bi-product of graduation from our best institutions of higher learning), a leader with the moral and intellectual tools (honed at university) with which lessons from the past can be gleaned would lead us on the right paths. The light of this notion is dimming as there is now so little basis upon which it can remain lit.

Most importantly there are important lessons from our history that we can use, but they are all ignored or never broached. This is not wisdom, but folly.

We are now engaged in a great civil and economic crisis whose historical precedents provide us with guidance and with points to ponder from which new solutions (based upon the old) may be devised. The ridiculous and oppressive obsession of the president with “Health Care Reform” and its attendant disastrous distractions has allowed the current economic crisis (and others) to fester and disastrously grow.

The president has expanded perhaps all of his political capital on this failed plan hashed out in secrecy and derided by most reasonable people across the land on both sides of the political spectrum. The failure of Obamism is seen most clearly in the arrogance and aggressivenesswith which this expensive, ineffective, and unwanted plan was shoved down the collective throats of the American people, stifling the cries that would have issued forth to “resolve the economy!” and “jobs!”  While our brilliantly over-educated leaders demonstrate their lack of commonsense, the font from which American democracy has long sprung, the lessons of history remain undiscussed and hidden.

The unemployment rate in the United States now stands at approximately 10%. Some analysts suggest that the actual number is likely much higher even to 15% or more. The “Stimulus” has stimulated Wall Street but left Main Street with shuttered businesses and little opportunity for people to find employment and companies with little access to credit as banks continue to hold back from lending. The TARP program, the bank bailout, was meant to both save banks and financial institutions and encourage them to return to lending (thought it regrettably does not force them). It has failed. As with the expected but mythical “peace dividend” after the fall of the Soviet Union there are few dividends for the American people from the “Stimulus” and “TARP”; it is past time to try other solutions.

The watchdog charged with monitoring the government’s $700 billion bailout unleashed one of his harshest criticisms of the program to date, questioning its overall effectiveness.

In his latest quarterly report to Congress, special inspector general Neil Barofsky said that the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, has failed to boost bank lending as well as halt the spread of foreclosures — two key aims of the sprawling program.
CNNand American Thinker

With an apparently stimulated but wavering Wall Street and a stagnant and struggling Main Street it must be asked – upon what is the present Wall Street “recovery” based? If unemployment remains high, and home foreclosures continue at a record pace, then the fundamentals of the economy continue to be sour and not “stimulated”. It appears clear that there is no proper “recovery” from recession at all if job losses continue at their staggering rates.

The obscene bonuses of bailed-out Wall Street executives are really a distraction from more important matters, but they demonstrate a disconnect of Wall Street with the wider society. This disconnect has rarely been so obvious. The President addresses this issue in the populist manner of reasonable outrage but misses the point. If there is no foundation for believing that the country’s economy has recovered – because unemployment continues to grow and no job anywhere is “safe” – then the Wall Street advance may well be a bubble, an advance built on speculation and possibly falsified data. If and when this bubble breaks (if it is a bubble), there will be a new recessional dip that will bring us to a “double dip recession”. This will be a disaster for all.

The potential for further economic nightmares are reason enough for the US government to use its organizational and economic might at home to reduce the effects of the current recession and hopefully offset any future “double-dip” (or worse). There is no structure in American society with the national scope and power greater than the federal government; certainly, such reach is one of the purposes of government – to respond during times of national crisis. We are in a national crisis and effective action has not yet been taken to help the families of America. The lessons of history have been ignored and must be no longer.

FDR is, regardless of political opinions on either side of the aisle, considered by many historians to have saved American capitalism from the Great Depression.

The “Great Depression” is often discussed today in that “we were this close to being in the 2nd ‘great depression’!” and other such excessive rhetoric (though it may be true) but little else of the comparison is mentioned. How did FDR get millions of unemployed Americans back to work on an emergency basis and improve infrastructure and cultural programs across the country? He did it with the WPA, the Works Progress Administration.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was formed in 1935 (it existed for eight years) with a mandate to be, as he put it in his announcement of the program, “self-liquidating and self-diminishing.” Extraordinary economic crises and devastating unemployment levels demand aggressive and effective solutions. We have the model for a solution – it is called the WPA.

By March, 1936, the WPA rolls had reached a total of more than 3,400,000 persons; after initial cuts in June 1939, it averaged 2,300,000 monthly; and by June 30, 1943, when it was officially terminated, the WPA had employed more than 8,500,000 different persons on 1,410,000 individual projects, and had spent about $11 billion. During its 8-year history, the WPA built 651,087 miles of highways, roads, and streets; and constructed, repaired, or improved 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, 8,192 parks, and 853 airport landing fields.
Source

A “New WPA” would be, like its predecessor, a temporary emergency measure whose purpose is to rapidly get millions of Americans back to work. There can be little question that the core of the failure of the current so-called “recovery” is the ongoing and non-diminishing unemployment rate. While Wall Street numbers rise (for now), the present and future dreams of the American working people diminish and, in many cases, are destroyed. We are at a cross-road with few aware that options are available. Let us create a new WPA and get the people back to work.

The Obama administration has on many occasions touted the new as yet largely mythical but environmentally friendly “green economy” though such a sector does not now widely exist. The government could, for example, create both the industry and the market for this new economic sector fueled by a “jobs bill” called “the New WPA”. This could be but one component of a new Works Progress Administration.

This new initiative would, like the 30’s version “… make a real and lasting contribution -but would not vie with private firms.” A new WPA could “jump start” the economy, get millions back to work, improve national infrastructure and create both an entirely new economic sector(s) and new domestic and foreign markets for alternative energy sources. This would unite the green initiative (environmentalism) with the Green Initiative (putting money well-earned into the pockets of Americans who need it).

The constructive possibilities for a new WPA are endless. With millions of people back at work building, improving, and creating such a program could be the cornerstone of a re-emergence of American economic initiative backed by the US government. We still drive over WPA bridges and roads, and enjoy the results of WPA cultural projects across the country. The long-term and short-term benefits of such a project could be astounding.

As the private sector recovers, the public sector would keep millions of American workers at work, earning money and adding to the life of the nation, so that when the program expired after a pre-set deadline the workers with their experience and pride could return to the private sector. We have our history, our national character of hard work and initiative and the path before us for a possible solution to a growing economic crisis – it is immoral to take no action to bring relief to millions of Americans suffering on the sidelines with no hope for respectable and rewarding work.

We live during a time of political, cultural, economic, and security crises; it is a “perfect storm” of difficulty and challenges. During such times when our “best and brightest” fail, and our people know not where to look – we should look to our past to find the answers that we need.

It has been said recently that an attack on Iran will save the failing Obama presidency. Such an attack may be necessary rather than discretionary and may not “save the presidency” though it may save the country and our allies from Iranian nuclear assault.

What will likely revive/save the presidency of Mr. Obama is a clear and determined resolution to relieve the suffering of the American people and gather around him the most capable of people who may not have doctorates from Ivy League institutions but do have degrees from the “college of hard knocks”.

The operational and organizational details of a new WPA must be determined at some future time (but soon). What is most important is that a new regime will be put in place, based upon the successful model of the Works Progress Administration of the FDR presidency that will put Americans to work in their millions, improve and upgrade national infrastructure. Such a program would build upon the foundation of innovation and value that will benefit the country in the short term and the wider world in the long term.

As the so-called “stimulus” and bank bailouts have supported the survival of institutions and not individuals and families it is long past time to support Americans directly with the power of the federal government. As each day passes and warning signals continue to ring we run out of options.

Let us look to a past program marked by success and the value and longevity of its creations. The partisans of one side or the other may balk at the revival of a depression-era fix. However, such partisans will turn silent when the challenge to present evidence of a fundamental recovery and a renewed vigor in the economy of the nation cannot be answered. Such evidence is scarce and difficult to find because it likely does not exist.

Our rich history of success, hard work, initiative and innovation is the mine from which we shall recover the gold standard of prosperity. To leave such a mine untapped is beyond explanation, it is simply wrong.

This evening without apology or explanation the Facebook accounts of SIOE/SIOA organizers were reinstated. As no explanation for the deletion of the accounts nor for their reinstatements has been provided by Facebook one can only speculate as to what has occurred and why. Yesterday’s post was forwarded and taken up by numerous websites, and on Twitter in the United States and in Europe.

As it is not clear why Facebook removed the accounts in the first place nor why they were reinstated (due to the great silence from Facebook), the pressure brought to bear against Facebook because of this situation may well have resulted in the return of these accounts. 

Some Facebook users suggest that Facebook pays no attention to these controversies and that account deletions and reinstatements have an almost whimsical quality due to Facebook’s silence on such matters. Since this perspective is speculation in the same way that my “Facebook-bowed-to-pressure” argument is, I’ll stick with my interpretation.

-DLA

By DL Adams

In the internet world of social networking Facebook is the premier platform. Its reach is global and its user community numbers in the hundreds of millions. According to statistics about Facebook posted on Facebook’s own site there are 350 million users, 50% of whom log in on “any given day”. This means that at any given time there are likely at least 150 million people logged in on the site. Facebook has deeply affected the way that individuals and groups communicate and interact with one another.

Facebook’s rules are extensive and clearly listed on their “Statement of Rights” page. However there are terms used that are open to interpretation. Most specifically the nature of content posted on personal and group pages is open to scrutiny and judgment by Facebook staff; action taken by Facebook against its users sometimes appears arbitrary and harsh. Accounts are disabled or removed generally with no warning or explanation. Returning to the site and recovering one’s content can be difficult or impossible. For people with large “friends lists” or who use Facebook for professional purposes loss of their Facebook account can have unpleasant consequences. For many users especially those who access their accounts throughout the day via mobile device (blackberry, etc.) Facebook is an almost ubiquitous communications tool.

Many Facebook users express political views and opinions – often challenging and unpopular views. There are millions of pages dedicated to discussion of issues across the political and cultural spectrum. SIOA, SIOE and other like-minded groups as well as those holding opposing views use Facebook extensively to get their messages out. With a potential audience in the hundreds of millions the significance of Facebook to those who wish to spread knowledge and engage in direct discussion with interested people, often in real-time, the loss of a Facebook presence can be significant.

Several days ago, without warning or explanation, and in an apparently simultaneous action Facebook removed the personal accounts of Anders Gravers, Stephen Gash, and Harald Andersen of SIOE and SIAD (Denmark). Organizers of Stop Islamization of Bulgaria (Pavel Chernov), and Stop Islamization of America (Kendra) also had their personal Facebook accounts removed. As no explanation for these actions has been provided, one can only speculate as to the cause and purpose of these account removals.

While it is understood that Facebook is privately held and is not required to provide access the removal of SIOA/SIOE organizers’ personal accounts appears to demonstrate a particular opinion on the part of Facebook management, a certain bias against the message if the not the individuals themselves. Notably, the organizer of the Jewish Internet Defense Force (JIDF) has long been banned from Facebook.

Facebook’s user guidelines regarding content can be interpreted in any number of ways. Simultaneous account removal of multiple users having a common viewpoint appears to demonstrate a negative bias relating to the philosophical and political positions espoused by the individuals mentioned above. Because almost every user of Facebook could be said to be in violation of one or more guidelines at any given time the removal of accounts of users with the same political positions must therefore be specific and targeted rather than arbitrary.

There are many controversial individuals and groups on Facebook including Islamists, supporters of terrorism, Nazis, and even terrorists themselves, etc. People having these views and worse remain on Facebook but those having anti-jihad perspectives apparently are now targets for account removal. How can this be explained?

It is understood that because of the reach of Facebook and its large user community the Facebook “world” is another theater in the current culture wars and in the existential war that is Islamic jihad against the non-Muslim (kafir) civilizations of the West. In the war of ideas that is ongoing in public and behind the scenes (with much dissemination of opinion and information on the internet) there are vigorous, important, and fascinating debates that occur on Facebook pages hourly.

Facebook is a platform used for educating the people about the threat that Islam and its warfare poses for our country and the entire West. Kendra is particularly adept at online debate and had thousands of Facebook friends following her posts and discussions prior to the removal of her account without warning or explanation.

We have seen in recent events in Europe and the United States that the message about the truth of Islam and its doctrine of jihad and intolerance is making its way from scholarly fringes to a wider audience. The message involves an acceptance of the fact that political correctness and multiculturalism are empty and false notions that are impediments to knowledge and understanding.

Political correctness and multiculturalism require the adherent of these corrupt philosophies to jettison thousands of years of human and civilizational history and experience so that a fairly recent post-modernist utopian concept of how the world and humanity function can be accepted. These false concepts must be destroyed so that the truth can be discussed openly and understood.

Many in the United States and Europe do not want to let go of the accepted (but generally unspoken) dogmas of political correctness and multiculturalism; they refuse to discriminate. The ability and even the desire to discriminate between right and wrong, good and evil, victim and aggressor is now a rarity in our culture due to political correctness and multiculturalism and the radical tolerance that such utopian notions demand.

Events occurring in our daily lives and the historical record prove the emptiness of these two barren philosophies. Preference for fantasies over realities is rife across the culture now and is foundational to the ongoing philosophical and moral conflicts we see daily. The message of the dangers of Islam is spreading; how can it not when Hassan at Fort Hood and the Christmas underwear bomber do the horrors that they do to innocents and place their actions in an Islamic doctrinal context as do all Islamist terrorists/jihadists?

If our existential enemies say that they hate us and must fight us till we submit to Islamic domination because their doctrine tells them so, it is folly for us to suggest that they are mistaken. These abysmal criminals have the authority of Koran, Sira, and Hadith and the historical record to justify their statements. Our silly western politically correct multiculturalists have nothing but their fantasies, dreams and ignorance to support their positions.

The removal of SIOA and SIOE organizers accounts from Facebook may indicate a pro-Islam or anti- anti-Jihad bias on the part of Facebook management; we may never know. However, what is more likely is that online discussion and debate as seen on the pages of the individuals mentioned above has been effective.

Thousands of people have followed these online Facebook discussions. Many now view the statements and actions of terrorists and Islamists in a different light, now illuminated with their knowledge of Islamic doctrine – a doctrine never taught to them in our institutions of higher “education”. A great deal of learning and erudite discussion has been occurring on the pages of Facebook.

The truth of Islamic jihad and intolerance is difficult to deflect, even with politically correct multicultural biases and fantasies that diminish the truth to something both unpalatable and unacceptable. Islamic ideology is fundamental to what is happening across the world today. A re-invigorated Islam fighting its jihad against the kafir West does so because of ideology and doctrine. The doctrine behind this ideology is available and can be studied and understood. The falsehoods are falling away, in large part due to the efforts of the people mentioned above and many others.

An American who joined the al Shabab Somali terror group and is now one of its leaders and propagandists puts the matter succinctly. For the Islamic terrorist ideology and doctrine are the central motivators.

“They can’t blame it on poverty or any of that stuff,” he continued. “They will have to realize that it’s an ideology and it’s a way of life that makes people change.”

The idea that all of this horror is due to poverty-stricken peoples lashing out at the West is now all but delegitimized and dismissed. Ideology is at the center of this struggle. Once the ideology is known defensive action can be taken. What is at stake in this jihad against us is … everything. 

by DL Adams

[The article first published on Family Security Matters, with the title "Why Are American Soldiers Dying so Iraq and Afghanistan Can Remain Sharia Law Nations?"]

With great fanfare but little grit or talk of victory President Obama announced at West Point last month that 30,000 additional American soldiers are going to Afghanistan. If the mission in Afghanistan is two-fold, the defeat of the abysmal Taliban and the creation of a stable, democratic state it would appear that we are not doing well.

The same could be said of “nation building” in Iraq where violence of late appears to be diminishing in comparison to the bloody mountains and valleys of Afghanistan. While the reduction of violence in Iraq is comforting the diminishment of violence is not the definitive measure of the success of nation building.

The true measure of our efforts in both beneficiary countries should be based upon an examination of the foundations of these countries that we have created with the blood of our best and treasure. When such an examination is made the result can only be horror.

The constitutions of Iraq and Afghanistan for those who love democracy, freedom, and liberty, are failures. If the constitution of a new nation is a failure, what kind of nation can be built then upon it?

After the US military (with our allies) drove the Taliban out of Kabul we endeavored to create a new Afghanistan based upon Constitutional law. Neither the Constitution of Iraq nor of Afghanistan are structured on the secular American model of the state subordinate to the will of the people. This concept is the foundation of American democracy given to us by Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Madison, Monroe, Franklin, and Hamilton; this is tragically not the foundation of our failed nation building strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iraq and Afghanistan are both Islamic states (specifically stated as such in their constitutions). The people of both beneficiary states are therefore in service to Islam (the state is Islam and Islam is the state); this is not any form of “democracy” that most Americans can countenance nor reasonably support.

After WW2 Douglas MacArthur remained in Tokyo to oversee the creation and passage of a new American-style constitution on the defeated Japanese; one which entirely rejected the previous system of government/society. The new Japanese constitution removed the power of the Emperor and created an American-style democracy in which the people have power over the government through the constitution. This approach completely overturned the old order of Japanese totalitarian empirical rule.

In announcing the new constitution in Tokyo MacArthur said that “the Japanese people thus turn their backs firmly upon the mysticism and unreality of the past and face instead a future of realism with a new faith and a new hope.” Regarding the Emperor, MacArthur said in a public statement that the new constitution “leaves the throne without governmental authority or state property, subject to the people’s will, a symbol of the people’s unity.”

The new constitution represented a complete and total shift in approach to government in Japan and most importantly, the relationship of citizen to the state.

Declared by its terms to be the supreme law for Japan, it places sovereignty squarely in the hands of the people. It establishes governmental authority with the predominant power vested in an elected legislature, as representative of the people, but with adequate check upon that power, as well as upon the power of the Executive and the Judiciary, to insure that no branch of government may become autocratic or arbitrary in the administration of affairs of state.
MacArthur’s Announcement of Japan’s New Constitution, March 6, 1946

Japan’s post-war constitution specifically identifies the constitution itself as the supreme law of the land. This is the same structure of constitutional democracy that exists in the United States as delineated in Article 6, Clause 2 of the US Constitution. Constitutionalism is ensconced in Japan by the 98th Article.

“This Constitution shall be the supreme law of the nation and no law, ordinance, imperial rescript or other act of government, or part thereof, contrary to the provisions hereof, shall have legal force or validity.”

The new constitution reiterated the overturning of the old empirical order; the Emperor was now legally powerless and subordinate to the constitution.

The Emperor or the Regent as well as Ministers of State, members of the Diet, judges, and all other public officials have the obligation to respect and uphold this Constitution.
Article 99, Constitution of Japan

We have taken a tragically different course in Afghanistan and Iraq.  

Article One of the constitution of Afghanistan states that “Afghanistan is an Islamic Republic, independent, unitary and indivisible state.” Article 2 of the constitution of Iraq states that “Islam is the official religion of the State and it is a fundamental source of legislation.” Both states identify Islam as the bedrock of the state and also the law of the land.

No law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established.
(Article 2, A; constitution of Iraq.)

In Afghanistan, no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.
(Article 3; constitution of Afghanistan.)

Both Afghanistan and Iraq are Islamic states as codified in their new American-supported constitutions. Sharia Law is the law of Islam. Islamic law supersedes any laws in the constitution that are not Sharia law-compliant.

Any review of the implementation of Sharia law anywhere in the world (or of Sharia itself ) shows it to be brutal, cruel, misogynist, anti-homosexual, anti-free speech, supremacist, anti-democratic, and anti-freedom of religion among its many unpleasant qualities. Even in Afghanistan as late as 2006 a Muslim Afghan convert to Christianity was sentenced to death for leaving Islam. Only American outrage prevented the implementation of the Sharia death penalty.

Under Sharia Law, leaving Islam is not permitted. It is considered a crime worse than murder and is punishable by death. A Sharia judge on the case commented at the time, “We are not against any particular religion in the world. But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law. It is an attack on Islam.” The inherent contradiction between democracy and Islamic law did not go unnoticed by everyone, however.

But, while democracy is taking root in Afghanistan, the country’s constitution is not a truly secular document.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Sharia law is derived from Koran, Sira, and Hadith, the three foundational documents of Islam. Sharia law therefore has the authority of both Allah and Mohammed as it is the codification of their commands, and the words, deeds, and example of the prophet. American support of this barbaric “legal system” anywhere on this planet is folly.

Sharia law is antithetical to American concepts of freedom and democracy. What can be the reason that we have created two Islamic states founded upon American blood and treasure? Why did we take such a radically different approach to Iraq and Afghanistan than we did with Japan after WW2?

There is no overlap whatever between American concepts of decency and justice and Sharia law. Among the horrors of Sharia are death for criticism of Islam, death for leaving Islam, dhimmitude for those who are non-Muslims living under Sharia, the near impossibility of rape victims to prove rape, wife beating, child marriage, unequal rights for women, no legal rights for non-Muslims, and the subjugation of women. The list of Sharia’s horrors is lengthy and disturbing. An illustration of Sharia from the definitive book of Sharia law, Reliance of the Traveller, is illustrative.

The following are not subject to retaliation:

a Muslim for killing a non-Muslim (o1.2(2))

a Jewish or Christian subject of the Islamic state for killing an apostate from Islam (O:because a subject of the state is under its protection, while killing an apostate from Islam is without consequences); (o1.2(3))

a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offsprings offspring (o1.2(4))

Under Sharia law there is no “retaliation” by the Islamic state against a Muslim who kills a non-Muslim for whatever reason. Can there be a more barbarous “legal” system that is more overtly opposed to our own concepts of right/wrong, good/evil, decency/barbarism, and justice/injustice? This is the system of “law” for which we fight in Iraq and Afghanistan? This is folly.

No American who loves our Constitution and the freedoms guaranteed under it should accept Sharia Law anywhere in this country or actively support it elsewhere. How can it be countenanced that American soldiers are told that they fight and die for “freedom” in Iraq and Afghanistan when in fact our soldiers fight to prop up two Sharia law states?

Why did we free the Japanese people from the backwardness, totalitarianism and aggressive warfare of the empire of Japan but chose to co-operate in imposing the anti-human injustice and brutality of Islamic Sharia law on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan? The blame for this disaster must be spread across two administrations. We have failed in that we did not create a society based upon justice, secular law and constitutional democracy in the American model as we did for Japan.

Sharia law is horrific and anti-human and should be opposed by decent people everywhere. Our “allies” across the Islamic world implement Sharia law to varying degrees but every Islamic state must acknowledge their Islamic obligation to implement it.  

The goal of Islamic expansion everywhere is the implementation of Sharia law in countries and cultures where it is not now enforced. This expansion is fueled by jihad. Jihad is required of all adherents of Islam.

What can be the purpose of the United States (the “great satan”) in creating new Islamic states? The answers are not forthcoming because the question is rarely (if ever) asked.

We now fight a war around the world and at home against Islamic brutality against us (our so-called “war on terror”) motivated entirely by the doctrine of Islam yet we fight two wars to create and prop up two new Islamic countries bound to the same doctrine; folly.

What can be our war aims when the result will be the creation of two countries that are ideologically opposed to our existence? It would appear that we have been fooled, or worse. Our mistakes carry a staggeringly high cost; to bring any value or meaning to our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq we must admit that our course has been tragically in error and quickly make the necessary corrections.

In this important article an active US Army officer criticizes a national opinion leader for his mistaken notions about the motivations of Islamic terrorists.  He criticizes and with good reason those who speak ignorantly about Islam but know little about it, particularly opinion makers in the national spotlight.

It is important that Americans understand Islamic doctrine as this is the motivator of jihadists. We have seen many times, most recently at Fort Hood when a self-identified jihadist attacks unbelievers and explains/justifies his/her actions in a doctrinal context. The context of jihad and attacks on non-Muslims by adherents of Islam is the doctrine of Islam, Koran, Sira, Hadith. To deny this linkage is to deny reality and suggest that ideology is not a motivator even when the perpetrators of these atrocities say specifically that it is.

Disturbingly, our leaders continue to minimize or actively denythat Islamic doctrine or Hasan’s Muslim identity had anything to do with his murders, treason, and betrayal. People who believe such absurdities are in denial with devastating consequences for all Americans.

The author convincingly shows that knowledge of the doctrine of Islam is our first line of defense. Without this essential knowledge, we cannot defend ourselves.

This article appears in Human Events and is re-posted here with permission by the author.

Video

A video appears at the end of this article that is complimentary to the message of the author and to this site. A former terrorist discusses his motives, and why the West is hated. The man in the video is now a defender of the West and of Israel. For those having difficulty accepting the the truth of the unpleasant ideology of Islam and the dire threat that it presents to us have only to listen to this brave and knowledgeable man.  He speaks with the knowledge of experience. Ignoring this man and his message is a fool’s choice.

-DLA

Why They’re Really at War With Us

Over eight years since 9/11, it is amazing that a prominent conservative would not understand the fundamental motivation and doctrine driving those who have and continue to attack us. This is not rocket science.

Raymond Ibraham’s analysis in his invaluable book, the Al Qaeda Reader, best summarizes it. On page xii he explains that radical Islam’s war with America and the west is not finite and limited to political grievances real or imagined but is existential, transcending time and space and deeply rooted in [the Islamic] faith.

Pat mentions only half of al Qaeda’s binary worldview in his article, the dar al-Islam (the land of Islam). By failing to even mention the dar al-Harb (the land of warfare), he fails to acknowledge that Islam, by doctrine (Koran 9:29), views the entire non-Muslim world as a land that must be subdued under Islamic rule (read sharia law).  This is explained in the primary text of Islamic Law, Reliance of the Travelerby Ahmad ibn Naquib al-Misri (page 605).

What Buchanan also fails to mention, is taqiyya- the Islamic doctrine of deception, the understanding of which is fundamental to understanding the threat. Muhammad himself said war is deceit. (See “Summarized Sahih Al-Bukhari” by Muhammad Muhsin Khan, p. 614) Here again, Mr. Ibraham has done yeoman’s work analyzing and explaining the doctrine of taqiyya and its impact on jihadist terrorism in his article, “How Taqiyya Alters Islam’s Rules of War.”

As we learn from Reliance of the Traveler, by Islamic law there are things Muslims are required to know and there are other things we, as non-Muslims, are allowed to know. In fact, Islamic law requires lying at times (it is obligatory to lie if the goal is obligatory.) (See pages 8-14, 732 and 745).

As a result of their binary world view, al Qaeda has two main audiences: the Muslim world (the ummah) and the non-Muslim world, consisting of the United States and the rest of the Western world. As such, it uses markedly different approaches to address each group.

When speaking to America and the Western world, al Qaeda turns statements made by what Lenin called the “useful idiots” into popular propaganda. They frequently cite Michael Moore, William Blum and other liberal commentators.

In contrast, when speaking to their constituents — the Muslim World — bin Laden and Zawahiri instead use formal Islamic theology and sharia law as levers to enforce Muslim compliance. Those who don’t comply are labeled apostates, who, by sharia, must be killed and will inhabit hell. (See “Reliance of the Traveler,” pp. 595-98 and 848).

Written for Muslim audiences, they [al Qaeda’s Islamic theological treatises] are rarely translated into English or disseminated to a non-Muslim public. This is unfortunate since they reveal much more about al Qaeda’s ideology than the more famous political [propaganda] speeches. In these theological tracts, al Qaeda gives Muslims reasons why they should hate and fight the West that differ from those they give in their political speeches. (“Al Queda Reader,” p. 2)

There’s a difference between reciting the enemy and knowing the enemy. Buchanan confuses the two concepts. Which is why his cry for appeasement is misguided. He implies that if we packed up and came home (from Iraq, Afghanistan and all other Muslim countries), and adopted an isolationist foreign policy, then they would stop attacking us. Wrong.

Not only would this hand them a strategic victory, but they’d simply find another reason to continue to attack us. Islam cannot be appeased. (Koran 9:29). Not to mention the moral bankruptcy of abandoning the Afghan people and leaving them under the repressive rule of the Taliban.

Buchanan writes as if the Taliban were a legitimate government. The Afghanis know we are not the Russians or some other malicious occupier. But they are realists in a hostile land with a legitimate concern about our staying power and what will happen after we leave. Pat’s argument doesn’t help our cause.

Buchanan states that this is their war (the Muslim world’s war) and suggests that if we stayed out of it they would leave us alone. Even if this were true — and it is not — it wouldn’t be the right thing to do.

Americans are not being killed, as Buchanan retorts, for the propaganda reasons he repeats, but rather for who we are and what we believe. Not one American died in Iraq in December because the Iraqis finally saw the bankrupt ideology al Qaeda was selling and they helped us eradicate them.

To bin Laden and his ilk, we are the Great Satan. They hate us more than they hate Israel.

As for Hamas and Hizballah — which Pat paints as if they have benignly left us alone — they are here in the United States — actively pursuing a strategy of non-violent jihad that is arguably a more dangerous threat than the challenges in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen or Somalia.

I can understand his sentiment and aversion to war. As a career soldier, I know too many Gold Star parents to be cavalier about war.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. – John Stuart Mill

As a parent, you’ll not hear me utter the unfatherly expression, Give me peace in my day. Rather, I will always say — as the real Thomas Paine said in 1776 — If there must be trouble, let it be in my day that my child may have peace.

It’s time we start to know our enemy.

As for Mr. Buchanan, it’s encouraging that he’s started to learn the enemy’s vocabulary. I hope he’ll stop repeating the enemy’s talking points and blaming us for the enemy simply executing their own offensive, totalitarian doctrine.  

It takes many hours to read and study books such as the ones I have mentioned here.  But unless more Americans do — especially opinion leaders such as Mr. Buchanan — we cannot understand the true nature of the enemy.

Several days ago a reader posted an extensive comment on New English Review in response to “Saul Alinsky and the Rise of Amorality in American Politics.” The commenter’s insightful essay merits a wider audience and is presented here in its original form.

The author provides historical background by way of explanation for the difficult situation in which we now find ourselves. The linkage with Vietnam and our current embrace of radical tolerance, multiculturalism, post-modernism and a loss of faith in the value of our own society are clearly discussed. The role of Vietnam and the societal upheavals that occurred here at home in opposition to it has not gone entirely unnoticed by the author and other acute observers.

It is clear that we must return to our long held acceptance, now recently lost, of our own American exceptionalism; a concept widely embraced for generations. As we are now engaged in a very old war against civilization now renewed with a vigor it is critically important to come to an understanding as to how we got here. According to the author we have lost sight of what is that we are fighting for which is our own identity.

-DLA

Comments on Loss of Meaning and Existential War

by Victor Hertz
(posted with express permission)

This article is absolutely superb, but unless I missed something, it does not mention the root historical catalyst of the political/cultural phenomenon that has spawned the likes of Obama: Vietnam.

In this war, we were supporting an admittedly corrupt and undemocratic government against an even worse adversary. This was not unlike Korea, except that the South Koreans had more motivation to defend themselves, and the North Koreans lacked a military leader with the singular genius of General Giap.

While we wring our hands over the corruption we see in the Karzai government of Afghanistan today, for example, many forget that South Korea was an authoritarian dictatorship for decades after the war, before evolving into the democracy they are today. Chiang Kai Shek ruled Taiwan with brutal repression, until similar changes ultimately occurred there. This is not to say that we should turn a blind eye to the abuses of dictators who would be our allies, but neither should we expect Jeffersonian democracy overnight.

In the case of South Vietnam, after the battle of Ap Bac in 1963, perhaps a good case can be made that we should have walked out and redrew our local Cold War defensive perimeter at the Thai frontier. But for a variety of reasons, some more noble than others, we decided to stay and fight. By any reasonable measure, we should have won. We nearly did. But we were undone, because while we concentrated on the clash of arms in a two-dimensional sense, General Giap expanded the battle to include a new dimension of media-driven impressionism combined with utter cold-blooded ruthlessness.

Everything that is being done to Israel today, was done to us in Vietnam. This is no coincidence. Yasser Arafat traveled to Hanoi in the late 1960s to get advice on how to defeat a materially more powerful foe. Giap’s writings on this subject have been translated into Arabic and are widely circulated among the Palestinians to this day.

Only today, the Arabs have greatly expanded on what Giap had devised, having petrodollar funding and a compliant media that he only could have dreamed of. But I digress.

Back to the original point, in Vietnam, we were fighting an utterly ruthless totalitarian enemy who used child warriors, suicide bombers, and civilian-clothed terrorist/combatants who hid among the general population so as to deliberately increase casualties among the same so as to give us a black eye in world opinion, and who very deliberately manipulated the media and academic circles in the U.S. and the West generally so as to turn public opinion against the war in these societies. Sound familiar, everybody?

We trounced the Viet Cong in the wake of Tet in 1968. They were ready to sue for peace, until they saw the fruits of their disinformation efforts among the Western media as to how this battle was reported. We pretty much pummeled them into nothing during the two Linebacker campaigns of 1972, especially the second one, but even after the peace that ensued, they counted on our broken will to ensure that we would do nothing when they flouted the agreement and invaded anyway. And they were right on the mark.

Despite what impressions some may have, the counter-culture student left in the U.S. was never really that big. Many may have adopted the costumes, but the hard core believers were small in number. But their views appeared to be validated by our defeat in Vietnam. For, in the singularly innocent American psyche, the “good guys” are supposed to win in any war. Since we lost, we could not have been the “good guys”. We deserved to lose. It logically followed then, that the murderous bastards in Hanoi must have been the “good guys”. We simply could not accept, as a nation, that we were in the right – at least more in the right than our opposition – we could have won, and we walked away anyway. So, in order to digest the indigestible, we had to make the North Vietnamese regime in Hanoi into a somehow noble “David” that defeated the American “Goliath”, we turned black into white. In the wake of this, even the political right in this country could not and even today cannot come to grips with what happened in Vietnam; even as they refuse to concede that the Hanoi regime represented the “good guys”, they retreat to the almost equally delusional position that even if our goals had been noble, we were fighting an “unwinnable war”.

And, by the way, that the U.S. “pig empire” was the villain in all of this is what the hippies who worshipped at the altar of Saul Alinsky had been saying all along who now looked so vindicated in the eyes of their generational peers who had mostly sat on the sidelines through the whole thing; wondering who was right, dumbfounded when our helicopters were perched on top of our embassy in Saigon. I was only 13 years old at that time, but even I knew that our country would never be the same. Suddenly, 2+2=5. Once you have done this, anything is possible, anything can be rationalized.

Fast forward to the present. Obama becomes positively indignant when supporters of McCain suggest that he could not really have patriotic credentials on a par with those of the Senator from Arizona. Objectively, such critics of Obama could not have been more correct, but in the upside-down political culture of post-Vietnam America, among a certain segment cut from the cloth of Barack Obama, to hate America – or what most of us take as that which America has traditionally stood for – is somehow a kind of special patriotism unto itself. Indeed, it is superior to the kind of more “traditional” patriotism of someone like John McCain; that is for squares, chumps, and neanderthals. Obama’s is a more “sophisticated”, “postmodern” patriotism.

And who will question this? Absurd as many may feel in their gut that this may be, well, such people as Obama’s teachers were “right” about the misguided nature of our “imperialistic” war in Vietnam, so perhaps they are right about Obama as well. Those who question this can easily be painted as “racists” and “reactionaries”.

This is where the power has come from, that has given rise to the disciples of Alinsky who occupy the halls of power today in Washington (and elsewhere). In addition to winning on the battlefield as we had – if we had also won the battle for the hearts and minds of the American public, and thus maintained the psychological will to prevail in SE Asia as we could have and should have done, the Alinsky types like Obama would today still represent no more than an insignificant fringe, not unlike the “beat” movement of the 1950s, with little credibility or influence.

We need to return to the principles espoused by Mr. Adams. We need to rediscover what we stand for, what we are willing to fight for. In short, we need to return to the level of civilizational self-confidence, if you will, that prevailed in this country circa 1964. We need to finally, truly recover from our “Vietnam Syndrome”, whose flower now sits in the Oval Office.

We fight an adversary today, in the form of Islamist fundamentalists, over whom we have every advantage save one: we don’t know what the hell we are fighting for, and they do. And until we figure out something worth defending about ourselves besides being fat and comfortable, as long as we keep making excuses and maintaining a state of bullshit PC denial about what our adversary is about, then we are going to keep getting hit. How many of our innocents are going to have to die before we galvanize something resembling genuine national will, before we can clearly perceive Obama and his ilk for the traitorous frauds they are, I have no idea. I am afraid that it will be many.

Since Alistair Cooke passed away we’ve had a dearth of deep insight, criticism and analysis of culture from the British perspective. Now, step in the irrepressible Pat Condell.

Pat is spot on in this “letter from Britain”; he’s angry and for good reason – he can see his country and culture falling and not defending itself. We have the same problem here. But, people are learning of the existential threat from Islam, they are learning rapidly. They cannot help but be aware of this Islamic threat as it is explained so clearly by so many of its adherents, and demonstrated through violence and terror almost daily. The message is not difficult to see nor understand it is rather the facade of ignorance and postmodernist stupidity in our American and British cultures that is so difficult to breach.

Pat makes a strong case for freedom of speech in this particular message. Freedom of speech is foundational to a healthy society. Those who prefer a broken, totalitarian, monocultural, barbaric, anti-human society instead of a healthy democratic society of tolerance, justice, freedom, opportunity, and rationality often use their freedom of speech rights to… excess.

Many Islamic supremacists have recently used their freedom of speech rights to such an extreme extent that many people, particularly in the UK and elsewhere,  who otherwise would not have known their message of hate and violence now do – and they do not like what they hear.

The recent threat by “Islam4UK” to march on Wootten Bassett to “protest” the British war dead of Afghanistan was too much for Britain to take. As of today, Islam4UK is banned in Britain. Pat Condell has a slightly different take on this ban.

He suggests that the group should not be banned and that the British people and all kafirs everywhere should be able to hear the messages of hate coming from Choudary and his fellow Muslim supremacists. Condell has a valid point of course.

However, even free speech rights have limits – the supremacists continue to overplay their hands everywhere. This is a new theme, and one that is resulting in raised alarms across the West among many who were previously unaware or unconcerned.

Pat Condell is an important voice from Europe ringing the bell of warning – the same bell tolls for us.

-DLA

(Thanks to New English Review for posting this video.)

by DL Adams

[This article first published on Family Security Matters]

Denial and Ignorance – No “Systems” Work

There is little cause for rejoicing in this new decade; we are in an existential conflict thrust upon us by reactionary and extreme forces whose existence precedes us by more than a millennium. We are not a doctrinaire people and we seem to have difficulty acknowledging that in others. Our inability to accept the truth of the doctrine of those who want to destroy our people and our society is a staggering failure of epic proportions.

O you who believe! fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness; and know that Allah is with those who guard (against evil). (Koran, 9:123)

Northwest flight 253 landed safely in Detroit not because any system worked but because private citizens took action for their own safety and that of their fellow passengers. The passengers who defeated their would-be killer on the flight to Detroit are heroes much like Todd Beamer and the heroes of Flight 93 were on 9/11.

We rely on technology for fake security that destroys our privacy and undermines ease of interstate and international travel. In fact, the invasive “solutions” now being pushed by American security officials are considered by some to violate child pornography laws. We seek technological solutions because we will not profile; we will not profile because so many of us are silly multiculturalists, politically correct, post modernist ignorant fools. We should do behavioral profiling, racial, national – all of it. Profiling must be a weapon of defense, not to use weapons of defense when attacked is folly.

ElAl airlines has never been hijacked specifically because they actively profile. They profile because profiling is the most successful method of preventing hostiles on aircraft. The legitimacy of Israeli profiling is validated because it is effective. In fact, just after 9/11 Logan airport in Boston hired Rafi Ron, a former director of Ben Gurion airport to advise on security at that airport.

What has happened to this rationalist approach? It has been subsumed by our culture of silliness and multicultural political correctness and the absolute ridiculous need in all sectors to avoid “offense” to minorities. If we deployed the Israeli model of rational security the Christmas “undie” bomber would never have gotten on any America-bound aircraft in Amsterdam (or anywhere else). Our failure to deploy effective security across our society is a profound moral and operational failure whose origin is political correctness – the ridiculous childish fear of causing “offense”.

If we must offend someone to secure our people, so be it. It is alright to inconvenience the entire travelling public to avoid causing offense to somebody who may well have reason to avoid security checks in the first place?

We are clearly more concerned with avoiding “offense” to a minority, and causing severe inconvenience, intrusiveness, and creating an obvious security theater than actually ensuring the security of our people, our friends, and aircraft. This is utterly stupid. Certainly our society has reached the final stage in the Peter Principle process; we’ve advanced to the point of collective denial and incompetence.

But more than one-third of all terrorist plots since 9/11 transpired in 2009 — despite loud chest-thumping about rejecting the idea of a war on terror, reaching out to the Muslim world, and apologizing for purported American sins. A non-impoverished Major Hasan or Mr. Mutallab (or Mr. Atta or KSM) does not fit with the notion that our enemies act out of poverty or oppression or want. (Victor Davis Hanson)

The idea that Islamic terrorism, violence and hate against Americans is poverty-driven, or a response to some particular American foreign policy (cf. support of Israel, another frontline state in the jihad war) is now clearly debunked after the most recent attack by a wealthy, privileged Islamic terrorist. Islamic terror is motivated by Islamic doctrine; we are the target because we exist.

The adherents of Islamic doctrine attack us because they hate us, they hate us simply because we exist. El Al takes security very seriously, we Americans do not; Israel is very successful with airline security because they ask questions and are not concerned with ridiculous politically correct self-censorship. Relying entirely on technology and ignoring the human component of a potential attacker has already failed.

There have been no hijackings of Israeli planes in recent years, he (Mordechai Rachamim) says, “because they saw it is impossible to make (a) hijacking.”

And Shlomo Dror says that, while there are sky marshals on every flight, they are the last line of defense. If they have to spring into action, it means the security system has failed.

…

Until recently, Rafi Ron was director of security at the Tel Aviv airport. He knows how sophisticated terrorists have become.

“We believe that profiling is a very important concept in aviation security,” he says. “Finding a bomb is not such an easy thing. Bombs don’t look any more like a black, round thing with a smoking fuse coming out of them. They take…almost every possible shape. They are created out of so many type of materials that it has become extremely difficult to find the bomb.”

That’s why it’s so important to find the terrorist before he gets on the plane. And the Israelis say they cannot do that without profiling, or selecting, passengers who match certain profiles. (CBSNews – The Safest Airline)

National sovereignty and its security are the essential purposes of government. The wannabe Detroit ”crotch bomber”-Nigerian-jihad-killer demonstrated to us all that we must do better.

It has often been said that if we alter our daily activities, if we don’t fly the “friendly skies” then the terrorists have “won”. We must understand what victory means to the jihadists. For them, blasted cities such as Detroit and the total failure of American society and government to rebuild them is what they are fighting for. They fight for the failure of American ingenuity, security, and prosperity. The would-be killer of the Detroit-bound flight would have preferred a devastated aircraft over a failed city; we were lucky on Christmas Day, 2009. As long as America is not Islamic the model for all American cities to the jihadists is Detroit. The purpose of jihad against us is the destruction of the United States and the implementation of Sharia law.

Conglomeration of Failure

We live in a time of the confluence of dangerous cultural, intellectual, ethical, moral, and political failures. At a time when American exceptionalism and importance should be encouraged and understood across the country and the world it is diminished instead. When American jobs and livelihoods should be protected and made safe they are undermined by open porous borders and an immigration policy that is neither a proper national policy nor of benefit to newcomers or citizens.

We live in a time when security considerations are built upon absurd concepts of extreme tolerance and a total aversion to cause offense to anyone most particularly those who may be threats. We live in a time of rampaging folly.

We live in a time shaped by definitive concepts of good and evil and right and wrong; there are those who do not share our concepts and hate us for the ideals that we embrace. We are hated because we are not Islamic and we are hated because we help Islam, but never enough. There is no unifying this contradiction as we always remain kafirs to the Islamic umma. No matter how much we help, no matter how “good” we are, the adherents of Islam fight us as they are commanded to do so by Allah and Mohammed.

So obey not the disbelievers, but strive against them herewith with a great endeavour. (Koran, 25:52)

Despite the experiences and lessons of our founders who experienced jihad themselves during the “Barbary Pirate” conflicts we have chosen to live in a world as we would prefer it to be rather than what it actually is. We suffer from a national delusion that results in the denial of reality, we have placed a matrix of utopian dreams over our eyes to the delight of our detractors and enemies.

We cannot effectively defend our homeland and our people for fear of offending those who attack us; we fight wars for those who hate our existence and what we stand for; our president apologizes for our past greatness, condemning our friends and embracing/appeasing our enemies across the world. It has been said by arrogant and ignorant people that we only need to simply “reset” our approach to the world it will magically spin in the direction of our choosing; they are mistaken.

This is a great fraud that the deluded would have us all believe. The denial of history and humanity itself in the concepts of radical tolerance and the bizarre fake “resetting” of human and international relations is at the core of our inability to respond to existential threats. We live within a vortex of the confluence of errors all compounded again and again as we fail to accept the hard truths, and fail to take steps to make our country safe and support our friends once again.

An Undeniable Historical Vortex

During the Clinton administration the philosopher and historian Francis Fukuyama famously stated that with the fall of the Soviet Union we had reached the “end of history.” This notion is absurd because it suggests that history is finite.

While history has cycles and lines that may themselves come to an end the existence of humanity necessarily means that history never ends; it is both ignorant and arrogant to suggest that we live outside of the flow of history. The horror for those who accepted Fukuyama’s ridiculous assertion (including Bill Clinton) is that the truth of our situation today is more particularly difficult to accept. We are caught up in a brutal historical cycle that was created in the Arabian desert over 1400 years ago; this is very difficult for many to accept. Much worse than the “end of history” is that we now see a violent re-emergence of history.

To our great detriment, we in the West ourselves in large part facilitated the resurgence of Islam with trillions of dollars in oil purchases. Fully financed and resurgent because they (the adherents of Islam/umma) see the retreat and moral and ethical confusion/surrender of the West, Islam has rarely been as emboldened as it is today. Soon, Iran may acquire a nuclear weapon and a horrific new historical phase of the world will begin.

It is difficult for many to accept a world in which a particular ideology or concept, especially one so profoundly opposed to us as is Islam, may so influence the foreseeable future. As lovers of freedom and justice there are now new warnings that history is not at all an end but is in fact brutally influencing our lives.

Multiculturalism and post-modernism are the anti-reality tools that are used by those who oppose our existence. If we embrace multiculturalism, and post-modernism; a world-view of radical equivalence and the abandonment of meaning in the embrace of universal subjectivity – the outcome of this existential conflict must then be of little moment because all outcomes, as they are founded upon the opposition of equivalent cultures, must be … acceptable.

We must take a renewed interest in the preservation of our way of life which must reside upon a foundation of understanding and appreciation of its value. If we do not value our country, if we accept universal equivalence, if we concur that we must never “offend” anyone with criticisms or judgments based upon a comparison of essential values, we will fail in our defense. The idea of “good” and “evil” must be re-embraced across the country just as it was during the cold war against Communism and the war against Nazism. And once we identify the evil, it must be decisively opposed.

The importance of history has long been doubted by many in our anti-intellectual society. The answers we require are all available in our own history and in the founding documents of our country.

Forgotten History Illustrates the Present

What does our history teach us of Islam? Regardless of ridiculous, ignorant academics and iconoclasts who deny that history can be known or that its lessons have no meaning anymore – the struggle of today is not new.

Ambassadors Thomas Jefferson and John Adams’ 1785 report delivered after their meeting with the head of one of the Barbary Coast states (a jihadist) is instructive; what was true then is true now.

When they inquired by what right the Barbary states preyed upon American shipping, enslaving both crews and passengers, America’s two foremost envoys were informed that “it was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
(City Journal)

We are in the center of a vortex of historical forces, a confluence of error, ignorance, and folly. The key to our security and stability is in our past and our foundational documents, Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence; the key to opposing those who want to blow up our aircraft and destroy our country is found in their foundational documents, Koran, Sira, Hadith.

Multiculturalists and post modernists supported by the inanity of political correctness support the forces of monoculture and totalitarianism (Islam), though they may not fully know it; if they do know it, they often do not care. A radical amoral view of the world and of humanity, post modernism and multiculturalism, results in a national lack of will. Why should there be sufficient will either to oppose or to defend anything if everything is equivalent – this is the essence of post modernism. For the sake of the survival of our nation and to reinvigorate the intellectual life of our culture post modernism, multiculturalism, and political correctness all must be delegitimized, abandoned, and destroyed.

We have created two nations Afghanistan and Iraq and helped them write their new constitutions. These documents identify Islam as the state religion and law of the land, the law of Islam is Sharia law. Jihad is an obligation for all adherents of Islam, this is specifically delineated in Koran and reiterated in Sira and Hadith. Jihad is justified and “legalized” in Sharia law. We fight against jihad at the same time we create states that will mandate it and support it – we will always be its victims; this is folly.

Acknowledging Existential Conflict

If we acknowledge that our heritage is worthy of preserving for future generations in as close to the manner in which it was given us by our Founders then there is great and difficult work that must be done. The idea of existential defense is not new nor is it unrecognized in history, literature, and culture; it is the central theme of the history of civilizations. Most recently, a scene in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy captured this concept succinctly.

Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.
Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring

It is not for us to deny the unpleasant rhythms of history; it is not for us to flee from our responsibilities. We must accept the world in which we live and the challenges that we face. We must understand that we are engaged in a military and ideological war that is global. It is existential because if we are not successful in defending ourselves we will cease to exist as a people and a nation.

Something happened that prevents us from accepting the unpleasant truth of the world in which we live. Americans are experimenters and innovators; we search for “better ways”. We have created new ways of openness and tolerance, new ways of viewing others and their ideologies so that they feel welcome in our society. We did not understand the high cost of these new “ways” until 9/11; the hard lesson is unfortunately slow to penetrate.

Our “better way” of radical “niceness” and extreme, anti-judgment tolerance and an acceptance of the ridiculous disproven concept that if only we are nice then those who wish to destroy us will be nice in return is a failure; the world and humanity has never functioned in this Utopian manner.

Allan Bloom, the insightful author of “Closing of the American Mind” in his 1989 response to Fukuyama wrote that since the Soviet Union and Communism had been defeated Liberalism was victorious, but the victory “may be decisively unsatisfactory.” The meaning and purpose that our national opposition to the evils of Communism provided to us are now gone, a new ideology of emptiness, deconstruction and inverted morality/amorality (post-modernism) has taken root. Bloom’s predictions for the future do not mirror De Tocqueville’s.

I would suggest that fascism has a future, if not the future.
(Allan Bloom, Response to Fukuyama, “The National Interest”, Summer, 1989)

The timing of this catastrophic jihad war against us is not coincidental; our enemies see weakness in our confusion and anti-intellectual silliness. We no longer have the anti-Communist idea that unified the country for decades rather we now have an advancing deconstruction of Americanism itself.

Our desire (in some circles) to be accepted by the entire world translates into a failed world view of our collective guilt and averageness which cannot but elicit grave concern from our friends and derision and rejoicing from our adversaries.

The ideas of “right/wrong” and “good/evil” must be re-embraced as the world of reality is far removed from our fantasies of philosophical conundrums, mental gymnastics, and meaningless academic debates. We are now in an existential struggle founded upon the diametrically opposed concepts of freedom and civilization that we have always considered the core of our culture versus the anti-individual, brutal totalitarianism of Islam and its savage “legal code” of Sharia law. It would appear that we in the West have forgotten the complexities of civilizational conflict, with some in positions of importance denying even that such a conflict exists.

There is bliss across the world at our American failures to acknowledge the truth and tears of frustration here at home at our continuing failure to speak the truth and to fight the enemy and his totalitarian ideology. We fought a devastating civil war over a century ago to end slavery; let us not overturn the results of that struggle by denying that slavery is our future if we do not once again unite in the concepts that have given us the finest country, the light unto the world, so far seen on this planet.

[Part One of this article is available here.]

by DL Adams

[This article orginally posted on Family Security Matters, 1/11/2010]

The barely prevented horror that was the recent Christmas Day jihad terror attack on an inbound flight to Detroit from Amsterdam seems to have affected people in our country in a way that other recent terror attacks have not. Only 8 years since 9/11 and only weeks from the atrocity at Fort Hood it is now clear that we continue to be unsafe and profoundly vulnerable; the commonalities of our daily lives put us at risk in ways that we never thought could be possible in our country.

There is loaded symbolism also in Abdulmutallab’s terror attack of Christmas Day; an inbound flight to perhaps America’s most devastated city (Detroit) was almost destroyed by an ideologically driven sadist and would-be mass murderer. The image of a blown up (with all its attendant casualties) American aircraft at the aerial doorway of Detroit is horrific; a revolting unity of destruction and failure in the air and on the ground. The just-prevented terror attack is a symbol that every American city could one day become just like Detroit through acts of jihad war and hate.

The economic failure of Detroit is complex and occurred over many decades; the devastating cultural bankruptcy that now impedes the legitimate defense of every American city will likely result in future catastrophic disasters that will take only seconds to transpire, not decades. The failure of Detroit is not an illustration of the failure of Americanism, or democracy but rather a failure of attention paid; we have an obligation to do our best for the city of Detroit (or any American city) just as we have an obligation to secure our people, borders, cities, and the infrastructure of our country.

After the Christmas Day attack on the Detroit flight we stand at a crossroads; a crossroads where denial and ignorance meet rationality and common sense. We enter the new year observing a disturbing confluence of errors, mistakes, malfeasance and incompetence that puts every American and all of our friends across the world at increased risk. The last-minute prevention of the “crotch bomber’s” attack is a rare bright spot for us; there are few silver clouds to be found in these dark linings.

We continue to send our best and brightest men and women to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. The president said recently in a speech at West Point that US  troop levels would be increased by 30,000 in the Afghanistan theater of operations, a new surge. The president did say during the campaign that Afghanistan was the most important fight and Iraq was not; why this was so was never explained other than with derisive accusations of the previous president’s “errors”. The comparison dismissed by the current resident of the White House is an important one and should not be so readily minimized; Iraq and Afghanistan are the same battle in a much wider war. 

Afghanistan and Iraq – War for the Enemy’s Ideology

While his “progressive” supporters were almost universally condemnatory of this new surge, those on the political right were almost universally supportive. But they are all wrong because the foundations of both conflicts are built upon concepts that are contrary to American ideas of freedom, tolerance, equality of the sexes, and justice.

The “mission” in Iraq and Afghanistan appears to be “nation building” with ideals of democracy given lip service but no substantive backing. This is because the constitutional foundation of both beneficiary “states” is Islam and Sharia law.

There can be no doubt that Sharia law is anti-women, anti-tolerance, anti-homosexual, and anti-democratic and contrary to our concepts of justice and human rights. American support for such a brutal and anti-human system in two countries with the blood of our best and a great part of our national treasure derived from all citizens through taxation defies explanation.

If the foundation of both “states” is the law of Islam (Sharia) and the law of Islam is contrary to American concepts of freedom, justice, equality, and tolerance why then do we support these “states”?

When questions of ideology are presented to the planners of these wars and our leadership, the questioner is excoriated for his/her intolerance and impropriety and lack of consideration for another “culture”; but the questions themselves are never answered. We are experts at blowing things up, but we seem ill prepared for the ideological component of this massive conflict of which Iraq and Afghanistan are but a part.

The indefensible fact that no answers are forthcoming and, that the questions themselves cannot be asked, is a national tragedy upon which future tragedies will be constructed and for which our leadership must be held accountable.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are deeply flawed because we are fighting for Sharia law (Islamic Law) in both countries. We are, in effect, fighting for anti-democracy and monoculture (Islam), hatred, intolerance, and jihad. Astoundingly, we are fighting for the same ideology then for which our existential jihadist enemies fight – the creation of an Islamic state and the rule of Sharia law.

In Afghanistan does it make sense to support a Sharia law country (Karzai’s government) that is fighting a Sharia law former government (Taliban) when Sharia law itself is fundamentally opposed to everything for which the United States stands? Can there be a national foreign policy anywhere based upon greater moral, ethical, and intellectual confusions, ignorance, and foolishness than this?

The idea that American soldiers fight and die, and that America would stretch its economy to the breaking point, for a totalitarian system of brutality and cruelty (Sharia) would have been unthinkable only a generation ago. We have surely passed some kind of red line. 

Afghanistan

Afghanistan Constitution: Article One
Ch. 1. Art. 1
Afghanistan is an Islamic Republic, independent, unitary and indivisible state.

Iraq

Iraq Constitution: Article 2-
First: Islam is the official religion of the State and it is a fundamental source of legislation:
A. No law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established.

If establishing Sharia Law with all its cruelty, misogyny, brutalities, anti-homosexuality, anti-religious freedom, denial of individual rights, and the inculcation of Islamic supremacism and obligatory jihad is not the purpose of the United States government in supporting Iraq and Afghanistan it is certainly going to be the result. The purpose of jihad is to actively oppose the existence of systems of government, cultures, and religions that are not Islamic and bring the entire world under Islam and Sharia law. Participation in jihad is an obligation for all adherents of Islam. In Koran this is “fighting in Allah’s cause” and is mentioned over 100 times; it is a central if not the central theme of Islam itself.

The question must be asked, what is our purpose in supporting the creation and growth of societies and governments that are fundamentally opposed to our existence (as delineated in their founding documents and in Islamic doctrine) and the concepts of liberty and freedom, tolerance and openness, for which the United States has always, until recently apparently, so steadfastly stood?

Wars of Self-Destruction – Abandoning our Heritage

What then do our American ideas of freedom and justice mean when we encourage the existence and growth (with both blood and treasure) of societies that are opposed to such ideas? These wars are a disaster whose purposes must be understood. American support of Sharia law anywhere is evidence of an American cultural failure and an abandonment of the foundational concepts that form our national character and the foundations of our country. Support of Sharia law anywhere by the United States here at home or abroad is a foundational failure of understanding the doctrine of Islam.

Alexis De Tocqueville in “Democracy in America” compared the importance of the concepts of religion and American civilization in the early 19th century. His observations are as valid today as they were in 1840.

Mohammed professed to derive from Heaven, and has inserted in the Koran, not only religious doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories of science. The Gospel, on the contrary, only speaks of the general relations of men to God and to each other, beyond which it inculcates and imposes no point of faith. This alone, besides a thousand other reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, whilst the latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods. (Democracy in America, Vol 2, Cambridge: Sever and Francis, 1840; reprint, 1863); p.26.

The conceptual foundations of America as understood by early historians of the republic and of later analysts is in the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman tradition. De Tocqueville’s assessment is essentially correct in analysis but mistaken in its prediction; how could he have known that we ourselves would finance the resurgence of Islam through the greatest transfer of wealth in human history through our purchases of Arab/Islamist oil?

Over time it appears that we have been our worst enemy – forgetting those profound concepts of freedom and justice upon which the republic was fashioned with the intention that, like the Union itself, these concepts would be perpetual through our protection of them.

In our forgetting we have created an intellectual environment of radical tolerance for other ideologies and cultures – even to the existential detriment of our own.

Islamic justice, peace, war, tolerance, and civilization itself are profoundly opposed to American understanding of the same concepts. The failure of American leadership in acknowledging the fundamental oppositional relationship between Islam and American democracy is at the core of our failure post 9/11, to Fort Hood and the skies over Detroit.

Because the Taliban is entirely ideologically motivated (by the Islamic doctrine), and since their purpose is the implementation of Sharia Law wherever they hold power, what is the difference between the Taliban and the Karzai government? The Afghan Karzai constitution states in its first article that Afghanistan is an “Islamic Republic” and in the 3rd article that

“In Afghanistan, no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.”

What can be the difference between the Taliban and Karzai’s government except the cooperation that the Karzai government provides to the kafir Americans? The two forces are unified by Islamic ideology after all; the Taliban fights the Karzai government because the American -supported government isn’t Islamic “enough”; that is, most importantly, they cooperate with the kafir (non-Muslim).

Why are we fighting a war in which the purpose of both sides is the implementation of Sharia law?

In plain terms, what is the difference if Karzai and his kleptocrats implement Sharia or the Taliban does? Either way, American support of Sharia law and its savagery is a humanitarian and philosophical failure.

In such a conflict how is “victory” defined – through self-negation? Everyone will accept American funds and all sides will continue to fight for the success of Islam.

Prior to 9/11 our foreign policy was founded upon both national defense and support for those who wanted freedom if it was within our power to support them. Now, we ignore the freedom fighters on the streets of Iran and fight for Sharia law states in two countries; our foreign policy is overturned.

The “progressives” who opposed the surge in Afghanistan are correct but for the wrong reasons; the surge in Afghanistan is a mistake because the mission itself is confused and based upon a total ignorance of Islamic doctrine and purposes; goals in which both local sides in these conflicts (Iraq and Afghanistan) share. 

If the conflict in ideologies between American society and the Taliban/Karzai administration weren’t enough, there are the lessons of the Vietnam War that must be acknowledged but thus far have been ignored or too derisively dismissed.

Denial of History

Ngo Dinh Diem was the corrupt ruler of Vietnam from 1955 to 1963. Unwilling to check corruption and unwilling to follow the American line, Diem was overthrown with American help (and John F. Kennedy’s person approval) in 1963 only a month before Kennedy’s assassination. The parallels between the Obama Afghan surge and Johnson “surge” in 1965 in Vietnam (despite Johnson’s promise to continue President Kennedy’s policies of slow disengagement) are mistakenly ignored. It should be our policy universally to avoid the errors of our past.

There is no question whatever that our support of the implementation of Sharia law in Afghanistan by either the corrupt Karzai government or the abysmal Taliban is morally and ethically untenable. These facts put our entire effort in both Afghanistan and Iraq into serious question.

If the leadership in Kabul which we support is corrupt, and if the people there know it, and if we know it, and if the purposes of the supported government there and the opposing party (Taliban) are essentially the same (implementation of Sharia law and creation of an Islamic state), we have neither provided the people of the country with a viable alternative to the ideology of the forces we oppose or the conflict itself has been couched in terms that are false.

If Islam and its draconian and savage “legal system” of Sharia law is itself a form of slavery and barbarism and totalitarianism we have failed to provide an alternative to the people of either Iraq or Afghanistan; this is a failure on our part.

If we had created a secular state in either country in which religion was subordinate to the state (as in the American system) then we would have provided a beneficial alternative to Sharia and Islam to the people of both countries. However, in Islam there is no separation between religion and state; Islam is both a religion and a political ideology.

Even in Afghanistan in 2006 years after the Karzai government had been installed, leaving Islam (apostasy) was a crime punishable by death; this is Sharia law.

Regardless of the self-destructive extreme radical tolerance now in vogue in the United States support of a culture and ideology whose adherents are literally hostages to the ideology of the state itself (Islam is the state in both Afghanistan and Iraq) is clearly contrary to American concepts of justice, and individual rights.

If the people of Afghanistan wish to continue living in an Islamic society then we have no cause in which to be involved in what is essentially an internal conflict between adherents of Islam. What kind of “nation building” is possible when the only result can be a Sharia law “state”?

There has been no discussion of freeing the people of Afghanistan from the tyranny of Islam, as they appear to have no such interest; nor is it within our capabilities at this time to do so if we were to embrace such a concept. (Because of the totalitarian nature of Islam the people of Afghanistan, or any Islamic state, do not have the means of communicating such a desire.) Of course, such an approach would be condemned by those who know nothing of Islam, jihad or the doctrine of cruelty, hatred, and war upon which Islam is constructed; such an approach would be condemned as “intolerant” or simply “not nice”.

Afghanistan and Iraq – The Victory of Islam with American Aid

The people of Afghanistan with or without American help will continue to live under Islam because this is the only option that they have. The victory of Islam in Afghanistan which will occur with either a Karzai or Taliban victory is a negative result for Americans and lovers of freedom everywhere.

What is the difference between the brutality of the Taliban implementing Sharia and Karzai’s corrupt government implementing Sharia? Even after years of American military and financial support the Karzai government had plans to kill an Afghani who had converted to Christianity in 2006.

Abdul Rahman, 41 years, is separated from his wife; he was arrested last month after his family – fighting with him over the custody of his children – denounced him for being a convert. The man, who was found carrying a Bible, was accused of having rejected Islam.

The “rejection of Islam” is a crime under Islamic/Sharia law. The penalty for this crime is death under Sharia Law. There is no religious freedom in any state under Islamic law; leaving Islam is a matter of both religious and state authority; it is the gravest of crimes in Islam, it is considered worse than murder.

But any of you who renounce your faith and die an unbeliever, will have your works count for nothing in this world and the world to come. These people will be prisoners of the fire, where they will live forever. (Koran 2:216)

[Edit Note: The correct Sura for this quote is Koran, 2:217:
"But any of you who renounce your faith and die an unbeliever, will have your works count for nothing in this world and the world to come. These people will be prisoners of the fire, where they will live forever."

The Karzai government rejected the death sentence for the Christian convert only because of American outrage; biting the hand that feeds has never been a great strategy in international relations. The Afghan authorities conveniently however found though that the convert was suffering a mental illness which is one of only several ways in which a convert is spared the death sentence.

The minister said: "We released him last night because the prosecutors told us to.
"His family were there when he was freed, but I don't know where he was taken."
Deputy Attorney General Mohammed Eshak Aloko said prosecutors issued a letter calling for Mr Rahman's release because "he was mentally unfit to stand trial".
Mr Aloko added Mr Rahman may be sent overseas for medical treatment.
Critics said Mr Rahman should be free to follow the religion of his choice but under Afghanistan's deeply conservative Sharia law, he had committed a capital crime.
Hundreds of clerics and students chanted "Death to Christians" at a protest against dropping the charge.
SkyNews

Ibn Warraq, the celebrated scholar of Islamic doctrine (and former Muslim), explains the exceptions as follows.

Under Muslim law, the male apostate must be put to death, as long as he is an adult, and in full possession of his faculties. If a pubescent boy apostatizes, he is imprisoned until he comes of age, when if he persists in rejecting Islam he must be put to death. Drunkards and the mentally disturbed are not held responsible for their apostasy.
Apostasy and Human Rights, International Humanist Ethical Union

The critically important differences between the Afghan government that we support and our own society could not have been more starkly on display. The differences remain but we as a culture mainly pretend that they do not exist. Our denial of the totalitarian nature of Islam is folly.

The purpose of jihad is the advance of Islam and the destruction of all non-Islamic religions, political systems and cultures. The holding of great wealth (the jihadist on the Detriot flight lived in a £2 million apartment in London) is irrelevant to those who adhere to and embrace the doctrine of Islam and its warfare against the kafirs (unbelievers). Jihad war is not about the frustrations of poverty.

Abdulmutallab, 23, had lived a gilded life, and, for the three years he studied in London, he stayed in a £2m flat.
Independent-UK

Our failures to prevent crimes of doctrinally motivated Islamic killers (even when we are warned by their parents) is further evidence that we do not take the threat doctrine of Islam-motivated haters seriously enough.

You are commanded to fight although you may dislike it. You may hate something that is good for you, and love something that is bad for you. Allah knows and you do not. (Koran 2:216)

[Part 2 will be posted soon.]