Sunday, June 18, 2006

Gentle persuasion

He said he still hoped that one day the United States would be a Muslim country ruled by Islamic law, "not by violent means, but by persuasion." "Every Muslim who is honest would say, I would like to see America become a Muslim country."

The NYT and the Brie-and-Chablis set is persuaded, all right.

29 comments:

Tecumseh said...

And the muscle behind it:

Significantly, the new al Qaeda sympathizers have moved their base of operations to Canada, which has more liberal immigration and asylum policies than the U.S. (if such is possible), and avoids the interference of that meddlesome Patriot Act.

My Frontier Thesis said...

Canada is a likely training ground. I haven't heard much about Mexico other than the Nat'l Guard troops that were sent down (a bit late to the punch though, eh?) to the Rio.

I'm eager to hear what AA has to say about the Zaytuna Institute. Until World Cup madness ends, we might not get anything out of him other than soccer reviews.

Arelcao Akleos said...

Not just soccer reviews, perfervid soccer reviews...but fortunately for y'all they'll take a hiatus, starting wednesday, as I'll be trolling around the east coast a fortnight or so. But will be back disreviewing and mispredicting things just in time for the semifinals.

The Darkroom said...

america going from evangelism to fundamental islam ? really an incremental step towards obscurantism. I think they're ripe.

Arelcao Akleos said...

they being.... shoes? Ms. CZ Jones assets? Those clearly evangelical cadres over at ANSWER, the Nation, and ChomskyLand?

Tecumseh said...

AA, forget about those diversions -- an obvious ploy to confuse and deflect attention. Surely they teach that tired trick to would-be gauchistes in Sciences-Po 101.

Keeping the eye on the ball, though, here's a British poll from a few months ago -- the real stuff, not the make-believe red herring of perfervid brie-and-chablis imagination.

Arelcao Akleos said...

Thanks for the poll, AI. So roughly as many modern muslims living in Britain are for the Dictatorship of the Quran as are opposed to it. It would be interesting to see what a similar poll would show in other western nations. It would also be interesting to see more info from the poll, such as, for example, the levels of support for Sharia with age cohort. Given the other evidence we have [of lightly religious or secular parents seeing their children becoming fervent believers and separating themselves from we stinking kufr] I'm curious if the poll would have shown more support for Sharia among younger men than those over age 50. It is the "youths", after all, who are the future.

Tecumseh said...

I don't know off the top of my head where to find such data (I suspect that they are not readiy available), but here are some more polls on the subject, taken at various times, various places, and I guess with different kind of questions: 2004 poll, 2005 poll, and 2006 poll. Answers vary somewhat, but the trend is clear, unless you spent 4 years at the Sorbonne studying Sciences Politiques.

Tecumseh said...

Speaking of which, here's more about the long arm of the law.

Tecumseh said...

And also, while at it, looks like Winnie the Pooh got on the shit list. Who's next?

The Darkroom said...

aa - i was referring to your fellow citizens, eager to go on with the iraqi adventure after W's allaho akhbaresque consultation with god.

ai - just incase you have any interest in getting your oversimplifications in the ballpark, Science Po is everything but a gauchiste institution! It is actually rather conservative, maybe not Chicago/Friedman conservative, but it ain't the LSE, that's for sure. Now the Sorbonne is another matter.

Tecumseh said...

They don't study Sciences Politiques at la Sorbonne? Thought they did, but hey, I don't really pay attention to what exactly they teach there, though does it really matter? I assume it's all pinko-lefty-ecolo mumbo-jumbo, splayed with liberal doses of Anglo-Saxon kapitalism is baaad, French nanny-state is good indoctrination. But maybe I'm wrong -- as always, I'm ready to eat crow if solid evidence to the contrary is produced (though, mercifully, this happens only once in a blue moon).

Tecumseh said...

Getting back on topic (why did we get sidetracked about what the Frenchies study in their elite artsy-fartsy schools, again?) here is another instance of gentle persuasion, to make a bleeding Sorbonne heart cry. Aahhh, the baaad Ricains!

The Darkroom said...

>>why did we get sidetracked about what the Frenchies study in their elite artsy-fartsy schools, again?

because you raised the issue ?

The Darkroom said...

>>I assume it's all pinko-lefty-ecolo mumbo-jumbo, splayed with liberal doses of Anglo-Saxon kapitalism is baaad, French nanny-state is good indoctrination. But maybe I'm wrong -- as always, I'm ready to eat crow if solid evidence to the contrary is produced (though, mercifully, this happens only once in a blue moon)

you are really setting yourself up for an awful meal my friend. how do you like your crow and can I watch ?

Tecumseh said...

I usually eat crow au poivre with frites. Goes well with a Nuits-Saint-Georges. But first, I gotta see something concrete to prove me wrong. Where's the beef?

The Darkroom said...

I'm a-gonna be diggin', man.

Tecumseh said...

OK, do that. In the meantime, in the real world, here's the story of a guy who was persuaded that the head-hackers are the good guys.

Arelcao Akleos said...

"Uneducated scholars are bending the word of Islam"???? He means those dumb as a cluck, never got them some college, Magnificent 19?? Or he means those illiterates, who can't tell their shaheed from their shaheen, who man the Islamic Universities of Qom and Riyadh, and who somehow chanced to occupy all the major seats at Al-Azhar University, never mind Columbia's and Georgetown's Middle Eastern & Islamic studies??
Poor Heft, he was making such a good Muslim. But he missed his chance to off his parents, and now the virgins are fading fast in the distance. But one fine Makkah Hajj and his spirits will be back in fine mettle.

Tecumseh said...


More
:

Muhammad Robert Heft has blue eyes, fair skin and wears the long, white robe and turban of an observant Muslim. Since converting to Islam eight years ago, the charismatic Winnipeg-born 33-year-old has been to the fringes of extremist Islam and stepped back.
...
When the United States went to war in Iraq in 2003, Mr. Heft left behind his pregnant wife and travelled to Syria and then took a bus to Baghdad. He said he went as a human shield. But after five days of shock and awe, he left. Upon his return, Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers telephoned and asked what he had done in Iraq. "I was in jihad," he told them.

The Darkroom said...

noam=usama: it's all a vast left wing conspiracy if you ask me.

Tecumseh said...

Unlike Hillary's hallucinations, the existential threat posed by the head hackers is real, mon cher.

The Darkroom said...

it's real as long as you stay in iraq. We agree at last.

Between this and japan bailing out, it doesn't seem like
much corner turning has taken place since the offing of Zarky, wouldn't you say ?

Tecumseh said...

I don't see how we can agree on this: I root for victory in the War on Terror, and Iraq is the central front in this war right now, it's as simple as that. The Left always roots for whoever wants to destroy Western Civ -- it's axiomatic (see, eg, the Left's support of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, which was the proximate cause for the start of WWII: if Stalin sided with Hitler, the Left followed suit, bien sur). Do we agree at least on this axiom?

The Darkroom said...

>>The Left always roots for whoever wants to destroy Western Civ -- it's axiomatic

ai - you know that this is silly, don't you ?

Tecumseh said...

Perhaps a bit of hyperbole, but basically, true. Can you name one instance since the mid-60s where the Left has stood four-square with the US and its allies against foreign enemies? Sorry, I can't. At best, I can cite some waffling and half-hearted attempts at providing support (such as Kerry's now-you-see-now-you-don't voting for funding the war on terror, or, as the lefties would say, the "war on terror"), but no consistent, steely resolve to see us through. And this is the US -- don't even get me started with the Left in Europe (or even the "Right" in France)! Come to think of it, the only exception to the rule that I can think of is Tony Blair. But of course, he has been denounced by the Left the world over as a traitor, lackey of Kapitalism, Bush's poodle, and worse, for such a transgression to the dogma pioneered by dear Karlie in 1848.

The Darkroom said...

One gets the sense from reading your posts that there is a huge ego component to your idea of a foreign policy: don't step on our toes, no waffling, show resolve... I can only imagine what would have happened if nu-nu-nukular dubbyah had handled the bay of pigs incident instead of JFK.

Tecumseh said...

Ad hominem non-sequiturs. Each attack against us has to be judged a froid, and dealt with accordingly. It's the moonbatty left who typically responds hysterically to any foreign affairs crisis, and almost invariably, comes down on the side of the enemy. Eg, I betcha 10 to 1 that your typical Lefty in 1962 was rooting for Khruschev against Kennedy. Now that the crisis is long gone, they can afford to wax poetic about it, but whenever there is a clear, present danger, the old Kim Philbyesque reflex kicks in, like clockwork orange.

Tecumseh said...

And, by the way, I think you meant the Cuban missile crisis (from October 1962), not the Bay of Pigs invasion (from April 1961). Of course, Kennedy completely botched the invasion, which only emboldened Khruschev to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba, leading to the subsequent crisis. So, to answer your question (in a rational way, since of course W could not have been President in 1961), it's quite possible that Nixon, had he been elected in Fall 1960, would have better handled the Bay of Pigs, thereby lesening the likelihood of the Cuban missile crisis (which, by the way, was the closest we came to an all-out nuclear war during the Cold War). But that's what if "history". What saved the day ultimately was not so much Kennedy briksmanship during those 10 days in October (though some of it was quite good, some not as good). But rather, the superior firepower the US had at the time, despite all the efforts to the contrary undertaken by the usual suspects on the Left (Ban-the-Bomb fellow-travellers, assorted useful idiots, and out-and-out traitors such as the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss).