Redstate

Posted at 7:35am on Jun. 26, 2008 Christians still persecuted in Iraq.

By Paul J Cella

The situation in Iraq is improving, alright, but we should never forget the persecution suffered by Iraqi Christians. This New York Times article details at length the re-reappearance of the jizya, the ancient method of extortion reserved for Christians and Jews under Islam’s celebrated system of tolerance for People of the Book. It appears that a refusal to pay the jizya is what cost Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, the leader of the Chaldean Catholics in Mosul, his freedom and then his life.

Meanwhile, a Canadian parliamentary committee has uncovered some horrifying details of the unspeakable campaign against Christians in Iraq:

Muslim militants are crucifying children to terrorize their Christian parents into fleeing Iraq, a parliamentary committee studying the persecution of religious minorities heard yesterday.

Since the war began in 2003, about 12 children, many as young as 10, have been kidnapped and killed, then nailed to makeshift crosses near their homes to terrify and torment their parents.

One infant was snatched, decapitated, burned and left on his mother's doorstep, the committee was told.

May our Lord give them strength, comfort, and that peace which passes all understanding. May His justice find their persecutors swiftly. And may the religion of fire and sword which enjoins this persecution be discredited and banished from the world of men.

Posted in dhimma | Iraq | Iraqi Christians | Islam | War — Comments (13)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:13am on Jun. 14, 2008 Betraying Free Speech.

By Paul J Cella

Canada persecutes Mark Steyn for writing that Islam is a threat to the West. The New York Times, having ignored that drama for months, takes the opportunity to dilate tendentiously on the uniqueness of American tolerance for Free Speech, implicitly comparing Steyn to Nazis, and naturally burying his response in the last two paragraphs of a long article. The few European politicians and thinkers with the guts to stand up to creeping Islamization, find themselves betrayed and denounced in America, and likewise compared to Nazis and fascists, by prominent bloggers. Readers will recall the pitifully tepid response from the West to the beleaguered Danes during the Cartoon Jihad.

And now we have this, as reported by Josh Trevino: In Kuala Lumpar, at the Third International Conference on the Muslim World, three prominent Muslim leaders called on the West to renounce Free Speech in order to accommodate Islamic sensibilities; and the three Westerns who spoke uttered not a word of protest.

Read on.

Posted in Anti-Free Speech Liberals | Archived | free speech | Islam | Liberals | Mark Steyn | the Jihad — Comments (12)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:52am on May 21, 2008 The drama continues.

By Paul J Cella

Under pressure from the fanaticism and treachery of the Jihad, which is abetted by the peculiar manias of Liberalism, Free Speech is perishing. In Canada a sordid drama continues, with Mark Steyn actually managing to maneuver his accusers into a public confrontation — which naturally did not turn out well for these individuals [the confrontation begins about two-thirds of the way into the video].

But it probably doesn’t matter: On June 2, Mr. Steyn and the magazine that published him are compelled to answer to the charge of “flagrant Islamophobia” before another Human Rights Commission, this time in British Columbia. More trials may follow, including a federal tribunal which is said to boast a 100% conviction rate on hate speech cases.

The thing is, under the tyranny of these human rights tribunals, there really can be no defense. Steyn quotes a Canadian Justice Department summary of the situation: “The defences of truth and fair comment remain available to torts such as defamation and seditious libel, regardless of the medium in which they occur. However, … defences that may be available in tort actions are not available in cases of hate propaganda because the prohibition is concerned with adverse effects, not with intent.” Steyn comments:

The government rarely expresses it that brazenly. Especially the justice minister of a supposedly Conservative government. By the way, by “adverse effects,” they mean not anything that’s actually happened but something that might potentially theoretically hypothetically happen maybe a decade or four down the road. If you create a justice regime predicated as a point of principle on disdain for objective reality, it’s no big surprise to find perpetually aggrieved Muslim lobby groups eager to avail themselves of it — big time.

Now my view of Free Speech, admittedly, is somewhat ambivalent. As a general proposition concerning political speech, I endorse it; as an absolute proposition, with compass over anything remotely associated with human expression, I decline to endorse it, and indeed stand ready to oppose it where absolutism threatens to conjure anarchy.

The particular insanity of our day is that Liberals who tend toward the absolutist position are, it seems, sufficiently blind to the obliteration of Free Speech augured by human rights tribunals that they cannot see the flat contradiction that stares them in the face. Islam and grievance-mongering will destroy one of their most cherished principles, and our dear dear Liberals may not even notice.

Posted in free speech | Islam | the Jihad | War — Comments (11)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 6:39pm on Feb. 25, 2008 Muslim Scholars Denounce Terrorism

Where's The Outrage?

By California Yankee

Seems Muslim scholars are unhappy that terrorism is equated with Islam:

Opening the conclave the head of the Deoband school, Maulana Marghoobur Rahman, described terrorism as a thoughtless act which is against the teachings of Islam.

He said that the killing of innocent people of any religion was prohibited by the Koran, the Muslim Holy Book.

Many participants said they want to change popular perceptions in which, they say, terrorism is being equated with Islam.

Others said that while Muslims should not be harassed because of anti-terrorism operations, the community also needed to be more introspective.

Perhaps if the "scholars" had expressed a little outage and condemnation when terrorist acts are committed, there wouldn't be such a perception.

Posted in Breaking News | Islam | Muslim Scholars | terrorism — Comments (43)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:50am on Jan. 24, 2008 Jihad in Atlanta.

By Paul J Cella

I commend to your attention a Jan. 20th story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution headlined, “Muslim cop played key role in terror probe.” The tale told is fairly simple: a DeKalb County detective of Islamic faith and heritage, Mr. Khaled Sediqi, along with his partner, investigated and ultimately apprehended an agent of the Jihad. DeKalb splits the city of Atlanta with the more well-known Fulton County; both the detective and the Jihadist attended the same mosque in Midtown Atlanta near Georgia Tech. Syed Haris Ahmed, a former student there, is to stand trial for material support of a terrorist organization. He and an accomplice were arrested in 2006 and, later in that year, formally linked to a much larger Jihadist cell out of Toronto.

There is drama in abundance here. The detectives nearly succeeded, it appears, in turning Ahmed into an intelligence asset; he later changed his mind, having fortified himself “through prayer,” according to the article, and warned his accomplice. The interrogation technique of Mr. Sediqi, who we are told played the consummate “good cop” to his partner’s more aggressive and demonstrative method, seems to have relied at least partly on direct theological confrontation: “When you say you’re a good Muslim … I believe you, man” but “you’re easily swayed,” by men “with some really evil ways and evil ideas.” “If you’re trying to hurt innocent civilians and unarmed people, then you’re no longer a Muslim.”

Let us hope that the detective has, on Islamic grounds, the better argument here. We know that, on grounds of truth, he has the better argument. The principles and traditions of the Jihad are “evil ways and evil ideas.” If a man is truly “no longer a Muslim” when he embraces them, well and good. If he is rather a true Muslim . . . well, so be it.

But that conundrum we still have the luxury of leaving aside. We the people of the Republic are not now obligated, in my judgment, to deliver our republican judgment on the character of the Islamic religion. Many of us knew little about Islam before a certain autumn raid. And it would be a terrible thing for a republic to be forced to give a yea or nay vote on a whole religion and civilization. History is littered with the husks of great kingdoms and peoples, first savaged by the Jihad, then corrupted and enervated by the demands of a defense against it. The Empires of Byzantium and Spain, each in their characteristic way, teach this bitter lesson.

I call it a blessing that it is still within out power, as I perceive, to check the enemy and baffle his plans, here on our shores; to reduce our intercourse and limit our exposure to his madness; to crush his doctrine, his method, his conspiracies; to extirpate from our land the tendrils of the Jihad, and do so without war and repression — this is not yet beyond our power.

So we may still stay our judgment of Islam. But by God it is long past time that we delivered a resounding negative on the doctrine and institution of Jihad: wicked, treasonable, and menacing.

Detective Sediqi, I salute you — as an Atlantan, a Georgian and an American.

Posted in Atlanta | Islam | the Jihad | War — Comments (5)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:53pm on Jan. 15, 2008 The defiance we need

And the oppression we've got

By Paul J Cella

It is my firm view that the most vital problem of American national security, the question upon which hinges our fortune in the war that came to our shores on September 11, in short, nothing less than the most pressing issue before the Republic, is whether or not we will comprehend the ineradicably Islamic character of the enemy.

Are we or are we not a people capable of embracing hard truth about the war that is made against us — the hard truth that the enemy finds his motivation, his inspiration, his justification, his rhetoric, even his strategy and tactics, in the authentic and primitive traditions of the religion of Muhammad? Are we or are we not a people possessed of the fortitude equal to this challenge? As the cliché goes, can we handle the truth?

It is an open question, I’m afraid; and I am convinced that it is one whose answer will tell for or against this Republic for generations for come.

It is in this context that we ought to read with alarm and indignation of the dismissal of Major Stephen Coughlin from the Pentagon. Coughlin worked as a counterterrorism analyst, and took an unsparing view of the Jihad. The document he authored concludes that a “working threat model” of the enemy must begin with “an unconstrained, undelegated, systematic, factual analysis of the threat doctrine that the enemy self-identifies as being driven by Islamic law.” The pulverizing fact is that our current model begins with an unthinking rejection of such analysis: it begins with a deliberate closing of the mind, enforced by the standard methods of intimidation and vilification. Coughlin, for instance, has been publicly castigated as a “Christian zealot with a pen.”

Read on.

Posted in American tradition | Islam | Pentagon | Stephen Coughlin | the Jihad | War — Comments (42)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:30am on Dec. 13, 2007 Islam is better than Christianity

What Judeo-Christian Heritage?

By Jeff Emanuel

[Update: The Democrats in question are: "No" votes: Ackerman, Clarke, DeGette, Hastings (FL), Lee, McDermott, Scott (VA), Stark and Woolsey.

Lee voted no on Christmas and missed the Ramadan vote.]

What would you say if I told you that eighteen Democrat Representatives -- elected members of the United States Congress -- either voted against, or simply voted "present" on, a resolution passed in honor of Christmas?

Then, what would you say if I told you that seventeen of these eighteen American Representatives also voted for a resolution passed in honor of Ramadan?

No joke -- and believe me, it gets better. Go below the fold for more.

Posted in Are you freaking kidding me? | Christianity | Christmas | Democrats | Islam | Liberals | Ramadan — Comments (75)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:35pm on Nov. 6, 2007 Pakistan and our democracy problem.

By Paul J Cella

Well this Pakistan situation has put our Democracy Project under some embarrassing pressure, hasn’t it?

Consider the question: should it even be our long-term policy to open a place like Pakistan to the wild winds of popular opinion, in other words, to push it toward democracy? The country is not, in fact, teeming with responsible liberals and democrats. There are some of these brave and heroic souls, yes; but what Pakistan really teems with is various lunatic factions of the Jihad. Factions that are a heartbeat or two away from a nuclear arsenal.

Read on.

Posted in democracy | Foreign Affairs | Islam | Pakistan | the Jihad — Comments (15)/ Email this page » / Read More »