I was looking over some letters I have written in the last few months about the double standard by which the Dar al-Islam and the West are judged. While conversion to Islam is encouraged of South Korean Christian prisoners of the Tabiban as they wait to be murdered and an Egyptian former Christian is denied permission to convert back to his original faith. Christians and Jews - in fact all non-Islamic religions - are forbidden to build places of worship in Saudi Arabia. Muslim authorities routinely deny that the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is a Jewish Holy site, seeming to claim that it came into existance with the onset of Islam or that the kings, prophets, and patriarchs of the bible were Muslim.
Within this environment the BBC lambasts the Roman Catholic bishop of Cordoba in southern Spain for the religious insensitivity of his rejection of an appeal from Muslims for the right to pray in the city's cathedral, a former mosque.
The BBC discussed at length the request of Spain's Islamic Board to share the Mezquita, the Cathedral in Cordoba, as "an ecumenical temple where believers from all faiths could worship". While this might seem to be a reasonable request to someone who does not consider the worship of a different religion within the confines of a Catholic Cathedral to be a desecration it should be considered within context, which the BBC story does not provide.
While the the short article noted three times, the history of the Cathedral as a former mosque, it doesn't mention even once the name of the Cathedral, officially the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin.
Nor did the story address the Islamic practice after conquest of desecrating existing religious sites and replacing them with mosques. Such notable examples are the Tejo Mahalaya, a hindu temple-palace which is now known as the Taj Mahal, the most holy site in Judaism which is the site of the Temple of Solomon but is now the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Visigothic cathedral of St. Vincent which was razed to build the Aljama Mosque - the very site of this story.
Most interestingly, the Aljama Mosque episode began with a determination by Tariq ibn-Ziyad, who occupied Cordoba in 711, that the Cathedral would be used as a shared place of worship. This was eventually determined to no longer be acceptable, the Christian portion was expropriated and St. Stephen's was destroyed.
Within the context of history the hesitation of the Bishop of Cordoba is understandable.
08 August 2007
Spain cathedral shuns Muslim plea
Cambridge University Press Offers Its Submission
This is really frightening!
The Cambridge University Press is the oldest publishing and printing house in the world. It received its Royal Charter in 1534 by Henry VIII. Its charter authorizes it to print "all manner of books" and it has been a paragon of academic and intellectual leadership since its inception.
Until now. Now CUP takes its publishing direction from Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz a Saudi billionaire whose charity Muwafaq is designated as "an al-Qaida front that receives funding from wealthy Saudi businessmen" by the US Treasury Department and the Sheikh himself as a "specially designated global terrorist."
How did this come about? CUP published a book, "Alms for Jihad: Charity And Terrorism in the Islamic World," by J. Millard Burr, a former USAID relief coordinator, and the University of California history professor, emeritus Robert O Collins. In the book they detail who has funded the radicalization of Muslim populations in South Asia, Indonesia, the Balkans, Western Europe and, North America. They show who funds the mosques and Islamic centers that in the last 30 years have set up shop on just about every Main Street around the planet. The book was received with positive critical reviews with even the Globe and Mail calling it "The most comprehensive look at the web of Islamic charities that have financed conflicts all around the world."
The problem is partly that the leader of this web is Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz who was the personal banker to the Saudi royal family and head of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, until he sold it to the Saudi government and Sheikh Mahfouz doesn't like his dealings with the enemies of the West being public knowledge. The rest of the problem is that English libel law overwhelmingly favors the plaintiff so when Bin Mahfouz' attorney Laurence Harris filed suit in the UK against the UK publishers they capitulated completely. They have pulped all unsold copies of the book and asked libraries to take it off their shelves. They even sent a letter to the Sheikh saying:
"Throughout the Book there are serious and defamatory allegations about yourself and your family, alleging support for terrorism through your businesses, family and charities, and directly.
"As a result of what we now know, we accept and acknowledge that all of those allegations about you and your family, businesses and charities are entirely and manifestly false."
This despite the fact that the information was not manifestly false. According to The Terror Finance Blog "'Alms for Jihad' is properly sourced, with hundreds of references. And Burr and Collins provided Cambridge University Press with all their materials on bin Mahfouz' al Qaeda and Hamas financing, contrary to the false statements by both bin Mahfouz' and Cambridge University Press attorneys."
Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld has shown, in her defense of her right to publish "Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It" that Americans cannot be bullied out of their First Amendment rights by foreign courts. Unfortunately, Cambridge University Press didn't have that protection.
One wonders if Justice David Eady, the judge common to both the "Funding Evil" and "Alms for Jihad" cases, required the publishers at CUP to make the Shahadah. If the British People don't start to take back their rights to publish the truth they will soon be lining up to make an obligitory Shahadah, "I testify that there is no god but Allah..." though, with protectors such as Justice Eady, it might just become implicit to being British.
03 August 2007
Dalhousie Honours an Arsepluck
May 25, 2007 I was sitting in the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium in Halifax at my son's graduation from Dalhousie Law School. The speech from the recipient of the Legum Doctor (honoris causa), Prof William Schabas, seemed a little flaky in that he referred to his fight to establish the inalienable right of all people to peace and that, to that end, he had established offices all over the world. It seemed typical of a liberal that he had responded to a need he had identified by establishing a beauracracy.
Just the other day, however, I discovered a new dimension to Prof Schabas. I was perusing a post at The Torch and it struck me that one of the people who had written to the International Criminal Court to investigate the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan for War Crimes was this same wingnut. I recognized him because he is the director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights in Galway. The letter was instigated by Michael Byers, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia who is a senior policy advisor to the federal NDP who wrote a defence policy discussion paper for the NDP in the spring of 2005. He is a strong proponent of distancing ourselves from the USA in defense matters.
What is Schabas role in this? It is not clear if he is a happy participant in a stunt that was clearly designed to play to the tune of the debate going on in Commons the week of the letter allowing the NDP to state that there had been complaints to the ICC about the CF in Afghanistan or if he was a dupe of Byers' to lend credibility to the stunt that was lacking in a PoliSci Prof/Political Hack but it was a cheap and dirty trick to play on people who put their lives on the line by people who respond to human rights issues by setting up offices around the world.
I am offended that I was made part of honouring this arsepluck by attending my son's convocation.
South Korea "Submits"
I heard the term "root cause" on the radio today with regards to the Taliban abduction and murder of South Korean Christian aid workers and I had to look into what the "root cause" for the situation was. I found the source of the story through Michelle Malkin's August 2, 2007 post.
Sure enough, as reported in the English version of The Chosun Ilbo, it was the US's fault again:
At a meeting of the Uri Party on Wednesday, Rep. Park Chan-suk said, "The root cause of the hostage crisis lies in our dispatch of troops to Afghanistan. While the Koreans are suffering, the U.S. stands firm on the principles. It's irresponsible and it's a betrayal of one of its allies." Uri Chairman Chung Se-kyun said, "The U.S. should not remain a mere bystander."Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea a quotable pacifist group has labeled "the Bush administration the "main party" responsible for the abduction of 23 Koreans by the Taliban." I think that their reasoning for this was the irresistable pressure that President Bush applied to Bae Hyung-kyu and his group to risk their lives and to go into Afghanistan without telling them:
- that the Taliban don't want the conditions of normal Afghans between Kandahar and Kabul to improve,
- that the road between Kandahar and Kabul is so dangerous that it makes the DMZ between North and South Korea look like the Epcot Centre, and
- that anyone travelling in an Islamist controlled region under the banner of Christianity is considered to be a proselytizer and is subject to death.
Lee Jeong-hoon, a representative of the families, said on Thursday, "Since an anti-American demonstration could have a negative influence on the negotiations for the release of the hostages, we have made efforts to avoid being involved in any such demonstrations." "An anti-American movement could be what the Taliban want," Lee said. "We rejected suggestions by some anti-American groups to hold a candlelight vigil and march to the U.S. Embassy in Korea."Yes!! That is exactly what the protests for disengagement from Afghanistan are doing. Dealing with them as real people legitimizes them and makes them stronger. It emboldens them to go into schools and kill little girls for being out of their homes and it ensures that this "hostage crisis" will happen again. Meanwhile the Korean government has engaged in a remarkable round of moral equivalence:
Korean hostage negotiators have agreed to direct talks with Taliban kidnappers in Afghanistan, a purported spokesman for the Islamists militants told DPA Thursday. The news agency quoted Qari Yousuf Ahmadi as saying Korean Ambassador to Afghanistan Kang Sung-ju spoke directly by phone with his Taliban counterpart.His Taliban counterpart??!! Is Kang Sung-ju a murderous terrorist? That is the only counterpart that the Taliban have in the real world. How can they even say that? This is what Lee Jeong-hoon was talking about. Every inch that these people are given emboldens them to take the next. Their stated goal is to bring their version of Sharia law to the world and they use every concession received as a launching pad to the next while treating every concession given as a temporary tactical retreat. It is an eternal struggle for them to force the Submission of everyone to the authority of Islam.
Every time an atrocity is not met with overwhelming force it rewards them with another inch. Al Quaeda has already taken over foreign policy for Spain when they were elected to that office as a result of the 2004 Madrid train bombings. They now seem poised to take over that position in South Korea. How is it that countries can rail on about the evil USA dictating foreign policy to them and then jump onto the Islamist bandwagon as soon as they say "Boo"? Once they cede their foreign policy to Islamofacsists it is a short hop to total "Submission". For Spain this will simply be a re-reconqista but for South Korea it will be something new.
02 August 2007
Negotiation with Animals
Jack Layton and the NDP want to start peace-oriented discussions with the Taliban in Afghanistan. These are the same people who murder adolescent girls for the crime of going to school. How do you negotiate with that??!! Do you tell them that this is wrong??!! If you have to then there is not basis for discussion.
The NDP and thier advisors advocate an unconditional rejection of violence that makes them smugly think of themselves as noble, as enlightened, but in reality it is nothing less than abject moral capitulation to evil. Unconditional rejection of self-defense, and defense of people like these Afghan girls, because they think it's a supposed surrender to violence, leaves no resort but to beg for mercy or offer appeasement.
Evil grants no mercy, and these animals are evil, and to attempt to appease it is nothing more than a piecemeal surrender to it. Surrender to evil is slavery at best, death at worst. Thus, the unconditional rejection of violence is really nothing more than embracing death as preferable to life.
Those who embrace this path of death will achieve what they embrace, if not for themselves then for their children. The right, the absolute necessity, of overwhelming response against anyone who initiates force against you is fundamental to survival. The morality of a people's self-defense is in its defense of each individual's right to life. It's an intolerance of violence, made real by an unwavering willingness to crush any who would launch violence against you. The unconditional determination to destroy any who would initiate force against you is an exaltation of the value of life. Refusing to surrender your life to any thug or tyrant who lays claim to it is in fact embracing life itself.
If you are unwilling to defend your right to your own life, then you are merely like a mouse trying to argue with owls. You think their ways are wrong. They think you are dinner.
Layton's predecessor, Alexa McDonough, said much the same a week after the WTC attack on 11 September 2001. She felt that an international court should mete out the punishment. Current advisors of the NDP want the same courts to mete out punishment to our own soldiers in Afghanistan rather than to the Taliban and al Quaeda. (more on that later) You can't wag your tongue at such people and offer it the justice of a civilized court. They don't acknowledge our concept of justice.
Even as the Taliban as killing off one Korean teacher after another people are calling for negotiation and talks with the captors. This was the tack that was taken by Karzai in March to secure the release of Daniele Mastrogiacomo, an Italian journalist who had been captured by Taliban forces, a tactic that significantly encouraged this abduction. However, Cheong Wa Dae (S Korean Office of the President) also ruled out the possibility of military action against the kidnappers. "There is no change in the stance that without our government's consent, there will not be any military strategy to solve the issue," Cheon Ho-seon told reporters. Nothing can be more misguided. This event is the direct result of Karzai's capitulation and that of the Spanish left wing government's after their last election.
If, hoping to appease it, you willingly compromise with unrepentant evil, you only allow such evil to sink its fangs into you; from that day on its venom will course through your veins until it finally kills you.
Compromising with murderers, which is precisely what these people are suggesting, grants them moral equivalence where none can rightfully exist. Moral equivalence says that you are no better than they; therefore, their belief - that they should be able to abduct, torture, rape, or murder you - is just as morally valid as your view - that you have the right to live free of their violence. Moral compromise rejects the concept of right and wrong. It says that everyone is equal, all desires are equally valid, all action is equally valid, so everyone should compromise and get along.
Where could you compromise with those who abdut, torture, rape, and murder people? In the number of days a week you will be tortured? In the number of men to be allowed to rape your loved ones? In how many of your family are to be murdered?
No moral equivalence exists in that situation, nor can it exist, so there can be no compromise, only suicide. To even suggest compromise can exist with such men is to sanction murder.
Some comments on negotiation with murders was paraphrased from Terry Goodkind's "Naked Empire".