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It’s been obvious for some time that Obama simply cannot stand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s also increasingly obvious that the President feels a real sense of liking for and fellow-spiritedness with Turkish leader Recep Erdogan, who has moved his country away from secular democracy and disturbingly far in the direction of Islamic fundamentalism and hostility to Israel.


Which says plenty about the kind of leadership we are getting from Obama himself.


More here.

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Link

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This Chicago area event – Faith Under Fire — looks like it will be excellent.

This Conference is designed to address the plight of persecuted religious minorities in Muslim countries. Join us to learn the real nature of their hardships and what each of us can do to advance religious liberty for suffering indigenous communities.
 
Leaders of the indigenous communities describe their plight.
 
Eyewitnesses offer riveting testimony about this harsh reality.
 
Key members of U.S. Congress discuss action to prevent genocide.
 
Global experts offer critical analysis of the international threats.
 
Panelists discuss policy issues and opportunities for action.
 

We hear about a mythical Arab Spring.

But for many non-Muslims in the region, it is a Winter of persecution and the destruction of ancient communities.

These atrocities should be getting more attention.

Buy tickets here.

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A friend on facebook posted the video below and asked for comments:

I sent my friend the following email (proper names redacted):

Hey xxx,
You solicited comments on the video of the guy who loves Jesus but not religion. This is a fairly lengthy reply, and I didn’t feel it appropriate to put in your facebook comments to clog them up. First a little background on my life.

My parents raised me in a Baptist church. I am sure you are familiar with Baptists being in xxx and all, but to say the least it was a very strict, but loving environment at that church. I also went to the Baptist school that was attached to the church until 9th grade.

There was a falling out with the Baptist church when I was a freshman in high school. I transferred to an Assembly of God school. We never returned to any church.

The crux of the falling out was twofold. First, my dad was putting in excruciating hours at work to get the xxx store moving (sound familiar? haha!). He simply didn’t have the energy to attend the Baptist church anymore and we didn’t have the money to give as we had previously. My parents started feeling heat from the elders at the Baptist church for this and couldn’t believe what was happening. My father thought that it was more important to take care of and feed his family than not get any sleep on his one day off so my parents told the Baptist church to “pound sand”.

During summers when I was little, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, who were Lutherans from the old country (Germany). I attended the Lutheran services with them.

I am prefacing my reactions to the video with this background to show that I know my Bible a bit, and also have some experience with organized religion. Most of the experiences were good. Some were not so good.

In general, I think the video is interesting and I see his point. But he paints with too broad of a brush in some spots.

You really cannot worship a man like Jesus without being in a religion yourself. The man in the video claims to despise religion, but if he is worshipping Jesus, well, hate to break it to you, you are participating in a religion, and it is called Christianity. Christianity takes many forms – Lutheran, Baptist, Catholicism, and scads of others. You can call it anything you want. Heck, you can call it “Dave’s religion”, I don’t care. If you worship Jesus as the man in the video says he does, you are participating in an act that requires a leap of faith. There is no scientific way to explain miracles that Jesus supposedly performed while on earth, or to prove (or disprove) things like the resurrection.

I did not like the way the man in the video broad brushed all churches. Yes, bad things happen in churches. They are run by men and women and there will always be politics. Throwing out an accusation like he said in the video of “why are there poor/hungry people when we have churches” (I paraphrase, of course) is just not fair. Some people don’t want help. Some people, help cannot be had (iron regimes, or whatever – are you going to start smuggling guns into Tibet to fight the Chinese? I’m not). In many places I will admit, religion and superstition are the causes of poverty and social stratification (typically not in the United States). However, so many churches do so many good things I thought it was disingenuous at best for him not to say that. The Lutheran church I attended with my grandparents did absolutely everything they could all the time for disadvantaged people here and abroad. The Catholic Church is the single largest charitable organization in the world. There are many more examples, but all churches aren’t all bad. Period. Are some churches bad? Perhaps. I would rather hear the guy say that certain individuals in certain places are bad, such as the Catholic priests who molested the children. This doesn’t make all Catholics or the church itself any more guilty than if someone who worked for me robbed a bank and then all of a sudden people began saying that xxx folks were all bank robbers.

As for the point he makes that Jesus says there doesn’t need to be a church, it isn’t as simple as that either. There is debate on both sides as to what exactly Jesus said and wanted and a lot of it comes down to translations of different versions of the Bible. This is why we have so many different sects of Christianity – different people translate things differently. I don’t need to bore you with that but again, I think it is disingenuous for the guy in the video to make that blanket statement.

Why did he bring politics into the video? I don’t understand why the line “what if I told you voting Republican wasn’t his mission/voting Republican doesn’t = Christian” was WAY out of place in a theological discussion and gives me a hint as to exactly where he is coming from (more on this in a bit). Why did he single out Republican voters? Does he not think that there are no people that vote Republican that aren’t Buddhists or Jews? Does he also not think that there are no Christians that vote Democrat?

Also of note is that Christianity is the only religion he takes a swipe at. Does he not think that Islam or Judaism or Buddhism have issues? I understand that his points need to be compacted into a short video but again, why the hate for Christianity alone?

As for me, today, I have been an agnostic at best for quite some time. My feelings are the same that my father had when I was a boy. My family is the most important thing to me. It is my responsibility FIRST to take care of my wife and kids. If that means that I can’t go to church, so be it. And that is what that means. I work usually 60-70 hours a week and by god, if I want to ride my bike on Sunday morning to relax or workout instead of sitting in the pews, that is what I will do. And that is what I do. In the end, I believe if you live a good life and there is something or someone to atone to when it is all over, I will be fine. Jesus would think so, I believe.

My children go to a Catholic school, and they and my wife will likely be turning Catholic very soon. I refuse to do it and not only is my family OK with this, the Catholic church is absolutely supportive of my decision. I just have too many things I don’t accept about Catholicism to convert to that religion (or any religion for that matter). The congregation at that church and the attached school is made up of fantastic and wonderfully supportive people.

As for the guy in the video, I think he is full of crap. The bashing of Republicans and singling out Christianity for his anti religion screed smell to high heaven to me. But that is of course just a guess. Your mileage may vary.

It was an interesting piece and I understand where he comes from, since I have been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

I know this was long and that is why I didn’t want to put it in facebook – these issues take a lot of thought and are much more complex than a short comment can allow.

Looking forward to seeing you (and xxx?) in San Diego!

Best Regards, Dan.

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Richard Fernandez:

There will always be those who’d like to abstract the candy from the candy store. But it is the shopkeeper’s responsibility to keep that from happening. Conservatives cannot simply hope that progressives will behave themselves. Boys will be boys and progressives will be progressives.
 
The supine acquiescence and collaboration in centralizing government over the last 3 decades has led to the point where a candidacy like Obama’s was not only possible but inevitable. His election is a symptom, not the primary cause of it of what ails the body politic.
 
The man himself can’t be blamed for taking his ambitions and ideology as far as they will go. It is those who let him pass that shows how low the rot within what passes for conservatism has fallen. Conservatism has basically been reduced to behaving well. To politely choose between the milquetoast offerings the press serves up and do nothing to make waves.
 
Anyone who so much as threatens to cause the slightest amount of controversy is branded a wacko — ironically not just by the Democrats but all too often by conservatives who are obsessed with the cult of respectability. Thus Palin, Bachman, Cain, Gingrich and Paul are faulted not so much for their personal failings — which any politician has — but for being disreputable. And being disrepute in today’s conservative world often consists in daring to think a single original thought.
 
By contrast, ‘progressives’ are psychologically conditioned to challenge and even subvert the system. They see that as their job. Others may criticize them, but their Base at least, will cheer them on. Implicit in the ‘progressive’ brand name is the idea of loyalty to the future, not so some transient present or disposable past. So when City Journal’s Siegel and Kotkin write that Obama is perfectly capable of trying to remake the US into a version of China they mean it. After all, politicians of 1940s dreamed of making America like the Soviet Union.
 

A victorious Obama administration could embrace a soft version of the Chinese model. The mechanisms of control already exist. The bureaucratic apparatus, the array of policy czars and regulatory enforcers commissioned by the executive branch, has grown dramatically under Obama. Their ability to control and prosecute people for violations relating to issues like labor and the environment—once largely the province of states and localities—can be further enhanced.

 
But it’s dollars to donuts that any ‘reputable’ conservative asked to comment on Siegel and Klotkin’s article would vehemently deny that such a thing is possible, not because it isn’t — which would be a good reason if it were true — but because it’s impossible for a conservative to admit a progressive can be a progressive.
 
CS Lewis wrote that the biggest trick the devil ever pulled was to make people believe he didn’t exist. Similarly the greatest conjury progressivism has ever peformed was to make their political opponents believe it was shameful to accept that progressives could ever be anything but slightly racier versions of themselves.

Eric Trager (via Martin Kramer):

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Radical Plan for Egypt
January 10, 2012
 
Given the Muslim Brotherhood’s anti-Western outlook, Washington must prepare for the strong possibility that it will hold only limited influence with Egypt’s next government.
 
When the third and final round of Egypt’s parliamentary elections concludes tomorrow, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) is widely expected to cement its dominance of the next legislature. Although the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces still holds executive power, the FJP’s political victory promises radical changes for Egypt, including a theocratic domestic program and a confrontational foreign policy. The United States should have no illusions about the party’s aims or ability to moderate. As long as the FJP is in power, Washington should condition future bilateral relations on its behavior regarding key U.S. interests, including the treatment of religious minorities, Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, and counterterrorism.
 
A Theocratic Domestic Policy
 
The FJP’s overriding aim is to establish an Islamic state in which sharia would be the primary source of legislation. Although FJP leaders correctly note that “sharia principles were a main source of legislation” under Article II of the 1971 constitution, which was suspended following Mubarak’s ouster, the party intends to implement sharia-based laws far more comprehensively than was previously done. The FJP platform states that “sharia, in its essence…organizes the various aspects of life for Muslims and those non-Muslims who participate in the state with them.” The party’s theocratic aims are therefore likely to change many aspects of Egypt’s domestic policy.
[...]
 
A Confrontational Foreign Policy
 
The Brotherhood is similarly signaling its preference for radicalism over realism in foreign affairs. For example, Supreme Guide Muhammad Badie recently declared that, after forming the new government, the organization would pursue its final goal of establishing a “rightly guided caliphate for the education of the world.” This goal may be unrealistic in the short term, but the Brotherhood is already working through the FJP to tilt Egypt away from its Western allies and toward an Islamist foreign policy.
 
The peace treaty with Israel will likely be the first casualty of an FJP-led government. Although the party has said that it will honor Egypt’s international agreements, it has carved out an exception for the Camp David Accords, which it intends to put to a national referendum, thereby shielding itself from direct responsibility for the treaty’s demise. Meanwhile, the Brotherhood has amplified its confrontational posture toward Israel in recent weeks by vowing never to recognize the state and warmly greeting Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Cairo.
 
Not Likely to Moderate
 
It is tempting to believe that the FJP will moderate once in power, but four factors make this highly unlikely. First, although the Brotherhood has frequently portrayed the FJP as a separate entity, the distinction between the “organization” and its “political wing” is superficial. The Brotherhood’s fifteen-member Guidance Office elected the FJP’s leaders, all of whom are former members of that office. Moreover, the choice of hardliner Muhammad Morsi as the FJP’s first chairman suggested that the Brotherhood was committed to ensuring the party would not veer from its parent organization’s principles.
 
Second, the Brotherhood ensures the FJP’s ideological rigidity by retaining direct control over its parliamentary nomination process. The new FJP parliamentarians are all longtime Muslim Brothers whose candidacies were thoroughly vetted by multiple layers of the organization’s leadership.
 
Third, the emergence of the Salafist Nour Party as Egypt’s second-strongest faction makes moderation a strategically dangerous choice for the FJP. Much of the Nour Party’s appeal is based on its claim to represent the “true” Islam, making it a respected arbiter of Islamic principles within Egyptian politics. The FJP thus risks losing support among an overwhelmingly religious electorate if it is perceived to be veering from its Islamist doctrine. It is particularly unlikely to disagree with the Nour Party on basic Quranic principles such as the bans on usury and alcohol.
 
Finally, the FJP has invited al-Gamaa al-Islamiyah, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, to join its future governing coalition. The inclusion of this radical, historically violent faction further reduces the likelihood of the Brotherhood pursuing a moderate agenda, and will severely complicate U.S. efforts to cooperate with the next Egyptian cabinet.
[...]

The quoted passages share a common quality of cutting through what their authors see as other people’s illusions. Are they right to do so? I think so.

People tend to believe what they want to believe and to extrapolate their judgments of others from their own experiences. Extrapolating from your experience is a good heuristic when you are dealing with people whose backgrounds and values are similar to yours, but it can be dangerous in dealing with people who are very different from you. The only reliable way to avoid traps is by education, not necessarily formal education but reading and experience with different kinds of people and systems. It’s also helpful to have a gut-level understanding, which tends to come from hard experience, that there are often many ways for things to go wrong, that extreme events happen sometimes and that there are people who are best avoided. Not everyone understands these things. As Fernandez suggests, many American voters incorrectly believed that Obama would not function as a leftist radical once he was in office even though he had functioned as one before. (One wearies of media conservatives who criticize Obama’s “mistakes” when it should be obvious that Obama is doing what he always intended to do.)

Similarly, as Eric Trager implies, US officials who have been trying to frame the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as a conventional interest group that is amenable to western-style win/win power-sharing deals in the low-risk shared-values manner of liberal democracy are, to put it mildly, ignoring the obvious. The odd thing is that so many of our media and government people go along with such charades and delusions. They seem to confuse words with reality and articulated plans with experience. When they see something disturbing happen their instinct is often to explain it away rather than accept what is happening and decide how to proceed. At such times, maybe always, people who are capable of seeing what is going on in front of them are rarer than we like to think.

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A Terrorist’s Call to Global Jihad: Deciphering Abu Musab al-Suri’s Islamic Jihad Manifesto by Jim Lacey (Ed.)

Cross-posted at zenpundit.com

Previously, I read and reviewed Brynjar Lia’s Architect of Global Jihad , about Islamist terrorist and strategist Abu Musab al-Suri. A sometime collaborator with Osama bin Laden and the AQ inner circle, a trainer of terrorists in military tactics in Afghanistan and an advocate of jihadi IO, al-Suri was one of the few minds produced by the radical Islamist movement who thought and wrote about conflict with the West on a strategic level. Before falling into the hands of Pakistani security and eventually, Syria, where al-Suri was wanted by the Assad regime, al-Suri produced a massive 1600 page tome on conducting a terror insurgency,  The Global Islamic Resistance Call, which al-Suri released on to the jihadi darknet.

Jim Lacey has produced an English digest version of al-Suri’s influential magnum opus comprising approximately 10% of the original  Arabic version, by focusing on the tactical and strategic subjects and excising the rhetorical/ritualistic redundancies common to Islamist discourse and the interminable theological disputation. There are advantages and disadvantages to this approach.

First, Lacey has produced a concise and readable book from a large mass of sometimes convoluted and repetitive theorizing that al-Suri strung together piecemeal, sometimes on the run or in hiding. For those interested in getting to the heart of al-Suri’s nizam la tanzim strategic philosophy, A Terrorist’s Call to Global Jihad is an invaluable resource for strategists, counter-terrorism specialists, tactical operators,  law enforcement and laymen. Secondly, it is also a useful reference for policy people to see through al-Suri’s eyes the internal political and philosophical divisions within the radical jihadi community. al-Suri himself writes very ambivalently about 9/11 as a great blow against America and yet a complete calamity in its effects for the “jihadi current” that destroyed everything the Islamist revolutionaries had so painstakingly built, including the Taliban Emirate. Thus a climate was created by the American counter-attack where old methods of struggle were no longer useful and jihadis must adopt radically decentralized operations (what John Robb terms Open-Source Warfare; indeed it is clear to an informed reader that al-Suri, a wide-ranging intellectual rather than a narrow religious ideologue, was influenced by Western literature on asymmetric warfare, 4GW, Three Block War and COIN).

The drawback to this approach is more for scholars looking at the deeper psychological and ideological drivers of jihadi policies, strategy and movement politics. The religious questions and obscure Quranic justifications cited by Islamist extremists that are so tedious and repetitive to the Western mind are to the jihadis themselves, of paramount importance in establishing both the credentials of the person making an argument but also the moral certainty of the course of action proposed. al-Suri himself had some exasperation with the degree to which primarily armchair ideologues, by virtue of clever religious rhetoric, could have more influence over the operational decisions of fighting jihadis than men with field experience like himself. By removing these citations, an important piece of the puzzle is missing.

The Musab al-Suri whose voice appears in A Terrorist’s Call to Global Jihad is consistent with the one seen in Lia’s book, dry, sardonic, coldly hateful toward the West and highly critical of the jihadis’ own mistakes, laden with overtones of pessimism and gloom. al-Suri did not envision a quick victory over the West and wrote his manifesto as a legacy for future generations of Islamist radicals because the current one was nearly spent after the American onslaught and poorly educated in comparison with predecessors like the generation of Sayid Qutb.

Strongly recommended.

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Via Peter Robinson and Ricochet (and Instapundit), this is worth watching both on the merits and because it reminds how people were thinking a decade ago:

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I started following what I called “The Affair of the Danish Mo-Toons” way back at the very beginning of that particular imbroglio, followed by the ruckus last year over “Everybody Draw Mohammad” and now we seem to have moved on to the Charlie Hebdo fiasco – a French satirical magazine dared to poke fun at the founder of Islam … by putting a cartoon version on the cover of their latest issue, with the result that their offices were firebombed. I think at this point it would have been fair to assume that representatives of the Religion of Peace would respond in a not-quite-so peaceful manner, so all props for the Charlie Hebdo management for even going ahead with it – for even thinking of standing up for freedom of thought, freedom of a press, even freedom to take the piss out of a target.  (The following is what I wrote last year – still relevant to this latest case)

What do you call it when you – theoretically speaking – have a certain designated freedom bestowed upon you, such as freedom of speech or thought  . . .  but you are afraid to exercise it, for whatever reason? What then, oh wolves; are you then truly free if you are constrained from exercising that right because  . . . ? If honest discussion of certain topics is essentially forbidden because it is infra dig, or rude, or may cause hurt feelings to another, or offend a segment of society, then can we still claim that we have freedom of speech, or any sort of intellectual openness, even if convictions for sedition or blasphemy are relatively rare in the West? That speech is still unspoken, those thoughts un-aired are still un-aired, whether it is fear, social pressure or the rule of law what keeps them so.

 Which brings me back to the matter of the Danish Mohammad cartoons – even after four years, the matter is still resonating: at the time I wrote this:

 (It) depresses me even more, every time I think on it. For me it is a toss-up which of these qualities is more essential, more central to western society: intellectual openness to discussion and freewheeling criticism of any particular orthodoxy, the separation of civil and religious authority, and the presence of a robust and independent press. The cravenness of most of our legacy media in not publishing or broadcasting the Dread Cartoons o’ Doom still takes my breath away.

 They have preened themselves for years on how brave they are, courageous in smiting the dread McCarthy Beast, ending the Horrid Vietnam Quagmire and bringing down the Loathsome Nixon – but a dozen relatively tame cartoons? Oh, dear – we must be sensitive to the delicate religious sensibilities of Moslems. Never mind about all that bold and fearless smiting with the pen, and upholding the right of the people to know, we mustn’t hurt the feelings of people  . . .  The alacrity with which basic principals were given up by the legacy press in the face of quite real threats does not inspire me with confidence that other institutions will be any more stalwart.

 The latest iteration in this farrago of freedom of the press is the fatwah on American cartoonist Molly Norris, who originally created “Everybody Draw Mohammad Day.” The fatwah originated in Yemen, a place which I am sure a great many members of the American public would have difficulty pin-pointing it’s exact location on a map of the world. But the tentacles of the murderously offended reach a long way. She is now in hiding, and in various discussion threads, a dismayingly large number of commenters are blaming her for provoking Moslem ire.

 But that is my point – what good is it to have brave principles about open, intellectual discussion, freedom of the press, of thought and expression, if in the end they are not exercised out of fear? A freedom not exercised out of fear … is not a freedom at all; like muscles, they have to be used, lest they atropy.

Here’s the thing – the other half of the intellectual freedom thing; there is no right of the individual never to be offended. In a free and open discussion, there will be differing opinions and interpretations, and there may even be people offended by the exercise of it. God knows, the artistic set have been cheerfully offending the bourgeoisie for decades, on the principle that it is good for us to be shaken up now and again, just to make us all consider or reconsider our preconceptions, or expand our consciousnesses or whatever twaddle they will use to justify themselves with. And the good bourgeoisie, even if offended, usually wasn’t motivated to do much more than grumble and write a letter to the editor; they didn’t go around chopping off heads. One might therefore have grounds for suspecting that in the case of the Danish Cartoons o’ Doom, and ‘Everybody Draw Mohammad’ that a good part of this sudden unwillingness to offend is plain old fear.

Compounding the irony is the fact that those who are the most fearful of repercussions are also afraid to openly admit their fear in the first place – that some Islamic radical nutbag would come after them with a knife, or a car-bomb, or even just get their asses fired for ‘Islamophobia.’ So much easier to transfer the blame, and never have to admit that intellectual freedom has been stifled – not by law, but by fear.

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Dear ChicagoBoyz readers: Please note this most excellent presentation, to be presented by the Mens’ Leadership Forum of Chicago.

Our first, distinguished, speaker for the season will be Mr. Robert C. Reilly.

(Stand by for announcements of future speakers.)

The presentation will be on November 11, 2011 at 7:30am at the University Club of Chicago. You can register here.

Mr. Reilly is the author of The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis. See also his recent piece Will the Arab Spring turn into winter?.

I will be at this event and I hope some of our readers will be there as well.

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(This is an essay I constructed some time ago, for the Daily Brief – but in light of ongoing events in the Middle East is still quite relevant, and worthy of being recycled to a larger audience.)

The pufferfish is an odd little creature with mostly poisonous flesh, which has developed as a primary defense, the ability to inflate itself in order to appear larger to predators. In addition, the spiny pufferfish is covered all over it’s body with short bony barbs.  In full defense mode, it looks like nothing so much as a small spiky ball, a sort of aquatic porcupine, attempting to look larger and more combative, more dangerous than it actually is. I was reminded of these qualities a some years ago,  when I read something apropos of  an Islamic hissy-fit over Pope Benedicts’ mildly stated observation as regards violence and Islam. I am not quite sure where I read it, or anything but the general thrust of the suggestion, which was in a way, revolutionary.

 What if Islam is not a strong, vibrant and attractive faith, growing like some sort of theological kudzu, sweeping all before it? What if it is actually a hollow construct, under stress from a number of directions, seeming strong but in reality fragile, riven throughout with tiny cracks, and teetering on the edge of implosion? What if the frequent explosions of violence at the slightest of critical voices were not a demonstration of power and strength, but of tamped-down fear … fear that if the orthodoxy is questioned or defied, then the whole construct will come crashing down in ruins? What if the whole structure of Islam is actually shivering on its foundations, and the whole bloody-handed constellation of imams and ayatollahs, of shaheeds and jihadists know and fear that, down in the pit of their souls? That the whole thing is a sham, based on the maunderings of a desert bandit, pulled from bits of this or that, for his own aggrandizement? What if the whole jihad against the West is the last spectacular lashing out of those who know in their hearts that if the roots of Islam are ever questioned, then doubt will set in, and the whole edifice come crashing down… and that quietly, here and there, the faithful are slipping away, and ever more would join them but for the threat of death for apostasy.

 This is an interesting train of thought; as Eric Hoffer pointed out decades ago in his study of fanatical belief,  “The True Believer”… a certain sort of fanatic is driven by secret doubts of his or her own abilities or qualities. The most violently inclined towards homosexuals, for example, may be someone who may in their deepest and most private part of the mind feel homosexual urges, and is then shamed and horrified by them. The most virulent advocate of racial superiority, for example, may be the one who at heart has doubts about himself … and reacts with special brutality against a member of what is viewed as a lesser race who yet exemplifies more superior qualities than himself. For myself, I have always observed that someone who was entirely comfortable in themselves and in their deeply-held beliefs was not threatened by someone who did not share them… and certainly not threatened enough to erupt in threats and violence.

 Ages ago, I read Bernard Lewis’ “The Roots of Moslem Rage”, when it first was published in “Atlantic Magazine. I made a total pest of myself to my friends, because I ran around with my tattered copy (this was at about the start of the first Gulf War) saying “See… this is what makes them so angry with us!!!” It seemed only the sensible, empathetic way of looking at it then, and still does now: that the Islamic world, once so powerful, glorious, famed for tolerance, scholarship and culture, was diminished and shattered. That men who had been told all their lives that they were the righteous and blessed, should look around and see that their world was diminished, powerless and ridden by disease and ignorance, and should at once seek for a reason that this should be the way of things, that there should be a reason for this. And of course, it is always easier to find a reason: the rich and powerful should be so because they had cheated, or were empowered by Satan. There could not possibly be any fault in Islam or in those who followed the faith most perfectly for they were chosen and favored by God, in being submissive to him. It was entirely understandable to me, with a great deal of sympathy and regret, that of course, those who thought themselves so chosen must be looking around and observing that most of the lands where Islam ruled were plagued with poverty, disease, ignorance and autocrats. Even those in the Middle East who sat on a lot of oil reserves were not in all that much better a shape. Only so much can be imported and paid for with oil money.

 Being carefully raised in the Lutheran tradition and somewhat of a history nut as well, I had been schooled in the history of the Protestant Reformation. I knew very well how the great unified fortress of the medieval Catholic Church began fracturing once the Bible began to be translated from Latin into the various vernaculars spoken across Europe. It was revolutionary not just because ordinary people could read it for themselves, without the intercession of a priestly authority… but because a great many clever people had to sit down and work out for themselves exactly what each word, each phrase, each sentence actually meant. Ambiguities had to be resolved, alternate versions of varying antiquity had to be consulted. There’s nothing like a translation for thrashing out meaning from a text. The authority and power of one holy, catholic and apostolic church shattered on the rock of textual analysis … something that might be starting to happen with the Koran. I read a fascinating article about the work of Christoph Luxemberg,  his analysis of Koranic texts and his dangerous speculation about various possible sources in Aramaic. (link to article here. More on that topic here.)

 But according to Moslem orthodoxy,  the Koran may not be translated, examined, analyzed… merely accepted whole and entire, memorized and recited. For what dangerous heresies and doubts might emerge then? Might the Islamic faith militant, exemplified by Bin Laden and his merry chums, sympathizers and apologists be ridden by a secret terror of their own… that Islam is not growing, powerful, and omnipotent, but flawed at the root, and dying by degrees… a dangerous-looking but essentially hollow show, like the pufferfish? Is it a hollow faith, crumbling by insidious degrees, as it’s commonly assumed tenents are being examined in the spirit of skeptical scholarship? The ferocious reaction to any departure from orthodoxy suggests that the most fanatical believers may fear so, very deeply. Even the scholar of linguistics, Christoph Luxemberg, in his  study of influences of the Aramaic language on the Koran must publish under a pseudonym… for his suggestion that translations of the Koran must consider the Aramaic in teasing out exact meanings is as explosive as what devotees of the Prophet strap about themselves, or pack into automobiles as their response to the insults of another extant belief system. And again, the violent response suggests that something more is going on here, something deep and dangerous… but the very violence of the response is enough to make a curious person wonder why… Why so touchy?

Some years ago, NPR aired another one of those poor-mouthing stories about the sad plight of Hispanic female converts to Islam and how they must cope with family disapproval, and—horrors! How people look at them funny when they wear a headscarf! NPR seems to love this sort of story, they bang on (and on, and on and on!) about the Poor Muslim having to Cope In Heartlessly Hostile America about as often as they do about the Poor Palestinians Having to Cope with the Brutal Israeli Occupation, demanding our sympathies as if their listening audience were some sort of psychic ATM… swipe the story-card through the slot, here’s another twenty bucks worth of Sympathy for the Chosen Victim Class. I’d love to hear a story, for once about Amish or Mennonite women having to endure other people giving them the stink-eye because of their somewhat distinctive and defiantly old-fashioned dress-sense, but that’s just me. And I am also left to wonder… what about converts from Islam?

I googled that topic, when I originally drafted this essay;  “Islam+converts+from” and got a couple of stories and a query “Do you mean “Converts to Islam”? Well, no, I meant exactly what I typed in… but considering that conversion from Islam means a death sentence as an apostate… talk about a story that most major news media don’t want to touch with a ten foot pole, and a subject which converts themselves  would also mainly prefer to remain untouched. Since exposure as a convert means the death penalty for apostasy, one can hardly blame such converts for being extremely circumspect. Missionaries and ministers to converts also must feel the same need for a similarly subterranean profile… but there are still a trickle of accounts and witnesses, mostly from religious organizations. A story which intrigued me when I first read it was about conversions to Christianity among the Berbers of Algeria… that very quietly, many local Berbers were rejecting Islam as a horrific death cult; in fact, they were reclaiming their heritage as Christians, which they had been up until the Moslem conquests of the 8^th century. (St. Augustine’s mother, St. Monica was a Berber Christian.)

There is currently a Christian evangelist in Iran, currently under a death sentance. Some years past there was briefly famous Afghan convert, and a handful of others, leaving one to wonder how many other converts there are in the shadows, seeking no notice of themselves for fear of being murdered. One also wonders how many outwardly conforming Moslems have quietly declared apostasy in their hearts, going through the outward motions for the sake of their families and a bit of peace and quiet, or have moved to another city, or country and just let the whole thing lapse. There’s probably no way to work out the numbers, but it is food for thought.

Especially since life under a strict Wahabi Islamic rule seems desperately unappealing: Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban and Iran under the Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors  looked more like a sort of religious concentration camp, with every pleasure in life, small and large being banned, constrained and forced underground.

 This is only a speculation, a working out of various themes and memes in my own mind. But it is different way to look at the whole structure of Islam, and a way to account for the hostility on display every time the followers of the Prophet feel disregarded and to have been offended. Might it possibly be that the disporportionate reactions among the Moslem faithful are those of frightened men who feel power trickling out of their fingers, like grains from a handful of sand?

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Two years ago I wrote this:

The only part of the American national security establishment that successfully defended America on 9/11 was the portion of the reserve militia on board Flight 93, acting without orders, without hierarchy, without uniforms or weapons, by spontaneous organization and action.

The lesson I derived:

Bottom-up, inductive, spontaneous self-organization is the essence of America.

After a decade I can say we have wasted a decade failing to learn from that lesson.

We had better do better over the next decade.

“Are you guys ready? Let’s roll.”

A minute by minute narrative of Flight 93, done as tweets today, is here. Scroll from the bottom. Very much worth reading.

My recollection of the day was in a comment here, written on September 11, 2004 — below the fold. It is funny how after ten years I had forgotten some of the details I had remembered three years later. You can say “we will never forget” but your brain fades away, and you forget whether you want to or not.

The weather this morning was exactly like the day ten years ago: Clear, warm, blue skies.

God bless America.

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I was standing in my kitchen, running late, getting ready to head out the door. We had the radio on when the reports started coming in. No TV. Thank God. It was a beautiful, sunny day in Oak Park. Kids were playing in the yard. I just paced up and down in the kitchen as the news reports came in. My wife said to me, you are not surprised and I said I wasn’t. I remember thinking, how in the Hell are they going to repair the damage of a jetliner-sized hole, then the first tower fell. Len Walter on WBBM, the business reporter, was reporting all morning, I remember. My wife tends toward being a pacifist. I said something like, this is like the Vietcong going global, and I asked her will you support it when we retaliate, when we find out who did this? She said, I remember it like if was five minutes ago: “the Vietcong never fucking attacked New York.” Right on.

Sometime after the second plane hit, Jonathan calls me. He says something like, “well they got us”, and I said something like, “yeah, the fucking bastards got us.” Neither of us was surprised. The method was a surprise, but we had both been saying that the USA was living in a dreamworld and that we were overdue for a massive terrorist attack. I expected an Oklahoma City type of bombing, maybe. I also had long thought I’d get to work one day and find out Lower Manhattan had just been leveled with a nuclear bomb. That may yet happen.

I remember praying to God, “grant that we will find and destroy the people who did this. Grant that we will find and thwart and stop the people who did this. Not vengeance. No vengeance. I don’t want vengeance. You judge their souls. That’s your business. I don’t care about that. No. Justice. Only justice. Give us justice. Make us instruments of your justice.” Along those lines, over and over, and praying for the people being incinerated, the people who’d been snuffed out in an instant on board the planes, the people falling and dying smashed on the pavement, the people going into the buildings to rescue others and being crushed under countless falling tons of steel and cement.

I didn’t go to work that day.

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Todd Beamer:

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Three thousand, six hundred fifty days, more or less,depending on leap years – since the end of the 20th century. Oh, I know, calendar-wise, only a year or two off. But we don’t count strictly by the calendar. Afterwards, we count by events. Myself, I have the feeling that the 19th century didn’t truly end for good and all until 1914. That’s when the 20th century began, in the muddy trenches of WW1. All the previous comfortable understandings and optimistic assumptions of the earlier world were shattered right along with three monarchial dynasties, over the course of four years. When it was over, the world of the time before seemed impossibly far removed, to those who could remember it – a number which, as the decades passed, became steadily fewer, until that old world was entirely the stuff of books, paintings and relics, rather than true human recollections. We eventually adjusted and accepted the new reality of things. The old way, and the shattering events in which it passed – became a date on a monument, a paragraph in a history text, a book on the shelf.

Being that humans are mostly optimistic and pretty adaptable, we patched together some new understandings and assumptions, which worked pretty well – or at least we became accustomed to them . . . until the 20th century ended on a glorious autumn morning, ten years ago. One day. And then we had to become accustomed to the new reality. More than three thousand dead, a hole in the New York skyline that will never be filled in again – the ghosts of twin silvery towers showing up in the backgrounds of movies, now and again, drawing your sudden attention with a catch at the heart and memory.

And three thousand-something men and women who went off to work one morning, families who took a vacation, catching an early morning airplane flight, firefighters going on shift, everyone living out those thousands of petty daily routines, most of them probably quite boring. I am certain that practically every one of those who became casualties on that morning – a name and a face on a makeshift poster, a black-framed picture on the mantel or in the obituary pages – were looking forward to the end of the workday, the end of their journey – to coming home for a good dinner, wrapping up that business trip and getting on with that portion of our life that is ours, and belongs to us and our families and loved ones alone.

But they were never allowed that luxury, of having a tonight, a tomorrow. Those lives which they might have had, would have – were brutally wrenched from them, in an organized act of terrorism, wrenched from them in fire and horror and blood, while the rest of us watched or listened – watched in person, on television, or were glued to a radio – ten years ago today.

Ten years. Time enough for children to grow to middle-school age, never remembering that time before, barely recollecting as children do,  the loss of a father or mother, who worked in a department in the outer ring of the Pentagon, or in an office on a high floor of the World Trade center. A foreign country to them, is that place, where once you could go into the airport terminal and go all the way to the gate to meet an arriving friend . . . and for travelers not to have to take off their shoes to go through security. Or even have to go through security, come to think on it. A world where one could have no reaction but idle curiosity upon noticing a woman in full black burka, or a nervous-appearing man of Middle-eastern appearance, taking pictures of an otherwise undistinguished bridge or power station. A world where a familiarity with the dictates of the Koran and the Hadith, the maunderings of Sayyid Qutb as regards America and the workings of a desert tribal autocracy are an eccentric interest and hobby – not a professional necessity.

Ten years. The world that was passes from memory, and we have the brutal world of ‘now.’ As an amateur historian, one of my own comforts on this anniversary is that – it was always like this. We will survive, we will live in a world that is made new and eternally renewed by events, events that will eventually fade . . .

But today, we remember. We will always remember.

My past  anniversary posts at The Daily Brief: 

 2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
I didn’t write a specialized post for 2009, and last year I only reposted some music videos.

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There is a type of machine called an attrition mill. It consists of two steel discs which rotate at high speed in opposite directions, crushing the grain or other substance being milled between them. In earlier posts, I have used the metaphor that our civilization is now caught in a gigantic attrition mill, with one disc being the Islamic terrorist enemy and the other disc being the “progressive” Left within our own societies.

Recently, David Solway wrote an important post on the Leftist-Islamist nexus. Solway’s post is more than a bit over the top, IMO: while it is certainly true that there are signficant parallels between modern “progressivism” on the one hand, and Naziism/Fascism on the other…and even stronger parallels between radical-militant Islam and Fascism…I don’t think it is helpful to use terms like “Fourth Reich.” Still, many of the concerns he raises are valid ones, such as the extent to which prestigious American universities “are actively colluding with Islamic foreign governments” in their aim to criminalize (a non-existent) “Islamophobia,” thus putting them “in direct opposition to the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections.” Definitely read the whole thing.

For a current example of the kind of thing that Solway is talking about, see this post from Pam Geller.

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One of my favorite novelists is Neville Shute. He was an engineer, as was I, plus he writes about people with an ability to show their humanity and their deeper motivations without a lot of explanation. He is the engineer’s novelist, the businessman’s novelist and should be on every list of conservative novelists. I have read all his post-war novels, most of his wartime novels and a selection of his pre-war novels. He died in 1960 and all his books are still in print.

I was a college student when “On the Beach,” possibly his most famous novel, came out. It scared me so badly that I have not been able to enjoy rereading it, as I have his other books. I was a college sophomore and familiar with his other work at the time. I had read his aviation novel, “No Highway,” and was aware that the plot device in that book, of metal fatigue causing a new airplane to crash without explanation, had been prophetic. Shortly after “No Highway” had come out, the British Comet jet airliners had begun to crash and, when finally identified, the cause was metal fatigue.

Shute had written another prophetic novel in the late 1930s, called “Ordeal,” which predicted the effects of the Blitz on London. Both of these books, with their predictions borne out by history, caused me to be very shaken by “On the Beach.” A rather successful movie was later made from this novel, which Shute hated because it had suggested that the two principle characters, played by Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner, had slept together while he believed it important to establish their morality, even when doomed.

I very nearly dropped out of school after that book and spent a year or two getting over the idea that I would soon be fried in a nuclear war. My reaction was based as much on my regard for his novels as for the topic, itself. A quite good movie was made from “No Highway” with James Stewart, Glynnis Johns, and Marlena Dietrich.

It was about this time that Shute became disgusted with Socialist England and emigrated to Australia. His conservative politics can be discerned in the rest of his work from this time. The most overtly political of his books is “In the Wet,” an attempt at prediction of the future. He attempts to look into the future, writing a novel set 30 years in the future and looking back through dream sequences, a device he uses rather often. He is too pessimistic about England, failing to anticipate Margaret Thatcher, and too optimistic about Australia, imagining that his adopted homeland has devised a weighted ballot system, which credits those with achievement more weight in voting. The book was written in the 50s and tried to predict the 80s. Shute died in 1960 and had no chance to update his predictions.

His autobiography, “Slide Rule” explains some of his political evolution as he recounts the story of the R 100 and R 101 competition. At the time, Shute (Norway) was working as an engineer for Geoffrey DeHavilland and Vickers aircraft company, which were building the R 100. The government had decided on a competition between the R 101 government sponsored project and the R 100 private project. From Wikipedia, with a bit of revisionism on the part of the web site, not known as a conservative stronghold:

R101 was the result of a British government initiative to develop airships. In 1924 the Imperial Airship Scheme was proposed as a way to provide passenger and mail transport from Britain to the most distant parts of the British Empire, including India, Australia and Canada and intermediate destinations. The distances were too great for conventional aircraft of the period. The specification called for airships with a passenger capacity of 150 including luggage, plus mails, in addition to the crew of around 40. In wartime the airships would be used to carry 200 troops or five fighter aircraft. This was expected to require airships of eight million cubic feet (230,000 m³) — well beyond then-current designs. As a result the two prototype airships of five million cubic feet (140,000 m³) were authorised; each to exploit competition and develop new ideas. Two teams were used: one, under direction of the Government Air Ministry, would build R101 (hence the nickname “the Socialist Airship”), and the other, a private company, Vickers, would build R100 (the “Capitalist Airship”) under contract for a fixed price.

The story of the designs of R100 and R101, and the competition between them, is told in Shute’s Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer, which was first published in 1954, and in Airship Saga, published in 1980 by Lord Venty. Shute’s book characterised R100 as a pragmatic and conservative design, and R101 as grandiose and over-ambitious. In fact the purpose of having two design teams was precisely to test different approaches, with R101 deliberately intended to extend the limits of existing technology. Shute later admitted that many of his criticisms of the R101 team were unjustified, and that he had been piqued by the scrapping of R100 following the crash of R101.[citation needed]

I’ll say that a “citation ” is needed! There is no sign that Shute Norway ever revised his opinion. In fact, one of his stories from Slide Rule is how Lord Nuffield, a rich auto manufacturer, decided to stop building the small gasoline engines that so much of the aircraft industry depended upon for smaller planes and trainers. Nuffield had finally had enough of the Air Ministry bureaucrats’ idiocy.

There are several transitional novels as he learns about his new country. “The Far Country” is one and holds up well. The English girl, a doctor’s daughter, comes to visit relatives in Australia who have been pitied a bit by the English branch of the family when it is quickly apparent to her that they have prospered far beyond the imagination of the English who stayed behind and who are now poor. An Austrian doctor is an immigrant who works as a lumberman. Australia is seen as the land of opportunity while England stagnates in a socialist muddle. The widow of an Indian bureaucrat, and the girl’s grandmother, starves to death in England, too proud to ask for help. The Australian couple married after World War I much against the wishes of the wife’s family. The only support they received from the family came from Aunt Ethel, who is now quietly starving to death in Socialist England. After the grandmother dies, the girl’s father, an overworked doctor in the NHS, reads the old lady’s letters and a recipe book that pictures a world incomprehensible to 1953 English girls. Cakes made with two pounds of butter, 18 weeks ration for one person. Steak and onions for dinner, a meal the doctor has not seen since before the war. It illustrates Shute’s point without the need for explanation.

“Requiem for a Wren” is another transitional book, and has a somber tone, as it deals with a young woman whose fiance is killed the week before D-Day as he is one of the special forces who cross the channel early to prepare the way. Shute knows a lot about this from his war work. The young woman eventually makes her way to Australia where she works as a maid for the parents of her dead fiance, never letting them know who she is. The brother of her fiance, who has been badly hurt as an RAF pilot, spends years looking for her, never realizing until too late that she was with his parents in Australia.

The “The Rainbow and The Rose” is another transitional book, the story told in dream sequences, about a World War I fighter pilot who becomes an airline captain after World War II and eventually meets his daughter from a relationship of years ago. It begins in England and ends in Tasmania. All these transitional novels begin in England and end in Australia.

His classic book about Australia, “A Town Like Alice,” has been in print, especially in England, for 60 years. It is the story of a young English woman who was a prisoner of the Japanese in Malaya during World War II. She meets an Australian soldier, a POW, and has every reason to believe he is killed by the Japanese. She is repatriated but goes back to Malaya after the war to build a well for the simple people who sheltered her and her companions from the Japanese. Here again, is the theme that, given a legacy she did not expect, she goes back to help people who once were good to her. Once there, she learns that the Australian soldier survived. She goes on to Australia to see him and learn what has happened. In the meantime, he has learned she was not married (She was caring for an infant that was her employer’s) and has gone to London in search of her.

They meet and the rest of the story is about how her attempts at business, a shoe factory, a laundromat, a dress shop, transform the outback town into a pleasant place that is almost “A town like Alice.” Here again, Shute makes the business person a hero. Her small businesses employ local people, helping to keep girls near aging parents instead of their having to go thousands of miles away for work. Local stockmen cannot find wives and form families because the outback town has no amenities that would encourage a young woman to stay. As the local businesses that Jean Paget organizes begin to affect the town, there is a multiplier effect. This is one of the very few examples of economics and the multiplier effect in fiction. In the end, the town is transformed by business and becomes a thriving community.

Shute’s final novel, published after his death in 1960, is “Trustee from the Toolroom.” The story is of a man who lives in England, in Ealing where Shute himself grew up, and writes for a model engineering magazine. He designs and builds models which are described to readers with step by step instructions. In doing so, he has made friends all over the world. Friends who, when they learn he is in trouble, are willing to do what they can to help him. His sister and her husband, a retired naval officer, have decided to emigrate. They sail a small sailboat (Shute was a sailor) from England with the intention of settling in British Columbia. Because of severe currency controls at the time (A friend of my in-laws used to come for an annual visit and was dependent on them for expenses, an obligation she reciprocated when they visited England), they are unable to legally bring their funds to Canada so they smuggle diamonds in a box let into the keel with Keith’s help. They are lost in a southern hemisphere hurricane, with the yacht wedged into a coral reef surrounding an island in the Tuamotu Archipelago.

They have left their daughter with Keith and his wife until they send for her from Vancouver. Now, with the girl’s legacy lost in the south Pacific, Keith feels responsibility for the girl but the task is daunting.

Keith knows that the diamonds are there and accessible but only if he goes personally to retrieve them himself and in secrecy. The story of how he does this is one of the two or three best sailing novels of modern times. It also is a story of personal friendship and the honor of businessmen. The heroes are a mentally dull but competent seaman, a wealthy businessman and other characters who respond to a respected man who needs help. It is probably Shute’s most sentimental story. I have read it at least 50 times. It is probably a coincidence that most of the good people are Jewish but maybe not.

Probably his most mystical novel is “Round the Bend,” a story of a young man building an air transport business. Once again. the businessman is the hero. Along the way, he runs a business and undercuts his competition by employing local pilots and engineers, mostly Muslim since the business is set in the Middle East. About half way through the story, he meets a childhood friend, Connie Shaklin, a childhood friend from their early life working for an air circus. Connie comes back to Bahrain with Tom and helps him expand his business by expanding his ground engineer operation. Connie teaches the Muslim employees that every time they properly wire a nut to keep it from unscrewing, they are praying. He tells them the story of how Allah taught Mohammed that men should pray 50 times per day but allowed the requirement to remain at 5 times per day due to the weakness of men. Connie teaches his ground engineers, in a part of the world where native employees are notoriously unreliable, that they are praying by working to the best of their own ability. His methods are so successful that other airlines adopt them and he becomes a cult figure among ground engineers and their supervisors across Asia. He is consulted by imams and becomes a figure of reverence.

Inevitably, the British bureaucracy becomes alarmed and finally drives Connie from the Middle East. This results in severe consequences for the British but Shute has small patience with minor British officialdom. In the end, Connie becomes a Christ-like figure and Shute has written his most mystical novel. It is all based on plausible scenarios and the issue is left one of speculation but it is one of my favorite two or three of his books.

A review– A story which grips and fascinates, a story enriched by the observation and understanding which have made Shute’s work outstanding Scotsman He holds attention to the last page — Daily Telegraph

So convincingly does Shute tell the story and so cleverly does he leave the character of Shaklin deliberately vague that the book is as absorbing as anything he has written, and Cutter one of his finest creations

Glasgow Herald

There is a Neville Shute site, which is quite active and sponsors trips to locations of some of his novels. A recent entry shows how active it is.

I was recently contacted by the son of Forester Lindsley. Forester now lives in Brisbane, Australia. At 16, Forester joined Airspeed in York and moved with it to Portsmouth. Forester is now 90 and in poor health so I am interviewing him slowly. Apart from speaking to him, what is particularly exciting is that I have been told he has a large collection of photographs so I am hoping we will soon uncover some treasures. Forester worked on Cobham’s Air Circus planes and was a ground engineer on the first Ferry flights and was also involved in the aerial refuelling project. He met Amy Johnson several times and also said that he knew Flt Lt Colman, Airspeed’s test pilot, well. He spoke well of Shute and Tiltman. Forester worked as a Ground Engineer through the war and was working in Karachi in 1948 when Shute had his Proctor serviced there on his way through to Australia. Being a young ground engineer who joined aviation as a young boy, was involved with Cobham’s Air Circus, and later was working in The East where Shute met him, it is hard not to speculate that he must have been a partial model for the characters of either or both Tom Cutter or Connie Shak Lin in Round The Bend. Further speculation is encouraged by the story that Forester was doing a bit of Ground Engineer teaching in Karachi when Shute visited. Sadly when I tried to cross reference in the Flight Log for a mention of Forester I couldn’t find one but as the Flight Log is a hurriedly written diary this is not so surprising. I have been sent a lovely photo of a teenage Forester with an early version of the Airspeed Courier. He looks like a fun loving and likeable teenager just like Tom and Connie. Hopefully there will be more forthcoming as I hear more from Forester.

If you have read Round the Bend, you know exactly what the comment is about. There are thousands of people all over the world who know the novels well enough to immediately recognize the significance of the comment. They are like a treasure hunt of gems of writing and history. He is my image of the conservative novelist and should be read by engineers, conservatives and those interested in well drawn personal images.

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Here is a detailed analysis of the evolution of Obama’s views on the Israel-Palestinian issue. For anyone who wishes Israel well but is still supporting Obama, you owe it to yourself to read it carefully. The author clearly demonstrates how the left’s hostility toward Israel is part and parcel of their generalized hostility toward Western societies.

The title that was given to the article…”Pro-Palestinian-in-Chief”…seems questionable, though. Supporting the “Palestinian cause” in the way that Western leftists do is not really pro-Palestinian, at least not pro-those-Palestinians-who-want-to live peaceful and happy lives. Great harm has been done to these people, as well as to Israelis and to the world in general, by the way in which the Palestinian conflict with Israel has been hyped and romanticized. It is specifically the insane focus on anti-Israel beliefs and action which has acted to prevent the economic development of the Palestinian areas and ensure the continue immiseration of its people, and all of this has been greatly aided and abetted by American and European leftists.

See this related article by Fouad Ajami, which contrasts the behavior of the Palestinian leadership with the behavior of pre-statehood Israeli leadership.

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[ cross-posted from Zenpundit -- AQ tech savvy, impact of visuals ]
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Jarret Brachman told us a while back:

Jihadi movement participants, he [al-Awlaki] argues, should also use computers, CD-ROMs, and DVDs to circulate large quantities of jihadi information—in the form of books, essays, brochures, photographs, and videos—in a highly compressed fashion.

I know that in theory, it doesn’t surprise me too much — but visuals like these bring it home to me in a way that reading words never will:

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Merchandise — CDs and DVDs, the coin of the info-realm.

BTW, that Brachman article, High-Tech Terror: Al-Qaeda’s Use of New Technology, will be familiar to some who read here, but is worth reading if you don’t already know it.

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[ cross-posted at Zenpundit -- apocalyptic movements, best readings, budget shortfalls, lack of support for scholarship in crucial natsec areas -- and with a h/t to Dan from Madison for the video that triggered this post ]
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What with rapture parties breaking out all over, billboards in Dubai proclaiming The End and thousands of Hmong tribespeople in Vietnam among the believers, this whole sorry business of Harold Camping‘s latest end times prediction is catching plenty of attention. I thought it might be helpful to recommend some of the more interesting and knowledgeable commentary on Camping’s failed prophecy.

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First, three friends and colleagues of mine from the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, about which I will have a further paragraph later:

Richard Landes of BU has a text interview here, and a TV interview here. His forthcoming book, Heaven on Earth, is a monumental [554 pp.] treatment of millenarian movements ranging “from ancient Egypt to modern-day UFO cults and global Jihad” with a focus on “ten widely different case studies, none of which come from Judaism or Christianity” — and “shows that many events typically regarded as secular–including the French Revolution, Marxism, Bolshevism, Nazism-not only contain key millennialist elements, but follow the apocalyptic curve of enthusiastic launch, disappointment and (often catastrophic) re-entry into ‘normal time’”.

Stephen O’Leary of USC wrote up the Harold Camping prediction a couple of days ago on the WSJ “Speakeasy” blog. He’s the rhetorician and communications scholar who co-wrote the first article on religion on the internet, and his specialty as it applies to apocalyptic thinking is doubly relevant: the timing of the end — and the timing of the announcement of the end. His book, Arguing the Apocalypse, is the classic treatment.

Damian Thompson of the Daily Telegraph is a wicked and witty blogger on all things Catholic and much else beside — the normally staid Church Times (UK) once called him a “blood-crazed ferret” and he wears the quote with pride on his blog, where you can also find his comments on Camping. Damian’s book, Waiting for Antichrist, is a masterful treatment of one “expecting” church in London, and has a lot to tell us about the distance between the orthodoxies of its clergy and the various levels of enthusiasm and eclectic beliefs of their congregants.

Three experts, three highly recommended books.

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Two quick notes for those whose motto is “follow the money” (I prefer “cherchez la femme” myself, but chacun a son gout):

The LA Times has a piece that examines the “worldwide $100-million campaign of caravans and billboards, financed by the sale and swap of TV and radio stations” behind Camping’s more recent prediction (the 1994 version was less widely known).

Well worth reading.

And for those who suspect the man of living “high on the hog” — this quote from the same piece might cause you to rethink the possibility that the man’s sincere (one can be misguided with one’s integrity intact, I’d suggest):

Though his organization has large financial holdings, he drives a 1993 Camry and lives in a modest house.

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Now back to the Center for Millennial Studies.

While it existed, it was quite simply the world center of apocalyptic, messianic and millenarian studies. CMS conferences brought together a wide range of scholars of different eras and areas, who could together begin to fathom the commonalities and differences — anthropological, theological, psychological, political, local, global, historical, and contemporary — of movements such as the Essenes, the Falun Gong, the Quakers, Nazism, the Muenster Anabaptists, al-Qaida, the Taiping Rebellion, Branch Davidians, the Y2K scare, classic Marxism, Aum Shinrikyo and Heaven’s Gate.

And then the year 2000 came and went, and those who hadn’t followed the work of the CMS and its associates thought it’s all over, no more millennial expectation, we’ve entered the new millennium with barely a hiccup.

Well, guess what. It was at the CMS that David Cook presented early insights from his definitive work on contemporary millennial movements in Islam — and now we have millennial stirrings both on the Shia side (President Ahmadinejad et al) and among the Sunni (AQ theorist Abu Mus’ab Al-Suri devotes the last hundred pages of his treatise on jihad to “signs of the end times”)…

Apocalyptic expectation continues. But Richard Landes’ and Stephen O’Leary’s fine project, the CMS, is no longer with us to bring scholars together to discuss what remains one of the key topics of our times. When Richard’s book comes out, buy it and read it — and see if you don’t see what I mean.

Or read Jean-Pierre Filiu‘s Apocalypse in Islam. Please. Or Tim Furnish‘s recent paper.

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And while it may not see Judgment Day or the beginning of the end of the world as predicted, what this week has seen is the end of funding of Fulbright scholarships for doctoral dissertation research abroad. But then as Abu Muqawama points out:

hey, it’s probably safe to cut funding for these languages. It’s hard to see Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan or anywhere in the Arabic-speaking world causing issues in terms of U.S. national security interests anytime soon.

Right?

So the CMS isn’t the only significant scholarly venue we’ve lost to terminal lack of vision.

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The discovery of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan’s most secure stronghold at Abbottabad, just 800 yards from Pakistan’s West Point is clear and convincing evidence that Pakistan is a state sponsor of terrorism against America. There is no other reasonable explanation.

We already knew Pakistan is what we feared a nuclear-armed Iran would be — a nuclear-armed, terrorist supporting, state. Just ask India about Mumbai and the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Now we know that Pakistan is attacking us too. Al Qaeda is the operational arm of Pakistani intelligence (ISI) attacking us just as Lashkar-e-Taiba is its operational arm attacking India.

There are no good options with Pakistan, just greater or lesser degrees of bad ones. Given its possession of nuclear weapons, there is little we can safely do to deter Pakistani terrorism against us. Nothing short of actually destroying the nuclear-armed Pakistani state, and the rapid, forcible, seizure of its nuclear weapons, will protect America from Pakistani terrorism – they’ll build more nukes if we allow the Pakistani state to survive.

Destruction of the Pakistani state and prompt seizure of its nuclear weapons are well within America’s power, particularly if we ruthlessly use some of our own tactical nuclear weapons in the process of seizing Pakistan’s. Securing Pakistan’s nukes quickly — to keep them from being used on American cities by Pakistani agents aka terrorists funded by Pakistani intelligence — is an important enough objective to merit the use of our tactical nuclear weapons.

Our second major problem here is that Pakistan’s people and culture are almost totally infected by Islamist Jihadist hatred of us, unlike Iraq and Iran. We liberated Iraq from tyranny, while the Iranian people loathe their Shiite Islamist tyranny. Pakistan is larger than Iraq and Iran combined, and far beyond our ability to subdue, let alone occupy. Our destruction of the Pakistani state would create a vast, hideously dangerous, and totally unrestrained failed state base for overt terrorism against us. The single thing they wouldn’t be able to use against us after we leave are nuclear weapons, which only an organized government can (so far) manufacture.

The only way to keep Pakistan from subsequently becoming a far more dangerous terrorist base than Afghanistan ever was would require the physical destruction of its people with strategic nuclear weapons. We won’t have the will do so…until we are again hit at home with more biological weapons, or with nukes.

Our world is now on the verge of Richard “Wretchard” Fernandez’s “Three Conjectures.”

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Lord Wolseley was the most distinguished British soldier of the Victorian era. My favorite book from last year was his two volume memoir. A third volume, full of further astonishing adventures was unfortunately never written. (I do wonder if there are any surviving notes or drafts, though? HIs papers are apparently housed at Hove, near Brighton. I wonder if you just asked around on the street in Hove if someone would direct you.)

Lord Wolseley gave an interview which led to this article in the Review of Reviews for September, 1890.

As I mentioned previously, his resume beggars belief:

1852. Second Burmese War—Ensign.
1854. Siege of Sebastopol—Lieut., Captain.
1857. Ordered to China. Wrecked near Singapore.
1857. India. Suppression of Mutiny—Lieut.-Col., V.C.
1860. Chinese War. Mission to Nankin.
1861. Canada. First Assistant, then Deputy, Quartermaster General.
1870. Red River Expedition—K.C.M.G.
1871. Assistant-Adjutant-General at War Office.
1873-4. Ashantee War—Major-General, K.C.B.
1874. Inspector-General Auxiliary Forces.
1875. Governor of Natal.
1878. Governor of Cyprus.
1879. Zulu War—Commander-in-Chief and High Commissioner, South Africa.
1882. Egyptian Campaign. Tel-el-Kebir. Peerage.
1884. The War in the Soudan.
1885. Adjutant-General at War Office.

The article fails to mention him sneaking into the South during the Civil War and meeting Robert E. Lee. It also cannot have known that he would be promoted to Field Marshall in 1894, and that he would finally ascend to the very top, being named Commander in Chief of the Forces, in 1895.

What is remarkable in the interview is the continuity of the Anglospheric defense considerations across twelve decades.

The English-speaking global hegemon, whether it wears a Red coat, a Khaki tunic, or Camo fatigues, is worried about the same things, once the Germans and the Russians are out of the way: troublesome Muslim “fanatics” and the prospect of a Chinese Leviathan taking over the East and challenging the Anglosphere for Dominion of the World.

About “fanaticism” he had this to say:

Speaking of the fighting value of fanaticism, Lord Wolseley said that in the Mutiny he had fought hand-tohand with fanatics, who are of all people the most dangerous to fight with. Fanatics, meaning men who are nerved up by religious enthusiasm to such a pitch that they have lost all care for their own lives, and who go straight for you, are the most formidable foes in the world. Twenty thousand fanatics such as those whom the Mahdi hurled against the English troops in the Soudan were far more to be dreaded than three times that number of French or German troops. No Continental troops would have ever faced the fire which almost failed to check the onward rush of the Mahdists. “Give me,” said Lord Wolseley, “20,000 fanatics, and I am not by any means sure that I could not take them through the Continent, regardless of any numbers that might be put upon the field against them. It is the same with English gentlemen. Give me 20,000 English gentlemen, and I will march them to the other end of Europe and back again.” “Of course,” he said, laughing, “this is nonsense, if you take it too literally; but you have no conception of the terror which 20,000 resolute men, who always go forward and never turn back, would have in the hearts of armies many times their number. The sentiment of honour in an English gentleman is as good a fighting force as religious fanaticism. There is a great deal of hollowness about modern armies. The real soul of the army consists of comparatively few.”

(Emphasis added) Note that fighting Muslim fanatics is a challenge, and a difficulty, but not insurmountable. Further, Wolseley sees the fanaticism of the Mahdist, or what we would now call a Jihadi, as being matched by the moral character of his own troops. The distinction he makes with European armies, which is not expressly stated, is between the English who are all volunteers and the Continental armies composed of draftees. I suspect he would see the American All Volunteer Force as having a similar sentiment of “honour” though in the American variant the word chosen may be professionalism.

He had this to say about the rise of China, where he had served in 1860.

“The Chinese,” he said, “are the coming nation. The Chinese will, I think, overrun the world. The Battle of Armageddon will take place between the Chinese and the English-speaking races. There will be, I assume, another war between France and Germany, and it will be about the bloodiest war or series of wars which we have seen in Europe. But, some day, a great General, or Lawgiver, will arise in China, and the Chinese, who have been motionless for three centuries, will begin to progress. They will take to the profession of arms, and then they will hurl themselves upon the Russian Empire. Before the Chinese armies—as they possess every military virtue, are stolidly indifferent to death, and capable of inexhaustible endurance—the Russians will go down. Then the Chinese armies will march westward. They will overrun India, sweeping us into the sea. Asia will belong to them, and then, at last, English, Americans, Australians, will have to rally for a last desperate conflict. So certain do I regard, this that I think one fixed point of our policy should be to strain every nerve and make every sacrifice to keep on good terms with China. China is the Coming Power. These people—intelligent, active, ingenious; so industrious that at twelve o’clock at night you can hear the hammer of the smith in the forge—have for the last 300 years been ruled by the simple method of having all the more active, capable, and progressive heads shorn off by their Tartar rulers; that is a simple, literal fact. … But these rude Tartars will not always be able to control the nation. Another Moses might change it, or a Mohammed, or a Napoleon.

He was right about another round of war between France and Germany, but seems not to have foreseen that Britain would participate in it. The notion of a Pan-Anglospheric alliance against China is not completely alien to current thinking. However, Wolseley seems to want to avoid conflict and remain on good terms with China, whose ascent he seems to see as inevitable.

His assessment of the United States is worth noting:

In America you have a pure democracy, and a pure democracy is capable of doing much more in the direction of strong measures and of war than a mixed system such as ours. When democracy is thoroughly established in England the chief security against war will have disappeared. It is democracies that make wars, oligarchies that are afraid of them, especially an oligarchy like ours, which is timid and hampered by the party system. Our system, by dividing the nation into two halves, each of which opposes on principle what the other one proposes, paralyses our strength when a Minister is tempted to go to war. If our people were as unanimous in cases of affront as the United States we should go to war many times oftener than we do. In America, questions of foreign policy, involving the maintenance of the honour of the flag or the rights of American citizens, are outside the area of party dispute. The whole nation acts as one man. Hence, Russia, Germany, and France habitually show the United States a deference which they never show England.

So much for the idea of a Democratic Peace. His observation that affronts to America’s national dignity cause the whole country to “act as one man” seem to have been borne out on several occasions, including the responses to Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

He also correctly foresaw the Anglo-American alliance that would shape the 20th Century:

He ridiculed the idea that America would be an enemy of ours, and asserted, with a tone of deep conviction, that if ever the old country were, in a time of difficulty, to appeal to our American kinsfolk and to cry across the Atlantic for help, the American nation would respond enthusiastically. The only weakness, said he, is the Irish element in the States.

He was almost right. The Irish were one element, as well as a large, indigenous isolationist and pacifist element, and the presence of many Germans. But, eventually, the USA got into both world wars on Britain’s side.

The fact that the Americans used these opportunities to displace and dismantle British power while we were at it would have come as no surprise to him.

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[cross-posted from Zenpundit ]
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Glenn Beck has a new documentary coming out tonight on Mahdism and the Antichrist.

He calls it “the documentary that you will not see on mainstream television” and to get to see it, you have to be a subscriber to Beck’s Insider Extreme channel on the web. But then that fits with Beck’s emphasis right now — he doesn’t mind crying shame on the media for not carrying the documentary, but he doesn’t want unbelievers to see it either — he told his radio audience today:

Make sure you see it tonight at nine o’clock. And if I may recommend that you watch it with some friends. Invite some friends over, some like-minded people, don’t try to get any converts in. Pull up the nets, man, pull up the nets.

So okay — it won’t be on “mainstream television” but it will be seen in a million “like-minded” homes, and it will influence them, it will influence their perspective on Islam, and on the Middle East.

Here’s a description of what they can expect, drawn from Joel Rosenberg‘s blog today. Joel is the author of the apocalyptic thriller The Twelfth Imam, has seen the rough cut and will be appearing on the video, along with those he lists here:

Tonight on his website, Glenn Beck will premiere his new documentary film, “Rumors of War — Part Two.” As with Part One, I was interviewed for the film…

The documentary examines current events and trends in the Middle East and the Islamic world from various vantage points — Biblical End Times theology, Jewish End Times theology, and Islamic End Times theology. It discusses the latest threats from the Radical Islamic world to Israel, the West and our allies. It features a wide range of Jewish, Muslim and evangelical Christian authors and commentators in a balanced yet provocative and fascinating way. Among them:

• Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the U.N.
• Reza Kahlili, former CIA agent inside Iran and author of A Time To Betray
• Tim LaHaye, author of the Left Behind novel series
• Brigitte Gabriel, author of They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It
• Joel Richardson, author of The Islamic Antichrist
• Dr. Zudi Jasser, president of American Islamic Forum for Democracy

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The thing is, Beck doesn’t know a whole lot about these things, and his advisers get things wrong — sometimes flat out wrong, sometimes just out of proportion — too.

I aim to review Beck’s documentary along with its predecessor, and the books of Joel Richardson and Joel Rosenberg, and also take a look at some other books and articles that cover the same materials with greater scholarship and less religious special interest — notably the works of David Cook, J-P Filiu and Timothy Furnish — clear up some of this issues in which definitive corrections are in order, suggest areas where the preponderance of evidence and informed commentary leans away from Beck’s position, and raise again those urgent questions which remain.

Because from where I sit, Glenn Beck has hit on one of our blind spots — and is giving us a dangerously distorted mirror in which to view it.

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Here’s Beck talking about the upcoming documentary this morning on his radio show:

Tonight, you don’t want to miss, on Insider Extreme, something that we have been trying to tell the story for quite some time, and I have told it to you many times before, the story of the Twelfth Imam, well this is not the full story of the Twelfth Imam, this is what people Middle East believe about the Twelfth Imam, or the Mahdi as the… Sunnis? Sunnis are in Egypt, Shias are in, ah, is it Shias in Iran or is it the other way around? I think it’s S.. Shias are in Iran. One believes in the Twelfth Imam, the others believe in the Mahdi, same guy, it is the… the… you would know it as the Antichrist. It is the, it has every earmarking of the Antichrist, every single one, I mean, he makes a peace for seven years with Egypt, he viol… — I mean with Israel, he violates it, he marks people with a number, he beheads people if they don’t submit, I mean it’s all there. It’s all there. And Ahmadinejad says that he is alive and well and orchestrating the things in the Middle East.

Did you get that? He’s not sure: “is it Shias in Iran or is it the other way around?”

If Beck has been working on this documentary for a year now, let’s hope he does in fact know the difference between Sunni and Shi’a, and that he’s using the popular gag technique of pretending not to know, so his audience — who haven’t all been working on a documentary and may well not know — can feel all the more strongly “he’s one of us”. And besides, Sunni, Shia, it’s all the same, Mahdi, Twelfth Imam, no difference at all, right?

So that’s the level of required accuracy that’s tolerated here. Which side was it wanted to keep slavery? I forget now, I think it may have been the South. Belfast — now is that Catholic, or Protestant?

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And one last quick note from the same post on Joel Rosenberg’s blog:

As far as I can tell, Glenn Beck is leaving the Fox News Channel in part because Fox is opposed to him devoting so much time on his program to End Times issues, Bible prophecy, Iran’s eschatology, and the linkage of these things to left wing efforts to sow seeds of revolution and chaos. It’s too bad, really.

That’s an interesting data point.

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There will be plenty to talk about, anyway:

the new documentary, Joel Rosenberg’s thriller, which I enjoyed, Joel Richardson, with whom I correspond and whom I like, the new Mahdist video in Iran which is causing quite a stir, and may or may not be an “official” Iranian production, the vexed question — vexed in all three Abrahamic faiths — of whether you can hasten the coming of the Awaited One and if so, how, and the implications of all this both in the United States and in the Middle East, the Iranian nuclear program…

The Glenn Beck, Mahdism & Antichrist blog series, coming up.