Time for Christians to Start Re-Populating

Picture Of The Day

The Shortcomings Of Democracy

Today we're constantly told that democracy is the best form of government. Our founding fathers would not necessarily have agreed with this. Benjamin Franklin reportedly once said, "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch." The fact is that America was not designed to be a democracy but a Democratic Republic. In a democracy the majority rules. In a democratic republic the leaders may change but the underlying principles will always stay the same.

There is an interesting article I ran across this morning about democracies and it's drawbacks. The proposed solutions I would generally disagree with as they generally favor only those with money and neglect everyone else. However, it makes some very good points and opens up some interesting lines of thought and discussion. Another interesting article that's not specifically about democracy but covers the state of governments in Europe and the influx of Mohammedans that is changing their political landscape can be found at the Brussels Journal.

End The Secularism

Dinesh D'Souza has all the latest here.

Muslem Cabbie Runs Over Students

Some use airplanes, some use guns, and some use taxi cabs!
WSMV is reporting:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A local cab driver allegedly tried to run over two customers after a fight over religion became heated.

The incident happened early Sunday morning on the Vanderbilt campus and left one man hospitalized and a cab driver arrested, said police

Two students visiting from Ohio were coming from a bar downtown when they got into an argument with their driver over religion, said police. After they paid the driver he allegedly ran them down in a parking lot.

Ibrihim Ahmned, of United Cab, was arrested and charged with assault, attempted homicide and theft. One of the passengers, Andrew Nelson, managed to outrun the cab but Jeremy Invus was taken to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center with serious injuries, said police.

Ahmed has been convicted of misdemeanors including evading arrest in a motor vehicle and driving on a suspended license, said police.

Ahmed was charged with theft because police said the license plate on his cab was listed as stolen. His bond is set at $300,000.

What this article fails to mention however is that the cabbie is a Sunni Muslim from Somalia. Think there's a reason the drive-by media isn't mentioning this? Jihad Watch has more.

The Truth About Tolerance

The Truth about Tolerance
How Our Therapeutic Thinkers Threaten Western Values.
by Bruce Thornton


Acceptance of a double standard has always been a sign of inferiority. To let someone behave according to one set of principles or values while demanding that you be subjected to others is to validate a claim of superiority that justifies the inconsistent and unfair behavior. A double standard can also reflect incoherent thinking, a failure to apply consistently a principle that presumably has universal validity. In the West’s struggle with Islamic jihad, doubts about the superiority of Western values have coupled with a breakdown in ethical reasoning. The result is the appeasement of jihadist aggression and the confirmation of the jihadist estimation of the West’s corruption.

That’s why many Muslims demand from Westerners a hypersensitivity to Islam, all the while that Christians and Jews in Muslim countries are subjected to harassment, assault, and the looniest kinds of slander and insult. In the West, respect for Muslim ways such as the veil for women is supposed to be granted as a self-evident right beyond argument or debate. Yet Western ideals and values, such as the equality of the sexes, are derided, disrespected, and rejected as self-evident evils. The worst inconsistencies, however, involve the violation of core Western ideals, most importantly free speech. Many Muslims demand the right to deny the Holocaust, recycle Nazi-era anti-Semitic drivel, characterize Christianity as polytheistic idolatry, and excoriate a decadent, corrupt Western civilization. But no such criticism of Mohammed or Islam is tolerated, but it is, in fact, met with violence and threats.

The past few years have seen numerous examples, from the riots over the extremely mild political cartoons featuring Mohammed, to the uproar over the Pope’s quotation of a Byzantine emperor. The exercise of free speech in all these cases is met with rage, violence, and hysterical demands of “respect” for Islam, but there is no reciprocal respect for Western values. And for the most part, we in the West go along with this double standard, and thus accept the logic of the jihadist position: we are weak and unsure of our beliefs. Our craven behavior is a sign of our inferior status and our justified subjection to those who passionately believe in the rightness of their faith.

Let’s be clear on the roots of this cowardly response — the West has lost its faith. We have created John Lennon’s juvenile utopia in which there is “nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.” Shorn of transcendent validation, now all our beliefs are contingent and negotiable, easily traded away for security or comfort. At the same time, the therapeutic mentality bestows on the non-Western “other” a finely calibrated sensitivity to his culture, no matter how dysfunctional, all the while the West refuses to extend such consideration to its own. Why would it? Haven’t generations of Western intellectuals and artists told the world how corrupt and evil the West is? Having culturally internalized this self-loathing, we are vulnerable to those who are filled with passionate intensity about the rightness of their beliefs and the payback due to us for our various historical sins such as colonialism or imperialism or globalization. And then we wonder why the jihadist considers us ripe for conquest, and destined to be subjected to the superior values of Islam.

Consider the following cautionary tale, from San Francisco State. Last October the College Republicans held an anti-terrorism rally during which posters painted to look like the flags of the terrorist gangs Hamas and Hezbollah were walked on. Since those flags have the name of Allah in Arabic, a complaint was filed in which the College Republicans were accused of “incitement,” “creation of a hostile environment,” and “incivility.” The complaint is now headed for trial before one of those campus star chambers created to monitor and police student behavior.

You don’t have to be a Constitutional scholar to see that this investigation is a gross violation of the students’ First Amendment right to free speech. This sort of institutional intervention creates what the ACLU­­ — which never seems to make a peep about this sort of “progressive” censorship — likes to call a “chilling effect.” The Vice President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Robert Shilbey, has pointed out the obvious: “At a public university, stepping on a flag — even burning an American flag — is without question a constitutionally protected act of political protest. The right to protest is at the very heart of the First Amendment, and means nothing if only inoffensive expression is permitted.”

Here’s where the double standards and incoherence of much politically correct behavior comes in. On any college campus in this country, every day, inside of class and out, you can encounter speech that is “insensitive,” “uncivil,” or “hostile.” But of course, this speech is directed towards Christians, or “conservatives,” or Israel, or Republicans, or “straight white males.” Nobody attempts to censor this speech or haul people before tribunals to answer vague charges such as “incivility,” which will be defined according to the subjective standards of the complainants. And if someone does complain, the faculty and administration will immediately go into high dudgeon mode and start preaching the glories of unfettered free speech no matter how offensive. In other words, free speech for me but not for thee.

But the ill effects of this hypocrisy are nothing compared to the damage done when the institution caters to the unreasonable demands of those Muslims who, convinced of their spiritual superiority and righteousness, are active enemies of the West and think they are justified in imposing their standards on everybody else, even if those standards violate a core political value such as free speech. And when the appeasement comes from the university, which supposedly exists in order to foster what Matthew Arnold called “the free play of the mind on all subjects,” the message is quite clear: we don’t really believe in all these goods we profess and benefit from, but we will abandon them a

Sleeper Cells In The US & Canada

Sleeper Cells in the United States and Canada
By Dave Gaubatz
February 02, 2007

There is every reason to suspect that we will endure suicide missions by Islamist sleeper cells. They are already in place. They are waiting for the right time. I know this from experience.

I have worked over 15 years as a U.S. Federal Agent, a U.S. State Department Arabic linguist, and the first civilian Federal Agent deployed into Iraq at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Since returning from Iraq I have been involved in terrorism analysis, specifically the mindset of terrorists. During my extensive research on sleeper cells I have talked with hundreds of people from the Middle East from all walks of life, and have talked with Iraqi Government officials, Iraqi military, and Iraqi police officers. In addition I have interviewed numerous counter-terrorism specialists in the U.S. and abroad. In the last year alone I have trained over 4000 U.S. Law Enforcement officers in Basic Investigative Arabic and counter-terrorism. The conclusion of my research is the title of this article.

Before I departed for the Middle East in 2003 I had been assigned to Kirtland AFB, NM. Kirtland has some of the best scientists in the world working on U.S. Government projects. I had been working closely with these scientists who specialized in nuclear energy, directed energy, laser technology, bio-weapons and more. I fully understand the impact if suicide bombers begin progressing from conventional explosives to unconventional methods.

The Middle East

In Jan 2003, I was assigned to Arar Air Base Saudi Arabia. Arar is located near the border of Iraq. My mission was to interact with Saudi military officials in order to determine the support we could expect from the Saudi government, to determine if Iraqis were monitoring the activities of the U.S. forces at Arar, and to infiltrate the encampments of the Bedouin community (Saudis and Iraqis living in the desert of Arar). This involved leaving the relatively safe confines of Arar Air Base and driving to the Bedouin camps.

It was most important the Saudis did not know we were leaving the compound because they had forbidden us to do so. Four U.S. special Agents would use our ATV's and/or four wheel drive vehicles to conduct these missions. The Saudi Government had active spies collecting information pertaining to our troop strength, our weapons, and any other intelligence they could obtain. The Saudis were providing the intelligence to the Saudi Government, and we were very confident it was also being passed to Iraqi intelligence.

During January 2003 and Feb 2003, Saudi Intelligence officers would boast that the American military was overreacting about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Their bravery changed as we approached the invasion of Iraq in Mar 2003. The high-ranking Saudi officers were scrambling to obtain gas masks and other protective equipment. They knew their equipment was substandard and they wanted U.S.-made protective equipment. We gave them some of ours. The Saudi Intelligence officers were visibly frightened about a potential chemical, biological, or nuclear attack and expressed their fears. This was my first confirmation Saddam Hussein still had WMD material and the capability to use them.

The Saudis knew Saddam had WMD and would use them if he had the opportunity.

When I arrived in Nasiriyah, Iraq (after the start of war) my team and I immediately began interviewing (in the field) Iraqis from all walks of life to determine where the WMD sites were located. At the beginning of the war Iraqis were very helpful and provided us exact locations and proof WMD was at certain locations (primarily southern Iraq because Saddam knew the UN Weapons Inspectors had seldom inspected any locations in this area). They had always focused in northern Iraq.

Four primary suspected WMD sites were located. We tried from April until July 2003 to have the Iraq Survey Group come and excavate these sites. They advised us they did not have the manpower nor the heavy equipment needed to excavate the sites, which were underground bunkers (beneath waterways). We were frustrated. I have received information from various sources that the WMD I had attempted to have excavated was subsequently looted (after the war) and transferred to Syria.

While in Iraq we determined the following:

1. Russian activity in Iraq had been rampant several months prior to the war and up until the day before the invasion.


2. Iranians were infiltrating southern Iraq by the thousands and were preparing to assistinsurgents in removing U.S. forces from Iraq.


3. We found numerous pieces of evidence indicating WMD were in Iraq before the war began and some were still in Iraq.


4. I and other agents were informed by Iraqis that a civil war would erupt and violence against U.S. forces would increase due to the Iranian and Russian influence.

All of this information was provided through intelligence channels, but was ignored. Today we are seeing the results of our intelligence being ignored in 2003.

Vulnerability at home

Upon returning from Iraq I left Federal Service to pursue a career educating U.S. law enforcement in the U.S. I wrote a book titled "Arabic for law enforcement and military". During my lectures to local, county, and state law enforcement officers it was revealed the true first line defenders in the U.S. are not trained nor prepared to combat terrorism in the U.S. (through no fault of their own). The local law enforcement agencies were not receiving adequate funds or assistance from the Federal Government to fight terrorism. The majority advised they were supposed to be the first line defenders, but in actuality they did not even know what Al-Qaeda meant, and/or could not point out Iraq or Iran on a map. They had no Arabic language training.

I began conducting research and talking with experts from various fields and determined three significant facts that I corroborated by further research:

1. The terrorists groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and Al-Qaeda each had different leaders and to some degree operated in different ways, but they each had the same two goals (destroy Israel and destroy America and any country that supported either)


2. Our nuclear research centers were very vulnerable to an attack and the potential for a suicide bomber using a dirty radiological bomb from these facilities was and is a high probability. Note: Vic Walter and Brian Ross of ABC News did an excellent report on the lack of security at these facilities. I received an enormous amount of information from individuals associated with Russian nuclear programs that there is nuclear material being sold on the black market and nuclear material is in the hands of Islamic Extremists.


3. Terrorist sleeper cells are located primarily in North Carolina, Michigan, and Canada. The "sleepers" are prepared to conduct terrorist attacks within the U.S., and nuclear material is available to them. "Prepared" in this instance indicates they have the necessary tools to carry our their attacks and are prepared to die.

About nine months ago a lady from Morehead City, NC contacted me and asked for assistance because she had been ignored by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), the FBI, and local law enforcement. Her allegation: A group of people who were citizens of Lebanon was operating from NC and was involved in financially supporting Hezbollah. The members were also befriending United States Marine Corps personnel (to include the Marine Corps Base Commander at Cherry Point USMC Base). The Lebanese citizens had free access to the Marine Corps base and had frequent parties with USMC members. She had ledgers; photographs of U.S. Marines with the Lebanese members, numerous passports (some falsified), duplicate drivers licenses, social security cards, and financial transactions log books both in Arabic and English. I obtained the information from her and conducted research. I turned my information over to the NCSBI office.

Less than a week ago I met several citizens from the Middle East who are familiar with terrorist groups, their methodology, and more importantly the mindset of terrorists (specifically Al-Qaeda). They believe violence in Iraq will increase and the number of U.S. troops in Iraq is not a factor. The largest percentage of U.S. troops in Iraq are support troops and not combat troops. From the beginning of 2003 until now the number of troops who actually engage insurgents is actually less than 5% of all assigned troops in the region. Al-Qaeda now has a strong hold in Iraq and they will not let go. Terrorist operations are active in the U.S. and are being operated/financed in Michigan. U.S. citizens need to understand there are people trained and prepared to carry our suicide missions in the U.S. and nothing is off limits. Churches, malls, and even the schools our children attend are not off limits to suicide bombers. It is only a relatively short time before the U.S. will begin seeing suicide terrorist missions.

I will continue to research terrorism related issues in the U.S. and Canada and will bring forward the results. My next project is to follow Dr. Paul William's investigation into McMaster University located in Canada. My initial research indicates terrorists are being educated here with the approval of some university administrators. I have contacted the university and informed them of this project and will give them an opportunity to respond to each piece developed during my research on terrorism at McMaster. McMaster is not alone when it comes to nuclear reactors located on major university sites. Nuclear reactors are located on a large number of major university campuses in the U.S. There locations are not classified and are described on the internet.

Children are the ones who suffer in wartime and I want to prevent any child from ever having to experience a terrorist attack.

The Enemy At Home

Dinesh D'Souza's has a great article about the war on terror and the enemy in our own backyard. Read the entire article here, and check out this and this. The following is a great excerpt.

If you assume that the activist left wants to prevent the Islamic radicals, who already control Iran, from winning their second major victory in Iraq, then its rhetoric is baffling. If you presume the left-wing activist groups are working hard for the war on terror to succeed, their policies become incomprehensible. On the other hand if you assume they want Bush to fail in Iraq, they don't care if Iraq falls into insurgent hands, and they're generally on the side of Bin Laden and his allies, then their statements and actions make perfect sense.

But in a deeper way, the behavior of the left and its political allies is a mystery. After all, the Islamic radicals are the most illiberal forces in the world. Leftists know how the Bin Laden and Khomeini types feel about Hillary Clinton and Barney Frank. So why doesn't the left want to fight the broadest and most aggressive campaign possible against these sworn enemies of liberal values?

Here is the reason. If America's war on terror succeeds, the result is a big win for Bush and his conservative allies. Recall the left's seething hatred for Bush, a man whom historian Sean Wilentz terms "the very worst president in all of American history." Ted Kennedy says, "No president in America's history has done more damage to our country than George W. Bush." They left doesn't like Bin Laden, but it has a pathological hatred for Bush

From the left's point of view, Bin Laden wants sharia in Baghdad but Bush wants sharia in Boston. It is Bush, not Bin Laden, who threatens liberal values at home. The left blames Bush and his religious conservative allies for blocking the campaign for homosexual marriage. One more Bush court appointment and the abortion right secured in Roe v. Wade might be in jeopardy.

The left, once the party of unions and the working man, is today the party of sex and "gender issues." So the left regards Bush as a greater threat than Bin Laden to its social values, and in some ways it is right to feel that way. Bush, the near enemy, is more dangerous to the left than Bin Laden, the far enemy.

But is the left willing to risk an American debacle in Iraq and in the war on terror in order to rout its enemy at home? Does the left actually want "another Vietnam"?

Dinesh D'Souza is the author of The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, just published by Doubleday. D'Souza is the Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Website: dineshdsouza.com. Email: dineshjdsouza@aol.com.

Dispatch: The Undercover Mosque

Little Green Footballs and Bare Knuckle Politics report on the United Kingdom Channel 4 documentary Dispatches: Undercover Mosque, which shows how blatant the radical tendencies of Islam towards terror are. The videos are quite reveling and eye opening.

In other news, Wizbang has a great article on the horrors of growing up Muslim.

An Iranian Impeachment?

Wizbang is reporting that members of the Iranian parliament are calling for the impeachment of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Hopefully the 72 signatures needed for an impeachment summons can be had.

What a Contest!

Thanks to the Infidel Bloggers Alliance for this photo and contest.
The Los Angeles Billboard Project is here.
Do you know about this? Pretty disturbing. A Muslem states his case. The religion of peace is here.
A great picture.

Interesting Interview with Robert Spencer

I just ran across this interview with Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch, on the Catholic Report. It's a very interesting read. I was unaware that he is a practicing Melkite Catholic so it gave a different perspective of his views than my previous notions of him.

Want a scary story about how whacked out Iran's president is? Check out this one from several months back.

Thought for the Day

The so-called “War on Terror” is a misnomer. Terror is a tactic, not an enemy. We are at war with those who utilize this tactic against us, our interests, and our allies.

Negotiation is by definition the art of compromise. The finding of a middle ground which can be mutually acceptable. Diplomacy is only possible where both sides are capable of compromise. When one party to a negotiation has an immutable agenda and the willingness to die in the pursuit of its fulfillment, there is nothing to be gained by negotiation as there is no possibility of mitigating their position. There is no mutually beneficial or mutually acceptable common ground. To believe otherwise is little more than politically correct pie-in-the-sky pipe dreaming.

Jimmy Carter the Jew-Hater

Jimmy Carter: Jew-Hater, Genocide-Enabler, Liar
By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 14, 2006

Jimmy Carter was certainly the worst President in American history. It was no particular feat that he went on to become the worst ex-President as well. But now he has sunk to a new and abominable low.

Even as Islamic Hitlerites gather in Iran to deny the first Holocaust of the Jews and to plot the second, former president Jimmy Carter tours America with a new book that describes Jews as racists and oppressors, and suggests they are also a conspiratorial mafia that intimidates “critics,” controls America’s media and war policy, and are therefore also the source of Islamic terrorism and the Arabs’ genocidal campaign to eliminate them from the map of the Middle East.

In other words, Americans beware of the Jew in your midst.

Here is Carter’s description of the Middle East conflict in his own words, delivered during an interview he gave on National Public Radio during the second day of the Holocaust deniers’ conference in Teheran:

“I have spent a lot of time in Palestine in recent years. … The Palestinians have had their own land, first of all, occupied and then confiscated and then colonized. They’ve been excluded from their own gardens and fields, and pastures and churches. They have been severely restrained in their movements. They have to have different kinds of passes to go through different checkpoints inside their own lands on their own roads. The Israelis have built more than 200 settlements inside Palestine.They connect these settlements with very nice roads for the Israeli settlers, and then superhighways and so forth going into Jerusalem. Quite often the Palestinians are prevented from even riding on those roads that have been built in their own territory. So this has been in many ways worse than it was in South Africa.”

When hundreds of millions of Muslims are calling for the extermination of the Jews of Israel this is more than a lie; it is a blood libel.

It is a lie that Palestinians “had their own land, first of all, occupied.” This is like saying that Texans had their own land occupied by Hispanics, ignoring the fact that Hispanics were there first. The very word Palestine is a Roman appellation for the people called Philistines, who were not Arabs but red-haired sailors from the Aegean. The Jews were there as well.

In short, first of all the Jews were in the land before the Arabs.

Second of all, the Arabs who inhabited the Palestine Mandate in 1948, at the time of the creation the state of Israel, considered themselves Syrians.

Third, the Palestine Mandate was not created on land taken from the Syrians or the Arabs. It was taken from the Turks.

It was not taken from the Turks by the Jews, but by the British and the French. They took it because Turkey sided with Germany in the First World War and, of course, lost. The Turkish empire had ruled the entire region including Syrian, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan for four hundred years before Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan were artificially created by the English and the French. Jordan – a state whose majority is Palestinian – occupies 80% of the Palestine Mandate.

So it is a preposterous lie to say that the Palestinians had their own land and that it was occupied by the Jews.

Fourth, the individual plots of land that Jews now own were in the first instance bought from the Arabs who regarded themselves as Syrians and who lived in the area of Israel. The only property that was confiscated was confiscated as a spoil of the aggressive war that five Arab states waged against Israel from the day of its birth. Five Arab armies invaded Israel, a sovereign state, with the declared intent of “pushing the Jews into the sea.” The cry today of the Muslim majority in the Middle East is to “liberate Palestine from the river to the sea.” In other words push the Jews into the sea.

By the standards of occupation and legitimacy Jimmy Carter invokes, Israel has more legitimacy as a Jewish state than Texas does as an American state, rather than a Mexican province.

The fifth Jimmy Carter lie in this lone Jimmy Carter sentence is the claim that the Jews have colonized anything. “The Israelis have built more than 200 settlements inside Palestine.”

Why is it wrong of the Jews to live in the West Bank? (The 7000 Jews of Gaza, of course, have already been expunged as result of the Arabs’ genocidal hate.) Why can’t Jews have settlements in the West Bank?

The answer is because the Palestinians Arabs are filled with a racist and theocratic hate towards the Jews. They can’t tolerate a non-Muslim, non-Arab people --however small a minority -- living in their midst. (The 7000 Jews of Gaza – out of a population of 1.2 million – were law-abiding and peaceful and created a horticultural industry that produced ten percent of Gaza’s gross national product. But they were Jews. And that was intolerable to Palestine’s Nazis. So they had to be removed.)

Contrast Carter’s attack on Jews living in the West bank as “colonizers” who must be expelled with the fact that more than a million Arabs live in Israel, where Israel provides them with more rights – including the right to vote and elect Arab members of Israel’s government – than any Arab who lives in any Arab state in the Middle East.

There is indeed a wall now between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. But it is not a wall to keep Arabs out of Israel because they are Arab, as Carter maliciously maintains. There are more than a million Arabs living in Israel. There are indeed checkpoints in the West Bank and into Israel and obstacles to Palestinians crossing them. But this is not because the Israelis discriminate against Palestinians because they are Muslims or Arabs.

It is because too many Palestinians have shown themselves to be bloodthirsty, murderers who have been indoctrinated by their religious leaders and their government to believe in a sick Islamic fantasy that it is their Muslim duty to kill Jews by blowing themselves up; and that, if they do so, they will go to heaven along with 70 members of their family; and, that, if they are lucky enough to be male they will be rewarded by 72 virgins on the other side.

On this side they will be regarded as martyrs and saints and honored by their government. Sixty-percent of Palestinians support suicide bombing and this sick, genocidal agenda – which is shared by all members of the Palestinians’ democratically elected government – to kill the Jews.

To ignore these facts and to invert them, as Jimmy Carter does, is to mark yourself as a moral defective.

To take on as a mission the spreading of lies that enable Islamic Nazis to carry out their final solution is the epitome of the evil that America’s fifth column left and its reprehensible ex-President represent in our time.

Islam as Heresy & the Endless Jihad

Two excellent articles on Islam, the enduring heresy from a Catholic perspective, can be found here, and the endless jihad from a muslem worldview, here.
Thanks to Catholic Answers for these great articles.

Iran Students Heckle Ahmadinejad

Breitbart news reports that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was heckled by a group of students during a speech at a Tehran university recently.

If the US could somehow tap into these disgruntled groups of students or others and support them, it would be a significant help in undermining the radical Islamic ideas set forth by Ahmadinejad.

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit lists all the latest and Hotair has the video via fox.

Islam Gets Concessions; Infidels Get Conquered

By Raymond Ibrahim
December 5, 2006

IN THE DAYS before Pope Benedict XVI's visit last Thursday to the Hagia Sophia complex in Istanbul, Muslims and Turks expressed fear, apprehension and rage. "The risk," according to Turkey's independent newspaper Vatan, "is that Benedict will send Turkey's Muslims and much of the Islamic world into paroxysms of fury if there is any perception that the pope is trying to re-appropriate a Christian center that fell to Muslims." Apparently making the sign of the cross or any other gesture of Christian worship in Hagia Sophia constitutes such a sacrilege.

Built in the 6th century, Hagia Sophia — Greek for "Holy Wisdom" — was Christendom's greatest and most celebrated church. After parrying centuries of jihadi thrusts from Arabs, Constantinople — now Istanbul — was finally sacked by Turks in 1453, and Hagia Sophia's crosses were desecrated, its icons defaced. Along with thousands of other churches in the Byzantine Empire, it was immediately converted into a mosque, the tall minarets of Islam surrounding it in triumph. Nearly 500 years later, in 1935, as part of reformer Kemal Ataturk's drive to modernize Turkey, Hagia Sophia was secularized and transformed into a museum.

Protests aimed at keeping the pope out of Hagia Sophia rocked Istanbul right up to the morning of his visit to the site. Contrast that intolerance with the tolerance granted Muslims in regard to the Al Aqsa mosque — this time, an Islamic site in Jerusalem annexed by Judaism. Unlike the permanent Muslim desecration of Hagia Sophia, after Israel's victory in the 1967 war, the Jews did not deface or convert the mosque into a Jewish synagogue or temple, even though the Al Aqsa mosque is deliberately built atop the remains of the Temple Mount, the holiest site of Judaism and, by extension, an important site for Christians. Moreover, since reclaiming the Temple Mount, Israel has granted Muslims control over the Al Aqsa mosque (except during times of crises).

All this illustrates the privileged status that many Muslims expect in the international arena. When Muslims conquer non-Muslim territories — such as Constantinople, not to mention all of North Africa, Spain and southwest Asia — those whom they have conquered as well as their descendants are not to expect any apologies, let alone political or territorial concessions.

Herein lies the conundrum. When Islamists wage jihad — past, present and future — conquering and consolidating non-Muslim territories and centers in the name of Islam, never once considering to cede them back to their previous owners, they ultimately demonstrate that they live by the age-old adage "might makes right." That's fine; many people agree with this Hobbesian view.

But if we live in a world where the strong rule and the weak submit, why is it that whenever Muslim regions are conquered, such as in the case of Palestine, the same Islamists who would never concede one inch of Islam's conquests resort to the United Nations and the court of public opinion, demanding justice, restitutions, rights and so forth?

Put another way, when Muslims beat infidels, it's just too bad for the latter; they must submit to their new overlords' rules with all the attendant discrimination and humiliation mandated for non-Muslims. Yet when Islam is beaten, demands for apologies and concessions are expected from the infidel world at large.

Double standards do not make for international justice. Either territorial conquests are always unjust and should therefore be ameliorated through concessions, or else they are merely a manifestation of the natural order of things — that is, survival of the fittest.

If some Muslims wish to wage eternal jihad until Islam dominates the globe, they are only being true to Islam and its doctrines as they understand it. However, in that case, where the world is divided into two warring camps, Islam and Infidelity — or, in Islamic terms, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War — how can these Muslims expect any concessions from the international community? The natural conclusion of the view that "might makes right" is "to the victor go the spoils."

The fact that Turkey conquered Constantinople more than 500 years ago does not prevent the Turkish government from returning Hagia Sophia to Christendom today, which would undoubtedly be a great gesture. But of course that can never be. The Muslim world would undergo a "paroxysm of fury" if a Christian pope dares pray in the conquered church; what would the Muslim world do if Hagia Sophia were actually converted back to a church?

But perhaps Muslims cannot be blamed for expecting special treatment, as well as believing that jihad is righteous and decreed by the Almighty. The West constantly goes out of its way to confirm such convictions. By criticizing itself, apologizing and offering concessions — all things the Islamic world has yet to do — the West reaffirms that Islam has a privileged status in the world.

And what did the pope do in his controversial visit to Hagia Sophia? He refrained from any gesture that could be misconstrued as Christian worship and merely took in the sights of the museum. Moreover, when he was invited into the Blue Mosque nearby, he respectfully took off his shoes and prayed, eyes downcast, standing next to the the grand mufti of Istanbul like a true dhimmi — a subdued non-Muslim living under Islamic law and acknowledging Islamic superiority.

And therein is the final lesson. Muslims' zeal for their holy places and lands is not intrinsically blameworthy. Indeed, there's something to be said about being passionate and protective of one's own. Here the secular West — Christendom's prodigal son and true usurper — can learn something from Islam. For whenever and wherever the West concedes ideologically, politically and especially spiritually, Islam will be sure to conquer. If might does not make right, zeal apparently does.

The Anti-Islamofascism Movement

I'm a little late in posting about this but Jack Wheeler has created a great concept to help stamp out the Islamofacists. A similar movement was used during the Cold War. Read all about it here.

An Oldie but a Goodie

I just stumbled across this great article about Oriana Fallaci, the famed Italian journalist who died of cancer back in September. I found it a fascinating read and thought I'd pass it on.

The Latest on the Flying Imams

Pajamas Media reports the latest info on the flying imams, including the official police report and an eye witness account. This certainly doesn't sound like they were just innocent passengers flying home to me.


UPDATE: Powerline has posted more info from the Minneapolis airport police.