RUTHFULLY YOURS

What is clear is that Austria’s “Law of Islam” of 1812 represents protection for Islamic organizations that no other European country has to offer.

Many Egyptian communities in Austria, however, do not define themselves as Muslim. They are completely opposed to political Islam, and are enormously worried about the presence of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The 1912 law might be delivering the most potent weapon of Islamic extremism at the expense of the majority of Austria’s Muslims — most of whom practice their religion as a part of life not as an instrument of power.

One reason for the possible relocation of the Muslim Brotherhood’s European headquarters from London to Graz, Austria, mentioned by The Daily Mail on April 12, might well be the inquiry, started by the British government in March, into the activities of the Brotherhood.

Ibrahim Munir, Secretary General of the Muslim Brotherhood and often referred to as the head of the Brotherhood in Europe, had said to the Anadolu news agency that he could not “imagine or accept leaving Britain for any other country.”

However, the satellite channel Al Arabiya reported, from a source linked to the Brotherhood, that in London a meeting had taken place in the presence of Mahmoud Hussein, the secretary general of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, during which those present had discussed not only the situation in Egypt and the appointment of 17 new leaders, but had also endorsed the decision to move their headquarters from London to Austria and three other European countries.

Even Khalid Sham’a, Egypt’s ambassador to Austria, confirmed to Al Arabiya that many leaders and members of the Brotherhood had moved to Austria, and noted that the main Egyptian community in Austria is located in Graz.

It appears that the European Muslim Brotherhood, in keeping with its pragmatic strategy of adjusting to contingencies, might be thinking of decentralizating.[1]

The enticement, however, that might really make Austria attractive to the Muslim Brotherhood, is its legislation. In 1912, Emperor Franz Joseph, as a result of the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as an attempt to integrate Bosnian soldiers in Imperial army, issued the so-called Islamgesetz [Law of Islam].

Why I am a Zionist
Because I am a Christian, many people assume it is my religious faith that is the primary motivation for my advocacy for Israel. But that is not the case.
Because I am a Christian, many people assume it is my religious faith that is the primary motivation for my advocacy for Israel. But that is not the case. Like all true Zionists, my strongest motives are more visceral, more mysterious than any creed or pledge. I am a Zionist because of my son, Taylor. His spirit and his struggle led me to the only people, the only nation on earth, that share the essence of both.

When Taylor was nine years old, a huge tumor was discovered in his pelvic dish. It was an especially insidious cancer, one in which tumors calcify, turning into bone, stabbing from the inside out. My immediate concern was not only for Taylor’s body but also for his spirit. Witty, curious and charismatic, he loved people and life. What good, I wrote to friends and family, if his body is healed but his spirit is crippled? Please, pray for both.

In the two years that followed, everyone prayed and fought and fixed their hopes on physical recovery. Almost no one did the same things for his spirit. And so Taylor and I became a team, fighting for each other’s inner man. Early on, I shaved my head. When he first saw the new look, Taylor deadpanned and said, “Now both of us are MIB’s. Kinda like the movie, Men In Black. Except we are Men In Baldness. You are Agent B and I am Agent T.”

Three months after diagnosis and initial treatment, his case was transferred to Herbert Schwartz, Vanderbilt’s chief of orthopedic oncology. When Taylor and I went for a consultation, Herb’s kindness was expected. It was, however, a kindness that did not preclude breathtaking clarity. I was warned about this. “It is because he’s Jewish,” several whispered. After months of patronizing prevarication, plain-speaking clarity was sunshine and fresh air. But the news we heard was dark. “The tumor has grown,” he said. “In order to remove it, I probably will have to remove the left of side of your pelvis and so, of course, your leg as well.”

When Schwartz left the room, we cried and prayed, then headed out the door. Passing by the surgeon and his retinue of residents looking up at scans upon a lighted wall, Taylor stopped them all and said, “Dr. Schwartz?” Every head turned. “If you do have to amputate my leg,” he continued, pausing for effect, “do you think you could get it stuffed so that I can hang it over my fireplace at home?” Turning with a grin, Taylor walked away.

Four days later I walked into surgical recovery. Vastly diminished but with the tumor removed, I did not know if Taylor knew the leg was gone. His eyes were shut. An oxygen mask blew on his face. Leaning down, I said, “Honey, I’m here; I love you.” He responded with a halting rasp, “Now… I should… be able… to get… a really… good deal… on shoes. At least 50 percent off.” Just a few days later, he accepted an invitation to speak to first year medical students. That afternoon he hopped up on a treadmill and using armrests, walked. In less than six weeks he was climbing trees. “It’s easier on one leg,” he explained. “I can get places where I could not get with two.”

Taylor’s body was diminished but his spirit was enhanced, radically enhanced. In spite of heartbreaking pain, shocking loss and eventually death itself, Taylor always rejected despair, always chose life. For my part and more often than not, I fought. I challenged our doctors, our culture, our religion and our God.

One Fall day, eighteen months into Taylor’s war with cancer, a war his body was losing, my Christian congregation held a prayer meeting. It began with at least thirty minutes of “praise and worship” music. I did not sing along. When asked to speak, I stood and said, “Right now, God is my Opponent. Like Jacob, He insists I wrestle with Him. And so I do, I do.” Everybody squirmed. Almost everybody; one man smiled. Taylor’s Jewish surgeon, Herb Schwartz, was there. Afterward, he shook my hand, looked me in the eye and with a sympathetic twinkle said, “Nice speech.” He was the only one who understood.

For Israel, nuclear weapons and doctrine are absolutely necessary, but they are not sufficient.

When Pericles delivered his Funeral Oration in 431 BCE, the same year as the start of the Peloponnesian War, his oratorical perspective was plainly strategic. As recorded by Thucydides, an early Greek historian whose dominant focus was on a better understanding of military power, Pericles’ speech acknowledged that Athenian security must forever remain uncertain.

“What I fear more than the strategies of our enemies,” lamented the wise Athenian wartime leader Pericles, “is our own mistakes.”
More precisely, his oft-quoted words expressed a determinedly timeless apprehension: “What I fear more than the strategies of our enemies,” lamented the wise wartime leader, “is our own mistakes.”

Contemporary Jerusalem is not ancient Athens. Nonetheless, history is often kaleidoscopic, and despite unimaginable changes in science and technology, the most primal inclinations toward war and peace continue largely unaltered. On complex matters of military strategy, there is always considerable reshuffling and recombination of doctrine, but still no genuinely basic transformation of constituent “parts.”

To be sure, Pericles didn’t have to concern himself with nuclear weapons and nuclear war. Still, the core principles of offense and defense in warfare have remained pretty much unchanged. Later, Machiavelli said as much, when, in the Discourses, he reminded his early sixteenth-century readers that both strategic dilemmas and strategic solutions are endlessly repeating themselves: “We ought to consider,” commented Machiavelli, that “there is nothing in this world at present, or at any other time, but has and will have its counterpart in antiquity.”