RUTHFULLY YOURS

Which of us in childhood was not captivated by a print, or perhaps a portrait of the Flying Dutchman [1], ”a legendary ghost ship that can never make port and is doomed to sail the oceans forever. … If hailed by another ship, the crew of the Flying Dutchman will try to send messages to land, or to people long dead. In ocean lore, the sight of this phantom ship is a portent of doom.” Which of us thought such a thing could actually happen … in the Caribbean?

If the public thought that allowing a nurse with Ebola symptoms to fly commercial air was the worst possible blunder the administration could make, think again. ABC News [2] reports that “a Dallas health care worker who handled clinical specimens from an Ebola-infected man from Liberia who later died is on a Caribbean cruise ship – where the worker has self-quarantined and is being monitored for any signs of infection, the State Department said in a statement.”

“The worker has voluntarily remained in the cabin and the State Department and Cruise line are working to bring the worker back to the U.S. out of an abundance of caution,” the Department of State said in the release.

An Ebola suspect on a cruise ship, that’s worse than letting the nurse fly by air. At least the government is trying to get him back.

But wait. There’s more. According to the Washington Post [3], the cruise ship has been denied entry into Belize. “News reports out of Belize said the Carnival Cruise ship “Magic” was being kept offshore because of a health worker who had contact with an Ebola patient and that passengers were not being permitted into the country.” They won’t even let the Dallas health care worker transfer to shore so he can be flown back to the U.S.

The reports quoted a statement from the government of Belize: The Government of Belize was contacted today by officers of the U.S. Government and made aware of a cruise ship passenger considered of very low risk for Ebola. The passenger had voluntarily entered quarantine on board the ship and remains free of any fever or other symptoms of illness. The Ebola virus may only be spread by patients who are experiencing fever and symptoms of illness and so the US Government had emphasized the very low risk category in this case. Nonetheless, out of an abundance of caution, the Government of Belize decided not to facilitate a U.S. request for assistance in evacuating the passenger through the Phillip Goldson International Airport.

The party ship is now unwelcome. In a manner of speaking the Flying Dutchman sails the seas again. It won’t be long before pundits ask: ‘hey, if Belize can close its borders to a whole cruise ship, then why could not president Obama close the US borders to West Africa?’

I would have thought I was reading the New York Times. But no, it was the Washington Times, whose Andrea Noble gave a platform to notorious Islamists yesterday, enabling them to masquerade as moderates who condemn Islamic State jihadists for purportedly running afoul of sharia law in their rampage through Iraq and Syria.

Ms. Noble helped the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Omar Shahin along by airbrushing their backgrounds: CAIR is presented to the reader as a mainstream “Muslim organization” opposed to terrorism, with no mention of the fact that it is a Muslim Brotherhood creation conceived to promote Hamas — one with a long history as an apologist for terrorists (indeed, it has had terrorists in its ranks). Not a word is breathed about Mr. Shahin’s unsavory background: ringleader of the infamous “Flying Imams”; leader of an Islamic Center in Tucson well-known for its al-Qaeda and Hamas sympathies; denial of Muslim terrorist involvement in the 9/11 attacks; and his ties to Islamic “charities” shut down by the government for promoting jihad.

Ms. Noble similarly whitewashes sharia. It would of course be nice if, as she intimates, there were no mainstream interpretation of Islam that supported sex slavery and extortion in the form of jizya – the tax required of non-Muslims for the privilege of living under the protection of a sharia state. But it is simply a fact that these practices have firm roots in Islamic scripture. While we should applaud the work of authentic Muslim moderates to reform these concepts, it is a disservice to our national security to minimize the threat by pretending that the extremist construction of Islam is utterly false and followed by only a fringe.

It is literal, plausible, and has millions of adherents.

But it is not my purpose to rebut the Washington Times’s happy-face sharia; the estimable Robert Spencer has already done that here (see also here). My focus is the continuing practice by the government and the media — and not just the left-wing legacy media — of presenting Islamists as both “moderates” and a reliable source of information about Islam. Islamists promote sharia, which — as classically interpreted — is a most immoderate body of law. And they are incorrigibly Janus-faced, peddling “religion of peace” treacle for credulous Westerners while lionizing jihadists when they figure no one but other Islamists are listening.

In 2010, The Grand Jihad – my book about the Muslim Brotherhood and its sabotage of the West — was published. As it happens, I included a chapter that dealt specifically with CAIR, Mr. Shahin, and the “Flying Imams” episode.

I reproduce that chapter below, and encourage readers to ask: (a) Isn’t the sharia debate, as Mr. Spencer demonstrates, more complicated than the Washington Times suggests; and (b) shouldn’t the Times either make full disclosure about its sources or, dare I say it, find better ones?

Some stories you have to read 10 times before deciding: ’Yes: What I thought was too crazy is really true.’

This is one of those stories. Here goes, believe it or not:

A black Baltimore bus driver organized a mob of 20 black people to assault a white family of three on her bus, which they did with gusto and pepper spray. All the while, the other black passengers hooted and hollered in encouragement.

All while the bus driver waited for the beating to finish so the attackers could get back on the bus. With her thanks.

The bus company didn’t give a darnn. And it took Baltimore police two months before they even investigated it.

If you want to reread that another ten times, go ahead. I’ll wait.

More details from WBAL TV that somehow escaped the attention of the Baltimore Sun. (Which means either this happens all the time and is not newsworthy. Or the paper has an embargo on news about large scale black mob violence. Or both.)

It happened in June: A Baltimore couple was escorting their 9-year old son home from school on the city bus. The bus was crowded, so the driver asked the family to move to the back. They said they could not. There was no room. That is when the driver started yelling at them. From WBAL TV news:

Two chemical weapons-related stories this week should be considered separate, not necessarily interchangeable, parts of a whole.

The first was that ISIS had used chemical weapons against Kurdish forces in Kobani, raising the question of where ISIS would have acquired such weapons. The second, in the New York Times, detailed how U.S. forces in Iraq uncovered thousands of shells filled with chemical munitions from various areas of the country following the invasion, and how they were stored and guarded until 2011.

Those disinclined to support the Iraq War, including the Times, International Business Times, and Huffington Post, posit that the chemicals ISIS is said to have used in Kobani are from old Iraqi stocks now under ISIS control. That would make it “Bush’s fault.” The NYT story details how the Bush administration hid the finding of chemical munitions and suggests two motives:

First, neither the troops nor expert groups dispatched later found the active Iraqi chemical weapons production capability the administration said existed. Information about the age and condition of the shells, and the absence of newer munitions, would have confirmed that Saddam had no active program, further undermining already lagging support for the war.

What U.S. troops in Iraq found was old and leaky but still very, very dangerous. In fact, the most important part of the story is how American troops were exposed to chemical shells that had been turned into IEDs and found caches of chemical ordinance lying around in ditches. Their treatment by the U.S. military, including poor medical treatment, denial of Purple Heart medals, and later lack of medical follow-up should be seen as a precursor to the VA scandals of 2014.

Second, reporting would have indicted a number of Western countries for their role in providing Saddam with chemical capabilities in the first place. “Germans built the facilities…aviation bombs from a Spanish manufacturer, American-designed artillery shells from European companies, and Egyptian and Italian ground-to-ground rockets — to be filled in Iraq,” according to the NYT. This is not news. The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq by Kenneth Timmerman was published in 1991 with the details in spades.

So did ISIS really raid the leaky Iraqi stocks from a containment facility in territory now under its control? That could prove more toxic to ISIS than to the Kurds.

How about a more plausible scenario? ISIS got its supplies from Syria.

Quanta Ahmed, at the close of her latest standard fare apologetic on Islam versus “Islamism,” published today at NRO, writes that she “knew well” the following words of Islam’s prophet Muhammad:

Whoever sees a wrong and is able to put it right with his hand, let him do so; if he can’t, then with his tongue; if he can’t, then in his heart, and that is the bare minimum of faith.

Pace Ahmed’s contention that these words compel a Muslim to “expose injustice,” they actually sanction jihad war, a context made plain by both authoritative Islamic legists, and modern Islamologists.

Islam apologist, and revisionist Ahmed is invoking Sahih Muslim-Book 001, Number 0079, a canonical hadith which prioritizes the categories of jihad.

It is narrated on the authority of Tariq b. Shihab: It was Marwan who initiated (the practice) of delivering khutbah (address) before the prayer on the ‘Id day. A man stood up and said: Prayer should precede khutbah. He (Marwan) remarked, This (practice) has been done away with. Upon this Abu Sa’id remarked: This man has performed (his duty) laid on him. I heard the Messenger of Allah as saying: He who amongst you sees something abominable should modify it with the help of his hand (i.e., by force); and if he has not strength enough to do it, then he should do it with his tongue (i.e., by preaching or propaganda), and if he has not strength enough to do it, (even) then he should (abhor it) from his heart (i.e., soul), and that is the least of faith.

Princeton Islamologist John Ralph Willis’ 1967 essay (“Jihad fi sabil Allah- Its doctrinal basis in Islam and some aspects of its evolution in 19th century West Africa” The Journal of African History, 1967, Vol. 8 [No. 3], pp. 395-415) discusses this canonical hadith (Sahih Muslim-Book 001, Number 0079), in the following bellicose context (pp. 398-99), which establishes the priority of jihad by the sword:

The Islamic community…retained as part of its ideology the desire for world domination. According to the Sharia, the world was divided in two. That part which fell outside the abode of Islam was said to be the abode of war (dar al harb). Since the Sharia could not countenance the indefinite existence of this dichotomy, the Muslim community was under obligation to declare jihad upon those who refused to submit or pay the tax of humiliation, until all peoples were brought within the fold of Islam. The jihad came to be looked upon as the instrument by which the dar al-harb would be transformed into dar al-Islam (the abode of Islam)

The administration’s handling of the Ebola crisis continues to be marked by double talk, runaround and gobbledygook. And its logic is worse than its language. In many of its actions, especially its public pronouncements, the government is functioning not as a soother of public anxiety but the cause of it.

An example this week came in the dialogue between Megyn Kelly of Fox News and Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control.

Their conversation focused largely on the government’s refusal to stop travel into the United States by citizens of plague nations. “Why not put a travel ban in place,” Ms. Kelly asked, while we shore up the U.S. public-health system?

Dr. Frieden replied that we now have screening at airports, and “we’ve already recommended that all nonessential travel to these countries be stopped for Americans.” He added: “We’re always looking at ways that we can better protect Americans.”

“But this is one,” Ms. Kelly responded.

Dr. Frieden implied a travel ban would be harmful: “If we do things that are going to make it harder to stop the epidemic there, it’s going to spread to other parts of—”

Ms. Kelly interjected, asking how keeping citizens from the affected regions out of America would make it harder to stop Ebola in Africa.

“Because you can’t get people in and out.”

“Why can’t we have charter flights?”

“You know, charter flights don’t do the same thing commercial airliners do.”

In one short interview, the two Muslim speakers had ensured that: a Zionist conspiracy is in place; ISIS is not really dangerous; the West is at war with Muslims, and the killing must continue; Muslims must not speak out on Western media about violence within the faith, and those who do are liars desperately seeking the limelight. So most Muslims stay silent.

This brand of boxed and packaged Islam, started by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, has been so cleverly marketed that most Muslims do not even know what hit them.

Then there are those have moved outside the box — scholars, reformers and academics, who, like me, are considered heretics but are still part of the faith. We do not accept the branded, “boxed” version of Islam — exported largely from Saudi Arabia on the wings of billions of petro-dollars in unobtrusive packaging — that is trying to pass itself off as mainstream Islam.

The debate about “Moderate Muslims” has gone viral. From Bill Maher to Ali Rizvi in his Huffington Post article, it is trending.

As someone who used to call herself a moderate, I am now moving away from that terminology. One reason is a recent interview a cable TV talk show called Bilatakalluf.

On the program were two members of The North American Muslim Foundation (NAMF) — Imam Shehryar and Farooq Khan — and the discussion was about ISIS and being a Canadian Muslim. Below is a translation of some of the “quotable quotes”:

“I honestly think the news about ISIS is extremely exaggerated – there are other interests fanning the flames — we do not know if ISIS is Muslim or not, could be anyone.”
“When we look at history and the way the West has lied, it is obvious… I refer to Iraq — this drama has been done before, so the reports we are getting are not credible as they are coming from Western media, which has a track record of being No. # 1 liars — once you tell a lie over and over again it becomes credible — look at the Jihad/Sharia hype?”
“We must establish authenticity of the [beheading] TV clips — it is a man wearing a niqab so how do we know whether he is a Mossad guy or ISIS?”
“I have heard reports that some people living under ISIS are peaceful — at least the Sunni areas are better patrolled.”
“Having a Caliphate is an integral part of faith. Every believing Muslim prays for a true Khalifah.”

Election Questions

Congressional Elections are upon us in a few weeks. We are bombarded with talking points from both pathetic parties. Both political parties concentrate on two or three main issues. We need to look at lots of questions to see what is happening in the country, both good and bad.

I have many questions people should think about. The order of the questions is not important because all of the questions are important. People need to think about all of them because they give a complete picture of the state of our country.

The questions may seem to be mainly about the Democratic Obama Administration. That is because they are the ones in power. They have the Presidency and the Senate. There are questions about Republicans as well.

The purpose of this message is not to open debate but for you, the voter, take a deep look at what is happening in our government.

We will start off with questioning your own beliefs.

Questions for you

1. Are you so pro-Obama that no matter what he does, it is right?

2. Are you so against Obama that everything he does is wrong?

3. Do you question what the government tells us?

…We are talking about 600,000 Israeli settlers planted on Palestinian soil,” declared Slaughter. But this is pretty astounding stuff. Would Slaughter describe an Arab living in Israel as “planted on Jewish soil”? Indeed, he’d cause a minor crisis within British politics if he started describing Pakistani immigrants to Britain as colonizers “planted on English soil.” Presumably, Slaughter’s belief that the very soil of the West Bank is somehow intrinsically and exclusively Palestinian stems from his equally misguided view that the West Bank is a foreign country.
Tom Wilson..

Commentary Magazine..
15 October ’14..

Responding to Monday’s Palestinian statehood vote in Britain’s parliament, Times of Israel editor David Horovitz penned an op-ed provocatively titled “It’s the Settlements, Stupid.” Horovitz argues that the erosion of Israel’s diplomatic standing that made Monday’s vote possible has in large part been on account of Israel’s settlement policy. If true, then we live in strange times, where building homes for Jews can cause more outrage than Hamas stockpiling rockets and Iran developing nuclear weapons with which to murder those same Jews. And yet the following day, Sir Alan Duncan, Britain’s envoy to Yemen and Oman, gave a shocking speech asserting that those endorsing settlements should be considered on par with racists and hounded from Britain’s public life. The reality is, it is not the settlements that have eroded Israel’s standing, but rather the completely warped narrative that now surrounds them. And what’s worse, many Israelis have in no small part helped to create that narrative.

So let us see if we have this straight. The British parliament decides to “recognize” the “state” of “Palestine.” It thus reverts to exactly the same displays of courage and integrity that it showed back when Britain recognized the right to self-determination of the Sudeten Germans in 1938. All this from Britain, the occupier of Gibraltar, the Falklands, Wales, Scotland, Ulster, and the Channel Islands. The Brits are joined by Sweden in a similar belch of “recognition.” You remember Sweden, the country that was too cowardly to choose a side in either World War and that provided iron ore to feed Hitler’s war machine. Yes, Sweden, which refuses to recognize the rights to self-determination of its own Samis, and whose journalists recycle medieval blood libels about Jews murdering gentiles and selling their body parts. Other European countries are expected to follow. Why “Palestine” is any more worthy of being “recognized” than ISIS, another terrorist gang claiming to be a state seeking “recognition,” is never explained.

Now an interesting twist to the story is the demonstration of the Israeli Radical Left of its contempt for democracy and for Israeli sovereignty. The Israeli Left, led by the tenured leftists, is willing to endorse pretty much anything that is harmful to its own country. It has been urging European countries to “recognize the state of Palestine.” A petition was signed by dozens of Israel’s most anti-Israel academics, plus some non-academic members of the Hamas Lobby. It was organized by Amiram Goldblum from the Hebrew University, a founder of the extremist anti-Israel “Peace Now” organization, and Alon Liel, an ex-diplomat who now teaches for some reason at Tel Aviv University. These two were earlier among the initiators and organizers of a notorious pseudo-poll that claimed falsely to show that Israeli Jews favor “apartheid.” That “poll” last year was an exercise in distortion and tendentious manipulation, designed to generate misleading “statistics.” It was thoroughly discredited by serious social scientists.

Now the same “Israel is an Apartheid Regime” propaganda team is back, rallying the rest of the anti-Israel academic Left to attempt to bypass and neutralize Israeli sovereignty. Their initiative also reflects the utter contempt and disdain that Leftists in Israel have for democracy.