British Publisher Stands Up to Muslims

Islam is well-known for using threats of violence to silence its adversaries. However, at least one company had the strength of will to stand up to said threats. Alas, that company is not US-owned, but rather is a British company.

According to Breitbart.com,

A novel about the Prophet Mohammed and his child bride, which has already caused controversy in the United States and Serbia, will be released in Britain next month, its publisher said Wednesday.

Publishing house Gibson Square, known for having sold other controversial books, such as Alexander Litvinenko's "Blowing Up Russia", said it was "imperative" that "The Jewel of Medina" by American author Sherry Jones be available to the public.

Now, the book itself may well be (and I regret to say probably is) unmitigated rubbish- many romance books are. However, it is the principle at stake here. No group should be able to threaten us into submission. Muslims in particular are very adept (with the willing participation or the world's media) in threatening violence in response to things they do not like.

However, we in the West are not Muslim (yet). There is no reason for Christians, Hindis, Jews, Buddhists or any other non-Islamic religion or culture to pay any attention to what Muslims do or do not like. Christians certainly are not fond of images of Jesus Christ in piss water, but that is one of the many things that they must bear. So books or images that do not portray Muhammad or members of his family in a positive light are also things that Muslims ought to get used to.

Creeping Sharia

I cannot imagine any scenario where a "Christian-themed" private school would be allowed to open without furious outcry from most of the media and many Democratic politicians. the ACLU would be in the forefront of the fight, filing legal challenges to keep it from recieving any kind of public funding whatsoever. And virtually every news outlet in the country would be editorializing that American was becoming a thoecracy.

Yet these same organizations apparently have no problem with an Islamic-themed public school opening in Brooklyn. In fact, according to the New York Department of Education,

Khalil Gibran International Academy is a new public middle school that will teach Arabic language and culture while adhering to all state academic and legal standards. This is a non-religious school and will be open to all New York City students. The school will be housed in the Sarah. J. Hale building at 345 Dean Street in Brooklyn and will enroll 60 6th graders in September.

A school that will "teach Arabic language and culture"? And it is being sponsored by the New York Department of Eduction? If the separation of church and state means anything to the usually-fierce opponents of religion, then this school should not be allowed to open. Unless of course the New York Department of Education is prepared to open similar schools teaching "Hindi culture and language", "Jewish culture and language" and maybe even "Christian culture". But I suspect that there will be no such schools opened by the New York Department of Education. For some reason Islam, the religion that openly calls for a combined church/state structure is OK but all other religions, which have a long-established separation between the political and the religious, are not.

One can only wonder when the mavens of "diversity" will finally realize that the very forces they are so closely allied with- the forces of radical Islam- are those that they ought be most fearful of, for "diversity" is one of Islam's first targets anywhere they achieve a majority rule.

Dhimmis at the BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), like many other so-called "mainstream media" outlets, has been one of the worst offenders in groveling to anything Muslims wish, while doing their utmost to assist in the defeat of the Western culture that they exploit and which pays their bloated salaries.

Today, the BBC made yet another step toward dhimmitude, as they cancelled a proposed fictional terror attack in order to avoid offending Muslims. According to the This is London entertainment guide at the Evening Standard,

The first show of the hospital drama's new series was to have featured a storyline about an explosion caused by Islamic extremists.

Now the bomb will be set off by animal rights campaigners instead.

It appears that the BBC caved due to fears of Muslim's reactions to the proposed show. One wonders if they would have had the same reaction if the proposed show had featured Christian extremists setting off a bomb?

The BBC is well on the way to full dhimmitude. It only remains for them to follow Dutch Bishop Tiny Muskins and call God "Allah" in their public pronouncements. Or maybe they can wear large crosses on their raiment as Muslims have traditionally required non-Muslims to do. Surely the fine progressives at the BBC would not protest- after all, they have already surrendered in the culture war between Islam and the West.

Dhimmitude Creep

I have never understood why Christians should be expected to be submissive to Muslims. It was not Christianity that has spent over a thousand years murdering its way across two continents. It is not Christianity that has tried time and again to conquer ancestral homelands of Muslims. On the contrary, Islam has a bloodier record and a longer history of imperialism than any single other organized group of belief.

However, this appears to be unknown to at least one Christian official. Bishop Tiny Muskins of Breda in the Netherlands has suggested that Christians should call God 'Allah' to "foster understanding".

This has to be the most ridiculous suggestion I have heard yet. Why don't you renounce your diocese, Bishop Muskins, give up your raiment and become a practicing Muslim? This is what you are suggesting, that Christians should basically convert to Islam. I think the response by one of the Bishop's potential parishioners is the best.

"Sure. Lets call God Allah. Lets then call a church a mosque and pray five times a day. Ramadan sounds like fun," Welmoet Koppenhol wrote in a letter to the newspaper."

I couldn't have said it better myself. If you are determined to become a dhimmi, then I would be the last to stop you. But if you, like me, believe that Western culture and history contains far more shining examples of goodness than does Islam, then we need to stand up and defend our own civilization. Islam, save for a short period in the Middle Ages, has always been a barbarous religion, displaying neither mercy nor equality to anyone other than its own. Christianity, on the other hand, has a long history of tolerance, though like most other religions, it also has its dark stains- the Inquisition come to mind relatively quickly.

Islam is determined to conquer the world. It has tried many, many times before and the current popularity of al-Quaeda and other similar organizations indicate that jihad and imperialism once again are popular with many Muslims. Only a strong defense , both verbally and militarily will overcome this jihadist fervor. We have a culture and history to be proud of. Our nations are responsible for many gifts to the world, including the ideas of equality and freedom- something Islam cannot claim. We do not live under Sharia, and the only way to ensure we never do is to promote our own culture- not denigrate it to "reduce tensions". We did not start this- Islam did. It is their responsibility to "reduce tensions", not ours.

Hat tip to SFB.

U.S. Resolve-1, Islamic Intimidation-0

Since the case of the Flying Imams that occurred in Minnesota it has become fairly obvious that Islamic groups in the United States are trying to use our own judiciary to scare us into silence about the various plots and terrorist ideals many of these groups support and espouse.

However, as Captain Ed reports on the new site Heading Right, in an article entitled The Unintended COnsequences of Tort Law, it appears that judiical intimidation does not always works the way that Muslim groups would like it to.

The case in question was a lawsuit for libel brought by the Islamic Society of Boston against various persons and groups who had accused them of having links to terror. Said links being fairly well-proven in the ensuing discovery phase, and with even more evidence of wrongdoing both by the City of Boston and the Islamic Society itself, the Muslim group today chose to withdraw the lawsuit.

This is excellent news. As Captain Ed remarks,

"Islamic groups have apparently decided that the way to dhimmitude is to use our legal system to disarm us, allowing them to intimidate us into submission.

It didn’t work in Boston. Let’s hope we remain firm enough to ensure it fails everywhere."

Indeed. As long as we remain resolute, intimidation will never succeed. We can only hope that the defeatists in our media and the Democratic Party take this lesson to heart. Hat tip to Ed Morrissey.

Islam & the Left

It is no secret that the political Left in the United States and indeed most of the West has made common cause with the forces of radical Islam. this should come as no surpirse to anyone who has spent any time at all studying either of these two forces.

Islam has spent well over a thousand years conducting bloody imperialism against the world, including the West. The radical Left has spent the majority of the past two hundred years enabling and apologizing for various dictators- Mao Tse-tung, Josef Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe and of course Yasser Arafat. The Left has spent the majority of the past century trying its best to cause revolution in democratic states that might bring in their preferred form of government- totalitarianism.

Let us not forget that Hitler's war was made possible by his secret alliance with Josef Stalin's Soviet Union. And that the predecessors of today's al-Quaeda, in the person of Yasser Arafat's uncle, Grand Mufti Amin al-Husayni (or al-Husseini) constituted some of the strongest and most fervent supporters of Hitler's "Final Solution". Before there was a state of Israel, mind you.

Of course, the latest collaboration has caused the Left some problems. After all, leftists renounce all religion with great passion. they consider Christianity to be one of the great evils of history, and rarely have a good word for any other religion either. But yet their alliance with Islam requires that they celebrate exactly the kind of religious ecstasy that they find so repugnant in other religions. Christians experience ecstasy in the covenants, or in "being saved", not in blowing up civilians or making onerous pronouncements about how non-Christian must convert or die.

Christopher Hitchens, the anti-religious, pro-Iraq War leftist stepped up on May 24 in Berkeley, California to try to make the Left reconcile this essential dichotomy. His verbal opponent was journalist Chris Hedges. According to Zombie, who photo-blogged the event,

The American political landscape experienced an epochal re-alignment on May 24. A subtle yet far-reaching tectonic shift.

You probably didn't notice. But you will, eventually.

Because it was on that date in Berkeley, California that the radical left reversed what had been its immutable rejection of religion and for the first time embraced spirituality.

...

The arena where this pivotal re-alignment took place was the King Middle School auditorium in Berkeley, where far-left "progressive" journalist Chris Hedges formally debated iconoclastic "neocon" pundit Christopher Hitchens. (Videos of the debate and photos from the event can be found below.) The topic of the debate was "Is God...Great?", a riff on the title of Hitchens' new book, God Is Not Great.

Surprising as it might seem in a contemporary political landscape where mocking religion is an established liberal pastime, and where Christianity and spirituality are most often associated with conservatism, it was Hitchens -- now loathed by the left for not toeing the party line over the Iraq War -- who attacked religion, while the neo-Socialist, anti-patriotic, radical Hedges volunteered for the seemingly topsy-turvy position of having to defend spirituality and the existence of God.

How did this strange state of affairs come to pass? In one word: Islam.

The left -- of which Hitchens was a part until recently -- has always been anti-religion. But now, they've become caught in a philosophical bind: how can they promote multiculturalism -- and by extension all non-Western cultures, such as fundamentalist Islam -- if they condemn religion in general? Neocon pundits have since 9/11 frequently accused the left of being in bed with Muslim extremists, a charge which the left has vehemently denied. But with every denial their position was becoming more and more untenable, as the verbiage and narratives of Islamic radicals and "anti-war" progressives have grown to become virtually indistinguishable.

Someone had to take the lead and resolve the dilemma that the left had created for itself. And so it was Hedges who stepped forward in this debate to test the waters for the first time, taking what is for him (and the left) a revolutionary position: that spirituality and religion -- with the noteworthy exception of organized Christianity -- is good.

Now, at no point did Hedges state that he was performing this amazing flipflop specifically due to Islam. He didn't need to say it -- because Hitchens said it for him. In fact, Hitchens repeatedly tore the roof off of Hedges' carefully constructed rhetorical edifice, saying aloud the exact thoughts that Hedges and the left didn't want anyone to hear.

OK, let's be frank: Hitchens absolutely mopped the floor with Hedges. It was an embarrassment, really.

Zombie has been kind enough to post the videos on YouTube that he took of the evening's entertainment. Read the whole thing and watch the videos.

The Left in the United States and the rest of the West has become a laughingstock for their persistent hypocrisy and their lack of patriotism. However, it took Hitchens to expose them as nothing more than tired ideas without even a robe in which to hide- unless they want to take the burqa. I hear Islam is always looking for converts...

Hat tip to little green footballs.