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Mitigating Islam

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An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.-
Winston Churchill

Arutz Sheva,  By Jason James Butler:

Countries all over the world have taken hold of the idea of ‘appeasement’ from the 1930’s and made it their policy regarding radical Islam. Western nations are the anthill and Islam the magnifying glass in the sun; where they cast their glance, people cower in fear.

This embarrassing fear has led to such ideas as: the presentation of a global ban on insults to Muhammad at the UN General Assembly as recently as September, 2012, the blame and subsequent incarceration of an American citizen because he insulted Islam in a movie which was used as an excuse for riots in the Middle East and the murder of a US diplomat in Benghazi, and the UN and Obama’s belief that the answer to the constant rocket attacks, threats of destruction, murder of Israeli civilians, and possible third Arab Intifada in Judea and Samaria is to simply give them what they want: more Israeli land, a Palestinian state, and other concessions which will lead to the eventual destruction of all Western nations.

Twenty years ago these ideas would have been laughed at by the media and the general populace, not thought of as great ideas to achieve peace. Would al-Qaeda have stopped after 9/11 if in response America had given them a portion of California to create their own state?

It seems that the world’s policy is to merely mitigate the destructive nature that is Islamic extremism, rather than cure the world of this infectious disease. We celebrated when a report shows that less Israelis were murdered this year than at the same time last year or when only one act of terrorism occurred during the entire month of January.

When did murder and destruction become the status quo in the Middle East? Why is the world more focused on the poor Palestinian refugees that never were and less on the families that are being slain in their beds by extremists?

The countries of the world seem content with slowing the rate of death and destruction caused by Muslim extremists and show no concern over a future where Islamic ideas have spread so far and have become so deeply rooted that it is too late to act. This is the reality that we face today.

Too long have the Western countries shown fear in the face of the enemy, too long has the only peaceful Western-friendly country in the Middle East been told it cannot defend itself, and too long has there been the attempted appeasement of an enemy that needs to be destroyed rather than given concessions.

Appeasement does not work. This was shown when Hitler understood the policy of appeasement to be a weakness and continued on his path of murder and destruction until it was almost too late for the entire world. This is where the world is headed again. Islamic extremists have rooted themselves in communities across the globe. Soon the riots will spread from the Middle East to all over Europe and the US, as they already have, yet this time there will not be any way to stop them.

The extremists have learned a very valuable lesson: kill a few Americans, kill a few Israelis, and the world will do nothing but bend its knee and beg for you to stop. The extremists attack and murder innocent civilians, yet there is no response due to the fear that the extremists will retaliate. The world’s response has been weak, if not nonexistent.

Islamic extremism is the weed that needs to be plucked from the garden before it spreads and destroys all that is held dear. The Western nations have a decision to make: strike back at the heart of the beast that bares it’s fangs to the world, or continue to fruitlessly appease and risk becoming an Islamic nation themselves.

Rotten to the Core, Part III: Lessons from Texas and the Growing Grassroots Revolt

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20130301_Texas_textbooks_largeBy Michelle Malkin:

Texas is a right-minded red state, where patriotism is still a virtue and political correctness is out of vogue. So how on earth have left-wing educators in public classrooms been allowed to instruct Lone Star students to dress in Islamic garb, call the 9/11 jihadists “freedom fighters” and treat the Boston Tea Party participants as “terrorists”?

Here’s the dirty little secret: Despite the best efforts of vigilant parents, teachers and administrators committed to academic excellence, progressive activists reign supreme in government schools.

That’s because curriculum is king. The liberal monopoly on the modern textbook/curricular market remains unchallenged after a half-century. He who controls the textbooks, teaching guides and tests controls the academic agenda.

That is how the propagandistic outfitting of students in Islamic garb came to pass in the unlikely setting of the conservative Lumberton, Texas, school district. As Fox News reporter Todd Starnes noted this week, a 32-year veteran of the high school led a world geography lesson on Islam in which hijab-wrapped students were banned from using the words “suicide bomber” and “terrorist” to describe Muslim mass murderers in favor of the term “freedom fighter.”

Madelyn LeBlanc, one of the students in the class, “told Fox News that it was clear her teacher was very uncomfortable lecturing the students. ‘I do have a lot of sympathy for her. … At the very beginning, she said she didn’t want to teach it, but it was in the curriculum.’”

But the headline-grabbing injection of moral equivalence into social studies and American history is just the tip of the education iceberg.

Top-down federalized “Common Core” standards are now sweeping the country. It’s important to remember that while teachers-union control freaks are on board with the Common Core regime, untold numbers of rank-and-file educators are just as angered and frustrated as parents about the Big Ed power grab. The program was concocted not at the grassroots level, but by a bipartisan cabal of nonprofits (led by lobbyists for the liberal Bill Gates Foundation), statist business groups and hoodwinked Republican governors. As I’ve reported previously, this scheme, enabled by the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” funding mechanism, usurps local autonomy in favor of lesson content and pedagogical methods.

One teacher described a thought-control training seminar in her school district titled “Making the Common Core Come Alive.” A worksheet labeled “COMMON CORE MIND SHIFTS” included the following rhetorical muck:

–The goal of curriculum should not be the coverage of content, but rather the discovery of content. … If done well, Common Core will elevate our teaching to new heights, and emphasize the construction of meaning, while deepening our understanding of our students.”

–”In our classrooms, it is the students’ voices, not the teachers’, that are heard.”

Blah, blah, blah. In practice, Common Core evades transparency by peddling shoddy curricular material authored by anonymous committees. It promotes faddish experiments masquerading as “world-class” math and reading goals. Instead of raising expectations, Common Core is a Trojan horse for lowering them. California, for example, is now citing Common Core as a rationale for abandoning algebra classes for 8th graders. Common Core’s “constructivist” approach to reading is now the rationale for abandoning classic literature for “informational texts.”
Read more: Family Security Matters 

See also:

Husband Charged in Murder Hyped as Hate Crime

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by IPT News 

An Iraqi-exile woman’s murder outside San Diego last March now appears to be a case of domestic violence.

Shaima Alawadi was bludgeoned to death in her home in El Cajon, Calif. The case drew international attention as a possible hate crime when a note found near her body said “Go back to your country, you terrorist.” But police said they were investigating other leads. Alawadi’s husband, Kassim Alhimidi, reportedly was arrested Thursday evening and charged with first degree murder.

Investigators found draft divorce papers in Alawadi’s van after the murder and the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that she discussed taking her kids to Texas to live with relatives.

It’s a far more common motive than the claims made immediately after the killing.

Islamist groups used the note, which would now appear to have been an attempt to misdirect investigators, to argue that Islamophobia in America had grown so severe that Muslims were being attacked in their homes or for their dress. Alawadi wore a hijab.

A Facebook page called for “a Million Hijab March” to protest the killing. Activists likened her case to the Florida shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin, who allegedly was seen as threatening in part because he wore a hoodie.

Dawud Walid, who leads the Michigan office for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was among those who pushed the hate crime theory. “Shaima Al-Awadi’s murder, like Trayvon Martin’s, was a senseless murder based upon racial animus,” he said. “We must come together as a society to have frank discussions about the toxic rhetorical environment which we currently live in that leads to such wanton violence.”

Alawadi’s death is a tragedy no matter why it happened. And it shows groups like CAIR and others will continue to hype hate crimes without any proof, and often in cases that turn out to be entirely wrong.

 

 

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CAIR: Censor or Free-Speech Champion?

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By Andrew C. McCarthy:

Breaking news: CAIR, perennial agitator for language purges and “hate speech” regulation, is suddenly the champion of First Amendment free expression. It proves, once again, that Islamists and leftists are just like defense lawyers.

A defense lawyer who has a good case can be very persuasive. If the defendant really is innocent, or if the prosecution’s case really is flawed, defense counsel can take one main line of defense and pound away at it relentlessly. That is how doubt is sown, which is the defense lawyer’s objective. A credible story that the prosecutor cannot completely refute is the roadmap to acquittal.

This, however, is not the lot of most defense lawyers. In the vast majority of cases, the client really is guilty, and the state really does have ironclad proof. So defense counsel becomes the charlatan for whom every trial day is a new day. On Monday, he tries a false-identification theory, suggesting that the defendant was not even at the scene of the crime. When that doesn’t fly, on Tuesday he runs with, “Well, maybe he was there, but he didn’t know the three guys he was with.” Once that blows up, Wednesday’s gambit is: “Well, sure, he knew them, but he didn’t know they were going to rob the bank.” By Thursday, it’s: “Well, maybe he said he’d help them, but one was a government informant, so he must have been entrapped.”

Our defense lawyer is put in this untenable position because his true objective is fundamentally different from his lofty pretense. He purports to be on a quest for justice, but the only thing he really cares about is getting the defendant off, by any means that might work. Thus, he tries all means he can think of, even if they are contradictory — even if positing the first defense undermines the next, ultimately destroying his overall credibility as an advocate.

Although it does more than its share of litigating, the Council on American-Islamic Relations operates mainly in the court of public opinion. CAIR is the Muslim Brotherhood bullhorn created to cheerlead for sharia, for Hamas, and for sundry other jihadists — all under the guise of “civil rights.” In unison with its “social justice” collaborators on the left, CAIR is most often found campaigning against “Islamophobia.” This is a term strategically created by the Brotherhood to slur as “defamation” or “incitement” (collectively, “hate speech”) any criticism of Islamic supremacism. That includes the ideology’s undeniable roots in Muslim scripture; its vow to destroy the West from within; and its promotion of terrorism against legitimate sovereign authority, spun as “resistance” against “occupation.”

It is farce. CAIR has no real interest in hate speech per se. Indeed, it has no real interest in civil rights — no proponent of sharia could. Its sole actual imperative is Islamic supremacism: promoting any cause that increases Islamic influence and protesting any effort either to reduce Islamic influence or to subject Islamic-supremacist doctrine to scrutiny. Consequently, CAIR’s precious fretting over hate speech extends only so far as Islam is advanced or imperiled.

The same is true of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — the supranational caliphate in the making — whose top goal at the moment is suppression of speech about Islam. Like its CAIR confederates, the OIC pretends to be a champion of universal “human rights.” Thus it feigns opposition to defamation or incitement against what it calls “religion.” But we know this is fraudulent — or at least we would know if examination of Islamist ideology were not so adamantly discouraged. It is a plain, irrefutable fact that Islamic countries repress the practice of other religions. Indeed, the practice of religions other than Islam is illegal in Saudi Arabia, the OIC’s de facto leader. Patently, it is not “religion” that the OIC cares about; it is Islam. “Religion” is invoked as a smokescreen, enabling these Islamist activists to pose as guardians of civil rights rather than the vanguard of Islamic supremacism.

All of this is worth sorting out because, unexpectedly, we have a teachable moment. The state of California has adopted a resolution decreeing that “no public resources will be allowed to be used for any anti-Semitic or any intolerant agitation.”

Read more at National Review

See also: CAIR Opposes California Resolution On Anti-Semitism; Says “Pro-Palestinian Speech” Is Not Anti-Jewish (GlobalMBreport.org)

Video: Understanding the Islam in Muslim Jew Hatred

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Andrew Bostom, January 24, 2012, Los Angles, California

Andrew Bostom (http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/) is the author of The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims (2005/2008) and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History (2008).