Note from Robert Spencer:
No wonder the supporters of terror and their allies want his head. A refreshing dose of realism from Rumsfeld, speaking in Singapore on his way to Bangladesh. From AP, with thanks to Twostellas

Note from Ethelred - what is below is not just an essay by Hugh Fitzgerald, but a dialogue between a number of respondents and him. Click on the above link for the full thread. Fascinating reading!

So be it. But there are ways of discussing "Islam" without using the word "Islam" so directly -- or at least, to let that word be used not at the very top, but by commentators.

How to do it? The word "Jihad" comes swimmingly to mind. Talk not about "terrorism," a mere tactic, but about the "Jihad." Let Rumsfeld go first, and then Powell. And then Bush. And then all those under them, making clear that McCain must do his bit, and Zell Miller, and Birch Bayh, and all those Democrats who -- including Kerry -- might realize that this problem is not solvable, has no end, can only be contained, requires attention as well to the non-violent instruments of Jihad (such as the use of OPEC wealth to fund madrasas and mosques, and buy arms, or the demographic conquest, from within, of Western Europe), and should not be linked to any one party. It is the entire Infidel world, from Buddhist monks chanting in southern Thailandd, to Trappist monks in western Massachusetts, and the Orthodox Serbian church in Kosovo, and the Catholic churches of Assisi, and the churches attended by Korean Presbyterians on Northern Boulevard in Queens, and the A.M.E. Zion Damascus Church, outside Columbia, South Carolina (where Fort Jackson trains our troops, and "Victory Begins"), on the winding road to the Congaree Swamp -- and hundreds of thousands of churches, synagogues, Buddhist temples, Hindu temples, and cathedrals, and chapels, and storefront houses of prayer, and every sort of religious institution, from a Shinto temple hidden deep in the woods, under the cold night sky, on the island of Sado ("Amanogawa" as Basho exclaimed in that last line), that are all under equal assault.

Here's how to do it:

"We are fighting a war, on all fronts, and with every instrument that is used by the enemy -- open warfare, though of course we do not use terrorism, and economic warfare, and propaganda, though our propaganda consists not of nonsense and lies but simply the truth, which eventually will get through if we state it often enough, and lucidly enough, and winningly enough, about what it is we seek, and through demographic conquest that we must be aware of, and do what we can to undo in every way we can.

And what is that enemy? That enemy is not the religion of Islam, that is, the religion that offers people a structure for individual worship [forget the fact that the basis of Islam is the collective, not the individual -- untruths here are in the service of a larger Truth that we cannot speak directly]. No, it is only the geopolitical cult, that also uses the name of Islam, and that in a sense has hijacked the word "Islam" for its own purposes [this is ahistorical nonsense, but again useful for the purposes of smuggling in the truth, in circumstances where inhibition and forked tongues are called-for). We are fighting only those who believe in, and conduct Jihad {never mind that that includes almost all Muslims; just pretend it doesn't]. We are fighting it in the MIddle East, and in Pakistan, and in northern Nigeria, and in the southern Sudan, and in the Moluccas, and in Thailand, and in Madrid, and in New York and Washington -- wherever the instruments of JIhad are used to terrorize non-Muslims and those many Muslims [nonsense, but keep it up, keep it up, in order to get the message out] who do not believe in Jihad, who are content simply to worship their god in their way and do not for one minute wish to impose their views on others [endless nonsense, but keep it up, it is very useful].

And let it be said, a thousand different ways. Let the word "Jihad" be discussed openly. Let the word "dhimmitude" emerge onto the pages of the New York Times. Even the Friedmans and Kristofs will have to cease, for a minute, telling us about the dinners they have had on their complacent globe-trotting ventures, and about their "theories" ("I have a theory. I call it the...." is how Friedman/Kristof, Friedhof, Kirstman, whatever their names, like to impose their simpleminded observations on the rest of us, their long-suffering readers), and actually begin to investigate the tenets of Islam.

Rumsfeld, you are smarter than Wolfowitz the arms-analyst. You have your doubts about this absurd "light-unto-the-Muslim-nations project." Maybe you should start the ball rolling. Start talking about the Jihad. Make sure the word goes out everywhere. And make sure it is not limited to Republicans. There are many people waiting eagerly for coherent articulation of the problem that is keenly sensed, and for which the proper words are not being said. They need to be said, however slyly. Let the word "Jihad" substitute for the word "Islam." We'll get to that last word later.

and this: General Zinni is a devoted promoter of the Saudis, with whom he got along so swimmingly when he was in the Middle East. He does not understand, and sees no need to understand, the tenets of Islam. He does not connect the dots, or even see the dots that need connecting. The murders of Christians in East Timor, the Moluccas, Sulawesi, the Moro Islands, Pakistan, northern Nigeria, southern Sudan, the murders of Hindus in Pakistan, Kashmir, Bangladesh, and even within India itself, the murders of Buddhists in Thailand, the murders of Confucian and Christian Chinese in Indonesia, none of this swims into General Zinni's ken.

It is right to criticize the failure to analyze what it is that ails Iraq. Hint: it is not the absence of democracy. From the Infidel point of view, all the most important developments to tame or constrain or limit the effect of Islam have come from despots -- the Shah of Iran, Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia, Mohammad V of Morocco, and especially Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), of Turkey.

But Zinni's criticism is coming from the wrong direction. He criticizes because he wishes to appease the world of Arab Islam. Like Wolfowitz, he does not understand, and cannot factor in, the main problem: Islam itself. It is a problem for Muslims. And it is a problem for Infidels. And nothing can be done until its failures are seen, by Muslims themselves, as failures, and the Muslim world ceases to be held up by Western aid and OPEC money. Zinni is not, in other words, a critic who sees the need to let Iraqis, from within, learn in their own wallowing in failure about the failures of Islam as an answer (as the Iranians have been learning, over the past 25 years from those Masters of Misrule, the Shi'a Mullahs and Grand Ayatollahs who have, thankfully, done more to drag Islam into disrepute than could a hundred years of Infidel attempts, from the outside, to suggest as much. No intelligent Iranian can -- it must be said -- think of Islam in the same way as might once, some thirty or forty years ago, have been possible.

Citoyen suedois, take note. And were I you, I might consider changing your email name. Let me explain. The words "curious" and "Sweden" in the same sentence evoke, for all Americans above the age of, say, 35, the truly awful and tepidly erotic movie "I Am Curious (Yellow)" that, some decades ago, naturally attracted a certain undeserved audience. "Curious Citizen From Sweden" makes us all -- I blush to admit it for the rest of us, but some picador or banderillero must take this bull by the horns -- unwillingly recall that film's title, and we hate to be reminded. So pick another name, for god's sake and ours. "Enquiring Swedish mind"; "Linnaeus" or "Karl von Linne." Or "Bruzelius" or some similar latinized Swedish names from that 17th and 18th century fad, the kind of name to evoke an earlier, more tolerable Sweden, with gentle naturalists, and disinterested philosophers wearing wire-rimmed spectacles, and gorging on raspberries in Uppsala in August. Choose any damn internet name you want, but not, please not, "Curious Citizen From Sweden." It's driving us mad.

Does the desire to lessen the threat of a potential Islamic takeover of Western Europe, through alerting Europeans to the demographic weapon and the expressed intention of using it, strike anyone as apocalyptic? Would not the truly apocalyptic wish to do nothing, and to wait until the only way out will be all-out civil war, between non-Muslims and Muslims, within Europe itself? It may come to that, but one wishes to avoid it.

Would not those of an apocalyptic frame of mind wish to bring on a great cataclysm, when the whole point to Jihadwatch, and the effort bythose who support it, is to inform, to instruct -- in order, precisely, that the "big wars" (in Othello's phrase) may be avoided?

As for the sneer about the "red cow" and torching the "al aqsa mosque" -- what is that all about, and from what psychic subdepths does it emerge? A few people in Israel, mainly Jews but also some Christians, apparently waiting for the Messiah, and taking the most extreme "literalist" approach that, it might be noted, while not shared by 99% of the world's Christians and Jews, but is shared, most emphatically, by all Muslims who claim to be Believers -- who believe that the appearance of a certain kind of "red cow" will herald the Messiah's appearance, and who also hope that destroying the Al-Aksa Mosque will spark a conflagration that will lead to the establishment of Justice on Earth. If the poster does not know it, and I suspect he knows it perfedctly, the people who think this way can be numbered, at most, in the 100s. The Muslims who think that all Infidels need to be subjugated, that Jihad is necessary and cannot be foresworn, number in the hundreds of millions. That matters.

Nor are those involved in the breeding of red cows, or planning to destroy the Al-Aksa Mosque (and every so often, some demented soul tries to suggest this, and is promptly arrested by the Israeli police whenever they deem it appropriate), in any way to be associated with the supremely rational, often well-informed, and therefore alarmed people, from many countries, and with varying backgrounds, who post here. Many of them have had to be autodidacts, for the simple reason that the official teaching of Islam is more and more in the hands of Muslim propagandists and their non-Muslim allies; it is becoming impossible, in the West, to "tell the truth about Islam," as Jacques Ellul complained of France back in 1989. Those who have come to comprehend the full horror not only of Jihad, but of the institution of dhimmitude that follows upon it, and who have little by little begun to realize the great similarity in the treatment, through time and space, of Christians and Jews, Zoroastrians and Hindus, by the Muslims who have conquered their lands and subjugated them, are naturally the most alarmed -- and like people in the 1930s who recognized the threat from Hitler (for Churchill was not alone) -- feel an urgent need to communicate what they know, to let others become acquainted with the same material, to learn to see through taqiyya and kitman, to dismiss the irreducible brigade of antisemites who will, it seems, take the side of Islam even if it means cutting their own throats (like the antisemites of the 1930s, who kept dismissing worries about HItler, because in their view, in his hatred of the Jews, he was performing yeoman's service, and they hardly wished to interrupt his activities), and to help others reach the melancholy conclusions that they have come to -- which is to say, to use all the artfulness and cunning we possess, throughout the Infidel world, to defeat Islam, to let Muslims themselves see its failures, without having to engage in an "apocalyptic" war.

Nor are those who recognize this problem by any means limited to non-Muslims. Ex-Muslims are perhaps the keenest-eyed and most uncompromising. Many intelligent people, born into Islam, have come to recognize its intellectual and moral failings, and dared, despite the punishment for apostasy, to leave it (see, for examples, the collection of testimonies in "Leaving Islam"). Neither Ibn Warraq, nor Ali Sina, nor many like them, are waiting for someone to breed a "perfect red cow" (whatever that is; could it be a Bolshevik relation to Gelett Burgess' "purple cow" -- you know, the one he never saw, but he could tell you anyhow, he'd rather see than be one?), or to destroy the Al-Aksa Mosque (ca en dit long, that charge, for here I detect the note either of a Muslim, or the usual antisemite who enjoys taking a thinly-veiled swipe at those "typical" Israelis -- you know, those millions who are trying to destroy the Al-Aksa Mosque by warning that if the Arabs keep up their dangerous subterranean excavations on the Temple Mount, they may cause tha mosque, and the Western Wall, to collapse).

While on the subject of the Al-Aksa Mosque, and the Dome of the Rock (actually a non-Islamic, Byzantine maryrium, with inscriptions in Arabic, but not canonical Qur'anic inscriptions -- as almost no one has bothered to point out), it should be remembered that the Al-Aksa Mosque was placed precisely on the Temple Mount for a nonreligious and geopolitical purpose: to lay claim to a city holy to both Judaism and Christianity (the competing faiths whose believers had to be won over to Islam), and to put a kind of marker of Islamic power (like the American flag at Iwo Jima) right smack on top of the holiest site where the Temple of the Jews had stood. Indeed, the identification of "the farthest mosque" -- "al-masjid al-aksa" in the Qur'an -- from which Muhammad was said to have taken off on his miraj, or Night Journey, flying heavenwards on his fabulous winged steed al-Buraq, was deliberately identified with Jerusalem only after some time, and discussion had gone on, and most likely it took place as a way to allow the Umayyad caliphates to lay claim, from Damascus, to Jerusalem. Abdel Malik may, incidentally, have been one of the original concocters of Islam, given its non-Hijazi origins (note to doctoral candidates in the history of early Islam: look into this, if you want to make a splash, but don't expect tenure from too many MESA members). Abdel Malik was doing what La Salle did in the woods near the Mississippi, when he laid claim to all of North America, back in 1682, for his prince lointain, Louis of France.

My comment on your posting was rational, pointed, complete, and in places, I allow myself to believe, funny. Perhaps you are not as fond of Purple Cows as I am. And I simply noted that for someone to raise the issue of a handful of people (what? 10? 200?)raising red cows and wanting to destroy the Muslim structures placed on Temple Mount, is as suspect a rhetorical diversion, as would be that of some Muslim spokesman who, under pressure in a debate to admit to the reality, and centrality, of Jihad, and to the role of Islamic texts in fomenting violent (and other kinds of) Jihad, were to invoke the Lord's Army in northern Uganda, that utterly bizarre, and utterly un-Christian movement, whatever its claimed basis in Biblical teachings, and to say -- "look, you Christians have your crazies, too, who hijack you religion." You know perfectly well that would be a transparent attempt at diversion, and at establishing a false symmetry. So why do it with this "red-cow-Al-Aksa" trivial pursuit? If you are not, as you claim, a "Muslim or an antisemite," then perhaps it is simply a failure to adequately measure the relative significance of tens of millions of Jihadis worldwide, and the infinitesimal handful of people in other religions who exhibit signs of similar, extraordinary religious dementia.

Come off it. Use your head.

And then there were other suggestions, far from apocalyptic. I suggested that there were ways to encourage a revival of Zoroastrianism; that the American government could supply the works of Ibn Warraq and other ex-Muslims just as it once supplied the literary works of Russian emigres, to Soviet tourists passing through in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, and elsewhere. I suggested that a tax, ever-increasing, should long ago have been put on gasoline, and that even now it should be done, to make sure that all economic planning can take place in the assurance that certain energy prices will not go down -- so that the Saudis cannot jerk the price up and down, in order to kill alternative sources of energy. It is important to take away their money. I suggested that, where any mosque has been found to contain weaponry, or fake passportrs, or videocassettes preaching murder, or where the khutbas (Friday Prayer sermons) are shown to have preached hatred and murder for Infidels, that mosque should be permanently closed. I suggested that we could work, in Western Europe, to rally those forces that, feeling abandoned by their corrupt EU elites, so deeply involved in the appeasement which is turning Europe into "Eurabia," need to have money, moral support, and a center to which to rally -- in other words, the Americans should behave, in confronting the world-wide Jihad, and the use of the demographic weapon within Western Europe (where every third birth in France is now a Muslim baby -- can you figure out what that means in 20 years? in 40?), exactly as they did in the early years of the Cold War, paying for Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, supporting the Congress for Cultural Freedom, paying for meetings and symposia where ex-Communists could testify as the reality of Communism (where is the support for ex-Muslims such as Ibn Warraq and Ali Sina? Why are they not on Sixty Minutes? On radio and TV foreign policy shows? Why are they not called as Congressional witnesses to testify as to the belief-system known as Islam? Why -- fear of offending someone?).

My constant theme has been to create the conditions in which 1) the non-Muslim world can have articulated for it either the truth, or a close simulacrum of it ("Jihad" instead of "Islam"); 2) the various parts of that non-Muslim world can realize that they have an identity of interest, and need to support one another 3) create the conditions, within the world of Islam, which will allow -- from within -- the recognition by at least the thinking members of those countries and societies, to recognize the failures, political, economic, moral, and intellecutal, of Islam, so that they will work to do what Ataturk did -- to constrain and limit Islam (for its doctrines, its sacred texts, cannot be changed, and are immutable).

Those are just some of the suggestions. Others may offer others. Does this sound like someone who wants some goddam Apocalypse Now? You know nothing about me, but I will say that many brave young men and women are now risking their lives in Iraq, helping to "win hearts and minds" belonging to people who hate us because we are Infidels, no matter what we do for them. Why should he, why should any American soldiers risk their lives at this point (yes, the original war was justified -- it is this idiotic Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations project that is based on complete intattention both to Islam, and to the apposite example of Ataturk), when there are so many better ways to constrain and weaken Islam, and the threat it poses to all non-Muslims, including the undeniable fact that the presence of large numbers of Muslims make the lives of non-Muslims more expensive, unpleasant, difficult, and dangerous than they would otherwise be.

Had I the "leisure" of which I joked, and you took seriously, obviously such a brazen beseeching of scholarly baksheesh (Swinburnian hyperalliteration in moments of embarrassment, and not for the last time) would not be made. Pitiful, isn't it? Still, worth a shot.

"So we do not need to publicly defame Islam and demean the Prophet of Islam as some American Christian leaders have done since September 11, 2001. This creates more cultural and social stumbling blocks than already exist before Muslims get to the stumbling block of the cross. To do so goes against the biblical injunction: “If it is possible … live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18) because it stirs up hatred, fosters mistrust and suspicion, and unnecessarily hurts Muslim sentiments.

And we can even be people of peace in the way we greet Muslims. Jesus commanded us to love our enemies and pray for them who persecute us. The greeting Jesus probably used, “Shalom aleichem” (Hebrew) is very similar to the universal Muslim greeting in Arabic of “Salaam Aleikum” (Peace to you). This is only a small thing, but blessing Muslims in the sense that we greet them with warmth, sincerity and goodwill, is faithfulness in that which is least.

Finally, waging peace on Islam means reaching out to the Muslim immigrants in our midst (nearly 60% of American Muslims are immigrants) and not hating them. Unfortunately, since 9-11, some in our midst who look Middle Eastern have been unnecessarily harassed and treated unfairly. It is instructive to see that the Bible commanded the Israelites to "love the aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt" (Deut. 10:18-19). It commanded them to gather the aliens in their towns so they would learn about the Lord and so that children of the aliens would hear it and learn to fear the Lord (Deut. 31:12-13).

In conclusion, Muslim militants have turned to hatred and violence because they perceive Islam is under attack and that perception is real and spreading all over the world. Since Islam does not teach love for enemies, bur rather hatred, some Muslims are tempted to fight America. The best way for Christians to respond is to look to the cross as the bridge to reconciliation. The battle will not be won by wrapping ourselves in the flag of patriotism and missiles won’t win the battle either. Esposito is right on that point. Most Muslims are true seekers after God as indicated by their prayer several times a day that God would lead them in a straight path (Qur’an 1:6). Christians must reach out to Muslims with the Gospel of Peace."

I am indeed glad to see some of your other suggestions, which I agree are absolutely non apocalyptic...and even make sense to cash cow worhipping country boy from NC.

I hope all is well for your family member in Iraq...and I also hope beyond hope that our experiment there works.

Finally, I also hope you get to be a man of leisure one day, if that's your wish. I believe I could live with that title.

And I repeat: I am trying to avoid all-out war, not cause it. What do you think is going to happen in Europe, if in 30-40 years there is a majority Muslim population in France? Anything? Nothing? What if something similar occurs, a decade later, in Italy? Do you care about the statues in Florence and Rome? The paintings in the Uffizi and the Vatican? I do. And of course, what about the Italians themselves? What about the very idea of Italy? Can Western civilization long exist without Italy? No, it can't. (Come to think of it, it can't exist without Israel either, and Muslim conquest of the Holy Land would deal a mortal blow to the idea of the West, and Western civilization).

As for the quote you adduce, it is so full of interfaith-racket simpering, so much treacly nonsense, that I can hardly stand to read it. Yuch. It is full of one sly untruth after another. Why should Christians be reaching out to Muslims? Why? The history of Islam is the history of conquest, first and possibly foremost, of Christian lands -- Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, North Africa (yes, and the Jews of Judea, a/k/a "Palestine" in Western Christendom), and then, later, all of the riches of the civilization of Byzantium. That Jihad conquest was followed by the mass destruction of Christian works of art, Christian churches, and the slow asphyxiation of Christian life. The same happened to Zoroastrians in Persia, Hindus and Buddhists in India (Buddhism was extirpated from India by the Muslim invaders), the Greco-Buddhist civilization of Afghanistan. And everywhere Islam went, it encouraged a complete indifference or hostility to whatever the non-Islamic past had been. Around the world today we see, of course, Muslim assaults on Christians wherever they live in Muslim lands, on Jews everywhere, on Buddhists wherever they happen to live near a Muslim population (Thailand and Bali), on Hindus wherever they can be found, and so on. The murders in East Timor (200,000 Christians killed), the murders in the Moluccas (tens of thousands killed), in the southern Sudan (1.8 million killed), not to mention the constant assaults, murders, attempts to impose Shari'a on Christians in northern Nigeria, murders in Pakistan, murders of Hindus and Christians (and Ahmadiyyas now) in Bangladesh, the persecution and murder of Copts in Egypt and Christians, especially Maronites, in Lebanon, on "Infidel" aid workers in Afghanistan and Iraq, on "infidel" journalists, businessmen, oil workers in Saudi Arabia, the huge popularity of Bin Laden (and others like him) all over the Arab and Muslim world -- what further evidence would it take to convince you that there is really a problem with the tenets of Islam? At this point, what? If you keep having to be re-persuaded, re-convinced, then there is something else going on, something irreducibly refractory, something in your own mental makeup that causes you to assent, briefly, and then to relapse into skepticism and an unwillingness to believe. Why?

How, at this point, knowing what you do, about Qur'an and hadith (for god's sake, just go to any of the Islamic websites or the www.usc.edu site, and look up the hadith of Bukhari or Muslim and start reading; it's all there; so are 3-4 different translations of the Qur'an, all laid out, side by side. It will take time. But it will be instructive.

I assure you that the American soldiers coming back, including many who had previously studied Arabic and often been subject to pro-Muslim propaganda, will not be fooled, and the families and friends to whom they will return, will not be foolable. Those soldiers have seen, up close and personal, large numbers of Muslims. They have had daily dealings with them. Some of those soldiers will rise in the ranks. Others will enter politics. Unlike the General Zinnis or chocolate soldiers like Scowcroft, they will not be fooled by the gobbledygook put out by apologists for Islam, including the non-Muslim apologists of the Esposito school (speaking of whom, do you not think it curious that on a Muslim website, John Esposito announced, in answer to a question about the numbers of "reverts" to Islam after 9/11, that he was "pleasantly surprised" that the number had not gone down but increased? Doesn't it strike you as strange that Esposito, having taught at two Jesuit colleges, Holy Cross and now that phony Georgetown "Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding," described himself as PLEASANTLY surprised? He is apparently delighted that more people, according to what news he has received, are converting -- sorry, reverting -- to Islam, even after 9/11? Why would that be?

It would take me too long to respond to every single idiocy in this gooey mass of pious goodwill, with its obvious line of taqiyya apologetics, and deliberate diversion from, both the teachings of Islam (Qur'an and hadith) about Infidels, and the history of Muslim treatment of the Infidels in the non-Muslim lands those Muslims conquered. The monstrous notion expressed in the excerpt you provide, to suggest that it is non-Muslims, Christians, who should be under some kind of obligation to understand, to reassure Muslims, to reach out to them, and all of that sentimental bosh, makes me sick. I won't quote any more than this little item: "Muslim militants have turned to violence and hatred because they have perceived that Islam is under attack" -- oh, so that explains the 1350-year record of Jihad-conquest and imposition of dhimimtude. That explains why those 1.8 million non-Muslims in the southern Sudan, the East Timorese, and so many others have been killed, including that Buddhist monk trimming his tree, and the Pakistani Christian beaten to death in his hospital bed by a Muslim guard; that explains the Hindu peasants who get their throats slit in Kashmir and Pakistan -- the Muslims, you see, were forced into it because they perceived that "Islam was under attack." Nothing at all to do with any passages all over the the Qur'an and hadith, calling for waging war against the Infidels, killing them, seizing their land, their wealth, their women. Why, when you know or should know better, do you persist in this? Why?

Here's a suggestion. Forget about this website for a while. Just don't go to it. Apparently, it hasn't had the impact it might, or should, on your brain. So forget the earnest attempts to relate the 1350-year history of Jihad and dhimmitude to their up-to-date expressions. Assume we are all here secret agents, Mossad Badge #13476 (expiration date: 08/05).

Instead, just stick to what former Muslims have to say about Islam. They do it better than all the rest of us, anyway. Go to www.secularislam.org, and spend a week or so reading, after Mammon-serving for eight hours at work, the articles, and the testimonies of ex-Muslims, and especially Ibn Warraq's (yes, as a child he really did attend a madrassa, and lived to think coherently, and express himself beautifully, nonetheless) site, at ISIS. See if you learn anything. Check with any Muslim friends you have, to see how they explain away what you've been reading. Oh, and don't forget to also check out "kitman" and "taqiyya" in the Encyclopedia of Islam, or online. And then go to www.faithfreedom.org, and the contributions of Ali Sina and other former, chiefly Iranian, ex-Muslims.. Don't forget to read the articles of Azam Kamguian (especially on the treatment of women in Islam), and those of Irfan Khawaja (who is very good on the immediate relevance of the Qur'an, and takes issue with Daniel Pipes on this), and others whose names at the moment escape me. These people are real, not fake, not marionettes of the CIA. They exist, they write, they speak. They are well-versed in combatting the infinite slynesses of taqiyya and kitman, and every variety of apologetics (nicely displayed, I think, in the way Muslims explain away, using a thousand different tricks, Muhammad's sexual intercourse with Aisha when she was 9, and the relevance of that incident for Muslims today).

Then, when you have thoroughly read around at that site, and been directed to relevant articles by it, look at www.chiesa.com, and especially at the articles at that Vatican site by Sandro Magister. Finid out what Cardinal Biffi, once the Pope's man in Istanbul, writes about Islam, and what he warns about. See if you can discover why the Vatican, for so long putty in the hands of the "Arab" Christians who, to protect themselves, practiced the most craven appeasement, and even today promote the Muslim agenda behind clerical collars (Naim Ateek, Hilarion Cappucci, etc.-- they are all of a piece), is slowly coming to realize that the attempt to buy time by essentially throwing Israel to the wolves was not working, and that Islam cannot be appeased, and that the situation within Europe itself is perilous, and coming close to a tipping point.

And once that has been done, should you have the scales drop from your eyes, and feel like coming back here to Jihadwatch and actually taking seriously, and in good faith, what those posting -- yes, including people posting from Israel, posting even from whatever red-cow-raising Al-Aksa threatening Gaza settlement I made up for rhetorical purposes may exist -- have to say, as long as they are logical, as long as they make legitimate use of the evidence, and are not engaged in highly selective and distorted use of that evidence, then, as John Travolta used to say in his pre-scientology days, welcome back, Kotter.

But please spare us, or at least spare me (I am, after all, 98 years old) -- this pious interfaith-racket stuff; I just can't stand any more of it. Excerpts such as the one quoted by you in this latest posting, of the most obvious, most treacly, most phony blend of the "why-can't-we-all-get-along-just-as-soon-as-you-Christians-try-just-try-to-undestand-the-wonderfulness-of-Islam, a kind of Rodney-King-meets-Prince-Hassan's-Dialogue-of-Civilisations absurdity that, after all that has happened, after all that we know, after what happened in the world yesterday, is happening today in that same world, and will undoubtedly happen tomorrow in that same whirling world, really has got to be put out of its rhetorical misery. "Muslim militants have turned to

And if you want to demonstrate that bygones are bygones, here's an idea: Send cash, check, or money order to Robert Spencer's little electronic begging-bowl at the site, asking him to please forward your personal doremi to HF so as to assuage him, and so that HF may further his education by buying a few more of Patricia Crone's excellent books on early Islam (do look her up), and a bottle of Nuits St.-Georges to accompany his reading. Then we can both put our guns back in our respective holsters, podnuh. I don't know about you, but ah'm plumb tuckered out, so ah'm goin' in to set a spell.

Since the P.A. was foolishly given so much power by the Israelis (under duress, of course), the Christian Arab population has declined to about 2.5% of the total Arab population in P.A. areas. Some Christian Arabs have managed to obtain Isareli citizenship; most have not, and are emigrating as best they can. Though they may echo the anti-Israel sentiments of the Muslims, and even promote the Muslim agenda (think of Naim Ateek, Hanan Ashrawi -- for a while, the great and good friend of Peter Jennings, the gunrunning, icon-stealing Bishop Hilarion Cappucci, and others, exhibiting all the classic features of internalized dhimmitude and desire to curry favor with more powerful circumambient Muslims)--they are getting out.

If Israel goes under, whatever the fate of its people, it is clear that the Muslims will have no real need even to pretend to curry favor with the Christians left in the Holy Land, and Muslim triumphalism will be given such a boost by the victory over the Jews of Israel, that the Jihad that had, for a time, focussed on Israel can turn its full volume of hate and aggression against remaining Christians in the Middle East (Copts in Egypt, Christians in Iraq and Lebanon and some in Jordan), as well as continuing to prevent European resolve to do something about Muslim demographic conquest from within.

I think that without some non-Muslim Western presence in the Holy Land under the protectionof the State of Israel (unless the American government wants to send a few hundred thousand troops stationed say, permanently in the area -- perhaps in the Sinai, which could simply be demanded from Egypt, or seized without so much as a by-your-leave) the West will have to support Israel as the guarantor of free access to all non-Muslim holy sites (which is to say, to everything except the Byzantine martyrium of the Dome of the Rock, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque). Perhaps you do not agree that a physical presence of the West is necessary, and non-Muslim control of the area, because you think we can relly on the present assurances of Muslims who have a 1350-year track record of destroying Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, and Hindu sites (the Bamiyan Buddhas were blown up just a few years ago; the Tomb of Joseph just a year or two ago; 2,300 churches destroyed in Indonesia in 2003; 86 Orthodox churches destroyed a few months ago in Kosovo; tens of thousands of Buddhist and Hindu temples destroyed all over India, over the centuries of Muslim rule). Just how much evidence does one need?

2) the greatest modern journalist, in the high sense, in modern Italy, Indro Montanelli (who died, at 91, four years ago at 91), wrote a few years before his death in his celebrated page, the "Stanza di Montanelli" in the Corriere della Sera, that the rebirth of the Jewish state was the best thing to happen in the 20th century -- and then Montanelli corrected himself, and said -- no, actually it was probably the only good thing to come out of the twentieth century. My sentiments come close.

If, after all we know now about the history of the treatment of the Jews, the most persecuted tribe in human history (and please see, for the European side of this, the Roman Catholic Scots historian Malcolm Hay, whose impassioned book "Europe and the Jews" has recently been reprinted, after years of being out-of-print), whose misfortune it has been to have been driven by the adherents of one monotheism, Islam, out of its own land, and forced to live, statelessly and helplessly, in both Christian and Muslim lands where both persecution of the well-known European variety, and dhimmitude in the Muslim lands, more or less guaranteed, in either domain, and for many centuries, degradation, humiliation, and permanent insecurity.

The Nazi murders, in which the populations of many countries participated, some of them substantially and enthusiastically, eliminated from Europe not only many Jews, but many of the very best (morally best, intellectually best) non-Jews who joined various Resistance movements, and whose families, whose backgrounds, were the kind that had offered traditional sympathy to the Jews.

I claim that the hidden, still largely uncomprehensible, aftereffects of World War II, did enormous damage -- subconscious, or subterranean, or subliminal, or sub-something -- to the psyche of European man. He could not even come to grips with, admit freely, examine fully, the full horror of what had taken place, until many decades past. It just couldn't be done. There had to be some kind of slow coming to terms. When one wonders why what we know about now, and write about, and teach in schools, took so long to come to the surface, no doubt the haste with which the Cold War arrived, and the unseemliness with which Nazis (always called "former Nazis") were doubtfully enrolled in that Cold War (for a study of just how few Nazi murderers were punished, and how many led successful lives in Germany, see the study by T. H. Tetens that deserves to be reprinted, and read: "The New Germany and the Old Nazis." Or try to find a used copy). Civilizations exist, and thrive, as long as their morale is kept up, as long as they understand their reason for being, as long as, if I may use an awkward metaphor, they can look at themselves in the mirror, in the morning. If Israel goes under, after the heroic efforts of those who settled there, who reclaimed the land (see the study of the fantastic efforts made at land reclamation by the Jewish pioneers, "Palestine: Land of Promise" by Walter Clay Lowdermilk, a Rhodes Scholar out of Liberty, North Carolina, and one of the greatest agronomists of his day), after all the efforts, all the suffering, all the tremendous achievements, if this happens because of the pusillanimity of the EU leaders, or of the slow stillicide of vilifcation that has come spewing forth from the BBC, Agence France Presse, and the assorted hirelings of the Arabs -- ex-ambassadors, ex-CIA agents, professors of Middle Eastern studies for hire to promote Islam and hide its real tenets -- if, as I say, this were to happen, a great many thinking people, and very few of them Jewish, could stand to look at themselves in the mirror, in the morning.

And those are the two main reasons (yes, there are others, including the fact that the loss of Israel will not sate but whet Muslim ambitions, and cause renewed efforts everywhere to expand the Jihad, and consolidate its gains) is why I say that if Israel goes under, after all that has happened and that every educated person knows has happened, in the death camps and in all that led up, in the Western psyche, to those death camps, if Israel is now put to death, it will not be recreated, resurrected, and Western civilization may be dealt a mortal blow from which it will not recover.

Next question.

Othello is a Moor, but the whole point is that he is NOT a Muslim; he is in the service of the Venetians against the Ottoman Muslims. Remember how he puts it: "Say, that in Aleppo once/Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk/Beat a Venetian and traduced the state/I took by the throat the circumcised dog/And smote him thus." That's from memory; would you, Phil, or the antisemitic punster like some more from the Shakespeare Amateur Theatrical Society here at Red Cow Farms?

Othello was in the employ of the Christians of Venice (who, admittedly, didn't do much in 1458, during the Fall of Constantinople, for complicated reasons), and he falls heavily for that Venetian girl Desdemona, tupping his white ewe, she of the handkerchief, and the putting-out of the light, and all the immortal rest of it. "The time, the place, the torture." It is Othello who, having decided in his grief to give up his commission, declares: "Farewell, the tranquil mind! Farewell content! Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars/That make ambition virtue!" Note, please, prosodists that you may be when not worshipping Mammon, the unusual scansion, a pyrrhic followed by a spondee in the four syllables under discussion: "and the big wars."

If, Phil, you don't know what Ataturk achieved, fine. Mr. Carson has kindly agreed to set you straight. If you, Kirk, want to continue the absurd pretense that you remain open to the claims of logic and evidence -- and I offered you that chance, sportingly -- you who are now going off to "one by one" meet Muslims, and change their minds -- buona notte, buster. Write if it works.

But for god's sake, tutti quanti, brush up your Shakespeare. And here's a little question to consider: could Shakespeare, or anyone remotely like Shakespeare, with his wit and intelligence and humor and flair and superhuman understanding and sympathy and pity, conceivably have been produced by, or allowed to flourish under, any civilisation where Islam ruled the roost? Eh?