Note from Robert Spencer:
A revealing report on the Fawaz Damra case from the href="http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1085736922222790.xml">Cleveland Plain Dealer. How could Damra's statements about terrorism be irrelevant and prejudicial to a case about his past links to terrorism?

The "wealth" of the Saudis that has bought up hirelings among the Western ambassadors (see the list of recent signatories to the twin documents of disgrace, by a host of such hirelings in both America and England, which simply parrot Arab insistence that as soon as the little matter of Israel is cleared up to Arab satisfaction, there will be no further disruption in the otherwise perfectly harmonious relations between Islam and the rest of the world), is another instrument.

The Jihad has never disappeared from the world; the 19th and 20th centuries are full of Jihads. But how few of them are known. Think of the list of unknown Jihads: that of Abdel Kader in Algeria, or the 1869 Patna Conspiracy, a Jihad that was delcared specifically against the Sikhs, and later extended to the Hindus; or the Jihad of Muslim Turks and Kurds against the "giavour" (the word keeps coming up, as being uttered by the murdering Muslims, in every Armenian survivor's account), or "Infidel" Armenians; the Jihad formally declared in 1915, and not released, by the British Foreign Office, until just a few years ago. The Jihad against Israel, an absolutely classic case -- for what is Israel if not an Infidel sovereign state on land which is particularly important to recover as it was once part of dar al-Islam.

The greatest weapon of Jihad today, in order to spread Islam and ultimately to subjugate the non-Muslims, is the demographic invasion. Everything that makes that invasion easier, everything that makes the conduct of a Muslim life -- the mosques and madrasas, funded by Saudi Arabia -- more accessible, is a danger to non-Muslims.

It is entirely possible that terrorism will die down, or that non-Muslims will adjust to a low level. So what? That does not end, for nothing can end, the ideology of Jihad. That is the most fearful prospect: the slow steady takeover through migration, overbreeding, and within the dar al-Harb, since every Muslim is to be engaged in missionary activity, daw'a, which has particular appeal to the psychically and economically marginal -- those who wish to find a community that will endow their own lives with meaning, and also serve as a vehicle for their resentments and alientation. Islam fits the bill.

Damra's statement might be reversed: "if what they mean by terrorism is Jihad, then we are terrorists." It is Jihad itself that represents the threat, and not merely terrorism. When he says that those who do not go to fight, but supply money, are Jihadis, he is right. And those who build madrasas, mosques, fight tooth and nail against any inquiry into the nature of Islam, its tenets and its history, are also engaged in Jihad -- whether or not they are Muslims. All those who engage in Jihad are a threat, if Jihad is properly understood, and Islam as a system of irrational mental constraint is properly understood, to all that is best in civilization: unfettered artistic expression (limited in Islam to calligraphy and architecture, and a handful of poets, most of whom were perilously close to unorthodoxy themselves), and free and skeptical inquiry (there are no Humes, no Spinozas, no Oakeshotts in Islam, and there never can be; it is an entirely closed mental system, which stunts intellectual growth like nothing else).

But would it end the world-wide JIhad? Far from it. Any Muslim triumph like that would lead not to a dying-down of Jihadist influence, but would swell the certainty -- and many Muslims possess that certainty -- that they will, eventually, conquer the entire non-Muslim world.

I think quite the reverse. There is not the slighest evidence that Israel's already dangerous compromises, by giving up land to Egypt, have done anything to make its situation better. Far from it. Those Muslim Arabs who might wish to stay out of the fray, and not enter into violent conflict with Israel -- as King Hussein of Jordan wished to remain out of the Six Day War -- must have, as their excuse, the overwhelming military superiority of Israel. It must not only exist, but must be obvious to everyone. Then, and only then, can the excuse of darura, or necessity, be invokved for non-participation in the violent Jihad, qital.

If Israel is perceived to be weakened through further reduction in size (it is now about 1/1000th the size of the members of the Arab League), with the ratio of length-of-borders to land area already the highest in the world, and a mere 8 airfields, all within Katyusha range, it will be absolutely impossible to invoke the darura or necessity argument.

Furthermore, imagine a successful assault on Israel. Do you think that would simply sate the appetite? I think it would, on the contrary, whet the appetite for Jihad.

Western Europe countries are now led by elites which have done a number of awful things to their own peoples and own civilizations.They have permitted millions of Muslims to settle, and to breed, and overbreed, in their midst. The polities and peoples of Western Europe are now faced with lives that will be inceasingly expensive (the cost of monitoring those mosques, those madrasas, those banlieus, and protecting synagogues, churches, airports, metros, government offices, schools, etc.), unpleasant (having a hostile population living among you, one that is taught, and re-taught, its hostility by its sacred texts and the religious authorities), and dangerous (Madrid? Plots uncovered in Strasbourg? In Manchester? In London? In Turin? In Milan? In Hamburg? In Barcelona? Fill up the page, printer). Their elites, and the EU panjandrums, have done this to them. They cannot admit it to themselves. They could not face, or live with, the consquences. So they pretend that the problem is not Islam itself but the "integration" of Muslims into Western society. What nonsense. It is Islam, the belief-system of Islam as it has been for 1350 years, as it has shown what Believers make of it from Spain to the Philippines over those 1350 years.

Anyone who thinks that the Arab-Israeli conflict can be "resolved" short of Israel's disappearance is ignorant -- perhaps wilfully so -- of Islam. This includes quite a few Israelis, who cannot face the prospect of a permanent Jihad, and who have themselves ignored the many fine scholars of Islam -- Moshe Sharon, Raphael Israeli, others come to mind -- who point out the unpleasant truth.

One has only to note the central significance, in Muslim jurisprudence, of Muhammad's Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya. It does not matter whether or not Muhammad really existed (I suspect he did not). What matters are the lessons of his own life, for everything he did is taken as the model, the Way. By the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyaa, made in 628 A.D. with the Meccans, Muhammad bought time to strengthen his side. When, 18 months later, he felt sufficiently strong, he breached the agreement on a flimsy pretext (that it was flimsy, that his breach was deliberate, can be seen in the Muslim commentaries themselves, which laud the deceptive brilliance of Muhammmad, who is reported to have said that "war is deception" and certainly Muslims have taken that statement to heart). According to every authority on Muslim rules for dealing with Infidels, it is impossible to make a permanent peace treaty with Infidels. If such were possible, then the required goal of subjugating all lands to Islam could not be achieved. Arafat mentioned the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya, to Muslim audiences, on at least five separate occasions (he was caught on tape doing so, to an audience of Muslims in Johanneseburg). Now all of this can be found laid out, quite well, in Majid Khadduri's The Law of War and Peace in Islam (Johns Hopkins Press). The book, however, is out-of-print but libraries have it. See also, if you read French, Antoine Fattal's great study of the treatement of Christians and Jews under Islam, Le statut legal des non-musulmans en pays d'Islam -- you can order it from the Librairie Orientale in Beirut and also from Khuttab booksellers).

Everyone is squirming around, hoping that somehow we can do something -- throw Israel to the wolves, fall all over ourselves rebuilding the Middle East so that "poverty" (would that be the same "poverty" from which Mohammad Atta, Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, whose great-uncle was Azzam Pasha, and all the other jeunesse doree of the Islamic world that have given their lives meaning by engaging in violent jihad-- would it be that "poverty" that causes all our current problems?) no longer besets them.

The only way is a very different way. Educate non-Muslims. Prepare a strategy that is more various, more cunning, more complete than the mere use of military force. Do everything to limit Muslim migration to dar al-Harb. Do everything to make sure that any ethnic divisions (hatred of Turks for Arabs, of Persians for Arabs, of Kurds for Arabs, and the contempt and hatred of Arabs for all non-Arab Muslims, for according to the Arabs they are the "first of people" and "in whose language the Qur'an was given") is fully exploited. Understand that whatever it costs in dollars, a barrel of oil costs far more because that money goes to fund the Jihad, and that taxes, energy conservation, whatever it takes to diminish Arab and Muslim oil revenues must be done. The propaganda war has not even begun on the side of Infidels, for our government seems to be tying itself in knots not to say the obvious; the consquent confusion and demoralization of Infidels is dangerous. If it cannot bring itself forthrightly to discuss Islam, then at the very least let it come out against "only those Mulims who support the JIhad by any and all means." Nudge, nudge, wink, wink -- since, of course, that means all Believers, and any Muslim who does NOT believe in Jihad (and that non-belief will, I'm afraid, have to be clearly demonstrated, given the record of taqiyaa and kitman) is not really a full-fledged Muslim at all. And give great attention to, and support to the fullest, all ex-Muslims who are able to articulate their disenchantment; it is they who know best the secrets of Islam, its real teachings, its real attitudes toward non-Muslims, and its intellectual constraints on thought.

America - Learn to Fix it.

And since Mahmoud is talking about Native Americans, let me offer him a little quiz. In Israel, or Judea and Samaria (renamed the "West Bank" only in 1948) who are the "Native Americans" and who the imperialist conquerors? If you check your Qur'an, you will see that the Promised Land was indeed promised to the Jews. And there is a certain record of the development, over many centuries, of their civilisation in that area. The return of modern Zionists, who sought only permission to buy land (and to be entrusted with public, i.e. state, and waste land), seem to be to be like a modern Indian tribe, wishing only to return to its historic home.

And what would one think if the United States, with all of its territory, made incessant war on a tiny Indian tribe merely because it had attempted, after wandering the world and suffering as the most persecuted tribe in human history, to return to, say, the woods of the upper MIddle East, or the southwest, and sought over many decades to buy land, to reclaim the area that had fallen into ruin and desolation, and yet, at every step, the entire United States was determined to make war on that tiny Indian tribe. I know whose side I would be on.

Mahmoud, of course, does not care about which people are tiny and which are vast. Lands belong to Allah. Jews are non-Believers. They are entitled, like Christians and other non-Muslims, to nothing. And even if they rescued Bosnian Muslims, even if they perform endless acts of good will toward those Muslims who will accept it, such as aid to Turkey during its earthquake, the Israelis find that for the most adamant Muslims, it means nothing. It is precisely the same with the Americans in Iraq. No matter what a deed was performed in eliminating Saddam Hussein's regime, and no matter how much aid we (crazily) pour into Iraq, the outstanding feature of the Iraqi reaction is one of utter ingratitude -- a reaction which the American soldiers have taken note of, and on their return, they will form a core of people unwilling to accept the nonsense of Muslim apologists. That, at least, is one good result of the unnecessary "Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations" Project. Many captains, majors, and colonels are learning about Islam. I have reason to believe that many of them are now turning to sites such as www.jihadwatch.org, www.dhimmitude.org, www.secularislam.org, to find out just what Islam is all about -- having experienced the full volume of its welcome for Infidels, they are not going to be as prone to being fooled as have some in Washington without direct experience of Muslim peoples, their hysteria, their prevarications, their deceptionhs, their passivity ("Wake me when it's over" is about the best one can expect from Iraqis today -- hoping America will transform their country, and make it a turnkey operation).

The Muslims made a mistake on 9/11 and in the period since. They ought not to have bombed, but just quietly kept migrating, flowing into the Western world, building mosques, building madrasas. But now, one suspects, it is too late. Too many cats out of too many bags. Even the faulty analyses of Bernard Lewis, or of Fouad Ajami (who never touches Islam, brave and forthright as he otherwise may be -- he always ascribes the various problems to pan-Arabism or some such; even the most secular Arab cannot publicly bring himself to tell home truths about the belief-system of Islam -- extraordinary inhibitions and fears abound).