Religious Practice Versus Imposition

Wednesday

Earlier tonight an acquaintance said he had heard that during Ramadan in Dearborn, Michigan, there's a high school football team that does their football practice from 11:00 p.m. until 4:00 a.m. because some of the devout Muslim players can't eat or drink anything during the daylight. He said this without any judgment at all. It looked like he felt absolutely neutral about it.

I said, "In other words, the Muslims are imposing their practices on non-Muslims." I said it with a face that clearly displayed disapproval.

He was casually dismissive. "Well, other religions do crazy stuff too," he said.

I said, "They don't impose their stuff on me. Are there religious people who impose something on you? Or try to get you to grant a concession? Or try to make your values yield to theirs? To practice a religion is personal and private. If someone wants to go without food, what do I care? They can go right ahead. But when it impinges on people who are not members of the religion, that's no longer religious. It's political. So all the high school students who want to play football at that school have to practice in the middle of the night because Muslims are thrusting their Islamic practice into the non-Islamic public sphere. Those non-Muslim kids have to disrupt their normal sleep cycle because the Muslims won't bend and the non-Muslims will. And step by step, inch by inch, orthodox Muslims gain one concession after another as our tolerant culture yields to their intolerant culture. Is that okay with you? It's not okay with me."

I had to leave, but this brief conversation inserted an idea I got from Bill Warner. And my acquaintance looked like he heard something he had never even thought about. I wish I'd had time to explain to him that religious supremacism is the belief that a particular religion is superior to others and entitles members of the religion to control or dominate non-members. That's what these Muslim football players were doing.

But maybe it was better that I didn't go into any more detail. Sometimes less is better. Sometimes it's actually more effective to let things sink in a little at a time.

Given how many people are becoming aware of the disturbing nature of Islamic texts, these kinds of brief conversations must be taking place all over the free world. Let's keep it up. We should think in terms of small bits and long campaigns.

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Can We Stop This Creeping Jihad?

Sunday

CAIR executive director, Nihad Awad
The following is a letter by Edward Kesler, published on July 28, 2013 in the Reader's Forum of the Tribune Star.

Admittedly, Americans have enormous difficulty realizing that a religion, Islam, is a threat to our society. Perhaps untiring efforts to awaken the public is a fool’s errand. Most readers of any newspaper will not research this issue for themselves. Understanding the task is daunting. It may be useful to examine groups the media believes purportedly speak for Muslims in the U.S.

In the news recently is the Muslim Brotherhood. Some Americans realize the Brotherhood controlled the Egyptian government until the last few weeks. Fewer understand this is not a “political party” but a movement dedicated to world domination. Simply reading the Muslim Brotherhood’s motto should sound alarms for all of us.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 after the collapse of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. A primary goal was to re-establish a caliphate that could be extended worldwide. The founders, ardent admirers of Hitler, translated “Mein Kampf” into Arabic. The Muslim religious leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem, spent many years in Germany supporting and observing death camp operations and planning the same for the Muslim world. Rommel’s defeat at El-Alamein ended the plan.

The Jihad (terrorist) group Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is the government of Gaza. In the United States the Brotherhood is the power and financing arm behind the Islamic Society of North America (headquartered in nearby Plainfield), the Muslim Students Association, the International Institute for Islamic Thought and many others.

Perhaps most notably, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, portrayed as a Muslim civil rights organization, is not only connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, but was also an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation money laundering case. The foundation was convicted of funneling money to Hamas to aid in the terror against Israel.

These are the “moderates” with whom this president’s administration and, to some extent, the previous two administrations, have attempted to coexist. In this administration, members of the Brotherhood and various other Islamist groups have made deep inroads into the halls of power.

Is it too late to stop the creeping social jihad being waged against us, even at the highest levels of our government?

— Edward Kesler, West Terre Haute

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ACT! for America Wins Victories

Saturday

If you haven't yet signed up for ACT! for America's email updates, it's time to do yourself the favor. Their updates are top quality, they often give you action alerts to let you know how to take a specific immediate action that will make a difference, and sometimes their reports include good news, like the one they sent out yesterday. Here's what it said:

This year, the governor of Oklahoma signed into law American Laws for American Courts (ALAC) legislation.

The Alabama legislature passed ALAC and has sent it to the voters for approval in 2014 to add ALAC to the state constitution.

South Dakota passed the Free Speech Defense Act.

A school board in Northern Virginia rejected a charter school application from a group affiliated with the Islamist Gulen Movement.

A principal in Washington state removed a flawed, biased textbook from the school.

Kansas said "no" to sharia law and passed anti-Female Genital Mutilation legislation.

And ACT! for America helped make every one of these 2013 victories possible.

They have the largest national security grassroots citizen action network in the country, with over 260,000 members and 800 chapters, and growing.

They've got chapters now in other countries too: Argentina, Canada, Australia, Britain, India, Germany, etc. Sign up for their email updates here.

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They Oppressed the Wrong Woman

Friday

Waris Dirie
Waris Dirie was born in the desert of Somalia. Her family were Muslim nomads. When she was 13 years old, her father announced to her he'd found her a husband and she would soon be wed. Her "groom to be" was an old man. She protested and begged, but the old man had already paid her father, so the deal was done.

The next morning, before her father awoke, she ran away. She took off into the desert knowing only that somewhere was a city named Mogadishu and somewhere in that city she had an aunt. Amazingly, after a very difficult journey, she found her aunt and stayed with her a short time. Then one of her uncles became the Somalian ambassador to the UK and would be stationed in London. Waris begged her uncle to take her with him to be a maid. He consented.

She eventually became a fashion model whose face adorned the covers of many glamour magazines.

At one point in her career, Waris had been interviewed many times. The interviews were always about how a barefoot Somalian nomad became a famous model. But one day as another of these interviews was beginning, Waris took a bold step. She said the rags to riches story had already been told. "Would you like a real story?" she asked.

She told the interviewer about the day she experienced female genital mutilation (FGM), an ancient practice of removing a woman's clitoris, labia minora, and labia majora. Waris was then sewn up with a small hole for urination, which is usually how it's done. This procedure guarantees that she will be a virgin when she gets married, and it ensures she will not feel pleasure during sex (and thus helps prevent infidelity). A girl is not considered marriageable if she is "uncut" — she is considered no better than a whore, so parents make sure she undergoes FGM.

The interviewer was moved and shaken by Waris's story. And the magazine had the guts to print it. This was the beginning of an increasing global awareness of FGM and a movement to do away with it, in the same way that binding girl's feet was banned in China in the early 1900s. Already several countries have committed themselves to eradicating the practice.

Banning FGM would not only save millions of girls from the horror, pain, and death caused by this barbaric practice (it is done to 8,000 girls a day worldwide, with one out of four girls dying from the procedure), it would also help to marginalize, discredit, and disempower orthodox Islam.

The practice is over 4000 years old, and it was taken for granted during Muhammad's lifetime that all women underwent FGM, so he mentioned it a few times as a forgone conclusion, and his mention was written down, so it has now been enshrined in Islamic doctrine as an Islamic practice. Fundamentalists want it to continue because whatever Muhammad said is right for all time.

Banning the procedure would stop this orthodox practice, which would help disempower the fundamentalism itself. Everywhere we can prevent an orthodox practice, like covering women or beating them for disobedience or FGM, we weaken the forces of orthodoxy. If some Islamic fundamentals can be abandoned or seen as wrong, other fundamentals might be more easily abandoned as well.

I encourage you to help your friends and family become aware of FGM. You don't even have to mention the word "Islam." Read Waris's story in her excellent book, Desert Flower (written with Cathleen Miller). And then share the book with people you know. Talk it up. And watch National Geographic's movie by the same name and share that too. This is a way to help innocent girls, a way to pit humanistic empathy against Islamic domination, and a way to get people involved in marginalizing orthodox Islam — people who might never otherwise get involved. The Islamic oppression of women can and should be stopped. Let's start by saving orthodox Islam's weakest and most innocent victims: Girls.

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Why Talk About Islam? Shouldn't We Talk Specifically About "Extremists?"

Thursday

One of our articles, Will It Stop Terrorism To Build Schools?, received a comment and I wanted to talk about it here because the point of view of the commenter is one of the most important barriers preventing the West from successfully defending itself against Islam's relentless encroachment.

In other words, if the issues the commenter brought up are not answered and answered well, I believe Islam will successfully Islamize the West. My answer (below) may not be complete enough, but it's a start, and I hope others will help out by adding their points in the comments to this post. So here goes...

The commenter's name was Ekblad. His first comment was, "Seems to me that you yourself, sir, is promoting hatred."

My response was, "Let me get this straight, Ekblad: Because I stated a fact: 'The primary doctrinal source of Islam, the Qur'an, teaches hatred and encourages violence against non-Muslims,' that means
I'm promoting hatred?

"Who do I recommend hatred toward? Nobody, as far as I can tell. But if you quote a statement I have made that recommends people hate somebody, please let me know so I can correct it.

"Otherwise, what I am concerned with is a particular DOCTRINE. That is, a collection of written teachings. My main message is that anyone following those teachings will be necessarily dangerous to non-Muslims, and we non-Muslims best be aware of that fact and alter our policies accordingly. I'm talking about immigration policies, sedition laws, and our policies of negotiating with anyone following those teachings. I'm talking about policies toward allowing madrassas that teach these ideas to children, and I'm talking about policies toward what is said in mosques. Read more about that here.

"Many people do not know that inside the Qur'an are passages urging hatred toward Jews and Christians, and even greater hatred for those of us who are neither, and there are Muslims around the world who take these passages seriously and follow the teachings religiously.

"Do you recommend that we infidels simply stop talking about these teachings? Do you repudiate these teachings? Which passages of the Qur'an do you reject? Let's hear it, Ekblad."

Ekblad had this response:

"From your defensive tone I surmise your intention is in fact not to promote hatred. In that case I suggest you separate the Qur'an texts from its implementations, as we would do with Old Testament texts of similar content.

"An honest assessment of the implementation would no doubt result in the conclusion that the jihadists represent a tiny minority position within the Muslim world — and one that simply thrives on the kind of violence that has been the main tactic against them for too long.

"Bundling these extremists and their extreme interpretation of the Qur'an with all Qur'an followers is unfair and counterproductive.

"Greg Mortenson offers in my opinion a much more adequate and appropriate response towards the Muslim world, an attitude based on compassion for peoples living under difficult situations, regardless of creed."

Here is my response to that:

I think what you're bringing up here, Ekblad, is one of the most important issues non-Muslims will have to come to grips with in this century. Namely, is it legitimate to warn against the contents of the Qur'an and the Hadith? Or is wrong to do so? Is it being unfair to those who do not abide by
every teaching of the Islamic doctrine?

I'm glad you responded, Ekblad. I was hoping for an opportunity to go into detail about this. To call my tone "defensive" seems oddly hostile. The reason I'm explaining so much to you is not only to answer you, but to answer your questions for the many others who will read this. And by the way, you didn't answer
my question, which I still put to you: Are there any passages in the Qur'an that you repudiate?

But back to the main issue. I'm going to take your points one at a time. First you suggest we separate Qur'an texts from what people do with those texts (how they implement them). To which I would reply: I do exactly that. In the article you are taking exception to, I wrote, "Islamic terrorism (the implementation) has its roots in the ideology of Islam (the texts)."

I went on to say, "The primary doctrinal source of Islam, the Qur'an, teaches hatred and encourages violence against non-Muslims." Which is true. If you haven't read the Qur'an, I urge you to read it cover to cover as I have and find out for yourself. It is not difficult to read. Find out more about reading the Qur'an here. The passages are not hard to decipher. It is not written in vague language. It is vigorous and direct. And it does, very straightforwardly, encourage intolerance and violence against non-Muslims.

You should read it yourself before criticizing someone who talks about what's in it.


Your next point is that Jihadis are only a small minority of Muslims. If you mean
violent Jihadis, I concede that point, although the minority who support the violence is much larger than most non-Muslims would guess (or feel glad about), and when you add up the violence worldwide, as Glen Reinsford does, this small minority of Muslims causes a great deal of carnage. But violent jihad is only one small part of the problem. There is a much larger and more dangerous issue — the political nature of Islam.

Islamic teachings direct Muslims to commit violence against non-Muslims, but the teachings do far more than that, and the options for waging jihad against non-Muslims are enormous. Violence is only one of many ways to wage jihad.

The political goal of Islam is universal Shari'a law. Political action toward that goal is a religious duty for a Muslim. One way a Muslim can work toward that goal is to use violence to strike terror into the hearts of non-Muslims. Or to intimidate non-Muslims into refraining from any criticism of Islam, as the "cartoon riots" tried to do (and in some ways they succeeded). Another way to wage jihad is to organize a YouTube video-banning project. If YouTube gets enough complaints about a video, YouTube makes the video unavailable to view. Muslims around the world have successfully banned many videos that were critical of Islamic teachings. Another way to wage jihad is to create an organization such as the Council of American-Islamic Relations and bring lawsuits against people who criticize Islam. Another way to wage jihad is to infiltrate the "chaplain system" of the penal system and try to convert prisoners to Jihadis.

The list goes on and on. All of these things and many more are being done in the United States and Europe. Jihad is being waged on so many fronts at once, it is astonishing. And frightening. The end-goal of all of these efforts is to establish Shari'a law — a seventh century form of law which removes human rights from women, among many other drawbacks.

Warren Mendleson said at a recent press conference:

Sharia "requires non-Muslims to live as dhimmis, second-class citizens... and be treated in a brutal and demeaning way... it mandates discrimination against women and non-Muslims, demands the murder of homosexuals, adulterers, and apostates, and requires violent jihad against all infidels, including Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and others." He continued that "Sharia law is seditious because it calls for the violent overthrow of governments like the United States and the replacement of democratic Constitutional law with its own bureaucratic code." He indicated that the nations practicing Sharia law today are "some of the most oppressive regimes in the world."

Another speaker at the same press conference, Wendy Wright, said:

In Shari'a law, "husbands can use physical force against their wives, the early forced marriage of a girl as young as nine, that men can have multiple marriages and multiple wives, that men can have the right of custody of children and mothers have no rights of custody, that homosexuals should be stoned to death, that women accused of bringing dishonor to male relatives should be killed."


The teachings of Islam urge followers to establish Shari'a law and to abolish "man-made" governments (such as democracies) so the law of Allah can rule the behavior of all people on earth. That is the goal.

R. James Woolsey, former director of Central Intelligence, commenting on Robert Spencer's book, Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs, wrote:

"Robert Spencer makes a solid case that the major threat to our way of life does not come solely from those radical Islamists who embrace violence and terrorism. It also comes from those who do not accept that they must live side-by-side on a basis of equality with those of other faiths in a civil society and who instead work in multiple ways toward obtaining special standing for Islam in our society and, ultimately, toward theocracy. A vital wake-up call of a book."

So in answer to your question, Ekblad, I do not think it is especially significant or useful to emphasize that Jihadis are a "tiny minority" in the Muslim world.

This is why the core teachings of Islam are relevant and important to non-Muslims. The core teachings of Islam are aiming at the eradication of the values, principles, and way of life non-Muslims care about most. If Islam accomplishes its goal, governments protecting liberty and equality will no longer exist.

Your third point, Ekblad, is that it is unfair and counterproductive to bundle "extremists and their extreme interpretation of the Qur'an with all Qur'an followers." And here we arrive at the core issue. The Qur'an says what it says. It promotes intolerance toward non-Muslims in very direct language which requires no "interpretation." Since we can all read it, and since we couldn't possibly know for sure that at least some of the people who call themselves Muslims have decided not to follow some of those teachings, it is up to
Muslims to declare themselves. It is not up to non-Muslims to avoid offending those liberty-and-equality-loving "Muslims" by assuming they are peace-loving, liberty-loving, and equality-loving people.

That is a big assumption to make for anyone who knows what is in the Qur'an.


This is so important, I want to make this perfectly clear. We non-Muslims can read the Qur'an. We can know what it says. Anyone who calls himself a Muslim, we assume, must believe the Qur'an is the word of Allah, which means he believes in (and is committed to) the passages in the Qur'an. Which means he is potentially dangerous to the liberty and even the survival of non-Muslims. For non-Muslims to have any inkling that a "Muslim" does not follow all the teachings contained in the Qur'an, he would have to tell us which passages he repudiates.

I have yet to hear any Muslim doing so (except the excellent people over at Muslims Against Sharia). In fact, it says in the Qur'an itself a Muslim may not reject or ignore any verses of the Qur'an. So both Muslims and non-Muslims are between a rock and a hard place. I don't know what the ultimate solutions will be for this problem, but I'll tell you what I know will NOT work: For non-Muslims to avoid or ignore or downplay the writings of Islam's most sacred book. For any solution to come about, we all have to be honest about what is written in that book.

I've been studying about this and writing about it for a long time, and I have heard from many Muslims over the years. Almost all of them have said they were "peaceful Muslims." But not one of them has quoted a passage from the Qur'an and said, "I do not and will not ever follow that passage."

What is a non-Muslim to do?

To be on the safe side, a non-Muslim should assume anyone who calls himself a Muslim follows the teachings of the Qur'an. Just as we would assume anyone who calls himself a Christian is following the teachings of the Bible. But as much as people always try to imply the two religions are similar, the Bible is a large collection of writings from many different writers and written at different times in history. Its message is not nearly as clear-cut as the Qur'an's message. And the Bible does not give its followers a political agenda. It does not explicitly tell its followers how to treat non-Christians.

For those and many other reasons, non-believers such as myself have no need to be as wary of Christians as we need to be of Muslims (read more about that here). This may not be "fair" to those Muslims who choose to ignore particular teachings in the Qur'an, but this is an important issue of self-preservation and the protection of liberty. We cannot risk such things for the sake of being "nice."

It is up to the
Muslims to say which intolerant and violent verses of the Qur'an they reject. It is not up to the non-Muslims to assume every Muslim rejects those passages until they prove otherwise by their behavior — too much is at stake. "Innocent until proven guilty" is an important legal principle in a criminal court, but it would be foolish to follow the same principle in establishing immigration policies, for example. It would be foolish to assume all mosques in the free world are teaching a peace-loving, democracy-loving (altered) version of the Qur'an until after a generation of mosque-goers prove otherwise, especially when Undercover Mosque and Mapping Sharia have already shown quite otherwise.

The onus is on the Muslims. Sad but true. There is no other sensible way for non-Muslims to deal with our dilemma.

The whole issue is compounded further by the principle of taqiyya, or religious deception. This is an Islamic teaching that says, basically, a Muslim may deceive a non-Muslim if it furthers the goals of Islam. But that is a whole other discussion which I will reserve for another time.

The last point you made, Ekblad, is that Mortenson offers a more appropriate response toward the Muslim world than my response of educating non-Muslims about Islamic teachings. You are saying you think it is a better solution to build non-madrassa schools in Muslim lands than it is to educate non-Muslims about the contents of the Qur'an.

I really like what Mortenson is doing, as I said in the article. But given all the ways jihad is being waged against non-Muslims, Mortenson's solution is only a small part of the response non-Muslims should make. It is an important and worthwhile contribution, but will not solve the problem by itself.

By the way, you said it was unfair to bundle "extremists" and other Muslims together. I assume you mean I "bundled them together" by saying they both use the Qur'an as their holy book. But I didn't make that up. I didn't conjure that idea from thin air. All Muslims — "extremists" and otherwise — profess to follow the teachings of a single book. In other words, I didn't bundle them together. They have bundled
themselves together by professing reverence for the same holy book and Prophet.

You also said it was counterproductive to educate non-Muslims about the unsavory teachings of the Qur'an. And here I finally agree with you. It is counterproductive to the Jihadis' goals for me to inform non-Muslims about Islamic teachings. Non-Muslims are more capable of resisting "Shari'a creep," as it's been called, when they know about it. When non-Muslims are more informed about Islamic teachings, we are better able to see through the taqiyya and to stop giving concessions to Islam's constant pressure. We are better able to defend ourselves.

I wonder how you would answer this question, Ekblad: Does it harm a
truly peaceful Muslim (or Christian, for that matter) to inform non-Muslims and non-Christians that their books contain passages that promote violence?

If the person is truly peaceful, and if the person is truly a Muslim or Christian, then that person must already be fully aware of the passages in their primary holy books, right? Are they
embarrassed by those passages? I doubt it.

So they know about the violent or intolerant passages and they are not embarrassed. Then where is the harm of mentioning those passages?

The only harm I can see is it might make people shy away from
converting to those religions. But that's not a good enough reason to avoid warning the potential victims of the violence.

I see only one other way it harms someone: I can see that it harms the Jihadis' ability to fulfill their plans when people like me go around "giving away the game." It harms the Jihadi goal of imposing universal Shari'a law to let non-Muslims know that's what they want. That is a "harm" I can live with.

I asked you a question before that you have so far avoided answering: What passages in the Qur'an do you reject? Here's another: Are you a Muslim? If not, what do you hope to accomplish by your criticism?

One last thing, Ekblad. Awhile back I wrote a post you might be interested in. I have heard from so many Muslims in the past, I decided to write out my response so I could just send a link next time and save my fingers some wear and tear. Check it out: A Message to Peaceful Muslims.

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Informative Fliers From Crusader's Armory

Monday

The links in the article below are no longer valid. Hopefully the web site will be restored at some point, but for now, I'm sorry to report, the web site is not available.

One of the most knowledgeable people I've been in contact with over the years is the man who runs the Crusader's Armory. I first found out about him in a magazine article about web sites Pakistan blocks its citizens from seeing. I figured if Pakistan doesn't like his work, I might love it. And I was right.

He's got a great collection of fliers to use for educating our fellow non-Muslims about Islam. There are about twenty fliers on the "Fliers to Print" page, which are suitable for use as email attachments. They are designed to be printed double-sided and folded. You can find them here: Crusader's Armory Fliers. Below are a few of my favorites.

Is Islam Peaceful? is intended to be the first in a series of informative pamphlets which you can print, fold and hand out to anyone able to read and willing to learn. The pamphlet makes its case with relevant ayats and ahadith.

Hijacked Has Islam been hijacked??

Can Islam Be Reformed? proves, by reference to the Koran and Hadith, that Islamic doctrine is fixed and immutable.

Can Islam Be Valid? proves, by reference to the Koran, its own fallacy, which exposes Islam as a fraud.

Islamic Misogyny exposes Islam's dim view and mistreatment of women. This flyer should be presented to any western woman who is exposed to Muslim men as a warning against seduction & entrapment!

Embrace Islam And You Will Be Safe. Safe From What? A sample of Muhammad's threats and follow through.

Situational Scripture delves into Allah's special dispensation for Muhammad's lusts for women and plunder.

Terror reveals the ayats and ahadith which sanctify and exemplify terrorism.

His entire web site is a wealth of resources. Check it out and bookmark it for future use: Crusader's Armory.

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The Key to Today's Global Jihad is Oil Money

Sunday

Money is the power behind jihad. This has been the case since Muhammad began his raids on caravans. Look at the graph below. Before Muslims started gaining plunder, their numbers hardly increased for 13 years. Once the money started coming in, Islam's success rate skyrocketed.


Plunder from raids was only part of the cash flow. They also confiscated goods from the Jews they expelled from Medina (and the Jews they slaughtered, taking their women and children as slaves).

The other very crucial part of Islamic cash flow has been jizya taken from dhimmis. Jizya is a tax on Christians and Jews. As long as they remain subordinate and pay their non-Muslim tax, they are allowed to remain Christians and Jews under Islamic law.

All of these forms of income are parasitical. They take wealth from non-Muslims and use it to advance the cause of Islam.

The exploitation of oil's monopoly of the transportation fuel market is the modern version of jizya. The non-Muslims of the world paid OPEC nations over a TRILLION dollars last year (nine of the twelve OPEC nations are Muslim countries). That number should make you sit down to catch your breath. It is a literally incomprehensible sum of money. 

Just like the use of jizya in Muhammad's time, Islamic fundamentalists are draining the wealth of non-Muslims, trying to keep them weak and struggling, while strengthening and enriching their prime directive.

This can be stopped with fuel competition. Petroleum must get so much competition that we strip it of its strategic status. This will cause oil prices to drop, which will cut off money now going to build madrassas around the world and funding suicide bombers and sleeper cells and mosques that promote hatred and violence, etc. — fuel competition will cut off money now funding jihad

Many abundantly available fuels can successfully compete with oil better than ever before (because of the Save the King Foundation). The single most effective thing we can do to marginalize, discredit, and disempower Islamic fundamentalism in the world is to give those fuels a chance to compete with oil in the fuel market

In America, an Open Fuel Standard bill has just been introduced into Congress. It will make fuel competition a reality in the United States. If you are an American citizen, please urge your Representative to co-sponsor this bill. Learn more about it here.

The key to jihad is money. The key to curbing jihad is cutting off the money.

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A Country Without Muslims

Friday

The following article was written by Dr. Mordechai Kedar (Ph.D. Bar-Ilan U.), an Israeli scholar of Arabic and Islam, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University and the director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam at Bar Ilan University in Israel. He specializes in Islamic ideology and movements. He served for 25 years in the IDF Military Intelligence, specializing in Arab political discourse, Arab mass media, Islamic groups and the Syrian domestic arena. A lecturer in Arabic at Bar-Ilan U., he is also an expert on Israeli Arabs. Watch a YouTube video of Dr. Kedar appearing on Al-Jazeera: Jerusalem and Islam. The article below was originally published at Middle East and Terrorism. It was translated into English by Sally Zahav.

____________________

There are countries in the world, mainly in Europe, that are presently undergoing significant cultural transformations as a result of Muslim immigration. France, Germany, Belgium and Holland are interesting examples of cases where immigration from Muslim countries, together with the Muslims’ high fertility rate, effects every area of life.

It is interesting to know that there is a country in the world whose official and public approach to the Muslim matter is totally different. This country is Japan. This country keeps a very low profile on all levels regarding the Muslim matter: On the diplomatic level, senior political figures from Islamic countries almost never visit Japan, and Japanese leaders rarely visit Muslim countries. The relations with Muslim countries are based on concerns such as oil and gas, which Japan imports from some Muslim countries. The official policy of Japan is not to give citizenship to Muslims who come to Japan, and even permits for permanent residency are given sparingly to Muslims.

Japan forbids exhorting people to adopt the religion of Islam (Dawah), and any Muslim who actively encourages conversion to Islam is seen as proselytizing to a foreign and undesirable culture. Few academic institutions teach the Arabic language. It is very difficult to import books of the Qur’an to Japan, and Muslims who come to Japan are usually employees of foreign companies. In Japan there are very few mosques. The official policy of the Japanese authorities is to make every effort not to allow entry to Muslims, even if they are physicians, engineers and managers sent by foreign companies that are active in the region. Japanese society expects Muslim men to pray at home.

Japanese companies seeking foreign workers specifically note that they are not interested in Muslim workers. And any Muslim who does manage to enter Japan will find it very difficult  to rent an apartment. Anywhere a Muslim lives, the neighbors become uneasy. Japan forbids the establishment of Islamic organizations, so setting up Islamic institutions such as mosques and schools is almost impossible. In Tokyo there is only one imam.

In contrast with what is happening in Europe, very few Japanese are drawn to Islam. If a Japanese woman marries a Muslim, she will be considered an outcast by her social and familial environment. There is no application of Shari’a law in Japan. There is some food in Japan that is halal (kosher according to Islamic law) but it is not easy to find it in the supermarket.

The Japanese approach to Muslims is also evidenced by the numbers: in Japan there are 127 million residents, but only ten thousand Muslims, less than one hundredth of a percent. The number of Japanese who have converted is thought to be few. In Japan there are a few tens of thousands of foreign workers who are Muslim, mainly from Pakistan, who have managed to enter Japan as workers with construction companies. However, because of the negative attitude towards Islam they keep a low profile.

There are several reasons for this situation:

First, the Japanese tend to lump all Muslims together as fundamentalists who are unwilling to give up their traditional point of view and adopt modern ways of thinking and behavior. In Japan, Islam is perceived as a strange religion that any intelligent person should avoid.

Second, most Japanese have no religion, but behaviors connected with the Shinto religion along with elements of Buddhism are integrated into national customs. In Japan, religion is connected to the nationalist concept, and prejudices exist towards foreigners whether they are Chinese, Korean, Malaysian or Indonesian, and Westerners don’t escape this phenomenon either. There are those who call this a “developed sense of nationalism” and there are those who call this “racism.” It seems that neither of these is wrong.

And third, the Japanese dismiss the concept of monotheism and faith in an abstract god, because their world concept is apparently connected to the material, not to faith and emotions. It seems that they group Judaism together with Islam. Christianity exists in Japan and is not regarded negatively, apparently because the image of Jesus perceived in Japan is like the images of Buddha and Shinto.

The most interesting thing in Japan’s approach to Islam is the fact that the Japanese do not feel the need to apologize to Muslims for the negative way in which they relate to Islam. They make a clear distinction between their economic interest in resources of oil and gas from Muslim countries, which behooves Japan to maintain good relations with these countries on the one hand, and on the other hand, the Japanese nationalist viewpoints, which see Islam as something that is suitable for others, not for Japan, and therefore the Muslims must remain outside.

Because the Japanese have a gentle temperament and project serenity and tranquility toward foreigners, foreigners tend to relate to the Japanese with politeness and respect. A Japanese diplomat would never raise his voice or speak rudely in the presence of foreigners, therefore foreigners relate to the Japanese with respect, despite their racism and discrimination against Muslims in the matter of immigration. A Japanese official who is presented with an embarrassing question regarding the way the Japanese relate to Muslims, will usually refrain from answering, because he knows that a truthful answer would arouse anger, and he is both unable and unwilling to give an answer that is not true. He will smile but not answer, and if pressed, he will ask for time so that his superiors can answer, while he knows that this answer will never come.

Japan manages to remain a country almost without a Muslim presence because Japan’s negative attitude toward Islam and Muslims pervades every level of the population, from the man in the street to organizations and companies to senior officialdom. In Japan, contrary to the situation in other countries, there are no “human rights” organizations to offer support to Muslims’ claims against the government’s position. In Japan no one illegally smuggles Muslims into the country to earn a few yen, and almost no one gives them the legal support they would  need in order to get permits for temporary or permanent residency or citizenship.

Another thing that helps the Japanese keep Muslim immigration to their shores to a minimum is the Japanese attitude toward the employee and employment. Migrant workers are perceived negatively in Japan, because they take the place of Japanese workers. A Japanese employer feels obligated to employ Japanese workers even if it costs much more than it would to employ foreign workers. The traditional connection between an employee and employer in Japan is much stronger than in the West, and the employer and employee feel a mutual commitment to each other: An employer feels obligated to give his employee a livelihood, and the employee feels obligated to give the employer the fruit of his labor. This situation does not encourage the acceptance of foreign workers, whose commitment to the employers is low.

The fact that the public and the officials are united in their attitude against Muslim immigration has created a sort of iron wall around Japan that Muslims lack both the permission and the capability to overcome. This iron wall silences the world’s criticism of Japan in this matter, because the world understands that there is no point in criticizing the Japanese, since criticism will not convince them to open the gates of Japan to Muslim immigration.

Japan is teaching the whole world an interesting lesson: There is a direct correlation between national heritage and permission to immigrate — a people with a solid and clear national heritage and identity will not allow the unemployed of the world to enter its country; and a people whose cultural heritage and national identity is weak and fragile has no defense mechanisms to prevent a foreign culture from penetrating into its country and its land.

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How to Save the World With a Computer

Thursday

One of the best ways to marginalize, discredit and disempower orthodox Islam is to talk to your friends and family in person. But that's not the only thing you can do. Some good work can be done online to advance the cause.

The first thing I recommend to Americans is to sign up for the ACT! for America email alerts. They give you lots of opportunities to write letters, call, and apply pressure to politicians for anti-Sharia legislation. And they give you good articles to share with your friends and family. Many other countries have similar organizations, like the Q Society in Australia and ACT! for Canada.

Another good thing you can do with your computer is visit web sites or popular blogs or Facebook pages where the "Islam issue" is being discussed, and make persuasive arguments with courtesy and class, give good information, and provide links to more information. I'm not talking about counterjihad sites. I mean anywhere you find Islam being discussed where you could add to the discussion with some real information. You might even sign up for Google News Alerts with the search terms, "counterjihad" or "Islam means peace," and then jump into those conversations.

Another good way to inform people is to go to Yahoo Answers and watch for questions to come up that you can answer with good information about Islam, and make really good answers.

And also adding information to Wikipedia or even writing pages for Wikipedia.

Yahoo Answers and Wikipedia are often the first results on a Google or Bing search, so if you can get something there to answer questions when someone is searching, that's a great place to reach people. The result will be seen and you're providing the information at the perfect time: When someone wants to know.

The place where you will have the most impact is reaching people who are arguing in favor of Islam, or at least against counterjihadists. What we're trying to do (and where our impact will be greatest) is reaching those who don't already know that Islam is not a religion of peace.

It's tough work because sometimes people are hard to reach, but many times people have told me that they were at one time against counterjihadists and thought they had it all wrong but eventually something got through to them and they started investigating it for themselves, and that's the beginning. As soon as someone really starts looking into Islam, they will become counterjihadists, because the facts speak for themselves. Our job is to make the "undecideds" curious enough to see for themselves. This is best done in person. But a close second is what you can do online.

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Article Spotlight

One of the most unusual articles on CitizenWarrior.com is Pleasantville and Islamic Supremacism.

It illustrates the Islamic Supremacist vision by showing the similarity between what happened in the movie, Pleasantville, and what devout fundamentalist Muslims are trying to create in Islamic states like Syria, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia (and ultimately everywhere in the world).

Click here to read the article.


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