Above Thy Deep And Dreamless Sleep…

 
The Baron inisists: my post from The Neighborhood of God on
Christmases past should be hung up to dry here at Gates of Vienna.

A Merry You-Know-What to everyone. And a Happy, Holy Season to those whose hearts are so inclined.


Christmas at Saint Mary’s

Yeah, Christmas at an orphanage sounds bad. But when you’re six years old, what do you know? It was Christmas, just like everybody else.

There are parts that stand out for me. One is the hymns we prepared all through Advent so we’d be ready for Christmas morning (years later, in middle school, the Gregorian choir was my introduction to midnight Mass. Besides getting to stay up till midnight to sing, there was the excitement of singing “Adeste Fideles to a packed house which emitted enough alcohol fumes to share a little cheer with us, way up in the choir loft). There were strong delineations between the hymns we sang and the Christmas carols we prepared for the school party. Somehow they didn’t mix back then.

Then there was the party at the Naval Air Station. Christmas for the Orphans, put on by the sailors. We all got a present from Santa Claus — he smelled like moth balls — and loads of food. The first year’s party was my introduction to black olives. I put a few in my mouth thinking they were grapes — I should have been suspicious since these “grapes” were next to the carrot sticks and celery on a plate, but back then grapes were my passion and I’d never seen an olive. The deeply salted taste surprise scarred my little gustatory psyche for years. I was twenty-three and in an Italian restaurant before I ventured near another one.

That first year, I was young enough to sit on Santa’s lap. When he asked what I wanted for Christmas, I told him — duh — I wanted to go home to my Mother. Big silence. Then he said “sure, sure, little girl,” and passed on to the girl behind me. Since I’d been praying to go home ever since I’d heard about “ask and ye shall receive” I tried it like a key on anyone who gave me the opening — no longer expecting an answer but impelled to ask anyway. At the party, though, with the band playing carols and all the food, I never ruminated long.

On the long ride back to the city on the Navy bus we sang Christmas carols and ate most of the little boxes of hard candy they’d handed out on the way out the door. To this day, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” makes me think of that dark trip on the warm bus, watching the stars first, and later the street lights as we neared the city again. It’s a song I associate with sleepy sweet sadness.

We also had our own Christmas party at school. Everyone got up on stage and did their own solo. Mine was usually “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas,” because of my favorite line: “Neddy wants a pair of skates, he thinks dolls are folly.” “Folly” was so foreign, so antiquated: I loved the idea that someone could think of a way to use “folly” in a song. Now that I consider it, however, when “Good Golly, Miss Molly” came to be written, my favorite word would have fit in well. But it never crossed Little Richard’s lips. He was obviously thinking of other things in his song.

As Christmas drew nearer, we made loooong paper chains, red and green. The paste was white and came in large jars with brushes inside the lid. Later, after we’d hung them on the tree, we got to put up angel hair as the final touch. “Angel hair” is long gone as a Christmas decoration. It was made of fiberglass, finely spun, and little pieces of it became attached to the spots of glue and inevitably created myriad splinters which worked their way into the skin on my arms. I called it “Christmas tree itch”; the agony took days to go away.

The nuns took us shopping the Saturday before Christmas. It’s hard to believe they herded sixty little girls down the street to the dime store near the Florida Theater, but perhaps they took us in groups. Of course, back then, weirdoes weren’t stalking the aisles of stores checking for loose kids, so maybe they did take us all in one fell swoop. We each got a dollar to spend and we deliberated long and carefully over our choices. It really was a dime store. Most years I got my mother my heart’s desire: a box of chocolate covered cherries, which left enough to buy a handkerchief for my brother. One year, though, I splurged and got two sherry glasses for mother and nothing for Mark. I still have one of those glasses, etched with grapes.

There was a nickel to spare from my purchase so I used it to buy some candy for my best friend, Sylvia Rivera. I loved her dark, curly hair. In fact, I deeply envied her dark, curly hair but kept this fault to myself as envy was not a sin I was willing to share in Confession. One day her father arrived from Cuba and took Sylvia out of St. Mary’s. I was totally surprised — so was everyone else — and thus ended one of the world’s great friendships and began my intense dislike of surprises. “She went home” was all we were told. I looked up Cuba in a geography book and found out they grew bananas there. That old devil, envy, popped up again. Not only did she have curly hair, she had a daddy and all the bananas she wanted.

Christmas morning was exciting — that was the big deal. After Mass (you couldn’t break your fast before Communion back then) we came into the dining room to find a stocking on each chair. There were no ordinary Christmas stockings, either. These were the nuns’ own discarded black cotton stockings, too worn to darn anymore, but very long and capacious. Much better than a fancy stocking, which couldn’t have held half of the loot in one of those long black things. And instead of the usual burned oatmeal (the older girls really couldn’t cook worth a damn) we had toast and tea and eggs. It was all rather magical, digging up one delight after another out of those big black bulges and sipping tea like a grown up.

Nativity sceneIn the afternoon I was permitted to go home overnight with my mother. Our tree was tiny — otherwise it wouldn’t have fit in the living room — but the Nativity scene had a tiny yellow light behind the angel. It lit the manger indirectly, as though it was star shine. I was always impressed. Years later, when I had a family of my own, Mother gave me the Nativity set.

The Baron, not as pious as I, would arrange the sheep in compromising positions. I’ve never known a man who could have so much fun with so little material. Little plaster sheep??

Sister Mary Agnes was right about men.

Jolly Old Saint Nicholas, lean your ear this way…

General Musharraf: Then and Now

 
Before the 2000 election, back when President Clinton was the one bombing Islamist terrorists and Osama bin Laden was not yet the monomaniacal obsession of George W. Bush, The New York Times was willing to publish straightforward reporting on the Great Islamic Jihad.

Reporter Jeffrey Goldberg enrolled in the Haqqania madrassa in Pakistan and spent some time there studying the Koran and talking to his fellow students. In June of 2000 he published his report, “Inside Jihad U: The Education of a Holy Warrior”, in the NYT magazine.

Haqqania Madrassa Very few of the students at the Haqqania madrasa study anything but Islamic subjects. There are no world history courses, or math courses, or computer rooms or science labs at the madrasa. The Haqqania madrasa is, in fact, a jihad factory. This does not make it unique in Pakistan. There are one million students studying in the country’s 10,000 or so madrasas, and militant Islam is at the core of most of these schools.

The man has guts to do what he did, since he is Jewish.

     “The only enemy Islam and Christianity have is the Jews,” [the chancellor of the madrassa] said. “It was the Jews who crucified Christ, you know. The Jews are using America to fight Islam. Clinton is a good man, but he’s surrounded by Jews. Madeleine Albright’s father was the founder of Zionism.”
“I’m Jewish,” I told him.
There was a moment’s pause.
“Well, you are most welcome here,” he said.

And indeed he was made welcome. His fellow students seemed to overcome their ideological antipathy towards America, answering his questions and introducing him to their world.

Back then the Taliban were ascendant in neighboring Afghanistan. Mr. Goldberg visited Kandahar and the surrounding region, where many of Haqqani’s alumni ended up.

His conclusion?

     And the secret of the Taliban — the secret of Talibanism — is not found inside the Shrine of the Cloak of Muhammad. The secret is embodied in the two 11-year-olds cocking their fingers at me, and in the taunts of the students in the mosque who raised their hands for Osama bin Laden, and in the person of Mullah Haji Muhammad, my 17-year-old minder in Kandahar who has no interest in any book but the Koran, and in the hundreds of thousands of young men like him at madrasas across Pakistan and Afghanistan. These are poor and impressionable boys kept entirely ignorant of the world and, for that matter, largely ignorant of all but one interpretation of Islam.
They are the perfect jihad machines.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *


But the most interesting parts of the article are the quotes from the President of Pakistan. While Mr. Goldberg was in Pakistan, he had the opportunity to attend General Pervez Musharraf’s birthday party, and spoke with the General at some length.

These quotes were uttered and published before 9-11, and thus are untainted by any hindsight engendered by that fatal day.

Concerning the madrassas:

Very few of these schools are engaged in any kind of militancy. Most of them are very humanitarian. They give food and lodging to these poor boys.

On terrorism:

There is no question that terrorism and jihad are absolutely different. You in the West are allergic to the term “jihad,” but jihad is a tolerant concept.

Concerning American claims that bin Laden is a terrorist:

The Taliban has a stand on this subject. They say they need proof, which has not been given to them. We have asked for proof from the U.S. and we are in the process of getting this. From the legal point of view, I haven’t seen the proof.

Concerning HUM, the terrorist group that hijacked an Indian airliner in 1999:

These people are not terrorists. They are fighting a jihad.

And, perhaps most ominously, on the question of the “Islamic bomb” being the will of Allah:

Yes, we do use the term “Allah’s will.” We do consider God to be the supreme sovereign, and we do consider ourselves to be his representatives on earth. We being his representatives on earth, whatever has to be done is according to the teaching of Allah. But when we say “the will of God,” that doesn’t mean we aren’t using our brains, that we are trigger-happy fundamentalists.

Mind you, this is the man that the current administration considers a “staunch ally in the war on terror.” This is the regime which receives substantial fiscal and military aid from the United States. President Musharraf has been repeatedly fêted at the White House and has received the highest encomiums from President Bush.

I suppose we should be reassured that General Musharraf is not a “trigger-happy fundamentalist.” That’s a relief!

It’s good to know that he can shrewdly and cynically calculate his advantage, patiently awaiting the exact moment to execute the will of Allah.

They Don’t Blink in Denmark

Another update several days ago, from The Brussels Journal, which has been following the cartoon capers in Denmark.

First of all the storms of outrage: The Council of Europe (if you follow the link at Brussels Journal, it appears to be much like the Amercian Council of Churches, only without the spires and belfries. Since Europe is mostly atheist anyway, a Council of Churches there would be three people and maybe a candle) is mouthing the usual clap-trap.

This particular bloviation concerns the Danish government’s refusal to come down on the newspaper and the cartoonists who outraged the Muslims by drawing cartoons of Mohammed (the cartoonists) and then publishing them (the newspaper). One of the numberless “committees” in the Council condemned the “seam of intolerance” in the Danish media. “Seam”? You mean, like a small thread running through a garment so politically correct it stands by itself when you take it off? That “seam”?

The paper had originally decided to run the cartoon contest for two reasons: to aid an author who was having trouble finding anyone willing to illustrate his book, and more importantly, to test the freedom of the press in broaching such a forbidden subject. The Jyllands-Posten is Denmark’s leading newspaper. If they could not speak who would?

You know the rest, or at least parts of it. There were ther usual Muslim international outcries, street protests as far away as Pakistan, and letters of reproof from Arab countries.

     It also resulted in a diplomatic crisis when eleven ambassadors to Copenhagen, including the ambassadors of Bosnia and Turkey, asked to meet Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen for an urgent meeting to discuss the matter. They wanted him to call JP to account for “abusing Islam in the name of democracy, human rights and freedom of expression.”

The Prime Minister wasn’t awed. He told them all that Denmark doesn’t interfere in the freedom of the press:

     “This is a matter of principle. I will not meet with them because it is so crystal clear what principles Danish democracy is built upon that there is no reason to do so,” he said, adding that those who felt offended should bring their grievances to the courts. “As prime minister, I have no power whatsoever to limit the press – nor do I want such power.”

Now the original printing of the cartoons took place in September. Here we are in December and the noise is still going on.

     Egypt cut off its talks on human rights with Denmark while the Egyptian Grand-Imam Muhammad Said Tantawy condemned the Danish government. Tantawy is the religious leader of Egypt, appointed by the Egyptian president, and chancellor of the prestigious al-Azhar University, one of the Sunni Muslims’ most important centers of learning. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticised his Danish colleague during bilateral talks last month.
On 7 December, the 56 member countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) unanimously condemned Denmark for its refusal to act against alleged “islamophobia” in the press. In a letter to the OIC Louise Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, deplored the Danish newspaper’s “lack of respect for the religion of others” and announced that the UN experts on racism would take the matter up with the Danish government.

And would you believe it – of course you would – even Denmark’s own retired diplomats weighed in. Yes, just like their confreres in Foggy Bottom, they sided not with their government, but with international elitist opinion:

     Instead of supporting their government, 22 prominent Danish former career diplomats criticised Prime Minister Rasmussen this week. In an open letter to the national daily Politiken the former diplomats write: “It would have suited democracy in Denmark if the prime minister had met the request for a meeting that was put forth by eleven foreign ambassadors from Muslim countries.” According to the former diplomats Denmark is witnessing “a sharpening of tone, which can only be regarded as persecution of the minority that consists of Muslim citizens.”

Only tiny Hirsi Ali in the Netherlands could be heard above the din, protesting that Prime Minister Rasmussen deserved support in his stand on principle.

And then guess what happened? When Denmark’s Prime Minister refused to back down, the Danish Muslims decided to moderate their demands. Juste, the editor of The Jyllands-Posten welcomed their advances:

     Moderate Muslim groups in Denmark proposed to stop demanding apologies from JP and organise a “celebration” to show the moderate side of Islam. Juste welcomed the idea. “I consider it a chance at reconciliation,” he said. “While it’s important to protect freedom of speech, there is also a need among Danes to gain more knowledge of Islam and Mohammed.”

Lesson? Don’t back down. Muslims, like the rest of us, respect principled strength. Oh, they may not like it, but they respect it.

Danes One, Islamofascists Zero.

The Council Spoke and I Finally Took Notes

Watcher's CouncilWould you believe the dog ate my Watcher’s post from last week? Of course, we don’t have a dog, but there is this cat, Lulu…oh, never mind. I’m just four days late. Okay?

I’m so glad the Education Wonks placed first in the December 16th voting. That there is one scary post. Here’s the meat:

     Today was the 64th Anniversary of the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor. Not surprisingly, my students, being 12 and 13 years old, don’t know much about who attacked who or why…
I was surprised how little they knew about the attacks of September 11th, 2001…
Among the 34 students present, most of the kids recognized the name of Osama Bin Laden, but none could connect him in any way with the attacks on New York and Washington. Come to think of it, none of the students even knew that there had been an attack on the nation’s capital.
Not one single kid could connect Bin Laden with the attack. None recognized the term Al-Qaida.
Only one student even knew that there had been a “plane crash in New York City.”

Jesus, Mary and Joseph! This level of ignorance among twelve year olds is evil. It is malignant. It needs to be addressed more than we need drug programs, or safe sex education, or any of the ancillary time-wasters these kids are already exposed to. While I don’t agree entirely with E.W.’s conclusion — I mean his idea is necessary but not sufficient to address this kind of memory hole problem — he offers a good place to start:

     I think that kids are often good barometers of what’s going-on in our larger culture, and in our opinion, the kids’ regrettable lack of knowledge about the war serves to demonstrate how the administration has failed to involve the people of our country in supporting the war-effort. This may explain why support for the Iraq War has dropped so precipitously.

I will never understand why Bush and Co. are not now, and never have been, on the offensive all the time, 24/7. So much for the genius of Rove.

New World Man is hilarious this time. I have to admit I voted for both these posts — something I don’t usually say out loud. But each in his own way was sooo good. It’s no wonder my post just dropped off the list this week. It really didn’t deserve a vote compared to these guys. New World Man’s George W begins with this intro:

     During World War II, the British government commissioned a film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry V, hoping to stoke Britons’ patriotic fires and remind them that few nations have overcome long odds at war like theirs. Henry V is the tale of the king who rose from low expectations to heroically seek and win the throne of France (briefly, as it turned out; his son squandered it), in the name of God and England, in a stunning battle at Agincourt in which his forces were hopelessly outnumbered and underarmed.
Today, of course, a moviemaker approached by a Republican administration to try and help the war effort would fall laughing hysterically out of his leaky motorboat. What if modern Hollywood remade Henry V today as George W?

And then he opens his play with a chorus and Whoopi Goldberg. There are characters named The Archbishop of Cheney and the Bishop of Rumsfeld…they scheme about methods for carrying that lightweight idiot, you-know-who. I won’t give away anymore juicy parts except for this: “As the end credits roll Kanye West sings an ironic gangsta rap version of Non Nobis, Domine.” Damn. I wish I had thought of this.

The non-Council winner is an open letter posted by Silent Running. If you’re not familiar with this blogger from Down Under, he’s more than worth a visit. Sharp, smart and funny. Try his podcasts, too –reminiscent of, but with more gravitas, The Goon Show. This letter, about a miscarriage of justice here in the US, will never compete with Tookie, which is sad beyond saying. SW begins to set out his case with his own biases from the get-go:

     Right up front, it’s fair to say that I’m a supporter of Capital Punishment. For some things, I think the appropriate response is to pull someone’s ticket for riding on the planet. There are many areas of debate on the matter, such as what constitutes action heinous enough to gain someone ultimate outcast status, and about the processes used to determine when it should be applied.
But in this case, probably brought to wider attention because it does involve a sentence of death, the death penalty isn’t the issue. The main issue is that Cory Maye ended up in jail at all. There is an expression “there but for the grace of god go I” – and it is really hard to read the particulars of this case without having that thought, or one which expresses the same sentiment, cross your mind.

He then goes on to outline the case of Cory Maye’s travails and his eventual placement in a cell on Death Row.

Silent Running wants him out of there. Given what he reports of this case, he’s right to enjoin us in this crusade:

     So, an effort must begin to take the decision away from those, that by all appearances, have utterly botched it so badly to this point. It’s time that some of the governmental checks and balances mechanisms grind into action.

He follows with a letter to the Governor of Mississippi, outlining the specifics of the case and closing with this:

     Aside from simply bringing the disturbing aspects of the Corey Maye case to your attention, Governor Barbour, I’d like to make the following recommendation, and make the request that you, and your office, act upon it with all due diligence. I would recommend that as Governor, you direct that a fresh, thorough, and as completely unbiased an investigation possible into all of the aspects of this case be conducted immediately. I further request that should that investigation reveal that there is substance to this apparently gross miscarriage of justice, that you bring any and all powers available to your office to bear to rectify the situation as expeditiously as possible. I’m making this request of you, in your capacity as Chief Executive of the State of Mississippi, as events to date, as I understand them, give me little reason to assume that the Judicial Branch of the Government of the State of Mississippi is capable of resolving this situation either expeditiously, or correctly.

Fortunately, Silent Running’s effort got a tap from Instapundit. Perhaps, when the hectic Christmas is over, you will consider the fate of Corey Maye and send your own letter — Silent Running has supplied the address and the details. As I ask this of you, I think of Mr. Maye right at this moment. What is he doing as he prepares to die, leaving a child behind? What is his Christmas like this year?

There were two second place winners. I’ll deal with the happy one first. If you haven’t made Florida Cracker a regular stop, you ought to. She is so, so…Florida. And so cracker. She’s all those girls I grew up with (only younger). In this post, she’s talking about a government program I actually approve of, one that she calls “LIVING TRIBUTE”:

     Did you know that every puppy in the Transportation Safety Administration’s explosives detection program is named for a victim of 9-11? The dogs are born at Lackland Air Force Base, then fostered for their first 14 months by local families.

This program is an old one:

Canine Program The Explosives Detection Canine Team Program, of which these dogs are members, came into being by order of President Nixon on March 9, 1972; the day that K9 Brandy found a bomb inside a bathroom wall on a TWA flight 12 minutes before it was set to explode.

While I don’t usually put up pictures from winning posts, you must see this one. There are more pups on her post, and some stories behind their names.

Baldilocks tied for second place. That woman sure can cut to the bone. This time, her post is not so easy, and for a number of reasons — the first being the subject matter: Tookie Williams’ controversial execution. The second reason being that I am personally embarrassed by the ignorance of her interlocutor, since this boy is a student at my son’s school, the College of William and Mary. Baldilocks puts it this way:

     Sometimes it’s of use to respond to one’s more problematic commenters, if only to make a point or ten.

And she then proceeds to “respond” to Jeremy, her commenter. She responds him a new orifice, one that he desperately needs. Here is his whine, from her comment section:

     how come you all seem to be picking on tookie. about his impending execution when no one that has posted anything on this page was not in the court room when his trial took place you didn’t here the evidence. so dont comment about it. As for his impending execution I hope Gov. Arnold gives him clemency because even if tookie did those murders. I believe and so do thousands around the world believe that stanley “tookie” williams has done more good then bad. It is possible that he commited those murders and killed four people. But he has saved thousands check that millions from making those same mistakes that he made and probable has saved many lives in the process. Oh and another thing people talking about killing tookie because he may be a murderer. How about we kill the actual murderers like charles manson and stop protecting him behind laws. Oh yeah he’s white.
from a 19 year old white william and mary student

Baldilocks lets him have it:

     Frankly, Jeremy, unlike you, I acknowledge that you are free to comment all you want from your dorm room or the library at William and Mary–as is your right—about anything and everything. But frankly, sir, I find your academically and experientially unlearned opinion wanting and, conversely, I am free to tell you why I think so.
(As an aside, were I one of the faculty at William and Mary, I’d give you an ‘F’ simply for staining that august institution’s reputation by displaying your poor writing skills; it wouldn’t matter what subject it was. Were I one of your parents, I’d demand a refund for your tuition. However, I’m glad that you are only nineteen because you will have time to improve all of the writing-skill deficiencies displayed above.)

I agree with her on all levels, except I think he’s waaay too old to improve his writing skills or his critical faculties at this point.

In fact, I’m going to send a copy of her post to Vice President for Student Affairs Sam Sadler at the College and ask why children like this are being admitted to the College. It’s a demanding place — Freshman year is called Boot Camp for a good reason. A boy with this level of skills belongs somewhere else, anywhere else, but not in an academic setting. People wonder why the suicide rates at colleges are rising? This boy’s performance is certainly one reason. He’s in over his head and he obviously can’t swim. It’s pathetic.

By the way, I showed this to my son and asked how a kid like this survives in such an environment. He told me that Jeremy’s probably in a program called “Literary and Cultural Studies.” I think it’s the moral equivalent of what we used to call a major in basket-weaving. With his skill level, college must be a living hell. Baldilocks’ recommendation that his parents demand their money back is a good one. And after they get it back, they should have a good long talk with whichever high school guidance counselor suggested he go to college. The whole thing is a corrupt racket.

All of the rest of December 16th’s posts are over at the Watcher’s Place. I recommend at least checking out the idea about getting rid of journalists in order to save journalism. What a nifty thought! Then we can go for the lawyers. And then the politicians. And then the lobbyists. Oh, wait. If we get the politicians first, that will take care of the lobbyists. Two buzzards with one rock.

Islamic Sovereignty

 
In The Islamic Ratchet, commenter ik referred to an article entitled “Paving the Way for Islamistan” in The Daily Pioneer:

     Some 46 organisations accompanied by 420 Muslim luminaries have reportedly presented a memorandum to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and urged that agricultural land in the possession of Muslims should be transferred from the law of the land to the Muslim Personal Law — rather like the rules of marriage and divorce.
If this ridiculous demand is met, the country would lose its sovereignty over lakhs of land parcels. These territories would become quasi-wakfs. According to Islamic theology, wakf properties belong to Allah the Merciful, which make every property a micro Islamistan.
Article 43 of the Constitution declares that India is a secular state, which means that there should be a wall of separation between the state and religion. Moreover, one country should have one law, especially when the Constitution guarantees equality before the law to all its citizens. It was with this intention that Article 44 of the Constitution directed that India should have a common civil code (UCC). Unfortunately, Jawaharlal Nehru did not have the courage to face up to Muslim pressure. He, therefore, transferred this article to the chapter of Directive Principles, instead of making it a fundamental right.

As India travels down the road towards a nationwide rule of law, Canada and other Western nations are passing it going in the opposite direction. In the name of multicultural sensitivity, the idea has been floated to introduce elements of Sharia as a form of “Islamic mediation.”

If you were a Muslim woman — accustomed to the brutality and misogyny which is routine in most Islamic countries — what would you do when the stern white-bearded “mediator” arrived at your door? As the The Daily Pioneer points out,

     UCC is also essential if justice is to be done to Muslim women, who continue to be treated as chattel. In the recent Imrana case, the victim was raped by her father-in-law; and thus her relationship with her husband overnight changed from that of a wife to that of a mother. That the father-in-law had committed a crime found little place in the discussion.
However revolting the experience of Imrana might be, it would seem even worse if the context of sharia is seen. According to Holy Quran by A Yousaf Ali, a woman requires four male witnesses to prove her complaint of having been raped. In case she fails to do so, she would be charged with being an adulteress to be stoned to death.

No man can serve two masters, and no modern state with a democratic constitution can implement sharia for a portion of its population unless it violates their rights under that constitution. No multicultural legerdemain can find a way around this essential conundrum.

The Muslims of India demand, in effect, that they be treated as a separate nation. The whole of Islam — the entire Ummah — is the only nation they recognize. To meet their terms, any country they inhabit will have to Balkanized, divided up into different religious enclaves, each with its own laws.

Perhaps that is what makes Islamism so attractive to the Left, since to a leftist it is the identity group — racial, ethnic, or religious — that counts, and not the individual.

We would do well to remember the fate to which we are consigning the women of Islam, if we are to meet these demands:

     This description is consistent with the supreme principle of the religion: That Allah is the only God and there is no other god. Since God is essential for the passage of man to jannat or heaven, it is necessary for him to be Muslim. Incidentally, the woman has no place in heaven. The only females in jannat are Houris who do not mensurate and their function is exclusively to provide pleasure to men (Sura iv, Ayat 56-78).
The wife was expected to give birth to as many children as possible. To ensure that she is obedient, it was best if she was not educated. The other advantage was that an uneducated mother would not realise the importance of studies for her children. The consequence would be that the next generation also would not question the ulema. Women are seldom allowed to pray in a masjid, nor hear the khutba or sermon customarily delivered on Fridays.
Islam and modernity are a contradiction in terms…
The ulema realise the threat women pose to their tight grip over the ummah. Their ill treatment is the biggest faultline of Islam and this today is under attack.

Or, as ik said in the comments:

     The background to this is that in India — there is one law for everyone else and a separate law for Muslims called “Muslim Personal Law.” According to this a Muslim man in India can get four wives and can divorce a wife by just saying the word “talaq” three times in front of a Mullah…
The longest standing demand of the Hindu Nationalist parties is that there should be one law applied to all the people EQUALLY and FAIRLY.

It was a revolutionary idea in the 18th century, and it’s still revolutionary in some parts of the world: all people should be equal in the eyes of the law.

Ik also wanted to clarify the demographics of Muslim expansion:

     Your article would be much better if there was an additional column showing the percentage of Muslims in those countries around 1950 and the percentage now.

          1947    2001
India    Muslims    7%    15%
Pakistan    Hindus    20%    1-2%
Bangladesh    Hindus    40%    10%

In Malaysia the Muslims had 40% (the rest were divided among Indians, Chinese, etc. each less than 20%) and they declared the country an Islamic state. Now they have reached 60% and they are already caling for the imposition of Sharia Law on EVERYBODY. And Malaysia is held up as an example of a moderate Islamic country.

Perhaps Malaysia is an example of moderate Islam. Maybe that’s as good as it gets. A moderate Muslim country might give thieves a stern warning, and then cut off their hands only on the second offense. Or maybe it would demand more humane living conditions for its infidel slaves. Or allow women to expose their eyes in public.

But don’t expect civic tolerance or respect for universal human rights.

Islam and modernity are a contradiction in terms.

Dhimmied Down Again

 
Dhimmification continues.

In a review from Newsweek you can find the latest on offer: a sitcom — actually, they term it a “drama” — on HBO about polygamy. Don’t ask why, maybe they just figured it might draw an audience.

Essentially, the plot revolves around a shopkeeper in Utah who has three wives and pops a lot of Viagra. Maybe it’s just an extended Viagra commercial? As one actress who plays a part in his harem puts it:

     “In my career, I’ve pretty much seen it all, but I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything on a polygamous family,” says Tripplehorn. Though she was intrigued by the concept, Tripplehorn wasn’t sure she could handle it. “I had a hard time finding a connection as to why a woman would share her husband. I didn’t think I was up to the task. I didn’t think I could make it real.”

Nothing like having integrity in your work life, lady.

Of course, the moral imbeciles producers of the show are quick to explain away any ambiguity:

     Despite the title and the Viagra, “Big Love” is only peripherally about sex. The Henricksons are devoutly religious and wholesome (they are not Mormons, but an unspecified offshoot). Most of the action focuses on how Bill, who owns home-improvement stores in Utah, handles the mundane aspects of his overpopulated life. How does he keep three women emotionally, as well as physically, satisfied? How does he juggle the demands of work and home? And how do the wives deal with all the competition? Suffice it to say these are three very desperate housewives. “It’s everything that every family faces, just times three,” says co-creator Mark Olsen. “The yuck factor disappears and you just see human faces. We found it to be a mother lode.”

This may be the mother of all mother lodes. Can you say “crock”, Mr. Olsen?

I love this…stuff. It reminds me why we got rid of our television. No doubt those who still own these propaganda outlets will soon be treated to a Palestinian version of “The Brady Bunch.”

I can’t wait not to see it.



Hat Tip: Commenter Rebecca JW on Jihad Watch

UPDATE: They don’t mention any children in this show. How can a man have three such worldly delights and not be producing scores of descendants? Not a one of ’em looks pregnant.

Sacred Animal Farm

 
No sacred cow here.What’s wrong with this picture?

If you’re a Christian or an atheist, nothing.

If you’re a Jew, unless you see it as a version of the golden calf and the restaurant patrons as worshippers, nothing.

If you’re a Muslim, and you’re one of the strict no-graven-images types who believes that all representative art is offensive to Allah, then you wouldn’t like it. Otherwise it would be fine.

If you’re a Hindu, though, since it’s a representation of the earthly form of your primary deity, you might well find it sacrilegious and offensive.

So devout Hindus in New Delhi are rioting to demand that the offending statue be removed, right? And hasn’t the restaurant owner received a death threat because of his blasphemy?

No? I wonder why not…

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The recent brouhaha over the cartoons depicting Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper reminds us of the consequences of impinging on the religious sensibilities of Muslims. Any prominent transgressor of Islamic strictures – for example, Theo Van Gogh or Salman Rushdie – is putting his life at risk.

Here in the ultra-tolerant heart of Western Civilization, no other religion demands so much special treatment. Nor does any other garner such fawning capitulation. In Britain the piggy banks must go. In Norway women must take into account the cultural characteristics of Muslim men, or risk rape. Muslims even want banks to issue interest-free loans, since the Koran bans usury.

For a counterpoint to all this, look at Christianity. Forget inadvertent offense: the examples of deliberate, calculated, and extreme attempts to offend Christians are legion within the popular culture. Even so, no Baptists are strapping on bomb belts and blowing themselves up in the Museum of Modern Art.

Not long ago, on my way towards the meat counter in a grocery store I passed a Hindu couple pushing their shopping cart up along the aisle. When I got to the beef section I noticed a little display sign showing a smiling cartoon cow holding up a steak on a platter and licking her chops in autophagous anticipation.

Surely, I thought, the Hindu couple must have found this display repugnant. The rows of raw red beef in packages might well have deeply disturbed their religious sensibilities. Yet there they were, calmly shopping!

No one was picketing the store. I didn’t have to pass through a metal detector to get in. Nobody firebombed the place the next day. No Hindu suicide bomber blew up the regional Food Lion headquarters.

Britain has its share of Hindus. If they are demanding an end to cow iconography, I haven’t heard about it. They’re not writing angry letters to Borough Councils demanding the removal of the “Cock and Bull” pub signs. If they mind the little cow pitchers that dispense milk in the tea rooms, they’re not making a loud noise about it.

Why is that? They’re just as much aliens in Britain as their Muslim counterparts. Until very recently they were indiscriminately designated “wogs” by the uncouth, along with their Pakistani neighbors. They’re just as entitled to politically correct redress of their grievances.

What makes Muslims different?

I’d like to be very politically incorrect and assert that Hindus are more civilized.

There. I said it, and the sky didn’t fall.

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Leaving aside for the moment why Hindus (and adherents of other religions) are less belligerent than Muslims, there still remains this question: Why do modern Western societies cave in so easily to Muslim demands, capitulating and appeasing at every opportunity?

Of all the major religions, only Islam is enjoined by its scripture to have a hair-trigger for violence. Add to that the traditional shame/honor tribal culture and you have a volatile and lethal mix.

And we in the West are so allergic to violence that the merest whiff of it sends us scurrying to the ethnic grievances dictionary to look up the “root causes.” Find the solution, apply the anodyne, build yet another ethnic outreach cultural center, designate a new Muslim school holiday, and then…

And then what? And then the Muslims won’t be mad at us any more?

Or will capitulating to their violent threats only lead to demands for more concessions, and then more again? Until at last the Caliphate is established and Shariah instituted and the Ummah becomes coterminous with the entire planet…

Pigs and cows. All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Say Goodbye to Fjordman

 
Fjordman’s last post is up. He will be sorely missed – his blog was a powerhouse of information on the Great Jihad and other topics of current interest. And not just on Europe – breaking news anywhere in the world was likely to show up on Fjordman before any of the other blogs.

The Scandinavian Vikings are still represented by Viking Observer, of course, who blogs in English from Denmark.

In his last post Fjordman says that his work may occasionally appear here in Gates of Vienna. Anything he cares to send will be welcomed by us and promptly posted.

The Islamic Ratchet

 
As noted here recently, Pakistani irredentism manifests itself in a claim to the province of Kashmir. Other territorial hot spots for Islam are in southern Thailand, the Philippines, Indian Punjab, northern Nigeria, Kosovo, Chechnya, Dagestan, and, of course, the Palestinian territories.

And then there’s Al Andalus, formerly known to most of the world as “Spain.”

As Dymphna has written, “any geography that once belonged to Islam always belongs to Islam and it is the duty of every Muslim to reclaim its property.” This doctrine means that Muslim cemeteries anywhere in the world are part of the Ummah, and subject to Islamic agitation.

And what about the areas that are not yet Muslim? It doesn’t take a Muslim majority to turn a province into a hotbed of religious strife and jihad. Recent examples can be found in Rotterdam, Birmingham, Toronto, Malmö, and Hamtramck. When the Muslim population in a region reaches a certain critical point, the agitation begins: You must respect Islam! No more pig imagery! Women must cover themselves! Muslim holidays must be observed!

Take a look at these Muslim population statistics. It’s no surprise that Somalia, Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkey are almost entirely Muslim. Saudi Arabia clocks in a 95.7% – what are the other 4.3%, for goodness’ sake? Filipino maids? Christians in the catacombs under Riyadh?

But look at the countries that lie on the outermost marches of Islam’s “bloody borders”:

Country Population Pct # Muslims
Canada 32,805,041 2.0% 656,100
China 1,306,313,812 3.0% 39,189,414
India 1,080,264,388 12.0% 129,631,726
Netherlands 16,407,491 6.0% 984,449
Nigeria 128,771,988 50.0% 64,385,994
Philippines 87,857,473 5.0% 4,392,873
Spain 40,341,462 2.5% 1,008,536
Sweden 9,001,774 4.0% 360,070
Thailand 65,444,371 5.0% 3,272,218
United Kingdom 60,441,457 2.7% 1,631,919
United States 295,734,134 1.4% 4,140,277

It’s easy to see why Nigeria has a problem: it’s half Muslim already. And India, at 12%, has a mighty struggle ahead. But the other trouble spots have a much smaller percentage, yet they – especially Europe – are the ones that cave in more easily to Muslim pressure.

The one exception is China. Now why do you think that might be?

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Islam ratchets in one direction only. Where Muslims are in charge, other faiths are gradually driven out, converted, or killed. No one may convert out of Islam on the pain of death.

The signposts to dhimmitude are all prominent all around us. Neon lights are flashing and horns are blaring to draw our attention. The arrows point in one direction only.

We ignore them at our peril.



Cross-posted at Infidel Bloggers Alliance.

Ahmadinejad’s Kampf

 
In November 1923, Adolf Hitler entered a beer hall in Munich and fired a pistol into the ceiling. He announced that he was about to overthrow the Bavarian state government and install himself and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party as the new revolutionary government of Bavaria.

Hitler, Maurice, Kriebel, HessWith that, he and his fellow Nazis — along with the renowned hero of the Great War, General Ludendorff — marched towards the government offices in what became known as the “Beer Hall Putsch.” Unfortunately for the Nazis, they were met by the police, who ordered them to halt and then fired into the crowd, leaving more than a dozen Nazis dead.

This debacle turned out to be the event that launched Hitler’s career: the putsch made him into a household name across Germany. After a well-publicized trial he was sentenced to five years in prison, of which he served but nine months. During his incarceration Hitler was allowed not only pencil and paper, but also the secretarial services of his loyal follower Rudolf Hess.

Hitler spent his time dictating to Hess the infamous Mein Kampf, a rambling memoir and political diatribe that touched all the bases which eventually became so familiar to Germany and the rest of the world. His genocidal goals were not hidden; they were all laid out in Mein Kampf for anyone to see.

Fifteen years later in 1938, when the senior statesmen of Europe were negotiating away large chunks of territory from other people’s countries and giving them to Germany, they were acting on the assumption that Herr Hitler did not mean what he said back in 1925; that those were simply the somewhat intemperate writings of a man who was otherwise a politician just like they were; that once his demands for the return of the Volk to the Reich were met, Der Führer would be satisfied and the world (except for some unfortunate Jews, gypsies, and so on) could once again live in peace.

But Hitler’s agenda was clear, and it was all laid out in his book:

     The danger to which Russia succumbed is always present for Germany. Only a bourgeois simpleton is capable of imagining that Bolshevism has been exorcised. With his superficial thinking he has no idea that this is an instinctive process; that is, the striving of the Jewish people for world domination, a process which is just as natural as the urge of the Anglo-Saxon to seize domination of the earth. And just as the Anglo-Saxon pursues this course in his own way and carries on the fight with his own weapons, likewise the Jew. He goes his way, the way of sneaking in among the nations and boring from within, and he fights with his weapons, with lies and slander, poison and corruption, intensifying the struggle to the point of bloodily exterminating his hated foes. In Russian Bolshevism we must see the attempt undertaken by the Jews in the twentieth century to achieve world domination. Just as in other epochs they strove to reach the same goal by other, though inwardly related processes. Their endeavor lies profoundly rooted in their essential nature. No more than another nation renounces of its own accord the pursuit of its impulse for the expansion of its power and way of life, but is compelled by outward circumstances or else succumbs to impotence due to the symptoms of old age, does the Jew break off his road to world dictatorship out of voluntary renunciation, or because he represses his eternal urge. He, too, will either be thrown back in his course by forces lying outside himself, or all his striving for world domination will be ended by his own dying out. But the impotence of nations, their own death from old age, arises from the abandonment of their blood purity. And this is a thing that the Jew preserves better than any other people on earth. And so he advances on his fatal road until another force comes forth to oppose him, and in a mighty struggle hurls the heaven-stormer back to Lucifer.
We must eliminate the disproportion between our population and our area… Some of this land can be obtained from Russia… we National Socialists must hold unflinchingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely, to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled on this earth.

If only the politicians of Europe had taken him seriously in 1933 or 1935 or 1938, before the Wehrmacht rolled into Poland. A quick peek into a translation of Mein Kampf would have left them with no doubt about what was coming.

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Now fast-forward eighty years. Watch Kristallnacht, D-Day, Auschwitz, the Berlin Wall, Vietnam, and 9-11 fly by in a blur. Hit “play” as soon as you see the face of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, making his infamous speech this past October:

     The establishment of the Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world… The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land.
As the Imam [Khomeini] said, Israel must be wiped off the map.
The Islamic umma will not allow its historic enemy to live in its heartland.

It is as if the President of Iran were eerily channeling the Reichskanzler of the 1930s.

President Ahmadinejad elaborated on the same topic when he denied the existence of Herr Hitler’s most notorious accomplishment:

     They have fabricated a legend under the name “Massacre of the Jews”, and they hold it higher than God himself, religion itself and the prophets themselves.

Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s delusional haloTo underscore the messianic nature of his mission, Mr. Ahmadinejad revealed during an interview that, when he was giving his recent speech at the UN, a halo appeared behind his head for half an hour or so. Not only that, the members of the audience who were watching were unable to blink during that time!

Yes, we’ve got a Hitlerian fruitcake here, but he’s a fruitcake who’s about to go nuclear on us. Hitler, after all, never managed to get that far.

Mr. Ahmadinejad has no doubt of his mission; he has made that mission blindingly clear on numerous occasions. He is here to prepare the way for the appearance of the Twelfth Imam, which will usher in the Islamic version of the Apocalypse.

The parallels with Hitler are uncanny:

  • Volk = Ummah
  • The Sudetenland = Palestine
  • Götterdämmerung = Twelfth Imam
  • France and Britain= France and Germany
  • Six million Jews = Six million Jews

But this time the six million are determined not to go quietly. After the Holocaust, the Jews will never again go quietly.

The 21st century’s version of Der Führer is ready to incinerate the Jews in their homes, but Israel is resolved: this shall not come to pass. Unfortunately for the Jews, and for all of us, the dénouement of this sordid drama is imminent.

As a final note, consider the following:

     For while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim… all they want is a central organization for their international world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.

Who do you think said that? I’ll give you two guesses.



Note: The “Beer Hall Putsch” photo at the top shows Hitler, Ernst Röhm (second from the right), and Rudolf Hess (far right). The fourth man (second from the left) I haven’t been able to identify; Göring, Strasser, Streicher, Frick, Eckart, and Rosenberg have all been ruled out. Knowledgeable readers are invited to fill in the missing name.



Update: Commenter Charlie Eklund has identified the mystery man in the putsch photo as Hermann Kriebel. I’ll have to take his word for it, because the only other photo of him I can find is here (fourth from the left, in the pickelhaube), and the resolution is not good enough to confirm the likeness. But it could be the same guy…



Update 2: El Jefe’s post about the mullahs, which he was too bashful to link, is here.



Update 3: Ah, the distributed intelligence of the internet!

Reader SC writes, “Left to right, it’s Hitler, Emil Maurice (his chauffeur), Kreibel (not Roehm), and Hess.”

Also, reader CW writes, “According to The Hidden Hitler by Lothar Machtan, the man behind Hitler’s left shoulder is Emil Maurice.”

They’re quite right. I found another version of the same photo, and, even though it’s in Hungarian, you can see the list of names identifying people in the photo.

Hermann Kriebel is the guy I thought was Röhm (he still looks like Röhm to me!). Also see this page identifying Emil Maurice as Hitler’s “secretary.” It’s definitely the same guy.



Update 4: Welcome, Corner readers! Take your time and look around; you might be interested in the Jamaat ul-Fuqra material – look at the left sidebar near the top for links.



Update 5: Reader JS writes, “Your updated attribution is correct. There’s a better picture (including a fifth man, another early gangster crony, I think, Christian Weber) in my Folio Books edition of Shirer.”

The Hungarian site includes the fifth man, and identifies him as “Friedrich Weber.” So it looks like JS knows what he’s talking about.

Welcome the Infidel Bloggers Alliance

Dymphna and I have signed up as contributors to a new group blog, the Infidel Bloggers Alliance, along with Cuanas, Drunken Blogging, Justify This!, Fu2rman, Liberty And Culture, A Deeper Look, News From Eurabia, and Thomas The Wraith.

The mission statement of the Alliance: We are a user contributed site featuring the latest articles from around the blogosphere. Our mission is to act as a hub for bloggers and web users who want easy access to the latest news but do not necessarily have all day to look for it.

If you want to know what’s going on, drop by the Infidel Bloggers Alliance.

Pakistan Irredenta

 
With the rise of nationalism in Europe during the 19th century came a new phenomenon called “irredentism” – the agitation by one country to reclaim portions of another, based on ethnic similarity or previous ownership. The term was based on the phrase Italia irredenta, the slogan of Italian nationalists who wanted Italy to annex Italian-speaking areas retained by Austria after the unification of Italy in 1866. Italia irredenta was a significant force in Italian politics right up until the Great War, and helped induce Italy to join the Allies.

Various irredentisms were the bane of Europe in the 20th century. Hitler wanted to unite with his ethnic compatriots in the Sudetenland and Alsace-Lorraine. A significant Romanian minority was included in the Hungarian portion of Transylvania, causing friction between the two countries. The Turks and the Greeks are still at odds over Cyprus, and the Serbs long to reclaim the “historic heartland of Serbia” in Kosovo.

Ethnicity, religion, language, shared history, and general culture combined to form a volatile mix that produced modern nationalism. But nationalism and irredentism are not necessarily language-based phenomena; both Italy and Spain united even though their component provinces spoke dialects which were all but separate languages.

Driven as it is by powerful nationalist emotions, irredentism can cause countries to make decisions that are not always in their national interests. It is impossible to understand the deadly foreign policy of Germany during the 1930s without reference to German irredentism. Similarly, in order to understand current Chinese foreign policy it is necessary to examine China’s fixation on reclaiming Taiwan.

And Pakistan’s foreign policy cannot be understood without considering Kashmir.

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Map of Pakistan



In the runup to independence in the 1930s and 1940s, the Muslim portions of India could not be reconciled with the rest of the country, and the British decided to partition the territory.

Muhammad Ali JinnahMuhammad Ali Jinnah founded the state of Pakistan in 1947, cobbling together different ethnic groups whose only major commonality was Islam. Many Muslims remain in India, but few Hindus and other non-Muslims remain in Pakistan – like other Muslim-majority countries, Pakistan has driven out, killed, or converted most of its infidels.

Even so, Pakistan is quite diverse. It originally included what used to be East Pakistan and is now Bangladesh. The latter is ethnically distinct, and fought to gain its independence from Pakistan in 1971. In Pakistan are Shiites as well as Sunnis, and the Sunnis are divided into different sects and subgroups, speaking different languages or dialects and having differing social status.

One of the major distinctions is between the Deobandis and the Brelvis. According to B. Raman,

     The majority of the Brelvis are descendants of converts from Hinduism and belong to poor rural classes. Since they cannot afford to go on Haj to Saudi Arabia, their tradition allows them instead to visit the graves of their pirs and saints. These flexible and tolerant traditions had spread in the past from the sub-continent to Afghanistan , the Central Asian Republics (CARs), Dagestan and Chechnya and to other countries where Muslims from the sub-continent have migrated.
The Wahabi-Deobandis of Pakistan, who are in a numerical minority, are the descendants of the original migrants from Central Asia, Afghanistan and the Gulf. They look upon themselves as the high-born (the “Ashraf”) and look down on the Brelvis as the low-born (the “Alaf”). Power has largely remained in the hands of the Wahabi-Deobandis, but till 1971 there was no organised, state-sponsored attempt to force the Wahabi religious traditions on the Brelvis.
The alienation of the people of pre-1971 East Pakistan was mainly due to the refusal of the Deobandi high-born of West Pakistan to accept the Bengali Muslims, largely the descendants of converts from Hinduism, as their equals.
The war of 1971 and the separation of Bangladesh and the subsequent appearance of signs of alienation amongst the Mohajirs of Karachi and other urban areas of Sindh, who are descendants of converts from Hinduism from northern India, created fears of another split of Pakistan.
This led to the emergence in the 1980s of a number of Muslim extremist organisations wedded to the policy of ridding Islam in Pakistan of what they looked upon as the corrupting influences of Hinduism and making the Muslims of Pakistan strictly adhere to the Deobandi-Wahabi traditions.

The Deobandi-Wahhabi group Tablighi Jamaat has experienced a tremendous growth during the last quarter-century, converting infidels and bringing lapsed Muslims back into its austere version of the Ummah. Its graduates have moved on to join or form some of the most violent and radical of the Islamist terror groups.

At the time of independence India was awarded the former principality of Jammu and Kashmir. Kashmir is a remote but strategically important area, and has at various times been ruled by Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims, as well as the British. It contains a mixture of tribal groups, including many which share ethnicity with their brethren in Pakistan itself.

Pakistan went to war with India in 1948 with the aim of obtaining Kashmir. There was an eventual cease-fire, a line of control was demarcated, and an uneasy truce ensued. Affairs were complicated by the interference of China, to whom Pakistan ceded a part of the “Northern Areas” in 1963. China annexed the part of Kashmir known as Aksai Chin, which is still claimed by India.

Conflict has flared periodically since 1948, with India and Pakistan occasionally going to war over Kashmir. But after each country acquired nuclear weapons, war became all but unthinkable. In order to achieve its urgent goal of occupying the remainder of Kashmir, Pakistan must consider different strategies.

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Since the 1980s Pakistan has allowed extreme Islamist groups to operate openly within its borders. Even proscribed terrorist organizations flourish; when listed by the U.S. State Department they tend to change their names so as to avoid a crackdown.

Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, finds these groups useful, since they are instrumental for operations in Kashmir. The groups infiltrate India, inflame the sentiments of like-minded Muslims there, and organize terrorist attacks against Indian targets. They can also be useful within Pakistan itself:

     In their efforts to maintain law and order in Pakistan and weaken nationalist and religious elements and political parties disliked by the army, the ISI and the army followed a policy of divide and rule. After the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, to keep the Shias of Pakistan under control, the ISI encouraged the formation of ant-Shia Sunni extremist organisations such as the Sipah Sahaba. When the Shias of Gilgit rose in revolt in 1988, Musharraf used bin Laden and his tribal hordes from the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to suppress them brutally. When the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM—now called the Muttahida Qaumi Movement) of Altaf Hussain rose in revolt in the late 1980s in Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur in Sindh, the ISI armed sections of the Sindhi nationalist elements to kill the Mohajirs. It then created a split between Mohajirs of Uttar Pradesh origin (in Altaf Hussain’s MQM) and those of Bihar origin in the splinter anti-Altaf Hussain group called MQM (Haquiqi–meaning real). In Altaf Hussain’s MQM itself, the ISI unsuccessfully tried to create a wedge between the Sunni and Shia migrants from Uttar Pradesh.
Having failed in his efforts to weaken the PPP by taking advantage of the exile of Mrs.Benazir and faced with growing unity of action between Altaf Hussain’s MQM and sections of Sindhi nationalist elements, Musharraf has constituted a secret task force in the ISI headed by Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed, the DG, and consisting of Lt.Gen.(retd) Moinuddin Haider, Interior Minister, and Lt.Gen.Muzaffar Usmani, Deputy Chief of the Army Staff, to break the PPP, the MQM and the Sindhi nationalists.
This task force has encouraged not only religious political organisations such as the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) of Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam (JUI) of Maulana Fazlur Rahman etc, but also sectarian organisations such as the Sipah Sahaba and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi of Riaz Basra, living under the protection of the Taliban and bin Laden in Kandahar in Afghanistan, to extend their activities to Sindh.

Pervez MusharrafThis is the unruly tiger which Pervez Musharraf inherited and is attempting to ride. The ISI believes that it controls the terrorist groups, but who controls the ISI? Depending on which source you read, the ISI answers either to the office of the President or to the Army chiefs of staff. Musharraf would like us to believe the latter – “Ah, those rascals at ISI! I wish I could do something about them, but they are beyond my control!” – but Indian intelligence tends to believe that he is in control. Otherwise, how has he managed to escape the tiger’s jaws thus far?

But it is a dangerous game that Pakistan is playing:

     During his televised breakfast discussions with Indian editors at Agra on July 16 and his press conference at Islamabad on July 20, Musharraf described the terrorists operating in J & K as “indigenous freedom-fighters” and denied that they were based in Pakistan or that they were receiving any assistance from Pakistan. A similar stand was taken by Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, the Pakistani High Commissioner in New Delhi, during a TV interview on July 22 when he was asked about the post-summit massacre of some Hindu pilgrims going on their annual pilgrimage to the Amarnath cave by the Al Umar Mujahideen and the massacre of the Hindu residents, including women and children, of a village in the Doda district of Jammu by the LET on July 22.
In its issues of February 13,1995, and March 27,1995, the “News” of Pakistan had carried two detailed investigative reports by Kamran Khan, a well-known Pakistani journalist, on an international terrorist network consisting of the HUM (then known as the Harkat-ul-Ansar) and other Islamic terrorist organisations operating from Pakistani territory with the knowledge and connivance of the Pakistani authorities. He reported that about 200 HUM members from Pakistan had died in clashes with the Indian security forces in J & K since 1991 and that its cadres were also active with the Abu Sayyaf group in Southern Philippines and with the terrorists in Chechnya. He also brought out the links of these organisations with Ramzi Yousuf, now undergoing imprisonment in the US for his role in the New York World Trade Centre bombing in February, 1993, and their role in the explosion at a holy shrine at Mashhad in Iran on June 20,1994, killing 70 people and in training Saudi fundamentalist elements opposed to the ruling family.

The Islamist terrorists may prefer Musharraf to the infidels, but it is hard to imagine that they like Pakistan’s military government as much as they would the Caliphate. That is, after all, their ultimate goal.

Musharraf and the ISI believe that they can continue this triple game indefinitely – holding the terrorists “by the scruff of the neck,” playing the extremists off against each other, and then saying, “Terrorists? What terrorists? There are no terrorists here!” to the world at large.

Pakistan’s cynical policies bore fruit in 1999, when India caved to the demands of terrorists after the Kandahar hijacking:

     Five years after Indian Airlines Flight IC-814 was hijacked in December 1999, the three men released by the Indian government to ensure the safety of the passengers continue to be sheltered in Pakistan despite repeated demands for their custody by Interpol, the American FBI and the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
On December 24, 1999, five armed Pakistani nationals hijacked Indian Airlines Flight IC-814 from Katmandu to Kandahar, Afghanistan. Led by Sunny Ahmed Qazi, alias Burger, the hijackers slashed the throat of one of the 178 passengers, a honeymooner, and forced pilots to open the cockpit door. Burger demanded that the Indian government release three Pakistani terrorists from prison in exchange for the hostages aboard the aircraft.
…Among those released by India was Masood Azhar, a Pakistani national and secretary general of the Harkat-ul-Ansar, who was arrested on February 11, 1994 from Srinagar. Masood Azhar was the ideologue of the Harkat-ul-Ansar, a militant group already placed on the US State Department’s watch list of terrorist organizations. The second released jihadi was an Indian national — Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, chief of the Al-Umar Mujahideen militant outfit.

Azhar has continued to ply his trade under the watchful eye of Pakistan and the ISI.

In 1917 The German General Staff had their own version of Azhar. They, too, thought that they had him by the scruff of the neck. Calculating that they could play the Bolsheviks against Kerensky, they permitted Lenin to travel in a sealed train through Germany to the Finland Station in Petrograd. Their schemes succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, igniting the Bolshevik revolution and consigning millions of people to the hell of Communism for the next 74 years. For those survivors who could still remember, it must have been bitterly ironic to see the hammer and sickle flying over the ruins of the Reichstag in 1945.

What diabolical forces is General Musharraf even now unleashing? What future conflagration is he igniting by playing with his terrorist matches?

And all for Pakistan irredenta, those swaths of Central Asian mountainous territory, the Alsace and Lorraine of Kashmir.