On July 13th, the Sunni Central Waqf Board of Uttar Pradesh declared that the Taj Mahal was Muslim property, and claimed ownership of the monument. Their claim is based on the Islamic principle that any burial ground where Muslims are interred belongs to Islam (see last month’s post on this topic).

But it seems that the Indian government is not going to roll over for the Islamists. According to the Economic Times,

Don’t you love India? What an eminently sensible country! It’s hard to imagine that Britain would show the same kind of common sense if Muslims laid claim to, say, St. Paul’s. There would have to be meetings of the Multicultural Committee of the Borough Council, or something similar, which would undoubtedly conclude that there was something to what these imams had to say, after all, and cultural sensitivities require us to pay attention to sharia law, and etc blah yak…

And what about Arlington Cemetery? Are there any Muslims buried there? It seems to me there must be. Let’s hope that Donald Rumsfeld has the same kind of sand as the Indian government.

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Update: According to Northern Virginiastan, there are definitely Muslims buried in Arlington Cemetery. Stay tuned…

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Further update: The exact link is here.

 
The News Telegraph has reported that the BBC has re-edited some of its coverage of the London Underground and bus bombings. When the horror first happened, the BBC amazed the world by actually referring to the terrorists as “terrorists.” But reality didn’t last long. In two shakes of a journalist’s tail, it was back to “bombers” for them.
The News Telegraph said:

So here’s the Gates of Vienna version of things. Much closer to reality, too:

The BBC has redacted some of the language used to describe its initial coverage of the London Underground and bus bombings.

Earlier reports had spoken of terrorists but as new attitudes were adjusted — or as the shock wore off and journalists reverted to their former attitudes — it became clear that “careless use of words which carry…value judgments” would need to be…umm, erased.

The BBC says this revision of recent events is necessary in order to avoid “undermining” its credibility. Undermining?? Why, absolutely it would. Thus, the new version of events:

The BBC has learned of the recent holiday in London enjoyed by the local Bright Incendiary Hobbies Club. Using their avocation of spelunking to enter the tunnels of the Underground, the enthusiasts were able to undermine several trains, detonating explosive materials with great success… and thus undermining any rumors or imprecations regarding their manhood. Or womanhood, as the case may be. Or human species of whatever sort.

Obviously this talented team is able to use incendiary materials to great effect. It has been observed that their timing and methods bespeak an expertise to be admired and emulated. Even now, others are searching for them in order to be shown how to create their own special effects to undermine several credibilities other than merely those of the BBC.

Our hats are off to such skilled incendiary practitioners. Also off are some of our legs, arms, and vital body parts. But no matter. At least we know these underminers are good at what they do.

I say, not bad for a morning’s work, what?

Yes, it’s satire.

 
The California National Guard made the mistake of reaching out a welcoming hand to its opponents. According to a July 11 story in Mercury News (Hat tip: LGF), the Guard invited a group of antiwar activists to visit its headquarters in Sacramento, in order to demonstrate that the Guardsmen were normal, decent human beings, and not the ravening bloodthirsty baby-killers of wide repute.

Big mistake.

As it happened, one of the Guard members had posted a flyer on his cubicle featuring the hoary old story about General Pershing and the Muslim terrorists.

Now, to those of us who are concerned about actually winning this war, and who don’t have to worry about winning re-election or holding down a job in academia, this does not seem like a terribly controversial idea. A little bit over the top, maybe, but nothing we all haven’t contemplated with secret pleasure in the privacy of our vile Crusader hearts.

But to the antiwar activists, it is a misfeasance of the highest order.

Once again, most of us wouldn’t have a problem with this. In an allegorical way, the cartoon simply speaks the truth: Islamist jihadis in the West Bank and Gaza have repeatedly used ambulances to transport weapons for terrorist attacks against innocent Israeli civilians. If this “offend[s] the cultural values of a major world religion,” well, then maybe “a major world religion” is offended by the truth.

But, predictably, the Guard caved under the pressure and took the flyer down.

I’m willing to stipulate to the possibility that not all Muslims are our enemies. However, it is an ineluctable fact that a significant percentage of them are indeed our enemies.

Here’s the clincher:

Well, DUH. I wonder why that is?

Ms. Thomason is a volunteer for the GI Rights Hotline, “a coalition of nonprofit groups that offers advice and help to soldiers”. If I were offering advice to a soldier, it would be that he is fighting a religious war. I would assert that it is a religious war because the enemy is fighting a religious war. He wants to kill us because of what he perceives to our religion; if we believed exactly as he does, then he would not be fighting us.

And when the Great Islamic Jihad eventually arrives at the Left Coast — as it has in Israel, Iraq, Spain, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Thailand, and, most recently, London — it will do the well-meaning peace activist no good whatsoever to protest that he is an atheist, or an agnostic, or secular, or a lapsed whatever. He can keep repeating his non-religious mantra right up to the moment when the hooded mujahid holding the bloody scimitar hoists his severed head high up before the video camera.

Or, if he is lucky, he can become a dhimmi, and pay the jizyah. Then his life will be spared.

For a while.

 
Of the traitors and quislings in World War IV, Norm Geras says:

First, he says, there are those who see the terrorist murderers [my term] as an environmental hazard. Like killer bees, maybe. So this is the deal: you don’t disturb their nest, they don’t bother you. As he says, more or less, that’s one lame explanation.

Then, there are the America bashers:

Finally, there are what Mr. Geras (and I) would term the confused:

In other words, this third group, this tertium quid, is more properly known as that group which cannot tell its ass from its elbow. They want to appear enlightened about the local political infighting while refusing to take sides because of their superior omniscient perspective. At least that’s my take on Mr. Geras’ view of this group — you know, the chattering classes, as in “Blessed are the sincere.”

Sincerity be damned, this is war, and it will be won by those on the side of truth, liberty, justice… and, oh, yeah, the Anglic Way — of which the American counterpart is just one via.

But don’t tell Superman.

 
According to a recent CNN story, the ice axe used to murder Leon Trotsky has resurfaced.

This was an interesting coincidence for me: a few days previously I had been discussing the very same topic with my good friend Wally Ballou. Whenever you read about the weapon, it is generally described as an “ice pick”, just as in the CNN story. As you can see from the photo below, it is indeed an ice axe. Wally is of the opinion that ice picks should be called “ice awls”, since that is what they resemble, and then ice axes could be renamed “ice picks”, since they certainly look like picks.

In any event, the ice axe turned up in the possession of the daughter of the late commander of the secret police, who had been in charge of a criminology museum where the pick was on display, and later removed it “for safekeeping”. The woman evidently wants to shop it around to the highest bidder, and Trotsky’s grandson is outraged.

CNN reports:

The revelation comes just weeks before the 65th anniversary of Trotsky’s assassination on August 20, 1940. But tests that could prove the weapon’s authenticity have been delayed by a dispute between the ice pick’s owner, who is shopping it around, and Trotsky’s descendants, who want it donated to a revolutionary museum — proving that the struggle between socialist ideals and capitalism is continuing. [emphasis added]

What caught my eye is the contention that “the struggle between socialist ideals and capitalism is continuing.” In whose opinion? CNN’s? Or that of Trotsky’s outraged grandson? And notice that only socialism has “ideals” — capitalism, of course, is not capable of such things.

Well, business as usual in the MSM.

“Trotsky” was a nomme de guerre; his birth name was Lev Bronstein. Like so many of the Old Bolsheviks, he was Jewish, a fact which was used by Hitler to characterize Communism as an “international Jewish conspiracy”. Strangely enough, Stalin did the same thing, and found himself having to purge all those dangerous Semitic conspirators from his inner circle.

And, of course, the Jews are still internationally conspiring. Even today their secret cabal controls the foreign policy of the Western Allies, and persuades young Muslims to blow up women and babies so as to discredit Islam. Clever fellows, those Jews.

It’s a strange world.

 
Ol’ Hillary gave a speech at the Aspen Ideas Festival this past weekend. During an otherwise boiler-plated address, she laid this breath-taking egg:

This from the woman who married William Jefferson “What Me Worry?” Clinton??

This from a sort-of wife of a sort-of president whose foreign policy consisted of lobbing the occasional bomb followed up by massive libidinal overreach??

The gall. Talk about projection.

Dear Lord, find her a good therapist. Let’s certify her before she’s sworn in.

Wolfgang Bruno breaks down the stages of jihad for us. Taking his cue from Mark Gabriel, an ex-Muslim turned Christian, he divides the stages of jihad into these three:

1.The first is the weakened stage. This is when Muslims are in a small minority and have to dissemble regarding their intentions. Think of Mohammed before Medina.

2.The preparation stage begins when Muslims are a large minority. Here, they have the beginnings of real power and are able to make headway in the political marketplace. Think of Europe and the unrelenting positioning for place and voice in the public debate.

3.This marks the true jihad stage. This is the point at which Muslims begin the process of full scale armed assault. Remember how the Muslim minority in India created Pakistan? There you have the paradigm for jihad.

But it doesn’t end in Pakistan. As Mr. Bruno points out, Islam currently makes up ten percent of the population in France. However, thirty three percent of all babies born in France are Muslim babies. He predicts that when some critical mass is reached – somewhere between fifteen and thirty percent – France may experience civil war just like Lebanon did. All they have to do is wait; demographics are on their side.

Do you think he’s unnecessarily pessimistic? Remember Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses? Who could forget that book? For many of us, it was the dawn of the age of Islam. “What is a fatwa?” we asked one another? To our bemusement, and to Mr. Rushdie’s terror, it turned out to be a death sentence. That fatwa was issued sixteen years ago. In 1989 it seemed exotic and not terribly germane to our lives. Sure, some novelist or other had his problems with some religious extremists, but what did that have to do with us? Earlier this year, the original fatwa, issued by the long-gone Khomeni, was re-issued by his political heirs. And now it no longer seems exotic. Now it seems familiar and up close.

Mr. Bruno says that the Japanese translator of Rushdie’s work was assassinated in 1991. Lots of people have died because of the Muslims’ reaction to that book. But as we have also learned, Muslims die for rumors about books.

So far, in America, Islam in is the first stage. But it won’t stay that way unless we stay vigilant. If we go the way of Europe – vacillating, apologizing, excusing terrorists and refusing to call them by their right name – the second stage will be here shortly. Already, for fear of appearing incorrect, we refuse to profile Arabs at airport terminals. What next on the slippery slope to dhimmitude?

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. We already knew that, but now we’re having to learn it by heart and the hard way.

It’s just a matter of time.

This week’s Council Winner: Border Freebies: Using The Race Card To Get An Education by the Education Wonks.

Second place went to e-claire for her Independence Day post.

Read the stories of her five men.

First Place in the non-Council posts went to Today I Leave For the War from the Makaha Surf Report:

Read the whole moving and sincere goodbye to those he loves.

Varifrank, in second place, does it again. This time an incisive post on the Boomers, that large, loud, and narcissistic cohort which continues to believe the world is about them. Always. As Varifrank says, in his response to Gary Trudeau for one of the latter’s more insufferable “cartoons” — this one a snide comment on bloggers:

As Varifrank says, his generation wil have revenge:

Thank you, Varifrank. He needed that.

Go see ’em all at The Watchers’ Council.

 
It is with some trepidation that one takes issue with a premier essayist, especially the incomparable James Lileks. In a brilliant post on the London attacks, Mr. Lileks says:

Mr Lileks: our ethnic complexity began in the 17th and 18th centuries. Well before the arrival of the groups you mentioned, the unique character of our nation was formed from the mix of three distinct peoples: the English, the black Africans who were their slaves, and the Scots-Irish. The English brought the democratic process, the equality of independent freeholders, and rule of English Common Law; the black Africans contributed the ultimate refusal to be broken by involuntary servitude; the Scots and Irish brought a fierce and martial independent spirit, a strong tradition of self-reliance, and a suspicion of all ruling elites. The traditions of the Scots-Irish mixed with the heritage of slavery to produce the modern “redneck culture” as described by Thomas Sowell in Black Rednecks And White Liberals. This mixture established the essence of the American character.

To this brawling bastard child of the British Isles came the later arrivals, all the tired and the poor from Italy and Russia and Norway and Germany and Poland, and later the huddled masses from Vietnam and Korea and El Salvador and Nigeria, fleeing despotism, war, and destitution. People who yearn to breathe free still yearn to come to America.

What is it about this Anglo-Saxon hybrid — this English, African, and Scots-Irish mongrel — that so easily accepts and incorporates all the wretched refuse of these polyglot arrivals?

The answer lies in the English language itself. Old English was an inflected Germanic tongue. The Anglo-Saxons who spoke its various dialects first united against the Danes under King Alfred, creating what was to become the bulldog English character.

But the English language took a severe blow from the Norman invasion, dropping its inflexions, simplifying its syntax, and borrowing massively from Norman French. So modern English is essentially a pidgin: a jury-rigged composite of languages thrown together so that the servants and vassals of the Normans could communicate with their masters as well as among themselves.

English became a voracious borrower of other peoples’ words. Even before the Conquest English had been liberally salted with Irish, Welsh, Gaelic, Danish and Norse; afterwards, besides the French contributions, words were borrowed from Arabic, Latin, Greek, German, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish throughout the Renaissance. Nowadays we take in Japanese, Hindi, and Malay with aplomb. Arabic is contributing a new batch: witness “jihad”, “dhimmi”, and “kufar”.

As an analytic language with simplified syntax and flexible forms, English easily incorporates and adapts new elements. Anglo-Saxon culture, particularly in America, parallels the language in its welcome of the new arrival.

The United States differs from Britain because we threw off the yoke of those Norman overlords; we decided to govern ourselves. Suspicion of elites is bred in our Celtic bones, so it comes naturally to us to extend a welcoming hand to the stranger descending the gangplank beside the golden door.

 
One of the major denominations of the religion of the Left is scientism. And one of the dogmas of the Church of Scientism is that anything worth investigating can be, or should be, reduced to a hypothesis which is either proved or disproved. Anything which does not fall within this boundary is anathema to these fundamentalists.

A paradoxical dogma in Scientism is that of relativism. Ever since Einstein intuited and explained this feature of time and space, the Church of Scientism has sought to apply it to daily life. They failed to understand that Newtonian physics still works quite well to explain the quotidian; Einstein’s intuitions are for the spaces between things… this categorical error on their part has led to no end of mischief.

A particularly unfortunate result of all this intellectual relativism is the atrophied faculty of moral reasoning in otherwise well-educated adults. Discussions of good and evil leave them embarrassed and without voice. They lack the vocabulary or the cortical connections to speak of good and evil; the best they can do is utter bromides about ‘tolerance’ — though surely this is one of the least practiced of their commandments when it comes to those with whom they disagree. In that respect these Mandarins are as ignorant as the people Theodore Dalrymple describes in Life At The Bottom:The Worldview That Makes The Underclass.

Neuroconservative expands on this idea:

And here is the heart of his argument:

As he points out, we have recurrent problems accepting the reality of evil. Perhaps it is the optimism of youth, for I can remember a time when I thought evil was merely some Freudian projection which could be vanquished with education and insight. If someone were to ask what the greatest mistaken belief of my life was, it would be that. But I was not, am not, alone. Neuroconservative reminds us:

To emphasize the bedrock truth of his observations, here is the complete text of the London Bombers:

In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate, may peace be upon the cheerful one and undaunted fighter, Prophet Muhammad, God’s peace be upon him.

God says: “You who believe: If ye will aid (the cause of) Allah, He will aid you, and plant your feet firmly.”

A future post will dissect this manifesto in more detail. For now, it suffices to say with Neuroconservative —

For that matter, call him anything you please. Here’s his phone number:

(202) 224-2152

Here’s the message, via Free Thoughts Splinder:

REPORT: One UK Homicide Bomber Was Recent GITMO Release 7 July 2005; 12:54 ET: Preliminary reports from a source inside the Pentagon indicate that one of the operatives involved in this morning’s bombings in London was recently released from the prison at Guantanamo. DEVELOPING

And to you, Senator Durbin, I say: damn you for the moral damage you have inflicted on our country. Damn you for the aid and comfort your words give to the killers in London.

Meanwhile, there’s a site to see: Dump Dick Durbin. The masthead reads:

“Though he is a hard worker, Durbin is also bland, dull, and his mind is unburdened by original thought. He seems to be more guided by the polls than anything resembling a political philosophy … He is the Rodney Dangerfield of the Senate. Durbin is without relevance and gets no respect.” Steve Neal, Chicago Sun-Times columnist, July, 2003.”

Check it out and take heart.

 
A group calling itself “The Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe” has claimed credit for today’s bombings in London:

Conspicuously missing from the list of future targets are Australia and the United States. One assumes that these countries would be even more desirable victims of al Qaeda than Denmark and Italy. Why, then, were they left off?

Possible reasons:

Your guess is as good as mine.

Blogging is so 2004! Everybody who is anybody has an Online Magazine, right?