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Politics : The Truth About Islam -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (11085)12/11/2007 11:06:01 AM
From: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 20106
 
This story provides a vivid example of what is known as “cultural jihad” – the advance of “holy war” through means other than direct violence. “Cultural jihad” leads to the Islamic subjugation of society, and as this story illustrates, Britain is clearly being subjugated. Remember this — America is next.
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The Teddy Problem in Britain
BY DANIEL JOHNSON
New York Sun.com
nysun.com <http://www.nysun.com/article/67582>
Until a class of seven-year-old Sudanese children decided to call their teddy bear Mohammed, the Koran had been rarely consulted on the subject of cuddly toys. Apart from its connection with the eponymous bear-hunting president Teddy Roosevelt, there was nothing political, let alone blasphemous, about the teddy bear.
On November 25, Gillian Gibbons, a kindly Englishwoman in her 50s who was teaching in Khartoum, found herself arrested for allowing her students to "insult" the name of the Prophet. After the Sharia court ruled that she should not be beheaded or flogged, but merely imprisoned for 15 days in a notoriously overcrowded and brutal jail, mobs appeared on the streets to proclaim: "No tolerance — execution."
By now the case had become a cause célèbre. The Islamist regime — one of the most evil in the world, guilty of genocide against its own people and terrorism against others — tried to exploit the plight of Mrs. Gibbons in order to extract the maximum advantage from the British. True to form, the Foreign Office acquiesced in its own humiliation. It used to be said that British diplomats were sent abroad to lie for their country; it would be truer to say that they are sent abroad to lie down and be walked over for their country.
Their very mild requests for her release once rebuffed, the British did not wait to hear the Sudanese conditions for not beheading nor flogging Mrs. Gibbons. Instead, an extraordinary mission was dispatched to Khartoum, one unprecedented in the history of British diplomacy. Two life peers, Lord Ahmed and Baroness Warsi, were flown in, not as formal representatives of the British government, but as intermediaries. They had only one qualification as negotiators: both were Muslims. The Sudanese refused to communicate with the British embassy in Khartoum, and diplomats were reduced to phoning journalists to find out what was going on. [emphasis added]
It is true that Mrs. Gibbons was released unharmed on Monday, terrified and grovelling her apologies: "I have great respect for the Islamic religion and would not knowingly offend anyone. I am sorry if I caused any distress." By then, however, she had unwittingly served her purpose. On the return journey, Lord Ahmed apparently joked about the teddy bear and remarked to the press: "We hope that British aid to Sudan continues and that relations between our two countries will not be damaged by this incident — in fact, this should be a way to strengthen relations."
Really? Great Britain still is the world's fourth largest economy and one of the only countries apart from America capable of projecting military power abroad. The days when Her Majesty's government would respond to the arrest of a British citizen by sending a warship are long gone, but Britain has still managed to fight four wars in the past 10 years.
Yet this great nation, this homeland of democracy and the rule of law humbles itself before a dictatorship by tacitly accepting the monstrous notion that non-Muslims are unworthy even to negotiate with an Islamic state. [emphasis added]
What this incident shows is just how fast the growth of large Muslim communities in Europe is altering the balance of power. Because, in the words of the eminent Muslim theologian Zaki Badawi, Muslim theology "is a theology of the majority," the fact that Muslims are still a minority in European states does not prevent them demanding the right to live under Shariah law and the right to have a veto over foreign policy. Islamist states, such as Sudan, now insist on negotiating with British Muslims, implicitly treating Britain as if it were already part of the global Muslim community, the Ummah. [emphasis added]. Incredibly, the British government seems content to be sidelined. Last month I attended a meeting at which Ayaan Hirsi Ali debated Islam with Ed Hussein, the author of "The Islamist." Mr. Hussein has turned his back on his jihadi past, for which he has been condemned as an "extremist" by Muslim leaders, but he is still an enthusiastic Muslim. Ms. Hirsi Ali, by contrast, called her autobiography "Infidel" and she rejoices in her apostasy. The debate had to be held at a secret location: as she said, random Muslims consider it their duty to kill her.
For Ms. Hirsi Ali, the "war on terror" is really a "war on Islam" — though not a "war on Muslims." "I see no difference between Islam and Islamism," she declared. "I don't believe there is such a thing as 'moderate Islam'." No compromise is possible with a faith that claims to govern every aspect of life, including politics, she thinks. In any test of who is a good Muslim, the fundamentalists would always win against the moderates, she explained.
The fact that so many disputes revolve around the person of Mohammed is not accidental. Strict Muslims believe that they must imitate his conduct. What, asked Ms. Hirsi Ali, about the prophet's choice of a nine-year-old girl as a bride? Under modern Western law, an adult having sex with a child is punished as a serious criminal. But for a devout Muslim, all the prophet's actions are by definition justified. The attempt to silence dissent, to prevent anyone from scrutinizing, or criticizing Mohammed's morality, is at the heart of the confrontation between Islam and the West. [emphasis added]
Mr. Hussein attempted to defend his prophet, arguing that the bride in question, Ayisha, had fought in a battle and must really have been a teenager, maybe 15, by the time she married Mohammed. Ms. Hirsi Ali's rejoinder was uncompromising: "No, Ayisha was actually six. She was nine when the marriage was consummated."
Perhaps it was wrong to name a teddy bear after Mohammed — not for the sake of the prophet, but for the sake of the children.



To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (11085)12/11/2007 11:13:00 AM
From: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 20106
 
I wouldn't let a moslum a mile near my butt. they are likely to stick a bomb up there.



To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (11085)12/11/2007 11:28:43 AM
From: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 20106
 
New CIA details emerge about waterboarding
PAMELA HESS

Associated Press

December 11, 2007 at 8:35 AM EST

WASHINGTON — New details emerged Tuesday about the CIA's waterboarding of a top al-Qaida figure as the agency's director, General Michael Hayden, prepared for questioning by congressional panels about the destruction of CIA videotapes of terror suspect interrogations.

According to a former CIA agent, waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, a major al-Qaeda figure, got him to talk in less than 35 seconds, a technique he asserted had the approval of high-ranking U.S. officials. He said he thought the technique, which critics say is torture, probably disrupted “dozens” of planned al-Qaida attacks.

The former agent, John Kiriakou, a leader of the team that captured Mr. Zubaydah, did not explain how he knew who approved the interrogation technique but said such approval comes from top officials.

“This isn't something done willy nilly. This isn't something where an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he's going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner,” he said Tuesday on NBC's “Today” show. “This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department.”

Probe demanded into destruction of CIA videotapes
Each time CIA agents wished to use waterboarding or any other harsh interrogation technique, they had to present a “well-laid out, well-thought out reason” to top government officials, Mr. Kiriakou said. In Mr. Zubaydah's case, Mr. Kiriakou said the waterboarding had immediate effect.

“The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to co-operate,” Mr. Kiriakou said in an interview first broadcast Monday evening on ABC News' World News. “From that day on, he answered every question. The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.”

Details of Mr. Zubaydah's interrogation came as Gen. Hayden prepared for two days of questioning by the Senate and House intelligence panels about the CIA's destruction of the videotapes. Both are closed sessions.

Mr. Kiriakou said he did not know the interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah was being recorded by the CIA and did not know the tapes subsequently were destroyed.

“Like a lot of Americans, I'm involved in this internal, intellectual battle with myself weighing the idea that waterboarding may be torture versus the quality of information that we often get after using the waterboarding technique,” Mr. Kiriakou, now retired from the CIA, told ABC News. “And I struggle with it.”

He added: “What happens if we don't waterboard a person and we don't get that nugget of information and there's an attack. I would have trouble forgiving myself. ... At the time, I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do.”

Gen. Hayden told CIA employees last week that the CIA taped the interrogations of two alleged terrorists in 2002. He said Congress was notified in 2003 both of the tapes' existence and the agency's intent to destroy them.

The CIA destroyed the tapes in November of 2005. Exactly when Congress was notified and in what detail is in dispute.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the CIA claims it told the committee of the tapes' destruction at a hearing in November 2006. Mr. Rockefeller said, however, that the hearing transcript found no mention of that subject.

The House committee first learned the tapes had been destroyed in March 2007, according to Committee Chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas.

In last week's message, Gen. Hayden told CIA employees that “the leaders of our oversight committees in Congress were informed of the videos years ago and of the Agency's intention to dispose of the material. Our oversight committees also have been told that the videos were, in fact, destroyed.”

But Mr. Reyes said Monday that Gen. Hayden's claim that Congress was properly notified “does not appear to be true.”

Mr. Reyes and ranking Republican Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan have launched a committee investigation into the decision to destroy the videotapes and whether Congress was apprised. It will also scrutinize the techniques used during the interrogations.