Category Archives: Terrorism

HarperCollins Panders to Gulf Extremism

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HarperCollins has admitted it sells school atlases in the Middle East that omit Israel. A HarperCollins subsidiary spokesperson said naming Israel would be “unacceptable” in the Gulf and the change accommodated “local preferences”.

It no surprise that the Arab and Muslim states of the greater Middle East prefer to erase Israel. Since 1947, Israel’s neighbors and their supporters in the Gulf have invaded Israel four times. Since those conventional military efforts failed, the intermittent terror war against Jews that began in the 1910s has become the focal point. Petrodollars have fueled the terror, as first Iran and now Qatar are primary Hamas financiers, Iran still controls Hezbollah, Saudi wealth supports extremist mosques, madrassas and organizations that indoctrinate members with virulent, violent anti-Westernism, Yemen remains an al-Qaeda hotbed, and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq paid cash prizes to families of Palestinian suicide bombers until his overthrow.

Erasing Israel from school maps may seem a trivial slight or self-indulgence when seen alongside perpetrators of horrific violence, but that misses the point. In 1967, the Arab League met in Khartoum, Sudan and adopted the “three no’s” – no negotiation with Israel, no normalization of Israel and no recognition of Israel. Underlying this rejectionist doctrine was the realization that acknowledging Israel’s very existence might lead some to believe resolving the conflict short of Israel’s annihilation was possible. The Arab League rejected any peace with Israel under any circumstances, so any feeling that peace was possible ever, under any conditions could only hamper their efforts. Israel could not be acknowledged in the least sense.

Indoctrination, incitement and rejectionism remain significant obstacles today. Throughout the Muslim and Arab world, terrorists who perpetrated attacks on Israel are lauded as heroes, with streets, parks and schools named after them and the anniversaries of their attacks celebrated. Mein Kampf is popular. Despite 36 years of peace since the Camp David accords, Egypt’s state media still pedals anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, including a gala 2002 television adaptation of the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Not surprisingly, polling consistently finds the Egyptian population among the most anti-Semitic in the world, perhaps exceeding even the Palestinian Territories. Among the many failings of textbooks used in UNRWA and other Palestinian schools, a perennial source of dispute, they, like HarperCollins’s maps, fail to acknowledge Israel’s very existence.

As a business, HarperCollins is of course free to acquiesce in its clients deceiving their children. However, its officers should understand that they are perpetuating a mindset and conflict that has already continued at least sixty-six years, and as long as a hundred, depending what starting point you choose. Prospective HarperCollins clients and partners are likewise free to take their business elsewhere in light of its loose relationship with facts and complicity with extremists.

Terror in Canada

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There is no good information available, yet, about the terror attack in Ottawa today.  Whomever the perpetrators are, they have targeted a people as committed to freedom and individual rights as any in the world.  The United States’ closest and most important ally, in many ways Canada under Stephen Harper has taken the lead in extolling the virtues of Western ideals.

This has apparently made Canada a target. If so, Canada is in good company. The United States has been under attack for championing the West since at least the 1970s; England was victimized in July, 2005; Spain in 2004. Israelis are under perpetual threat as an outpost of Western ideals in a hostile region.

Canadians should be proud of their moral and clear-sighted leadership at a time when U.S. vision is sadly lacking. And Americans should first mourn with their northern neighbors, but then renew their commitments to the Western liberalism that binds the modern world.

UPDATE: As expected, Prime Minister Harper’s statement on today’s attack strikes just the right tone. After acknowledging that Canada was not immune to terror, Harper continued, “let there be no misunderstanding….Canada will never be intimidate.”

The latest reports are that the perpetrator is a recent convert to Islam. That may turn out to be anecdotal and not pertinent to the attack itself, but it seems unlikely. That Canada’s leadership in promoting a western liberalism at odds with extremists is a badge of honor.

There Is No Middle Ground With The Islamic State

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The scale of the Islamic State’s (IS) brutality against dissenters across swathes of Syria and Iraq give the West yet another opportunity to accept and embrace the civilizational conflict between Islamists and the modern world order. Since at least the 1960s and especially under the Obama Administration, a growing portion of Americans and Westerners generally have believed that humanity’s universal and inherent goodwill make any quarrel reconcilable with adequate discussion. While the fallacy has long been apparent, it has rarely been illustrated with IS’s tremendous alacrity.

IS’s basic motivation is establishing, or re-establishing, the khilafa – the Islamic Caliphate. According to IS’s brand of Islam, allowing the kafir – the unbeliever – to rule in any land that once was ruled by Islam is an offense to Allah. In this interpretation, once land has become part of Islam – dar ul-Islam – it rightly remains so in perpetuity. Thus IS requires all Muslims to wage war to “restore” the Caliphate, which shall include all of dar ul-Islam, which in turn is coextensive with Islam’s farthest expansion. IS proposes to undo at least 500 years of history, as it would claim the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal), Eastern Europe to the gates of Vienna, the Caucuses, North Africa, parts of Italy and Sicily, and all of Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Indian Subcontinent.

For IS, any and all means are permissible for reestablishing the Caliphate. IS perpetrates mass executions, enslavement, kidnapping and forced marriages to eliminate potential enemies. Those who refuse to convert are executed. Mosul has no Christian population for the first time in 2000 years. IS razes Christian and non-conforming Muslims’ shrines, whether as anathema in-and-of-themselves, or to deprive dissenters of rallying points and hope.

In its attacks on other Muslims whom it deems apostates, IS illustrates its own extremism and one of the flaws in Western thought about Islamist terror. IS does not represent all Muslims; neither does al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, Boko Haram, etc. These groups often hate one another with equal or greater passion than they hate Christians, Jews or anyone else. IS merely arrogates its interpretation as the unique, true Islam and self-identifies as Sunnis. Yet many Sunnis oppose them and Sunnis are but one sect of Islam. There are probably around 1.2 billion Muslims who would reject IS theology. So it is that Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the Kurdish Peshmerga are all battling IS despite often deep hostility to one another.

Despite the diversity of Muslim sects and beliefs, Western leaders insist on purveying the same superficial assessment that Islam should be treated as a benign monolith. Western leaders’ penchant for saying “Islam is…” reflects little but the speaker’s ignorance. Islam is not a religion of peace, of war, or of anything else in particular, even if various sects’ more illiberal adherents think it ought to be. Islam is a varied religion led by men who espouse wildly different interpretations and views. IS and its followers are motivated by an interpretation of Islam not only permitting, but requiring unrestrained violence in the name of Islam.

The Western world has no modern equivalent of such religious fanaticism. Europe’s religious wars essentially ended with the enlightenment, albeit with latent patches of religious violence and continuing socio-political battles along sectarian lines. Religious affiliation of any kind continues to wane in the West and committing violence for religious goals is virtually unheard of. There is no ability to internalize that anybody might have religious beliefs so strong, so deep and so harsh that it compels unadulterated violence against nonconformists.

The alienness of unadulterated religious belief that condones violence and ubiquitous rote proclamations that “Islam is a religion of peace” lead Western populations and leaders alike to suffer a sort of cognitive dissonance and avoidance rather than confront the implications of the ongoing, 21st Century religious war. Classical Western ideology holds individual rights including freedom of expression and conscious sacrosanct. IS and discordant other Islamist terrorist organizations believe they are obligated by god to destroy anybody and anything derogating from the universal imposition of their own interpretations of Islam. There is no common ground; only one civilizational principle can survive.