The Bosque Boys

HERE

From the New York Times, link from Jihadwatch.

Excerpts:
introduction: As a 22-year-old Somali Muslim, Ayaan Hirsi Ali disappeared en route from Nairobi, Kenya, to an arranged marriage in Canada, and fled to the Netherlands. A decade later, she won a seat in the Dutch Parliament, where she became known as an advocate for women and a critic of Islam. She collaborated with Theo van Gogh on a movie that depicted abused women with passages from the Koran written on their skin. In 2004, Mr. van Gogh was shot dead in Amsterdam by a Moroccan immigrant, who then staked a letter threatening Ms. Hirsi Ali onto Mr. van Gogh’s chest, sending her into hiding for a while. Three months ago she landed in Washington as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Her autobiography, “Infidel,” will be published in English on Tuesday. Recently she spoke to Laurie Goodstein, a reporter for The New York Times.

An interesting Q & A:
Q. Have you seen any ideology coming from within Islam that gives young Muslims a sense of purpose without the overlay of militancy?

A. They have no alternative message. There is no active missionary work among the youth telling them, do not become jihadis. They do not use media means as much as the jihadis. They simply — they’re reactive and they don’t seem to be able to compete with the jihadis. And every time there is a debate between a real jihadi and, say, what we have decided to call moderate Muslims, the jihadis win. Because they come with the Koran and quotes from the Koran. The come with quotes from the Hadith and the Sunnah, and the traditions of the prophet. And every assertion they make, whether it is that women should be veiled, or Jews should be killed, or Americans are our enemies, or any of that, they win. Because what they have to say is so consistent with what is written in the Koran and the Hadith. And what the moderates fail to do is to say, listen, that’s all in there, but that wasn’t meant for this context. And we have moved on. We can change the Koran, we can change the Hadith. That’s what’s missing.

Who says that Islam has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists?

Name the current giants in Christianity. . . . . Okay, is this name on your list--Pope Shenouda III. Most Americans would have overlooked his name also. But, he is a man that will be in books of church history a thousand years from now, who will be the subject of dissertations and books by scholars not yet born.

He is the leader of the Coptic Church, the indigenous Christian church in Egypt whose history goes back to apostolic days. Under his 36 years of leadership the Coptic church in Egypt and abroad has seen revitalization and renewal. (Historical note: prior to the Muslim conquest Egypt was one of the most Christianized nations in the world.)

He is in Ambridge, northwest of Pittsburgh, to consecrate a church building for the growing St. Mary parish.

Article here from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The article gives a good summary of Pope Shenouda III's life and significance.

Yesterday on the radio I caught part of an interview with Arnaud de Borchgrave, who covered the Tet Offensive as Newsweek‘s chief foreign correspondent and had seven tours in Vietnam between 1951 under the French and 1972. Since I missed the opening segment, I do not know if the interview was live or taped.

Since many are comparing Iraq to Vietnam, I think it is important to be clear on what the similarities and differences actually are. To that end, de Borchgrave's 2004 article for UPI is must reading. In it he makes the case (now more widely accepted by historians) that Tet was actually a military defeat for the Vietcong and NVA, but was misreported by the US media as a defeat for us. The political consequences of this misreporting eventually resulted in the fall of South Vietnam.

The UPI article is here.

A Buddhist ice-cream vendor tries to sell in the wrong village, and is beheaded. Here from Jihadwatch.

Remember, if the Palestinian problem is solved Islamic militancy will vanish.

When Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis speaks, it is a good idea to listen. Here is a summary of recent remarks.

Many in the West seem to think that Islam is simply reactive. That is, the motivation to war with others simply is a reaction to actions or characteristics of non-Muslims. While reactive motivation probably is present, it is simplistic reductionism to believe militant Islam is purely reactive. Similarly, here in the mostly secular West, many disbelieve in religious motivation. The actions of militant Muslims are explained simply in terms of social and economic factors. This also is simplistic reductionism. Islam, in all its forms, is a life-and-belief system with its own inner dynamism. To ignore this inner dynamism is to misunderstand. To prove my point, this BBC interview with a Taliban leader. Here is a portion of the interview. Link from Jihadwatch.

With a black-dyed beard, 34-year-old Baitullah greeted us in a big room with several of his armed men beside him. We sat on a new colourful quilt spread on the ground.

Baitullah seemed a man with only jihad (holy war) on his mind. During the interview he quoted several verses from the Koran to defend his stance that foreign forces must be evicted from Islamic countries.

"Allah on 480 occasions in the Holy Koran extols Muslims to wage jihad. We only fulfil God's orders. Only jihad can bring peace to the world," he says.

The militant leader on several occasions in the past had openly admitted crossing over into Afghanistan to fight foreign troops.

"We will continue our struggle until foreign troops are thrown out. Then we will attack them in the US and Britain until they either accept Islam or agree to pay jazia (a tax in Islam for non-Muslims living in an Islamic state)."

I think these items need to be a bigger deal on the American media

Here. Shia kill and threaten Palestinians in Iraq, prompting exodus. From Gulfnews. Link from Instapundit.

NIBRAS KAZIMI in the New York Sun, points to evidence that "staying the course" may have reached a tipping point against the insurgency in Iraq. Here.

Tocqueville attached this essay to the prior post, and, in response to off-line requests, Iam featuring it as a stand-alone post:

It's the Demography, Stupid
By Mark Steyn

"Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries. There'll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands--probably--just as in Istanbul there's still a building called St. Sophia's Cathedral. But it's not a cathedral; it's merely a designation for a piece of real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate. The challenge for those who reckon Western civilization is on balance better than the alternatives is to figure out a way to save at least some parts of the West."

Full essay here.

Gaypatriot has a link to this site on Terror-Free Oil. That is, a list of gasoline companies broken down into those whose product contains oil from countries of the Persian Gulf and those who do not. Here is the list.

Who are we funding when we fill up?

Worth Looking at: Martian Mariner takes exception to the Okie Gardener's post (read here in its entirety), which featured S. K. Malik's The Quranic Way of War. In conclusion, The Gardener commented: "We are not in a War on Terror. We are in a war with radical Islamists. This is not a new war. We are in another hot period of the nearly 1400 year-long war of Islam against everyone else. We need to understand the enemy in order to defeat him."

Guest Blog Rebuttal: Martian Mariner

"Understand the enemy."

Pakistan and its army is an important ally of our current War on Terror, misnamed as it may be. The reason that every Arab government, and most Islamic governments, are cooperating with us is because radical Salafism is as threatening to their regimes as it is to us. I'm certain that these secular but assuredly Muslim leaders do not consider themselves in the midst of a 1400 year-long war against the West.

My point here is that you're giving the Salafists more credit than they are due, by granting them the point that their brand of Islam is the true Islam. This point is not decided within Islam, and we shouldn't help legitimitize the side which would be most harmful to us.

I for one am not looking for a fight, and to claim that we're in the midst of an epoch-long war can have no benefit in a search for peace.