A year and a half ago, as the West enjoyed a collective thrill up the leg over the flowering of democracy in Tahrir Square, I suggested that the real beneficiary of the “Facebook revolution” would be the Muslim Brotherhood — an outfit our leaders apparently figured they could do business with, despite its mortal and […]
With a hat tip to VFR, here’s Charles Krauthammer on the “Arab Spring”: Many Westerners naÁ¯vely believed the future belonged to the hip, secular, tweeting kids of Tahrir Square. Well there were, after all (ahem!), some observers here in the West who saw things a bit more clearly. Alas, this sliver of Westernization was no […]
In which it is demonstrated once again that “Second-In-Command of al-Qaeda” is the world’s most dangerous job.
My, so many interesting things afoot in the Gulf and environs lately! Much to think about: — The ongoing game between AQAP and the Saudis… — …in particular, between Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri and Mohammed bin Nayef (little brother Abdullah Asiri having already sacrificed his life in vain on that score); — That Fahd al-Quso was […]
Armed with weapons purloined from Muammar Qaddafi’s arsenal, Tuareg fighters and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb give us what I think is referred to around Washington these days as a “teachable moment”. Today’s lesson? The law of unintended consequences.
March 31, 2012 – 10:36 pm
Oh, my. For a truly startling, completely unforeseeable turn of events, check out this item from the Times: Islamist Group Breaks Pledge to Stay Out of Race in Egypt CAIRO ”” The Muslim Brotherhood nominated its chief strategist and financier Khairat el-Shater on Saturday as its candidate to become Egypt’s first president since Hosni Mubarak, […]
Here’s a thoughtful new item by Sam Harris called Islam and the Future of Liberalism. A sample: As I tried to make clear [in a recent podcast], we know that intolerance within the Muslim world extends far beyond the membership of “extremist’ groups. Recent events in Afghanistan demonstrate, yet again, that ordinary Afghans grow far […]
February 29, 2012 – 10:04 pm
It took a year, but it seems reality is finally beginning to impinge upon Thomas Friedman, who, of all people, should have known better all along. Beginning to impinge, I say, because there is one reality — the elephant, as they say, in the room — that he, and most of the academic and political […]
January 31, 2012 – 3:08 pm
Dennis Mangan brings us news from the prestigious London School of Economics — where the Student Union has declared “Islamophobia” to be “racism”, and has appointed itself to identify, root out, and prosecute blasphemy against Islam. This craven gesture is not only an affront to freedom of speech, and to freedom of thought itself, but […]
January 30, 2012 – 9:15 pm
How wonderful it is to see democracy flowering at last in the Maghreb! It would be too much, though, to expect everything to be put right all at once, after so many years of ruthless oppression. Even though Egypt’s newly elected political leaders have now consolidated their parliamentary power in the wake of last year’s […]
January 4, 2012 – 1:18 am
In the discussion thread of our recent post about Yusuf al-Qaradawi and the Muslim Brotherhood, the issue soon became: what should the attitude of the West have been toward the democratic uprisings in Egypt and elsewhere? On the one hand, as Americans it seems we ought to support democracy wherever we can; on the other, […]
January 2, 2012 – 5:21 pm
Nearly a year ago, as the uprising in Egypt was gaining traction, I wrote: The Muslim Brotherhood (or “Ikhwan’) differs from militant Islamist factions like al-Qaeda not in its goals, which are more or less the same, but only in its strategy: it has no moral or philosophical aversion to violent jihad, but considers it […]
December 23, 2011 – 7:02 pm
Diana West comments here on the dismal verdict in the Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff trial in Vienna. Her crime, if you haven’t followed the case, was to comment disapprovingly on Mohammed’s deflowering of his nine-year-old wife Aisha. Well, tolerance is paramount in a decent society, I guess. Meanwhile, Christmas masses have been canceled in Iraq due to […]
December 15, 2011 – 7:05 pm
Here are a couple of recent items on the dawa-jihad front: First: you may have heard about the kerfuffle that arose recently when the home-improvement chain Lowe’s decided to yank its sponsorship of the “anti-Islamophobic” television series All-American-Muslim. (Dozens of other sponsors soon joined them; all are now predictably being tarred as “racists” by the […]
December 1, 2011 – 12:04 am
Here’s a stunning development, a real shocker: Early Results in Egypt Show a Mandate for Islamists Seems to me there was somebody who saw this coming almost a year ago, even before the Times started writing things like “We can think of no better rebuttal to Osama bin Laden and other extremists.” Back around January […]
November 2, 2011 – 12:56 pm
Over at NRO today, Andrew McCarthy and Robert Spencer debate the distinction between Islam and “Islamism”. Mr. Spencer argues that Islam is in its very essence “Islamist”: that its core doctrines, on any coherent and broadly acceptable interpretation, are normative and prescriptive not only spiritually and socially, but also legally and politically. Mr. McCarthy insists […]
October 29, 2011 – 9:29 pm
Strong stuff yesterday from Andy McCarthy on our doings in Libya. Excerpt: [A] throng of seething Islamists stripped, beat, paraded, and finally shot Qaddafi execution-style, all the while screaming the signature “Allahu Akbar!’ battle cry with a fervor that would have made Mohamed Atta blush. They then shoved the despot’s corpse into a refrigerator ”” […]
October 24, 2011 – 6:51 pm
Startlingly, it appears that the new government in Libya will be an Islamist arrangement, based on Sharia law. Vlad Tepes has a video clip, with translated subtitles, here.
September 30, 2011 – 12:07 pm
I see we’ve just managed to annihilate Anwar al-Awlaki, who was hiding in a compound in Yemen. Good work. I often criticize president Obama, but I’ll gladly give him praise and credit for this, and for having steadfastly maintained the pressure on al-Qaeda throughout his term in office. The same also, of course, to the […]
September 28, 2011 – 7:12 pm
This is good: a uniquely reliable source has finally got round to calling out Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad for his crackpot 9/11-conspiracy theories. Story here.
September 20, 2011 – 8:47 pm
U.S. building secret drone bases in Africa, Arabian Peninsula, officials say
September 14, 2011 – 10:26 am
This from John McCreary of NightWatch, on yesterday’s Taliban attack in Kabul (my emphasis): Afghanistan: Special comment: The details of the five-hour complex attack in Kabul have been reported all day. An extremely knowledgeable, well-informed and brilliant Reader provided feedback that most of the news coverage is factually wrong, but NightWatch will provide more details […]
September 11, 2011 – 8:17 pm
Here it is, then: September 11th, 2011. On that black day ten years ago, Nina and I stood on the roof of our Brooklyn home and watched the towers burn, and fall. Our daughter, now in her twenties, was in school at Stuyvesant High, just a couple of blocks from the doomed buildings; we didn’t […]
On January 28th, as the ground was shifting in Egypt, our crack strategic-analysis team here at waka waka waka saw a critical opportunity for the Muslim Brotherhood, and predicted that the Ikhwan would step smartly into the breach. We wrote: Nature abhors a vacuum, and although the newspapers have so far reported that religious groups […]
Good news. One cheer for Europe. Here.
Here’s Stanley Kurtz, writing at the Corner: Although it’s too soon to fully understand what they mean, there are important developments in Egypt today in the run-up to this fall’s election. First, a major coalition of parties has formed that includes not only the Muslim Brotherhood, but two key liberal parties, Wafd and Ghad. The […]
Between a drumming gig in the wilds of rural New Jersey yesterday, and Mother’s Day doings today, it’s been one of those busy weekends. So for tonight, an analyst’s report sent our way by the indefatigable JK: Osama bin Laden’s Death: Implications and Considerations. I haven’t had time yet to read it through myself, but […]
New York City thanks you, SEAL Team Six. This will sharpen everything. Osama bin Laden has been such a potent symbol of American impotence that his death will be a jolt of electricity. We’ll see far-reaching effects, I think, quite out of proportion to any tactical, or even strategic, effect his death will have. The […]
April 27, 2011 – 10:31 pm
In the wake of the latest massacre of US personnel by our Muslim “allies”, here is a response from Diana West. We’ve lost our minds, and as a result the best among us are losing their lives.
On Wednesday’s Today show, Matt Lauer interviewed Michele Bachmann. He is clearly of the opinion that our joining Libya’s civil war on behalf of the rebels was the right thing to do; she disagrees. In the course of their brief conversation came the following exchange: BACHMANN: …We don’t know how much al Qaeda is involved […]
Lawrence Auster brings to our attention an article, published by the National Association of Scholars, about a Christian student’s experiences in the Islamic Studies department at the Hartford Seminary (which is, by the way, the oldest Islamic Studies department in America). The Seminary represents itself as a secular institution dedicated to interfaith dialogue and comparative […]
February 3, 2011 – 11:00 am
Amongst all the turmoil in the Mideast, some good news: Lars Hedegaard has been acquitted — on a technicality, but we’ll take it. He published this statement at the website of the International Free Press Society: As my ancient forefathers, the Vikings, would have said: It is always good to fight. It is better to […]
January 29, 2011 – 11:53 pm
Over the transom comes a link to an analysis of the Egyptian situation by foreign-policy analyst Barry Rubin. Some salient excerpts: There is no good policy for the United States regarding the uprising in Egypt. …There is no organized moderate group in Egypt. Even the most important past such organization, the Kifaya movement, has already […]
January 28, 2011 – 12:13 pm
The pot is aboil all over the Mideast and the Maghreb; today the world’s attention is focused on Egypt, where the long reign of Hosni Mubarak seems to be coming to an end. (Mubarak’s son, his heir apparent, has apparently already fled.) The indispensable NightWatch offers a crisp analysis of why events like these can […]
January 25, 2011 – 12:02 pm
In our previous post we republished the statement before his inquisitors of Lars Hedegaard, the president of the International Free Press Society, who stands trial, in a supposedly free nation of northern Europe, for the crime of uttering a forbidden opinion in his own home. You would think that the leading newspapers of the capital […]
January 24, 2011 – 11:18 pm
The show trial of Lars Hedegaard, the president of the International Free Press Society, took place today in Copenhagen. He stands accused, for remarks he made in a privately taped interview, of violating a Danish law that allows a prosecutor to bring criminal charges against anyone deemed to have spoken words that insult or degrade […]
December 12, 2010 – 11:45 pm
Here’s some holiday cheer, sent our way by the indefatigable JK.
November 30, 2010 – 4:23 pm
Writing in Slate, Christopher Hitchens rails at the foolish and humiliating measures we have imposed on ourselves in our bumbling, ill-guided quest for airline security. We read: When the best that the children of a revolution can do for the defense of their inalienable protection against unwarranted search and seizure is to issue the pathetic […]
November 28, 2010 – 10:43 pm
In a recent editorial about the airport-security brouhaha, the Times reiterates the usual liberal cant as regards profiling. We read: Seeing conservative Republicans accuse the Obama administration of trying too hard to protect America from terrorists is a remarkable spectacle of contortion. But many of them are making a far more pernicious point. They want […]
November 8, 2010 – 11:19 pm
Among the myriad wavelets in last week’s conservative electoral tsunami was a measure passed in Oklahoma banning the application of sharia, or Islamic law, in that state. Sharia, you say? In Oklahoma?? Fair enough. But the referendum was inspired, no doubt, by a look around at other theoretically secular Western polities such as England, in […]
October 31, 2010 – 11:51 pm
Well, here’s a surprising development, brought to our attention by the indefatigable JK: in this video clip, we see liberal stalwart Bill Maher breaking ranks with party orthodoxy, and expressing public concern about the usurpation of Western culture by Islam. This is not actually an inconsistent position for Mr. Maher, whose scorn for religion he […]
October 29, 2010 – 9:42 am
How utterly gormless has our moribund liberal Western culture become in its prostration before its nemesis? A story making the rounds today should give you some idea. Here.
October 21, 2010 – 10:35 pm
Everybody’s talking about the Juan Williams firing. For those of you who have spent the past day or two under anesthesia, or held at gunpoint in an al-Qaeda safe-house, Juan Williams is the National Public Radio “on-air personality” who publicly spoke forbidden truths, and was immediately sacked and disfellowshipped for his heresy. Here’s what happened, […]
October 4, 2010 – 9:59 pm
We’ve been just about completely mum on the clash-of-civilizations front for the past couple of months, so here’s an update. The blasphemy trial of Geert Wilders resumed in Holland today. No sooner had it got under way than the presiding magistrate, Jan Moors, made a snarky comment about the defendant, prompting Mr. Wilders’s attorney to […]
September 15, 2010 – 11:31 pm
Tea Party candidates made a strong showing in primary elections yesterday, and as a conservative sort myself I can’t say I was sorry to see it happen. The American people are roused to righteous anger, and by all indications, there are going to be an awful lot of wigs on the green come November. Of […]
September 9, 2010 – 10:39 pm
Tonight a cold front has moved through the Northeast, and suddenly it feels like fall outside, which is always just fine with me. If there’s one thing I detest (and longtime readers will know that’s something of a lowball estimate), it’s a hot September. But right now there’s a cool, crisp breeze coming through the […]
August 6, 2010 – 11:12 pm
Elena Kagan lately having been confirmed as a Justice of the Supreme Court, John Derbyshire gives us a preview on this week’s Radio Derb (transcript here) of what he thinks we’ll be getting: Look for lots of wonderful new rights to be discovered buried in the Constitution ”” things that mysteriously escaped the attention of […]
The United States recently announced a “thaw” in relations with Pakistan, with the US agreeing to burn $500 million to provide the needed warmth. Meanwhile, most observers have for some time now seen quite plainly that Pakistan has been playing a double game, with the all-powerful ISI taking US assistance with one hand and stroking […]
103° today. It’s hard to think original thoughts while undergoing massive organ failure, so for tonight I will just add my own to the chorus of voices yelping in indignation over the interview that NASA director Charles Bolden gave to al-Jazeera. Here’s what he said (starting at about 1:11): “Before I became the NASA administrator, […]
In this item from a couple of days ago, we learn that representatives of various Muslim nations have appealed to that supremely impartial and impeccably credentialed arbiter of justice, the U.N. Human Rights Council, to protest a rising tide of “Islamophobia” in Western nations. We read: “People of Arab origin face new forms of racism, […]