Razzia Redux

Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, found no need to explain or justify his unprovoked looting raids which suggests that the attitude of, “it’s there for the taking” and the lure of “something-for-nothing” was already well established and accepted as normal behaviour. This barbarous and predatory conduct may have, in time, changed—as it did with the Vikings— had it not been for Islam. Muhammad’s divinely sanctioned marauding of booty-laden merchant’s caravans became the imprimatur that entrenched opportunism and predation as, not only legitimate, but in fact exemplary, thereby immutably casting the die for eternity.
With Islam’s belief that all is preordained, where even the most minute detail in day to day life only happens because Allah has previously willed it, (the inshallah mentality), it doesn’t require a great stretch of the imagination to conceive that, in the Muslim mind, Allah has permitted Western society to develop, succeed and prosper so as to present the “faithful” with a ready-made “walk-in-walk-out”, “under new management” takeover, complete with a functioning infrastructure and a populace steadily retreating into an ever increasing degree of subservient “dhimmitude”. -Warner MacKenzie at Islam Watch

In most historic instances before nations have been subjugated to the muslim will, the final capitulation can be shown to have been preceded by years of marauding terror raids, "razzias", and the classic contemporary example can be found in the Darfur region of the Sudan.

This week the news in Darfur is the mass re-population by moon-watching, ethnic arabs of the now abandoned homelands of the indigenous black Africans (Dar=land; fur=the fur language). Lets put that bit of predictable news into context. This piece comes from Amnesty International and dates to 2003:

"The attack took place at dawn in September 2003 when many Janjawid arrived on camels, horses and by cars. Some Arab women, on donkeys and on camels, accompanied them. The women took part in the looting. I was sleeping when the attack took place. I was taken away by the attackers in khaki and in civilians clothes, along with dozens of other girls, and had to walk for three hours. During the day, we were beaten up and the Janjawid they told us: 'you, the black women, we will exterminate you; you have no God.' We were taken to a place in the bush were the Janjawid raped us several times at night. For three days, we did not receive food and almost no water. After three days, the Janjawid had to move to another place and set us free. They told us: 'next time we come, we will exterminate you all, we will not even leave a child alive'."

So it has been throughout the history of the non-islamic world beginning with conquest of Mecca by the first muslims. Rape, pillage, burn. Strip the boys and check for pubic hair. Those without become slaves, the others and their fathers and uncles are summarily executed. The women: raped and impregnated to make them dependent on their new masters. The razzia, repeated over and over, has always been the procedural precursor to the major push. This is how Judea went down, and Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, India, Anatolia, North Africa, and Spain. (Indonesia may be an exception here, but my ignorance of its history doesn't permit me to hazard a guess). Sometimes the razzias were just to extract booty, and sometimes simply to destroy the livelihood of the target peoples to soften them up for later. In Judea, Syria and Anatolia (the last Asian piece of Greco-Roman-Byzantine culture), the raiding parties would burn the crops and cut down the fruit trees, which of course led to immediate (and enduring) famine, untold suffering and eventual depopulation, not to mention de-forestation and ruination of the land. Conversion to islam under those circumstances would mean a chance at physical salvation (but also living life under Sharia law). Thus did islam move into the West at its margins.

Certainly, the razzias of al-Qaeda in the West today are meticulously planned to go after our fruit trees and crops, so to speak, but don't neglect to include as razzias the on-going car-torching campaigns in the French cities, and the marauding gang rapes in Sweden, Norway, Australia, and elsewhere.

I have been meaning to blog something on razzias through history for a while and their connections to current events, but didn't get around to it until MacKenzie's fine article gave me a bit of a kick in the pants. His piece also touches upon a related topic that really interests me: how the rich, and hugely productive Middle-eastern and North African agricultural regions of the Greco-Roman world were largely turned into deserts by the muslims, and are only now, under western influence, slowly beginning to recover.

Read it all.

A shouting headline I heard today

I have cribbed the following post in its entirety from the Pedestrian Infidel site, as I could not find a quick way to yank it out separately and link to it...This expresses many of my own thoughts regarding islam as my thinking has evolved over the past few years. Most people simply don't get the sense of desperation those of us in the anti-jihad movement feel as we watch the history of islam repeat itself in our own day. But history can be on our side this time if only we can create for ourselves, as a civilization, the tools which are there to be crafted that can defeat this scourge....Thanks to Mark Alexander for putting this down.


Stop the Islamization of Europe! Stop the Islamization of the West!

The West is being Islamized before our very eyes! It is happening in such subtle ways that it is sometimes imperceptible to those who are not looking out for it. But much of the time, what is happening is plain to see. Each and every concession we make to Muslims is a further nail in the coffin of liberal democracy. Each time we consider granting Muslims a public holiday, each time we consider curtailing our own freedom of speech to appease them, we are assisting Muslims to further Islamize our home countries. Be sure of that.

Western governments should not be powerless to deal with this, but even so they seem to be: They lack the will and determination to stop the rot.

Political correctness, of course, has taken its toll on the West. So has the ridiculous concept of multiculturalism. Add to this a deep-seated guilt complex, a pervasive attitude of self-denigration, extreme tolerance, and an army of apologists for Islam, and we have a catastrophe in the making.

One of our greatest mistakes is to think of Islam as just another one of the world's great religions. We shouldn't. Islam is politics or it is nothing at all, but, of course, it is politics with a spiritual dimension, politics all wrapped up in a deity.

What is the nature of the politics of Islam? Well, that's an easy one to answer: It is little different from the politics of a totalitarian state, little different from the ideologies of Nazism or communism, different only in detail rather than style. Both Nazism and communism used the purge to try and 'cleanse' society of what it considered undesirable. Islam always does the same. Both of those tolerated only a single political party. Islam generally does the same, and certainly, where it doesn't, insists that all parties be Islamic ones. This, of course, gives the establishment the power to coerce the people. G. H. Sabine, in his book, A History of Political Theory, tells us this about Nazism and communism:

...the party was a self-constituted aristocracy which has the mission partly of leading, partly of instructing, and partly of coercing the bulk of mankind along the road that it must follow. Both were totalitarian in the sense that they obliterated the liberal distinction between areas of private judgment and of public control, and both turned the educational system into an agency of universal indoctrination. In their philosophy[,] both were utterly dogmatic, professing, the one in the name of the Aryan race and the other in the name of the proletariat, a higher insight capable of laying down rules for art, literature, science, and religion. Both induced a frame of mind akin to religious fanaticism. In strategy[,] both were reckless in their assertions, boundless in their claims, abusive toward their opponents, prone to regard any concession on their own part as a temporary expedient and on a rival's part as a sign of weakness. The social philosophies of both agreed in regarding society as in essence a system of forces, economic or racial, between which adjustment takes place by struggle and dominance rather than by mutual understanding and concession. Both therefore regarded politics as merely an expression of power.

So much in Islam resembles those two despicable ideologies. The ruling party in Islamic countries coerces the people along the road that it must follow. This is particularly easy to observe in Iran today. Islam, too, tries to obliterate the liberal distinction between areas of private judgment and of public control. We see this in all Islamic countries. Similar to Nazism and communism, Islam also turns the educational system into an apparatus of the state for the purpose of universal indoctrination. One would be justified in using the term 'brainwashing'.

In addition, Islam also lays down rules for art (no depiction of the human form is allowed, for example), for literature (all is censored), for science (nothing discovered may contradict the Qur'an or Ahadith, or the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad), and certainly for religion (no religion is accepted of man except Islam). Where Jews and Christians live in Islamic countries, they are given protection in return for a high tax known as the jiziyah, but are given dhimmi status, which means, in effect, that they are subdued and given second class status.

Islam also induces a frame of mind akin to fanaticism. That this is so is self-explanatory. Islam is also reckless in its assertions, and boundless in its claims. Example: All the world belongs to Allah; therefore it is the duty of all Muslims to Islamize it. In Islam, too, adjustment takes place by struggle and dominance. Note the Jihad.

A remarkable similarity is this: Islam is also inclined to be abusive to its opponents (they are infidels and unclean), and is prone to regard any concession on its own part as a temporary expedient and on a rival's part as a sign of weakness. And Islam, too, regards politics as an expression of power. Oh, and we shouldn't forget that Islam is profoundly anti-Semitic!

Aren't the similarities just remarkable?

What is troubling is this: Islam is closing in on us. We have so many unassimilated Muslims living in Europe, and an ever-growing number living in the States, too. In fact, millions and millions of Muslims live in the West today. But the West has no strategy for dealing with the fall-out. We saw this recently in France when their cities burnt night after night. The mayhem Muslim immigrants caused there was enough to make anyone's hair stand on end. But what has France done about it? It has unveiled a series of measures to appease the Muslim immigrants, and has ignored the fact that this was an uprising caused in no small part by the Islamic community flexing its ever strengthening muscles. Now, however, we have some hope of change: after all, Nicholas Sarkozy has been elected Président de la Republique.

If we in the West wish to ensure the survival of our own civilization, wish to ensure that our children will be able to live as freely as we have been able to do till now, wish to ensure that people are free to choose their religion in the West, but just as free not to choose one, then we have a lot of thinking to do!

I would suggest that we start by asking one simple question: Should we regard Islam as a mere religion, or should we start to see it for what it truly is: a political ideology with megalomaniacal aspirations; a political ideology with a spiritual dimension which will stop at nothing until the West is no more, until the West has been brought into Dar ul Islam, or the 'House of Islam', until the West has been well and truly Islamized. To ignore this fact is tantamount to playing fast and loose with our children's future freedoms and security. In fact, it is negligent of their future well-being!

Mark Alexander*

*All rights reserved

Thoughts for Memorial Day

Some Memorial Day observations here, courtesy of Jihad Watch

Robert Spencer observes that the western literati have completely lost it. Armies are, of course, obsolete, declasse, and anachronistic. That force of will and steely acts of men-at-arms might be necessary and honorable in their own right is but (temporarily, I hope) a distasteful memory best not memorialized. Of course, all of history has been made for our benefit, for there to be loft condos and granite countertops, and the trophy child and the retirement plan, and preening "pride" festivals and womens' studies, and Richard Brautigan novels, and the little dinner parties and the on-line shopping, and social justice, and arts-on-the-avenue and the lattes, and the nanny and the nanny-state. But no winners and no losers and no army recruiting either, please; its just so--so violent.

And my sentiments... well, there is a quote by General George Patton, paraphrased, that states: We ought not mourn people like those who died, but instead, thank God that they lived.

War? What war? Aren't we ending the war?

The opportunity of a lifetime! Death! Inshallah...

This interesting recruiting post comes to us courtesy the estimable website Internet Haganah, probably sourced out of an African or European Jihadist website. Internet Haganah performs an invaluable service in monitoring the Arabic jihad websites for sensory indications that somewhere out there there are people who have designs on upsetting our complacency.

A lot of nice people here in the USA think that if you notice things like this, it's racist behavior for sure. If you try to draw conclusions or suggest there might really be something going on, something that our hapless president didn't create or cause, or plan in advance, why, that's insane.

What I find particularly interesting about this item is the expression "He who misses this war". Why is it that the al-Qaida guys tend always to know what war they're fighting in and recruiting for, but we don't? Could it be that what we consider to be wars, they consider to be merely battles? The last I heard, al-Qaida was operating in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Algeria, and lately in Arab occupied Judea and Lebanon. Probably lots of other places, too, including here in the USA. The U.S. Congress, however, is quite busy with the "War in Iraq", squaring it off and drawing bright lines and such with great emphasis and nodding amongst themselves. Wait 'til they find out it's only been a battle for position.

Just a really diverse group of foot-washing, edgy totalitarians

They're just pushing the cultural envelope with performance art.

How very fashionable!

Jihad Watch: Berber Leader: "No Worse Colonialism Than That of the Pan-Arabist Clan"

One of my favorite subjects...the pre-islamic identities of the conquered muslim subject. Here this notion is discussed in some detail. The comments are worth scrolling down .

North Africa was the granary of imperial Rome and one of the most fertile and productive agricultural regions in the world--until the conquering Arab muslims got their hands on it. The Berbers are a native population of Libya and North Africa, who were deeply influenced by the Phoenicians who were the founders of the remarkable city-state of Carthage. The Berbers are still there. The seafaring and Semitic Phoenicians were originally from the East coast of the Mediterranean, today's Lebanon and northern Israel.

It is a hopeful sign when we see the victims of Arab-islamic imperialism defiantly pushing back while firmly grounded in their own history.

Shedding the dead husk of Islam

Since one of my interests is in trying to understand how muslims might learn to throw off their muslim identity (the "Ummah") and retrieve and restore the native culture that underlies the nearly impermeable islamic outer shell they live in, I found this DhimmiWatch post very interesting.

FYI: Makkah=Mecca.

Click on the post title above to see the article.

HE SAYS DROP THE DROP THE GLOVES

An important post coming out of England. This is must reading.

Victory Means You Win

ARMENIA ET
MESOPOTAMIA
IN POTESTATEM
P R REDACTAE




The Romans appear to understand the concept of victory and depict it here on the tails side of an a amazing sestertius of the emperor Trajan. This, a large brass coin that could buy a man a lunch, was the coin of the realm on the Roman homefront in the year 116 A.D. Standing over an abject personification of the land of Armenia is Trajan himself holding an upright spear and and a parazonium (short infantry sword) while the recumbent Tigris and Euphrates rivers look on impassively.

Here, Rome has defeated an enemy, and seeing it fitting to do so , announces, articulates and depicts it. And by making it money, promulgates it into the thickest parts of the daily life of the people.

I wonder how we would depict on TV an American victory over the jihadists in Iraq and Afghanistan? Is what we hope to achieve capable of being expressed this compactly? If not, then perhaps we need to re-cast our concepts of victory into something that can be compacted for a clear and effective visual depiction. We must visualize in order to actualize while remembering that the narrative of victory must be capable of being illustrated in order to demonstrate that it has occurred.

Toward a semiotics of victory

A claim to victory must be made without regard to dreams of returning threats.


TRAJAN issued 116 A.D.
Brass Sestertius 33mm, 28.4g.
His laureate and draped bust right
IMPCAESNERTRAINOOPTIMO AVGGERDACPARTHICOPMTRPCOSVIPP
Reverse:
ARMENIAETMESPOTAMIA INPOSTESTATEMPRREDACTAE, SC in fields
Trajan, in military attire, standing right holding upright spear and parazonium in sheath; river gods Tigris and Euphrates reclining on either side; Armenia, in abjection between them, her eyes to the ground.

(this coin is actually for sale on an ebay seller's site) at

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120042235116



...more to come.

Know the Enemy

Douglas Farah writes the following brief expostion on the central purpose of jihad and da'wa ("combat and preaching" as one Algerian cell's nom de guerre is often translated).

I am quoting the whole thing here, but you can get straight to his blog by clicking on the post title. (scroll down)

"Knowing the Enemy, Understanding the Enemy

One of the greatest weaknesses five years after 9-11 is the striking inability of the political leadership and body politic to define and reach a consensus on who the Islamist enemy is and what the enemy wants. There is a striking lack of intellectual curiosity, or perhaps fear because of concerns about political correctness, that have blocked a serious discussion of what bin Laden and al Qaeda really think, what their real targets and objectives are and how that group fits into the broader Islamist project of converting the world to an Islamic state ruled by sharia law.

Hence we have the absurd ridiculing in Newsweek magazine of President Bush’s use of the word “caliphate” in discussing the Islamist project (and the even more absurd CAIR response that talking about the caliphate is anti-Islamic). We have the inability of senior people whose job it is to study and understand the Islamist project unable to identify the two major branches of Islam, never mind how they differ and what such divisions might mean.

The caliphate, from its historical signficance to the dream of its recreation, is perhaps the best way to understand how the different currents of Islamist thought relate to each other, support each other and form a coherent whole that embraces the Muslim Brotherhood to the historic al Qaeda.

I cannot do better than my friend Walid Phares on the Counterterrorism Blog in describing the history and signficance of the term. But what is most disturbing is that this is an issue at all. The Islamist project to recreate the caliphate is not a secret plot gleaned from suspicious methods of intelligence gathering that are subject to manipulation and political usage.

Rather, it is written and rewritten, as an integral part of the Muslim Brotherhood strategy, al Qaeda, affiliated al Qaeda groups in Europe, by Islamists themselves. They provide the roadmap that they hope to follow, in official publications and in open conferences.

Not all who support the Islamist project support violence to bring it about, but support a more gradual political take over of different countries. Many, perhaps most, of the Islamist community, focus on the conditions in the Arab world and how to get rid of the corrupt, secular regimes there. But the Islamist project does specifically and clearly embrace the concept of re-establishing the caliphate at its time of greatest territorial conquest. From there, the war with the rest of the world will begin.

This is what I find so disturbing about this debate. It is intellectual laziness, not a lack of information, that has led to the paucity of understanding of what the Islamist project is.

The administration, from the beginning, has done an abysmal job of explaining this to the American people. The Democrats have not done any better in presenting an alternative view. Yet it is written out, and we quibble over using the very Islamist terms that the Islamists use to define their Islamist project. And listen when they tell us that those words make us anti-Islamic. Alice in Wonderland would feel right at home on this side of the looking glass."

Indeed.