Archive for category War on Islamism
Bin Laden Dead
Posted by Joshua Sharf in PPC, War on Islamism on May 1st, 2011
Osama bin Laden is dead. Of course, this doesn’t end the War on Islamism, there are more practitioners out there, but it is a signal victory for which all of us, as Americans, are grateful.
Given that we got the news on May Day, I think in future years, we should co-opt the communist holiday and dance around May Poles with replicas of bin Laden’s on them. As for what to do with the actual body, I’m open to suggestions. Personally, I think putting it in a clear plastic box and sending it on tour of the country where it can be used for carnival dunk-tanks is probably too dignified a disposition.
Shariah vs. Halachah
Posted by Joshua Sharf in War on Islamism on September 26th, 2010
This evening on Backbone Radio (listen live at www.710knus.com), attorney David Yerushalmi will be testifying on the key differences between Islamic (Sharia) Law and Jewish Law (Halachah). For anyone looking for intellectual ammunition in the fight against introducing Sharia in the US, this is must-listen radio.
You can read, and see, Mr. Yerushalmi at BigPeace.com.
Thoughts From the Road
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Iran, Israel, War on Islamism on June 1st, 2010
Naturally, the UN Security Council, which always stands at the ready to condemn Israel, responded to Turkey’s call with a first draft of a resolution attacking Israel for defending itself. As it happens, the draft resolution isn’t so bad, for a relentlessly anti-Israel organization (and I’m talking here about the UN, not the Obama administration). But the UN would be worthless if it weren’t the primary tool for Israel’s isolation from the rest of the world. (Giving Gaza free access to Iranian arms, or the West Bank a state, isn’t going to change that, no matter what this administration thinks.)
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The Turks, who had held down NATO’s southern flank and, through Ataturk’s modernism, were the model for what a Muslim state could be, is back to being what Muslim states usually are. It’s moved from a tactical alliance with Israel and knocking on the Gates of Brussels, to a strategic alliance with Iran and Russia, and calling up the battering rams to the gates of Jerusalem.
So much for moderate Islamism.
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Far from representing the failure of Zionism, as Peter Beinart’s column would have us believe, this weekend’s events should point out the failure of liberalism. The moral difference between Israel and its enemies has rarely been more clear. It’s been the left that has defined public education, college education, and most of the public debate in the west for 40 years. If liberals are turning against Israel, if the west is doing so, it’s because liberals have defined morality not as virtuous action, but as weakness.
More on those Israeli Visas
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Iran, Israel, War on Islamism on April 11th, 2010
The following is being cited by administration apologists as proof that Israeli nuclear scientists are not being denied visas:
QUESTION: Can I go back to Israel for a second – non nuclear? Well, actually it’s – actually it’s somewhat nuclear. There’s a report in an Israel newspaper that says that the U.S. is denying visas to Israeli nuclear scientists who want to come to the States. Can you say anything about that?
MR. CROWLEY: Without commenting on individual visa determinations which are governed by the Privacy Act, we continue to issue visas to Israeli scientists, including nuclear scientists, on a regular basis. We’ve actually improved processing times for visas for scientific exchanges with Israel. So there’s been – it has been suggested there’s been a policy change. There has not been a policy change. And we continue to support exchanges with the Israeli scientific and academic communities.
QUESTION: So this report is wrong?
MR. CROWLEY: To the extent the report is that we’ve stopped providing visas to Israeli scientists as a whole, that report is wrong.
This mis-states the problem. It’s not ‘Israeli scientists as a whole,” or even “Israeli nuclear scientists,” it’s Israeli nuclear scientists working at Dimona. The former would be unmistakably a generalized academic and professional boycott. The latter would be a specific, unmistakable message about Israel’s nuclear program.
About That Nuclear Deterrent… (updated)
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Iran, Israel, War on Islamism on April 8th, 2010
According to Ma’ariv, the administration is now denying visas to Israeli nuclear scientists associated with the Dimona research facility:
Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor’s employees have told Israel’s Maariv daily that they have been having problems recently getting visas to the United States where they have for years attended seminars in Chemistry, Physics and Nuclear Engineering. They also complain of being treated in an ‘insulting manner’ by President Obama’s people. Until recently, employees of the Nuclear Research Center routinely traveled to the United States for seminars and courses.
But reactor employees also complain of an American refusal to sell them reactor components that have routinely been sold to them by the United States.
At the same time, the administration is prepared to allow Turkey and Egypt hijack a conference aimed at nuclear non-proliferation to terrorists with demands that Israel sign the non-proliferation treaty. Prime Minister Netanyahu has canceled a planned trip to Washington over the decision, apparently in violation of previous administration assurances (expiration date, April 8, 2010), with Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor leading the delegation instead.
Some of us have feared that the price of administration action against Iran’s nuclear program would be administration action against Israel’s. The pretext for such a position would, of course, be garnering Islamic support for moves against Iran, as though the Arabs and Turkey weren’t equally worried about Iran getting a bomb. Naturally, they see an opportunity to use administration disdain for Israel to score a major diplomatic victory. Since an Iranian bomb would pose an existential threat to many of these regimes, they would seem to be gambling that 1) the administration will crack, and act against Iran even with Israel signing the NPT, or 2) that Israel will crack, and make its program open to international inspection.
UPDATE: The White House is denying that there has been a change in visa policy. Value White House denials accordingly.
These Things Qatar Both Ways
Posted by Joshua Sharf in War on Islamism on April 7th, 2010
CNN is reporting that it’s a “misunderstanding.” From the Daily Mail:
Sky News said marshalls were alerted to a passenger who had taken a long time in one of the plane’s toilets. When he emerged, a marshall could smell smoke and asked the man what had happened.
His alleged reply was: ‘I was trying to set my shoes on fire.'”
If this is true, the guy deserves every bit of hassle he gets.
Norouz Mubarak
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Denver, HD-6 2010, Iran on March 28th, 2010
It was delightful to be able to spend a little time Friday celebrating Norouz, or the Persian New Year, with Denver’s Persian community. The Persian New Year is celebrated at the onset of Spring, and, like our own New Year, is essentially secular, celebrated by the entire country. So when my friend Ana Sami invited me to drop by, it was a no-brainer. I also had a chance to meet Tim Ghaemi in person, after having interviewed him for the Rocky Mountain Alliance’s Blog Talk Radio show last year.
In addition to the actual food, there’s usually a special table set, with a number of symbolic items:
For some reason, they all begin with “S” in Farsi, but here’s the list:
- Sabzeh – wheat or lentils grown in a tray or dish prior to Noe-Rooz to represent rebirth,
- Samanu – a sweet pudding made from wheat germ, symbolizing affluence,
- Senjed – the dried fruit of the lotus tree which represents love,
- Seer – which means garlic in Persian, and represents medicine,
- Seeb – which means apple in Persian, and represents beauty and health,
- Somaq – sumac berries, which represent the colour of the sun rise,
- Serkeh – which means vinegar in Persian, and represents age and patience,
- Sonbol – the hyacinth flower with its strong fragrance heralding the coming of spring, and
- Sekkeh – coins representing prosperity and wealth
There’s also usually a copy of the community-appropriate religious book, be it a Chumash, a Bible, or a Koran. This being an inclusive celebration, they had a copy of both the Koran and the Bible on the top shelf there, but the big red book there in the middle is actually neither. Instead, it is a book listing the 12,000+ vicitms of political executions under the current Iranian regime, a reminder that as is often the case, immigrants to America are freer to celebrate their holidays here than they would be back home.
Norouz Mubarak to Ana, Tim, and the rest of the Persian-American community here in Denver.
Tawfiq Hamid in Colorado
Posted by Joshua Sharf in War on Islamism on February 28th, 2010
Dr. Tawfiq Hamid, one of the voices in the wilderness seeking to reform Islam from within, is making an extended tour of the Denver/Boulder area. In addition to the public appearances listed below, he is making a large number of radio appearances, including one this evening on Backbone Radio (audio to be posted later in the week). If you get a chance, please be sure to hear him speak.
- Mon, March 1, 7:30 PM, St. John’s Cathedral’s Abrahamic Inititive, The Roots of Jihad: What Americans Need to Understand to Keep America Safe., 1350 Washington St., Denver
- Tues., March 2, 5:30 pm-7:30 pm, Regis University, 3333 Regis Blvd., Denver 80221
- Wed., March 3, 11:30am-1:00 pm, Centennial Institute, 8787 W. Alameda Ave., Lakewood 80226. Confronting Radical Islam
- Thurs., March 4, noon-1:30 pm, Wellshire Presbyterian Church, 2999 S. Colorado Blvd., Denver 80222. Why Terror is Proliferating in the West.
- Thurs., March 4, 6:00 pm-8:00 pm, CU Boulder Mathematics Bldg., Room 100 (Folsom and Colorado). -Fri., March 5, 7:00 pm-8:30 pm, University Park Methodist Church, 2180 S. University Bldvd., Denver 80210. Reforming the Muslim Religion.
- Sat., March 6, 10:00 am-11:30 am, Simchat Torah Beit Midrash, 19697 E. Smoky Hill Rd., Centennial. An Insider’s View of Islamic Violence: The roots of Jihad and Suggested Solutions.
- Sat., March 6, 12:30 pm-1:30 pm, Book signing at Barnes & Noble, 8555 E. Arapahoe Rd., Greenwood Village 80112.
- Sun., March 7, 7:00 pm-9:00 pm, Plymouth Congregational Church, 3501 S. Colorado Blvd., Denver 80113. The Mentality of Terror: The How and Why Terror is Proliferating in the West.
- Mon., March 8, 7:00 pm-9:00 pm, Hebrew Educational Alliance, 3600 S. Ivanhoe St., Denver 80237. Why the World is Losing the War on Terror: An Islamic Liberal’s View.
His tour is being sponsored by Act for America.
Could Israeli Airport Security Work Here?
Posted by Joshua Sharf in War on Islamism on January 1st, 2010
Allison Kaplan Sommer and Michael Totten both have thoughts on why theirs works better than ours, and whether or not we can adopt some elements of the Israel approach.
Sommer:
Israelis won’t settle for “a fair chance.” But traditionally, in Israel, when it comes to the inevitable tension between civil liberties and national security, it’s security that wins out, and legal challenges to airport profiling have been generally unsuccessful in changing the reality on the ground. This could change following Israel’s Association for Civil Rights petitioning the Supreme Court to outlaw “racist, humiliating airport checks against Arab citizens” — but the odds are slim.
The question is whether the time has come when a large and powerful democracy like the U.S. must take a page from the playbook of the small and vulnerable Israel.
Resistance to adopting the Israeli model in the U.S. is understandable. The idea of subjecting profiled airline passengers to Israeli-style intensive questioning in the U.S. may not seem pretty.
But then again, the idea of every airline passenger in the U.S. being physically searched as a potential crotch bomber is even more unappealing. Taking account of our footwear before flying is one thing. Being forced to contemplate our choice of underwear is quite another.
And Totten, who, because he interviews Hezbollah-types, has been on the short end of the stick going through Ben-Gurion:
The United States need not and should not import the Israeli system. It’s labor intensive, slow, and at times incredibly aggravating. Americans wouldn’t put up with it, and it wouldn’t scale well. The one thing we can and should learn from the Israelis, though, is that we need to pay as much attention to who gets on airplanes as to what they’re bringing on board.
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The TSA’s whole mindset is wrong. Its agents confiscate things, even harmless things, and they apply additional scrutiny to things carried by people selected at random. If they were also tasked with looking for dangerous people, they would rightly ease up on grandmothers and senators, and they’d have a competently compiled list in the computer of those who are known to be dangerous. And if some kind of broad profiling means I’ll have to suffer the indignity of being frisked while the nun in line behind me does not, it’s no worse, really, than the embarrassment and contempt I’ll feel if the nun gets frisked instead.
There’s another problem with the sort of profiling in the US. At least one of the would-be bombers in the US this summer, the one who wanted to blow up a Federal building in Indiana, was a convert. Indeed, converts to Islam seem to comprise a vastly disproportionate number of radicals in the West. And since converts can come from any race, and we don’t ask people about their religions, profiling would be much harder here in a nation of nations.
Read ’em both, though.
Still, Libertarians and isolationists (and there’s more overlap there than is comfortable) should consider that the less aggressive we are overseas, the more invasive we’ll have to be here at home.
For Your Consideration
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Iran, War on Islamism on December 30th, 2009
If things in Iran work out, there may be a movie with much greater world significance than Al Gore’s efforts of a few years ago. Red County has learned, from sources close to the movie’s production, that The Stoning of Soraya M has become quite the hit on the Iranian street, with copies being smuggled in to meet the demand for group screenings in private homes. This is roughly the equivalent of The Magnificent Seven being shown on the other side of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.
Such films serve an educational purpose in the West. But in Iran, they stiffen resolve. They remind the population what all that fighting in the streets is about. It assures them that their overseas countrymen haven’t forgotten them, even as Iran tries to stifle debate in the West by threatening families left at home. And it provides some hope that the US and the West might yet be roused to help these people. Who knows? Maybe the Ayatollah Khameini saw the film and glimpsed his future, which would explain his sudden 100-hour check on his personal jet.
Of course, since the Iranian government is in bed with the Chinese, maybe it could prevail on them to cut a few hundred thousand pirate copies to satisfy demand. I doubt the movie’s producers would object.
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