Taking the Jihad Temperature - A Gathering Storm Special Series – APPEASEMENT – Part 4

If you throw a frog into boiling water, he will jump out. If you put it in cold water and slowly turn up the heat, he will not notice the rise in temperature and will eventually boil. 

The Islamists are boiling our frog and though this blog and hundreds like it record almost daily the rise in the Jihad temperature, unless we see how far and fast the temperature has risen, we will not know how far along our boiling has progressed. 

So, the Gathering Storm will be posting only once a week but these weekly posts will take the Jihadist temperature by looking back at news and events over the last two years. Over the next several weeks in the areas of intimidation, infiltration, disinformation and those appeasers and apologists who either knowingly or unknowingly advance the Jihad agenda, the Gathering Storm will show how far our frog has been boiled. 

By seeing the boiling water around us, we can see how far the boiling has progressed. 

The good news is that we are noticing that the water is getting warmer. There is a glimmer of awareness here - a glimmer of hope there. But we have a long way to go. 

Here’s this week’s look back at the rising Jihad temperature of APPEASEMENT !! And remember – this is just a sampling of Jihadist Appeasement. More to follow.

Storm Track Appeasement: Pluralism vs Multiculturalism

There are many things wrong with the concept of multiculturalism. The first of which are its attempts at replacing it with what makes a free society great – pluralism. Multiculturalism believes that all cultures are equal but that’s not true.

For example, the bushman of in Australia could, as individuals, be trained to fly the space shuttle. But that doesn’t make their culture equal to ours because they can’t build a space shuttle. You can try and give everyone equal opportunity and treat everyone equally - but that doesn’t make us equal.

A little story gives a good example of this.

Once upon a time, the animals decided that they must do something to meet the problems of the ‘New World’. So, they organized a school. They adopted an activity curriculum consisting of running, climbing, swimming, and flying and all the animals had to take all the subjects.

The duck was excellent in swimming. In fact, better than his instructors, but he made only passing grades in flying and was very poor in running. Since he was slow in running, he had to stay after school and also drop swimming in order to practice running. This was kept up until his feet were badly worn and he was only average in swimming. But average was acceptable in school since that would make him more equal. So nobody worried about that except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of the class in running but had a nervous break-down because of so much make-up work in swimming.

The squirrel was excellent in climbing until he developed frustration in flying class where his teacher made him start from the ground up instead of the treetop down. He also developed charley horses from over-exertion and then got a C in climbing and a D in running.

The eagle was a problem child and disciplined severely. In the climbing class he beat all the others to the top of the tree, but insisted on using his own way of getting there.

At the end of the year, an abnormal eel that could swim exceedingly well and also run, climb and fly a little had the highest average and was made valedictorian.

Equality is a fine ideal. But like all other ideas, it can be pursued to absurdity. The same with multiculturalism. Melanie Phillips wrote about the problem of multiculturalism.

Many people think multiculturalism just means showing respect and tolerance to other cultures and faiths. If that were so, it should be unarguable. We should all support respect and tolerance. But that's not what multiculturalism is at all. It holds that all minority values must have equal status to those of the majority. Any attempt to uphold majority values over minorities is a form of prejudice. That turns minorities into a cultural battering ram to destroy the very idea of being a majority culture at all.

The end result of multiculturalism the Balkanization of a society. Pluralism, on the other hand, doesn’t do this. Pluralism is based a values system that we all hold in common. Multiculturalism is based on lowest common denominator values in a society.

Back to Melanie Phillips .

Pluralism allows for many different groupings but, unlike multiculturalism, does not try to impose one uniform status on all of them. It allows a thousand flowers to bloom, with minorities forming communities of faith, ethnicity or culture within a society — but under the overarching umbrella of a national identity to whose core values everyone signs up. It is only by having that overarching set of common values — monogamy, freedom of conscience, equal rights for women, freedom of expression — that a society coheres as a common project.

Now, the USA and Australia have a leg up on pluralism on Europe. Why? Because of the way both countries were founded, when you come to America as an ethnic group you are immediately accepted being an American. Same with Australia. But when you immigrate to a European country, you are not a European and you are definitely not a Frenchman, German, Dutchman, etc. etc.

Now let’s consider the Muslim.

"What Unites And What Divides Us? Tough Questions for Islam and the West" brought together journalists, policy experts, and representatives of civic organizations from the Islamic world, Europe, and the United States. Discussion and disagreements abounded, but many participants found common ground around one idea. That is, fostering pluralism and participatory forms of government in the Muslim world could offer hope for moderating some of the radical political parties that claim to speak for Islam. And, ultimately, that might help bridge today's sharp divides between East and West.

But can you foster pluralism in Islam? Can you foster pluralism in a culture that sees itself superior to every other culture in world? And when it says it is attempting to assimilate, Muslims, over the last decade or so, instead use intimidation and disinformation tactics to dominate the non-Muslim culture they live in. That is why they can use the weaknesses of multiculturalism as it’s practiced today as a weapon to beat other cultures into submission with the help of their non-Muslim useful idiots who worship at the alter of political correctness and multiculturalism.

Tolerance is the main argument of multiculturalism and those who hold that view hold up America as a prime example of tolerance. But tolerance can go too far. A new book by Amy Chua entitled “Day of Empire - How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance -- and Why They Fall” takes on this concept tolerance as it applies to what she calls hyperpowers.

Every "hyperpower" in history, she writes, has been "at least by the standards of its time, extraordinarily pluralistic and tolerant during its rise to preeminence." Imperial Rome and Britain, China's Tang Dynasty, Achaemenid Persia, the United States -- in the rise to preeminence, each was more accepting of racial, ethnic and religious difference than the competing powers of its age.

Such a happily multicultural case may strike skeptics as politically correct cant, but Chua's argument is clear-eyed and hard-headed. For most of history, tolerance has been a tactical expedient rather than an abstract principle, a way of stoking economic dynamism, increasing manpower and maximizing the efficiency of political control. "To attain and maintain dominance on a global scale," Chua notes, "coercion is simply too inefficient, persecution too costly, and ethnic or religious homogeneity, like inbreeding, too unproductive." In short, tolerance is a force multiplier: It enables a nation to do more with the resources it has. Great powers do well by doing good.

But there are limits to the positive contribution of tolerance.

At some point, strategic tolerance reaches a limit and "sow[s] the seeds of decline," setting off a cycle of "conflict, hatred, and violence." That ominous note is especially evident in Chua's discussion of the U.S. She fears we may be approaching the point at which tolerant rise gives way to intolerant fall.

And where pray tell is this conflict, hatred, and violence coming from. I don’t have to tell you. Just look at the today’s headlines, but the main source is the end result of political correctness and multiculturalism that has replaced pluralism as the tolerant force in our society.

We need to recognize that pluralism is distinctly different from multiculturalism. One is based on strong, positive values. The other is based on appeasing everyone with a lowest common denominator approach. It must stop if we are to preserve the best of the free world’s cultures.

Storm Track Appeasement: Bush Throws in the Towel on War on Terror

First President Bush was lost in translation by turning a war against an ideology into a war against a military tactic. Now he’s lost in space rejecting his Bush Doctrine in favor of ‘real politik’.

As it stands now, American foreign policy in the Middle East has shifted from actively promoting democratic change to the previous policy of realpolitik -- a policy based on the appeasement of dictators and despots that was discredited in the post 9/11 world primarily because it had failed to secure American interests and security even in its heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The Bush Doctrine of actively promoting democratic change may have been problematic owing to the backward political culture of the Middle East and other reasons suggested by Silverberg such as Middle Eastern tribal cultures being too resistant to change; secular Middle East dictatorships as too well-entrenched, and Islamic extremists using the electoral process to acquire power and credibility in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, however an American foreign policy based on "based on cold, calculated political and material considerations rather than on moral, ethical or idealistic concerns" hasn't worked in the past and it is highly unlikely to work in the future.

The Bush administration's return to a policy of "realism" translates to both America and Israel being in for a rough time ahead. Simply put, it is unrealistic to think believe that the previously proven wrong policy of realism will do anything but invite another 9/11.

OK. A stinging criticism that has some merit. So what should Bush have done and what should he do now in the waning days of his Administration?

We all know that the label ‘war on terror’ is misnomer and opened the door to for the Left to define terrorism as a criminal justice problem not an ideological one. That’s the root of the confusion we have today. If Bush had said we declare war on an ideology, the ideology of political Islam, we would have seen our enemy in a clearer light.

But that would entail us dissolving our relationships with dictators who crush democratic ideals in their countries, no longer submitting to those dictators that hold our nation hostage to oil, and realizing the reality of a fifth column of Islamists in this country working under the guise of civil rights organizations.

The very best thing that Bush could do before leaving office is to push for US energy independence from foreign oil. This dependence is not just an economic problem but a national security issue and should be treated as one.

He should include this statement in his January ’08 State of the Union Address:

“Our dependence on foreign energy sources is a threat to national security and it must cease. I have ordered a 10-year plan that will open every and all possible sources for oil in the country to drilling and have ordered a fast track permit program for nuclear energy. Tax credits will be issued to any and all companies and individuals who develop or use alternative technologies to reduce the use of oil and natural gas products. I’ve ordered the temporary lifting of controls on the mining and use of coal in this country. We have more coal in this country than the entire middle-east has oil. We have a national crisis on our hands and we are going to use the coal – cleanly.”

Would he have the courage to make this his priority over the last months of his Administration? I wonder.

Storm Track Appeasement: The ‘Culture of Exclusion’

It seems that Sandy Robertson, the principal at the Columbus Manor School in Oak Lawn, Illinois finds it “difficult when you change the schools culture”.

This in response to the heated controversy – police had to be called the Columbus Manor School to intervene in a shouting match among parents – over a decision to deleted the annual Halloween parade and Santa’s gift shop this year.

This is on the heels of a decision by Ridgeland School District 122, that Columbus Manor is part of, to exclude Jello from the lunch menu because of complaints from Muslim parents. Gelatin is often made with tissue or bones of pigs or other animals.
This from an article by Angela Caputo of the Daily Southtown. The story itself is not longer available at the newspaper’s site.

First Jell-O, now Santa
OAK LAWN | School district considers banning traditions seen as offensive to Muslims

September 28, 2007
BY ANGELA CAPUTO Daily Southtown
So long, Halloween parade. Farewell, Santa's gift shop.
The holiday traditions are facing elimination in some Oak Lawn schools this year after complaints that the activities are offensive, particularly to Muslim students.

Final decisions on which of the festivities will be axed will fall to the principals at each of Ridgeland School District 122's five schools, Supt. Tom Smyth said.

"It's difficult when you change the school's culture," said Columbus Manor Principal Sandy Robertson.

Sandy Robertson doesn’t realize how true her statement is. The multiculturalism crowd is trying to change our culture through the process of exclusion – not inclusion. And what get’s excluded always seems to be the Judeo-Christian culture. Why is that when the libs make the change to accommodate a complaint is to drop their draws, raise the white flag of political correctness and surrender to the squeakiest wheel. Even the person who complained didn’t realize the spineless leftists that she was dealing with.

Elizabeth Zahdan, a mother of three District 122 students, says she took her concerns to the school board this month, not because she wanted to do away with the traditions, but rather to make them more inclusive. "I only wanted them modified to represent everyone," she said.

Ms. Zahdan, please understand that your request for Muslim inclusion will almost always result in another culture’s exclusion when officials are faced with lesser of two evils. That is to say, who would be offended least.

Nixing them isn't the response she was looking for. "Now the kids are not being educated about other people," she said.

By ‘other people’ she means our dominant culture. The administration’s excuse is for their action is this.

There's just not time in the six-hour school day to celebrate every holiday, said Smyth, who sent the message to principals that they need to "tone down" the activities that he sees as eating too much into instructional time. "We have to think about our purpose," Smyth said. "Are we about teaching reading, writing and math or for parties or fund-raising during the day?"

Following the example of Lieb Elementary School, Columbus Manor School will exchange the annual Halloween parade for a fall festival next month. The holiday gift bazaars at both schools also will remain, but they'll likely be moved to the PTA-sponsored after-school winter festival. And Santa's annual visit probably will be on a Saturday.

People are starting to get angry in this country seeing their culture under assault by one group of people who just can’t seem to assimilate into a country they chose to live in.

Storm Track Appeasement: U.S. Postage Stamp Celebrating Muslim Victory to be Issued

It seems the U.S. Postal Service is getting into the appeasement act. They will issue a new stamp celebrating the Muslim holiday of EID as part of their ‘Holiday’ Celebration Series.

Greetings! And Happy Holidays from Allah to you.

The Holiday they are celebrating with this Muslim stamp is EID. And what is EID? I’ll let my eloquent co-host, Always on Watch, speak to that.

The Battle of Badr of March 17, 624, is one of the few military conflicts specifically mentioned in the Qur'an and holds a great deal of significance in Islam. Eid ul-Fitr, the final portion of Ramadan and which the lighting of the Empire State Building will recognize this weekend, has as its origin the aforementioned battle. Furthermore and most importantly, this battle marked the turning point for Islam, both politically and ideologically.

Having earlier fled to Medina along with followers who accepted him as their prophet whereas most of the tribes of Mecca did not, early on that morning in 624 Muhammad got word that a rich Quraish caravan from Syria was returning to Mecca. He therefore assembled the largest army he had ever been able to muster, some 300 men, with the original intent of raiding the caravan. After his men successfully overtook the caravan and brought back the booty, Muhammad then conveniently received a new "revelation" from Allah — a "revelation" which not only included rejoicing in having captured an enemy's caravan but which also called "proved" that Muhammad had been preaching the true way all along. Fulfilling Destiny, Muhammad and his forces proceeded to trounce the Quraish as punishment for having earlier rejected the prophet's teachings. From this source:

In other words, victory at the Battle of Badr proved to Muhammad and his adherents that Islam should from that time forth take on a militant aspect because such is the will of Allah.

I guess to the U.S. Postal Service a holiday is a holiday even if celebrates that “Islam should from that time forth take on a militant aspect because such is the will of Allah.”

Is this what the Christmas Season has degenerated to?

Storm Track Appeasement: Episcopalians, Other Christians Ask Muslims for Forgiveness

Yeah, you read that right. Christians are now apologizing to Muslims. This is a disgusting and unbelievable act of prostration to Islam. What the hell is the Church thinking? Where are the Crusaders of old who remember Martel and Vienna and who refused to see Europe become another Muslim conquest?

Disgusting, just disgusting.

Seven bishops and other Episcopal leaders joined with a number of influential Christian leaders in signing a letter asking Muslims to forgive Christians. The letter with signatures recently appeared as a full-page advertisement in The New York Times.

“Muslims and Christians have not always shaken hands in friendship; their relations have sometimes been tense, even characterized by outright hostility,” the authors said. “Since Jesus Christ says, ‘First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye’ (Matthew 7:5), we want to begin by acknowledging that in the past (e.g. in the Crusades) and in the present (e.g. in excesses of the 'war on terror’) many Christians have been guilty of sinning against our Muslim neighbors. Before we ‘shake your hand’ in responding to your letter, we ask forgiveness of the All Merciful One and of the Muslim community around the world.”

And where’s the letter of forgiveness from Muslims for the atrocities they committed in history against Christians –and are still going on today? How can Christian leaders commend Muslim leaders and apologize for the failings of the church in the past without taking any account of what Islam has done and is doing to Christian minorities in their countries today. Why has the Church chosen to ignore their plight and even to apologize to the Muslims?

The Episcopal leaders should take a refresher course on the religion they claim to represent.

To quote Rev. Canon Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo, International Director of the Barnabas Fund a Christian Relief Agency that focuses on persecuted Christian minorities in the Muslim World and elsewhere, “Prince Charles and various Anglican bishops as well as political leaders are united in affirming this. However a closer analysis of both traditions will show this is not the case. For example, Islamic tradition is based on the community (ummah), or the nation [of Islam]. The Christian approach is based on the worth of the individual, freedom of thought, expression, conscience and freedom to change. In Islam such freedoms do not exist. So human rights and religious liberty in the Islamic mind are not given the same weight and importance as in the Christian tradition.”

Storm Track Appeasement: Heard Animals and the Left

 

A while back I wrote a post on Sheepdogs, Wolves & Sheep that compared the Left with sheep and those in our society that keep them fat and happy and protected from wolves. Mark Helprin writing in The Claremont Review of Books contributed an opinion piece using another animal comparison. His piece entitled “Herd Animals” described the Left as having a heard – or collective – instinct that prevents them from facing threats to their community.

 

The nature of one’s reaction to aggression against one’s country will often
be determined by whether one sees the polity primarily as individuals who must
struggle with the imperfection of being bound into a collective, or as a
collective that must overcome the circumstantial imperfection that it comprises
individuals. For wildebeest thundering across a plain in Africa, it takes a
village. The herd defends itself by sacrificing a miniscule
proportion of its number and moving on. If the herd were to turn upon the
jackals preying upon it, the jackels would be pulverized almost instantly.
Nonetheless, if the price for the escape of ten thousand is the sacrifice
of only a few, this is how it is done when the collective is paramount.

There is a comparison here to the school shootings of today. When a lone gun man enters a school, the collective cowers under their desks and wait for the hunter to pick them off one by one. If the males in the group, understanding that a gunman can be overpowered by numbers, attacked the government and sacrifice a few for the collective, such incident would reduce the causality count among the prey. But they don’t, and all and not just a few are subject to being victims.

 

But animals like bears, tigers and lions, that wander individually or in
small groups, know that their survival depends upon how they fight, and
their willingness to fight is so well understood that they are seldom attacked,
whereas to a predator a herd in flight is a living contradiction to the maxim
that there is no FREE LUNCH…

When The Left bends to America’s enemies it may not be a result of cowardice or betrayal, but of loyalty to the omelette so single-minded that it precludes consideration of the eggs….

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich delivered a speech at the American Enterprise Institute where he referenced a book called ‘Troublesome Young Men’ which is a study of the younger Conservatives who opposed appeasement in the 1930s and who took on Chamberlain.

It's a very revealing book and a very powerful book because we tend to look
backwards and we tend to overstate Churchill's role in that period. And we tend
to understate what a serious and conscientious and thoughtful effort appeasement
was and that it was the direct and deliberate policy of very powerful and very
willful people. We tend to think of it as a psychological weakness as though
Chamberlain was somehow craven. He wasn't craven. Chamberlain had a very clear
vision of the world and he was very ruthless domestically. And they believed so
deeply in avoiding war with Germany that as late as the spring of 1940, when
they are six months or seven months into they war, they are dropping leaflets
instead of bombs on the Rohr, and they are urging the British news media not to
publish anti-German stories because they don't want to offend the German people.

The Chamberlain world view was one of the British omelet
sacrificing, if necessary, the individual British eggs. Even on the eve of World
War II where most people knew war was upon them, the Chamberlain Brits were
concerned about publishing anti-German stories fearing that they might offend
the German people.

Sounds a lot like today? Huh? Chamberlain had the same problem we have today. He couldn’t bring himself to see that it was an ideology not a country or a people that was the enemy. We’re making the same mistake today by not embracing the concept of Islamo-fascism or Islamism as the enemy and not any one particular Muslim country or group.

And you read this book, and it makes you want to weep because,
interestingly, the younger Tories who were most opposed to appeasement were the
combat veterans of World War I, who had lost all of their friends in the war but
who understood that the failure of appeasement would result in a worse war and
that the longer you lied about reality, the greater the disaster.

And they were severly punished and isolated by Chamberlain and the
Conservative machine, and as I read that, I realized that that's really where we
are today. Our current problem is tragic. You have an administration whose
policy is inadequate being opposed by a political left whose policy is worse,
and you have nobody pre pared to talk about the policy we need. Because we are
told if you are for a strong America, you should back the Bush policy even if
it's inadequate, and so you end up making an argument in favor of something that
can't work. So your choice is to defend something which isn't working or to
oppose it by being for an even weaker policy. So this is a catastrophe for this
country and a catastrophe for freedom around the world. Because we have refused
to be honest about the scale of the problem.

Absolutely correct. Those that worship at the altar of pacifism will only bring down upon us all a terrible price for peace at any cost. Or to quote Robert Heinlein, “Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay -- and claims a halo for his dishonesty.”

When will the pacifist ever learn that peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of justice.

 

Storm Track Infiltration: Shari'a-Jihad Threat Alert #1

 

Mapping Sharia in America, that has been investigating different mosques over the last several months, has issued their first Shari'a-Jihad Threat Alert.

The first threat centers on an imam called Yusuf Estes – a popular Islamic leader in America. He is active in converting non-Muslims to Islam and writes for several different web sites. Check out the YouTube video where he claims to have converted 135 infidels to Islam after his lecture.

Yusuf Estes preaches from the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, Falls Church, Va. The evidence obtained by Mapping Sharia in America was an audio recording on 18 May 2007 of a conversation between Dave Gaubatz, Director of Mapping Shari’a, and Estes.

Dir. Gaubatz had specific intelligence information from a Muslim informant
who had visited Dar al-Hijrah suggesting that Muslims associated with Dar
al-Hijrah were recruiting other Muslims and even non-Muslims in an attempt to
establish a greater “Wahhabi” culture in America. The Wahhabi sect, with strong
ties to the Salafists of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States, is a main
exporter or the violent Jihadist political ideology of a world wide Islamic
hegemony.

During the conversation, Estes had his assistants go inside the mosque and obtain Islamic materials for Dir. Gaubatz. At 42:43 minutes into the site visit, Estes placed a compact disc inside Dir. Gaubatz’s jacket pocket. At 52:51 minutes into the site visit, Estes asked Gaubatz if he was ready to convert (or “revert” insofar as Estes preaches everyone was originally a Muslim) and to do so by repeating after him the expression of faith required by Islamic law to become a Muslim. Dir. Gaubatz completed the pseudo conversion to Islam.

Dir. Gaubatz subsequently left Dar al-Hijrah and reviewed the compact
disk Estes had placed inside his pocket. On the disk was a cover letter stating:
“We encourage you to review this CD carefully. Every Muslim must have a copy of
this valuable CD”. Further review of this disk revealed a 17-page manual in
English, entitled The Book of Jihad, Chapter 234, “Obligation of Jihad”. The manual includes passages from the Qur’an, the Sunna (consisting of Ahadith [pl. of
Hadith], which are the authoritative teachings and actions of Mohammed, and
which are used along with verses from the Qur’an as the basis of Shari’a or
Islamic law), and commentary.

So what we have here is a Jihadist actively recruiting people jihad and the over throw of the U.S. as a constitutional republic.

Those are examples of the rising Jihad temperature of for this week. When seen in groups like this, the slow boil becomes obvious.

Next week we return to a look back at the rising Jihad temperature of Islamist Intimidation!!

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