I like to make a virtue of necessity. My May article is, of necessity, late, but has the virtue of incorporating the result of the recent election for Mayor of London. The winner, as all British and most American readers will know, was one Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. Supporters and detractors alike know him simply as Boris. Like his predecessor, Ken Livingstone, he needs no surname. There is only one Boris. more...

by Theodore Dalrymple

by Rebecca Bynum

Willful Blindness
A Memoir Of The Jihad
By Andrew C. McCarthy
Encounter Books, 2008, 352 pp.

In the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11^th terror attacks, President Bush demanded the Taliban government of Afghanistan produce Osama bin Laden in order that he could be “brought to justice.” Bush threatened military invasion only if Bin Laden were not produced. Using the criminal justice system as a weapon of war was a continuation of U.S. policy already in place from our previous, quite limited dealing with Jihad, domestic and foreign, and apparently not about to be rethought. Islamic warfare has been waged against the infidel world since the beginning of Islam, even though at times that state of permanent war did not express itself in open warfare. We in the United States, sheltered by two oceans, two friendly neighbors, and our own great ignorance of history and of Islam were just beginning to take notice of Jihad, though without understanding what prompted it, or even calling it by its right name. The fact that Jihad is a struggle that is considered by Muslims a holy war, in order to spread Islam and insure its dominance, and that participation, direct or indirect, in this “struggle” is  a Muslim’s sacred duty to expand Islamic territorial sovereignty, was -- and still is -- lost on the President and his advisors. President Bush, following the lead of President Clinton, framed the conflict as one between our civilized justice system, deeply solicitous of individual rights, and a small band of criminal fanatics. This gross underestimation of jihad may prove to be one of the biggest mistakes in human history.  more...

by Jerry Gordon

For over a year, we have been waging a relentless, nearly solitary battle in apprising the Congress and the American public about a billion dollar boondoggle and scandal: the lack of credible Arabic translators for our national security and intelligence agencies. As a result hundreds have been killed in Iraq from infiltration of our military and civilian intelligence agencies by agents of Islamist terrorists. Our FBI and CIA have been infiltrated by Muslim linguists who have successfully evaded polygraph tests and been able to pass on vital information to terror groups in the Middle East such as Hezbollah. Tens of thousands of documents, containing vital information on potential threats have gone untranslated in large measure because of bias in hiring practices against qualified Arabic, Farsi and Urdu speaking Christians, Jews and apostate Muslims. The result has been “chaos” according to a knowledgeable counter terrorism source. The problem is one of political correctness. Our government has been gulled by the argument that only Muslims can translate accurately their “holy language.”  This is pure taqiyyah or religious dissimulation sanctioned by Islam.  more...

by Ibn Warraq

Report On The Inarah Otzenhauzen Conference On
  “The Early History Of Islam And The Koran”
     March 13-16, 2008

The newly founded institute, Inârah Institute for Research of Early Islamic History and the Koran, in cooperation with the Religious Studies Department of the University of Saarlandes, Germany and the Europäische Akademie Otzenhausen, Germany held its first International Conference on the Origins of the Koran and Early Islamic History. Inarah consists of a group of German scholars inspired by the work of Christoph Luxenberg but disturbed by the fact Luxenberg's insights were not discussed by other Islamologists because of their implications for the traditional history of the Koran (now thought to be almost certainly false, and fabricated many years after the foundation of Islam). I think it would be fair to say that the idea for the German conference came naturally after the successful conference at the University of California-Davis in January, 2007 on Scripture and Skepticism organised by the Center for Inquiry, Transnational, and the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion [CSER], inspired, organised, and coordinated by Dr. Paul Kurtz and Dr. Joseph Hoffmann. Many of the founders of Inarah, the organisers of the German conference, participated in the Davis Conference, and finding the experience exhilarating, decided a similar conference devoted entirely to the Koran and Early Islam would be in order, a conference that would fearlessly examine the origins of the Koran wherever the empirical research might lead, hence the Otzenhausen Conference.  more...

by Norman Berdichevsky

For almost two centuries, the coffee-tea dichotomy has been one of the firmest markers of the cultural divide between Britain and America. Many Americans/Britons can recall the pride felt as children when their parents allowed them their first cup of coffee/tea. This continues to be a right of passage into adult society. British and American folkways have diverged for the last two-and-a-half centuries and are a major source of humo(u)r on both sides of the Atlantic. Differences in speech, spelling, social graces, wit, political systems, hobbies, class attitudes, popular tastes in fashion, driving and road design, sports, and eating and drinking habits have all come to embody reciprocal stereotypes. America's successful revolution against the British Crown affected social mores and none more dramatically than in the switch from tea to coffee. The Boston Tea Party and its aftermath accomplished one of the few major changes in the popular taste for the two daily hot beverages which have become consumer staples the world over.  more...

(Part I is here.)


This second essay in the series was going to address the concepts of liberty and freedom. I intend to examine those concepts in the near future but I have decided that this essay will deal with the one issue which I did not cover in the first essay, namely that I believe, and stated without justifying it, that in a democratic polity the final and ultimate authority and power must be vested in the body of the people. more...

by Bill Warner

The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History
By Andrew G. Bostom
Prometheus Books, 768 pp.

Andrew Bostom's new book, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, is an historic work. It is an encyclopedia of both the doctrine and practice of Islamic Jew hatred. Jew hatred is Bostom's usage and it is accurate. The word Semitic refers to the Semitic language group, which includes both Arabic and Hebrew. No one hates the Hebrew language; so the term, antisemitism is a misnomer. more...

by Norman Berdichevsky

by Ares Demertzis

Throughout history, every country has had an army; either its own, or a foreign one. 
                                                                                               -- Anonymous

Coffee or Tea?

How Freedom Of Expression Is Undermined By Islam [1]
by Ibn Warraq

 What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

            The barbarians are due here today.     

Why isn't anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?

            Because the barbarians are coming today.
            What laws can the senators make now?
            Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating.                           

                        Waiting for The Barbarians. Constantine Cavafy [1864-1933].

The central issue, of which we should not lose sight, of the Fitna Affair is not whether the film by Wilders is good, bad, blasphemous, or offensive to Muslims, but rather freedom of expression. Human Rights begin with freedom of thought, and expression; democracy depends on it. Sixty years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, a noble document whose articles 18 and 19 guarantee freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and freedom of opinion and expression, Islamic countries on 28 March, 2008 managed to kill it.  more...

by Theodore Dalrymple 

by Hugh Fitzgerald

In his most recent taped broadcast, Ayman Al-Zawahiri doesn’t have a word to offer about the “legitimate rights” of the soi-disant “Palestinian people.” He notes that the perfidious Jews, or Israelis, have attacked Gaza. And so they have, in scrupulous fashion, in their attempt to end the rain and reign of rockets over Israel’s southern cities. For Al-Zawahiri it is “the Muslims” who have been hit and “the Muslims” who must avenge these attacks. There is not a secular or nationalist word in his speech. more...

The Common Strategies of Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Mussolini and Hitler

by Norman Berdichevsky

For more than two centuries, major conflicts involving the European powers spilled over the Mediterranean, Bosphorus, Black Sea, Suez Canal, and Caucasus mountains to engulf the adjacent areas of North Africa and the Near and Middle East in intrigue, espionage and open conflict. From Napoleon’s entry into Egypt in 1798 until the end of World War II in 1945, the vast majority of the Muslim peoples of these regions under leaders who directed their religious and political allegiance, decisively chose sides and in each case, embraced the ideologies of authoritarianism, Fascism and Nazism. more...

“The best positioned group to help al-Qaeda launch an attack in the US.”
by  Jerry Gordon

Wall Street Journalist Danny Pearl was on his way to a meeting with Jamaat ul-Fuqra (JF) founder, Sheik Mubarak Ali Gilani  in Lahore, Pakistan on January 22, 2002.  He was on the hunt for al Qaeda connections when he was abducted and slaughtered by Islamic Extremist and British citizen, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh.  more...

Part One – The basic definition

by John M. Joyce

It is often said today that democracy, specifically western liberal democracy, is under threat. Many people maintain that democracy cannot defend itself against those who revile it, and those who also want to get rid of it and put in its place some other system of determining leadership and government which would be more to their liking, because democracy itself is inherently flawed. Of course, this is said without anyone actually defining or stating what the flaws actually are or defining what is meant by democracy! Some maintain that democracy produces weak and ineffectual government which must always, by its nature, pander to the passing whims and fancies of the electorate. Others maintain that democracy will always lead to its own collapse as the people seek to extend democracy, over time, into every aspect of their civil lives. Neither of these statements is necessarily a condemnation of democracy – rather, each one is an indication of democracy’s strengths.  more...

by Rebecca Bynum

Vijay Kumar is a candidate for Congress from Tennessee’s fifth congressional district which includes the city of Nashville. This Congressional seat is currently held by Jim Cooper, a Democrat with a background as a lawyer and in private capital fundraising. He is the son of Tennessee Governor Prentice Cooper (who served three two-year terms from 1939-1945) and is well entrenched in state politics having previously served as congressional representative in Tennessee’s more rural 4^th district. Going up against such a well-known politician is a formidable task, but Kumar is up to the challenge. He says the political turning point for him came on September 11, 2001. more...

by Hans Allhoff

Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life
by Anthony Kronman 
Yale University Press, 2007

I bought a new mattress last month. Too much information, I know, but there is a point to it. With it came one of those “Care of your new …” leaflets. The leaflet advised me to turn the mattress over regularly, otherwise it would “develop depressions”. Well, we can’t have that, can we? I promise to keep my mattress happy, even if this turns me into one of those “women who juggle their lives”. And “women who juggle their lives” come to no good.  more...

by Ares Demertzis

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child."  Cicero.

(i)

The Presidente would frequently wake bathed in moist perspiration; silk pajamas and silk sheets dripping with his anguished liquid.  This morning he was startled from a troubled slumber by the violent trembling of his bed.  Earthquake!  His sleep swelled eyes opened. Riveting his gaze apprehensively out of the bedroom window, he focused on the smoking volcano in the distance.  more...

by Hugh Fitzgerald

Is it somewhere written that the countries of the advanced West are required to admit Muslims into their lands, or to continue to endure their large-scale presence, no matter what new information may come to light, and greater understanding as a result, of the meaning and menace of Islam? It is by now quite clear, to all who are paying attention, that there is something deeply worrisome about that ever-increasing presence of Muslims in the Bilad al-kufr (Lands of the Infidels). And it is clear to those who are a bit swifter of apprehension than others that this has led to a situation that is far more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous for the indigenous Infidels (and for other, non-Muslim, immigrants) than would be the case were there no such large-scale Muslim presence.  more....

Recently a panelist on QI, our impossibly arbitrary and magnificently funny TV quiz show, observed that the British measure hot and cold on different scales. On the rare occasions that we enjoy a hot day we say “It was in the Eighties”, meaning eighty degrees Fahrenheit. But when it’s cold we say, “Brrrr – it’s minus five, you know.” “Brrrr- it’s twenty-three,” won’t do. This is inconsistent, but so ingrained that we don’t notice we’re doing it. Equally British, paradoxically, is a sense of fair play: a belief that inconsistency is wrong. But fair play only works when everyone plays by the rules.  more...