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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Sept. 17, 2007 / 5 Tishrei 5768

And Shariah for all?

By Diana West


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The story of the week wasn't Gen. David Petraeus' testimony on Iraq, although it dominated the headlines. The story of the week wasn't the sixth return of September 11 since the jihad atrocity of 2001, although it inspired many public statements and ceremonies. The week's biggest story garnered little press and few comments. But, in a significant way, this overlooked story — an outrageous display of police force in Brussels on September 11, 2007 — symbolizes the missing link in our flawed comprehension of both Iraq and September 11.


There, in the so-called capital of Europe, 200 people marked the day with a protest against the Islamization of Europe — a civilizational shift which, as Europe increasingly accommodates Shariah (Islamic law), is shockingly advanced. Indeed, Bernard Lewis has already predicted Europe will become Islamic by century's end. Absent a reversal of Islamization (which remains possible) I'm guessing sooner than that.


The assembly, sponsored by Stop the Islamization of Europe, was wholly peaceful — at least until Belgian police showed up. With a chopper above, water cannon nearby, they didn't break heads, exactly — nothing so kind as that. In a photo that should be titled The New Face of Fascism (brusselsjournal.com http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2441), we see black-clad Belgian policemen brutalizing a man in a light-colored suit and tie. His hands are cuffed behind his back, his right elbow is clasped in what is known as an arm-bar hold, and he is also being subjected to a genital hold — a vicious grip that, a retired cop friend of mine tells me, would get any American policeman thrown off the force.


The man under arrest was Frank Vanhecke, president of the Flemish secessionist party Vlaams Belang and a member of European Parliament. Also arrested and beaten was Filip Dewinter, who, as the leading politician of Vlaams Belang, Belgium's largest opposition party, has personally garnered 25 percent of the electorate (http://kleinverzet.blogspot.com/). These men are invariably described as "far-right" politicians, as though "far-right"-ness alone (whatever that means when totalitarian police tactics are considered tolerant left) is rationale enough for harsh treatment. I've met both men and know them as free-market, small-government conservatives who deeply believe Western civilization is worth defending against the Islamization that occurs with the entrenchment of Shariah.


Indeed, they are bravely trying to prevent Europe's Islamization, practically by themselves. I say "bravely" because in Europe these days, as we know from the Islamically motivated murders of Pim Fortyun and Theo van Gogh, such beliefs can get you killed.


Maybe so, a reader might say. But what does protesting Shariah in Europe have to do with either American policy in Iraq or September 11? The answer is everything. What were the attacks of September 11 all about? Al Qaeda's terrorist plot was designed not only to strike at the United States but to advance the cause of establishing an Islamic caliphate — a world government ruled according to Shariah, which, among other things, forbids criticism of Islam. Polls indicate that sizable numbers of Muslims (solid majorities in key countries), regardless of their opinion of al Qaeda, share this same goal of a Shariah-based, Islamic caliphate. This is a highly significant overlap between the goals of Islamic terrorism and what we think of as mainstream Islam.


Meanwhile, though, in our childish, PC wisdom (accepted across the political spectrum), we have let Islam off the hook when it comes to terrorism, sticking to the story that our whole problem is with a Tiny Band of Extremists That Hijacked Islam, not the jihadist teachings of Islam itself. To make the story stick, we also seem to ignore the impetus behind Islamic terrorism — the imposition of Shariah, what with its ultimate institutional denigrations of non-Muslims and women, and its denial of freedom of conscience and expression.


This blinkered view of Islam explains how even in our commemorations of September 11 we ignore the ongoing threat to liberty posed by the spread of Shariah across the West, which the SIOE was trying to protest. It even helps explain our confusion over Iraq, where, ignoring the formative influence of Shariah on the native culture, we are stumped by our failures to remake Iraq in our own Western image.


There is another consequence of our blindness: a terrible indifference to cultural allies in Europe who are fighting its Islamization-a cataclysm for the liberty-based West. We ignore them at our peril.

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