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*"The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and engrafted into the machine of government, have been a formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man." Thomas Jefferson on Democracy.
Jefferson's words are true for clergy of all faiths!
THOSE WHO SEE NO DANGER IN UNITING CHURCH AND STATE AFTER THE WTC ATTACKS, HAVE TO BE INTELLECTUALLY BLIND, STUPID, OR PART OF THE PROBLEM. THE TERRORIST ATTACKS IN NEW YORK SHOW THAT FANATIC RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM IS A THREAT TO THE FREEDOM, PEACE AND SAFETY OF ALL MANKIND. WE MUST BE ON GUARD SO AS NOT TO FALL PREY TO THOSE WHO WOULD FAN THE FLAMES OF HATRED IN THE NAME OF RELIGION. RECENTLY A RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALIST IN THE U.S. SAID THAT THE WTC ATTACKS OCCURRED BECAUSE OF LESBIANS, HOMOSEXUALS AND THE LACK OF PRAYER IN SCHOOLS. HE HAS RECENTLY APOLOGIZED FOR THE REMARK, HOWEVER FURTHER OPINIONS FROM THIS PERSON SHOULD BE TOSSED IN THE GARBAGE.
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RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM CANNOT THRIVE WHEN THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE MODERN WORLD. IT IS DIFFICULT FOR EXAMPLE TO KEEP WOMEN UNEDUCATED AND ISOLATED, AS ONE WOULD KEEP CATTLE IF THEY KNOW THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE.
IT IS TIME TO EXAMINE THE ISLAMIC WORLD
Remember the movie Lawrence of Arabia?
SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM
BY
T.E. LAWRENCE
1926
CHAPTER III PAGE 1
If tribesman and townsman in Arabic-speaking Asia were not different races, but just men in different social and economic stages, a family resemblance might be expected in the working of their minds, and so it was only reasonable than common elements should appear in the product of these peoples. In the very outset, at the first meeting with them, was found a universal clearness or hardness of belief, almost mathematical in its limitations, and repellent in its unsympathetic form. Semites had no half tones in the register of vision. They were people of primary colors, or rather of black and white, who saw the world always in contour. They were a dogmatic people, despising doubt, our modern crown o f thorns. They did not understand our metaphysical difficulties, our introspective questionings. They knew only truth and untruth, belief and unbelief, without our hesitating retinue of finer shades.
This people saw black and white, not only in vision, but by inmost furnishing; black and white not merely in clarity, but in apposition. Their thoughts were at ease only in extremes. They inhabited superlatives by choice. Sometimes inconsistent seemed to possess them at once in joint sway; but they never compromised: they perused the logic of several incompatible opinions to absurd ends, without perceiving the incongruity. With cool head and tranquil judgment, imperturbably unconscious of the flight, they oscillated from asymptote to asymptote.
They were a limited, narrow-minded people, whose inert intellects lay fallow in incurious resignation. Their imaginations were vivid, but not creative. . . . . . . . .
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Most of the 911 highjackers were Arabs.
Most of the Al Queda and Taliban were and are Arabs.
Prince Abdalla offered money to rebuild New York and said we brought 911 on ourselves.
STOP TERRORIST FUNDING
BUY RUSSIAN OIL
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Sept. 27, 2001,
6:29PM
By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
Yes, we need to get Osama bin Laden. Yes, we need to bring down the terrorist networks. But the overriding aim of the war on terrorism is changing regimes. And it starts with the Taliban.
Searching Afghan caves for bin Laden is precisely the trap he would wish us to fall into. Terrorists cannot operate without the succor and protection of governments. The planet is divided into countries. Unless terrorists want to camp in Antarctica, they must live in sovereign states. The objective of this war must be to make it impossible or intolerable for any state to harbor, protect or aid and abet terrorists. The point is not to swat every mosquito, but to drain the swamp.
The war begins in Afghanistan. The first objective must be to destroy the Taliban regime. Indeed, to make an example of the Taliban, to show the world -- and especially regimes engaged in terrorism -- that President Bush was serious when he told the nation that we make no distinction between the terrorists and the governments that harbor them. The take-home lesson must be: Harbor terrorists -- and your regime dies.
Remember the context. Radical Islam is riding a wave of victories: The bombing of the Marine barracks in 1983 that drove the United States out of Lebanon; the killing of 18 American soldiers in Mogadishu in 1993 that drove the United States out of Somalia; and, in between, the war that drove the other superpower, the Soviet Union, out of Afghanistan.
And now Sept. 11, which sent America into shock and leaves it deep in fear. Victory breeds victory. The terrorists feel invincible, and those sitting on the fence in the region are waiting to see whether they really are. Overthrowing the Taliban would reverse the historical tide and profoundly affect the psychological balance of power.
This step is so obvious and necessary that it is deeply troubling to see the secretary of state begin to wobble. If the Taliban give up bin Laden and al Qaeda (his terrorist network), said Secretary of State Colin Powell on Tuesday, "we wouldn't be worrying about whether they are the regime in power or not." He then offered carrots ("significant benefits ... a better relationship with the West") and even hinted at American aid.
Carrots? Aid? After Sept. 11? The Taliban share responsibility for the worst mass murder in American history. For that they must be made to pay, or what meaning is there to the president's pledge that "justice will be done"?
If the administration goes wobbly on the Taliban, it might as well give up the war on terrorism before it starts. The Taliban are dripping blood. They are totally isolated. They are militarily vulnerable. On the ground they face a fierce armed opposition, the Northern Alliance, that is ready and eager to take Kabul. With our support, it could.
It may not be easy and it may not be quick. But such a signal victory is essential.
The campaign, however, cannot stop there. Nor with bin Laden. (Although when the Taliban government falls, finding bin Laden and his associates will be that much easier.) Afghanistan is just stage one.
A logical stage two is Syria. It harbors a myriad of terrorist groups, but the regime is as rational as it is cynical. Syria has no ideological or religious affinity with the terrorists it supports. It uses them to advance geopolitical aims. It can therefore be persuaded to abandon them.
We know this. For years, Damascus harbored Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the PKK (Kurdish Workers' Party), which was fighting the government in Turkey. Turkey repeatedly demanded that Syria turn him over. Syria refused. Until October 1998, when Turkey massed troops on its Syrian border, threatening military action. Ocalan was shortly expelled from Damascus. He now sits in a Turkish jail.
Syria is terrorist. But Syria is pliable. It is a low-hanging fruit. After Afghanistan, we turn to Damascus. What then?
Stage three is Iraq and Iran, obviously the most difficult and dangerous. Which is why it would be foolish to take them on right away. Changing regimes in Kabul and changing policy in Damascus, however, would already have radically changed the regional dynamic by demonstrating American power in a region where power, above all, commands respect.
In Iran, where the conservative clerics are unpopular and a large Westernized middle class is already straining for a free society, change might come from within. In Iraq, although Saddam Hussein is detested, internal revolt is less likely. Saddam will make his stand and we will have to confront the most dangerous terrorist regime in the world. The war on terrorism will conclude in Baghdad. How? No one knows. All we do know is that history, cunning and cruel, will demand that if this president wants victory in the war he has declared, he will have to achieve it on the very spot where his own father, 10 years ago, let victory slip away.
Krauthammer is a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.
What Islamic terrorists are really afraid of is women
By Boris Johnson
SO we're going in. In the next few days, our boys will be taking on the Taliban, and we must all pray they succeed. Let them winkle him out of his cave. Let them blast Osama bin Laden's arms dumps and blitz his foll owers, and carpet-bomb the Khyber with pineapple chunks, to appease the civilians, and then, and then . . . er: nobody seems sure what happens then, because this is a war against terrorism unlike any other. We have had our own such war for the past 30 yea rs, and we know that it is accompanied by a stately hypocrisy. On the one hand, we do our best to catch them, or sometimes just shoot them. On the other hand, we secretly talk to them and give them what they want. We invite them first to Cheyne Walk, in 1 973, and eventually to Downing Street. My dear Gerry, my dear Martin, what would it take to get your lads to stop blowing us up? A ministerial Rover? Done. The end of the RUC? Say no more. The trouble with the war against Islamic fundamentalist terror is t hat the terrorists themselves have no interest in talking. Bin Laden calls on his followers to kill all infidels. Then, he says, the killers will go to heaven. There is not much room for negotiation there, not even over tea at Number 10. We are not only h orrified by the actions of the 19 suicide killers; we are still baffled, two weeks on. What is it really all about? What is the true well-spring of this rage? We have all read that these crazed young men resent America for supporting Israel; that they beli eve the sufferings of the Iraqi people are excessive; that they hate their own corrupt regimes, especially in Saudi Arabia, and blame America for backing them. None of these geopolitical reasons, I am afraid, quite does the trick, for me. There must be so me deeper offence to their pride. I think it is to do with their sense that they are representatives of a culture under siege. They fear that American morals and values will take them over, just as Coca-Cola and McDonald's have conquered the Earth. And wha t is the biggest single difference between their culture and Western culture? That's easy: it's the treatment of women. Not all Islamic societies are equally sexist. You may not believe it, but the Turks gave women the vote before the British did. But lis ten to the casual bias of bin Laden's address to "brother Muslims". Look at the wacko women's gear that the BBC's John Simpson wore when he smuggled himself into Afghanistan, a sort of blue tent with a letterbox hole for the nose. This is a world where wo men are lashed for adultery; where little girls are denied education; where female teachers are sacked; and where women are kept from elementary health care. Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, says that mingling men and women is Western and decadent, and leads to licentiousness. To call these views medieval is an insult to the Middle Ages. And yet they are held, with varying intensity, across the Muslim world. In Kuwait, the country for which we fought, they recently decided against giving women the vote. As one enlightened Kuwaiti MP, Ahmad al-Baqer, put it: "God said in the holy Koran that men are better than women. Why can't we settle for that?" The Kuwaiti tribunes later had a debate on the Sydney Olympics, in which a fruitcake called Waleed al-Tabtaba ie called for the banning of women's beach volleyball, on the ground that it was "too sexy and indecent". In Kano, Nigeria, the Muslims banned female soccer. In Dhaka, Bangladesh, women have been banned from working for NGOs. A Malaysian minister recently announced that any kind of skirt is an invitation to rape. Iranian magazines may not show unveiled pictures of Monica Lewinsky, or any other woman who has had sexual relations with President Clinton. The imam of a mosque in Fuengirola, Spain, one Mohamed K amal Mostafa, has just published a handy guide to when you may beat your wife. Only hit the hands and feet, he says, using a rod that is thin and light. Of course, it's all grotesque. It's nutty. But these prejudices are so deeply held by Islamic fundamen talists that they will die to preserve them. They look at America, and they see a world full of spookily powerful women, such as Hillary Clinton. So terrifying have been the advances of Western feminism that her ludicrous husband can almost be expelled fro m office for having a sexual liaison with an intern. The Muslim fanatics see denatured men, and abortion, and family breakdown, and jezebels who order men around. It tempts them and appals them and, finally, enrages them. Mohammed Omar says that "only ugl y and filthy Western cultures allow women to be insulted and dishonoured as a toy". What he means is that only the West allows women to be treated as equals. Now, there will be plenty of British conservatives who think these Taliban chappies run a tight sh ip, women's lib is not an unalloyed blessing, look at all these poofters these days, and so on. There are even ex-feminists, such as Germaine Greer, who will take a perverse pleasure in announcing that women can look very beautiful in a veil. These points may or may not be valid, but they are essentially irrelevant. Female emancipation has been the biggest social revolution since print. In trying to resist it, the Muslim fanatics are establishing themselves as doomed cultural Luddites. Let me say what the Left cannot say, since it chokes on the contradictions of its position, at once feminist, and yet relativist. It is time for concerted cultural imperialism. They are wrong about women. We are right. We can't have them blowing us up. The deluded fanatics m ust be helped to a more generous understanding of the world. Female education is the answer to the global population problem. It is the ultimate answer to the problem of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. Boris Johnson is editor of The Spectator and MP for Henley
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THESE ARE THE FANATIC RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISTS IN OUR OWN COUNTRY
WHO WOULD UNITE CHURCH AND STATE
CLICK ON MENU FOR FEATURES
POLITICAL OPINIONS AND ESSAYS
The Republican Party is trading our constitutional rights to right wing fundamentalists for their lock step votes. Our method of electing people to public office is being subverted by people like James Baker, Jeb Bush, and George W., our Supreme Court appointed Boy President. The Fundamentalist care nothing about the economy or about constitutional government, The GOP cares nothing about the rights of the common man. They will do what is necessary to get elected and selling out our rights to the religious fanatics is part of the deal!
America is in a cultural and political war the out come of which will determine if our Democracy and Constitutional Government are to survive. There are those on the radical right who believe that we are not capable of governing our selves. They would replace our government with a Dominionist Theocracy.
In much the same way that middle eastern political terrorist groups have "popular fronts" to give them legitimacy, the Radical Right and Religious Fascists groups subverting and destroying Constitutional Government here in the United States, have their "popular fronts." Examine our presentation, discover who these groups are, how they are interconnected, how they are funded, how they plan to eliminate your Constitutional Rights.
Behind the blizzard of cultural
and religious extremism today is the desire of the economically
greedy for a no-holds-barred laissez faire commercial climate.
This group of fiscal conservatives is interested primarily in the
passage of legislation which fattens their pocketbooks. They feel
insulated from extremism by their individual wealth and power.
They care little about the freedoms and opportunities of this or
future generations.
If you don't read anything else read The Righteous
Revolution, then if you have any doubt about the danger religious
extremism poses to our Constitution, click on Progressive & "Other " Links
and visit The Chalcedon Foundation for an explanation of
Dominionism & Theonomy in their own words.
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This contents of this page are copyrighted, SEP 21, 2001 and may be quoted in publication provided source credit is given to PRO-SOCS.
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