Myth vs Fact

Myth	Fact
Islam: Religion of peace.	Reliance of the Traveller, Book O.10.1 Chapter O10.0: The Spoils of Battle O10.1 A free male Muslim who has reached puberty and is sane is entitled to the spoils of battle when he has participated in a battle to the end of it. After personal booty (def: o10.2), the collective spoils of the battle are divided into five parts. The first fifth is set aside (dis: o10.3), and the remaining four are distributed, one share to each infantryman and three shares to each cavalryman. From these latter four fifths also, a token payment is given at the leader's discretion to women, children, and non-Muslim participants on the Muslim side.A combatant only takes possession of his share of the spoils at the official division. (A: Or he may choose to waive his right to it.)
Bottom Line:	What need has the 'religion of peace' for legal rulings on the division of spoils of war? Why is this in the Qur'an? [9:1, 9:41] Why is this in the Hadith? One-fifth of Booty to the Cause of Allah (Khumus) Why is this in Sharia???

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Obama's Cowardly New World

A note from Radarsite: According to recent polls we learn that most of the world and almost all of Western Europe would, if they could, enthusiastically cast their vote for Barack Obama for President on the United States. The Europeans love Barack Obama and everything he stands for. But do we Americans really understand what Barack Hussein Obama stands for? Do we Americans really understand the enormity of Obama's grand vision of America's future? Do we truly understand the momentous issues involved in this fateful election?

Do you really want a more European America? A more leftist Socialist America? A more 'cosmopolitan' morally-neutral America that more closely resembles Western Europe, which has moved beyond those simplistic categories of good and evil? Do you really want an American President who embraces the idea of America's guilt and accepts the Western European critique of America's aggressiveness and seeks to restore American "moral standing" in the eyes of the world? An America intent on transferring political legitimacy from nation-states to supranational organizations like the European Union, the UN and the International Criminal Court? Do you really want to embrace the concept that the most dangerous nations in the world today are the Unitied States and Israel? Is it to be European appeasement or American exceptionalism? And finally, to appease the appeasers will you be willing to abandon our stalwart ally Israel to the mercies of the Arab 'anti-Israel resistance fighters'?

Could you really be this misguided or disinterested in our future? In less than two days you will have to answer these grave questions. Please read this fine article below from the Jerusalem Post to better understand the importance of your answers. - rg

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Think Again: The end of the special relationship?
From the Jerusalem Post
By JONATHAN ROSENBLUM


For those inclined to see the workings of divine providence in human history, the special affinity of the American people for Israel provides a happy example. If Israel could have only one consistent ally in the world, it would surely have picked the world's (still) most powerful nation. Without the United States, Israel would be hard pressed to obtain the weapons needed to defend itself.

American popular support for Israel has many sources. The first is historical. The Puritan founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony self-consciously modeled themselves on the ancient Hebrews and styled themselves as the New Israel. The Hebrew Bible provided their guidance. All the early presidents of Yale were Hebraists, and the college's insignia was patterned on the urim vetumim worn by the high priest.

To this day, Americans remain by far the most religious people in the Western world. Seventy million American Evangelicals constitute Israel's most ardent supporters. Americans have always tended to be jealous of their sovereignty and willing to defend themselves against any threat to their liberty. The state motto of New Hampshire, "Live free or die," captures that spirit. As such, they admire Israel's doughty self-defense against far more numerous enemies.

In Western terms, America is a center-right country. A major aspect of the American exceptionalism discussed by historians is its failure to develop a class-based political movement. That too has strengthened the bonds to Israel. Among American liberals, who tend to see the world in terms of victims and oppressors, 59 percent view the Palestinians more or equally sympathetically (according to a 2002 Gallup poll). Among conservatives, whose focus is on particular values and the determination to defend them, 59% view Israel more favorably.

The presence in America of the world's largest Jewish community - a community that is both wealthy and politically active - has also shored up American support for Israel. (That community, however, is diminishing both in numbers and concern with Israel; many of the most active supporters of Israel in Congress come from states with few Jews.)

Belief in American exceptionalism, its chosenness, has always played a major role in American civic religion. The two dominant conceptions of American foreign policy - isolationism and liberal internationalism - are both predicated upon an assumption of American moral superiority. Isolationists fear contamination from the "foreign entanglements," of which president George Washington warned in his farewell address. Liberal internationalists seek to remake the world in America's image.

Sen. Barack Obama represents a third foreign policy approach - what Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington calls the "cosmopolitan." Far from taking American virtue as its starting point, the cosmopolitan seeks to remake America in Europe's image.

Thus Obama presented himself to Europeans last summer as a citizen of the world, one of them. "Mr. Obama," in the words of Fouad Ajami, "proceeds from the notion of American guilt. 'We called up the furies...'" He accepts the Western European critique of America's aggressiveness and seeks to restore American "moral standing" in the eyes of the world.

He shares the Europeans' contempt for the terminology of good and evil: "A lot of evil's been perpetuated based on the claim that we were fighting evil," he says. If his heart thrilled at the sight of Iraqis twice braving suicide bombers to go the polls, he kept it to himself. The war in Iraq, in his view, was nothing more than a "cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors... to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the cost in lives lost and in hardships borne."

And he expresses understanding for the grievances of the perpetrators of evil - Hamas, Hizbullah, even the perpetrators of 9/11, which he characteristically portrayed as part of "an underlying struggle between worlds of plenty and worlds of want" (despite the affluent backgrounds of the attackers). He voted against a Senate bill to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.

Obama's most fervent support has come from the university campuses and cultural elites - where attitudes tend most to resemble those of Western Europeans, and where scorn for those who "cling to guns or religion" runs rampant. These campuses also happen to be the redoubts of the greatest hostility to Israel.

AN AMERICA that more closely resembles Western Europe will not be good for Israel. Western Europeans consistently deem Israel the greatest threat to world peace. And they are remarkably cavalier about Israel's defense of its own existence. Recent memory does not include any Israeli response to attack that the Europeans did not deem disproportionate. The Western European countries have done little to prevent the United Nations from degenerating into an anti-Israel debating society, and a number have supported or abstained on UN Human Rights Council resolutions supportive of anti-Israel "resistance" - i.e. terrorism.

Many commonly held attitudes predispose Europeans against Israel. Western Europe is far along a project of transferring political legitimacy from nation-states to supranational organizations like the European Union, the UN and the International Criminal Court. Having achieved their nation-state rather late in the day, the Jews of Israel remain proud of it. To the Europeans, however, a non-Muslim state based on national/religious identity seems an atavism.Western Europe's almost religious faith in international institutions of open membership, like the UN, and a declining concern with national sovereignty threaten Israel. International criminal jurisdiction has already rendered Israeli military personnel wary of traveling abroad. Obama frequently demonstrates a similar reverence for the UN, and has a long list of international treaty obligations to which he is eager to submit the US.


Europe has adopted a stance of appeasement toward both external threats and to Islamic minorities within. (Ironically, the US, which offers no special dispensation to Muslims, has done a far better job of integrating Muslim immigrants than European countries.) Europeans' abhorrence of any resort to military action causes them to instinctively recoil from Israel, the superior military power in the region.

Having moved beyond simplistic categories of good and evil, Europeans try to take, at best, an even-handed approach to any conflict, invariably warning, for instance, against a "cycle of violence" whenever Israel responds to attack. Obama's immediate call for "mutual restraint" after the Russian invasion of Georgia was a classic example of that tendency.

Worse, European sophistication favors whichever party can present itself as the aggrieved underdog, or serves to mask an ugly cynicism, as in the recent multibillion-dollar deals signed by Austrian and Swiss energy companies with Iran.

To the extent that Obama's likely election betokens a move toward a more European America, the special ties that have bound the people of America and Israel show signs of fraying.

Sphere: Related Content

Obama's Cowardly New World

A note from Radarsite: According to recent polls we learn that most of the world and almost all of Western Europe would, if they could, enthusiastically cast their vote for Barack Obama for President on the United States. The Europeans love Barack Obama and everything he stands for. But do we Americans really understand what Barack Hussein Obama stands for? Do we Americans really understand the enormity of Obama's grand vision of America's future? Do we truly understand the momentous issues involved in this fateful election?

Do you really want a more European America? A more leftist Socialist America? A more 'cosmopolitan' morally-neutral America that more closely resembles Western Europe, which has moved beyond those simplistic categories of good and evil? Do you really want an American President who embraces the idea of America's guilt and accepts the Western European critique of America's aggressiveness and seeks to restore American "moral standing" in the eyes of the world? An America intent on transferring political legitimacy from nation-states to supranational organizations like the European Union, the UN and the International Criminal Court? Do you really want to embrace the concept that the most dangerous nations in the world today are the Unitied States and Israel? Is it to be European appeasement or American exceptionalism? And finally, to appease the appeasers will you be willing to abandon our stalwart ally Israel to the mercies of the Arab 'anti-Israel resistance fighters'?

Could you really be this misguided or disinterested in our future? In less than two days you will have to answer these grave questions. Please read this fine article below from the Jerusalem Post to better understand the importance of your answers. - rg

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Think Again: The end of the special relationship?
From the Jerusalem Post
By JONATHAN ROSENBLUM


For those inclined to see the workings of divine providence in human history, the special affinity of the American people for Israel provides a happy example. If Israel could have only one consistent ally in the world, it would surely have picked the world's (still) most powerful nation. Without the United States, Israel would be hard pressed to obtain the weapons needed to defend itself.

American popular support for Israel has many sources. The first is historical. The Puritan founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony self-consciously modeled themselves on the ancient Hebrews and styled themselves as the New Israel. The Hebrew Bible provided their guidance. All the early presidents of Yale were Hebraists, and the college's insignia was patterned on the urim vetumim worn by the high priest.

To this day, Americans remain by far the most religious people in the Western world. Seventy million American Evangelicals constitute Israel's most ardent supporters. Americans have always tended to be jealous of their sovereignty and willing to defend themselves against any threat to their liberty. The state motto of New Hampshire, "Live free or die," captures that spirit. As such, they admire Israel's doughty self-defense against far more numerous enemies.

In Western terms, America is a center-right country. A major aspect of the American exceptionalism discussed by historians is its failure to develop a class-based political movement. That too has strengthened the bonds to Israel. Among American liberals, who tend to see the world in terms of victims and oppressors, 59 percent view the Palestinians more or equally sympathetically (according to a 2002 Gallup poll). Among conservatives, whose focus is on particular values and the determination to defend them, 59% view Israel more favorably.

The presence in America of the world's largest Jewish community - a community that is both wealthy and politically active - has also shored up American support for Israel. (That community, however, is diminishing both in numbers and concern with Israel; many of the most active supporters of Israel in Congress come from states with few Jews.)

Belief in American exceptionalism, its chosenness, has always played a major role in American civic religion. The two dominant conceptions of American foreign policy - isolationism and liberal internationalism - are both predicated upon an assumption of American moral superiority. Isolationists fear contamination from the "foreign entanglements," of which president George Washington warned in his farewell address. Liberal internationalists seek to remake the world in America's image.

Sen. Barack Obama represents a third foreign policy approach - what Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington calls the "cosmopolitan." Far from taking American virtue as its starting point, the cosmopolitan seeks to remake America in Europe's image.

Thus Obama presented himself to Europeans last summer as a citizen of the world, one of them. "Mr. Obama," in the words of Fouad Ajami, "proceeds from the notion of American guilt. 'We called up the furies...'" He accepts the Western European critique of America's aggressiveness and seeks to restore American "moral standing" in the eyes of the world.

He shares the Europeans' contempt for the terminology of good and evil: "A lot of evil's been perpetuated based on the claim that we were fighting evil," he says. If his heart thrilled at the sight of Iraqis twice braving suicide bombers to go the polls, he kept it to himself. The war in Iraq, in his view, was nothing more than a "cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors... to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the cost in lives lost and in hardships borne."

And he expresses understanding for the grievances of the perpetrators of evil - Hamas, Hizbullah, even the perpetrators of 9/11, which he characteristically portrayed as part of "an underlying struggle between worlds of plenty and worlds of want" (despite the affluent backgrounds of the attackers). He voted against a Senate bill to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.

Obama's most fervent support has come from the university campuses and cultural elites - where attitudes tend most to resemble those of Western Europeans, and where scorn for those who "cling to guns or religion" runs rampant. These campuses also happen to be the redoubts of the greatest hostility to Israel.

AN AMERICA that more closely resembles Western Europe will not be good for Israel. Western Europeans consistently deem Israel the greatest threat to world peace. And they are remarkably cavalier about Israel's defense of its own existence. Recent memory does not include any Israeli response to attack that the Europeans did not deem disproportionate. The Western European countries have done little to prevent the United Nations from degenerating into an anti-Israel debating society, and a number have supported or abstained on UN Human Rights Council resolutions supportive of anti-Israel "resistance" - i.e. terrorism.

Many commonly held attitudes predispose Europeans against Israel. Western Europe is far along a project of transferring political legitimacy from nation-states to supranational organizations like the European Union, the UN and the International Criminal Court. Having achieved their nation-state rather late in the day, the Jews of Israel remain proud of it. To the Europeans, however, a non-Muslim state based on national/religious identity seems an atavism.Western Europe's almost religious faith in international institutions of open membership, like the UN, and a declining concern with national sovereignty threaten Israel. International criminal jurisdiction has already rendered Israeli military personnel wary of traveling abroad. Obama frequently demonstrates a similar reverence for the UN, and has a long list of international treaty obligations to which he is eager to submit the US.


Europe has adopted a stance of appeasement toward both external threats and to Islamic minorities within. (Ironically, the US, which offers no special dispensation to Muslims, has done a far better job of integrating Muslim immigrants than European countries.) Europeans' abhorrence of any resort to military action causes them to instinctively recoil from Israel, the superior military power in the region.

Having moved beyond simplistic categories of good and evil, Europeans try to take, at best, an even-handed approach to any conflict, invariably warning, for instance, against a "cycle of violence" whenever Israel responds to attack. Obama's immediate call for "mutual restraint" after the Russian invasion of Georgia was a classic example of that tendency.

Worse, European sophistication favors whichever party can present itself as the aggrieved underdog, or serves to mask an ugly cynicism, as in the recent multibillion-dollar deals signed by Austrian and Swiss energy companies with Iran.

To the extent that Obama's likely election betokens a move toward a more European America, the special ties that have bound the people of America and Israel show signs of fraying.

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Community Organizing: Seizing Power, Creating Socialism

Cross-posted by Maggie at Maggie's Notebook

[transcription of above] Our final goal is the destruction of imperialism, the seizure of power, and the creation of socialism. Our strategy for this stage of the struggle is to organize the oppressed people of the imperial nation itself to join the colonies in the attack on imperialism. The process of attacking and weakening imperialism involves defeat of all kinds of national chauvinism and arrogance; this precondition to our fight for socialism.

The above from Prairie Fire - written by William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn

Zomblog has copies of a rare Weather Underground newspaper known as Osawatomie. Published in 1975 as William Ayers and Bernardine Dohn were hiding from authorities, and as Zomblog put it:

"transitioning from terrorism..."

to inside work for the revolution...what we now know was a plan to overthrow the government of the United States, tells us what community organizing is all about, and it's all about the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis.

If you are beyond weary of hearing about William Ayers' connection to Barack Obama, Zomblog makes THE point, and I'll use it here, because it cannot be said better:

Ayers was not simply protesting "against" the Vietnam War. Firstly, he wasn't against war in principle, he was agitating for the victory of the communist forces in Vietnam. In other words: He wasn't against the war, he was against our side in the war. This is spelled out in great detail in Prairie Fire. Secondly, and more significantly, the Vietnam War was only one of many issues cited by the Weather Undergound as the justifications for their violent acts. As you will see below, in various quotes from Prairie Fire and in their own list of their violent actions (and in additional impartial documentary links), Ayers and the Weather Underground enumerated dozens of different grievances as the rationales for their bombings -- their overarching goal being to inspire a violent mass uprising against the United States government in order to establish a communist "dictatorship of the proletariat," in Ayers' own words.

The plan was to overturn the government by "creativity and AUDACITY."
The following from Osawatomie:

[transcript]… the system itself is inhuman, and socialism is a real alternative; the energy crisis is the fault of Rockefeller and the oil companies, not the Arab people; unemployment is caused by capitalism not “illegal aliens” stealing jobs; war in Indochina or the Mideast is part of the problem, not the solution; political and social action can change things.

[transcript of above] Organizers must be intimately aware of every problem and each injustice, and they must show that underneath each particular problem lies another problem, and another and another until you reach the system of imperialism itself. The system is designed to create problems for poor, Third World and working-class people. Organizers need to find small solutions to small problems and great solutions to great problems. Our solutions should be drastic.

We need to build a successful struggle, strong organization and a winning revolutionary party. This is a process, which will not emerge full-blown from our minds. It will emerge and change and grow from practice. We know where to begin.

It is with all this in mind that we have created OSAWATOMIE, the revolutionary voice of the Weather Underground Organization.

The following from Ayers and Dohrn's book, Prairie Fire (more at Zomblog):

William Ayers is a communist. But don't take my word for it. He said so himself:

[transcript of above] We are a guerrilla organization. We are communist women and men, underground in the United States for more than four years.

[Zomblog] And not some nicey-nice peace-and-love kind of communist. Through his group the Weather Underground, Ayers was planning to "seize power" in a violent communist takeover of the United States:

[transcript of above] We need a revolutionary communist praty in order to lead the struggle, give coherence and direction to the fight, seize power and build the new society.

Manufactured Crisis:

[transcript of above] Our job is to tap the discontent seething in many sectors of the population, to find allies everywhere people are hungry or angry, to mobilize poor and working people against imperialism.

You've heard by now that Prarie Fire was dedicated to U.S. "political prisoners,"...one of those deemed a "political prisoner" is Sirhan Sirhan - the murderer of Robert F. Kennedy. Here it is, scanned directly from the book:

Visit Zombietime.com for more.

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Myth vs Fact

Myth	Fact
Islam: Religion of peace.	Reliance of the Traveller, Book O.9.16 O9.16: Truces (O: As for truces, the author does not mention them. In Sacred Law truce means a peace treaty with those hostile to Islam, involving a cessation of fighting for a specified period, whether for payment or something else. The scriptural basis for them includes such Koranic verses as: -1- "An acquittal from Allah and His messenger..." (Koran 9:1); -2- "If they incline towards peace, then incline towards it also" (Koran 8.61); as well as the truce which the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) made Quraysh in the year of Hudaybiya, as related by Bukhari and Muslim. Truces are permissible, not obligatory. The only one who may effect a truce is the Muslim ruler of a region (or his representative) with a segment of the non-Muslims of the region, or the caliph (o25) (or his representative). When made with other than a portion of the non-Muslims, or when made with all of them, or with all in a particular region such as India or Asia Minor, then only the caliph (or his representative) may effect it, for it is a matter of the gravest consequence whether globally or in a given locality, and our interests must be looked after therein, which is why it is best left to the caliph under any circumstances, or to someone he delegates to see to the interests of the various regions. There must be some interest served in making a truce other than mere preservation of the status quo. Allah Most High says, "So do not be faint-hearted and call for peace, when it is you who are the uppermost" (Koran 47:35). Interests that justify making a truce are such things as Muslim weakness because of lack of members or materiel, or the hope of an enemy becoming Muslim, for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) made a truce in the year Mecca was liberated with Safwan ibn Umayya for four months in hope that he would become Muslim, and he entered Islam before its time was up. If the Muslims are weak, a truce may be made for ten years if necessary, for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) made a truce with Quraysh for that long, as is related by Abu Dawud. It is not permissible to stipulate longer than that, save by means of new truces, each of which does not exceed ten years. The rulings of such a truce are inferable from those of the non-Muslim poll tax (def: o11); namely, that when a valid truce has been effected, no harm may be done to non-Muslims until it expires.)
Tafsir	The Command to Facilitate Peace when the Enemy seeks a Peaceful Resolution Publicizing the Disavowal of the Idolators Nullifying the Disbelievers' Deeds and the Command to chase Them

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