I think we need a regime change in the Idiotarian movement.

O'Reilly had Esposito on last night, and was all over him.

I am not the biggest O'Reilly fan, but he is head and shoulders over the other mainstream (U.S.) programs in fighting the good fight.

I wish he would articulate his (our) outrage better however...

[Link: www.foxnews.com...]

partial transcript of the John Esposito interview...

“September 11,” he said, “has made everyone aware of the fact that not addressing the kinds of issues involved here, of tolerance and pluralism, have catastrophic repercussions.” ...

RE- Actually, Esposito was dead-on in that cogent analysis.

I think they realized just how catastrophic those repercussions can be... in Kabul and Kandahar around the end of November last year.

I think some others might be due for finding out the "catastrophic repercussions of not addressing tlerance and pluralism", and I think they'll be finding out quite soon.

Very few of them are in the United States.

At a time when Christians and their leaders should be putting as much distance between themselves and the violence of the cult of Islam, many are in fact willingly blind to it. Never shy in their endless critisms of the West, they are however very “understanding” when it comes to Islam. They prefer the "people of the book" myth, and ignore the horrors that have been going on, including attacks on their own co-religionists.

With Christianity's terrible history of anti-Semitism, they should be bending over backwards to speak out in support of the Jewish people. Especially, as once again they are the target for extermination if given half the chance. Many of the Christians in the US are of course very supportive of the Jewish state, most noteably the Evangelical wing. However, the same can't be said in Europe.

Future generations will judge the actions of the church, and currently, as in the 1930's, it is found wanting to say the least.

You have GOt to be kidding me...Where do the types of people grow up? How come they get so much press? They dont have a single leg to stand on and are consistantly and verifably WRONG on issues. These people have zero credibility yet are still being flaunted as "experts"? Give me a break!

John Esposito has been "calm", but relentless in spewing forth reams of factually challenged drivel regarding the basic history and tenets of Islam to at least two generations of college undergraduate and graduate students. Sadly, former President Clinton actually sought Esposito out as a "policy" adviser on terrorism. In fact, Esposito has been the leading voice of a school of apologists whose whitewashed analyses are characterized by:

1) historical negationism, consisting of suppressing or sketching in a page or a paragraph, one thousand years of jihad which is presented as a peaceful conquest, generally "welcomed" by the vanquished populations
2) the omission of Christian and, in particular, Muslim sources describing the actual methods of these conquests, sanctioned by the classical jihad ideology written by numerous Muslim jurists since the 7th century: pillage, enslavement, deportation, massacres, and so on
3) the mythical historical conversion of "centuries" of "peaceful coexistence", masking the processes which transformed majorities (i.e., vast Christian populations, in particular) into minorities, constantly at risk of extinction
4) an obligatory self-incrimination for the Crusades, the Inquisition, imperialism, colonialism, Israel, and other intrusions into the dar al-Islam
5) servile criticism of the rational tools of historical knowledge, created by earlier European Orientalists and historians

This consistent, gross misrepresentation of history has real consequences and must be redressed on campuses, in the media, and within our governmental "policy" fora!

You know, it amazes me how much that "people of the book" crap has seeped into Christianity - or at least pseudo-intellectual Christianity. They don't seem to realize that a Christian's role in the new world order would be as a tax-paying slave while a Jew's role would essentially be to serve as tax-paying cannon fodder (though Muhammed did have a thing for Jewish ladies after he'd killed their husbands and sons). All other religions get to convert or die, period.

Islamic majorities have never peacefully coexisted with anything other than propoganda and lies.

The more I read about Islam, the less I regret the Crusades.

Some Idiotarian Esposito for your reading pleasure:

Islamic revivalism has run counter to many of the presuppositions of Western liberal secularism and development theory, among them the belief that modernization means the inexorable or progressive secularization and Westernization of society. Too often analysis and policymaking have been shaped by a liberal secularism that fails to recognize it too represents a world view, not the paradigm for modern society, and can easily degenerate into a "secularist fundamentalism" that treats alternative views as irrational, extremist, and deviant.

A focus on "Islamic fundamentalism" as a global threat has reinforced the tendency to equate violence with Islam, to fail to distinguish between illegitimate use of religion by individuals and the faith and practice of the majority of the world's Muslims who, like adherents of other religious traditions, wish to live in peace. To equate Islam and Islamic fundamentalism uncritically with extremism is to judge Islam only by those who wreak havoc--a standard not applied to Judaism and Christianity. The danger is that heinous actions may be attributed to Islam rather than to a twisted or distorted interpretation of Islam. Thus despite the track record of Christianity and Western countries when it comes to making war, developing weapons of mass destruction, and imposing their imperialist designs, Islam and Muslim culture are portrayed as somehow peculiarly and inherently expansionist and prone to violence and warfare.
[Link: www.arches.uga.edu...]

For anyone interested in learning the undeniable history that Esposito and his disingenuous ilk will NEVER impart, I urge you to attend this lecture by the scholar Bat Ye'or (if in the Providence vicinity), or simply read her writings at:[Link: www.dhimmitude.org...]

- Guest Lecture -

Dhimmitude Past and Present:

An Invented or Real History ?

Bat Ye'or*

Thursday October 10, 2002, at 7:30 PM
Brown University
Salomon Hall, Room 001
Main Green
(between George and Waterman Streets)
Providence, RI

* Bat Ye'or was born in Cairo, Egypt. Under the Nasser government, following a wave of pogroms against the small Egyptian Jewish community, along with expropriation of their assets, she became a stateless refugee. In 1957, Bat Ye'or and her parents found asylum in London where she married, became a British Citizen, and moved to Switzerland in 1960. While living in Switzerland, she has written numerous articles and four books on non-Muslims living under Islamic rule. Her first book The Jews in Egypt was written in 1974 and subsequently translated into Hebrew. The translation of Le Dhimmi (Paris, 1980) into English (1985), Hebrew (1986), and Russian (1991), brought her international recognition. The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam remains an essential introduction to her second major work, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam. From Jihad to Dhimmitude (French, 1991; English, 1996; German edition: May 2002), which put the study of this topic on a new footing. Bat Ye'or's latest book, Islam and Dhimmitude. Where Civilizations Collide, examines the trend toward dhimmitude during the 20th century.

An assessment of Jihad and Dhimmitude is all the more essential since the terrorist Jihad-war struck America on September 11, 2001.

---
This lecture is supported by C.V. Starr Foundation Lectureships Fund

Esposito writes that "contrary to what some have advised, the United States should not in principle object to implementation of Islamic law or involvement of Islamic activists in government."

What about the Constitution? The First Amendment would be trampled on by such an implementation. First Amendment issues aside, virtually every word of the Constitution would be nullified by Sharia.

As to his second point, that's all we need: more Sami Al-Arians all over the place.

"In 1994, he supported the notion that Hamas, the
suicide-bombing Palestinian terror group, is also a
community-focused group that engages in 'honey,
cheese-making, and home-based clothing
manufacture'. "

Yeah, and Htiler built the autobahns, Mussolini made the trains run on time, and Al Capone set up soup kitchens for Chicago's homeless...when does 'community focus' become bribing people to ignore the terrible truth?

Couldn't Georgetown do better than this?

I'm reminded of Lenin's assertion that capitalists would sell the rope and shovels by which they'd be hung and buried. I'm not sure what this Esposito guy is selling, but rest assured it'd bury him too.

Esposito writes that "contrary to what some have advised, the United States should not in principle object to implementation of Islamic law or involvement of Islamic activists in government."

It would be nice to see the context for this, and whether Esposito places any limits on the "implementation of Islamic law."

I can't help but imagine that he sees the physical oppression of Muslim women, of Muslim gays, of ex-Muslim apostates, as unrepresentative of real Islam, which of course has never been given a chance to work. And I'll just bet he bases his defense of Islamic law on an imaginary utopia where blasphemy and consensual fornication are allowed, and rape, theft, and murder are banned, but in all cases on "Quranic grounds." (In other words, the West, but in Mohammedan drag.)

I could be wrong, but I think Esposito's comment about the U.S. not objecting probably applies to Arab/ Islamic countries. Not that the U.S. should not in principle object to the implementation of Islamic law in the United States.

In other words, stoning rape victims should not in principle be objectionable to the United States. Mad Mullahs in control of armies should not in principle be objectionable to the United States. He's a cultural relativist. I think.

KR said, "The more I read about Islam, the less I regret the Crusades."

Bravo! Better copyright that puppy!

We don't see Prof. Esposito moving to Iran and paying his jeziya tax, now do we? He and his kind resemble the kind of activists V. S. Naipaul mocked during the Cold War, revolutionaries who flew to lands of revolution--with return air tickets.

Blame John Esposito everytime you read some self-proclaimed "orientalist" break every rule of both translation and common sense, by referring to Mohammed's (pig crap be upon that lying pedophile) god-fiction, as the "Qur'en." Apparently, the less gutteral "Koran" doesn't have the appropriate Arabic touch, for desert-sabbatical parasites. That is not a trifling issue, because Esposito's dubious political corrective originates at Wahhabi central, Islamic University (Medina).

Aisha (last wife of Islam's Pig-One): "I was six years old when the Prophet of Allah took me in marriage."

Esposito writes that "contrary to what some have advised, the United States should not in principle object to implementation of Islamic law or involvement of Islamic activists in government."

Huh? Sharia, if that is waht he means, has little gems like the word of a woman is worth one-half that of a man, allows slavery of non-Moslums, cannot find a rapist guilty unless four men (or possibly eight women) have witnessed the act (and are stupid enough to say so), and a bunch of other stuff that, in part, may actually been progressive when written but is not allowed to change with society.

---
I keep hearing that the Mohammedan religion is a religion of peace and the Islamists are not Islamic, and on and on.

I am sure most Moslems are peaceful - but I have yet to hear any quotes from the Quran that say so in the vein of "Love thy neighbor" or "There are many masions in the house of God." They exist, I have read them: it is forbidden, for example, to use force to convert the unbeliever if reason will not succeed, as the unbeliever is also part of Allah's plan.

Forgive me, my history is spotty here, but I do not recall a single instance of a populace being converted to Mohammed peacefully; always the sword and gun. Yes, Christianity has used those tactics as well - but how large a part did they play in the conversions of, say, Denmark? Sweden? Germany? Russia? France?

Yes, I think most are peaceful, but I think most Germans of the 1930's were peaceful and just wanted to be left alone. Unfortunately, as Lenin said, if you have absolute control of ten percent of a populace the other ninety percent won't know how to counter you: add Goebbel's idea that if you repeat a lie often enough it will be believed, and the Hitlers and ayatollahs take and keep command.

The difference between the "evangelical" christians in the US and those in europe has to do with two key events:

1. The presence of "eugenics" having evolved NOT IN GERMANY but in the US.
(Adolph hitler copied the eugenics program directly from it's american adaptations. Not many people in Germany are aware that eugenics started in the US.)

American Christians found many many poor americans "sterilized" for being "inferiors." The system of judging one by their race and "selecting" certain types of people to kill off or kill started in America; and many poor mothers were still being sterilized in mental hospitals as late as 1974.

Christians got a cold hard look at itself with hitler's use of eugenics and became hyper concerned with the link between orthodoxy or evangelical zeal and how, in government hands such a policy can be evil.

2. The presence of war-brides in America also gave the few and traumatized camp survivors a boost of credibility in the fact that many german war brides had seen what went on in Germany and passed that down to their children the unbelievable rise of anti-semitism which shocked even then. (Many will tell you that anti-semitism seemed to come out of nowhere to be suddenly--everywhere)

Whereas many German women stayed in germany and went into denial--many good german women became forever furious at hitler trashing germany in their name and they came to the US. (Married to US servicemen)

Some of those women came with a bigger grudge against anti-semitism than the camp victims did. Many of these war-brides who were german born had a sizeable affect on Christian thinking.

The problem Islam is GOING TO HAVE with the Christian community is that the Eugenics-style talk from Arab leaders (such as Jews are'nt real semites etc...) is only going to reinforce Christian guilt as having started it all.

(Therefore they must take responsibility and protect Israel) Because it was American Christians who spear-headed the Eugenics program, the american sterilization program--and ultimately Hitler's copying the program in his own way--American Christians are horrified at Islamic calls to kill all Israelis.

Christians in America have a unique history when it comes to religions targeting other religions etc...Europe has no history as unique (among its christian populations) as American Christians. From the abolitionists to the hated eugenics evangelicals--american christians have been savior and tormentor.

Islam will have a full fledged fight on their hands to make Islam get into the government any time soon, and my money is on them.
At least they are honest about their mistakes.

I doubt very much if Margaret Sanger was an Evangelical Christian, even when she was in the forefront of the Eugenics movement and founding Planned Parenthood. If Evangelical Christians had a major role in Eugenics in America, the secular humanists were not far behind.

How far out do CNN's cameras have to zoom before you stop seeing the individual clearly enough to really begin ranting at the faceless, cartoon crowd? Be even handed. Recognise Islam as just another pair of soiled old pants in the same fetid basket as corrupt old christianity and the rest of the bastardised crop. You'd be much happier. And so would they.

Lots of rants, mostly criticizing comments taken out of context. And mostly coming from people who have no experience of the Middle East far beyond Leon Uris' Exodus.

LGF is becoming a cess pit of ignorant, no, Idiotarian, racism that automatically assumes that "good information" from sources like MEMRI might not be as agenda-driven as HAMAS, and not shy about twisting facts.

You guys have got to get out more...