An interesting article from http://www.ucg.org/ about the Madrid bombings anniversary. This follows this post about the king of Jordan.For a free magazine subscription or to get the books recommended for free click HERE! or call 1-888-886- 8632.
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The Madrid Bombings: A Wake-Up Call for Europe

A commentary by Scott Ashley

Posted March 18, 2004

The 10 bombs that shattered commuter-packed rail cars in Madrid last week, killing more than 200 and injuring another 1,600, should have shattered Europeans' illusions about the War on Terror.

Instead, as the terrorists apparently hoped, it shattered a close alliance between Spain and the United States as allies in that cause, ushering in an appeasement-minded government in national elections held only three days later. The incoming socialist leader promptly announced that he would withdraw the 1,300 Spanish soldiers stationed in Iraq , troops sent there earlier in spite of the fact that the war was hugely unpopular with the Spanish public.
What motivated the Spanish response-and what motivated the terrorist attack in the first place?
The evidence relating to the attack-a stolen van found near the bombings containing explosive detonators and recordings in Arabic of a voice reading from the Koran, plus a videotaped claim of responsibility from an al-Qaeda-related group-apparently convinced many Spaniards that the attack was in retaliation for Spanish support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Indeed, the claim of responsibility for the bombing stated expressly that. Thus the voters chose a new government leader who promised to end Spanish involvement in Iraq. Apparently voters hope this will protect them from future terror attacks by Islamic extremists.
Simply put, the Spanish appear to have been coerced by terrorist blackmail-give in to our demands, disassociate yourselves from the United States and we won't kill you. The strategy appears to be effective, as other European countries immediately began bracing themselves for the possibility of similar attacks.
What motivated the terrorists? Assuming the mass murderers of Madrid were Islamic extremists-and the recent bombing-related arrests of several Moroccan and Indian Muslims with ties to al-Qaeda surely indicates they were-this is where things get interesting.
A little lesson in Islamic theology and history is in order.
In Islamic theology, the world is divided into two great spheres of influence. One is Dar al-Salaam, meaning "Land of Peace," a term used to describe Muslim-controlled lands (sometimes also called Dar al-Islam, meaning "Land of Islam").
The other is Dar al-Harb, meaning "Land of Struggle" or "Land of War." This term is used to denote all other lands. By this very terminology, all non-Muslim lands are defined as areas where Islam must struggle or war so that these areas may be converted to Dar al-Islam, lands ruled by Islam.
It's important to understand that, in the thinking of millions of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, it is an abomination for land that was once Dar al-Islam, land controlled by Muslims, to become Dar al-Harb, "land of struggle" in which Muslims have lost control and seen it revert back to rule by non-Muslims (infidels).
Because these concepts are so foreign to Western thinking, these distinctions are lost on most Westerners-and, tragically, particularly on their governments and leaders. Yet it explains why, in more than a dozen areas across the globe, Muslims are waging war along the edges of the Islamic world to convert more lands to Dar al-Islam (think of Chechnya, Kashmir, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, etc.).
It also explains why most Muslims in general, and Arabs in particular, are fundamentally opposed to the existence of the Jewish state of Israel . They don't want a two-state solution, unless it is only as a temporary measure. They want a single Palestinian state "from the sea to the sea" as they define it-from the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, with no place for Israel at all.
Israel, you see, is an infidel country sitting on land that was once Dar al-Islam, the land of Islam, and thus its existence is an abomination. This is why Israel has had to fight five wars for survival in barely 50 years of existence. This is why Israel, taking into account its small population (just over 6 million), has experienced the equivalent of nine Sept. 11 attacks since 9/11/01 .
What does this have to do with Spain? In the first great wave of Islamic expansion from its birthplace in the Arabian Peninsula, Muslim warriors spread the new religion throughout the Middle East to Central Asia, India, North Africa and Spain .
Spain remained under Islamic control for several centuries until the Islamic Moors were driven out, a process completed in 1492. But remember that it is considered an abomination for land that was once Dar al-Islam, land controlled by Muslims, to become Dar al-Harb, land controlled by non-Muslims. An al-Qaeda spokesman, explaining why America deserved the 9/11 attacks, cited as one reason "the tragedy of al-Andalus"-the expulsion of the Islamic Moors from Andalusia, their name for their kingdom in southern Spain .
But what did America have to do with events in Spain more than five centuries ago? That's part of the point. In their thinking, America = Spain = Britain = France = Canada = Australia = Israel = Dar al-Harb, the land of struggle that must be converted to Dar al Islam. All are one and the same, part of one continuous, ongoing struggle of Islam against its foes.
Simply put, the Islamic terrorists want Spain back-and they're clearly saying so in their Arabic-language pronouncements.
The wave of Islamic expansion that took Spain also advanced into the heart of France, where the Muslim warriors were defeated in the Battle of Tours in 732. Had the Muslims won, all of Europe might be speaking Arabic today. Even with their defeat, a second wave of Islamic expansion in the 12th century spread Islam into Eastern Europe before its advance was halted at Vienna in 1683. They want that area back, too, which is why we have seen bloody wars in the Balkans in recent years.
The United States received a tragic wake-up call on 9/11/01 . Europe received its own bloody wake-up call on 3/11/04-exactly 911 days later. If the West doesn't learn from the lessons of the past, it's likely we'll hear many more.

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Londonistan: A book to read on the anniversary of the London bombings

A very interesting post from http://www.wnponline.org/ about this book to read on the anniversary of the London bombings. This follows this post about the death of Hezbollah's spiritual leader. This follows this post about Genocide in South Africa and this article about the recent news about offshore drilling to encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran and Venezuela. For more posts like this click here.

You can get this book at your library here http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/64595883&referer=brief_results

or Amazon here http://www.amazon.com/Londonistan-Melanie-Phillips/dp/1594031975/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238446178&sr=1-1

A Page on the World: Londonistan: How Britain Is Creating a Terror State Within

Melanie Phillips shows that Britain has become a gathering ground for Islamist terror groups, while the British establishment is in denial (2006, ISBN 1594031444).
Reviewed by John Ross Schroeder
I would like to begin with the credentials of the author. Melanie Phillips is the leading political and current affairs columnist for the Daily Mail. Her insightful, common-sense assessments of modern political life in Britain are hard to equal in the world of British journalism because they are generally based upon the backdrop of the traditional values that built the United Kingdom.
Her latest book, Londonistan, points out that Britain has become the leading European gathering ground for recruitment and financing of Islamist terror groups. The sheer scale of these activities has earned the area the label "Londonistan" by antiterrorist specialists elsewhere in the world.
Mrs. Phillips addresses the overall problem from a number of different angles. For instance, she shows that radical Islamic demands are being appeased by multiculturalism and by a so-called replacement theology put forward by certain Christian theologians who seriously question the necessity for the state of Israel (Mrs. Phillips is Jewish).
Franklin Littell calls this replacement theology Christian anti-Semitism that "rings with the genocidal note. This is the myth that the mission of the Jewish people was finished with the coming of Jesus Christ, that 'the old Israel' was written off with the appearance of 'the new Israel.' To teach that a people's mission in God's providence is finished, that they have been relegated to the limbo of history, has murderous implications, which the murderers will in time spell out" (The Crucifixion of the Jews, 1996).
The gravity of the problem
Although she allows that the majority of the Muslim community in Britain is law-abiding, Melanie Phillips does insist that "the evidence suggests that the numbers who do support either the aims or the tactics of the jihad are terrifying. According to British officials, up to sixteen thousand British Muslims either are actively engaged in or support terrorist activity, while up to three thousand are estimated to have passed through Al Qaeda training camps, with several hundred thought to be primed to attack the United Kingdom" (p. 9).
But why would Britain allow such reprehensible activities within its borders? Mrs. Phillips states the obvious when she notes that Britain is a country "where traditional morality has been systematically undermined and replaced by an 'anything goes' culture in which autonomous decisions about codes of behaviour have become unchallengeable rights" (p. 25).
This reminds one of the descriptions of ancient Israel in the days of the judges when "everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 17:6; 21:25).
The author also takes pains to point out that the threat is not just from a few radical extremists who might rarely succeed like they did when suicide bombers wreaked havoc on the London Underground with the loss of many lives. She believes that the British establishment is in denial about how widespread the threat really is.
Too many erroneously pin the blame on the United States, Israel and even on Britain itself instead of the guilty culprit, which she identifies as radical Islamic ideology.
Melanie Phillips concludes that "the West is under threat from an enemy that has shrewdly observed the decadence and disarray in Europe where Western civilization first began" (p. 285). Those weaknesses are now being exploited on many fronts by those determined to bring down Western civilization as we know it and replace it with a worldwide "umma"—a global community of Islamic believers in submission to Allah.
She further points out that Britain has been the cradle of Western liberty, but urgently needs to squarely face this growing problem and counter it with policies based on "absolute consistency and moral integrity, which arise from the strength of belief in the values that are being defended" (p. 273).
This book review highlights a few crucial points, but cannot really do justice to the massive evidence proffered within its pages that identifies the causes of this disturbing trend threatening Britain's—and Western civilization's—stability and way of life.
The recent deadly train bombings in India, plus a fresh outbreak of violence by terrorist groups against Israel (involving Gaza and Lebanon) that prompted a response unprecedented in recent times, underscore the importance of her warnings and the peril our Western democracies face. WNP http://www.wnponline.org/wnp/wnp0608/pageworld0608.htm

Madrid Bombing: 6 years later

This is an interesting article from www.jihadwatch.org about something to read on the anniversary of the Madrid bombing which occured on March 11, 2004 go ahead and click through and get some of the recommended books. This follows this post about current events in Iran and follows the importance of domestic offshore oil drilling to dry up funding to terrorist rogue states. For more posts like this click here.


Fitzgerald: Obama needs book-learning, not real-life experience
A commenter at Jihad Watch has written of Barack Obama’s "utter lack of real life experience as most of us know it in every facet of life..."
He's had plenty of "real life experience." What he hasn't had is plenty of book-learning, of hours in the library, familiarizing himself with the texts and tenets of Islam, so much so, so repeatedly, that he thoroughly understands and assimilates the Total Belief-System, understands the politics and geopolitics of it, and comes to understand the inculcated division between Believer and Infidel.
And even more book learning is necessary: the kind of learning you can acquire from Bat Ye'or's "The Dhimmi: Jews & Christians Under Islam " and "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude" and from a dozen other books. Unless he had spent years in a Muslim country, he has to do this. And even that would not be a guarantee of anything were he not able to sink below the surface of life, knowing the local language, able to penetrate the barriers to mental entry -- not merely the obvious deliberate deceptions practiced on all foreign non-Muslims, the taqiyya and kitman, but also the everyday deceptions practiced, each upon each, in societies suffused with Islam.

I'll settle for book-learning, so that he can know about Islam, and know something of the history of Islamic conquests and subjugation of many different kinds of non-Muslims, over 1350 years, from Spain to the East Indies. That would be fine by me. That would be enough.
And then because he is intelligent, he could begin to make sense of the observable behavior of Muslims, begin to grasp the reasons -- to be sought in Islam itself -- for the difficulty of developing a democratic ethos in Muslim countries, or the difficulty of encouraging industry and entrepreneurship among those held in thrall to inshallah-fatalism, or the intellectual problems of a society where the Believer is encouraged to be a "slave to Allah" and discouraged from exercising independent moral choice (for "Allah Knows Best" and one must follow what the ulema tell you) and free and skeptical inquiry. All of this inhibits the development of human freedom and the enterprise of science.
Obama is a naif, but he's intelligent, and if he set his mind to it, he could find all this out, and he could make it his. And then he could, or would, agree that the squandering of this nation's wealth in Pakistan and Afghanistan, or for other Muslim states or polities, makes no sense, and that instead the two goals of American policy should be to 1) make sure that no Muslim state or group or groupuscule acquires the means -- the weaponry -- to inflict catastrophic damage on any Infidel nation-state or people and 2) make sure that the instruments of Jihad that do not receive enough attention -- the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest -- are recognized, and greatly constrained or even halted, especially in the countries of Western Europe. There, the large-scale presence of Muslims has created a situation that is far more expensive, unpleasant, and physically insecure, than it would be without such a large-scale presence.
I hope he will start to educate himself on this, and promote those younger officers who have, in Iraq and Afghanistan, begun themselves to ponder what Islam teaches and what makes Islamic societies tick, or fail to. The Yesterday's Men (Robert Gates comes to mind) whose mental set leads them to endorse appeasing Arab and Muslim leaders, and to continue with the wasteful policies in Pakistan and Afghanistan instead of focusing on the potential danger to the European members of NATO, need to be replaced by those with an understanding of Islam, and of all the instruments of Jihad, and a recognition that since the war of self-defense against Jihad has no end, since it is not a "Long War" but a war that goes on as long as the texts of Islam inspire and guide more than a billion people, a husbanding of resources by the Infidel powers is necessary. No more throwing trillions away on such a vain and vainglorious effort as that in Iraq, which cannot conceivably, if the goals sought are the goals somehow attained, help the Camp of Infidels, or damage the Camp of Islam.
In Iraq that can only be achieved if, upon an American withdrawal, the sectarian and ethnic fissures not only simmer, but widen, and result in some kind of unpatchable-up hostilities -- not necessarily full-scale war, but just a steady drip-drip-drip of attack and counterattack.
Posted by Hugh