The muslims are mostly known by their terriarists activities. They are troubling peoples and kill the peoples. Mostly they kidnapped and kill the people very horrible.This message is another example for their activity.

My Personal Blog

Yes, I know I took a shortcut with regards to the Crusades, but I didn't want to get diverted on that story while trying to make the point about how history was being revised by academics.

Robert Spencer goes into more detail about the Crusades in this recent interview, http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/010582.php

The Crusaders bloody sack of Jerusalem in 1099 is always brought up as a reminder about how bad our ancesters were...strangely enough...for some reason....the Muslim bloody sack of Jerusalem in 1077 is never mentioned.   The Seljuk Emir Atsiz bin Uwaq promised not to harm the inhabitants, but once his men had entered the city, they murdered 3,000 people.

@Van Roosbroeck

...."saying that culture is the problem is the easy way out...."

No, I strongly disagree with an extreme 'cultural relativist' like you.   I do not claim to be able to solve all the world's problems.  Who could make such a claim?  But, surely, these problems cannot even be 'approached' as long as people keep misdiagnosing the problem.  And, in the muslimworld, the central problem is NOT "oil" as you claimed earlier.  There are lots of other places in the world, that at one time or another, had an abundance of 'free resources' (oil, gold, copper etc...), and that fact did not prevent their 'development'.  On the contrary, it provided an EXTRA assist.  And, in a place like Australia, the abundance of 'desert and sunshine', did not stop development either.   

The problem is clearly 'culture'.  And don't blame me for not being able to move islamic cultures faster into modernity.  But as long as the naive-left western media keeps putting blame wrongly in other places like.... 'oil, European colonialism, Bush, racism.....etc...) many muslims will be prevented from making the necessary FIRST step, i.e. the realisation of the need for radical cultural change.   And this cultural change can only be brought about bij (morally) 'courageous' actions of many muslems themselves (with 'practical' help from others, not with cheap words).

Judging from their non-denunciatin of "savage serial mass murders" and appparent support perhaps indirectly to the criminal jihadis, the fraction of 'moderates' may be less than 20%!

Pls voice yur opinion on this!!

@Van Roosbroeck

I "kindly" took note of your latest comments. 

--

Please, read more carefully before commenting.  I did not say that the decline of religious fundamentalism in 'christendom' came about purely through "individual conviction".  I said almost the opposite of what you seem to think I said.  Indeed, it was only through terrible "'offers" (bloodshed and suffering) that such decline could be 'won'.   It will not be different in any other civilisation, certainly not one as violent and intolerant as the moslem one today.

-- In the context of your reference to the importance of "conviction", if you have 'difficulty' with concepts such as "life after death" or "God", replace them by concepts as "meaning, source, inherent nature, etc...with respect to human life".

-- Indeed, you are on to something.  In economics there is such a thing called the "oil curse".  But this would apply to any (virtually) 'free' resources, whether they be oil, gold, gas, etc... In fact it used to be called the "Dutch disease" because of northsea gas.  The general idea is that the availability of 'free' resources can create other economic problems.  However, countries like Norway and Holland can manage the 'Dutch desease', whereas Iran and Saudi Arabia cannot.  This is a long story....the point is that the problem is not 'oil', it is 'culture'.     

@truth serum

I do...believe you!  Furthermore, I suspect that what you call "revisionist history" is not so much "revisionist" as 'incomplete, biased, ideological' history.  In other words, it is history seen through an ideological lens (with ideological 'goals'), not an empirical one, and it produces judgments that are one-sided, selective and disproportionate.  There is nothing more ridiculous than the sight of European politicians (and some naive-left american ones too), and the pope as well, making selective 'apologies' for actions of past generations, thereby making it harder for 'others' to be self-critical of their own civilisations.  A civilisation with such 'leaders' cannot long survive.

"Your "people who have studied history" needs to be taken with a grain of salt."

Believe me...I do.  Academics and their offspring have been very successful at revisionist history in Europe and America.  Take the Crusades, for instance.  Most Westerners have been taught to be ashamed of this piece of history.  Without going into detail about that era, I believe that if the whole truth were taught, they would be proud of their ancestors.

You might be interested to know that Hugh Fitzgerald, a contributer to www.jihadwatch.org and http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/ has written and article on this very subject today entitled,  Scholarship and Sensitivity.  I do not know what his academic credentials are, but he does seem to be very knowledgeable on Islam...and is a very proliferate witer.

Jihadwatch.org is actually the website of Robert Spencer who has written many books on Islam. His life has been threatened too by Muslims and keeps his location a secret.

@Van Roosbroeck

-- No, "SUCH" fundamentalism does NOT exist anywhere in 'christendom' today (at least not to any significant extent).  That should be obvious if you care to make serious empirical OBSERVATION. 

--And if you care to look at history, then you would realise that such christian fundamentalism did NOT authomatically "change and diminish over time".   To overcome it required enormous 'offers' by many "courageous" people (which is precisely why 'morality' is not a matter of 'mooie woorden' but of 'faith') in numerous civil wars and political upheaval over two centuries.   Similarly, the muslim world will not be able to create 'democracy' and free its religion from 'fundamentalism' without terrible offers of its own.  In fact, today they face an EXTRA obstacle to their own 'liberation', because they are confronted with a naive-left western media  which preaches false victimhood and which tells them that - not they - but  others (chiefly the west) are somehow to blame for their predicament.  

-- We agree that the wealth generated from oil makes radical islam much more dangerous, but your economic analysis is flawed.  This has nothing to do with "profits", but rather with "income" which enables 'investments' in the promotion of radical islam (long story).  The "unemployment problem" is not directly linked to "diversification", but rather to issues relating to the 'quality' of labor markets (its flexibility or lack theroff, etc...).  But this would require serious economic analysis to explain further.  The most dangerous islamists today are not "unemployed people" (far from it), and socialist welfare states can also be shown to support and 'cause' high "unemployment problems".  

@truth serum

Your "people who have studied history" needs to be taken with a grain of salt.  The study of history in many western countries today, certainly in their 'formal' educational systems is highly 'ideological' and not very 'empirical' (and outside the west it has always been highly ideological).   This is the logical result of the gradual descent of the 'humanities'-side of Academia (higher education) into extreme moral-relativism and anti-empiricism over the past quarter century or so.  And it is in Academia that journalists, politicians, and opinion-makers are 'formed'.   There are of course still great historians to be found here and there, mainly outside Academia in 'think-tanks' and the like, but they get little attention in the formal educational systems.  

An excellent example of recent great general historical analysis (in the grand tradition of Huizinga, etc...) can be found  in the work of the great French-American historian Jacques Barzun (ex-Columbia univ prof). Particularly his last book From Dawn to Decadence (500 years of western cultural life) , 2000 (Harper Collins publishers).

In many parts of the muslim world the educational system imparts hatred for nonmuslims, whereas today in the western world the childeren are taught perverse selfhatred for their own civilization.  

Thanks, your response to Filip Van Roosbroeck is much better than what I could have written.

What amazes me the most is that people who have studied history, are to blind to see it repeating itself today.

@Van Roosbroeck

-- In history one can find almost anything at one time or another.  It is fundamentally dishonest to make direct comparisons across many centuries.  There is no proper possible comparison to be made between the threats and depredations of CONTEMPORARY radical islam and 'christian fundamentalism' in the distant past.  It is also DISPROPORTIONATE to compare with "the anti-abortion movement in the USA".  The latter has caused 1 victim over the last decade in the whole north-american continent.  Islamic radicals cause the deaths of thousands of nonmuslims in countries like Indonesia or Nigeria almost every year, not to mention the countless (presumably moderate) muslim victims in the muslim world every day (Sudan, Irak, etc...).  And the Lord's Resistance Army has nothing to do with 'religion'. 

-- Why should "virulent ideologies' in the Middele East be based on oil?  What has the production pattern of a country got to do with ideology?  That doen't make any sense.   The only sensible link here is that the availability of 'means' (money) makes an ideology more dangerous.   That applies to any totalitarianism.  The chinese communists, islamists-with-oil (or copper, or whatever), Hitler was much more dangerous at the helm of 'industrial' Germany than he would have been at the head of 'poor' Rumania..... Rich totalitarians are more dangerous than poor peasants anywhere.  

I would be very interested on your take as to why....

In Egypt, the Coptic Christians are not allowed to build new or repair their old churches?  And why do Muslims kidnap Coptic Christan women and force them to convert to Islam?

In Saudi Arabia, no other faith other than Islam can worshiped at all?  Why do they confiscate the bibles of Christians when they enter the country?

In Pakistan, Christian churches and Hindu temples are burned?  Why are Muslim men kidnapping Christian and Hindu women and forcing them to convert to Islam?

In the Sudan, there are hundreds of thousands of Christians, Animalists, and even Black Muslims are on the run to keep from being hacked or shot to death?

In Nigeria, the Muslims in the north are burning Christian churches and killing their worshipers?

In Indonesia,  Christian women have been thrown in jail for teaching Christianity to Muslims?  Or why Muslim men beheaded three little Christian girls on their way to school? 

"I do not advocate ignoring those death threats. All I'm saying is that it is by no means a new phenomenon which society has dealt with it in the past."

Exactly how are we supposed to deal with it NOW?

As for Christian and Judaic extremism, there's a plethora of examples in history both recent and ancient."

Are you a professor of history or something? 

Where are all the writers, journalists, and newpaper editors that are in hiding today from fundalmentalist, fanatical Christians for a perceived insult against Christianity?

And just how many "Christian" nations are there persecuting people of other faiths FOR Christianity?

"What I am saying is that geopolitical circumstances will change, so that their impact and power will diminish."

President Ahmadinejad of Iran has a very different idea about that.

Exactly how is this geopolitical change going to occur?  Who or what nations are going to make this happen? 

Ah, the normally sentence challenged abc has posted and linked to another in his(?) long running series of non sequiters. Where are the pictures of Christian fundamentalists standing in front of Papal or Protestant flags and reading incoherent suicide notes before bombing a mosque or, judging from the popularity of downloading pornography in Saudi Arabia and Iran, an internet cafe. I guess the question would be which part of the world would anyone rather be a prison? Cairo or Teheran vs. Guantanamo or Eglin?

Dear The Brussels Journal, I always am wondering about using terms like those you use, what is Anti-Jihadists or Muslim extremists...I am really upset now! Is this link a Christian terrorism, American way of brain dissection or is it a pain in the ass, or all of the above!!http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=guantanamo&sa=N&tab=wi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_terrorism

Filip Van Roosbroeck

Right now you are trying to be fair and balanced, "putting these things into context"

Don't you find it a bit unusual that anyone who says anything anti-Islamic comes under a death threat, labled as a racist/Islamophobe, and accused of hate speech?

If you truely want to put things into context...where are all the death threats, racist and hate speech accusations, against those who preach the anti-Christian or anti-Jewish line?  If you find any at all, you will see that they are few by comparison.

Your education can start here:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/

@pvdh

continued...

The reason why the nonsense of the "elders of zion" gets so much mileage in the moslemworld is because there is no freedom of speech there, so the nonsense cannot be adequately exposed. By contrast, Australians are a truly free people, they have access to freedom of expression and to 'unorthodox' opinions. If Bat Ye'or is talking nonsense it can be exposed, and will be.

Conclusion: The comparison you made is not valid. And it is not wise to assume that all "complot theories" are untrue. Some are, and some are not. The answer lies in an honest evaluation of the multitude of pieces of supporting and of contradicting empirical evidence in the REAL world.

@pvdh

I have not read the transcript in question, nor have I read the various versions of the "protocols of the elders of zion".  And I don't intend to read them either.  But I have read about them, and about many other "complot theories".

The point I want to make is this.  What is truly important about such "theories" is not the specific details of the theories but whether the 'gist' of the theory IS TRUE OR NOT.  Obviously there have always been many true complots in this world, and many imaginary complots, and the same applies to theories about them. 

Therefore, the sensible thing to do is to make empirical observations in the real world.  Read the speeches of the Iranian president, of the Iranian Supreme Leader, read what is being thought in 'moslem centers of higher learning' in Cairo, Teheran, etc..., and compare with the speeches of other world leaders and with what is being thought in other centers of higher learning in the world.   And take them seriously! Take them at their own word.   The alternative is to put one's head in the sand and to refuse to look into the future, as Europe has done often in the past vis-a-vis rising totalitarianisms, thereby bringing that unpleasant 'future' nearer.

to be continued....

Other books Europeans should read are the Koran, Bukhari's Hadiths (a collection of stories about Mohammed's pronouncements on life)and the Sirah by Ibn Ishaq (the biography of Mohammed).

In fact, all non-Muslims should read these books. This trilogy of texts form the foundation of the ideology of Islam and the beliefs that Hirsi Ali rails against.

Islam is in perfect position to conquer Europe and Britain by Muslim demographics and is in the process of doing so. Europeans will wake up one day and find they are the minority in their own countries.

Eurabia by Bat Ye'or is the one book all Europeans should read this year.

As far as I'm concerned, Rita Verdonk is guilty of an attempt at judicial murder by proxy.  By moving in less than 24 hours to remove Hirsi Ali's passport over an alleged 'lie' which had been known to others and to Verdonk for several years, hinted at something personal.  Certainly at malice and she had to know that by specifying Ali be deported to Kenya, she was flying her into the arms of the very people who have most reason to want to harm Hirsi Ali, the jihadists who infest the African countries, particularly the Horn of Africa and Kenya.  From where I sit, it certainly looks like she dotted all the 'i's and crossed all the 't's in the book where Hirsi Ali was concerned, and did it with unseemly haste;  then to nail it down, it wasn't enough to deport her and allow her to go to New York as she'd announced her plans to do.  No, Verdonk wanted to make sure Hirsi Ali went straight to Nairobi.  She specified Kenya as the country to which she would be deported.

We have a term in my country for this: it's called "the bum's rush".  Now why wouldn't Verdonk have extended professional courtesy to a colleague who might well fall under the statute, but could at least be allowed to tie up her loose ends and leave for New York as she'd announced.  Why virtually manhandle her onto the plane for Africa?

That abruptness speaks of personal malice at work and though she might deny she wants Hirsi Ali dead, Verdonk knew by extrapolation, her actions could well put Ayaan Hirsi Ali in MORTAL DANGER!

Here's lovely Rita doing her version of "Can't we all just get along" (hat tip: davidrietveld.nl):

http://www.davidrietveld.nl/pivot/entry.php?id=1001

I haven't heard anyone excuse death threats with 'cultural relativism' yet, both in the media or in private, but perhaps it has happened on occasion. Regardless, my point was that it's a problem going back several decades if not centuries and that in most instances, it has been resolved relatively quietly. These new threats should be taken just as seriously as the old ones.

If I were in a cynical mood, I'd say most of our culture is based on bloodshed, murder and brute force of arms, so it seems they're integrating quite nicely.

The “Wall Street Journal” wrote, that “Hans-Peter Raddatz, an Islamic-studies expert under police protection, recently moved to the U.S.”. That’s definitivly wrong, we met last week in Munich. He is living under police protection, that’s correct, after receiving a so called “prayer” via Internet saying that Allah should destroy him and all those who follow him in what he is writing; he is author of five Islam-related books, among them “Von Gott zu Allah?” and “Von Allah zum Terror?”. Raddatz announced today, that he will stay in Germany “as long as the constitution of his country has not been replaced by the Shari’a law”. His new book on Iran will be published in June.

All possible, but exactly my point. There is more than one group of people that sends death threats, and not all death threats need to be taken as serious. You'll have noticed that the VRT has also received a threatening letter a few days ago.

True, the far-left has had its share of extremists, just like the far-right and probably even the far-centre.

However, all of those threats have invariably been dealt with throughout various countries, including but not limited to Belgium, Germany and Italy, with relatively few casualties and relatively few lost freedoms.

Again, I'm not saying that Muslim extremism isn't a problem and shouldn't be dealt with. It should be dealt with, but, extremism -from all kinds of sources - is hardly a new problem in Europe.

Are those death threats coming solely from Muslim extremists, or are those from other sources and directions included in that figure as well? Such as, say, the same sources that death threats such as these came from? Or perhaps from the same direction Mr. Fortuyn was shot from? Or, though that would be a bit old-fashioned, maybe the same people that sent death threats, killed people, and bombed buildings in '80s?

Not saying that this isn't a problem, mind, but putting these things into context wouldn't hurt either.