Review: "Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran and The Revolt of Islam"

The political video documentary"Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran and The Revolt of Islam", written and directed by Joel Gilbert is - on the whole - a beautifully produced opus that delves into the origins of the confrontation between Islam and the Jews at the time of the Prophet Mohammed and is insightful in that respect, to say the least.

It is introduced as "a historic journey from the birth of Islam, through its 1,200 year reign over the civilized world, to the last 300 years is Islamic decline, overtaken and dominated by the West - then humiliated by a Jewish state. Islam's historic trials with Jews, and its relationship with conquered non believers, help illustrate the Islamic world view - all through the eyes of Muslims."

And this is exactly where the problem with this effort lies, resulting in part omission, part subjectivism, part revisionism. While it is appreciated that Judeo-Christian history is not part of this 'narrative', it is a serious objection to completely ignore the scene in which Islam from its inception, found itself. History begins with Mohammed, the measure of everything, so is the message.

The suggestion is made, that Christendom emerged from 'the obscurantism of the Dark Ages with the discovery of the Americas', ignoring centuries of social, cultural, religious, scientific and philosophical development under the influence of the Roman Church, and everything else for that matter, that has taken place before AD 610. The suggestion is ludicrous.

The author also missed the opportunity to stress the emergence and conquests of the Turkish tribes in the twelth and thirteeth centory, which could have clarified the Christian origins of the Levant and Asia Minor. Likewise, that the Crusades were as much a reconquest as the Spanish Reconquista.

The rich roots of pre Christian Greco-Roman culture, of which Islam was the custodian during the often praised 'Golden Age of Islam', is ignored altogether, as is Middle Eastern paganism. Islam, apparently, is an island. In that respect Gilbert indeed paints an accurate ' version of reality' .

On the other hand, an important insight is provided by describing more recent history. During the course of the last century Amin Al Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem between 1921 and 1948 and uncle to Yassir Arafat, is correctly identified as the link between the precedent of the massacre of the Jewish tribes at M'dina at the hand of Mohammed for failing to accept Dhimmitude, and the justification of the Turkish genocides of Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians in the aftermath of World War I, as well as the Nazi Holocaust (recommended video) during World War II.

The last two occasions of genocide and alleged genocide were encouraged and sanctified by Amin al Husseini on the grounds of the M'dina precedent: Dhimmis behaving in a manner unbecoming of their status. The M'dina Jews refused conversion as well as taxation, resulting in their 'justified' annihilation.

As Mohammed is the measure of everything in Islam, the less than loyal attitude of the Dhimmi groups that were subjugated and unwillingly integrated into the Turkish (Ottoman) Empire, likewise resulted in their mass murder.

Strikingly Adolf Hitler came up with the so-called Dolchstoss legend against the Jews, 'treason' resulting in the loss of World War I on the part of the German-Turko side - a similar justification for Holocaust. (More on the Unholy Alliance between (National) Socialism and Islam on files, Part I and Part II.)

Interesting is the suggestion that Anwar Sadat's 1977 Camp David Accords with Israel actually constituted not an offer of peace, but an attempt at destroying Israel by diplomatic efforts. The question is such case is, why was he assassinated by Al Zawahiri c.s. Apparently the effort was wasted on the Muslim Brotherhood.

The document' s central assertion is that - contrary to what is suggested by the title - the Islamic world doesn't seek as much the destruction of the state of Israel, as the wish to reduce it to Dhimmi status - tributaries under Islamic rule - the natural and solely acceptable status of infidels under Islamic rule. This suggestion is a fresh attempt at literally playing dice with Evil at the price of a second Holocaust. The very notion is despicable and worthy of denunciation as a irresponsible, Postmodern piece of amorality!

Nonsensical is the idea that the Bush administration played into Al Qaeda's hands after 9/11 by attacking Islamic lands. The suggestion is, that this would so much outrage Muslims that they'd dispose of their despotic rulers on a mass scale. In effect, the only changes of regime that have occurred have taken place in the countries thus liberated by the Coalition.

Gilbert further suggests that the establishment of democracy will merely result in radical Islamist regimes being voted in all over the Middle East. Indeed, the Hamas regime in Palestine has nothing to do with Fatah corruption and mismanagement, and everything with spiting the West.

Artistically "Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran and The Revolt of Islam" is a fine piece of work. Historically it is insuffient, it is politically wanting, and moraly irrelevant.

- Filed on Articles in "The Unholy Alliance", Part II -

A Bag of Postmodern Curses (III): Potentates, Narcissists and Hume's Law

Continued from Part II

Terpstra is still extending cartes blanches as he decided to ignore any wrongdoings on the part of the religion of peace, let alone that he will realise he isn't empowering the moderates, but on the contrary is leaving them in the lurch and at the mercy of radicals and fanatics!

As we have already established in the preceding instalments, Geert Wilders - the M.P. intending to produce a film about the Koran, who stands accused by a Leftist Christian of being Evil for collating Islam with fascism - has Libertarian credentials, not Counter-Enlightenment ones.

In the picture from the "Wiener Illustrierte" we see Amin Al Husseini, uncle of Yassir Arafat and Mufti of Jerusalem until 1974, inspecting a line of Bosnian Muslim goose steppers! There's been hardly a conflict during the last century in which the Mufti didn't have a hand, including the Turkish atrocities on Greeks, Assyrians and Armenians in the aftermath of World War I when Turkey fought on the German side.

I am tempted to throw counsel to the wind and try my hand at the time-honoured style-figure of sarcasm with "other than that, there is no relation whatsoever between fascism and Islam", but that would leave wide open space for misconstrues (see our two part file on the subject "The Unholy Alliance: (National) Socialism and Islam", Part 1 and Part 2, filled to the brim with collations of Islam with Counter-Enlightenment ideologies).

The second fallacy in Terpstra's subconscious inferring is rooted either in ignorance or in delusion. Probably it is a combination of both. His prejudice ...

1. that it the Libertarian Wilders who must be the fascist, and
2. that Islam has no relation with fascism whatsoever, but is a peace-loving religion

... works against the notion of further educating himself. At this point the delusion plays it's best trick yet, turning the tables on what in Terpstra's mind are well-meaning, peace-loving fellow believers - Christians almost, but with rather different habits, whom we'd all come to appreciate if only we'd not be so fascist about it.

But Terpstra doesn't live on Venus and watches the news too. But he willfully chooses to suppress the knowledge that Islamists in the real world are actually full of hostility, and bent on cultivating hatred for political gain. The psychological coping device of projection kicks in at this point and instead turns the object of the hostility into the one who is hateful, divisive, full of vitriol and bile, bigoted, intolerant and hate mongering. ('Blame the victim' is a similar psychological mechanism.)

So - in the mind of Terpstra - Wilders is Evil, Wilders and His Ilk must be Stopped! Even if they are the ones that require 24/7 state sponsored protection, which is all their own fault anyway! They know Muslims are an excitable lot, so shut up! The Dutch government - egged on by erroneous Christian Democratic notions of what constitutes 'civility' is using the same false arguments to shut up the native population and put the lid on 'free speech' - an derivative of Terpstra's rationale.

All that is happening, as if there never were two traumatic political assassinations on behalf of the Muslim cause in the course of a few years. Pim Fortuyn was killed by a Leftist Narcissist nursing a perverted self-identification with what he experiences as 'the oppressed', while national enfant terrible Theo van Gogh was butchered by a Islamic Hirabahist.

Contrary to the nebulous delusions in the mind of the Leftist Christians it is of course Wilders who is couragously staring reality in the face, who's indeed taking his responsibility as an M.P. towards society to expose evil where it lives, even if that means spending nights and weekends in protective custody or on heavily guarded Air Force Bases, away from his family.

If Terpstra is as well disposed towards his fellow believers as he claims to be, he might well take following quotes from Sanity's post "Behead the Enemies of Steyn!" to heart:

That there are decent, moral and civilized Muslims goes without question but they have been silenced by fear. Siggy, in a post titled, "Why I Hate Islam" talked about a friend: My friend believes in God, without equivocation, and my friend is outraged at the yoke that must be borne by true Muslim believers because of the disintegration of Islam. The shame of many - but not all, who go to mosques to pray, cannot be measured. My friend describes an unwritten code and language decent Muslims share, so that they might find each other. They are too frightened to speak freely and they are too frightened to stand up to the bullies that have taken over the mosques and Islamic schools.

(...) Wretchard has this to say in a post about the "kinder, gentler sharia" that is evolving in Nigeria, which he calls "The Ecology of Tolerance": "The transformation of hard-line Islamic regimes into softer ones in places as diverse as Anbar province (Iraq) and Nigeria suggests that if the world wants to see a more "moderate" Islam, it is far more effective to support those who take a principled stand against it's excesses than to pander to it's most extremist elements. Ironically, the West's disgusting groveling during the Danish cartoon riots and on many subsequent occasions may have done nothing to attract the "moderates" in Islam. Those moderates would have been far better empowered if Western leaders had told the radical theocrats to shove their demands, lashes, cutting knives and fatwas where the sun don't shine."

As I wrote in a previous post, the strategy of these 21st century barbarians is to use the tolerance and goodwill of the West for the very purpose of destroying civilization and implementing intolerance and ill will (i.e., sharia) in its place. So, I say without any humor intended, behead the enemies of Steyn. Wipe them off the map of civilization; and stop agonizing over hurting their feelings or doing something they won't like us for.

They already don't like us. And they like us less each time we show them our weaknesses. Death or submission is what they have in store for us; they been saying it clearly and unambiguously for several decades now. They don't need to think we're wonderful. When they respect us and understand that we mean what we say when we say, "Enough!", they may actually learn that tolerance is in their best interest. It is not in our best interest to hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil.

Get your head around that if you can, Mr Terpstra and your Leftist Christian ilk! The truth shall set you free! Praise the guts of people like Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders who defend causes larger than their own personal, Narcissistic self. It takes moral courage - the old-fashioned ability to overcome fear - and the pursuit of reason to do just that. Mr Terpstra, by all means ... truly empower moderate Muslims, don't excuse and protect blood thirsty radicals, who are their enemies too, by speaking, hearing and seeing no evil on their part! Come on, be a man ...

Berlin-Tehran: the Counter-Enlightenment Axis

Earlier this year Leeds University bowed for the forces of obscurantism and intimidation in cancelling a series of events on the theme "Hitler’s Legacy: Islamic Antisemitism in the Middle East", involving Matthias Küntzel, a Hamburg-based author and political scientist who specialises in the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Since the 9/11 demo "Stop the Islamization of Europe" was prohibited in Brussels by the Socialist mayor of that city under the excuse of 'security fears', this seems to have become the standard excuse.

Nevertheless, Leeds University at some point retrieved their moral and intellectual backbone and reissued the invitation to Küntzel, who this week finally held the oration on his new book "Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11" to an audience of about 120 people.

Melanie Phillips in a recent post on the subject "The Nazi roots of Muslim antisemitism" writes: "Muslims despised Jews as second-class citizens, but they did not see them as a global conspiracy. They do now - and that’s because of the influence of the Nazis. Key to this was the alliance during the 1930s between the Arab Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al Husseini, and the Nazis."

Küntzel: "Islamism ... was established as a mass movement by the Muslim Brotherhood, which stands in relation to Al Qaeda as the Bolsheviks did to communism. The Brotherhood is a revolutionary political movement focused almost entirely on Zionism and the Jews. It is inspired by two sources: the Koran and Islamic theology, plus Nazi doctrine and influences, using not only Nazi-like patterns of action and slogans but also, historically, Nazi funding."

In "Yes my Friends, I will Call for War" we have seen how historical, colonial ties led Nazism and Fascism into the Middle East where it fell on the fertile breeding ground of Islamic collectivism and subjectivism, the traits it has in common with the European - overwhelmingly Germanic - Counter-Enlightenment movement, which was a reaction started by Swiss born Frenchman Rousseau against the rationality of the Enlightenment, giving later rise to philosophies in the same vein by Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, through to the Nazist Heidegger and postmoderns Foucault et al.

Phillips quotes Küntzel as follows: "For Islamists, the issue at stake is not the welfare of individual Palestinians, but the abolition of Enlightenment, reason, and individual freedom – achievements whose spread is attributed primarily to the Jews."

So, there you have it: the Enlightenment is a Jewish project! Nothing could be further from the truth, but it is one of the lies Middle East conspiracy theories seem to thrive on, and another interface of Marxism and Nazism with Islam: the aversion to Reality and Reason.

Moving the attention to Shi'ism Phillips further quotes: "This Nazi/Islamist propaganda also made an impact in Iran, where it reached a certain Ayatollah Khomeini: even the German consulate in Tehran was surprised by the success of this propaganda.

"Throughout the country spiritual leaders are coming out and saying ‘that the twelfth Imam has been sent into the world by God in the form of Adolf Hitler’ we learn from a report to Berlin in February 1941. So, ‘without any legation involvement, an increasingly effective form of propaganda has arisen, which sees the Führer and Germany as the answer to every prayer… One way to promote this trend is sharply to emphasize Muhammad’s struggle against the Jews in the olden days and that of the Führer today.’"

It therefore may not come as a very big surprise that today the same Axis is revived in reaction to French President Nicolas Sarkozy's demand that in the event that the U.N. Security Council should prove incapable of measures in the Iran nuclear issue, Europeans take action against the recalcitrant Iranian stance.

It is only by applying massive economic pressure, Sarkozy argued, that "a catastrophic alternative" could still be avoided, "either the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran." The policy presented by Sarkozy is in fact the only non-military option available. It is only the European Union - in casu Germany - that is in a position to force a change in Iranian policy without the use of military force.

In his article "Berlin and Vienna Stand Against the West: European Divisions in the Iranian Bomb" in World Politics Review above mentioned German author Matthias Küntzel writes: "The former Director of the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce in Tehran, Michael Tockuss, drew attention to Germany's importance for Iran when he noted, in an interview with the German magazine Focus , that "around two-thirds of Iranian industry is essentially equipped with plant and machinery of German manufacture. The Iranians are thoroughly dependent upon German replacement parts and suppliers."

Here's the European reaction to Sarkozy's proposal for a unilateral European boycott against Iran: "... Germany and Austria ... have rejected it. ... German Chancellor Angela Merkel is supposed in principle to support the Sarkozy proposal, but has explained Germany's hesitations by reference to her Social Democratic coalition partners."

The cooperative Counter-Enlightenment Axis and their inability of spotting objective Evil never fails! Their alternative: "... Germany, Austria, and Russia are prepared now to accept Iran's nuclear facilities as long as they are placed under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). They have thus effectively shelved the strategy hitherto pursued by the U.N. Security Council."

"By opposing the prompt passage of a new sanctions resolution, Germany has, in effect, departed from the Western block in order to make common cause with China and Russia against the core Western powers. It is remarkable that in taking this unprecedented step it is coming to the aid of a government that denies the Holocaust and wants to eliminate Israel."

"The question of whether a country or society has drawn the correct lessons from the history of National Socialism is not to be answered by pretty speeches, but only in practice. As concerns Germany's and Austria's Iran policy, the answer is clearly "no." Iran's progress in obtaining a nuclear capacity casts the shadow of a potential nuclear Holocaust over the Middle East. Berlin and Vienna are standing on the front lines: not however with those who are attempting to avert the catastrophe, but rather with those who are, for whatever reasons, paving the way for it."

Amorality, as a result of the rejection of Reality as posited by Counter-Enlightenment Axis is today alive and well, and unfaltering.

Update: A lot of material is suddenly surfacing about Amin al Husseini. Not only was he the Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, he also appears to have been directly involved in Ottoman atrocities committed against Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians in the aftermath of the World War I (see comment by Politics and Free Thinking). It's hushed up, but Yassir Arafat was related to him. For the completeness of the files, here are the relevant links - Hat tip Jack:

- "Tell the Children the Truth"
- "Pearls of Wisdom" This is an important historic document. Please let us know if it ever fails, or is removed.