Written by Robert Spencer

The gift of jihad just keeps on giving. There is a polio outbreak in Syria because Pakistani jihadis are bringing the virus from home. A Pakistani Muslim cleric has said that polio vaccinations are un-Islamic. And the Taliban has for some time been murdering people who were administering the polio vaccine in Pakistan.

"Polio virus strain in Syria confirmed as being from Pakistan - WHO," by Stephanie Nebehay for Reuters, November 11:

GENEVA (Reuters) - Polio that has crippled at least 13 children in Syria has been confirmed as being caused by a strain of the virus that originated in Pakistan and is spreading across the Middle East, the World Health Organization said.
Genetic sequencing shows the strain found in Syrian children in Deir al-Zor, where an outbreak was detected last month, is linked to the strain of Pakistani origin found in sewage in Egypt, Israel and Palestinian territories in the past year.

"Genetic sequencing... http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/11/polio-virus-strain-in-syria-confirmed-...

Written By Jon Hodoway

As I sit to write this entry, I am looking at a red cylinder with a hose coming out, an activation handle and a pressure gauge. It doesn't take a great deal of writing skill on my part for you to get the word picture in your head that what I'm referring to is a fire extinguisher.

I think that when I describe the mindset of self-defense with a firearm the best metaphor I have is a fire extinguisher. No one would object if your house or business or car were on fire and you simply picked up that fire extinguisher and tended to your business. However, when those men in the leather jackets, big hats and the red truck show up we would all expect that you would step back and let the professionals do their job.

In the same manner, if... http://www.waltherle.com/mindset-of-shooting/

Written by Robert Spencer

Obama is not behaving as if the U.S. is Israel'a ally. He has partnered with "Palestinian" jihadists and haters of Israel from the beginning of his political career. And he has acted consistently with those partnerships throughout his presidency.

"Israel ‘furious’ with White House for leak on Syria strike," from the Times of Israel, November 1 (thanks to Benedict):

Israel is fuming with the White House for confirming that it was the Israeli Air Force that struck a military base near the Syrian port city of Latakia on Wednesday, hitting weaponry that was set to be transferred to Hezbollah.

Israel has not acknowledged... http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/11/israel-furious-with-obama-white-house-...

Written by Robert Spencer

I spoke to a packed house of over 300 students at Brown in October 2007; there were a few louts in the back trying to shout me down, and the question period was full of the usual self-righteous and ignorant Leftist rants that one expects on college campuses these days, but I was able to make myself heard. Now it looks as if things have gotten much worse at Brown -- and, I suspect, at campuses all over the country. Leftist and Islamic supremacist students imitate the Nazi brownshirts of the early 1930s, who would show up at lectures by anti-Nazi professors and shout them down, sometimes roughing them up as well. Instead of standing up to this, then as now university officials let it happen. In this case, Brown professor Marion Orr even asked the thuggish neo-brownshirts for a list of speakers who would be acceptable to them, after wistfully saying: "I thought that you all, my Brown students, would challenge him in a fundamental kind of way. I don’t think he could’ve withstood it if you guys had challenged him in that kind of way. There’s no way he could have stood up to it. That’s what I wanted you all to do.”

Orr is out of sync with the times. University students don't challenge opinions with which they disagree anymore. They don't engage rationally. Nor do Leftists and Islamic supremacists in general. Instead, they just shout down their opponents, or get their events shut down, while smearing them with all manner of ad hominems. If Orr wants a rational debate, he will have to leave academia.

"Brown Prof apologizes for inviting Ray Kelly," by William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection, October 31 (thanks to Anne Crockett):

We previously have reported... http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/11/brown-university-prof-apologizes-for-i...

Written by Hans A. von Spakovsky and Elizabeth Slattery

The U.S. Senate will soon vote on the nominations of three individuals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. This court is widely regarded as a steppingstone to the Supreme Court. Because of its location in the nation’s capital, a considerable portion of its cases involve federal agencies.

This makes the D.C. Circuit a watchdog over the executive branch. It’s the most important appellate court in the federal judicial system when it comes to restraining overreaching, unilateral or unconstitutional actions by the president. Thus, what happens in this particular court should be of very serious concern to state governments and Americans nationwide, given the constantly increasing push by the federal government, particularly unaccountable federal bureaucracies, to intrude into state sovereignty and every facet of our everyday lives.

For these reasons, President Obama naturally wants to fill up the D.C. Circuit with judges of his choosing, who share his ideology and his unlimited view of executive power. Despite the fact that it is the most underworked appellate court in the country, the president is pressing ahead to fill judicial vacancies that have remained open for years.

Congress allotted 11... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/24/spakovsky-packing-washin...

Written by Robert Spencer

"He brought a bottle of acid and made his wife drink it with the help of his family members." As I wrote in my piece for PJ Lifestyle this week, a religion that sanctions the beating of disobedient women in its holy book gives rise to a culture of violence in which women are brutalized with casual frequency.

"Husband forces wife to drink acid," from The Nation, October 21 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

SHEIKHUPURA: A man in Sheikhupura district forced his wife to drink acid after she gave birth to a babygirl, reported a private TV channel on Sunday. According to reports , family members of the man assisted him in the heinous act against his wife. God blessed Nawazish, a resident of Jandyala Road, with a daughter but he got so upset over the birth of a daughter that he decided to punish his wife.

He did not even... http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/10/pakistan-muslim-husband-forces-wife-to...

Written by Rob Richardson

Army TrainingAs the Federal government builds their own private military force through the Department of Homeland Security, it seems it has at the same time suspended training exercises for the U.S. Army.

The shocking revelation comes from Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno, who this week revealed the military has only two Army brigades that are actually combat-ready. Gen. Odierno, who was speaking at the Association of the U.S. Army conference, said that after the sequester kicked in, “we had to stop training basically” in the last six months of the year.

He went on to say that the whole system had become “dysfunctional” and warned the lack of training will have serious consequences for America’s fighting forces. He then revealed that troops being shipped into Afghanistan have little actual combat training, and were themselves not combat ready.

Is our military being systematically disassembled?

While the Department... http://offgridsurvival.com/army-not-prepared-for-battle/

Written by Robert Spencer

No Islamic groups were spoken about in this way. Under Obama, the U.S. has indeed switched sides.

"Does Army consider Christians, Tea Party, a terror threat?," by Todd Starnes for Fox News, October 23:

Soldiers attending a pre-deployment briefing at Fort Hood say they were told that evangelical Christians and members of the Tea Party were a threat to the nation and that any soldier donating to those groups would be subjected to punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
A soldier who attended the Oct. 17th briefing told me the counter-intelligence agent in charge of the meeting spent nearly a half hour discussing how evangelical Christians and groups like the American Family Association were “tearing the country apart.”

Michael Berry, an attorney... http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/10/soldiers-at-fort-hood-told-that-christ...

Written by Robert Spencer

It seems as if Monty Python has taken over the British government without telling anybody, and is ruling Britain according to a governing philosophy of absurdism. I was banned from Britain for saying that Islam had a doctrine of warfare against unbelievers, but just days before that, the British government admitted Saudi Sheikh Mohammed al-Arefe. Al-Arefe has said: "Devotion to jihad for the sake of Allah, and the desire to shed blood, to smash skulls, and to sever limbs for the sake of Allah and in defense of His religion, is, undoubtedly, an honor for the believer. Allah said that if a man fights the infidels, the infidels will be unable to prepare to fight."

And now they are texting illegal immigrants (including who knows how many Islamic jihadists). As Blazing Cat Fur says, "They can text them but they can't arrest & deport them?" It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the entire British government is a big joke, a put-on, and that John Cleese is soon going to take off his David Cameron mask and reveal the whole thing.

"Complaints over texts to suspected illegal immigrants," from the London Evening Standard, October 19 (thanks to Blazing Cat Fur):

More than 140 complaints have been received by the Home Office and a private contractor over communications sent to suspected illegal immigrants.
A total of 39,100 text messages have been sent by Capita on behalf of the Government as part of a contract to track down a pool of about 58,800 individuals who may not have the right to live in the UK.

Between December... http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/10/message-from-the-home-office-our-recor...

Written by Robert Spencer

If the money wasted on the fool's errand in Afghanistan had been kept at home, the U.S. economy would be humming along. And that was the point of the 9/11 attack, as Osama bin Laden and other jihadis explained: to weaken and ultimately destroy the U.S. economy. The jihadis in Afghanistan must find the foolish generous Infidels an endless source of amusement -- and, of course, of cash.

"An auto bailout for Afghans? U.S. government wasted millions on spare car parts," by Phillip Swarts in The Washington Times, October 16 (thanks to Lookmann):

Just like GM, the U.S. government has decided to give millions to another part of the auto industry — only this time it’s in Afghanistan.
In fact, a U.S.-led international group spent $230 million on spare vehicle parts for the Afghan National Army and other security agencies — then lost them.

Not knowing where the parts were, the group ordered up an additional $138 million in parts a watchdog said likely aren’t needed and some of which are now sitting in warehouses with boxes stacked to the ceiling.

“The Combined Security... http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/10/us-and-allies-spent-230-million-on-spa...

Written by Robert Spencer

It is rather astonishing that when things like this are happening, people still rail against opponents of jihad terror as "bigots" and "Islamophobes." But such is the upside-down Orwellian world in which we live.

"Bombs planted in confessional box of Syrian church," by Colin Freeman for the Telegraph, October 16:

Bombs have been planted in the confessional box of one of the world's oldest churches in a Syrian town hailed as the country's last remaining centre of religious tolerance, Syria's most senior Christian leader has disclosed.
On a visit to London to highlight the persecution of Christians in the civil war, Patriarch Gregorios III said the two devices were found at the Cathedral of Constantine and Helen in the rebel-held town of Yabroud.

Not only is... http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/10/syria-islamic-jihadists-plant-bombs-in...

Written By Peter Apps

LONDON (Reuters) - China's likely sale of sophisticated missiles to Turkey over the objections of its NATO allies might have angered Washington and other capitals, but it should not have been a surprise.

Even as the U.S. has spent billions of dollars and lost hundreds of lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, Beijing has been quietly upping its presence in the Middle East.

Militarily, the U.S. - which maintains a permanent aircraft carrier presence near the Gulf as well as dozens of other warships and major bases in Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates - is by far the dominant regional power.

China has tended to follow Russia's lead on the Middle East, sometimes appearing sidelined on issues such as Syria.

Beijing's economic, political and diplomatic clout, however, is growing fast. China's Ministry of Commerce said last month China-Arab nation trade now reaches $222 billion a year, 12 times its 2002 level. That would outstrip U.S.-Mideast trade, valued at $193 billion in 2011.

Militarily too, China's... http://ca.news.yahoo.com/turkey-missile-deal-shows-chinas-063424116.html

Written by Wesley Pruden

Why are intellectuals, sometimes the most intelligent among us, so dumb?

This is the question that confounds everyone; some intellectuals most of all. The late William F. Buckley Jr., a certified egghead, once said he would rather be governed by the first 50 names in the Boston telephone book than by the professors at Harvard.

Another wit observes that an intellectual is someone who so prefers theory over experience that he would sit down on a red-hot stove, twice. You can be too smart for your own good, and have the blisters on your bottom to prove it.

The intellectual romance... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/14/pruden-frying-eggheads-o...

Mohamed Elibiary recently got a promotion on the Homeland Security Advisory Council -- in another indication of how topsy-turvy the values of this Administration are. "Coptic Leaders Condemn Obama Adviser's Anti-Coptic Tweets," by John Rossomando for IPT News, October 11:

Major Coptic leaders are condemning Mohamed Elibiary, an Obama administration Homeland Security adviser, for suggesting that Copts who raise awareness of anti-Christian violence in Egypt promote "Islamophobic" bigotry.
Elibiary sent out a series of tweets that Coptic leaders found offensive last month. The tweets appeared to chastise the Coptic community for lobbying on behalf of their relatives in Egypt. He targeted them because they had aligned themselves with conservative groups that he called "Islamophobic."

"VERY disturbing... http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/10/copts-condemn-pro-muslim-brotherhood-o...

Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.

The Palestinian Authority gives pardons or suspended sentences for honor murders. Iraqi women have asked for tougher sentences for Islamic honor murderers, who get off lightly now. Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but "the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour 'provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.'" And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that "Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values."

In light of all this, until authorities get the courage to tell the truth about honor killing, there will be many more such murders.

"‘Honour’ Crime: 15-year-old girl, man killed by brothers," by Kashif Zafar for the Express Tribune, October 12 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

A girl was shot dead by her brothers over ‘honour’ in Rahim Yar Khan on Friday. In another incident, a man shot his brother dead over a marriage dispute.
Police said 15-year-old resident of Murad Machi village near Machi Goth was shot dead by her brothers Allah Din and Nadir Solangi. The latter was arrested shortly after the killing.

Police said the men... http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/10/pakistan-15-year-old-girl-shot-by-her-...

A massive waste of American resources, accomplishing nothing but the weakening of America. "Afghanistan awaits its fate at the hands of the Taliban," by Sandy Gall in the Telegraph, October 8 (thanks to Inexion):

In an interview with the BBC, six months before leaving office, President Hamid Karzai has put the boot into the British – and the West – in terms as extreme as any he has used before. “On the security front,” he claimed, “the entire Nato exercise was one that caused Afghanistan a lot of suffering, a lot of loss of life, and no gains because the country is not secure.”He even made the far-fetched claim that Nato is colluding with the Taliban....
In Kabul the other day, I was told a story about the members of the extensive Karzai family. One brother had complained to my friend about the obscene amount of money another member of the family was making – something like a million dollars a week – even though, he boasted, he already had $950,000 in the bank. This in one of the poorest countries in the world, with millions of its inhabitants living below the poverty line.

One would have thought... http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/10/afghanistan-taliban-poised-to-retake-p...

Written by Robert Spencer

In PJ Lifestyle today, I detail the latest example of the sickening fruits of multiculturalism.

Polygamy is against the law in the U.S. and Canada, and that’s a good thing: the practice devalues women, reducing them to the status of commodities, and stands as an affront to their equality with men as human beings. But now anti-polygamy laws are coming under stealthy and subtle challenge, as both governments bow before the god of multiculturalism and dare not confront the increasing number of Muslims who are practicing polygamy in both countries.

The QMI Agency reported on October 1 that “Canadian immigration officials are letting polygamous men into the country as long as they arrive with only their first wife and promise not to obtain a harem afterward.” The polygamous men are gaming the system, as immigration lawyer Richard Kurland explained: “Under Canadian law, all other marriages after the first are illegal. For this reason, the first spouse only may enter Canada on a permanent basis, which creates a monogamous marriage.”

But if a polygamist... http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/10/robert-spencer-in-pj-lifestyle-canada-...

Written by Robert Spencer

Islamophobia: what can be done to eradicate it? "Iraq: Children Killed In Playground Bombing," from Sky News, October 6 (thanks to Kenneth):

Suicide bombers have driven vehicles packed with explosives into a school and police station, while another blew himself up on foot among pilgrims, killing at least 27 people of whom many were children.
One drove a truck into the playground of a primary school in Qabak, near the town of Tel Afar, killing 12 students and their headmaster.

The explosion caused part of the single-storey building to collapse.

Just minutes earlier... http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/10/iraq-islamic-jihadists-murder-27-inclu...

Written by Tad Cronn

The acceptance of open homosexuals in the military is increasingly having the effect that many conservatives anticipated, as Christians and anyone who opposes homosexual "marriage" are finding that they are being punished for their views.

A group of airmen from Lackland Air Force Base recently attended a packed meeting at Village Parkway Baptist Church in San Antonio, where they expressed concerns about a rise in intimidation and persecution from homosexual commanders and their supporters, according to Fox News.

Pastor Steve Branson heard... http://godfatherpolitics.com/12729/air-force-homosexuals-go-christians/

Britten by Raymond Ibrahim

Rereading some early history books concerning the centuries-long jihad on Europe, it recently occurred to me how ignorant the modern West is of its own past. The historical narrative being disseminated today bears very little resemblance to reality.

Consider some facts for a moment:
A mere decade after the birth of Islam in the 7th century, the jihad burst out of Arabia. Leaving aside all the thousands of miles of ancient lands and civilizations that were permanently conquered, today casually called the “Islamic world”—including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and parts of India and China—much of Europe was also, at one time or another, conquered by the sword of Islam.

Among other nations and territories that were attacked and/or came under Muslim domination are (to give them their modern names in no particular order): Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Sicily, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, Albania, Serbia, Armenia, Georgia, Crete, Cyprus, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Belarus, Malta, Sardinia, Moldova, Slovakia, and Montenegro.

In 846 Rome was sacked and the Vatican defiled by Muslim Arab raiders; some 700 years later, in 1453, Christendom’s other great basilica, Holy Wisdom (or Hagia Sophia) was conquered by Muslim Turks, permanently.

The few European regions that escaped direct Islamic occupation due to their northwest remoteness include Great Britain, Scandinavia, and Germany. That, of course, does not mean that they were not attacked by Islam. Indeed, in the furthest northwest of Europe, in Iceland, Christians used to pray that God save them from the “terror of the Turk.” These fears were not unfounded since as late as 1627 Muslim corsairs raided the Christian island seizing four hundred captives, selling them in the slave markets of Algiers.

Nor did America escape. A few years after the formation of the United States, in 1800, American trading ships in the Mediterranean were plundered and their sailors enslaved by Muslim corsairs. The ambassador of Tripoli explained to Thomas Jefferson that it was a Muslim’s “right and duty to make war upon them [non-Muslims] wherever they could be found, and to enslave as many as they could take as prisoners.”

In short, for roughly one millennium—punctuated by a Crusader-rebuttal that the modern West is obsessed with demonizing—Islam daily posed an existential threat to Christian Europe and by extension Western civilization.

And therein lies the rub: Today, whether as taught in high school or graduate school, whether as portrayed by Hollywood or the news media, the predominant historic narrative is that Muslims are the historic “victims” of “intolerant” Western Christians. That’s exactly what a TV personality recently told me live on Fox News.

So here we are, paying the price of being an ahistorical society: A few years after the Islamic strikes of 9/11—merely the latest in the centuries-long, continents-wide jihad on the West—Americans elected a man with a Muslim name and heritage for president, who openly empowers the same ideology that their ancestors lived in mortal fear of, even as they sit by and watch to their future detriment.

Surely the United States’ European forebears—who at one time or another either fought off or were conquered by Islam—must be turning in their graves.

But all this is history, you say? Why rehash it? Why not let it be and move on, begin a new chapter of mutual tolerance and respect, even if history must be “touched up” a bit?

This would be a somewhat plausible position—if not for the fact that, all around the globe, Muslims are still exhibiting the same imperial impulse and intolerant supremacism that their conquering forbears did. The only difference is that the Muslim world is currently incapable of defeating the West through a conventional war.

Yet this may not even be necessary. Thanks to the West’s ignorance of history, Muslims are flooding Europe under the guise of “immigration,” refusing to assimilate, and forming enclaves which in modern parlance are called “enclaves” or “ghettoes” but in Islamic terminology are the ribat—frontier posts where the jihad is waged on the infidel, one way or the other.

All this leads to another, perhaps even more important point: If the true history of the West and Islam is being turned upside its head, what other historical “orthodoxies” being peddled around as truth are also false?

Were the Dark Ages truly benighted because of the “suffocating” forces of Christianity? Or were these dark ages—which “coincidentally” occurred during the same centuries when jihad was constantly harrying Europe—a product of another suffocating religion? Was the Spanish Inquisition a reflection of Christian barbarism or was it a reflection of Christian desperation vis-à-vis the hundreds of thousands of Muslims who, while claiming to have converted to Christianity, were practicing taqiyya and living as moles trying to subvert the Christian nation back to Islam?

Don’t expect to get true answers to these and other questions from the makers, guardians, and disseminators of the West’s fabricated epistemology.

In the future (whatever one there may be) the histories written about our times will likely stress how our era, ironically called the “information age,” was not an age when people were so well informed, but rather an age when disinformation was so widespread and unquestioned that generations of people lived in bubbles of alternate realities—till they were finally popped.

Raymond Ibrahim is author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians. He wrote his master's thesis on an early battle between Islam and the West under the direction of military historian Victor Davis Hanson.