THE INGRAINMENT OF JIMMY CARTER—TOO RELIGIOUS FOR HIS OWN GOOD by Ad Mira

It takes a lot of guts to be Jimmy Carter, traipsing all over the world like he does solving one problem after another. Shoot! He’ll stick his nose into anything. Ain’t nothing too small for Jimmy to tackle. And he’s utterly fearless—he ain’t got a cowardly bone in his body; he don’t know the meaning of the word ‘fear.’ You can call him ‘yellow’ or ‘cowardly ’or of ‘lusting in his heart—don’t know what those words mean! Heck! I got a whole list of words Jimmy doesn’t know what they mean—an awful lot of them!

He will walk right up to the most disgusting bloodthirsty dictator in the world and stare him right in the eye! He’s like Sergeant York, like Audie Murphy—only he uses his brains. He reminds me of Sergeant Bilko—always thinking. He’s smarter than Hawkeye Pierce. And he’s a diplomat—they don’t come any better. Look how close he got to making a deal with Castro—closer than Kennedy. JFK didn’t get any farther than the Bay of Pigs. Jimmy’s been to Havana more often than Danny Glover. Of course, Jimmy had a real Navy education. He went to Annapolis; he was a submariner. JFK was an amateur, a PT-boat commander. Now be honest—who would you rather be shipwrecked and marooned with in The Slot off Guadalcanal in 1943—a nuclear physicist or a guy with a bad back?

And look how many times Jimmy kissed Yasser Arafat on the cheek—more times than Jesse Jackson, I’ll bet. That took guts. If the Prophet Mohammad had personally known Arafat he would have put him on his list of unclean things—third or fourth at least. Almost anything could have been crawling around in that beard. Those whiskers could scrape the scales off an alligator! And Jimmy never had a tetanus shot—not after he met Arafat, not after Castro, not after he had been viciously assailed by an attack rabbit. That’s true grit!

And he went to see Kim Jong Il while Bill Clinton was hiding under his desk in the Oval Office. I hate to get repetitious, but that took guts—pure guts. That Monica Lewinsky episode—it never happened. Lanny Davis cooked the whole thing up so nobody would know Slick Willie was a do-nothing President. Jimmy went to North Korea, stared that Commie dictator right in the eye and told him the biggest whopper any ex-President ever told anybody. And Kim thought he putting one over on Jimmy! Sure, Kim had broken every one of his previous agreements and got more cash and rice and oil and nuclear reactors out of Jimmy then he got from the last guy, but all Jimmy had to do was smile, say North Korea was a great place to live and the poor little children were fed and there was peace—until that Blanton fellow opened his mouth. A wise man once said you can’t cheat an honest man and you can’t fool a fool. Jimmy’s quick thinking saved the Clinton presidency. And he won a Nobel Peace Prize! Those things don’t grow on ranches in Crawford, Texas.

Ever notice how Jimmy’s eyes cloud up when he talks about the Camp David Accords? The Road Map to Peace was his idea. He knows apartheid inside out. Had Nelson Mandella explain it to him; it’s when the chickpeas pushes all the goobers into the weeds near the drainage ditch. It ain’t right, but it happens. When you’re from Plains, Georgia, you understand things like that. If Jimmy isn’t a genius than Granny Clampett wasn’t the smart one on the Beverly Hillbillies.

Of course, Jimmy ain’t perfect—he’s a bit too religious for his own good. It kind of clouds his mind at times. I wrote down some of the things he said last week. “We are developing an ingrained hatred for people who aren’t Christians,” he said. It seems the other way around to me—it’s the Christians who are being hated, but what do I know, I’m one of the un-churched and Jimmy’s been a Sunday school teacher since, well, probably before he started lusting in heart. It took a lot of guts though to say what he said about Christians but I think he was wrong to say it. It’s that Hollywood crowd that hates Christians. If I remember correctly it was Ted Turner who said he never met a Christian he liked, and, that fat chick on The View—what’s her name? Rosie O’Donnell—she said Jerry Falwell was a worse threat than Muqtada al-Sadr. Well, all that Christian bashing and Jimmy saying Christians were developing an ingrained hatred of non-Christians got me to thinking and I determined to make my own little survey.

So I asked around at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club and half of them said they had never heard of Jerry Falwell and two said they had never heard of Jimmy Carter! Can you believe that! They all agreed though that if they ever caught either of those rascals tossing a bomb into Joe’s Bar and Grille they’d beat the crap out of them. Well, I was shocked! I told them they couldn’t beat the heck out of an ex-President! That wouldn’t be right. They said, why not? Wasn’t he always sucking up to Castro and Hugo Chavez and Danny Ortega? Wasn’t he always hogging the news when they could be giving the football scores? Wasn’t he always complaining about the Jews and calling them terrorists? Well, they had me there. So I quoted Jimmy. I said: “The distortion that we are about to be destroyed makes us suspicious of those who don’t worship the way we do. And our country has no reason to be afraid.”

Maybe I chose the wrong quote. Even Peewee bristled. They must have taken it as an insult. There wasn’t a guy in that bar that would admit to being afraid of anything and two of them offered to take me outside and prove it. They weren’t cowards and America wasn’t a cowardly country. Jimmy Carter had no right to call them cowards.

Then one fellow said all this fear we were talking about was Al Gore’s fault and it didn’t have anything to do with religion. Well, how was that possible, I asked? Well, said he, Al Gore says Global Warming is going to destroy America and he wants us to stop driving SUVs and Humvees and car pool and backpack or something and that makes us suspicious of all them loony environmentalists, Gore included. Why he hadn’t been to a Robert Redford movie in years and if Rob Reiner didn’t wise up he was going to stop watching All in the Family reruns.

The more I asked around the more confused I became. Nobody was complaining about non-Christians, in fact, all those Mexicans coming across the border that were being complained about were Christians, and the only things people seemed to fear were death and taxes. The more I thought the more I wondered why Jimmy would say what he did about Americans and ignore all the hatred of America and Israel being preached in mosques and universities from Saudi Arabia to Iran and from Columbia University to Harvard. It was a puzzle. Had Jimmy lost it?

I was about ready to give up when an old codger looked me square in the eye and said, “Sonny, you are approaching the problem from the wrong end. We don’t hate anybody. It’s Jimmy Carter that does.”

“Carter?’ I asked. “How’s that?”

He sighed as if he were about to explain something to a child. “It’s the cockle-doodle-do syndrome,” he said. “Jimmy was taken down a notch in1980. Billy Carter could lose an election, order a case of beer and take a golf swing all in the same breathe; Jimmy couldn’t. He’s been developing an ingrained hatred for all those people who didn’t vote for him in 1980. It’s the cockle-doodle-do syndrome. In the process Jimmy Carter has become dhimmi Carter.”

“You think so?” I said.

“Sonny, I voted for him in 1976 and I haven’t forgiven myself for that yet. What do you think?”

I’ll have to tell Jimmy. He’s got a problem here.

“I am shocked! shocked! beyond words that terror has been going on here” Christiane Amanpour

Christiane Amanpour was hired by CNN in 1983 when Ted Turner and Jane Fonda were still doing the Tomahawk Chop at Fulton County Stadium—before Chief Nok-a-homa was sent to the Happy Hunting Ground. Christiane has been around the world a few times since those balmy days. She covered Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait in 1990, the Persian Gulf War, the conflict in Bosnia, the battle for Afghanistan—things Ted Baxter only dreamed of. She won a Peabody in 1998. Christiane was born in London; grew up in Iran. Her dad was an airline official; he knew the Shaw.

The Cunninghams thought they had it good in Milwaukee—a hardware store, a renter with a Harley-Davidson, two fine kids and a jukebox that never stopped playing. The Amanpours in Teheran had all that and more. It was a great life; then came the Ayatollah Khomeini and the music stopped and the Amanpours packed up and went back to England. Christiane became a journalist She has been there, done that. Bill O’Reilly might think he has seen war, Christiane has. Looking the devil in the face is a tough job, but somebody has to do it. The world is a nasty place. Then came July 7, 2005. It should have come as no surprise to Christiane—right? Remember what Claude Rains said in Casablanca? “I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here?”

Christiane was born in London; it’s her hometown. Richie Cunningham knew who played first base for Harvey's Wallbangers and how many times he spit on the dugout steps. Nothing about the Brewers or Milwaukee surprised him. But on CNN.com, January 22, 2007, the day after the airing of the CNN documentary The War Within, there was Christiane. “When we reported the unprecedented suicide bombings on the London underground trains and buses in 2005, we were shocked beyond words that young British Muslims, born and bred here, would go to that extreme,” she wrote. Shocked! Shocked! Baghdad! Beslan! The World Trade Center! Bali! Ten thousand terrorist incidents from Afghanistan to Zanzibar! Scarcely a day without surcease and she was shocked! Shocked! It certainly merited a closer look at the internal workings of Islam in London. So Christiane searched for an answer or perhaps for an excuse, some place to lay the blame, to paper over the seismic chasm that existed between Islam and the modern world.

“What struck us most was how deeply the Iraq war has radicalized today’s generation of young Muslims in Briton, they are angry about the war; angry that their country so devotedly follows U.S. foreign policy,” she wrote. Ibrahim Hoopercrit could have said that. Jimmy Carter could have said that. Christiane said it. Their country—England is their country? Bogey and Peter Lorre went to Casasblanca with little more than the clothes on their backs and became part of the environment. Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton struck out across the Alleghenies, looking for a fresh start in life. Tens of thousands of pioneers followed in their wake; the one thing they had in common, aside from a smattering of household goods and a few cows and pigs, was a roughhewn and abiding faith in democracy. Tariq Ramadan and Omar Bakri did not migrate to England in search of democracy or to become Englishmen.

Christiane took Islam’s London pulse—moderates, radicals, Islamists; there are no liberal Muslims—maybe that’s why Islam is running a temperature. Anjem Choudary, a radical Islamist, said, “I happen to be in an ideological and political war. My brothers at al-Qaeda and other Mujahedeen are involved in a military campaign.” (Choudary has denounced democracy and has predicted that England will eventually be ruled by Islamic Law)

Hanif Qadir, a moderate, said young Muslims saw no way out of their ethnic ghettoes. “The new threat is radicalism,” he said. “It’s a cause. Every young man wants a cause.”

More revealing were eerie séances with Aki Nawaz, a Muslim rapper, and street artist, Aerosol Arabic. Nawaz is also known as Propa-Ghandi; that’s Ghandi as in Mohandus—obviously, a cruel play on words. Aki’s rap band is Fun-da-Mental. His latest hit is I Reject. One can imagine Joanie and Chachi dancing the night away to the vibrant strains of “Reject your thieving foreign policies, Reject your elitist congregation, Reject your mini skirt liberation, Reject your concept of integration.” After a quick trip to the punch bowl, it’s rockin’ an’ rollin’ to Parasites. “But revenge will be mine, with my last breath I will rise to curse you. Because you, you dogs and parasites have made us helpless.” And there’s a song about building dirty bombs. It’s not “hang down your head, Tom Dooley.” Christiane was impressed. Nawaz is “on the cultural cutting edge,” she said. Blissful ignorance or did Christiane want Nawaz to feel good about himself?

Aerosol Arabic is Mohammed Ali, a 25-year-old artist from Kings Heath in Birmingham. Christiane quickly fell under his spell. “My fascination with graffiti goes back to the early days,” said Ali. “I remember always doodling and sketching outlines. I couldn’t connect with the depressing lives that ‘great’ artist lived. Studying van Gogh’s life wasn’t for me. (How about studying Theo van Gogh's life?) I didn’t want my art to drive me to that. I wanted to take an art form that belonged on the street (graffiti) and connect with ordinary people through the divine meaning contained in the book of Allah.”

No van Gogh; no Picasso, no Frederick Remington, no Pleistocene man carving mammoths on the wall of a cave; no representations of the human form; no Gil Elvgren; no horrors of war; no Guernica; no guerilla art; no artistic rendering of the pain and suffering inflicted by Islam on tens of thousands of Kurds, dhimmis and infidels—only crescents, squares, mathematical formulations; Nazi art, Soviet art, Islamic art. Form over beauty; form over truth; form over humanity; the banality of evil.

Christiane missed something here. It could be she missed everything. Hitler and Stalin did not get rid of the great masterpieces because they were not Nazi or Soviet art; they stole them; they recognized that art transcended ideology and religion. They could not reject Wagner and Tchaikovsky.

“Increasingly,” summarized Christiane, “we find mainstream Muslims are realizing that they can no longer be quiet, but they have to stand up to have any hope of winning back the debate (if they ever had one) from the extremists who dominate it now. The question is whether they can form a critical mass of voices to finally drown out the growing ranks of the extremists.”

Actually this sounds simple; there are the moderates, the good Muslims, versus the extremists, the bad Muslims, and they read from the same Book. Unfortunately there are those who believe—including some moderates—that the extremist interpretation of the Qur’an is closer to what the Qur’an says than what the moderates believe, otherwise Osama bin Laden and Omar Bakri would have been run out of Islam long ago. The sad fact is that the extremists—the radicals, the Islamists—have killed a hundred times more Muslims than the Crusaders did and the toll increases with each passing generation with no end in sight. Unless the moderates start killing the Islamists instead of helping the Islamists kill other Muslims, admittedly a novel approach, the dispute will never be settled because religious differences in the end, except for creatures like Robert Edgar and John Esposito, are non-negotiable.

Who is scarier? Kyrsten Sinema (D-Phoenix) or the Minutemen?

“I’ve been monitoring the Minutemen for a year now,” said Arizona State Representative Kyrsten Sinema (D-Phoenix), “and they are scary…Remember the Ku Klux Klan…” Well, sure, the Klan was scary—scarier than J. Edgar Hoover in drag, scarier then D. W. Griffith in a Halloween costume, scarier than all get-out with those white sheets and burning crosses, but Robert Byrd was a young man back in those days, young and impressionable, and if Kyrsten should ever end up in the US Congress it might not be easy for her to look him square in the face.

Kyrsten was born in 1976. Nathan Bedford Forrest had been dead more than a hundred years. The Klan is kaput; Hoover saw to that. What does Kyrsten actually know about the once Invisible Empire—that they wore white sheets instead of tartans? Does she know enough about Imperial Wizards to compare them to, say, Ulysses S. Grant? More FBI agents attend Klan rallies these days than guys named Bubba. Maybe in an Empire long ago, when Kyrsten was at an impressionable age, she heard Phil Donahue interview an Imperial Wizard on the Donahue Show. Or maybe she once came within a hundred yards of David Duke. That would certainly terrify any Liberal with a degree in Social Work from Arizona State University. What Kyrsten needs is a new scorecard: the Minutemen are not Klansmen. They are Vietnam and Gulf War veterans. They are good citizens; they pay taxes, have steady jobs and know how many stripes there are in the star spangled banner. Jim Gilchrist is not a Godfather—Teddy Kennedy is.

It’s Kyrsten Sinema who is a good example of what’s wrong with America. A combination of childhood fears, political correctness and a liberal education can traumatize those unprepared for the real world. Mother Nature did not intend for man to mix the Wizard of Oz and Rooster Cogburn with Marx and Chomsky. It is too much for some minds to handle.

Kyrsten has introduced a bill in the Arizona state legislature—HB2286—that would redefine what constitutes domestic terrorism in the state of Arizona. The intention is to disarm the Minutemen so they won’t be able to defend themselves against outraged Klan-hating college students, the usual campus SWINE (Students Woefully Ignorant of Nearly Everything).

The bill says in part: “A. An individual or group of individuals commits domestic terrorism if the individual or group of individuals are not affiliated with local, state or federal law enforcement entity and associated with another individual as an organization, group or corporation or company for the purpose of patrolling to detect illegal activity or to individually patrol for the purpose of detecting illegal activity and if the individual or group of individuals is armed with a firearm or other weapon.” The penalty for violation of the statute would be a minimum of six months in jail.

A word of advice to the Lone Ranger and Tonto: Stay out of Arizona! And you, too, Cisco and Pancho—you are scary.

Scary? Are the Minutemen scary? Not so as one would notice. Check any list of scary things—people, creepy crawlers, talk show hosts. There are hundreds of lists. New ones are made up every day. How do the Minutemen fare?

They are not as scary as Hamas or Hezbollah or al-Qaeda; they are not as scary as the Crips or the Bloods or Mara Salvatrucha; they are not as scary as Ernst Roehm was in a Brown Shirt or Heinrich Himmler in a Black Shirt or Rosie O'Donnell in a Pink Shirt; they are not as scary as the Dukes of Hazard or Archie Bunker or Jesse Jackson; they are not as scary as Angel Maturino Resendez, the notorious Railroad Killer, who murdered—among others—Christopher Maier, a 21-year-old University of Kentucky student while he was walking along the railroad tracks with his girlfriend in 1997; they are not as scary as Armando Chato Garcia who shot and killed—execution style—Sheriff’s Deputy David March at a routine traffic stop in April of 2002 and fled to Mexico; they are not as scary as Victor Anzua-Torres who, with a blood alcohol level of 0.26, enough to stone W.C. Fields, drove his vehicle head-on into Ryan Ostendorf’s Cherokee, killing Ryan and putting himself in jail for 13 years (One of thousands of illegal aliens driving drunk on the highways of America every day); they are not as scary as Jose Sandoval, 23, Jorge Galindo, 21, Erik Fernando Vela, 21, or Gabriel Rodriguez, 26, who murdered five people while robbing a U.S. Branch bank in Norfolk, Nebraska, in 2004; they are not as scary as the thousands of drug smugglers, rapists and child molesters illegally crossing the border every day; they are not as scary as President George W. Bush who hasn’t done any more to close the Mexican border than Pancho Villa or Juan Cortina or Victorio; they are not as scary Kyrsten Sinema, former Green Party member, social worker, advocate for undocumented families, Arizona media rep for Ralph Nader in 2000, member of ACLU, Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club and the AZ Alliance for Peaceful Justice among others. Socialist, progressive, Marxist, communist—it scarcely matters, Green is Green.

The Minutemen are not scary. They don’t collect taxes, sell drugs on street corners; wear Che Guevara T-shirts. Many of them have served their country in a non-profitable way—through military service. Yet, they are not Kyrsten’s kind of people.

“Race-based tactics always lead to violence,” says Kyrsten, “The Ku Klux Klan was the first-ever group to patrol the border between the US and Mexico. One must repeat: Kyrsten was born in 1976. Did she mean Richard Nixon and Gordon Liddy or the Juaristas in the 1870s or the Apaches in the 1770s? The latter groups were far more proficient at patrolling the border then Mr. Milhaus was. Kyrsten’s memory seems to be selective, vivid and retroactive—like Robert Torricelli’s. Illegal aliens are killing almost as many Americans in the United States as al-Qaeda and Muqtada al-Sadr’s thugs are maiming and killing American servicemen and women in Iraq. It’s a two-front war!

It may be that Kyrsten has never been beaten up in an alley behind a bar. That can lead to exaggerated notions as to how the world works. Michael Moore isn’t God and Howard Dean is not the Messenger. George W. Bush is President and Tom Tancredo isn’t. It’s the best America can do at the moment. If that doesn’t satisfy Kyrsten, she should take up sewing or macramé, useful occupations compared to what she’s been doing.

The good news is that HB 2286 has only a slightly better chance of becoming law than Peewee Herman has of marrying Hulk Hogan’s daughter.

Warning! A crucifix can be hazardous to your health and safety! Do not get caught wearing a crucifix!

The Robert Napier School in Gillingham will make you pay!

First day of classes at the Robert Napier School in Gillingham, Kent, is a frightful experience. Everyone is on edge. It’s been that way for years; part Blackboard Jungle, part Clockwork Orange, with PC commissars roaming the corridor. It’s hell. And the kids, oh, yes, the kids—it’s going to be a long day at Checkpoint Charlie. Keep a stiff upper lip, men! Don’t let them know you’re scared! Steady now—here they come, here they come, wall- to-wall kids! Let’s have some order now. You can’t all register at the same time! Please, get in line; please get in line! Let’s see…

Sikh kid with the turban, okay; girl with the Lolita glasses, okay; Muslim girl with the hijab, okay: Huck Finn with a squirrel? Now wait a minute, Master Huck. I don’t care if you have seen Madonna naked. No live animals allowed. You get him out of here…

Kid with the Che Guevara T-shirt, okay; girl with the, ah…ah, Super Wonder bra, ah…okay; Muslim in the jaballah, okay; kid in the Margaret Thatcher sweatshirt—wait a minute! That might be political. Oh…it’s a Bernard Montgomery sweatshirt? Well, okay. Who is Bernard Montgomery?

Girl in the hijab, okay; boy with the shaven head, okay; HEY! What is this? Red alert! Red alert! Sergeant of the Guard! Sergeant of the Guard! Checkpoint Charlie! Samantha Devine is trying to sneak into school with a crucifix around her neck!

By now it should be obvious that Robert Napier School is not Welcome Back, Kotter. After registering for classes last Wednesday, 13-year-old Samantha Devine was told to remove her necklace in front of her snickering classmates. It wasn’t much as jewelry goes—a chain and a tiny crucifix, scarcely an inch long—but nothing escapes the eagle eyes of the Molochs who man Checkpoint Charlie. Chalk it up to Socialized Medicine and regular eye examinations. They caught Samantha just as George Orwell had predicted.

Samantha’s parents were furious. Sikh students came to school with turbans and bangles and Muslims wear headscarves, they argued, and the turbans and the hijabs are religious symbols.

Samantha’s dad is an Army veteran. He served in Kosovo and Sierra Leone; he said he gave the necklace to his daughter as a present. “It’s a harmless, very small crucifix and she wears it as a symbol of her religion. It’s just political correctness gone absolutely mad.’

Samantha said, “Other religions can show their beliefs by wearing bracelets or turbans, so why can’t I wear a cross to show my devotion to God?”

But Robert Napier was way ahead of Samantha and her Dad. Please open your PC Primer to page 201.You have the new Machiavelli 901 edition, of course. If you don’t, you had better get one. You see—this is not about religion. It’s about health and safety, that’s what. Health and safety—the necklace poses a health and safety risk! (They must have been proud of themselves with that one)

Samantha was puzzled. “I can’t understand why the school thinks a tiny crucifix on a thin silver chain is a health and safety hazard,” she said.

Well—suppose a student was being chased down a dark corridor by some North Africans, screaming ‘get the dhimmi b____. It would give them something to grab at. We’re talking major hickey. This could also apply to the girl with the, ah…ah, Super Wonder bra, should she stray into the wrong neighborhood. Fortunately, off-campus activities are not their concern. But a student wearing a yarmulke could conceivably have his beanie snatched from his head along with half his scalp. (Of course, they didn’t say this, but it was less ridiculous than what they did say)

Yes, they were thinking of Samantha’s health and safety. And they hadn’t even mentioned rust! It was beyond Uncle Jed's ‘Well, doggies.’ It was more like balderdash.

Mr. Devine echoed Samantha. “I have seen other religious pupils at the school who are not part of the Christian faith,” he said, “but they are allowed to wear their religious garments and symbols without being questioned.”

It’s 2007, Mr. Devine. Remember Joe Stalin and the Pope? A Commissar asked Stalin if he was worried about what the Pope might do? “How many divisions does the Pope have?” snorted Stalin. Take a look around. Pope Benedict XVI doesn’t have a single terrorist cell in all of England and very few missionaries and Jerry Falwell lies over the Atlantic. They’re armed with Bible verses not RPGs. You are outgunned, Mr. Devine. Who has the attention of the spineless wretches at Robert Napier—you or Sir Iqbal Sacranie?

The crucifix might be a religious symbol, but according to the PC grotesques at Robert Napier, the hijab has nothing to do with religion. It is worn by Muslim women to preserve their virtue—or, more accurately, to preserve the virtue of Muslim men. It’s a sort of anti-aphrodisiac. Take Paris Hilton. How many men would Paris Hilton assault if she were wearing a hijab? Hah! With practically no peripheral vision…darn few! How would she cast her devastating sidelong glances? Hah! As a horse needs blinders, so Muslim women need hijabs. If Jefferson Davis had tried to put hijabs on the slaves on his plantation he would have been in the fight of his life. But Ole Jeff wasn’t Mohammed; he was a plantation owner, not Allah’s Prophet.

Paul Jackson, Robert Napier assistant head teacher, said, “The school has a policy of no jewelry to be worn by any students in years seven to ten. All parents and students are aware of this…the student and parent were informed that wearing the chain was a health and safety hazard, but that we would allow a lapel badge to be worn.”

Little Mosque on the Prairie: A Ground-breaking sitcom or a Dust Bowl of Humor?

Nothing like a good sitcom to break down racial and religious stereotypes! Who can forget Maude glaring at her spouse and saying, “God is going to get you for this, Walter,” or Sammy Davis, Jr., planting a big wet one on a surprised Archie Bunker. And look what The Beverly Hillbillies and The Dukes of Hazard did for rednecks. Corn pone sales shot up 50 percent and Eddie Albert took up farming and became a nationally renowned pig lawyer, representing the notorious Arnold Ziffle in a trial that shocked Petticoat Junction. Gomer Pyle did more for the Marine Corps than Harry Truman who only wanted to kick butt. If the sitcom was a good forum for lessening religious tensions between Jews and Christians and breaking down black and white stereotypes, it could logically be expected to do the same for the tensions between Muslims and dhimmis. So why not give it a try? Not in the United States, of course, but in Canada. And that’s exactly what the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has done with its new sitcom with the attention-grabbing name, Little Mosque on the Prairie. Eight episodes have been ordered.

Zarqa Nawaz, the show’s creator, is a mother of four, who wear a hijab and has lived on the prairie. She was born in Liverpool, raised in Canada and has a BS degree from the University of Toronto But she preferred movie making to a career in medicine. Her production company is FUNdamentalist Films. Little Mosque on the Prairie debuted January 9, but don’t look for Little Joe in a jellabah hitching horses to a Conestoga—it’s not post Little Bighorn, it’s post 9/11. It’s about Muslim immigrants in rural Saskatchewan bumping up against the local whites. Not the Nelsons or the Cunninghams or the Cleavers. Heaven forbid! These are shallow types, one-dimensional. Once critic has described the characterizations as cardboard thin. But there is an Archie Bunker.

“I expect both groups (Muslims and Christians) will be wondering if the other finds the show funny,” said Zarqa.

Neil Crone plays a galoot named Fred Tupper, the local Archie Bunker. Fred’s a radio talk-show host. Wake up, People!” he says. Yes—that sounds like Saskatchewan. The show’s website says Tupper, like most bigots, describes himself as a textbook Libertarian. That rules our Archie and brings in a much-sedated Rush Limbaugh. That’s too bad. Anybody who has ever sung Those Were the Days with a pitcher of beer in one hand and an empty glass in the other knows Archie was a lot funnier than Rush could ever be.

Tupper needs a foil and he has one in Baber Siddiqui, an opinionated Muslim played by Manoj Sood. The sitcom’s website says Baber believes in diversity and tolerance—as long as it is on his terms. He is the most conservative member of the Muslim community but when Election Day rolls around he always votes Liberal. (No doubt; it’s rural Canada not Gun Blast, Texas)

For humor, there’s this exchange: Muslim father sees daughter dressed in a tank top. Father says you look like a Protestant. Daughter says, “Don’t you mean prostitute?” Father says, “No, I mean Protestant.” It’s not Henny Youngman unchained.

Muslim sound bites from Little Mosque on the Prairie.com: “Muslims around the world are known for their sense of humor.” “I gave out plenty of this medicine in Nigeria and no one died. Of course, I haven’t been back in years.” “We’re going to open a mosque in your parish hall. Will you tell Jesus or should I?” “Desperate housewives? Why should they be desperate when they’re only performing their natural womanly duties?”

Christian sound bites: “The truth? I can work with that. But only as a last resort.” “Christianity didn’t survive 2000 years by being charitable.” “Why can’t we pick a time for Ramadan and stick with it? How about December? Shorter days. Longer shopping.” “If we don’t stop them soon we’ll all be speaking Muslim.”

Addenda: Christianity survived because of Christ’s concern for the poor, the ill, the halt and the blind, not because of marching armies. It was Judas who took the thirty pieces of silver. Christian charity matches government charity and it is freely given, not extorted. Second: Islam’s much-vaunted humor was missing during the Jyllands-Posten Mohammad cartoon controversy and when Pope Benedict XVI quoted from an obscure Middle Ages text the chuckles were few and the death threats many. (Actually the character was only joking about Islam’s wonderful sense of humor)

Zarqa Nawaz is not a reformer; she is not breaking with tradition; she is not leading Islam into a brave new world; she is not Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Wafa Sultan. Like all Muslim women she has suffered under Islam. She was a member of the Regina mosque in Saskatchewan where Muslim men and women prayed together until one day, out of the blue, the Imam ordered that all women henceforth would have to pray in a separate room, away from the men. This could have led to an epiphany. “The mosque was the most important part of my life,” said Zarqa, “and now I didn’t feel welcome. I felt a strong sense of spiritual loneliness. I am told (women) are a disturbance.” (If a Baptist minister or a Catholic priest ordered the women of his congregation to sit in a separate section of the church he would soon be seeking other employment) Two-thirds of the mosques in Canada require women to pray behind barriers, partitions or curtain, much the same as the slaves on John C. Calhoun’s plantation sat in the rear or stood in the balcony.

Islam is the religion of submission. No one thinks to protest. There are no Frederick Douglass’ or Denmark Veseys or Nat Turners, but there are plenty of Zarqa Nawazes. One does as ordered. It’s the constant brainwashing that commences at birth and continues into old age and death. It is Hitler's Jugend at age 1,400. There is no escape—no one marches to the beat of a different drum. There may be village atheists but they quickly learn to keep their mouths shut. It is easier—and a lot safer—to say ‘Allahu akbar’ than to complain. And Zarqa is not complaining. The incident at the Regina mosque did not bring on an epiphany; it was an Anschluss. Little Mosque on the Prairie will not stand in the way of the Caliphate; it will not come to grips with what is wrong with Islam; it is not All in the Family, it is not Little House on the Prairie; it is meant to allay Christian fears of the coming dhimmitude.

Mary Darling, one of Little Mosque’s executive producers, said, “It won’t do any harm, and maybe it can do some good.”

In the meantime, CBC, which is government-owned, has hired an independent Muslim-Canadian consultant to search the sitcom for politically incorrect errors and to suggest possible alterations. Norman Lear would have had a fit.

Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an; Keith Ellison’s Trojan Horse

George Lincoln Rockwell never ran for Congress but if he had there is no doubt he would have wanted to be sworn in on the original copy of the US Constitution because it was the closest thing he had ever found to Mein Kampf. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion would have been close, but in Rockwell’s Burgerbrau-Keller world close didn’t count. He ran for President in 1964 as a write-in candidate. He got 212 votes. Jethro Bodine got twice that many when he ran for Possum Day King in Beverly Hills. He campaigned with a possum on a leach. He wasn’t elected King but he did win a trip to Granny’s woodshed. Still he was light years ahead of Rockwell when it came to campaigning.

Rockwell ran for Governor of Virginia and got 5,730 votes. He created the American Nazi Party in 1959. He was assassinated in 1967. No member of the US House of Representatives would have let Rockwell get his hands on the US Constitution. But what if he would have insisted on Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an? That is what Keith Ellison did. Ellison could have asked for the Constitution but he wanted the Qur’an. That certainly pleased his followers at CAIR and at MPAC and in the Muslim community at large who hope to replace the US Constitution with the Muslim holy book. So, almost without a quibble, the freshman Democratic Congressman from Minnesota took the oath of office on Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an.

The Sage of Monticello’s copy of the Islamic Holy Book had been resting—lo these many years—in the rare books and special collections division of the Library of Congress. It was taken out of its crypt, dragged across the street and the deed was done. Pressed for cash, Jefferson had sold 2,375 books from his personal collection to Congress in 1815. The Qur’an, his get-to-know-your-enemies primer, was one of them. An Ellison spokesman said, “Jefferson’s Qur’an dates religious tolerance to the founders of our country.”

WHAT AN INCREDIBLE MIXTURE OF ARROGANCE AND HYPOCRISY! There is no freedom without slavery and no tolerance without Islam? Didn’t Darth Vader say something like that in Star Wars?

Islam’s brand of tolerance dates from the Qur’an: 33:64 “Verily Allah has cursed the Unbelievers (whom he defines as Christians in the 5^th surah) and has prepared for them a Blazing Fire to dwell in forever. No protection will they find, no savior. That Day their face will be turned upside down in the Fire. They will say: ‘Woe to us! We should have obeyed Allah and obeyed the Messenger!’ Our Lord! Give them double torment and curse them with a very great Curse!”

That does not sound tolerant! Double torment! Blazing Fire! Jefferson sent warships to the Mediterranean to rescue American seamen who had run afoul of Qur’an 33:64. It has never been revoked; it is still in effect—as is the rest of the Qur’an.

The lone quibbler, US Congressman Virgil Goode (R-VA), created a stir in the PC press with his comments on Ellison’s choice of the Qur’an. “When I raise my hand to take the oath in Swearing in Day, I will have the Bible in my other hand. I do not subscribe to using the Qur’an in any way.” That was bad enough, but Goode was not done. (The politically incorrect, in their blessed ignorance, never know when to stop)

“The Ten Commandments and ‘In God We Trust’ are on the wall of my office,” he said. “A Muslim student came by the office and asked why I did not have anything on my wall about the Qur’an. (It could be that Goode’s office is located in Washington, DC, and not in Riyadh or in Cairo or in Teheran) My response was clear. ‘As long as I have the honor of representing the citizens of the 5^th District of Virginia in the United States House of Representatives, the Quran is not going to be on the wall of my office’.”

The Washington Post took great umbrage. They called Goode’s outburst ‘dimwitted’ though it was more in keeping with Jefferson’s version of ‘Mohammedanism’ than with The Post’s submissive acceptance of Islam as the religion of peace and tolerance. “With 535 members,” groused The Post, “you’d think Congress would welcome the presence of a single Muslim representative. Whether it can afford a lawmaker of Mr. Goode’s caliber is another question.”

Caliber? That sounds warlike! What happened to The Post’s much vaunted tolerance? Why trash a Congressman scarcely known outside of Virginia? Ellison on the other hand, will be representing a religion that is hostile to the US Constitution and opposed to what most Americans believe in—women’s rights, minority rights, animal rights, freedom of the press. Ellison took his oath on the Qur’an! Did they miss that part of the swearing in?

Is Goode a lonely voice crying in the Wilderness? Not exactly, there are others. Goode is not a Winston Churchill but he is closer to Sir Winston than Ellison is or ever will be to Thomas Jefferson. Goode is almost as close to FrontPageMag and Islam: The Religion of Peace as Ellison’s promoter, The Post, is to al-Jazeera and The London Times—make that, The London Times of the 1930s. In the days when fascism was in bloom, The Times of London did not see Hitler as a threat to the peace and prosperity of Europe, much as today’s Post fails to grasp the Islamic threat to democracy.

While the Austrian Anschluss brought gloom and doom to the streets of Vienna in 1938, The Times was ecstatic. They had listened to Der Fuhrer’s speech. It was, according to The Times, “reasonable, straightforward and comprehensive. No one who reads it with an impartial mind can doubt that the points of policy laid down by Herr Hitler may fairly constitute the basis of a complete settlement with Germany.”

Churchill disagreed. In his column in the Evening Standard, he warned John Bull and Andy Capp what to expect. “After a boa constrictor has devoured its prey (Austria) it often has a considerable digestive spell…then people will be saying, ‘See how the alarmists have been confuted: Europe has calmed down, it has blown over, and the war scare has passed away…For five years I have talked to the House on these matters. I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf.” (This speech could be given today and would be no less frightening) Europe was tottering on the brink and the peacemakers were smiling and waving their umbrellas. The Evening Standard fired Churchill the next day. His bully pulpit was gone. John Bull and Andy Capp would no longer be informed of the dire consequences of appeasement. If one doesn’t talk about the Frankenstein monster he will go away.

Churchill’s views on Islam were every bit as realistic as they were on fascism. He had traveled extensively in Africa and his powers of observation and analyses were a match for de Tocqueville. “How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries,” he wrote, “Besides the fanatical frenzy…there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men…the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it.” Is this a ringing endorsement of Islam? Of course, not! Its closer to what Jefferson thought than The Post’s dimwitted and cravenly attack on Goode.

Ellison said the Qur’an is “definitely an important historical document in our national history and demonstrates that Jefferson was a broad visionary thinker who not only possessed a Qur’an, but read it.” (Jefferson read the Qur’an for the same reason Churchill read Mein Kampf) “It would have been something that contributed to his own thinking.” (It did!)

Arrogant hypocrisy?

“My readers ought to be informed that these merciless Barbarians are taught by their religion to treat the Christian captives with unexampled cruelty.” –From the Preface to A Journal of the Captivity and Sufferings of John Foss: Several Years as a Prisoner of Algiers. (Foss was captured by Muslim corsairs while serving aboard the Polly in the Mediterranean Sea)

Foss and his fellow seamen were told by Mahomet Salamia, the corsair captain, that they should expect to be treated harshly “for your history and superstition in believing in a man who was crucified by the Jews, and disregarding the true doctrine of God’s last and greatest prophet Mahomet.

See To The Shores Of Tripoli, A.B.C.Whipple

DOG GERMS AND BOOZE: ISLAM’S WORST NIGHTMARES “Dog is man’s best friend; Islam is freedom’s worst enemy”

“Ugh! Dog germs!” cried Lucy. A long-nosed mutt with an even longer tongue had just slobbered all over her! Talk about humiliation! He was a cute little pooch; he was wearing a World War One fighter pilot’s cap with goggles an inch thick and had leapt at her from the cockpit of his Sopwith Camel. A what? A camel? A Sopwith Camel? How horrible! Every good Muslim could commiserate with Lucy: a camel’s saliva is almost as bad as a dog’s! Fortunately for Lucy, a Sopwith Camel is a doghouse, but that didn’t lesson her shame. She immediately retreated to her psychiatry stand and didn’t speak to Charley Brown for five days! It didn’t do her any good; in spite of her Freudian pretensions, she wasn’t any better at self-analysis than Osama bin Laden or Muqtada al-Sadr or Howard Dean.

Given Lucy’s and Islam’s aversion to animals that engage in promiscuous slobbering, it should come as no surprise to the informed why a Somali Muslim taxi driver would react to the approach of a blind man with a seeing-eye dog with great consternation.

Allahu akbar! What is that thing? Is it a Saint Bernard? Is it Cujo? You say it is a German Shepard? Are you sure? I don’t believe it! Why is it so big? Why is it wearing a Nazi helmet? Get him away from here! The saliva of dogs is unclean! I refuse to transport unclean things! It is against my religion! The shari’a says…

And the blind man would lament. “Look, Moe,” he would explain patiently. “You transport dhimmis in your taxi every day and dhimmis are number nine on your list of unclean things. You transport them for money. Dogs are number seven. Seven from nine is two—you do the Math, Moe. One hates to use the word hypocrite and get philosophical but…”Dog is man’s best friend and Islam is freedom’s worst enemy. A good Doberman Pinscher could tear the seat out of bin Laden’s drawers and chase al-Sadr up a tree, but no Muslim taxi driver, Somali or otherwise, has done anything, as far as is known, to fight terrorism. Besides—there are more fleas in bin Laden’s beard than there were on Old Duke. You know who Old Duke was, don’t you? He was Jed Clampett's dog. And he was better groomed than bin Laden.

This dispute could easily evolve into a question of animal rights. What does the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) have to say? Ask them. Search the Bible. Ask Charlie Brown. Unless things change and soon it will be easier for Lassie to pass through the eye of a needle than for a Muslim cab driver to enter the Kingdom of Heaven!

But dog spit is only a part of the problem. If the blind man should be carrying a bottle of wine in addition to packing a mutt he would be twice cursed—caught between the Qur’an and John Barleycorn! Alcoholic spirits are tenth on Islam’s list of unclean things. Grain, barley, rye; oats—it’s worse than camel spit. That might be but the list didn’t prevent Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour from completely sousing themselves with ardent spirits on numerous occasions before they crashed into the World Trade Center.

Apparently Muslim cab drivers are made of sterner stuff than Mohammed Atta when it comes to resisting temptation. They have refused service to about 100 potential customers every month at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Paul Hogan, spokesman for the Metropolitan Airport Commission, says, “If you’re going to be driving a taxi at the airport, you need to provide service to everybody who wants it.”

That makes sense. Anything else would be, well, discrimination—religious discrimination. Ever been to a Mass, Moe? What is that red stuff they symbolically offer to the Congregation? Why it’s wine! And unless you believe in transubstantiation, that’s booze! Nonetheless, it is only one little priestly blessing away from being a sacrament! Denying a Christian his to-be consecrated booze is discrimination!

Suppose an animal rights activist was driving a taxi and refused to transport a Muslim because he was carrying a package of halal ground round? Would Ibrahim Hoopercrit and Jihad Awad remain silent? Of course not, they would be squealing like some of the animals on the forbidden list.

A proposition has been presented to the Airport Commission that would suspend or revoke a cabbie’s license for refusing service for reasons other than safety concerns. Well, that’s just fine! Imam Hassan Mohumad of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota wants the Commission to reconsider the proposal. Asking Muslims to transport alcohol, he said, “Is a violation of the faith, Muslims do not consume, carry, sell or buy alcohol, and Islam also considers the saliva of dogs to be unclean.”

Well, there it is again—the Snoopy factor. It could be one of the reasons why those huge St. Bernard dogs that roam the Alps rescuing trapped skiers and hikers carry kegs of brandy around their necks. Of course, that wouldn’t be much help to a vacationing Somali taxi driver trapped in a blizzard in the Brenner Pass. Dog germs and brandy! Ugh! If they survived it would cost them five cents at Lucy’s psychiatry stand.

Fortunately not everyone has lost his head. Some Muslim taxi drivers have no trouble at all in transporting alcohol. Capitalism can be as intoxicating as booze. Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, says, “We tell the taxi drivers, if you don’t want to do this, change your job. You are living in a country where alcohol is not viewed the way it is in your country.”

There are other dissimilarities of views between Somalia and the US—women’s rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion; the tip of what sunk the Titanic. Until recently Somali Muslims had been sharing a prayer room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport with Christians. It hasn’t worked out. Maybe it was the crosses, or the rosaries, or, perhaps, a dhimmis’ shadow fell across Keith Ellison while he was at prayer. The Muslim community is now demanding the Airport set aside a separate room for Muslims. This must have come as a shock to Robert Edgar and the Abrahamists.

Two weeks ago, 1,500 Muslims marched through Minneapolis demanding Ethiopia withdraw its troops from Somali. The march was organized by the Somalia Institute for Peace and Justice. “We seek the president of the United States, Mr. Bush, and his administration to stop supporting terrorists,” said Hassan Muhamed (that guy again; they get around). “Ethiopian troops are terrorists.”

The Institute could not heap enough praise on Somalia’s new government. “The Union of Islamic Courts accomplished miracles to pacify and stabilize much of southern Somalia,” they gushed. “Such an accomplishment must be congratulated and not disturbed.” And Ethiopia has disturbed the accomplishment and helicopter gun-ships have been no help at all. A partial list of the new governments accomplishments included: closer ties with al-Qaeda; the issuance of a death penalty by the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia for those who fail to perform daily prayers; the closing of movie theatres and video stores; a ban on television; a ban on music; a ban on women’s swimming; a return to public floggings and executions; closer ties to Hamas and Hezbollah; and the execution of two men for screening a World Cup match. Extracurricular activities included an exhortation to hunt down Pope Benedict XVI for things he had said about Islam though the vast majority of Somalis did not hear the remarks and would not have understood them if they had.

This is far beyond dog saliva and alcohol but it’s where the Muslim American Society of Minnesota and their cohorts at CAIR and MPAC will take Minneapolis, the Twin Cities and America if given half the chance.

“IS MY HIJAB ON STRAIGHT?” STUDENT CAPER OR ISLAMIZATION BY INCHES AT SPOTSWOOD HIGH?

“Hurry up, Darla, you’re going to be late for school!”

“Is my hijab on straight?”

“Spanky and Alfalfa are waiting! Get a move on, child!”

“But, mom…

It’s going to be a long 30 days. A long 30 days…where? In Baghdad…in Damascus…in a Mad-Rats-Asses school in Dearborn, Michigan? Or is this just another mad plan to indoctrinate American schoolchildren into the delights of Islam? Is there any doubt that it is the latter? There shouldn’t be by now.

The scene: Spotswood High School, Penn Laird, Virginia—God’s country. It’s in the Blue Ridge Mountains; Jed Clampett would be right at home traipsing around those hills. Penn Laird lies between Front Royal to the north and Staunton to the south—Stonewall Jackson's old stomping grounds. Spotswood High is 95 percent white, the rest Latino and African-American—ripe for indoctrination.

Starting January 2—so the story goes—Casey Morris and his classmates will become Muslims for 30 days, a sort of basic training. It won’t be as bad as what the grunts went through under John Wayne in The Green Berets, but there will be more discipline than Bill Murray experienced in S.T.R.I.P.E.S. The plan—Morris’ plan, apparently—calls for total immersion. It’s a research project—supposedly. The kids—the volunteers—will learn about Muslim culture, pray five times a day, abstain from pork and wear traditional Muslim clothes. And who is the mastermind behind the scheme? Well, so far no one has come forth. The students came up with the project—or more likely, one student, Casey Morris.

Casey intends to put everything on film—everything—the whole works, and if he can sign up Darla, so much the better. It will be a documentary. That’s s right—a documentary. How noble. The film will reveal how little the kids knew about Islam at the start of the 30 days and how far they have progressed down the road to dhimmitude by February 2, the termination date. Darla and Alfalfa’s parents will be stunned by how much knowledge the kids have amassed about Islam and may, in themselves, provide fertile ground for conversion.

And there’s one more point—documentaries make money. Look at Michael Moore—which, admittedly, is difficult to do while abstaining from pork. Moore made a lot of money with Roger and Me. How about Islam and Me by Casey Morris? It’s got bite. All one needs is a little publicity to get started. After that it’s Letterman and Leno and Jon Stewart and maybe even the O’Reilly Factor.

!

“What’s the first thing that comes to mind when I say Muslim?” Morris asks fellow students.

“Umm, prayer book,” said one.

“When I say Islam?”

“Iraq,” said another.

Such ignorance! Seventy years ago when a kid was asked about Chicago, he would say Capone. If he were asked about Birmingham, Alabama, he would say Imperial Wizard. When Huck Finn was asked about Abilene, he said Lily Langtry. Hardly anyone mentioned The Bible. Casey got prayer book right off the bat; it’s either the beginnings of an age of enlightenment, or the start of an Islamic Inquisition.

“Alan and I,” says Casey, “will obviously come out of the deal with a great understanding of the culture with a great respect for the Islamic culture and hopefully we’ll impart some of that upon other people, too.”

Alan and I? What about Darla? What about Alfalfa? What is this…a two-man operation? Alan and Casey? Isn’t there anyone else involved? Well, yes there is. There’s Zulfiqar Ishaq, a shadowy member of the almost non-existent Muslim community Zulfiqar lauds Alan’s and Casey’s enterprise. “Any effort that tries to educate people and increase to their information can turn very positive towards wider benefit in our society,” he says. (They never use words like brainwash and indoctrinate) It’s Islamization by inches.

Casey expects to be criticized. Why? Because of the clothes he will be wearing? Perhaps…maybe he hopes to be criticized. For 30 days he and his volunteers will be roaming the corridors of a blatantly Christian High School dressed in traditional Muslim clothes. That will get a rise out of the little dhimmis. Sure, of course—and some sophomore will come up to him in Home Economics, look him over closely, and say, “Nice threads, dude.” Maybe if he dresses like one of the thugs that murdered Daniel Pearl and wears a sign on his back that says Mohammad Atta he will get the attention he wants. No, that would be Dillon Klebold gross. The school administration would never stand for it. The chances are Casey will be the cause of more politically incorrect merriment than controversy. It he wants to raise a good rumpus, he should stroll through a Mad-Rats-Asses school dressed as a Crusader with a big red cross on a white tunic.

This 30-dag odyssey must seem like a silly little game to most observers, but it isn’t. Whether Casey is being used by Islam or is using Islam to gain notoriety is not altogether clear. What is known is that Casey’s research project is only one of thousands of similar activities being promoted by Islam in its never-ending attempt to insert its religious beliefs into the American educational system. Christian prayers in school are out but it is okay to shout Allahu akbar on the way to gym class.

It appears Casey, for whatever reason, has already accepted Islam as a positive good. Whether he will apply the same standards of credulity and gullibility to a study of Christianity or American history may never be known unless he should run off to Pakistan and join the John Walker Lindh Brigade. Until then he—or she—should be given the benefit of the doubt. But if he is sincere and is really determined to study Islamic culture, he should read Robert Spencer’s The Truth About Muhammad or Serge Trifkovic’s The Sword of the Prophet. Either would be a good start. It’s nice to have a piece of bread on each side of a ham sandwich. Whether these books are readily available for high school students is another matter.

The radical left and the National Education Association has been successful in keeping books by Spencer and Trifkovic and other objectionable authors out of the hands of mainstream American. This success has led to one of the big failures of America’s educational system in the late 20^th and early 21^st Centuries—keeping its citizens in the dark about real and potential enemies. For the Islamists and their running dogs no matter is too insignificant, no opportunity too modest to be ignored. It’s a war of inches and the kids at Spotswood High have bought into it with little knowledge of what the stakes are. “Alan and I,” says Casey. I’ll take Audie Murphy and Alvin York, and if I can’t get them, Spanky and Alfalfa.

Where have you gone Carl Yastrzemski? Harvard is saying Boston is part of the Islamic world! We need your help!

Boston is part of the Islamic world? Ridiculous! Who would say such a thing? Tarik Ramadan? John Esposito? It was in the Boston Globe? Really? A Harvard professor said so? Oh, where have you gone Carl Yastrzemski? What the Heck happened? Did Prince Al-Walid bin Talal buy the Paul Revere Tupperware and ship it to Riyadh while Tip O’Neill—bless his soul—wasn’t looking? Sure, Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees but that was 90 years ago and the world didn’t come to an end—not quite, and since than there’s been Yaz and the Splendid Splinter and Big Poppy.

Boston is part of the Islamic world? Say it ain’t so, Joe! It will take a ton of black crepe to cover Faneuil Hall. And what about Bunker Hill? Will they sow it with salt? There must be tears in the eyes of William Lloyd Garrison and John Adams wherever they are. This is not what they labored for. And what is going to happen to that loudmouth Clifford Claven? He could be in big trouble. He can’t tell a surrah from a hadith! He’s bound to insult Ibrahim Hoopercrit or Jihad Awad. Sure, the pointy-headed intellectuals at Harvard have been rewriting history for a long time, but one if by land, two if by sea and three if by Jihad? That is Valley Girl gross!

But there she is, the monster mosque, rising in Roxbury, albeit slowly, an Islamic Super Collider—a Goliath and the David Project is fighting it tooth and nail. The David has raised serious questions about the mosque’s financial affairs. Where is the money coming from? It smells of oil and Wahhabism; corruption, bribery; political favoritism. It’s the Big Dig scandal all over again. But Boston—part of the Islamic world? Wasn’t it once part of the free world? Why would any pack of idiots—excuse the language—want to change that? It’s mind-boggling!

Nonetheless, that is what Diana L. Eck says. Ms. Eck is professor of comparative religion at Harvard University and director of the Pluralism Project. Ah-hah! Pluralism! Harvard! One might have known! The fight over the mosque is just another part of Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. They may deny it, but it is. It’s the pluralists versus the David Project. The Pluralists believe Jihad is the struggle that takes place inside every Muslim as he strives to attain Islamic perfection; for the David Project, it’s a matter of survival—in Boston, in the United States and especially in Israel—to avoid being stuffed into ovens and sprayed with Zyclon B or blown to bits in a pizza parlor in Tel Aviv by Muslims who don’t give a damn about any inner struggle because if they can kill enough Jews, dhimmis and infidels, they will wind up in Allah’s Great Bawdy House in the Sky without having to answer questions about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness or explain some of the more embarrassing portions of the Qur’an.

In her article in the Boston Globe, Ms. Eck wrote, “Last month, as I stood under the great dome of the mosque at Roxbury Crossing, I prayed, as a Christian, for its speedy completion.” Not a cure for cancer or for the blind to see, but for a mosque to be completed—a dhimmi prayer, to be sure. Try to complete a Christian church in any Arab country—it is far more difficult, if not impossible because pluralism doesn’t exist in Islam and the jizya goes to maintain mosques.

But Ms. Eck is not Islam’s only willing dupe. There’s Robert Edgar of the National Council of Churches who would rather switch than fight. There is little difference between the three Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity and Islam, says Edgar. Franklin Graham would not agree with that assessment and neither would Jerry Falwell but there are tens of thousands of lukewarm Christians, many of them closer to Marx than to God, who are quite willing to give away Christianity’s talking points for peace in our time and to substitute Islamic apartheid for the 13^th Amendment.

Ms. Eck’s article was entitled: Good neighbors: Interfaith dialogue is not happy hand-holding premised on agreement. It is the kind of encounter we need to build a society that bridges our deepest differences.

Bridges? Of course—bridges! Building bridges! Corduroy that road, boys; plank those pontoons boats; drag out the suspension cables; celebrate Ramadan with your Muslim neighbors, join them at their Islamic center; sample the halal; make sure every 5^th grader in your neighborhood school learns about Mohammed, can plan a pilgrimage to Mecca, can say Allahu akbar without prompting. We need to know more about Islam, says Ms. Eck—she was quoting Madeleine Albright. Remember Ms. Albright? They remember her well in what was once Yugoslavia. She restored diversity to the Balkans, to Bosnia, to Kosovo, by driving out the Christians. Regular interfaith visits to Friday prayers at the Islamic Center is a must for any Bostonian willing to ditch Christianity for Abrahamism.

The great conquistador Hernando Cortez landed at Vera Cruz on the Gulf of Mexico in 1519, burned his ships and moved inland to conquer Mexico City. The Abrahamists—Ms. Eck, Robert Edgar and their associates—have landed on the shores of Islam: their mission a peaceful conquest of the three great monotheistic religions. Cortez was a better strategist. He knew what to do in a strange land and when he went to burning, he burned his ships, not his Bible. He took the Holy Book with him to Mexico City. The Ecks and the Edgars are proceeding unarmed; they have left their only protection, the Bible on the shores of Dar-al-Islam and are poking around in bin Laden’s cave. It would be like Shane entering Grafton’s Saloon without his six-gun.

But isn’t it time for a bit of reciprocity? How about a gigantic interfaith meeting at St. Patrick’s Cathedral? Think of it: incense; altar boys; a priest—a dead-ringer for Danny Bonaduce, doing one of the Stations of the Cross (if Mel Gibson hasn’t had them copyrighted); a tour of a confessional—no one need to admit to any sins though it wouldn’t hurt; a scene from The Exorcist; and maybe little Mohammed could try on a cassock or a surplice; it would be great fun and would be educational too. Who could object? And everybody would be the wiser.

And there is no logical reason for not holding an interfaith meeting at the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. Jerry Falwell is a nice man. Thomas Jefferson once lived nearby. They have music too—not hoe down, but the Gold City Quartet has class. And the church is easy on the knees. Why should the dhimmis derive all the benefits of learning about Islam while little Mohammed is kept in the dark about Christianity? Shouldn’t he know what a Eucharist is? Good Heavens—it’s not a card game. He can only guess at what is going on in the Thomas Road Baptist Church and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. What little information he gets is from Hamas and Hollyweird. Talk about a choice between Satan and Lucifer! Dawha is a two-way street—or it should be.

One of the nasty facts of life about Islam is that Muslims have been burning churches in Pakistan and in Palestine and in Kosovo and in Bosnia and they have been doing it for some time—since the 7^th Century—and on a regular basis at that. Hasn’t anyone told Ms. Eck? It’s time she woke up and smelled the embers of the World Trade Center.

Boston is still part of the free world—it’s what God intended or the Boston Red Sox clubhouse would have been built with prayer rugs glued to the floor.

Thank you, God, for Yaz, and the Splendid Splinter and Big Poppy—love those guys—with each swing of the bat they have done more for Boson, America and Christianity than a legion of Ms. Ecks.

SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER’S MISSING HATE GROUPS

There are 52 hate groups in California. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has counted them. The SPLC is always counting hate groups. It’s what they do. They have counted more than a hundred such groups in the United States. California has more than its share, more than any other state. Maybe it’s the weather.

If little Adolph or baby Huey wants to join a hate group they should take a gander at the SPLC website and look up California; it’s prime territory for the easy of rage and the light of brain. There are eight Black Separatist Groups in the Golden State—count them, seven Nation of Islam and one New Black Panther Party. Isn’t that something? What makes Louis Farrakhan proud would probably make Huey Newton, if he were still alive, jealous.

But what if Junior were white and wanted to be a racist Skinhead? Not to worry. There are only three racist Skinhead groups in California but Junior could choose between Working Class, Golden State and American Front. Their enemies call them boneheads. And there is always the Klan—the KKK—the Ku Kluxers—David Duke and company. California has eight separate Klan groups. If little Adolph or Billy Bob Bubba has a penchant for Imperial Wizards and Exalted Cyclops, with burning crosses lighting the midnight sky and the feel of freshly laundered white robes, one of these groups could be just what he’s looking for. But suppose he’s a cut above the average butthead and prefers swastikas and Iron Crosses to hoods and white robes, has read The Turner Diaries, can spell Reinhard Heydrich and knows all the words to The Horst Wessel Lied? No problem—California is blessed with twelve neo-Nazi groups.

There’s another category, called Others; a collection of odds and ends like the Jewish Defense League, the Traditional Values Coalition and some pretenders large and small.

The neo-Nazis are the worst. According to the SPLC website, neo-Nazis thugs have committed 29 hate crimes in California since the first of the year; most recently anti-gay and ethnic slurs were written on a teacher’s desk in San Francisco; anti-gay and anti-Semitic slurs were painted on a house and toilet paper was thrown in trees in Burlingame and swastikas and racial slurs were spray-painted on a black man’s car in Red Bluff.

Nasty stuff. But hate groups not on the SPLC list have committed worse hate crimes and have gone unmentioned. On October 24, 2002, John Allen Mohammed and Lee Boyd Malvo were arrested by police at a highway rest area off Interstate 70 in Maryland. They were charged with killing ten people and critically injuring three others in a three-week rampage in and around Washington, DC. Mohammed was sentenced to death and Malvo to life in prison without parole. Abu Doha was indicted for planning to blow up Los Angeles International Airport in 2001 with weapons of mass destruction. Ahmed Ressam intended to do the same but an alert border agent stopped his car as it crossed the Canadian border into the United States and he was thwarted. In 2002 Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, a 41-year-old Egyptian immigrant, opened fire at the ticket counter of Israel’s El Al airline at Los Angeles International Airport, killing two people before he was shot dead by police.

Lone wolfs? Hardly—it takes more than Spanky and Alfalfa in a tree-house to train, arm, supply and brainwash cold-blooded killers, to provide them with the necessary false documents and the safe havens they need as they go about doing God’s work while shouting Allahu akbar.

And one should not forget the Lackawanna Six, Homaidan Al-Turki and his slave, Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar who drove his jeep Cherokee with malice aforethought into a group of University of North Carolina college students, and Naveed Haq who was ‘angry at Israel.’ Their peers, their associates, those who knew them best, attended the same mosques were stunned by the actions of the miscreants. Why would they have done what they did? It was suggested by some that American foreign policy was to blame.

Has the SPLC missed a group or two? How about a dozen? Three years ago, the Palestinian Solidarity Movement (PSM), supported and protected by the Muslim Student Association (MSA) and by a spineless college administration, held their fourth national convention at Duke University. One of the speakers said, “Lest their be any doubt, this writer supports the Palestinian right to launch bombs on Israel any way they know how…each wedding, Passover celebration, or Bar Mitzvah is a potential military target.” Another speaker declared, “The enemy is not overseas. The enemy is amongst us.” The usual hate literature was distributed. That was three years ago—time enough for the SPLC to get on the job, to get a whiff of the Zyklon B.

Four years ago, the same groups held a hate-fest at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The notorious Sami al-Arian was a guest panelist. At a National Convention of the American Muslim Council (AMC), Sami had said, “Let us damn America. Let us damn Israel; let us damn their allies until death…the Qur’an is our constitution.” Was Sami a precursor of Keith Ellison? And al-Arian was only one of many spewing out hatred at that particular convention. Maybe the SPLC missed that one too.

Asan Akbar once belonged to the Muslim Students Association. While serving with the 101^st Airborne Division in Kuwait, Akbar tossed a grenade into a tent full of sleeping soldiers, killing two and wounding fifteen. He did it to “protect Muslim women.” What he did should have showed up on the SPLC radar. The MSA has solicited funds for the Holy Land Foundation, an organization that has helped finance Hamas, if not having been created by it.

The SPLC could look into the activities of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), several of whose members have been arrested for raising money for terrorists or engaging in terrorist activities. Yes, but they might get sued; CAIR has deep Saudi Barbaria Wahhabe pockets.

There are other so-called Muslim civil rights groups that could be looked into—the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the American Muslim Council, the Islamic Society of North America, etc., etc. Some of the leaders of these organizations have engaged in hate speech—Mahdi Bray and Maher Hathout.

In 1991, the SPLC established a Teaching Tolerance educational program “to help K-12 teachers foster respect and understanding in the classroom.” It was a good idea then and still is. The SPLC should have applied it to its own organization. They have carried respect and understanding of the actions of some hate groups to a laissez faire extreme while appearing to manufacture or exaggerate the actions of others. Latino hate groups like La Raza Unida and MEChA have been given a pass. Political correctness has long been a part of the SPLC. But with hatred of American and Israel de rigeur in mosques and on college campuses and with the internet awash with enough anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism to attract every would-be Hitler and bin Laden, the SPLC silence on Muslim hate groups is not only remarkable, it has become reprehensible and beyond that, cowardly if not treasonous.

Hug a Muslim; Kill a Kafir—‘T’is the season to be jolly!

No one will ever accuse Anthony Lewis, assistant editor of the Jersey Evening News, of being the Grinch who stole Christmas, but he did get his hands on a reindeer suit and he had plans—not to steal Christmas but to become an overnight singing sensation. Lewis, who had less experience in the music business than Jethro Bodine had as a Double Naught Spy, didn’t waste his time dreaming of chestnuts roasting over an open fire, he dreamed of topping the pop music charts via youtube. And, apparently, he knew what he was doing. So, get out of the way Madonna; get out of the way American Idol; get out of the way Mick Jagger—Anthony Lewis is coming to town!

Six thousand hits right off the bat on youtube.com! Not bad for an amateur in what amounted to an audition. And dig those threads—Lewis didn’t find them at the bottom of the discard bin at Goodwill Industries. Oh, no, he searched and searched until he found the best reindeer suit this side of Hanna-Barbera. Then he found an empty parking lot, enrolled a chorus of volunteer wannabes, anxious for ten minutes of fame, stuck a loudspeaker in his mouth and went to work. “Turn to the person next to you now and give them a hug,” he crooned. “Muslim, Hindu, Christian or Jew—hug a Muslim this Christmas.”

The video is called Colour This Time (Hug A Muslim). Despite the billing no one in the video hugged a Muslim, at least, not anyone who appeared to be identifiable as a Muslim, and certainly no one wearing a hijab or veil. Apparently, hugging has its limits and Lewis did not tempt fate by embracing Islam too closely. Everybody knows what happened to Salman Rushdie.

While Lewis was making his bid for contemporary fame and perhaps for a shot at immortality, Anjum Chaudri, a close associate of Omar Bakri Muhammadand spokesman for Al Muhajiroun, was appearing on BBC’s Hard Talk. Chaudri must not have seen Colour This Time for he did not embrace his host. That was to be expected. Muslim fundamentalists do not approve of music and are not noted for embracing Kafirs. It has something to do with the Qur’an and unclean things.

Chaudri told his host he was opposed to the killing of innocent civilians. He has said the same thing before, many times, and he will say it again—and again, and again. Such talk might impress Jimmy Carter and Prince Chuckles the Clown and the tone deaf and the morally blind, but Chaudri has not condemned the attack on the World Trade Center or the London bombings; in fact, he has approved of them. He hasn’t gone as far as Ward Churchill—he hasn’t referred to the victims of 9/11 and 7/7 as little Eichmanns, at least, not in public but they got what they deserved, he said, because they were not innocent. Not innocent? How could that be? Pregnant women who had never harmed anyone, leaping from the upper floors of the World Trade Center to avoid being burned alive? Not innocent? Courageous firemen responding to an emergency, anyone one of whom had done more good deeds in five seconds than Chaudri could possibly do if he lived a billion years, asphyxiated by the insane actions of as disgusting a pack of cretins as had ever escaped Dante’s Inferno? Not innocent? The women, the firemen, the cops, the salesmen, the secretaries, the janitors, the hundreds and hundreds about their everyday business—they were not innocent? How could that be? Is Chaudri insane? He might as well be. They were not innocent, he says, because they had rejected Islam!

The Qur’an says: 5:35 “Believers, (and Chaudri is one of them), fear Allah and seek the way to approach him, striving hard, fighting Jihad with all your might in His Cause that you may be successful. As for the disbelievers (the occupants of the World Trade Center, previously defined as Christians), if they had everything on earth, two times over, to give as ransom for the penalty of the Day of Doom, it would never be accepted of them. Theirs will be a painful torment. They will desire to get out of the fire, but they shall not be released from it. They shall have an everlasting torture.”

Goebbels said the same thing about Hitler and the Jews. It’s an old story—as old as Islam.

If Anthony Lewis rally wanted to hug a Muslim he should sneak up on Chaudri and give him a great big hug—no one is more in need of one than Chaudri. And if that doesn’t work, perhaps someone with a keen sense of irony, could arranged a chance meeting between Chaudri and, say, Hulk Hogan in the dead-end ally where Jeffrey Dahmer stashed unused body parts. As good as these ideas might be, Lewis would have to be willing and able and even if he were, he might not be able to get close to Chaudri. Whether Lewis knows it or not, he is on Islam’s list of unclean things. Take a look—there he is, number 9, a Kafir, right between number 8 (pigs), and number 10 (alcoholic liquers). Man’s best friend, dog, is number 7.

In the meantime, Mustaf Jama, a Somali immigrant shot and killed a policewoman; he escaped disguised as a woman—his sister! He used her passport and veil to sneak out of the country. Not to be outdone but in a more intellectual clime, Osama Saeed, one of Scotland’s most prominent Muslim thinkers, compared England’s treatment of Muslims to Hitler’s treatment of the Jews in Nazi Germany. Obviously, both of these rascals could use a hug or two. It might be what they are missing in life. Put them on Anthony’s list. It could be a long one.

One has to face the fact that creeps like Jama and Saeed comprise only the tip of the Islamic iceberg that is sinking England—ant the deeper one goes the colder and less huggable it gets. Lewis is not a Jimmy Carter or a Prince Chuckles the Clown. He may be a good-natured fool or a spineless dhimmi; it doesn’t matter. While he promotes hugging Muslims, the Chaudris are killing Kafirs, Christians, Hindus, Jews and infidels in the hundreds of thousands. England would be better off if just one Muslim promoted hugging Englishmen and not only those willing to embrace Islam.