BUSH SPEAKS AT THE U.N.

Today's the day....President Bush will take to the podium at the United Nations this morning to discuss his administration's plan for democracy throughout the world. Unbelievably, in the audience will be Iran's Crazy Little Man, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He will speak later in the day.

President Bush says he will not meet with Ahmadinejad..saying the United States won't meet with Iran until it agrees to stop enriching uranium. So this sets up an interesting series of events. There will be the president of the United States, speaking at the podium at the United Nations. In the audience will be the president of the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, Iran. And it will all be in New York, where Al-Qaeda slaughtered 3,000 innocent people 5 years ago. Unreal, isn't it?

And watch the media coverage of the two speeches. Bush will get up, tout democracy gains in places like Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and so on. But expect Ahmadinejad's speech to get better press. After all, he will be criticizing the United States...a prospect the media loves. And where does this leave the Democrats?

They have a problem. They're expected to win the mid-term elections coming up with national security becoming increasingly important. Will the Democrats, who hate George W. Bush and his policies, really come out in support of the President of Iran? Keep your eye on Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid on this one.

And just what is the President of Iran doing in this country anyway? How on Earth did that happen? Talk about ridiculous.

THE RELIGION OF....

By Michelle Malkin

...Fill In The Blank.

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After you're done watching that, watch Dan Riehl's take. Read the latest death threats from members of The Religion of Fill-in-the-blank here and here and here:

The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremist groups that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq, issued a statement on a Web forum vowing to continue its holy war against the West. The authenticity of the statement could not be independently verified.

The group said Muslims would be victorious and addressed the pope as "the worshipper of the cross" saying "you and the West are doomed as you can see from the defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and elsewhere. ... We will break up the cross, spill the liquor and impose head tax, then the only thing acceptable is a conversion (to Islam) or (killed by) the sword."

Islam forbids drinking alcohol and requires non-Muslims to pay a head tax to safeguard their lives if conquered by Muslims. They are exempt if they convert to Islam.

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And check out a few more anti-Pope Internet photoshops (first one is here) making the rounds of jihadi websites (thanks much to Lorenzo Vidino and Hamza Boccolini):

NOW...IS ISLAM A PEACEFUL RELIGION

Perhaps it would be instructive to look at what is happening to Pope Benedict over the past few days for an answer.

First ... just what did the Pope do? You can read the Pope's entire speech by clicking on this link. If' your not into reading Pope's speeches, I'll lift out the part that has started all of this controversy.

Pope Benedict moves into the area of his speech that has sparked the controversy with this paragraph:

"I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on-- perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara-- by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was probably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than the responses of the learned Persian."

Pope Benedict then goes on to quote one particular. This is something the Byzantine emperor said to the Persian on the subject of Islam and jihad, or holy war.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Now remember ... these were not the words of the Pope. These were the words of some emperor over 600 years ago. The emperor evidently thought that Islam was a violent religion, and that it was the commands of Mohammed that made it so.

So ... how do Muslims react to the Pope's revelation that a Byzantine emperor 600 years ago thought that Islam was a violent religion? Why, with violence, of course? Muslims murder a nun in Somalia. They burn churches in Gaza, and they go on their grand marches and demonstrations reminiscent of the violence they spread after that Danish cartoon mess.

And so what is the inescapable conclusion that we're left with? Islam is a violent religion. Don't take Empereor Paleologus' word for it ... just watch Muslims!

Is it just me, or does it make sense to you that if Muslims didn't want the rest of the world to consider Islam a violent religion, they wouldn't get so violent every time someone say's they're violent? Come on, folks! How hard is all this?

THE POPE'S REAL THREAT

Many people have written about the controversy over Pope Benedict's recent remarks at the University of Regensburg, where he quoted a medieval emperor about the barbarity of forced religious conversions. In a replay of the Prophet Cartoon madness, Muslims only escalated their rhetoric after the Vatican apologized for any offense the quotation may have given followers of Islam. Despite apologizing Wednesday for quoting Manuel II's words from 1391 (but not for its argument against violence in religion), Muslims burnt effigies of the Roman Catholic leader and staged demonstrations around the world:

Protesters took to the streets in a series of countries with large Muslim populations, including India and Iraq. The ruling party in Turkey likened Pope Benedict XVI to Hitler and Mussolini and accused him of reviving the mentality of the Crusades. In Kashmir, an effigy of the pontiff was burnt.

At Friday prayers in the Iranian capital, Teheran, a leading ayatollah described the Pope as "rude and weak-minded". Pakistan's parliament passed a motion condemning the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian prime minister, criticised him hours after a grenade attack on a church in the Gaza Strip. ...

The head of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, said the remarks "aroused the anger of the whole Islamic world".

Similar comments were made in other Muslim capitals, raising fears of a repetition of the anger that followed the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper earlier this year.

All this has shown is that Muslims missed the point of the speech, and in fact have endeavored to fulfill Benedict's warnings rather than prove him wrong. If one reads the speech at Regensburg, the entire speech, one understands that the entire point was to reject violence in pursuing religion in any form, be it Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or Bahai. The focal point of the speech was not the recounting of the debate between Manuel II and the unnamed Persian, but rather the rejection of reason and of God that violence brings (emphasis mine):

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

This is really the crux of the argument, which is that argument, debate, and rhetoric are absolutely essential in forming any kind of philosophy, including religious doctrine. The words of sacred text do not cover all situations in the world, and therefore development of a solid philosophical body of thought is critical to growth and wisdom. That requires the ability to challenge and to criticize without fear of retribution, a difficulty that most faiths struggle to overcome.

Islam, on the other hand, doesn't bother to try. Benedict never says this explicitly, but Islam's demands that all criticism be silenced turns doctrine into dictatorship, which rejects God on a very basic level. A central tenet of most religions is that humans lack the divine perfection to claim knowledge of the totality of the Divine wisdom. Islam practices a form of supremacy that insists on unquestioned obedience or at least silence of all criticism, especially from outsiders, and creates a violent reaction against it when it occurs.

Islam bullies people into silence, and then obedience. We saw this with the Prophet Cartoons, a series of editorial criticisms that pale into insignificance when seen against similar cartoons from the Muslim media regarding Christians and especially Jews. It is precisely this impulse about which Benedict warns can occur in any religion, but modern Muslims show that they are by far the widest purveyors of this impulse.

Unfortunately, the Muslims are not the only people who missed the point. The New York Times editorial board joins Muslims in demanding an apology and an end to criticism of Islam:

There is more than enough religious anger in the world. So it is particularly disturbing that Pope Benedict XVI has insulted Muslims, quoting a 14th-century description of Islam as “evil and inhuman.” ...

Muslim leaders the world over have demanded apologies and threatened to recall their ambassadors from the Vatican, warning that the pope’s words dangerously reinforce a false and biased view of Islam. For many Muslims, holy war — jihad — is a spiritual struggle, and not a call to violence. And they denounce its perversion by extremists, who use jihad to justify murder and terrorism.

The Vatican issued a statement saying that Benedict meant no offense and in fact desired dialogue.

The Times missed the point, too. They aren't satisfied with the explanation offered by the Vatican. They want a "deep and persuasive apology" for Benedict's temerity in criticizing the use of violence and rejection of reason in religion, and specifically using a six-hundred-year-old quote that insulted people who regularly insult everyone else, including other Muslims. The Times counsels surrender to the threats and the violence.

Benedict opposes both. That's the real threat behind the Pope's speech, and don't think the radical Muslims don't understand it.

I SUPPORT THE POPE

By Michelle Malkin

Target of jihad

It all seems so familiar, doesn't it (via Yahoo.com):

A Palestinian from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade attends a rally in Gaza to protest against remarks regarding Islam made by Pope Benedict XVI September 15, 2006. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA)

Pakistani Muslims chant slogans to condemn Pope Benedict XVI for making what they regard as 'derogatory' comments about Islam, during a rally in Multan September 15, 2006. (Asim Tanveer/Reuters)

Muslim students burn an effigy of Pope Benedict XVI at a protest rally in Allahabad, India, Friday, Sept. 15, 2006. A growing chorus of Muslim leaders has called on the Pope to apologize for the alleged derogatory comments made by him about Islam. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

There is always an insult to be manufactured. There are always fists and machetes and rifles to be raised. There are always flags and effigies and embassies to be burned. There are always throats and heads to be claimed:

Reader S. writes:

I'm a grad student in Theology at a Catholic seminary here in the U.S. and a long-time reader of your blog.

The media is ignoring the substance of Pope Benedict's remark while letting Muslims appear to be victims. Islam was indeed spread by violence. Denying that is like denying the holocaust. That wasn't the point of what the Pope was saying. In the address scientists on the role of faith and reason in human experience, the Pope recounts a debate between a Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an "educated Persian." Here I quote directly from his address :

Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he [the Byzantine emperor] says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".

The Muslims clearly have no response to this, because their religion was spread by the sword, and we can see it is spread so still by the forced conversions of Steve Centani and his camera operator. But underlying this is a theological point about the nature of God and his relationship with mankind that the Muslims also have no appropriate response for. The Pope continues:

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor [of the text where this debate appears], Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

God can't be God if he is unreasonable, because if He is unreasonable then he has some kind of deficiency or imperfection. Imperfection is incompatible with His divine nature. He can't transcend reason because perfect reason is also integral to His nature as God. God can't command us to practice idolatry, as the Muslim theologian Ibn Hazn said, because this would be totally incompatible with His nature. God can't be untrue to Himself - He doesn't have such human failings!

The Muslims can't justify the unreasonableness of violence by saying God transcends reason. The result of their beliefs is to make God in the image of their own leaders who spread Islam by any means possible in order to subjugate as many as possible under their brutal power.

But just as the Cartoon Rage wasn't merely about the cartoons, the jihadists' new Pope Rage isn't merely about his comments. It's a continuation of "unfinished business." The jihadists have had it in for the papacy for years. From a 2002 London Times article on the plot to assassinate the late Pope John Paul II:

The Pope has been told that the al-Qaeda terrorists who masterminded the September 11 attacks in the United States planned to assassinate him during his tour of the Philippines.

The attack never took place because the Pope called off the visit in 1999 through ill-health.

...Vatican officials declined to comment yesterday on reports of the latest plan to kill the Pope, but anti- terrorism experts in Italy said that there had been “repeated warnings” of an al-Qaeda attack on the Pope or on a “symbolic Vatican target” and that security had been intensified in and around St Peter’s Square, with metal detectors introduced for mass gatherings such as the Pope’s weekly audience.

Vatican-watchers said that although an abortive plot in 1995 in the Philippines against the Pope’s life was known about, the 1999 attempt had not been made public before.

[Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's] plan to kill the Pope was put together at the same time as he was enlisting al-Qaeda recruits around South-East Asia, many of whom were sent to Afghanistan for training in specialist techniques, including explosives and assassination.

The first attempt on the Pope’s life was to have been made in January 1995 as he addressed a crowd of several hundred thousand in a park in Manila. Documents show how Mohammed considered planting a pipe bomb and using snipers near the altar where the Pope was to say Mass. The idea was not only to kill the Pope and those standing closest to him, but also to cause pandemonium in the park by then ordering snipers to shoot randomly at those fleeing the carnage.

To fanatics such as Mohammed, the Pope is as great an enemy and obstacle to their vision of a global jihad as the US President.

This assassination plot had, though, to be scrapped after a clumsy accident by Ramzi Youssef, his nephew, who prematurely detonated an explosive device in his flat in Manila. These two men are said by the FBI to have been instrumental in planning the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. They had the idea of hijacking aircraft and turning them into flying bombs. Both were also involved in the lorry bomb attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993.

Although his nephew was arrested soon after the abortive papal bomb plot in 1995, Mohammed escaped.

He returned to the Philippines intent on reviving the assassination plot against the Pope, but the Pope cancelled his trip to Manila at the last minute.

Security experts say that there is a danger that Mohammed [ed.: since captured and now at Gitmo] will try again. Dr Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert and author of the book Inside al- Qaeda, is quoted as saying: “They (al-Qaeda) often return to complete unfinished business. When they didn’t destroy the World Trade Centre first time around, they came back to finish it off. That is how it was with the Pope in the Philippines.”

Pope Benedict's November trip to Turkey is now in jeopardy, but calling it off will neither make him or Catholics any safer nor end the new manufactured outrage by the jihadists. Via Time:

Pope Benedict XIV's controversial comments about Islam have already ignited a firestorm of criticism in the Muslim world, but it may end up costing the Vatican more than just its reputation. A top Catholic Church official inside Turkey says the polemics following Benedict XVI's comments about Islam may cause the cancellation of his November visit to the majority Muslim country, which is nevertheless governed on secular principles.

"At this point, I don't know if the trip will happen," Mons. Luigi Padovese, the Vicar Apostolic in Anatolia, the Church's representative for what amounts to the eastern half of Turkey, told TIME. "There are leading politicians, members of the ruling parties, a top minister and others who have expressed a negative opinion on the visit." Padovese blamed the outcry on voices in the Turkish press whom he described as "nationalist, Islamist and anti-Christian," and said the Pope's intention was not to offend anyone. "I don't know if anyone even read the Pope's discourse," Padovese said. "These elements tossed out the bait, and others took it."

The sharpest rebuke inside Turkey came from Salih Kapusuz, the deputy leader of the ruling Justice and Development, or AK Party, who said that Benedict would go down in history "in the same category as leaders such as (Benito) Mussolini and (Adolf) Hitler." He told the state-owned Anatolia news agency that Benedict's comments were a deliberate attempt to "revive the mentality of the Crusades: He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages." He added that Benedict "is a poor thing that has not benefitted from the spirit of reform in the Christian world..."

Asked if the Turkish authorities had made any specific requests of the Holy See, Padovese said that the only demands have come from the press. "There is a request that the Pope apologizes for what he said," says Padovese. "But I read into this request a kind of triumphalism — to see the Church and Christians and the Pope say out loud that they were wrong." Padovese spoke by phone from the parish in the Black Sea coastal city of Trebizond, where in February Father Andrea Santoro was killed by a young Muslim man in an apparently religiously-motivated attack. Two other Catholic clergy members have been the victims of attacks in Turkey over the past several months.

And there will be more.

Guess what's on the best-seller list in "moderate" Turkey right now? Via AllahPundit and Gerald Augustinus:

It's a hot-selling novel titled Papa’ya suikast (”Attack on the Pope”) which predicts that Pope Benedict will be assassinated in Istanbul.

Which side will the West--and moderate Muslims--stand on?

Who will stand up and say without equivocation:

"I support the Pope."

SENATOR POODLE SHOULD STOP YAPPING!

Kerry Accuses Bush of Cutting & Running in Afghanistan

Jean Francois Kerry made another totally dippy statement today, accusing the Bush administration of cutting and running in Afghanistan. Here’s a portion of his statement:

“The administration’s Afghanistan policy defines cut and run,” Kerry said in remarks prepared for delivery at Howard University on Thursday. “Cut and run while the Taliban-led insurgency is running amok across entire regions of the country. Cut and run while Osama bin Laden and his henchmen hide and plot in a lawless no-man’s land.”

Sen. Kerry should read the newspapers before making such a stupid comment. The Taliban are trying to mount a comeback of sorts but NATO troops (aka the Allies) keep killing them, according to this CBS article:

An Associated Press reporter who traveled to Pashmul saw warplanes drop five bombs within about 20 minutes on orchards where militants were believed to be hiding. Explosions echoed across grape and pomegranate fields and clouds of dust rose amid the greenery and dried-mud houses of the Panjwayi district, which is about 12 miles from Kandahar city.
Operation Medusa was launched Saturday to flush out Taliban fighters from Panjwayi and neighboring Zhari district. NATO spokesman Maj. Scott Lundy said alliance and Afghan troops had gained ground and disrupted the militants’ command system so guerrillas were moving in confusion. Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said Taliban casualties were high, but could not confirm the NATO report of more than 200 dead.
A NATO statement said its figure was derived from “surveillance and reconnaissance assets operating in Panjwayi and Zhari districts, as well as information reported by various Afghan officials and citizens living nearby.” About 80 other suspected Taliban were arrested by Afghan police and a further 180 fled the area, it said.

I’m betting that the Taliban are wishing that the allies would cut and run. They’re SOL, though, because Democrats don’t occupy the White House.

It’s also worth noting that his statement today is a signal that Kerry wants to run for president again. Couple that statement with his interview with the Washington Examiner, where he said that he was “prepared to kick [the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth] ass from one end of America to the other” and you get the impression that he’s running again.

What this means to me is that Kerry still thinks of himself in presidential terms even though most people don’t take him seriously. How can you take him seriously when he makes statements like that? How can people take him seriously when he can’t even get the most elemental facts right?