THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume IX, Issue # 239, December 20, 2007
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
JIHAD & THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES -- AN ASSESSMENT:
PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES & THE "FORBIDDEN WORD"
A REPORT ON ROBERT SPENCER'S MEF BRIEFING
By Winfield Myers
THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY & THE GLOBAL JIHAD BEING WAGED BY THE ISLAMISTS AGAINST AMERICA & WESTERN
CIVILIZATION: WHY MOST PRESIDENTIAL CONTENDERS IN AMERICA'S TWO MAJOR POLITICAL PARTIES GO TO
GREAT LENGTHS TO AVOID COMMENTING ON THE WORLDWIDE ISLAMIC JIHAD, WHILE BLAMING THE U.S.A. & THE WEST
FOR THE ACTS OF TERRORISM COMMITTED BY THE ISLAMISTS AGAINST OUR NATION & ITS ALLIES -- WHY "JIHAD" IS
THE FORBIDDEN WORD IN THE ONGOING U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN -- THE LACK OF COURAGE & WEAKNESS OF
LEADERSHIP ON THE PART OF ASPIRANTS TO THE U.S. PRESIDENCY -- THEIR FAILURE TO NAME OUR DEADLY ISLAMIST
ENEMY & DEAL REALISTICALLY WITH THE VITAL ISSUES OF AMERICAN FOREIGN & NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY
FULL STORY:
Whether from a desire to avoid being labeled as racist, from cowardice when confronted with the public relations machine,
or propaganda juggernaut, that is the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), or from slanted coverage in the
Liberal Leftist mainstream media, U.S. presidential candidates of both major political parties take great pains to avoid
commenting on jihad (Islamic holy war), even as they blame the West for terrorist acts committed against it, according to
noted expert on Islam, Robert Spencer.
Mr. Spencer, who runs the website Jihad Watch and is author of seven books, most recently Religion of Peace? Why
Christianity Is and Islam Isn't, called jihad "the forbidden word" in the ongoing U.S. presidential campaign.
Speaking on Tuesday, December 11, 2007, at a Center City luncheon sponsored by the Middle East Forum, a
Philadelphia-based think tank headed by Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes, Mr. Spencer lamented that the majority of
candidates in both major parties go to great lengths to avoid naming America's enemies, lest, by stating that a link exists
between terrorism and Islam, they find themselves pummeled for their frankness.
The dilemma, said Mr. Spencer, is that, while any presidential candidate would want to avoid being called a racist, anyone
speaking the truth on this matter will most certainly find himself tarred with that term. When Republican presidential
candidate Mitt Romney used the word "jihad" in a television campaign commercial, Saturday Night Live parodied
it simply by inserting a laugh track into the otherwise unaltered tape, as if using the term "jihad" was self-evidently absurd.
The Wall Street Journal attacked Romney in a news article for speaking the unspeakable.
Moreover, CAIR's media guide warns that some unnamed non-Muslim writers suggest the Quran teaches violence.
Yet, said Mr. Spencer, none other than Osama bin Laden quoted Quranic verses that call for violence against non-Muslims
in his latest video, as did, on many occasions, the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. "There are hundreds of passages in the
Quran and the Hadiths [commentaries on the Quran] that call for violence," Mr. Spencer said, and refusing
to speak of this historical fact puts the West "at a disadvantage in understanding the enemy in order to defeat them."
Although denial on this matter does presidential candidates no good, most of them act as if it does, Mr. Spencer argued.
But to voluntarily refuse to examine the causes of the global war against the U.S.A. and the West is self-defeating, he said,
adding that, while Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney are more willing to identity our enemies by name than other
candidates, every candidate needs to face the problem more fully. Yet, some voters, Mr. Spencer said, first adopt a policy
toward terrorists and then ignore facts that contradict it. "No number of future terror attacks will shake these peoples'
beliefs that Islam is a religion of peace," he said, adding that such Americans prefer to flock to candidates who won't
address the real issues.
Stating that "cowardice plays a tremendous role" in the problem, Mr. Spencer said that the media share much of the blame
for our silence in the face of the most dangerous threat of our time. He recounted the unwillingness of most American
media to show the Danish cartoons of Muhammad that caused worldwide rioting among some Muslims when they
appeared in a Danish newspaper in September, 2005. Mr. Spencer said that, "essential to a free press and a free society, is
the right to offend and to be offended." But, in the wake of the rioting, in newsrooms "the test became, could the Muslims
in Denmark be offended?" When Western papers said they didn't want to offend Muslims by reprinting the cartoons, they
proved themselves politically correct cowards, Mr. Spencer said.
A corollary of presidential candidates' care not to give offense is that they behave and speak as if terrorism was the fault of
the West (America, Israel, and Europe), rather than the violent, barbaric, and criminal actions of culpable and treacherous
enemy Muslims in their war against the West. Presidential candidates will recite a litany of Western sins — the CIA's overthrow of
Mohammad Mosaddeq of Iran in 1953, America's support for Israel, or Abu Ghraib — as explanations for Islamic terrorist
acts. The implication, Mr. Spencer said, was that, with the proper initiatives on the part of the West, "the problem will go
away," as if it's "something we can fix." Such an approach fails to grasp that the problem stems from "ideological
imperatives within Islam," Mr. Spencer added.
Those imperatives mean that, from Indonesia to America, there is a movement that appeals to peaceful Muslims to become
exponents of "pure Islam" and calls on them to "rise up and wage war to subjugate unbelievers under Islam," Mr. Spencer
said. While it's true that most Muslims are not involved with this movement, it's also true that "they're not objecting to it,
either."
Mr. Spencer said that, while there are indeed moderate Muslims, there is no moderate Islam, which is "not a sect or a school
of jurisprudence," since every school of Islam teaches warfare and subjugation. There exists, he said, a "huge spread of
beliefs within Islam, just as there is with Jews and Christians." According to Spencer, "the Islamic world is not hermetically
sealed against Western influence."
But Mr. Spencer warned against wishing for a widespread "Reformation" in Islam modeled on what the Christian West
experienced in the Sixteenth Century under the leadership of Martin Luther and others. A rallying cry of that movement was
a return to what the reformers believed was a purer, more ancient form of Christianity. Yet, in Islam, that has already
happened under the leadership of the Eighteenth Century writer Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab, the founder of the
Wahhabi sect of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. The severity of this strain rests on reliance on the earliest works of Islam,
and yet, Mr. Spencer said, the ancient works of Islam are more violent than later works, which Wahhabis, following the
movement's founder, regard as mere "accretions."
Mr. Spencer closed with a few public policy prescriptions. He said that the U.S. government should undertake a new "Manhattan
Project" to find alternative energy sources by putting the best brains in the nation to work on the problem. He also argued
some of America's massive foreign aid budget is misspent, saying that, in particular, we should tie aid to Egypt and Pakistan
to their willingness to work against the jihadists in their countries. Otherwise, Mr. Spencer said, "we're financing our own
destruction."
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
American Politics & Political Competition:
Elections, PACs, & Political Parties
The American Political System:
Politics & Government in the U.S.A.
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
International Politics & World Disorder:
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Winfield Myers is Director of Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.
Robert Spencer is the author of two New York Times bestsellers on Islamic topics and Director of Jihad Watch, a
project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. An expert on Islamic theology, law, history, jihad and terrorism, he has
appeared on virtually all the major television and radio news networks and has given seminars for the U.S. military, the
U.S. State Department, and the German government. Mr. Spencer addressed the Middle East Forum on November 13,
2007, in New York City and on December 11, 2007, in Philadelphia.
The foregoing article by Winfield Myers, originally published in The Bulletin, December 17, 2007, is a report on
Robert Spencer's briefing presented to the the Middle East Forum at its December 11 meeting in Philadelphia, and can
be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum.
The Middle East Forum is a think tank which seeks to define and promote American interests in the Middle East,
defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam, working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel,
improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's
energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering
the Iranian threat.
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
December 19, 2007
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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