So, You Want To Sit This Election Out?

The American Election and Islam
by Dean

By Phyllis Chesler
Pajamas Media
Friday, February 08, 2008

This coming American election is not just about universal health care—it is also about the survival of the free world as we have come to know it. And therefore, it is also about Islam.

If we say we are for women’s rights or for human rights, then a candidate’s gender, skin-color, or age may not be as important as their ideas about Islam.

Do our candidates understand that we are really at war and that we cannot talk our way out of it? That charm, even of the spellbinding variety, is not enough, nor can we “take a meeting,” Hollywood-style, or Tammany-Hall style, to set things right. Nor is simple, old-fashioned heroics the answer to the kind of Orwellian propaganda and guerilla-terrorism that America and our allies will continue to confront in the 21st century.

Does our next President understand that we have to fight with everything we have and risk losing it all in order to hold onto any of it?

Read the story here.


Why the West Is Best
My response to Tariq Ramadan, by Ibn Warraq

Last October, I participated in a debate in London, hosted by Intelligence Squared, to consider the motion, “We should not be reluctant to assert the superiority of Western values.” Muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan, among others, spoke against the motion; I spoke in favor, focusing on the vast disparities in freedom, human rights, and tolerance between Western and Islamic societies.

Here, condensed somewhat, is the case that I made.



The Rowan Williams Comments: When Christian Leaders Promote
Dhimmitude











Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams says its time to bring Sharia law to Britain. Aside from Hindus, Christians, Jews, atheists, artists, homosexuals, drinkers, intellectuals and women, we can't possibly imagine anyone objecting to such a sensible suggestion.

Dhimmitude is the condition of second class citizenship that Christians and other minorities experience when living under countries with Islamic rule. This near slavery-like condition has been amply described and documented by many. Two volumes by Bat Ye’or should be consulted here: The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985), and, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001.)

It is not a condition any Christian should wish upon another. Yet that appears to be exactly what the Angelican Archbishop of Canterbury has just done. Dr Rowan Williams has just announced that he expects at least some elements of sharia law to be adopted in the UK. He said the UK had to “face up to the fact” that some citizens do not relate to the British legal system, and argued that officially sanctioning Sharia law – in the areas of marriage and divorce, for example - would improve community relations.There are many problems with the idea of allowing sharia law to co-exist in a democratic nation. It seems rather incredible that the Archbishop is either unaware of these major problems, or does not consider them to be much of an obstacle.

Let me examine just a few of the major shortcomings here.

Sitting out this election is exactly what our enemies are counting on. The stakes are high, perhaps higher than at any time in our history. So choose wisely, and if you decide to sit this election out don't whine over what could follow.

Think about it. This isn't about feelings.

Dean