APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND REGENSBURG
(SEPTEMBER 9-14, 2006)
MEETING WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE
LECTURE OF THE HOLY FATHER
Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg
Tuesday, 12 September 2006
Faith, Reason and the University
Memories and Reflections
Your Eminences, Your Magnificences, Your Excellencies,
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves. We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas - something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned - the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience. The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.
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 presumably 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 those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.
In the seventh conversation (*4V8,>4H - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "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". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (F×< 8`(T) 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 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.
At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the 8`(@H". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, F×< 8`(T, with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.
In point of fact, this rapprochement had been going on for some time. The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and simply declares "I am", already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy. Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the words uttered at the burning bush: "I am". This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature. Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense really less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God's nature.
In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God's voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazn and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions. As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which - as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated - unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language. God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love, as Saint Paul says, "transcends" knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is Logos. Consequently, Christian worship is, again to quote Paul - "8@(46¬ 8"JD,\"", worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 12:1).
This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history - it is an event which concerns us even today. Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.
The thesis that the critically purified Greek heritage forms an integral part of Christian faith has been countered by the call for a dehellenization of Christianity - a call which has more and more dominated theological discussions since the beginning of the modern age. Viewed more closely, three stages can be observed in the programme of dehellenization: although interconnected, they are clearly distinct from one another in their motivations and objectives.
Dehellenization first emerges in connection with the postulates of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Looking at the tradition of scholastic theology, the Reformers thought they were confronted with a faith system totally conditioned by philosophy, that is to say an articulation of the faith based on an alien system of thought. As a result, faith no longer appeared as a living historical Word but as one element of an overarching philosophical system. The principle of sola scriptura, on the other hand, sought faith in its pure, primordial form, as originally found in the biblical Word. Metaphysics appeared as a premise derived from another source, from which faith had to be liberated in order to become once more fully itself. When Kant stated that he needed to set thinking aside in order to make room for faith, he carried this programme forward with a radicalism that the Reformers could never have foreseen. He thus anchored faith exclusively in practical reason, denying it access to reality as a whole.
The liberal theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenization, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative. When I was a student, and in the early years of my teaching, this programme was highly influential in Catholic theology too. It took as its point of departure Pascal's distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In my inaugural lecture at Bonn in 1959, I tried to address the issue, and I do not intend to repeat here what I said on that occasion, but I would like to describe at least briefly what was new about this second stage of dehellenization. Harnack's central idea was to return simply to the man Jesus and to his simple message, underneath the accretions of theology and indeed of hellenization: this simple message was seen as the culmination of the religious development of humanity. Jesus was said to have put an end to worship in favour of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message. Fundamentally, Harnack's goal was to bring Christianity back into harmony with modern reason, liberating it, that is to say, from seemingly philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ's divinity and the triune God. In this sense, historical-critical exegesis of the New Testament, as he saw it, restored to theology its place within the university: theology, for Harnack, is something essentially historical and therefore strictly scientific. What it is able to say critically about Jesus is, so to speak, an expression of practical reason and consequently it can take its rightful place within the university. Behind this thinking lies the modern self-limitation of reason, classically expressed in Kant's "Critiques", but in the meantime further radicalized by the impact of the natural sciences. This modern concept of reason is based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology. On the one hand it presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, its intrinsic rationality, which makes it possible to understand how matter works and use it efficiently: this basic premise is, so to speak, the Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature. On the other hand, there is nature's capacity to be exploited for our purposes, and here only the possibility of verification or falsification through experimentation can yield ultimate certainty. The weight between the two poles can, depending on the circumstances, shift from one side to the other. As strongly positivistic a thinker as J. Monod has declared himself a convinced Platonist/Cartesian.
This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity. A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.
I will return to this problem later. In the meantime, it must be observed that from this standpoint any attempt to maintain theology's claim to be "scientific" would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self. But we must say more: if science as a whole is this and this alone, then it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by "science", so understood, and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective. The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective "conscience" becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical. In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter. This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.
Before I draw the conclusions to which all this has been leading, I must briefly refer to the third stage of dehellenization, which is now in progress. In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a preliminary inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures. The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux. This thesis is not only false; it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed. True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.
And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is - as you yourself mentioned, Magnificent Rector - the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.
Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought - to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss". The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.
NOTE: The Holy Father intends to supply a subsequent version of this text, complete with footnotes. The present text must therefore be considered provisional.
© Copyright 2006 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Muslims blast pope's Islam speech
Muslims blast pope's Islam speech
POSTED: 2250 GMT (0650 HKT), September 14, 2006
CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) -- Muslim leaders have condemned Pope Benedict over comments he made about Islam on a visit to Germany and demanded he apologize.
The head of the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood called on Islamic countries to threaten to break off relations with the Vatican unless the pontiff withdrew his remarks.
And a top religious figure in Turkey suggested the pope should reconsider a trip he was planning to Turkey later this year.
The Vatican issued a statement to say the Pope had never meant to offend Islam.
In his speech at the University of Regensburg on Tuesday, Benedict quoted criticism of Islam and the Prophet Mohammad by 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who wrote that everything Mohammad brought was evil and inhuman, "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
Benedict, who used the terms "jihad" and "holy war", repeatedly quoted Manuel's argument that spreading the faith through violence was unreasonable, adding: "Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul."
The head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Mahdi Akef, whose organization is one of the oldest, largest and most influential in the Arab world, said the pope "aroused the anger of the whole Islamic world and strengthened the argument of those who say that the West is hostile to everything Islamic."
"The general guide (Akef) expressed his surprise that such comments should come from someone who sits at the summit of the Catholic Church and who has an influence over public opinion in the West," a statement on the Muslim Brotherhood's official Web site, www.ikhwanonline.com, said.
The Vatican press office said in a statement the pope had not intended to carry out an in-depth study of jihad (holy war) and Muslim thinking about it, "even less to offend the sensitivity of the Muslim faithful."
"It is clear that the Holy Father's intention is to cultivate a position of respect and dialogue towards other religions and cultures, and that clearly includes Islam," the statement by chief Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said.
He said a careful reading of the pope's lecture would show that "what really matters to the Holy Father is a clear and radical rejection of religious motives for violence."
In Turkey, the Anatolian state news agency quoted Ali Bardakoglu, the head of Ankara's Directorate General for Religious Affairs, as describing the pope's words as "extremely regrettable".
"I do not see any use in somebody visiting the Islamic world who thinks in this way about the holy prophet of Islam. He should first rid himself of feelings of hate," NTV's Web site quoted Bardakoglu as saying.
Bardakoglu, whose directorate controls all imams in Turkey and sends prayer leaders to Turkish communities abroad, recalled atrocities committed by Roman Catholic Crusaders during the Middle Ages in the name of their faith against Orthodox Christians and Jews as well as Muslims.
Benedict is due to visit Turkey, an avowedly secular state whose population is predominantly Muslim, in November at the invitation of President Ahmet Necdet Sezer.
In Qatar, prominent Muslim scholar Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi rejected the pope's comments and said Islam was a religion of peace and reason.
"Muslims have the right to be angry and hurt by these comments from the highest cleric in Christianity," Qaradawi told Al Jazeera television. "We ask the pope to apologize to the Muslim nation for insulting its religion, its prophet and its beliefs."
Copyright 2006 Reuters.
POSTED: 2250 GMT (0650 HKT), September 14, 2006
CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) -- Muslim leaders have condemned Pope Benedict over comments he made about Islam on a visit to Germany and demanded he apologize.
The head of the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood called on Islamic countries to threaten to break off relations with the Vatican unless the pontiff withdrew his remarks.
And a top religious figure in Turkey suggested the pope should reconsider a trip he was planning to Turkey later this year.
The Vatican issued a statement to say the Pope had never meant to offend Islam.
In his speech at the University of Regensburg on Tuesday, Benedict quoted criticism of Islam and the Prophet Mohammad by 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who wrote that everything Mohammad brought was evil and inhuman, "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
Benedict, who used the terms "jihad" and "holy war", repeatedly quoted Manuel's argument that spreading the faith through violence was unreasonable, adding: "Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul."
The head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Mahdi Akef, whose organization is one of the oldest, largest and most influential in the Arab world, said the pope "aroused the anger of the whole Islamic world and strengthened the argument of those who say that the West is hostile to everything Islamic."
"The general guide (Akef) expressed his surprise that such comments should come from someone who sits at the summit of the Catholic Church and who has an influence over public opinion in the West," a statement on the Muslim Brotherhood's official Web site, www.ikhwanonline.com, said.
The Vatican press office said in a statement the pope had not intended to carry out an in-depth study of jihad (holy war) and Muslim thinking about it, "even less to offend the sensitivity of the Muslim faithful."
"It is clear that the Holy Father's intention is to cultivate a position of respect and dialogue towards other religions and cultures, and that clearly includes Islam," the statement by chief Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said.
He said a careful reading of the pope's lecture would show that "what really matters to the Holy Father is a clear and radical rejection of religious motives for violence."
In Turkey, the Anatolian state news agency quoted Ali Bardakoglu, the head of Ankara's Directorate General for Religious Affairs, as describing the pope's words as "extremely regrettable".
"I do not see any use in somebody visiting the Islamic world who thinks in this way about the holy prophet of Islam. He should first rid himself of feelings of hate," NTV's Web site quoted Bardakoglu as saying.
Bardakoglu, whose directorate controls all imams in Turkey and sends prayer leaders to Turkish communities abroad, recalled atrocities committed by Roman Catholic Crusaders during the Middle Ages in the name of their faith against Orthodox Christians and Jews as well as Muslims.
Benedict is due to visit Turkey, an avowedly secular state whose population is predominantly Muslim, in November at the invitation of President Ahmet Necdet Sezer.
In Qatar, prominent Muslim scholar Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi rejected the pope's comments and said Islam was a religion of peace and reason.
"Muslims have the right to be angry and hurt by these comments from the highest cleric in Christianity," Qaradawi told Al Jazeera television. "We ask the pope to apologize to the Muslim nation for insulting its religion, its prophet and its beliefs."
Copyright 2006 Reuters.
Pope's speech stirs Muslim anger
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5346480.stm
Pope's speech stirs Muslim anger
The Pope's comments came on a visit to Germany
Muslim religious leaders have accused Pope Benedict XVI of quoting anti-Islamic remarks during a speech at a German university this week.
Questioning the concept of holy war, he quoted a 14th-Century Christian emperor who said Muhammad had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things.
A senior Pakistani Islamic scholar, Javed Ahmed Gamdi, said jihad was not about spreading Islam with the sword.
Turkey's top religious official asked for an apology for the "hostile" words.
In Indian-administered Kashmir, police seized copies of newspapers which reported the Pope's comments to prevent any tension.
A Vatican spokesman, Father Frederico Lombardi, said he did not believe the Pope's comments were meant as a harsh criticism of Islam.
'Abhorrent'
In his speech at Regensburg University, the German-born pontiff explored the historical and philosophical differences between Islam and Christianity and the relationship between violence and faith.
Stressing that they were not his own words, he quoted Emperor Manual II Paleologos of Byzantine, the Orthodox Christian empire which had its capital in what is now the Turkish city of Istanbul.
The emperors words were, he said: "Show me just what Muhammad 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."
Benedict said "I quote" twice to stress the words were not his and added that violence was "incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul".
The Pope is due to visit Turkey in November and the Turkish response was swift and strong, the BBC's Sarah Rainsford reports from Istanbul.
Religious leader Ali Badda Kolu said the Pope's comments represented what he called an "abhorrent, hostile and prejudiced point of view".
Whilst Muslims might express their criticism of Islam and of Christianity, he argued, they would never defame the Holy Bible or Jesus Christ.
He said he hoped the Pope's speech did not reflect "hatred in his heart" against Islam.
Many Turks see Benedict as a Turkophobe and commentators call his words just before the holy month of Ramadan "ill-timed and ill-conceived", our correspondent adds.
Pope's speech stirs Muslim anger
The Pope's comments came on a visit to Germany
Muslim religious leaders have accused Pope Benedict XVI of quoting anti-Islamic remarks during a speech at a German university this week.
Questioning the concept of holy war, he quoted a 14th-Century Christian emperor who said Muhammad had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things.
A senior Pakistani Islamic scholar, Javed Ahmed Gamdi, said jihad was not about spreading Islam with the sword.
Turkey's top religious official asked for an apology for the "hostile" words.
In Indian-administered Kashmir, police seized copies of newspapers which reported the Pope's comments to prevent any tension.
A Vatican spokesman, Father Frederico Lombardi, said he did not believe the Pope's comments were meant as a harsh criticism of Islam.
'Abhorrent'
In his speech at Regensburg University, the German-born pontiff explored the historical and philosophical differences between Islam and Christianity and the relationship between violence and faith.
Stressing that they were not his own words, he quoted Emperor Manual II Paleologos of Byzantine, the Orthodox Christian empire which had its capital in what is now the Turkish city of Istanbul.
The emperors words were, he said: "Show me just what Muhammad 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."
Benedict said "I quote" twice to stress the words were not his and added that violence was "incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul".
The Pope is due to visit Turkey in November and the Turkish response was swift and strong, the BBC's Sarah Rainsford reports from Istanbul.
Religious leader Ali Badda Kolu said the Pope's comments represented what he called an "abhorrent, hostile and prejudiced point of view".
Whilst Muslims might express their criticism of Islam and of Christianity, he argued, they would never defame the Holy Bible or Jesus Christ.
He said he hoped the Pope's speech did not reflect "hatred in his heart" against Islam.
Many Turks see Benedict as a Turkophobe and commentators call his words just before the holy month of Ramadan "ill-timed and ill-conceived", our correspondent adds.
Ex-aides accused of engineering Mahathir's defeat
Ex-aides accused of engineering Mahathir's defeat
At a meeting, they allegedly told voters not to back the former PM
By Reme Ahmad
The Straits Times, 13 Sept 2006
THREE former top aides of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad have come under fire for holding a meeting to deny him victory in the recent election in his Kubang Pasu Umno division.
Umno chiefs have said there was no campaigning to ensure the former premier lost in last Saturday's election, but his supporters said the meeting with delegates held at Kelab Darul Aman in Kedah served to stab him in the back.
Datuk Saad Man, who was Tun Mahathir's political secretary; Datuk Hanafi Ramli, former deputy chief of the Kubang Pasu Umno division; and former Kedah Menteri Besar (chief minister) Osman Aroff allegedly persuaded voters not to back the former prime minister at the gathering.
'There was a meeting and the leaders reminded the voters not to pick Dr Mahathir,' said a Kedah-based source yesterday.
News of the clubhouse caucus - and allegations that cash was paid to those who attended - has added fuel to arguments about what really caused Tun Dr Mahathir's humiliating defeat.
The meeting is said to have been held on Friday evening and attended by about half of the 500 divisional voters.
The pleas of the three men had a decisive influence on the election's outcome, the former premier's supporters alleged.
The three leaders were not available for comment yesterday.
Tun Dr Mahathir was chief of the Kubang Pasu Umno division for 26 years; he was also its Member of Parliament.
Members of the Kubang Pasu division did not pick the former premier as one of their seven delegates to attend the party's annual assembly in November.
The mainstream media yesterday played up comments by party leaders who said Tun Dr Mahathir must produce proof that bribes were paid to defeat him, as well as make a formal complaint about it.
They included Umno Supreme Council member Nazri Aziz, who said he doubted the division members would 'stoop so low as to accept a RM200 bribe just to ensure Dr Mahathir would not get elected'. RM200 is about S$86.
'I don't think it's right. If it is true, then make a report,' he said on Tuesday.
These sentiments were echoed by Kubang Pasu Umno division chief Johari Baharom and Umno Youth chief Hishammuddin Tun Hussein.
At the news conference on Monday when he said that cash had been paid out by those against him, Tun Dr Mahathir also referred to the clubhouse meeting.
He said his three former lieutenants had in speeches at the meeting claimed they did not get anything under his administration.
'Osman Aroff, the former Menteri Besar, said in his speech I did not give him anything. I don't know what he wanted from me when I was PM, but he was made Menteri Besar so what else does he want?' Tun Dr Mahathir said.
He also said Datuk Hanafi cannot complain because he was appointed chairman of the Tourism Promotion Board.
'And another person was Saad Man. He campaigned against me although he is not an Umno member any more,' he added.
On their part, Umno chiefs have accused the pro-Mahathir camp of presenting Kubang Pasu voters with a free newspaper and VCDs promoting the former premier's views.
At a meeting, they allegedly told voters not to back the former PM
By Reme Ahmad
The Straits Times, 13 Sept 2006
THREE former top aides of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad have come under fire for holding a meeting to deny him victory in the recent election in his Kubang Pasu Umno division.
Umno chiefs have said there was no campaigning to ensure the former premier lost in last Saturday's election, but his supporters said the meeting with delegates held at Kelab Darul Aman in Kedah served to stab him in the back.
Datuk Saad Man, who was Tun Mahathir's political secretary; Datuk Hanafi Ramli, former deputy chief of the Kubang Pasu Umno division; and former Kedah Menteri Besar (chief minister) Osman Aroff allegedly persuaded voters not to back the former prime minister at the gathering.
'There was a meeting and the leaders reminded the voters not to pick Dr Mahathir,' said a Kedah-based source yesterday.
News of the clubhouse caucus - and allegations that cash was paid to those who attended - has added fuel to arguments about what really caused Tun Dr Mahathir's humiliating defeat.
The meeting is said to have been held on Friday evening and attended by about half of the 500 divisional voters.
The pleas of the three men had a decisive influence on the election's outcome, the former premier's supporters alleged.
The three leaders were not available for comment yesterday.
Tun Dr Mahathir was chief of the Kubang Pasu Umno division for 26 years; he was also its Member of Parliament.
Members of the Kubang Pasu division did not pick the former premier as one of their seven delegates to attend the party's annual assembly in November.
The mainstream media yesterday played up comments by party leaders who said Tun Dr Mahathir must produce proof that bribes were paid to defeat him, as well as make a formal complaint about it.
They included Umno Supreme Council member Nazri Aziz, who said he doubted the division members would 'stoop so low as to accept a RM200 bribe just to ensure Dr Mahathir would not get elected'. RM200 is about S$86.
'I don't think it's right. If it is true, then make a report,' he said on Tuesday.
These sentiments were echoed by Kubang Pasu Umno division chief Johari Baharom and Umno Youth chief Hishammuddin Tun Hussein.
At the news conference on Monday when he said that cash had been paid out by those against him, Tun Dr Mahathir also referred to the clubhouse meeting.
He said his three former lieutenants had in speeches at the meeting claimed they did not get anything under his administration.
'Osman Aroff, the former Menteri Besar, said in his speech I did not give him anything. I don't know what he wanted from me when I was PM, but he was made Menteri Besar so what else does he want?' Tun Dr Mahathir said.
He also said Datuk Hanafi cannot complain because he was appointed chairman of the Tourism Promotion Board.
'And another person was Saad Man. He campaigned against me although he is not an Umno member any more,' he added.
On their part, Umno chiefs have accused the pro-Mahathir camp of presenting Kubang Pasu voters with a free newspaper and VCDs promoting the former premier's views.
Lagi Mengenai Oriana Fallaci
Fallaci: Warrior in the Cause of Human Freedom
By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com November 30, 2005
“We are gathered here tonight,” announced David Horowitz, “to honor a warrior in the cause of human freedom.”
Oriana Fallaci, who received the Center for the Study of Popular Culture’s Annie Taylor Award in New York Monday evening, has been a warrior for human freedom ever since she joined the anti-fascist resistance in 1944, at age fourteen. For over six decades, she has fought against those she has labeled “the bastards who decide our lives,” opposing all forms of tyranny and oppression, from Mussolini and Hitler to Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. She amassed a fearsome reputation as an interviewer, recounting of Ariel Sharon: “‘I know you’ve come to add another scalp to your necklace,’ he murmured almost with sadness when I went to interview him in 1982.” Other scalps on her necklace include that of Henry Kissinger, who termed his interview with Fallaci “the most disastrous conversation I ever had with any member of the press.” While interviewing the Ayatollah Khomeini, Fallaci called him a “tyrant” and tore off the chador she had had to wear in order to be admitted to his presence. According to Daniel Pipes in his introduction of Fallaci Monday night, she is also apparently one of the few who ever made the irascible old man laugh.
Today, at seventy-five years old, Fallaci still stands for freedom. She is suffering from cancer. She stated with her usual directness at the Taylor Awards ceremony: “I shall not last long.” But she has dedicated the four years since 9/11 to trying to awaken her native Italy, Europe and the world to the magnitude global jihad threat, which most analysts continue, whether from willful blindness, ignorance, or a misplaced strategic imperative, to misapprehend. Pipes noted that “she has her differences with the President. When he says that Islam a ‘religion of peace,’ she has said, ‘each time he says it on TV? I’m there alone, and I watch it and say, “Shut up! Shut up, Bush!” But he doesn’t listen to me.’”
And it isn’t, of course, just Bush. Fallaci spoke fervently Monday evening about how Western nations are selling their own homelands and culture to their mortal enemies. “We seem to live in real democracies,” she said, “but we really live in weak democracies ruled by despotism and fear.” Western elites – government and media – are paralyzed by fear, afraid to speak out against the life-destroying aspects of the Sharia law that Islamic jihadists want to impose on the rest of the world. The risk of offending Muslims is, in their calculus, apparently greater than the risk of national or civilizational suicide. Alexis de Tocqueville, according to Fallaci, explained that in dictatorial regimes, despotism strikes the body: the dissenter is tortured into silence. But in democratic regimes that have succumbed to corruption, despotism ignores the body and strikes at the soul. One is not tortured for dissent; instead, one is discredited for it. To affirm the patent fact that Islam is not a religion of peace today renders one “unelectable,” or “bigoted,” or beyond the bounds of what is fit to print. In despotic democratic regimes, Fallaci observed, everything can be spread except truth.
That is indeed the present-day situation. Most of the liberal and conservative mainstream not only will not feature trenchant criticisms like Fallaci’s of the violent and supremacist impulse within Islam; they will not even discuss them. Those who, like Fallaci, speak the truth about the motives and goals of the jihadists are vilified and marginalized, while the purveyors of comforting half-truths, distortions and lies fill the nation’s airwaves and newsprint. Fallaci herself faces the most frivolous of frivolous lawsuits in Italy for defamation of Islam; a Muslim group tried to have banned her searing, passionate response to 9/11, The Rage and the Pride.
Why does all this happen? In her speech Fallaci explained that it was to a great degree because “truth inspires fear.” When one hears the truth, one can only be silent or join the cause. It is a call to a personal revolution, an upheaval, a departure – perhaps forever – from a life of ease and comfort. So most will prefer not to hear the truth -- in no small part because of the difficulty of living up to it. Yet the real heroes, she said, are “those who raise their voices against anathemas and persecution,” while most succumb -- “and with their silence give their approval to the civil death of those who spoke out.”
“This,” Fallaci declared, “is what I have experienced the last four years.” She described how, since 9/11, the whole of Europe has become a “Niagara Falls of McCarthyism” – with the new Grand Inquisitors of the Left persecuting and victimizing all others. “In Europe, we too have our Ward Churchills, our Noam Chomskys, our Michael Moores, our Lewis Farrakhans.” And they are doing immense damage to the unity, will and cultural identity of the people. In Europe as in America, the new thought police ban Christmas observances to avoid offending Muslims; history is rewritten to depict Islam as having built a civilization of peace and mercy (regardless of the preponderance of evidence to the contrary), while Europe’s own Judeo-Christian civilization is regarded as “a spark of a cigarette – gone.” A spent force. In Leftist-controlled municipalities, police stand idly by while Muslim hooligans demonstrate their contempt for European society and culture by urinating upon and otherwise desecrating churches. Fallaci: “This is considered ‘freedom of expression’ – unless the offense is committed against Muslims.”
Meanwhile, the “religion of peace” myth and other falsehoods that interfere with our ability to defend ourselves are propagated aggressively by elected officials, the media, the Hollywood elite, and the justice system. Defenders of freedom are stripped of credibility and denied the means to get their message across. Or if they do get it across, they are not believed. “I really feel as a Cassandra,” said Fallaci, “or as one of the forgotten anti-fascists.” Yet she wears the Left’s attacks with defiant pride. “Since I wrote the trilogy (La Rabbia e l’Orgoglio (The Rage and the Pride), La Forza della Ragione (The Force of Reason), and L’Apocalisse (The Apocalypse), my real medals are the insults I get from the new McCarthyists.”
Fallaci told the audience that she faced three years in prison in Italy if convicted in her trial for hate speech. “But can hate be prosecuted by law? It is a sentiment. It is a natural part of life. Like love, it cannot be proscribed by a legal code. It can be judged, but only on the basis of ethics and morality. If I have the right to love, then I have the right to hate also.”
Hate? “Yes, I do hate the bin Ladens and the Zarqawis. I do hate the bastards who burn churches in Europe. I hate the Chomskys and Moores and Farrakhans who sell us to the enemy. I hate them as I used to hate Mussolini and Hitler. For the cause of freedom, this is my sacrosanct right.”
What’s more, Fallaci pointed out that Europe’s hate speech laws never seem to be used against the “professional haters, who hate me much more than I hate them”: the Muslims who hate as part of their ideology. While Fallaci faces three years in prison in Italy, “any Muslim can unhook a crucifix from a wall in a school or hospital and throw it into the garbage,” with little fear of consequences. Also unprosecuted, she said, were those responsible for a vile little publication entitled Islam Punishes Oriana Fallaci, which urges Muslims to kill her, invoking five Qur’anic passages about “perverse women.” In Italy Fallaci must be guarded around the clock; but no effort has been made to bring those who threatened her to justice.
Yet for all the isolation and the verbal abuse to which her enemies have subjected her, Fallaci remains indomitable – and has found an unlikely ally in Pope Benedict XVI, whom she warmly praised Monday night. Fallaci, who identified herself as an atheist (a “Catholic atheist”), was the first individual granted a private audience with the new Pope. She stated that the Islamic challenge had opened up a void in the West that only spirituality could fill – “unless the Church also misses its appointment with history. But I don’t think it will.”
Despite these warm words for the Pope and the ancient institution he heads, however, Fallaci announced that at the risk of disappointing many of her hearers, “I am not a conservative. I don’t sympathize with the Right more than I do with the Left. I cannot b associated with the Right or with the Left.” Why not? Because, she said, both Right and Left have been guilty of the “abuse of democracy, demagogic egalitarianism, denial of merit, tyranny of the majority, and lack of self-discipline” that are sapping the strength of Europe today. “Europe’s Islamic invasion has been backed by the Left, yes. But it would never have reached the point it has if the Right had not been complicit.”
Another indication of that complicity was, according to Fallaci, the American Right’s support for the entry of Turkey into the European Union – which both Fallaci and her friend in the Vatican oppose. “European citizens do not want Turkey in our home. Condoleeza Rice should stop exercising realpolitik at our expense.” And in America, she asked why the Right was so complacent before Leftist outrages such as the ongoing war against Christmas, the removal of the Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama courthouse, the amending of the noise ordinance to allow for the Muslim call to prayer over loudspeakers (but not church bells) in Hamtramck, Michigan, and others. Why, she asked, was Ward Churchill not fired for calling the 9/11 victims “Little Eichmanns,” while Michael Graham was fired for suggesting that Islam might have something to do with present-day terrorism?
This, Fallaci concluded, is the war we are really fighting. “I do not see Islamic terrorism as the main weapon of the war that the sons of Allah have unleashed upon us. It is the bloodiest, but not the most pernicious or catastrophic aspect of this war.” Far more dangerous to the West in the long run is unrestricted Muslim immigration, which already has brought at least 25 million Muslims to Europe (not counting, Fallaci said, the huge numbers of illegal aliens). That number will double by 2016 and, as Bernard Lewis and others have predicted, almost certainly create a Muslim Europe by 2100.
Yet all this immigration has not been accompanied by integration and assimilation – not because of European racism, but by the Muslims’ own choice. Fallaci noted that many other groups have assimilated into European societies, but Muslims have not. “They don even care to learn our language. They only obey the rules and laws of Sharia.” They do not want to learn European ways; rather, “they want to impose on us their own habits and way of life. They have no intention of integrating with us. On the contrary, they demand that we integrate with them.” Today’s Islamic expansionism, therefore, does not need the armies and fleets with which the Ottoman Empire once terrorized Europe. It only needs the immigrants, whom short-sighted politicians and befuddled multiculturalists continue to welcome. Fallaci said that Europeans – French, Dutch, Germans, English, Italians – are about to reach the status of the Comanches, Cherokees, and Sioux: “We will end up on their reservation.” She noted that some Muslim spokesmen, confident of their imminent supremacy, already refer to non-Muslim Europeans as “indigenous people” or “aboriginals.”
What to do about all this? Establish dialogue with Muslim leaders? Try to strengthen moderate Islam? Fallaci was dismissive of both options. Muslims have no intention of entering into genuine dialogue with non-Muslims, she said, and “I do not believe in moderate Islam. What moderate Islam? Is it enough not to cut heads off? Moderate Islam is another invention of ours.” Adopting Western dress, she said, was easy; adopting Western values was not.
Then Fallaci threw down the gauntlet to the multicultural, politically correct, and fearful. “There is not,” she asserted, “good Islam or bad Islam. There is just Islam. And Islam is the Qur’an. And the Qur’an is the Mein Kampf of this movement. The Qur’an demands the annihilation or subjugation of the other, and wants to substitute totalitarianism for democracy. Read it over, that Mein Kampf. In whatever version, you will find that all the evil that the sons of Allah commit against themselves and against others is in it.” As jarring as such language is to contemporary sensibilities, Fallaci here made a statement of fact that can be verified or disproved. And indeed: Islamic terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, Zarqawi, and others have never hesitated to quote the Qur’an copiously to justify their actions. It remains for those who identify themselves as moderate Muslims to convince violent Muslims that they are misusing the Qur’an – if indeed they are – and should lay down their arms. They have had no notable success in this so far.
Fallaci’s a voice of rare courage. “I am not as young and energetic as you are,” she told the crowd Monday night. “I am hopelessly ill. I shall not last long.” When she is gone, we may hope – for all our sakes – that many others will be ready to step into the breach and speak the truth as she did, whatever the cost, as she did. As Oriana Fallaci so memorably demonstrated in her address on receiving the Annie Taylor Award, nothing less than our civilization itself is at stake.
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of six books, seven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith and the New York Times Bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). His latest book, The Truth About Muhammad, is coming October 9 from Regnery Publishing.
By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com November 30, 2005
“We are gathered here tonight,” announced David Horowitz, “to honor a warrior in the cause of human freedom.”
Oriana Fallaci, who received the Center for the Study of Popular Culture’s Annie Taylor Award in New York Monday evening, has been a warrior for human freedom ever since she joined the anti-fascist resistance in 1944, at age fourteen. For over six decades, she has fought against those she has labeled “the bastards who decide our lives,” opposing all forms of tyranny and oppression, from Mussolini and Hitler to Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. She amassed a fearsome reputation as an interviewer, recounting of Ariel Sharon: “‘I know you’ve come to add another scalp to your necklace,’ he murmured almost with sadness when I went to interview him in 1982.” Other scalps on her necklace include that of Henry Kissinger, who termed his interview with Fallaci “the most disastrous conversation I ever had with any member of the press.” While interviewing the Ayatollah Khomeini, Fallaci called him a “tyrant” and tore off the chador she had had to wear in order to be admitted to his presence. According to Daniel Pipes in his introduction of Fallaci Monday night, she is also apparently one of the few who ever made the irascible old man laugh.
Today, at seventy-five years old, Fallaci still stands for freedom. She is suffering from cancer. She stated with her usual directness at the Taylor Awards ceremony: “I shall not last long.” But she has dedicated the four years since 9/11 to trying to awaken her native Italy, Europe and the world to the magnitude global jihad threat, which most analysts continue, whether from willful blindness, ignorance, or a misplaced strategic imperative, to misapprehend. Pipes noted that “she has her differences with the President. When he says that Islam a ‘religion of peace,’ she has said, ‘each time he says it on TV? I’m there alone, and I watch it and say, “Shut up! Shut up, Bush!” But he doesn’t listen to me.’”
And it isn’t, of course, just Bush. Fallaci spoke fervently Monday evening about how Western nations are selling their own homelands and culture to their mortal enemies. “We seem to live in real democracies,” she said, “but we really live in weak democracies ruled by despotism and fear.” Western elites – government and media – are paralyzed by fear, afraid to speak out against the life-destroying aspects of the Sharia law that Islamic jihadists want to impose on the rest of the world. The risk of offending Muslims is, in their calculus, apparently greater than the risk of national or civilizational suicide. Alexis de Tocqueville, according to Fallaci, explained that in dictatorial regimes, despotism strikes the body: the dissenter is tortured into silence. But in democratic regimes that have succumbed to corruption, despotism ignores the body and strikes at the soul. One is not tortured for dissent; instead, one is discredited for it. To affirm the patent fact that Islam is not a religion of peace today renders one “unelectable,” or “bigoted,” or beyond the bounds of what is fit to print. In despotic democratic regimes, Fallaci observed, everything can be spread except truth.
That is indeed the present-day situation. Most of the liberal and conservative mainstream not only will not feature trenchant criticisms like Fallaci’s of the violent and supremacist impulse within Islam; they will not even discuss them. Those who, like Fallaci, speak the truth about the motives and goals of the jihadists are vilified and marginalized, while the purveyors of comforting half-truths, distortions and lies fill the nation’s airwaves and newsprint. Fallaci herself faces the most frivolous of frivolous lawsuits in Italy for defamation of Islam; a Muslim group tried to have banned her searing, passionate response to 9/11, The Rage and the Pride.
Why does all this happen? In her speech Fallaci explained that it was to a great degree because “truth inspires fear.” When one hears the truth, one can only be silent or join the cause. It is a call to a personal revolution, an upheaval, a departure – perhaps forever – from a life of ease and comfort. So most will prefer not to hear the truth -- in no small part because of the difficulty of living up to it. Yet the real heroes, she said, are “those who raise their voices against anathemas and persecution,” while most succumb -- “and with their silence give their approval to the civil death of those who spoke out.”
“This,” Fallaci declared, “is what I have experienced the last four years.” She described how, since 9/11, the whole of Europe has become a “Niagara Falls of McCarthyism” – with the new Grand Inquisitors of the Left persecuting and victimizing all others. “In Europe, we too have our Ward Churchills, our Noam Chomskys, our Michael Moores, our Lewis Farrakhans.” And they are doing immense damage to the unity, will and cultural identity of the people. In Europe as in America, the new thought police ban Christmas observances to avoid offending Muslims; history is rewritten to depict Islam as having built a civilization of peace and mercy (regardless of the preponderance of evidence to the contrary), while Europe’s own Judeo-Christian civilization is regarded as “a spark of a cigarette – gone.” A spent force. In Leftist-controlled municipalities, police stand idly by while Muslim hooligans demonstrate their contempt for European society and culture by urinating upon and otherwise desecrating churches. Fallaci: “This is considered ‘freedom of expression’ – unless the offense is committed against Muslims.”
Meanwhile, the “religion of peace” myth and other falsehoods that interfere with our ability to defend ourselves are propagated aggressively by elected officials, the media, the Hollywood elite, and the justice system. Defenders of freedom are stripped of credibility and denied the means to get their message across. Or if they do get it across, they are not believed. “I really feel as a Cassandra,” said Fallaci, “or as one of the forgotten anti-fascists.” Yet she wears the Left’s attacks with defiant pride. “Since I wrote the trilogy (La Rabbia e l’Orgoglio (The Rage and the Pride), La Forza della Ragione (The Force of Reason), and L’Apocalisse (The Apocalypse), my real medals are the insults I get from the new McCarthyists.”
Fallaci told the audience that she faced three years in prison in Italy if convicted in her trial for hate speech. “But can hate be prosecuted by law? It is a sentiment. It is a natural part of life. Like love, it cannot be proscribed by a legal code. It can be judged, but only on the basis of ethics and morality. If I have the right to love, then I have the right to hate also.”
Hate? “Yes, I do hate the bin Ladens and the Zarqawis. I do hate the bastards who burn churches in Europe. I hate the Chomskys and Moores and Farrakhans who sell us to the enemy. I hate them as I used to hate Mussolini and Hitler. For the cause of freedom, this is my sacrosanct right.”
What’s more, Fallaci pointed out that Europe’s hate speech laws never seem to be used against the “professional haters, who hate me much more than I hate them”: the Muslims who hate as part of their ideology. While Fallaci faces three years in prison in Italy, “any Muslim can unhook a crucifix from a wall in a school or hospital and throw it into the garbage,” with little fear of consequences. Also unprosecuted, she said, were those responsible for a vile little publication entitled Islam Punishes Oriana Fallaci, which urges Muslims to kill her, invoking five Qur’anic passages about “perverse women.” In Italy Fallaci must be guarded around the clock; but no effort has been made to bring those who threatened her to justice.
Yet for all the isolation and the verbal abuse to which her enemies have subjected her, Fallaci remains indomitable – and has found an unlikely ally in Pope Benedict XVI, whom she warmly praised Monday night. Fallaci, who identified herself as an atheist (a “Catholic atheist”), was the first individual granted a private audience with the new Pope. She stated that the Islamic challenge had opened up a void in the West that only spirituality could fill – “unless the Church also misses its appointment with history. But I don’t think it will.”
Despite these warm words for the Pope and the ancient institution he heads, however, Fallaci announced that at the risk of disappointing many of her hearers, “I am not a conservative. I don’t sympathize with the Right more than I do with the Left. I cannot b associated with the Right or with the Left.” Why not? Because, she said, both Right and Left have been guilty of the “abuse of democracy, demagogic egalitarianism, denial of merit, tyranny of the majority, and lack of self-discipline” that are sapping the strength of Europe today. “Europe’s Islamic invasion has been backed by the Left, yes. But it would never have reached the point it has if the Right had not been complicit.”
Another indication of that complicity was, according to Fallaci, the American Right’s support for the entry of Turkey into the European Union – which both Fallaci and her friend in the Vatican oppose. “European citizens do not want Turkey in our home. Condoleeza Rice should stop exercising realpolitik at our expense.” And in America, she asked why the Right was so complacent before Leftist outrages such as the ongoing war against Christmas, the removal of the Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama courthouse, the amending of the noise ordinance to allow for the Muslim call to prayer over loudspeakers (but not church bells) in Hamtramck, Michigan, and others. Why, she asked, was Ward Churchill not fired for calling the 9/11 victims “Little Eichmanns,” while Michael Graham was fired for suggesting that Islam might have something to do with present-day terrorism?
This, Fallaci concluded, is the war we are really fighting. “I do not see Islamic terrorism as the main weapon of the war that the sons of Allah have unleashed upon us. It is the bloodiest, but not the most pernicious or catastrophic aspect of this war.” Far more dangerous to the West in the long run is unrestricted Muslim immigration, which already has brought at least 25 million Muslims to Europe (not counting, Fallaci said, the huge numbers of illegal aliens). That number will double by 2016 and, as Bernard Lewis and others have predicted, almost certainly create a Muslim Europe by 2100.
Yet all this immigration has not been accompanied by integration and assimilation – not because of European racism, but by the Muslims’ own choice. Fallaci noted that many other groups have assimilated into European societies, but Muslims have not. “They don even care to learn our language. They only obey the rules and laws of Sharia.” They do not want to learn European ways; rather, “they want to impose on us their own habits and way of life. They have no intention of integrating with us. On the contrary, they demand that we integrate with them.” Today’s Islamic expansionism, therefore, does not need the armies and fleets with which the Ottoman Empire once terrorized Europe. It only needs the immigrants, whom short-sighted politicians and befuddled multiculturalists continue to welcome. Fallaci said that Europeans – French, Dutch, Germans, English, Italians – are about to reach the status of the Comanches, Cherokees, and Sioux: “We will end up on their reservation.” She noted that some Muslim spokesmen, confident of their imminent supremacy, already refer to non-Muslim Europeans as “indigenous people” or “aboriginals.”
What to do about all this? Establish dialogue with Muslim leaders? Try to strengthen moderate Islam? Fallaci was dismissive of both options. Muslims have no intention of entering into genuine dialogue with non-Muslims, she said, and “I do not believe in moderate Islam. What moderate Islam? Is it enough not to cut heads off? Moderate Islam is another invention of ours.” Adopting Western dress, she said, was easy; adopting Western values was not.
Then Fallaci threw down the gauntlet to the multicultural, politically correct, and fearful. “There is not,” she asserted, “good Islam or bad Islam. There is just Islam. And Islam is the Qur’an. And the Qur’an is the Mein Kampf of this movement. The Qur’an demands the annihilation or subjugation of the other, and wants to substitute totalitarianism for democracy. Read it over, that Mein Kampf. In whatever version, you will find that all the evil that the sons of Allah commit against themselves and against others is in it.” As jarring as such language is to contemporary sensibilities, Fallaci here made a statement of fact that can be verified or disproved. And indeed: Islamic terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, Zarqawi, and others have never hesitated to quote the Qur’an copiously to justify their actions. It remains for those who identify themselves as moderate Muslims to convince violent Muslims that they are misusing the Qur’an – if indeed they are – and should lay down their arms. They have had no notable success in this so far.
Fallaci’s a voice of rare courage. “I am not as young and energetic as you are,” she told the crowd Monday night. “I am hopelessly ill. I shall not last long.” When she is gone, we may hope – for all our sakes – that many others will be ready to step into the breach and speak the truth as she did, whatever the cost, as she did. As Oriana Fallaci so memorably demonstrated in her address on receiving the Annie Taylor Award, nothing less than our civilization itself is at stake.
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of six books, seven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith and the New York Times Bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). His latest book, The Truth About Muhammad, is coming October 9 from Regnery Publishing.
Matinya Seorang Oriana Fallaci
Untuk pengetahuan semua, Oriana Fallaci ini adalah seorang pembenci Islam dan penganutnya (Muslim hater) menerusi tulisan-tulisan beliau. "Jasa" beliau ini cuba dijulang oleh seorang lagi penghasut terkenal iaitu Daniel Pipes. Berikut adalah rintihan pencinta seorang pembenci.
--------------------------------
Oriana Fallaci died September 15 2006, in Florence, Italy. In her memory, I offer an introduction to Ms Fallaci that I delivered on November 28, 2005, at a Center for the Study of Popular Culture event honoring her, chaired by David Horowitz. Her talk that evening, at the 3 West Club in New York City, was latterly incorporated in her book, The Force of Reason. I believe this was her final public appearance. [Daniel Pipes]
Appreciating Oriana Fallaci
by Daniel Pipes
September 16, 2006
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3967
It is my great pleasure to introduce Oriana Fallaci to you.
Born in 1930 in Florence, Italy, she was brought up in an anti-fascist family and her father was a leader in the fight against Mussolini. At age 14, Ms Fallaci took part in the Resistance. For her work during the war, she received an award from the Chief of the Allied Forces in Italy. She then attended the University of Florence.
She had the writer's urge from early on. She was writing what she calls "naïve short stories" at the age of 9 and at 16 (after lying about her age) began covering police and hospital topics. Here is how she has described the writing experience:
I sat at the typewriter for the first time and fell in love with the words that emerged like drops, one by one, and remained on the white sheet of paper ... every drop became something that if spoken would have flown away, but on the sheets as words, became solidified, whether they were good or bad.
In a less poetic vein, she has also acknowledged that "What really pushes me to write is my obsession with death."
Ms Fallaci subsequently wrote for many Italian, European, and American publications, including Corriere della Sera, La Nouvelle Observateur, Der Stern, Life, Look, New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, and The New Republic.
As a war correspondent, she covered the major conflicts of our time.
She covered the insurrection in Hungary, getting arrested in the process.
She spent seven years in the field in Vietnam, both North and South, and ended up being thrown out of the South.
She reported about the revolutions in Latin America: Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, as well as the Tlatelolco Massacre in Mexico City, where she was one of just two survivors. (She got caught up in a rally to oppose the Mexican government's decision to spend enormous amount of money on the 1968 Olympics and was Fallaci was shot at by police, taking bullet fragments in her shoulder, back, and knee.)
She covered the Lebanon civil war and the Kuwait War.
Ms Fallaci conducted her trademark confrontational interviews with powerful figures, or to use her more colorful terminology, "those bastards who decide our lives," including Willy Brandt, Lech Walesa, Muammar Qaddafi, Golda Meir, Ariel Sharon, Haile Selassie, the Shah of Iran, Indira Gandhi, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and Deng Xiaoping, and H. Rap Brown. Also, she interviewed leading non-political figures such as Federico Fellini, Sean Connery, Sammy Davis, Jr., Arthur Miller, Orson Welles and even Hugh Hefner.
She is the only person to have interviewed the Ayatollah Khomeini, with whom she spent six hours. At one point, she memorably ripped off her chador in indignation and heaved it at his eminence.
Known for her challenging interviewing tactics, Fallaci goaded her subjects into making unintended revelations. "Let's talk about war," she challenged Henry Kissinger in their 1972 interview, perhaps the one Americans remember best. Prior to this interview, Kissinger had revealed little to the press about his life and personality. Fallaci kept after the secretary of state during their conversation to explain why a mere diplomat enjoyed such fame. He dodged the question, but eventually gave in. "Sometimes," he said, "I see myself as a cowboy leading the caravan alone astride his horse, a wild west tale if you like." Kissinger thus revealed how he saw himself - as a heroic, imposing leader who controlled the direction of U.S. politics – and, consequently, was massively criticized. Even years later, Kissinger referred to his interview with Ms Fallaci as "the most disastrous conversation I ever had with any member of the press."
Her interviews also included unusual details. For example, she wrote of Yasir Arafat about
his "thick, Arab mustache and his short height which, combined with small hands and feet, fat legs, a massive trunk, huge hips, and a swollen belly, made him appear rather odd." She described his head and face in great detail, noting that "he has almost no cheeks or forehead, everything is summed up in a large mouth with red and fleshy lips, an aggressive nose, and two eyes that hypnotize you."
One biographer, Jill M. Duquaine, calls Fallaci "greatest political interviewer of modern times"
She is the author of 13 books, all but two of them translated into English. In all, they have been translated into 26 languages and published in 31 countries.
The first one, The Seven Sins of Hollywood, came out in Italian in 1958, featuring a preface by Orson Welles.
The Useless Sex: Voyage around the Woman, 1964. (reportage on a whirlwind trip around the world for a weekly newspaper, L'Europeo)
Penelope at War, 1966. (a novel about a career-minded young female journalist who refuses her boyfriend's pleas to stay home and have a family)
If the Sun Dies, 1966. (collected articles about the U.S. space program)
The Egotists: Sixteen Surprising Interviews, 1968.
Nothing, and So Be It, 1972 (on the war in Vietnam, sympathetic to the Vietcong) – she shares Second Thoughts with our host tonight, David Horowitz
An Interview with History, 1976, collected some of her outstanding interviews; it has been described as "one of the classics of modern journalism."
Letter to a Child Never Born, 1976 (a novel, called "one of the finest feminist writings about pregnancy, abortion, and emotional torture").
A Man, 1980 (a novel based on her personal experience with the Greek poet and resistance leader Alekos Panagoulis)
Inshallah, 1992 (another novel, about the civil war in Lebanon).
After a silence of ten years, she published The Rage and the Pride in 2001, a response to the challenge of radical Islam. It sold 1 million copies in Italy and 500,000 in the rest of Europe.
In 2004, she wrote The Force of Reason, out this month in English from Rizzoli. It also sold 1 million copies in Italy. In it, she argues that the fall of the West has commenced due to radical Islam. Western-style democracy, with its liberty, human rights, freedom of thought and religion, cannot coexist with radical Islam. One of them has to perish. She puts her money on the West failing.
The third book of her Islamic trilogy, Fallaci Interviews Herself and The Apocalypse, also came out in 2004, in Italian (and not yet in English). Here is what Bat Ye'or had to say of it, writing at FrontPageMag.com, another activity of this evening's sponsor, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture: "In this brief masterpiece Oriana Fallaci moves us to tears, shakes us with laughter, enlightens us and transmits her love and despair for a Europe she served with such great devotion and now watches in despair as it goes adrift."
In an interview in 2002, she was asked about George W. Bush. "We will see; it's too soon," she replied. "I have the impression that Bush has a certain vigor and also a dignity which had been forgotten in the United States for eight years." But the has her differences with him, especially when the president calls Islam a "religion of peace." "Do you know what I do each time he says it on TV? I'm there alone, and I watch it and say, ‘Shut up! Shut up, Bush!' But he doesn't listen to me."
In earlier years, her reportage put in her many times in harm's way; nowadays, it is her direct and unflinching writings on Islam that create dangers for her: "My life," Ms Fallaci wrote recently, "is seriously in danger."
She also has legal headaches. She was on trial twice in France in 2002 and was brought up on charges in Italy in May 2005. She was indicted under a provision of the Italian penal code that criminalizes the "vilification of any religion admitted by the state." Specifically, it states that The Force of Reason "defames Islam." One might therefore say that, wanted for a speech crime in her native country, Europe's most celebrated journalist now lives in exile in Manhattan.
The plaintiff is an extremist Muslim of Scottish origin named Adel Smith. He is thought to be the author of a pamphlet titled "Islam Punishes Oriana Fallaci," that calls upon Muslims to "eliminate" her and to "go and die with Fallaci." Bye the bye, Smith has also called for the destruction of the medieval fresco, "The Last Judgment" by Giovanni da Modena, in Bologna Cathedral, because it depicts the Prophet Muhammad as languishing in hell.
Ms Fallaci's writings have also, of course, won her many opportunities. I'd like to mention one: that she was among the first persons invited by Pope Benedict XVI for a chat, an encounter all the more significant for her being publicly declared an atheist. Before their meeting, this is what Ms Fallaci had to say about the new pope:
I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It's that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion.
It is a particular honor to have Ms Fallaci with us here tonight, for she is not exactly known as a socialite. Here is her description of her work habits:
I start working early in the morning (eight or eight-thirty a.m.) and go on until six p.m. or seven p.m. without interruption,. That is, without eating and without resting. I smoke more than usual, which means, around fifty cigarettes a day. I sleep badly in the night. I don't see anybody. I don't answer the telephone. I don't go anywhere. I ignore the Sundays, the holidays, the Christmases, the New Year's Eves. I get hysterical, in other words, and unhappy and unsatisfied and guilty if I don't produce much. By the way, I am a very slow writer. And I rewrite obsessively.
To conclude, here is Oriana Fallaci, speaking of her legacy: She hopes, through her books,
to die a little less when I die. To leave the children I did not have... . To make people think a little more, outside the dogmas that this society has nourished us with through centuries. To give stories and ideas that help people to see better, to think better, to know a little more.
Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Oriana Fallaci who will speak on "The European Apocalypse: Islam and the West."
--------------------------------
Oriana Fallaci died September 15 2006, in Florence, Italy. In her memory, I offer an introduction to Ms Fallaci that I delivered on November 28, 2005, at a Center for the Study of Popular Culture event honoring her, chaired by David Horowitz. Her talk that evening, at the 3 West Club in New York City, was latterly incorporated in her book, The Force of Reason. I believe this was her final public appearance. [Daniel Pipes]
Appreciating Oriana Fallaci
by Daniel Pipes
September 16, 2006
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3967
It is my great pleasure to introduce Oriana Fallaci to you.
Born in 1930 in Florence, Italy, she was brought up in an anti-fascist family and her father was a leader in the fight against Mussolini. At age 14, Ms Fallaci took part in the Resistance. For her work during the war, she received an award from the Chief of the Allied Forces in Italy. She then attended the University of Florence.
She had the writer's urge from early on. She was writing what she calls "naïve short stories" at the age of 9 and at 16 (after lying about her age) began covering police and hospital topics. Here is how she has described the writing experience:
I sat at the typewriter for the first time and fell in love with the words that emerged like drops, one by one, and remained on the white sheet of paper ... every drop became something that if spoken would have flown away, but on the sheets as words, became solidified, whether they were good or bad.
In a less poetic vein, she has also acknowledged that "What really pushes me to write is my obsession with death."
Ms Fallaci subsequently wrote for many Italian, European, and American publications, including Corriere della Sera, La Nouvelle Observateur, Der Stern, Life, Look, New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, and The New Republic.
As a war correspondent, she covered the major conflicts of our time.
She covered the insurrection in Hungary, getting arrested in the process.
She spent seven years in the field in Vietnam, both North and South, and ended up being thrown out of the South.
She reported about the revolutions in Latin America: Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, as well as the Tlatelolco Massacre in Mexico City, where she was one of just two survivors. (She got caught up in a rally to oppose the Mexican government's decision to spend enormous amount of money on the 1968 Olympics and was Fallaci was shot at by police, taking bullet fragments in her shoulder, back, and knee.)
She covered the Lebanon civil war and the Kuwait War.
Ms Fallaci conducted her trademark confrontational interviews with powerful figures, or to use her more colorful terminology, "those bastards who decide our lives," including Willy Brandt, Lech Walesa, Muammar Qaddafi, Golda Meir, Ariel Sharon, Haile Selassie, the Shah of Iran, Indira Gandhi, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and Deng Xiaoping, and H. Rap Brown. Also, she interviewed leading non-political figures such as Federico Fellini, Sean Connery, Sammy Davis, Jr., Arthur Miller, Orson Welles and even Hugh Hefner.
She is the only person to have interviewed the Ayatollah Khomeini, with whom she spent six hours. At one point, she memorably ripped off her chador in indignation and heaved it at his eminence.
Known for her challenging interviewing tactics, Fallaci goaded her subjects into making unintended revelations. "Let's talk about war," she challenged Henry Kissinger in their 1972 interview, perhaps the one Americans remember best. Prior to this interview, Kissinger had revealed little to the press about his life and personality. Fallaci kept after the secretary of state during their conversation to explain why a mere diplomat enjoyed such fame. He dodged the question, but eventually gave in. "Sometimes," he said, "I see myself as a cowboy leading the caravan alone astride his horse, a wild west tale if you like." Kissinger thus revealed how he saw himself - as a heroic, imposing leader who controlled the direction of U.S. politics – and, consequently, was massively criticized. Even years later, Kissinger referred to his interview with Ms Fallaci as "the most disastrous conversation I ever had with any member of the press."
Her interviews also included unusual details. For example, she wrote of Yasir Arafat about
his "thick, Arab mustache and his short height which, combined with small hands and feet, fat legs, a massive trunk, huge hips, and a swollen belly, made him appear rather odd." She described his head and face in great detail, noting that "he has almost no cheeks or forehead, everything is summed up in a large mouth with red and fleshy lips, an aggressive nose, and two eyes that hypnotize you."
One biographer, Jill M. Duquaine, calls Fallaci "greatest political interviewer of modern times"
She is the author of 13 books, all but two of them translated into English. In all, they have been translated into 26 languages and published in 31 countries.
The first one, The Seven Sins of Hollywood, came out in Italian in 1958, featuring a preface by Orson Welles.
The Useless Sex: Voyage around the Woman, 1964. (reportage on a whirlwind trip around the world for a weekly newspaper, L'Europeo)
Penelope at War, 1966. (a novel about a career-minded young female journalist who refuses her boyfriend's pleas to stay home and have a family)
If the Sun Dies, 1966. (collected articles about the U.S. space program)
The Egotists: Sixteen Surprising Interviews, 1968.
Nothing, and So Be It, 1972 (on the war in Vietnam, sympathetic to the Vietcong) – she shares Second Thoughts with our host tonight, David Horowitz
An Interview with History, 1976, collected some of her outstanding interviews; it has been described as "one of the classics of modern journalism."
Letter to a Child Never Born, 1976 (a novel, called "one of the finest feminist writings about pregnancy, abortion, and emotional torture").
A Man, 1980 (a novel based on her personal experience with the Greek poet and resistance leader Alekos Panagoulis)
Inshallah, 1992 (another novel, about the civil war in Lebanon).
After a silence of ten years, she published The Rage and the Pride in 2001, a response to the challenge of radical Islam. It sold 1 million copies in Italy and 500,000 in the rest of Europe.
In 2004, she wrote The Force of Reason, out this month in English from Rizzoli. It also sold 1 million copies in Italy. In it, she argues that the fall of the West has commenced due to radical Islam. Western-style democracy, with its liberty, human rights, freedom of thought and religion, cannot coexist with radical Islam. One of them has to perish. She puts her money on the West failing.
The third book of her Islamic trilogy, Fallaci Interviews Herself and The Apocalypse, also came out in 2004, in Italian (and not yet in English). Here is what Bat Ye'or had to say of it, writing at FrontPageMag.com, another activity of this evening's sponsor, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture: "In this brief masterpiece Oriana Fallaci moves us to tears, shakes us with laughter, enlightens us and transmits her love and despair for a Europe she served with such great devotion and now watches in despair as it goes adrift."
In an interview in 2002, she was asked about George W. Bush. "We will see; it's too soon," she replied. "I have the impression that Bush has a certain vigor and also a dignity which had been forgotten in the United States for eight years." But the has her differences with him, especially when the president calls Islam a "religion of peace." "Do you know what I do each time he says it on TV? I'm there alone, and I watch it and say, ‘Shut up! Shut up, Bush!' But he doesn't listen to me."
In earlier years, her reportage put in her many times in harm's way; nowadays, it is her direct and unflinching writings on Islam that create dangers for her: "My life," Ms Fallaci wrote recently, "is seriously in danger."
She also has legal headaches. She was on trial twice in France in 2002 and was brought up on charges in Italy in May 2005. She was indicted under a provision of the Italian penal code that criminalizes the "vilification of any religion admitted by the state." Specifically, it states that The Force of Reason "defames Islam." One might therefore say that, wanted for a speech crime in her native country, Europe's most celebrated journalist now lives in exile in Manhattan.
The plaintiff is an extremist Muslim of Scottish origin named Adel Smith. He is thought to be the author of a pamphlet titled "Islam Punishes Oriana Fallaci," that calls upon Muslims to "eliminate" her and to "go and die with Fallaci." Bye the bye, Smith has also called for the destruction of the medieval fresco, "The Last Judgment" by Giovanni da Modena, in Bologna Cathedral, because it depicts the Prophet Muhammad as languishing in hell.
Ms Fallaci's writings have also, of course, won her many opportunities. I'd like to mention one: that she was among the first persons invited by Pope Benedict XVI for a chat, an encounter all the more significant for her being publicly declared an atheist. Before their meeting, this is what Ms Fallaci had to say about the new pope:
I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It's that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion.
It is a particular honor to have Ms Fallaci with us here tonight, for she is not exactly known as a socialite. Here is her description of her work habits:
I start working early in the morning (eight or eight-thirty a.m.) and go on until six p.m. or seven p.m. without interruption,. That is, without eating and without resting. I smoke more than usual, which means, around fifty cigarettes a day. I sleep badly in the night. I don't see anybody. I don't answer the telephone. I don't go anywhere. I ignore the Sundays, the holidays, the Christmases, the New Year's Eves. I get hysterical, in other words, and unhappy and unsatisfied and guilty if I don't produce much. By the way, I am a very slow writer. And I rewrite obsessively.
To conclude, here is Oriana Fallaci, speaking of her legacy: She hopes, through her books,
to die a little less when I die. To leave the children I did not have... . To make people think a little more, outside the dogmas that this society has nourished us with through centuries. To give stories and ideas that help people to see better, to think better, to know a little more.
Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Oriana Fallaci who will speak on "The European Apocalypse: Islam and the West."
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Tanah Melayu tergadai, wakil rakyat Umno tidak endah
Tanah Melayu tergadai, wakil rakyat Umno tidak endah
Thu Jul 27, 06 01:23:50 PM
Oleh Wan Nordin Wan Yaacob
KUALA LUMPUR, 27 Julai (Hrkh) - Perjuangan Umno yang kononnya membela bangsa Melayu hari ini tidak boleh diharapkan lagi, segala keistimewaan Melayu yang kononnya diperjuang pertubuhan politik ini hanya 'indah khabar dari rupa'.
Banyak isu membabitkan kepentingan rakyat yang perlu diperjuangkan tidak terlaksana kerana bertindan dengan kepentingan peribadi melalui projek tertentu atas nama kemajuan dan pembangunan.
Hari ini ada sahaja laporan yang menyebut, tanah Melayu diambil untuk projek tertentu yang diberi kepada pemaju bukan Bumiputera.
Nasib yang sama menimpa penduduk Kampung Permatang Pasir, Linggi Negeri Sembilan. Atas nama kemajuan yang 'tidak rasional', satu perempat dari tanah tapak rumah kebanyakan milik penduduk Melayu di sepanjang jalan Kampung Permatang Pasir akan diambil oleh pihak berkuasa untuk projek naik taraf jalan Linggi, Pengkalan Kempas hingga ke Melaka.
Projek tersebut telah dimulakan di jajaran jalan Pekan Linggi hingga ke Pengkalan Kempas sejak sebulan lalu.Berapa penduduk yang ditemui Harakahdaily semalam merungut kerana pengambilan tanah tradisi yang diperturun dari nenek moyang mereka kini dalam bahaya untuk diserahkan kepada pemaju bukan Bumiputera.
Tiada perbincangan
Seorang penduduk, Suhaimi Zubir (mewakili pemilik tanah yang juga ibunya, Saerah Mahmod) berkata, penduduk telah menerima satu notis pemberitahuan pengambilan tanah di bawah Akta Pengambilan Tanah 1960 (seksyen 11) dari Pentadbir Tanah Daerah Port Dickson pada 10 November 2005.
Dalam pemberitahuan tersebut pentadbir memberitahu satu sesi perbincangan mengenai urusan pengambilan akan diadakan pada 14 Disember 2005 di Bilik Gerakan Pejabat Tanah Port Dickson, katanya.
Beliau berkata demikian semalam ketika ditemui wakil Harakahdaily yang berkunjung ke Kampung tersebut bersama Timbalan Pesuruhjaya PAS Negeri Sembilan, Zulkifli Mohammed Omar.
Zulkifli bergegas ke tempat tersebut setelah Suhaimi menelefonnya bagi meminta bantuan menyelesaikan masalah tersebut setelah aduan penduduk kepada wakil rakyat lansung tidak diendahkan.
Menurut Suhaimi beliau (mewakili ibu yang uzur) hadir dalam perbincangan tersebut, penduduk tidakpun diberi kesempatan untuk berbincang sebaliknya hanya menerima arahan dari pentadbir tanah, katanya.
"Kami cuba membawa sesi itu kepada perbincangan tetapi segala persoalan kami tidak dijawab oleh pentadbir tanah, malah dengan angkuh pentadbir tanah menyatakan segalanya adalah Akta Rahsia dan tidak boleh didedah kepada umum," katanya.
Tanah bergeran milik Melayu
Menurut Suhaimi, tanah yang mahu diambil adalah tanah bergeran yang dibayar cukainya setiap tahun, dan tanah tersebut juga adalah tanah milik Melayu di kawasan yang parlimennya dimiliki oleh kaum bukan Melayu.
"Kami ada membuat rayuan kepada wakil rakyat Permatang Pasir (Umno), Haji Ismail Taib untuk membincangkan soal pengambilan tanah, bagaimanapun wakil rakyat tidak mengendahkan permintaan untuk bertemu," katanya.
Selepas itu pada 18 Januari 2006, satu lagi notis yang disertakan dengan nilai wang pampasan atas pengambilan tanah diserah pejabat tanah daerah kepada penduduk, katanya.
Setelah meneliti Borang H, Akta Pengambilan Tanah 1960 itu, Suhaimi melihat, segala pampasan pengambilan tanah yang ditulis kononnya atas dasar persetujuan dalam perbincangan terdahulu (14 Disember 2005) adalah satu penganiayaan kepada bangsa Melayu, katanya.
Pampasan tidak setimpal
Menurut beliau, pampasan yang dijadualkan akan diberi berikutan pengambilan tanah milik ibunya hanya berjumlah RM17,415 sedangkan jika mengikut penilaian, jumlah tersebut tidak memadai.
"Ruang rumah ibu saya hampir satu perempat diambil.Jika pengambilan diteruskan secara paksa bermakna, rumah kami terpaksa dialih ke belakang bagi mengelak jarak yang terlalu dekat dengan kawasan pembinaan.Ini memberi kesan buruk kepada kami,Ini akan menambahkan kos pembinaan." katanya.
Jika projek itu diteruskan penduduk setidak-tidaknya terpaksa membina semula sebahagian besar rumah terutamanya bahagian hadapan yang terlibat dengan bahagian tepi projek tersebut, katanya.
Sementara melihat kepada kos bahagian rumah yang diambil termasuk pagar, jalan masuk, tanah dan binaan lain yang terdapat dihadapan rumah, jumlah pampasan yang diberi tidak memadai dengan kerugian yang ditanggung, katanya.
"Penilaian yang sewajarnya tidak pernah dibuat, malah pegawai yang dapat membuat 'survey' hanya membuat tinjauan dari tepi jalan dan bukannya berbincang atau masuk ke dalam kawasan yang mahu diambil," katanya.
Pada 14 Julai 2006, penduduk dikejutkan lagi dengan satu notis arahan dari pemaju, HBA Sdn Bhd yang ditandatangani oleh wakil Pengurus Pembinaan HBA, Tan Kim Meng, katanya.
Pemaju paksa pindah
Dalam notis tersebut Suhaimi berkata, pemaju mahu penduduk yang terlibat dengan kawasan projek segera mengalih, meroboh dan memusnahkan apa juga binaan yang terdapat dalam jajaran kawasan tapak projek.
"Inilah notis yang membuatkan hampir semua penduduk yang terlibat dengan pengambilan tanah marah.Adakah patut pemaju yang bukan berbangsa Melayu ini berani menyerah notis kepada penduduk tanpa terlebih dahulu berbincang dengan kami.Ini sikap kurang ajar," katanya.
Sementara itu, seorang lagi penduduk, Abdul Karim Sarip pula mendakwa, nasib beliau lebih malang dari pemilik tanah yang lain.
"Tanah yang nak diambil ikut jadual yang diberi betul-betul satu kaki dari bahagian hadapan rumah pak cik.Apa ni, ini menyusahkan pak cik.Sampai ke kiamatlah hidup pak cik merana jika tanah ini diambil.Mana pak cik nak duduk jika jalan raya betul-betul berada sekaki dari rumah pak cik.Ini membahayakan kami," katanya.
Malah lebih malang, bilik mandi yang dibinanya di bahagian hadapan rumah turut akan menjadi korban projek tersebut, katanya.
Apabila beliau meminta penjelasan dari pegawai tanah daerah yang terlibat, pegawai tersebut sebaliknya mengarahkan Abdul Karim mandi sahaja di sungai, dan mengalihkan struktur rumahnya ke belakang, katanya.
"Demi kerana projek untuk mengkayakan kroni dan bangsa lain, orang Melayu sanggup jadi 'pak turut' untuk mengusir bangsanya dari tanah milik sendiri," katanya.
Wakil rakyat tidak boleh diharap
Mengikut notis yang ditunjuk Abdul Karim kepada krew Harakahdaily, pampasan yang akan dibayar berjumlah RM19,630 sedangkan nilai kerugian dan nilai tanah jauh lebih tinggi dari nilai pampasan tersebut.
Sambil melahirkan rasa kesal kepada sikap wakil rakyat yang lansung tidak memperdulikan masalah itu beliau menyelar sikap pemimpin Umno lansung tidak dapat mempertahankan hak bangsa Melayu, katanya.
"Inilah sikap wakil rakyat kami di sini.Masa mengundi bukan main lembut lagi, turun padang jumpa kamiPelbagai janji ditabur, tetapi selepas pilihan raya semuanya hilang, malah hak kami turut tergadai kerana kepentingan peribadi," katanya.
Menurut seorang lagi penduduk Ramlah Zubir yang menetap disitu lebih 30 tahun, beliau tidak nampak rasionalnya menaiktaraf jalan tersebut sebagai jalan utama menghubungkan Linggi ke Melaka.
Malah untuk membesarkan jalan tersebut, pihak pemaju atau pihak berkuasa yang terbabit tidak perlu untuk mengambil sebahagian tanah tapak rumah kami kerana ruang di antara jalan dan bahu jalan masih besar.
"Jika nak ambil sedikit kami tak kisah, tetapi sampai satu perempat, dan ada yang dengan rumah-rumah sekali terlibat,Ini menganiaya" katanya.
Jika dilihat dari aliran kenderaan yang cukup kurang melalui jalan tersebut, tidak menampakkan rasional bahawa perlunya jalan tersebut dibesarkan lagi hingga memakan sebahagian besar tanah milik orang kampung, katanya yang juga bekas tenaga pengajar Kemas di kampung berkenaan.
Sedangkan jalan lain yang menghubungkan antara Linggi ke Melaka terlalu banyak malah Lebuh raya Utara Selatan adalah jalan yang paling cepat dan mudah menghubungkan dua kawasan berjiran itu.
Kesal dengan insiden yang menimpa penyokong Umno itu Zulkifli berjanji akan memberi bantuan termasuk menghebahkan kepada media isu tersebut.
"Saya akan cuba membantu sedaya mampu demi mempertahankan hak orang Melayu.Nak harap pemimpin Umno, mereka ada kepentingan peribadi," katanya.
Sambil meminta komitmen yang jitu dari penduduk untuk memperjuang isu itu Zulkifli berkata, beliau juga akan bertemu dengan pihak berkuasa untuk membincangkan isu tersebut. - mks.
Thu Jul 27, 06 01:23:50 PM
Oleh Wan Nordin Wan Yaacob
KUALA LUMPUR, 27 Julai (Hrkh) - Perjuangan Umno yang kononnya membela bangsa Melayu hari ini tidak boleh diharapkan lagi, segala keistimewaan Melayu yang kononnya diperjuang pertubuhan politik ini hanya 'indah khabar dari rupa'.
Banyak isu membabitkan kepentingan rakyat yang perlu diperjuangkan tidak terlaksana kerana bertindan dengan kepentingan peribadi melalui projek tertentu atas nama kemajuan dan pembangunan.
Hari ini ada sahaja laporan yang menyebut, tanah Melayu diambil untuk projek tertentu yang diberi kepada pemaju bukan Bumiputera.
Nasib yang sama menimpa penduduk Kampung Permatang Pasir, Linggi Negeri Sembilan. Atas nama kemajuan yang 'tidak rasional', satu perempat dari tanah tapak rumah kebanyakan milik penduduk Melayu di sepanjang jalan Kampung Permatang Pasir akan diambil oleh pihak berkuasa untuk projek naik taraf jalan Linggi, Pengkalan Kempas hingga ke Melaka.
Projek tersebut telah dimulakan di jajaran jalan Pekan Linggi hingga ke Pengkalan Kempas sejak sebulan lalu.Berapa penduduk yang ditemui Harakahdaily semalam merungut kerana pengambilan tanah tradisi yang diperturun dari nenek moyang mereka kini dalam bahaya untuk diserahkan kepada pemaju bukan Bumiputera.
Tiada perbincangan
Seorang penduduk, Suhaimi Zubir (mewakili pemilik tanah yang juga ibunya, Saerah Mahmod) berkata, penduduk telah menerima satu notis pemberitahuan pengambilan tanah di bawah Akta Pengambilan Tanah 1960 (seksyen 11) dari Pentadbir Tanah Daerah Port Dickson pada 10 November 2005.
Dalam pemberitahuan tersebut pentadbir memberitahu satu sesi perbincangan mengenai urusan pengambilan akan diadakan pada 14 Disember 2005 di Bilik Gerakan Pejabat Tanah Port Dickson, katanya.
Beliau berkata demikian semalam ketika ditemui wakil Harakahdaily yang berkunjung ke Kampung tersebut bersama Timbalan Pesuruhjaya PAS Negeri Sembilan, Zulkifli Mohammed Omar.
Zulkifli bergegas ke tempat tersebut setelah Suhaimi menelefonnya bagi meminta bantuan menyelesaikan masalah tersebut setelah aduan penduduk kepada wakil rakyat lansung tidak diendahkan.
Menurut Suhaimi beliau (mewakili ibu yang uzur) hadir dalam perbincangan tersebut, penduduk tidakpun diberi kesempatan untuk berbincang sebaliknya hanya menerima arahan dari pentadbir tanah, katanya.
"Kami cuba membawa sesi itu kepada perbincangan tetapi segala persoalan kami tidak dijawab oleh pentadbir tanah, malah dengan angkuh pentadbir tanah menyatakan segalanya adalah Akta Rahsia dan tidak boleh didedah kepada umum," katanya.
Tanah bergeran milik Melayu
Menurut Suhaimi, tanah yang mahu diambil adalah tanah bergeran yang dibayar cukainya setiap tahun, dan tanah tersebut juga adalah tanah milik Melayu di kawasan yang parlimennya dimiliki oleh kaum bukan Melayu.
"Kami ada membuat rayuan kepada wakil rakyat Permatang Pasir (Umno), Haji Ismail Taib untuk membincangkan soal pengambilan tanah, bagaimanapun wakil rakyat tidak mengendahkan permintaan untuk bertemu," katanya.
Selepas itu pada 18 Januari 2006, satu lagi notis yang disertakan dengan nilai wang pampasan atas pengambilan tanah diserah pejabat tanah daerah kepada penduduk, katanya.
Setelah meneliti Borang H, Akta Pengambilan Tanah 1960 itu, Suhaimi melihat, segala pampasan pengambilan tanah yang ditulis kononnya atas dasar persetujuan dalam perbincangan terdahulu (14 Disember 2005) adalah satu penganiayaan kepada bangsa Melayu, katanya.
Pampasan tidak setimpal
Menurut beliau, pampasan yang dijadualkan akan diberi berikutan pengambilan tanah milik ibunya hanya berjumlah RM17,415 sedangkan jika mengikut penilaian, jumlah tersebut tidak memadai.
"Ruang rumah ibu saya hampir satu perempat diambil.Jika pengambilan diteruskan secara paksa bermakna, rumah kami terpaksa dialih ke belakang bagi mengelak jarak yang terlalu dekat dengan kawasan pembinaan.Ini memberi kesan buruk kepada kami,Ini akan menambahkan kos pembinaan." katanya.
Jika projek itu diteruskan penduduk setidak-tidaknya terpaksa membina semula sebahagian besar rumah terutamanya bahagian hadapan yang terlibat dengan bahagian tepi projek tersebut, katanya.
Sementara melihat kepada kos bahagian rumah yang diambil termasuk pagar, jalan masuk, tanah dan binaan lain yang terdapat dihadapan rumah, jumlah pampasan yang diberi tidak memadai dengan kerugian yang ditanggung, katanya.
"Penilaian yang sewajarnya tidak pernah dibuat, malah pegawai yang dapat membuat 'survey' hanya membuat tinjauan dari tepi jalan dan bukannya berbincang atau masuk ke dalam kawasan yang mahu diambil," katanya.
Pada 14 Julai 2006, penduduk dikejutkan lagi dengan satu notis arahan dari pemaju, HBA Sdn Bhd yang ditandatangani oleh wakil Pengurus Pembinaan HBA, Tan Kim Meng, katanya.
Pemaju paksa pindah
Dalam notis tersebut Suhaimi berkata, pemaju mahu penduduk yang terlibat dengan kawasan projek segera mengalih, meroboh dan memusnahkan apa juga binaan yang terdapat dalam jajaran kawasan tapak projek.
"Inilah notis yang membuatkan hampir semua penduduk yang terlibat dengan pengambilan tanah marah.Adakah patut pemaju yang bukan berbangsa Melayu ini berani menyerah notis kepada penduduk tanpa terlebih dahulu berbincang dengan kami.Ini sikap kurang ajar," katanya.
Sementara itu, seorang lagi penduduk, Abdul Karim Sarip pula mendakwa, nasib beliau lebih malang dari pemilik tanah yang lain.
"Tanah yang nak diambil ikut jadual yang diberi betul-betul satu kaki dari bahagian hadapan rumah pak cik.Apa ni, ini menyusahkan pak cik.Sampai ke kiamatlah hidup pak cik merana jika tanah ini diambil.Mana pak cik nak duduk jika jalan raya betul-betul berada sekaki dari rumah pak cik.Ini membahayakan kami," katanya.
Malah lebih malang, bilik mandi yang dibinanya di bahagian hadapan rumah turut akan menjadi korban projek tersebut, katanya.
Apabila beliau meminta penjelasan dari pegawai tanah daerah yang terlibat, pegawai tersebut sebaliknya mengarahkan Abdul Karim mandi sahaja di sungai, dan mengalihkan struktur rumahnya ke belakang, katanya.
"Demi kerana projek untuk mengkayakan kroni dan bangsa lain, orang Melayu sanggup jadi 'pak turut' untuk mengusir bangsanya dari tanah milik sendiri," katanya.
Wakil rakyat tidak boleh diharap
Mengikut notis yang ditunjuk Abdul Karim kepada krew Harakahdaily, pampasan yang akan dibayar berjumlah RM19,630 sedangkan nilai kerugian dan nilai tanah jauh lebih tinggi dari nilai pampasan tersebut.
Sambil melahirkan rasa kesal kepada sikap wakil rakyat yang lansung tidak memperdulikan masalah itu beliau menyelar sikap pemimpin Umno lansung tidak dapat mempertahankan hak bangsa Melayu, katanya.
"Inilah sikap wakil rakyat kami di sini.Masa mengundi bukan main lembut lagi, turun padang jumpa kamiPelbagai janji ditabur, tetapi selepas pilihan raya semuanya hilang, malah hak kami turut tergadai kerana kepentingan peribadi," katanya.
Menurut seorang lagi penduduk Ramlah Zubir yang menetap disitu lebih 30 tahun, beliau tidak nampak rasionalnya menaiktaraf jalan tersebut sebagai jalan utama menghubungkan Linggi ke Melaka.
Malah untuk membesarkan jalan tersebut, pihak pemaju atau pihak berkuasa yang terbabit tidak perlu untuk mengambil sebahagian tanah tapak rumah kami kerana ruang di antara jalan dan bahu jalan masih besar.
"Jika nak ambil sedikit kami tak kisah, tetapi sampai satu perempat, dan ada yang dengan rumah-rumah sekali terlibat,Ini menganiaya" katanya.
Jika dilihat dari aliran kenderaan yang cukup kurang melalui jalan tersebut, tidak menampakkan rasional bahawa perlunya jalan tersebut dibesarkan lagi hingga memakan sebahagian besar tanah milik orang kampung, katanya yang juga bekas tenaga pengajar Kemas di kampung berkenaan.
Sedangkan jalan lain yang menghubungkan antara Linggi ke Melaka terlalu banyak malah Lebuh raya Utara Selatan adalah jalan yang paling cepat dan mudah menghubungkan dua kawasan berjiran itu.
Kesal dengan insiden yang menimpa penyokong Umno itu Zulkifli berjanji akan memberi bantuan termasuk menghebahkan kepada media isu tersebut.
"Saya akan cuba membantu sedaya mampu demi mempertahankan hak orang Melayu.Nak harap pemimpin Umno, mereka ada kepentingan peribadi," katanya.
Sambil meminta komitmen yang jitu dari penduduk untuk memperjuang isu itu Zulkifli berkata, beliau juga akan bertemu dengan pihak berkuasa untuk membincangkan isu tersebut. - mks.
Record heat wilts Europe, strains power supply and hurts crops
Record heat wilts Europe, strains power supply and hurts crops
By Thomas Crampton The New York Times
Published: July 26, 2006
PARIS With Paris, London and Berlin experiencing peak temperatures, matching those of Bangkok, Hong Kong and New Delhi, Europe's heat wave this summer has already headed for the record books. The severe and prolonged heat has prompted the authorities across Europe to issue advice on everything from personal safety to power use.
A 1911 record for the highest July temperature in Britain was broken last week when Wisley, a village in Surrey, hit 97.7 degrees.
Mark Vance, an entertainer at Warwick Castle who wears a full suit of armor and was named the man with the hottest job in Britain by The Daily Express, was photographed frying an egg on the breastplate of his outfit.
In the Netherlands, July will probably qualify as the hottest month since temperatures were first measured in 1706, the Dutch meteorological institute, KNMI, said Tuesday.
Many parts of Germany have hit the highest July temperatures since records began to be kept.
The French health minister, Xavier Bertrand, urged that medical students and retired doctors volunteer for hospital work as more than half the country was placed under the second-highest level of heat-wave alert.
Most of the 40 heat-related deaths in Europe in the last two weeks were in France, recalling the 2003 heat wave, in which 15,000 died in the country.
"The temperatures have not been so high in France as they were in the first weeks of August 2003, but the heat wave has lasted much longer," said Bernard Strauss, head of forecasting for Météo-France. "In the last six weeks we have had one of the longest stretches of higher than normal temperatures since we started records."
Temperatures along the west of France will probably rise in coming weeks, Mr. Strauss added.
The newspaper Le Parisien dedicated five pages to the heat wave, including tips for keeping cool, like wetting feet and hands as often as possible while walking the city.
A second type of warning was also issued in Europe - about strained electricity supplies, along with destroyed crops and forest fires.
Europe's increased demand for air-conditioning could make summer a greater challenge than winter for electricity suppliers, a report by the Datamonitor Group warned.
Nuclear power stations in France and Spain have been forced to cut output because the river water normally used to cool reactors is too warm.
Low water levels in the Po River in northern Italy affected hydroelectric supplies, prompting power shortages in Rome that knocked out air-conditioning and left people trapped in elevators.
Scorching temperatures and drought could destroy up to 20 percent of Poland's grain harvest, warned the country's agriculture minister, Andrzej Lepper. "It is quite simply dramatic, and if the weather does not change we could have a disaster," he said on Polish Radio.
Germany is facing crop losses of up to 50 percent in the worst-hit regions, according to Gerd Sonnleitner, the president of the national farmers association.
Forest fires affected regions as far afield as Corsica, in the Mediterranean, where homes near the capital, Ajaccio, were threatened, and the Czech Republic, Finland and Sweden.
PARIS With Paris, London and Berlin experiencing peak temperatures, matching those of Bangkok, Hong Kong and New Delhi, Europe's heat wave this summer has already headed for the record books. The severe and prolonged heat has prompted the authorities across Europe to issue advice on everything from personal safety to power use.
A 1911 record for the highest July temperature in Britain was broken last week when Wisley, a village in Surrey, hit 97.7 degrees.
Mark Vance, an entertainer at Warwick Castle who wears a full suit of armor and was named the man with the hottest job in Britain by The Daily Express, was photographed frying an egg on the breastplate of his outfit.
In the Netherlands, July will probably qualify as the hottest month since temperatures were first measured in 1706, the Dutch meteorological institute, KNMI, said Tuesday.
Many parts of Germany have hit the highest July temperatures since records began to be kept.
The French health minister, Xavier Bertrand, urged that medical students and retired doctors volunteer for hospital work as more than half the country was placed under the second-highest level of heat-wave alert.
Most of the 40 heat-related deaths in Europe in the last two weeks were in France, recalling the 2003 heat wave, in which 15,000 died in the country.
"The temperatures have not been so high in France as they were in the first weeks of August 2003, but the heat wave has lasted much longer," said Bernard Strauss, head of forecasting for Météo-France. "In the last six weeks we have had one of the longest stretches of higher than normal temperatures since we started records."
Temperatures along the west of France will probably rise in coming weeks, Mr. Strauss added.
The newspaper Le Parisien dedicated five pages to the heat wave, including tips for keeping cool, like wetting feet and hands as often as possible while walking the city.
A second type of warning was also issued in Europe - about strained electricity supplies, along with destroyed crops and forest fires.
Europe's increased demand for air-conditioning could make summer a greater challenge than winter for electricity suppliers, a report by the Datamonitor Group warned.
Nuclear power stations in France and Spain have been forced to cut output because the river water normally used to cool reactors is too warm.
Low water levels in the Po River in northern Italy affected hydroelectric supplies, prompting power shortages in Rome that knocked out air-conditioning and left people trapped in elevators.
Scorching temperatures and drought could destroy up to 20 percent of Poland's grain harvest, warned the country's agriculture minister, Andrzej Lepper. "It is quite simply dramatic, and if the weather does not change we could have a disaster," he said on Polish Radio.
Germany is facing crop losses of up to 50 percent in the worst-hit regions, according to Gerd Sonnleitner, the president of the national farmers association.
Forest fires affected regions as far afield as Corsica, in the Mediterranean, where homes near the capital, Ajaccio, were threatened, and the Czech Republic, Finland and Sweden.
By Thomas Crampton The New York Times
Published: July 26, 2006
PARIS With Paris, London and Berlin experiencing peak temperatures, matching those of Bangkok, Hong Kong and New Delhi, Europe's heat wave this summer has already headed for the record books. The severe and prolonged heat has prompted the authorities across Europe to issue advice on everything from personal safety to power use.
A 1911 record for the highest July temperature in Britain was broken last week when Wisley, a village in Surrey, hit 97.7 degrees.
Mark Vance, an entertainer at Warwick Castle who wears a full suit of armor and was named the man with the hottest job in Britain by The Daily Express, was photographed frying an egg on the breastplate of his outfit.
In the Netherlands, July will probably qualify as the hottest month since temperatures were first measured in 1706, the Dutch meteorological institute, KNMI, said Tuesday.
Many parts of Germany have hit the highest July temperatures since records began to be kept.
The French health minister, Xavier Bertrand, urged that medical students and retired doctors volunteer for hospital work as more than half the country was placed under the second-highest level of heat-wave alert.
Most of the 40 heat-related deaths in Europe in the last two weeks were in France, recalling the 2003 heat wave, in which 15,000 died in the country.
"The temperatures have not been so high in France as they were in the first weeks of August 2003, but the heat wave has lasted much longer," said Bernard Strauss, head of forecasting for Météo-France. "In the last six weeks we have had one of the longest stretches of higher than normal temperatures since we started records."
Temperatures along the west of France will probably rise in coming weeks, Mr. Strauss added.
The newspaper Le Parisien dedicated five pages to the heat wave, including tips for keeping cool, like wetting feet and hands as often as possible while walking the city.
A second type of warning was also issued in Europe - about strained electricity supplies, along with destroyed crops and forest fires.
Europe's increased demand for air-conditioning could make summer a greater challenge than winter for electricity suppliers, a report by the Datamonitor Group warned.
Nuclear power stations in France and Spain have been forced to cut output because the river water normally used to cool reactors is too warm.
Low water levels in the Po River in northern Italy affected hydroelectric supplies, prompting power shortages in Rome that knocked out air-conditioning and left people trapped in elevators.
Scorching temperatures and drought could destroy up to 20 percent of Poland's grain harvest, warned the country's agriculture minister, Andrzej Lepper. "It is quite simply dramatic, and if the weather does not change we could have a disaster," he said on Polish Radio.
Germany is facing crop losses of up to 50 percent in the worst-hit regions, according to Gerd Sonnleitner, the president of the national farmers association.
Forest fires affected regions as far afield as Corsica, in the Mediterranean, where homes near the capital, Ajaccio, were threatened, and the Czech Republic, Finland and Sweden.
PARIS With Paris, London and Berlin experiencing peak temperatures, matching those of Bangkok, Hong Kong and New Delhi, Europe's heat wave this summer has already headed for the record books. The severe and prolonged heat has prompted the authorities across Europe to issue advice on everything from personal safety to power use.
A 1911 record for the highest July temperature in Britain was broken last week when Wisley, a village in Surrey, hit 97.7 degrees.
Mark Vance, an entertainer at Warwick Castle who wears a full suit of armor and was named the man with the hottest job in Britain by The Daily Express, was photographed frying an egg on the breastplate of his outfit.
In the Netherlands, July will probably qualify as the hottest month since temperatures were first measured in 1706, the Dutch meteorological institute, KNMI, said Tuesday.
Many parts of Germany have hit the highest July temperatures since records began to be kept.
The French health minister, Xavier Bertrand, urged that medical students and retired doctors volunteer for hospital work as more than half the country was placed under the second-highest level of heat-wave alert.
Most of the 40 heat-related deaths in Europe in the last two weeks were in France, recalling the 2003 heat wave, in which 15,000 died in the country.
"The temperatures have not been so high in France as they were in the first weeks of August 2003, but the heat wave has lasted much longer," said Bernard Strauss, head of forecasting for Météo-France. "In the last six weeks we have had one of the longest stretches of higher than normal temperatures since we started records."
Temperatures along the west of France will probably rise in coming weeks, Mr. Strauss added.
The newspaper Le Parisien dedicated five pages to the heat wave, including tips for keeping cool, like wetting feet and hands as often as possible while walking the city.
A second type of warning was also issued in Europe - about strained electricity supplies, along with destroyed crops and forest fires.
Europe's increased demand for air-conditioning could make summer a greater challenge than winter for electricity suppliers, a report by the Datamonitor Group warned.
Nuclear power stations in France and Spain have been forced to cut output because the river water normally used to cool reactors is too warm.
Low water levels in the Po River in northern Italy affected hydroelectric supplies, prompting power shortages in Rome that knocked out air-conditioning and left people trapped in elevators.
Scorching temperatures and drought could destroy up to 20 percent of Poland's grain harvest, warned the country's agriculture minister, Andrzej Lepper. "It is quite simply dramatic, and if the weather does not change we could have a disaster," he said on Polish Radio.
Germany is facing crop losses of up to 50 percent in the worst-hit regions, according to Gerd Sonnleitner, the president of the national farmers association.
Forest fires affected regions as far afield as Corsica, in the Mediterranean, where homes near the capital, Ajaccio, were threatened, and the Czech Republic, Finland and Sweden.
MCA blasts Distributive Trade guidelines
MCA blasts Distributive Trade guidelines
Doreen Leong
KUALA LUMPUR: The MCA Youth Economic Bureau has hit out against the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry's proposed trade guidelines that will affect some 400 types of retail businesses.
Describing some of the requirements of the guidelines as "ludicrous", the bureau's chief, Datuk Henry Wong, said the matter should be viewed seriously as it would have far reaching implications.
He objected to the ministry's proposed Guidelines to Foreign Participation in the Distributive Trades as it was contrary to the spirit of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and appeared restrictive, especially to young entrepreneurs.
The guidelines aim to regulate the businesses that have at least a 15% foreign equity.
According to Wong, the guidelines states that all retailers, wholesalers, and specialty stores would be asked to restructure to meet a minimum 30% bumiputra requirement, to raise its paid-up capital to at least RM1 million and to ensure the composition of the directors and employees reflect the racial composition of the country.
"This will also put a heavy burden on the retailers and wholesalers, which are by and large small family-owned businesses.
"The requirement that the composition of the directors, managers and employee structure reflect the racial composition is also ludicrous," he said in a statement today July 24, 2006).
He was responding to The Edge Financial Daily's report yesterday on Cheras MCA Cheras service centre director Jeffrey Goh's statement, urging the ministry to clarify its position on the controversial trade guidelines.
Goh claimed that despite not having Cabinet approval for the proposals, the ministry was "testing the waters" at the ground level with the guidelines, which was mooted about two years ago.
Wong said the guidelines was contrary to the spirit of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), to which Malaysia was a signatory.
"It is understood that to be part of the global trade nowadays, we can't shift policies from liberal to non-liberal - this is literally reversing the traffic," Wong said, adding that the bureau would take up the issue when it meets on Wednesday (July 26, 2006).
He said when the Industrial Coordination Act 1975 was introduced, it was targeted at larger manufacturers where only those with a minimum paid up capital of RM2.5 million would be required to comply with the Foreign Investment Committee (FIC) rules where a 30% Bumiputra equity had to be met.
Wong added that there had never been a requirement of employee racial composition in the manufacturing sector.
He said Malaysia's services sector had always maintained a very liberal stand. He said even though the Act was still in place, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry and its agencies had applied a very liberal approach to the FIC guidelines.
"We need a clear stand on this because among the Barisan Nasional component parties, we have already agreed that there should not be enforced micro-restructuring.
"We are here to grow new businesses together," said Wong
Doreen Leong
KUALA LUMPUR: The MCA Youth Economic Bureau has hit out against the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry's proposed trade guidelines that will affect some 400 types of retail businesses.
Describing some of the requirements of the guidelines as "ludicrous", the bureau's chief, Datuk Henry Wong, said the matter should be viewed seriously as it would have far reaching implications.
He objected to the ministry's proposed Guidelines to Foreign Participation in the Distributive Trades as it was contrary to the spirit of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and appeared restrictive, especially to young entrepreneurs.
The guidelines aim to regulate the businesses that have at least a 15% foreign equity.
According to Wong, the guidelines states that all retailers, wholesalers, and specialty stores would be asked to restructure to meet a minimum 30% bumiputra requirement, to raise its paid-up capital to at least RM1 million and to ensure the composition of the directors and employees reflect the racial composition of the country.
"This will also put a heavy burden on the retailers and wholesalers, which are by and large small family-owned businesses.
"The requirement that the composition of the directors, managers and employee structure reflect the racial composition is also ludicrous," he said in a statement today July 24, 2006).
He was responding to The Edge Financial Daily's report yesterday on Cheras MCA Cheras service centre director Jeffrey Goh's statement, urging the ministry to clarify its position on the controversial trade guidelines.
Goh claimed that despite not having Cabinet approval for the proposals, the ministry was "testing the waters" at the ground level with the guidelines, which was mooted about two years ago.
Wong said the guidelines was contrary to the spirit of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), to which Malaysia was a signatory.
"It is understood that to be part of the global trade nowadays, we can't shift policies from liberal to non-liberal - this is literally reversing the traffic," Wong said, adding that the bureau would take up the issue when it meets on Wednesday (July 26, 2006).
He said when the Industrial Coordination Act 1975 was introduced, it was targeted at larger manufacturers where only those with a minimum paid up capital of RM2.5 million would be required to comply with the Foreign Investment Committee (FIC) rules where a 30% Bumiputra equity had to be met.
Wong added that there had never been a requirement of employee racial composition in the manufacturing sector.
He said Malaysia's services sector had always maintained a very liberal stand. He said even though the Act was still in place, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry and its agencies had applied a very liberal approach to the FIC guidelines.
"We need a clear stand on this because among the Barisan Nasional component parties, we have already agreed that there should not be enforced micro-restructuring.
"We are here to grow new businesses together," said Wong
Fight a democracy, kill the people
Fight a democracy, kill the people
By Spengler
Conventional armies can defeat guerrilla forces with broad popular support, for it is perfectly feasible to dismantle a people, destroy its morale, and if need be expel them. It has happened in history on occasions beyond count.
The British did it to the Scots Highlanders after the 1745 rising, and to the Acadians of Canada after the Seven Years' War; Ataturk did it to the Greeks of Asia Minor in 1922; and the Czechs did it to the Sudeten Germans after 1945. It seems to be happening again, as half or more of Lebanon's 1.2 million Shi'ites flee their homes. To de-fang Hezbollah implies the effective dissolution of the Shi'ite community, a third of whom live within Katyusha range of Israel.
A real war - that is, a war that is fought to a decisive conclusion - finally may have begun in the Middle East. To the extent Israel's campaign succeeds, it will have knock-on effects throughout the region, starting with another accident-prone multi-ethnic patchwork, namely Syria, with grave implications for Iraq. It is easy to say that the present war has unleashed chaos, but the question is: Upon whom? The collapse of Lebanon's Shi'ite community opens the prospect of chaos in the region, but to Israel's advantage.
Iran will face the humiliation of seeing dissolved a Shi'ite community it armed and nurtured, at the same time that Western powers demand the abandonment of its nuclear-weapons program. This will be too great for Tehran to bear; ultimately the West will have to take on Iran directly, for Iran has other means at its disposal to make life miserable for the West, including the so-called oil weapon.
"Fight a dictatorship, and you must kill the regime; fight a democracy, and you must kill the people," I warned on January 31 (No true Scotsman starts a war), meaning that one turns a proud and militant folk into a deracinated rabble. Sometimes it is not necessary to kill a single individual to crush an entire people. When a warlike people rather would fight, eg the Chechens, the result is butchery.
Blame George W Bush for this grim necessity in Lebanon, where the refugee count already has reached 15-30% of the total population. In the name of Lebanese democracy, Washington brought Hezbollah into mainstream politics, and the newly legitimized Hezbollah in turn became the focus of life for Lebanon's 1.2 million Shi'ites. To uproot Hezbollah, one has to uproot the Shi'ite community.
One has to evaluate with caution reports trickling in from the battlefield, but it appears that Hezbollah undertook vast works of military engineering under the guidance of Iranian advisers. Who dug the honeycombs of bunkers underneath Shi'ite villages south of the Litani River and in the Bekaa Valley? Hezbollah's fortifications must have provided the lion's share of the livelihood of numerous Shi'ite villages.
Given that Hezbollah emplaced its rocketry in Shi'ite civilian neighborhoods, Israel must reduce civilian areas to stop rocket attacks. The fact that casualties number in the hundreds rather than the tens of thousands shows that Israel has been meticulous about creating refugees rather than corpses. Nonetheless, Israel has forced the burden of uncertainty on its enemies, including by implication Syria and eventually Iran.
At least 200,000, and perhaps twice that number of refugees, have descended on Syria, joining half a million displaced Iraqis and perhaps 300,000 Palestinian refugees. Refugee streams clog the few undamaged routes between Syria and Lebanon. Evidently Syria fears destabilization; Information Minister Mohsen Bilal linked his July 23 threat of military action against Israel to the "evacuation" of Lebanon. He told the Spanish daily ABC:
It is unjustifiable that the superpower [ie, the US] does not work for a quick ceasefire. What is it waiting for - for Israel to destroy all of Lebanon so that it has to be evacuated completely? But Israel is not the only player in this region. I repeat: If Israel stages a ground invasion of Lebanon and comes close to us, Syria will not remain with its arms crossed. It will enter the conflict.
[1] Bilal's outburst is all the more extraordinary given that Israel's most hawkish defense analysts, eg Michael Oren in the July 17 New Republic Online, badly want to draw Syria into the war. It is hard for Israel to root Hezbollah out of its nest, but easy to destroy Syrian armor and air capability. The fact that Israel has not done so already is due to Washington's horror of further instability in Mesopotamia. The destabilization of Syria would produce more chaos in Iraq, as numerous commentators aver. [2] Washington still hopes that it can drive a wedge between Syria and Iran, which must be the second-silliest idea (after "Lebanese democracy") to possess the United States in years.
What, then, provoked Mohsen Bilal to offer to jump headlong into an Israeli trap? Contrary to Washington's hopes, the Bashar al-Assad regime may not be viable after the destruction of Hezbollah. The flood of refugees is painful to absorb. In addition, Syria's economy depends on Lebanon. Syrian workers in Lebanon remit US$4 billion a year, double Syria's reported exports. [3] The Assad regime and its supporters draw substantial income from Lebanon's black market, which Syria continues to dominate despite the removal of Syrian troops last year.
US as well as Israeli analysts assume that the Syrian regime will do anything to survive, but in the wake of Hezbollah's collapse and the breakdown of Lebanon's Shi'ite community, it may not be obvious to Bashar Assad how he may accomplish this. Without the skim from Lebanon's black market and the remittances from Syrian workers in Lebanon, the regime's purse will shrivel and its hold on the reins will slacken. Double-crossing its allies in Tehran at just that moment might not be the wisest move, particularly with remnants of Hezbollah fleeing into Syria.
Peaceful outcomes are possible when people have peaceable things to do. Lebanon's Shi'ites, the country's resentful underclass, have little stake in the tourism industry and other objects of Saudi investment in their country. Their livelihood is a function of war, of Iranian subsidies in particular. The fortification of southern Lebanon was not intended as a public-works project but, like Adolf Hitler's autobahn, it kept people employed. If Hezbollah is destroyed and the flow of Iranian largess stops, much of the Shi'ite population will lose its economic viability, and the Shi'ite community never will reconstitute itself in anything resembling its form prior to July 12. Syria, in turn, may lose a great deal of economic viability if Lebanon is cut off.
When chaos is inevitable, it's best to learn to like it, as I advised on March 14 (How I learned to stop worrying and love chaos). Ultimately the chaos in the Middle East plays to US advantage. In the meantime, it would not hurt to print gasoline ration cards.
Notes
1.Moshe Bilal, ministro de informacion sirio: 'Si Israel invade el Libano, Siria entrara en el conflicto'; my translation.
2. Syria seen as linchpin in Lebanon, San Francisco Chronicle, July 23.
3. Economics of the Syria-Lebanon relationship, SyriaComment.com, April 24, 2005.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .)
By Spengler
Conventional armies can defeat guerrilla forces with broad popular support, for it is perfectly feasible to dismantle a people, destroy its morale, and if need be expel them. It has happened in history on occasions beyond count.
The British did it to the Scots Highlanders after the 1745 rising, and to the Acadians of Canada after the Seven Years' War; Ataturk did it to the Greeks of Asia Minor in 1922; and the Czechs did it to the Sudeten Germans after 1945. It seems to be happening again, as half or more of Lebanon's 1.2 million Shi'ites flee their homes. To de-fang Hezbollah implies the effective dissolution of the Shi'ite community, a third of whom live within Katyusha range of Israel.
A real war - that is, a war that is fought to a decisive conclusion - finally may have begun in the Middle East. To the extent Israel's campaign succeeds, it will have knock-on effects throughout the region, starting with another accident-prone multi-ethnic patchwork, namely Syria, with grave implications for Iraq. It is easy to say that the present war has unleashed chaos, but the question is: Upon whom? The collapse of Lebanon's Shi'ite community opens the prospect of chaos in the region, but to Israel's advantage.
Iran will face the humiliation of seeing dissolved a Shi'ite community it armed and nurtured, at the same time that Western powers demand the abandonment of its nuclear-weapons program. This will be too great for Tehran to bear; ultimately the West will have to take on Iran directly, for Iran has other means at its disposal to make life miserable for the West, including the so-called oil weapon.
"Fight a dictatorship, and you must kill the regime; fight a democracy, and you must kill the people," I warned on January 31 (No true Scotsman starts a war), meaning that one turns a proud and militant folk into a deracinated rabble. Sometimes it is not necessary to kill a single individual to crush an entire people. When a warlike people rather would fight, eg the Chechens, the result is butchery.
Blame George W Bush for this grim necessity in Lebanon, where the refugee count already has reached 15-30% of the total population. In the name of Lebanese democracy, Washington brought Hezbollah into mainstream politics, and the newly legitimized Hezbollah in turn became the focus of life for Lebanon's 1.2 million Shi'ites. To uproot Hezbollah, one has to uproot the Shi'ite community.
One has to evaluate with caution reports trickling in from the battlefield, but it appears that Hezbollah undertook vast works of military engineering under the guidance of Iranian advisers. Who dug the honeycombs of bunkers underneath Shi'ite villages south of the Litani River and in the Bekaa Valley? Hezbollah's fortifications must have provided the lion's share of the livelihood of numerous Shi'ite villages.
Given that Hezbollah emplaced its rocketry in Shi'ite civilian neighborhoods, Israel must reduce civilian areas to stop rocket attacks. The fact that casualties number in the hundreds rather than the tens of thousands shows that Israel has been meticulous about creating refugees rather than corpses. Nonetheless, Israel has forced the burden of uncertainty on its enemies, including by implication Syria and eventually Iran.
At least 200,000, and perhaps twice that number of refugees, have descended on Syria, joining half a million displaced Iraqis and perhaps 300,000 Palestinian refugees. Refugee streams clog the few undamaged routes between Syria and Lebanon. Evidently Syria fears destabilization; Information Minister Mohsen Bilal linked his July 23 threat of military action against Israel to the "evacuation" of Lebanon. He told the Spanish daily ABC:
It is unjustifiable that the superpower [ie, the US] does not work for a quick ceasefire. What is it waiting for - for Israel to destroy all of Lebanon so that it has to be evacuated completely? But Israel is not the only player in this region. I repeat: If Israel stages a ground invasion of Lebanon and comes close to us, Syria will not remain with its arms crossed. It will enter the conflict.
[1] Bilal's outburst is all the more extraordinary given that Israel's most hawkish defense analysts, eg Michael Oren in the July 17 New Republic Online, badly want to draw Syria into the war. It is hard for Israel to root Hezbollah out of its nest, but easy to destroy Syrian armor and air capability. The fact that Israel has not done so already is due to Washington's horror of further instability in Mesopotamia. The destabilization of Syria would produce more chaos in Iraq, as numerous commentators aver. [2] Washington still hopes that it can drive a wedge between Syria and Iran, which must be the second-silliest idea (after "Lebanese democracy") to possess the United States in years.
What, then, provoked Mohsen Bilal to offer to jump headlong into an Israeli trap? Contrary to Washington's hopes, the Bashar al-Assad regime may not be viable after the destruction of Hezbollah. The flood of refugees is painful to absorb. In addition, Syria's economy depends on Lebanon. Syrian workers in Lebanon remit US$4 billion a year, double Syria's reported exports. [3] The Assad regime and its supporters draw substantial income from Lebanon's black market, which Syria continues to dominate despite the removal of Syrian troops last year.
US as well as Israeli analysts assume that the Syrian regime will do anything to survive, but in the wake of Hezbollah's collapse and the breakdown of Lebanon's Shi'ite community, it may not be obvious to Bashar Assad how he may accomplish this. Without the skim from Lebanon's black market and the remittances from Syrian workers in Lebanon, the regime's purse will shrivel and its hold on the reins will slacken. Double-crossing its allies in Tehran at just that moment might not be the wisest move, particularly with remnants of Hezbollah fleeing into Syria.
Peaceful outcomes are possible when people have peaceable things to do. Lebanon's Shi'ites, the country's resentful underclass, have little stake in the tourism industry and other objects of Saudi investment in their country. Their livelihood is a function of war, of Iranian subsidies in particular. The fortification of southern Lebanon was not intended as a public-works project but, like Adolf Hitler's autobahn, it kept people employed. If Hezbollah is destroyed and the flow of Iranian largess stops, much of the Shi'ite population will lose its economic viability, and the Shi'ite community never will reconstitute itself in anything resembling its form prior to July 12. Syria, in turn, may lose a great deal of economic viability if Lebanon is cut off.
When chaos is inevitable, it's best to learn to like it, as I advised on March 14 (How I learned to stop worrying and love chaos). Ultimately the chaos in the Middle East plays to US advantage. In the meantime, it would not hurt to print gasoline ration cards.
Notes
1.Moshe Bilal, ministro de informacion sirio: 'Si Israel invade el Libano, Siria entrara en el conflicto'; my translation.
2. Syria seen as linchpin in Lebanon, San Francisco Chronicle, July 23.
3. Economics of the Syria-Lebanon relationship, SyriaComment.com, April 24, 2005.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .)
Arabs Disavow Hizbullah by Daniel Pipes
Arabs Disavow Hizbullah by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
July 26, 2006
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3783
The current round of hostilities between Israel and its enemies differs from prior ones in that it's not an Arab-Israeli war, but one that pits Iran and its Islamist proxies, Hamas and Hizbullah, against Israel.
This points, first, to the increasing power of radical Islam. When Israeli forces last confronted, on this scale, a terrorist group in Lebanon in 1982, they fought the Palestine Liberation Organization, a nationalist-leftist organization backed by the Soviet Union and the Arab states. Now, Hizbullah seeks to apply Islamic law and to eliminate Israel through jihad, with the Islamic Republic of Iran looming in the background, feverishly building nuclear weapons.
Non-Islamist Arabs and Muslims find themselves sidelined. Fear of Islamist advances – whether subversion in their own countries or aggression from Tehran – finds them facing roughly the same demons as does Israel. As a result, their reflexive anti-Zionist response has been held in check. However fleetingly, what The Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh calls "an anti-Hizbullah coalition," one implicitly favorable to Israel, has come into existence.
It began on July 13 with a startling Saudi statement condemning "rash adventures" that created "a gravely dangerous situation." Revealingly, Riyadh complained about Arab countries being exposed to destruction "with those countries having no say." The kingdom concluded that "these elements alone bear the full responsibility of these irresponsible acts and should alone shoulder the burden of ending the crisis they have created." George W. Bush's spokesman, Tony Snow, a day later described the president as "pleased" by the statement.
On July 15, the Saudis and several other Arab states at an emergency Arab League meeting condemned Hizbullah by name for its "unexpected, inappropriate and irresponsible acts." On July 17, Jordan's King Abdullah warned against "adventures that do not serve Arab interests."
A number of commentators began to take up the same argument, most notably Ahmed Al-Jarallah, editor-in-chief of Kuwait's Arab Times, author of one of the most remarkable sentences ever published in an Arab newspaper: "The operations of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon are in the interest of people of Arab countries and the international community." Interviewed on Dream2 television, Khaled Salah, an Egyptian journalist, condemned Hassan Nasrallah of Hizbullah: "Arab blood and the blood of Lebanese children is much more precious than raising [Hizbullah's] yellow flags and pictures of [Iran's Supreme Leader] Khamene'i."
A leading Wahhabi figure in Saudi Arabia even declared it unlawful for Sunni Muslims to support, supplicate for, or join Hizbullah. No major Arab oil-exporting state appears to have any intention of withholding its oil or gas exports out of solidarity with Hizbullah.
Many Lebanese expressed satisfaction that the arrogant and reckless Hizbullah organization was under assault. One Lebanese politician privately confided to Michael Young of Beirut's Daily Star that "Israel must not stop now … for things to get better in Lebanon, Nasrallah must be weakened further." The prime minister, Fuad Saniora, was quoted complaining about Hizbullah having become "a state within a state." A BBC report quoted a resident of the Lebanese Christian town of Bikfaya estimating that 95 percent of the town's population was furious at Hizbullah.
The Palestinian Legislative Council expressed its dismay at these muted Arab reactions, while a women's group burned flags of Arab countries on Gaza's streets. Nasrallah complained that "Some Arabs encouraged Israel to continue fighting" and blamed them for extending the war's duration.
Surveying this opinion, Youssef Ibrahim wrote in his New York Sun column of an "intifada" against the "little turbaned, bearded men" and a resounding "no" to Hizbullah's effort to start an all-out war with Israel. He concluded that "Israel is finding, to its surprise, that a vast, not-so-silent majority of Arabs agrees that enough is enough."
One hopes that Ibrahim is right, but I am cautious. First, Hizbullah still enjoys wide support. Second, these criticisms could well be abandoned as popular anger at Israel mounts or the crisis passes. Finally, as Michael Rubin notes in the Wall Street Journal, coolness toward Hizbullah does not imply acceptance of Israel: "There is no change of heart in Riyadh, Cairo or Kuwait." Specifically, Saudi princes still fund Islamist terrorism.
Arab disavowal of Hizbullah represents not a platform on which to build, only a welcome wisp of reality in an era of irrationality.
Jerusalem Post
July 26, 2006
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3783
The current round of hostilities between Israel and its enemies differs from prior ones in that it's not an Arab-Israeli war, but one that pits Iran and its Islamist proxies, Hamas and Hizbullah, against Israel.
This points, first, to the increasing power of radical Islam. When Israeli forces last confronted, on this scale, a terrorist group in Lebanon in 1982, they fought the Palestine Liberation Organization, a nationalist-leftist organization backed by the Soviet Union and the Arab states. Now, Hizbullah seeks to apply Islamic law and to eliminate Israel through jihad, with the Islamic Republic of Iran looming in the background, feverishly building nuclear weapons.
Non-Islamist Arabs and Muslims find themselves sidelined. Fear of Islamist advances – whether subversion in their own countries or aggression from Tehran – finds them facing roughly the same demons as does Israel. As a result, their reflexive anti-Zionist response has been held in check. However fleetingly, what The Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh calls "an anti-Hizbullah coalition," one implicitly favorable to Israel, has come into existence.
It began on July 13 with a startling Saudi statement condemning "rash adventures" that created "a gravely dangerous situation." Revealingly, Riyadh complained about Arab countries being exposed to destruction "with those countries having no say." The kingdom concluded that "these elements alone bear the full responsibility of these irresponsible acts and should alone shoulder the burden of ending the crisis they have created." George W. Bush's spokesman, Tony Snow, a day later described the president as "pleased" by the statement.
On July 15, the Saudis and several other Arab states at an emergency Arab League meeting condemned Hizbullah by name for its "unexpected, inappropriate and irresponsible acts." On July 17, Jordan's King Abdullah warned against "adventures that do not serve Arab interests."
A number of commentators began to take up the same argument, most notably Ahmed Al-Jarallah, editor-in-chief of Kuwait's Arab Times, author of one of the most remarkable sentences ever published in an Arab newspaper: "The operations of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon are in the interest of people of Arab countries and the international community." Interviewed on Dream2 television, Khaled Salah, an Egyptian journalist, condemned Hassan Nasrallah of Hizbullah: "Arab blood and the blood of Lebanese children is much more precious than raising [Hizbullah's] yellow flags and pictures of [Iran's Supreme Leader] Khamene'i."
A leading Wahhabi figure in Saudi Arabia even declared it unlawful for Sunni Muslims to support, supplicate for, or join Hizbullah. No major Arab oil-exporting state appears to have any intention of withholding its oil or gas exports out of solidarity with Hizbullah.
Many Lebanese expressed satisfaction that the arrogant and reckless Hizbullah organization was under assault. One Lebanese politician privately confided to Michael Young of Beirut's Daily Star that "Israel must not stop now … for things to get better in Lebanon, Nasrallah must be weakened further." The prime minister, Fuad Saniora, was quoted complaining about Hizbullah having become "a state within a state." A BBC report quoted a resident of the Lebanese Christian town of Bikfaya estimating that 95 percent of the town's population was furious at Hizbullah.
The Palestinian Legislative Council expressed its dismay at these muted Arab reactions, while a women's group burned flags of Arab countries on Gaza's streets. Nasrallah complained that "Some Arabs encouraged Israel to continue fighting" and blamed them for extending the war's duration.
Surveying this opinion, Youssef Ibrahim wrote in his New York Sun column of an "intifada" against the "little turbaned, bearded men" and a resounding "no" to Hizbullah's effort to start an all-out war with Israel. He concluded that "Israel is finding, to its surprise, that a vast, not-so-silent majority of Arabs agrees that enough is enough."
One hopes that Ibrahim is right, but I am cautious. First, Hizbullah still enjoys wide support. Second, these criticisms could well be abandoned as popular anger at Israel mounts or the crisis passes. Finally, as Michael Rubin notes in the Wall Street Journal, coolness toward Hizbullah does not imply acceptance of Israel: "There is no change of heart in Riyadh, Cairo or Kuwait." Specifically, Saudi princes still fund Islamist terrorism.
Arab disavowal of Hizbullah represents not a platform on which to build, only a welcome wisp of reality in an era of irrationality.
World divided over Mideast conflict
World divided over Mideast conflict
Sunday 16 July 2006, 0:39 Makka Time, 21:39 GMT
Al-Jazeera, 16 july 2006
World leaders have acknowledged that the conflict between Israel and Lebanon risks destabilising the region, but have so far appeared divided over how to respond.
As the leaders of the United States, Russia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan gathered in Saint Petersburg on Saturday before the G8 summit talks, they all stressed the gravity of the situation.
But while George Bush, the US president, put the blame on Lebanon's Hezbollah for rocket attacks on Israel and the capture of Israeli soldiers, his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, called on Israel to show restraint.
Hezbollah should "lay down its arms" and end the attacks, Bush said, urging Syria to put pressure on it do to so.
Referring to Israel, Putin said that "recourse to violence must be balanced and it must be stopped as soon as possible".
Stephen Hadley, the White House national security adviser, spoke of the dangers of the conflict spreading.
Sergei Ivanov, the Russian defence minister, went further and said there was a "real threat" that other countries could be dragged in.
"Disproportionate" force
Hadley warned of the risks of
wider escalation of the conflict
The European Union, like Russia, described Israel's use of military force as "disproportionate".
A spokesman for Jacques Chirac, the French president, said G8 leaders should not allow themselves to be wedged apart but should put on a united front, "a mobilisation of all of us around this objective of de-escalation".
Tony Blair, the British prime minister, agreed. His spokesman said the summit "shouldn't be a talking shop, it should be setting an agenda" to resolve the crisis.
Hadley said Washington hoped to persuade its G8 partners to agree on a statement blaming Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran and Syria for the violence.
The draft US officials are pushing should recognise Hezbollah as being "at the root of this problem", Hadley said, and also name the Palestinian group Hamas as well as Iran and Syria for supporting them.
"I think it is coming together," he told reporters, referring to work on the statement.
Peace process "dead"
Amr Mussa: The Middle East
peace process is dead
In Cairo, meanwhile, Amr Mussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, said that "the Middle East [peace] process is dead" as foreign ministers met in an emergency session and unanimously condemned the Israeli offensive in Lebanon.
As they struggled to maintain a unified front, the foreign ministers who met at the Arab League headquarters, said they would ask the United Nations Security Council to handle the Middle East peace process.
The Arab League "condemns the Israeli aggression in Lebanon which contradicts all international law and regulations", the final statement said.
But the meeting comes at a time of profound differences among Arabs on how to confront the situation in the region.
On Friday, Jordan's King Abdullah II and Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, condemned the Israeli military aggression in Lebanon but also indirectly criticised Hezbollah for harming Arab interests.
Similar language was used earlier by Saudi Arabia, which indirectly accused Hezbollah of "adventurism" in provoking the Israeli onslaught and putting all Arab nations at risk.
Lebanon's plea
"Bombs are exploding, innocent people are being killed, infrastructures are being destroyed ... The powerful continue to crush the weak, but unfortunately those who hold the power in the world are keeping mum"
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister
Back in Lebanon, Fuad Siniora, the prime minister, called for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the "collective punishment" of his country. He also declared Lebanon "a disaster zone in need of a comprehensive and speedy Arab plan".
Saad Hariri, Lebanon's parliamentary majority leader, urged world powers to stop Israel 's "aggression" on his country and called for fellow Arab states to take a strong stand.
Lebanon failed to secure a ceasefire at an emergency UN Security Council debate on Friday, with the United States standing firmly behind its ally Israel.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, a key US ally and Israel's main Muslim ally, criticised the Israeli offensive and the reaction of other countries.
"Bombs are exploding, innocent people are being killed, infrastructures are being destroyed ... The powerful continue to crush the weak, but unfortunately those who hold the power in the world are keeping mum," he said.
Syria not a target
Four days of raids have killed nearly 100 civilians, mostly Lebanese, destroyed much of Lebanon's infrastructure and crippled its economy.
In an unprecedented action on Saturday afternoon, an Israeli fighter bomber fired four missiles about 200 metres beyond Masnaa, the main crossing point between Lebanon and Syria, Lebanese police said.
However, Damascus denied that its territory had been hit and General Gadi Azincot, Israel's head of military operations, said later that Syria was "not an objective of our operation".
Lebanon has been mired in its own political crisis since the murder of ex-premier Rafiq al-Hariri last year and is still rebuilding after the devastating 1975-1990 civil war.
Sunday 16 July 2006, 0:39 Makka Time, 21:39 GMT
Al-Jazeera, 16 july 2006
World leaders have acknowledged that the conflict between Israel and Lebanon risks destabilising the region, but have so far appeared divided over how to respond.
As the leaders of the United States, Russia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan gathered in Saint Petersburg on Saturday before the G8 summit talks, they all stressed the gravity of the situation.
But while George Bush, the US president, put the blame on Lebanon's Hezbollah for rocket attacks on Israel and the capture of Israeli soldiers, his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, called on Israel to show restraint.
Hezbollah should "lay down its arms" and end the attacks, Bush said, urging Syria to put pressure on it do to so.
Referring to Israel, Putin said that "recourse to violence must be balanced and it must be stopped as soon as possible".
Stephen Hadley, the White House national security adviser, spoke of the dangers of the conflict spreading.
Sergei Ivanov, the Russian defence minister, went further and said there was a "real threat" that other countries could be dragged in.
"Disproportionate" force
Hadley warned of the risks of
wider escalation of the conflict
The European Union, like Russia, described Israel's use of military force as "disproportionate".
A spokesman for Jacques Chirac, the French president, said G8 leaders should not allow themselves to be wedged apart but should put on a united front, "a mobilisation of all of us around this objective of de-escalation".
Tony Blair, the British prime minister, agreed. His spokesman said the summit "shouldn't be a talking shop, it should be setting an agenda" to resolve the crisis.
Hadley said Washington hoped to persuade its G8 partners to agree on a statement blaming Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran and Syria for the violence.
The draft US officials are pushing should recognise Hezbollah as being "at the root of this problem", Hadley said, and also name the Palestinian group Hamas as well as Iran and Syria for supporting them.
"I think it is coming together," he told reporters, referring to work on the statement.
Peace process "dead"
Amr Mussa: The Middle East
peace process is dead
In Cairo, meanwhile, Amr Mussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, said that "the Middle East [peace] process is dead" as foreign ministers met in an emergency session and unanimously condemned the Israeli offensive in Lebanon.
As they struggled to maintain a unified front, the foreign ministers who met at the Arab League headquarters, said they would ask the United Nations Security Council to handle the Middle East peace process.
The Arab League "condemns the Israeli aggression in Lebanon which contradicts all international law and regulations", the final statement said.
But the meeting comes at a time of profound differences among Arabs on how to confront the situation in the region.
On Friday, Jordan's King Abdullah II and Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, condemned the Israeli military aggression in Lebanon but also indirectly criticised Hezbollah for harming Arab interests.
Similar language was used earlier by Saudi Arabia, which indirectly accused Hezbollah of "adventurism" in provoking the Israeli onslaught and putting all Arab nations at risk.
Lebanon's plea
"Bombs are exploding, innocent people are being killed, infrastructures are being destroyed ... The powerful continue to crush the weak, but unfortunately those who hold the power in the world are keeping mum"
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister
Back in Lebanon, Fuad Siniora, the prime minister, called for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the "collective punishment" of his country. He also declared Lebanon "a disaster zone in need of a comprehensive and speedy Arab plan".
Saad Hariri, Lebanon's parliamentary majority leader, urged world powers to stop Israel 's "aggression" on his country and called for fellow Arab states to take a strong stand.
Lebanon failed to secure a ceasefire at an emergency UN Security Council debate on Friday, with the United States standing firmly behind its ally Israel.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, a key US ally and Israel's main Muslim ally, criticised the Israeli offensive and the reaction of other countries.
"Bombs are exploding, innocent people are being killed, infrastructures are being destroyed ... The powerful continue to crush the weak, but unfortunately those who hold the power in the world are keeping mum," he said.
Syria not a target
Four days of raids have killed nearly 100 civilians, mostly Lebanese, destroyed much of Lebanon's infrastructure and crippled its economy.
In an unprecedented action on Saturday afternoon, an Israeli fighter bomber fired four missiles about 200 metres beyond Masnaa, the main crossing point between Lebanon and Syria, Lebanese police said.
However, Damascus denied that its territory had been hit and General Gadi Azincot, Israel's head of military operations, said later that Syria was "not an objective of our operation".
Lebanon has been mired in its own political crisis since the murder of ex-premier Rafiq al-Hariri last year and is still rebuilding after the devastating 1975-1990 civil war.
Isu Artikel 11 : Kenyataan PM tamparan hebat buat Nazri Aziz
Isu Artikel 11 : Kenyataan PM tamparan hebat buat Nazri Aziz
Wed Jul 26, 06 10:40:22 AM
Oleh Wan Nordin wan Yaacob
SEREMBAN, 26 Julai (Hrkh) - Kenyataan Perdana Menteri, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi bahawa kewujudan kumpulan Artikel 11 hanya mengundang masalah kepada perpaduan memberi tamparan hebat kepada Menteri di jabatan Perdana Menteri, Dato' Seri Mohammed Nazri Aziz.
Ini kerana, Mohammed Nazri sebelum ini cukup lantang menyelar pertubuhan Islam termasuk PAS yang bertindak membantah perjuangan kumpulan Artikel 11, termasuk menyifatkan PAS sebagai bodoh kerana menentang forum Artikel 11, kata Setiausaha Agung PAS, Dato' Kamaruddin Jaffar.
Beliau berkata demikian ketika dihubungi Harakahdaily hari ini bagi mengulas kenyataan Abdullah berhubung kumpulan Artikel 11 dalam laporan akhbar harian hari ini.
"Siapa sebenarnya yang bodoh sekarang, Abdullah sendiri menyatakan kewujudan kumpulan Artikel 11 boleh mengundang perpecahbelahan, jadi mengapa Nazri pula menyokong kumpulan ini," katanya ketika membalas kenyataan Nazri membodohkan PAS di Dewan Rakyat yang pernah disiarkan Harakahdaily sebelum ini.
Hari ini rakyat Malaysia dapat melihat bahawa PM sendiri tidak bersetuju dengan perjuangan kumpulan Artikel 11 yang dilihat mampu memecahbelahkan masyarakat berbilang kaum, katanya.
Dengan keputusan yang Abdullah buat ini, pihak polis seharusnya membebaskan tiga aktivis PAS Pulau Pinang yang didakwa terlibat dengan penganjuran perhimpunan aman membantah forum Artikel 11 di Pulau Pinang baru-baru ini.
"Polis seharusnya berterima kasih kepada PAS kerana menghalang usaha Artikel 11 untuk meneruskan forum yang dibimbangi memberi kesan kepada perpaduan rakyat," kata Kamaruddin yang juga ahli Parlimen Tumpat.
Tolak IFC
Abdullah dalam satu kenyataannya hari ini berkata, beliau meminta semua pihak termasuk media menghentikan segala perbincangan mengenai agama kerana ia sangat sensitif.
Abdullah berkata, kerajaan kini memerhatikan kegiatan tersebut dengan serius kerana berpendapat ia boleh memberi kesan buruk kepada negara jika diteruskan tanpa sekatan.
"Hentilah (perbincangan agama), jangan buat apa-apa. Isu agama cukup sensitif. Ia lebih sensitif daripada isu perkauman. Jika ia tidak dibendung, dikawal secara berhati-hati, akan lahir situasi tentangan di kalangan rakyat."
"Jika perbincangan (agama) yang berjalan itu tidak dibendung, tidak dikawal dengan perasaan berhati-hati, maka apa yang berlaku ialah ketegangan antara rakyat yang menganuti agama berlainan," katanya.
Beliau berkata demikian ketika diminta mengulas tindakan Kumpulan Artikel 11 yang mengandungi 13 pertubuhan bukan kerajaan (NGO) termasuk Majlis Peguam yang sedang menjalankan kempen seluruh negara bagi mendapat sokongan untuk meminda Perkara 121(A) Perlembagaan Persekutuan.
Kandungan Perkara 121(A) tersebut merujuk kepada peruntukan perlembagaan yang menghalang mahkamah sivil mencampuri bidang kuasa mahkamah syariah.
Pertemuan pertama kumpulan 13 NGO tersebut berlangsung di Johor Bahru, Johor pada 22 Julai lepas.Perdana Menteri berkata, pihak yang mengadakan perbincangan agama adalah kumpulan yang mahukan Suruhanjaya Antara Agama (IFC) diwujudkan.
"Yang meneruskan perdebatan agama itu ialah kumpulan yang mahukan IFC. Saya katakan IFC sangat sensitif."Mengenai IFC, saya sendiri minta tangguh, jika tangguh ia tak perlu diadakan perbincangan lagi."
"Bila dilaksanakan, inilah jadinya. Dulu tiada masalah, sekarang dah jadi masalah," kata Perdana Menteri.Malah beliau yang juga Menteri Keselamatan Dalam Negeri berkata, IFC ditangguh hasil daripada keputusan Jemaah Menteri pada tahun lalu.
Dalam hal ini, Abdullah berkata, MT UMNO berpendapat dan bersepakat bahawa IFC tidak perlu diadakan langsung kerana ia sangat sensitif.
Nazri anti Islam
Sidang Dewan Rakyat pada 17 Julau lalu hangat setelah Mohammed Nazri mengeluarkan kata-kata kesat kepada PAS dengan menyifatkan 'PAS bodoh' kerana terlibat dalam membantah forum yang dianjurkan kumpulan Artikel 11 di Pulau Pinang baru-baru ini.
Kenyataan Mohammed Nazri berhubung tuduhan PAS sebagai 'bodoh' kerana terlibat menghalang Kumpulan Artikel 11 mengadakan forum disifatkan sebagai satu tindakan yang anti kepada Islam, kata Ketua Pemuda PAS Salahuddin Ayob yang juga ahli Parlimen Kubang Kerian.
Beliau yang ditemui selepas membahaskan Rang Undang-undang Kanun Kesiksaan (Pindaan) 2004 di Dewan Rakyat berkata, kenyataan Mohammed Nazri itu jelas menunjukkan 'tohmahan' pelbagai pihak bahawa menteri itu anti Islam adalah benar.
Tidak pertahan Islam
Sambil melahirkan rasa kesal di atas kenyataan itu Salahuddin mengutuk tindakan Nazri yang dilihat tidak mempertahankan Islam tatkala ada pihak bukan Islam cuba menodai Islam dengan pelbagai usaha termasuk dengan siri-siri penerangan forum Artikel 11 ini, katanya.
Menurut beliau, PAS membantah keras kumpulan Artikel 11 adalah kerana kumpulan ini mempunyai agenda untuk memastikan individu yang beragama Islam bebas menukar agamanya atau dalam erti kata lain menghalalkan 'murtad'.
"Apa lagi yang tinggal kepada umat Islam jika hak ini (Perkara 11 Perlembagaan Persekutuan) dipinda>oleh itu berhak bagi kita mempertahankan hak ini dari dinodai kumpulan seperti Artikel 11 atau IFC," katanya.
Mengecewakan dan sudah diduga
Kenyataan Mohammed Nari itu amat mengecewakan, bagaimanapun seperti yang telah diketahui umum ianya menjadi kebiasaan kepada menteri itu untuk berkata sedemikian, kata Kamaruddin dalam kenyataannya yang terdahulu di Dewan Rakyat.
Mengenai tuduhan PAS melalui kumpulan yang dinamakan 'Badai' menghalang perjalanan forum anjuran Artikel 11, Kamaruddin berkata, Mohammad Nazri sendiri sebenarnya salah dalam tafsiran mengenai kebebasan kerana baginya menurut perlembagaan, Badai berhak untuk berdemonstarsi atau berhimpun.
"Hak untuk berdemonstarsi, berhimpun menyatakan bantahan adalah hak semua rakyat.Badai tidak membatalkan perhimpunan Artikel 11, tetapi pihak polis yang bertindak demikian," katanya.
Baginya, adalah satu kesilapan jika Mohammaed Nazri menyatakan Badai adalah pihak yang menghalang forum Artikel 11, sebaliknya yang menghalang adalah pihak polis yang memberi arahan membatalkannya, katanya.
Sementara itu Abdul Fatah Haron (PAS Rantau Panjang) yang turut diminta mengulas kenyataan Nazri itu berkata, beliau tidak kesal dengan kenyataan Nazri itu sebaliknya telah menduga sikap sedemikian ditampilkan Nazri.
Wed Jul 26, 06 10:40:22 AM
Oleh Wan Nordin wan Yaacob
SEREMBAN, 26 Julai (Hrkh) - Kenyataan Perdana Menteri, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi bahawa kewujudan kumpulan Artikel 11 hanya mengundang masalah kepada perpaduan memberi tamparan hebat kepada Menteri di jabatan Perdana Menteri, Dato' Seri Mohammed Nazri Aziz.
Ini kerana, Mohammed Nazri sebelum ini cukup lantang menyelar pertubuhan Islam termasuk PAS yang bertindak membantah perjuangan kumpulan Artikel 11, termasuk menyifatkan PAS sebagai bodoh kerana menentang forum Artikel 11, kata Setiausaha Agung PAS, Dato' Kamaruddin Jaffar.
Beliau berkata demikian ketika dihubungi Harakahdaily hari ini bagi mengulas kenyataan Abdullah berhubung kumpulan Artikel 11 dalam laporan akhbar harian hari ini.
"Siapa sebenarnya yang bodoh sekarang, Abdullah sendiri menyatakan kewujudan kumpulan Artikel 11 boleh mengundang perpecahbelahan, jadi mengapa Nazri pula menyokong kumpulan ini," katanya ketika membalas kenyataan Nazri membodohkan PAS di Dewan Rakyat yang pernah disiarkan Harakahdaily sebelum ini.
Hari ini rakyat Malaysia dapat melihat bahawa PM sendiri tidak bersetuju dengan perjuangan kumpulan Artikel 11 yang dilihat mampu memecahbelahkan masyarakat berbilang kaum, katanya.
Dengan keputusan yang Abdullah buat ini, pihak polis seharusnya membebaskan tiga aktivis PAS Pulau Pinang yang didakwa terlibat dengan penganjuran perhimpunan aman membantah forum Artikel 11 di Pulau Pinang baru-baru ini.
"Polis seharusnya berterima kasih kepada PAS kerana menghalang usaha Artikel 11 untuk meneruskan forum yang dibimbangi memberi kesan kepada perpaduan rakyat," kata Kamaruddin yang juga ahli Parlimen Tumpat.
Tolak IFC
Abdullah dalam satu kenyataannya hari ini berkata, beliau meminta semua pihak termasuk media menghentikan segala perbincangan mengenai agama kerana ia sangat sensitif.
Abdullah berkata, kerajaan kini memerhatikan kegiatan tersebut dengan serius kerana berpendapat ia boleh memberi kesan buruk kepada negara jika diteruskan tanpa sekatan.
"Hentilah (perbincangan agama), jangan buat apa-apa. Isu agama cukup sensitif. Ia lebih sensitif daripada isu perkauman. Jika ia tidak dibendung, dikawal secara berhati-hati, akan lahir situasi tentangan di kalangan rakyat."
"Jika perbincangan (agama) yang berjalan itu tidak dibendung, tidak dikawal dengan perasaan berhati-hati, maka apa yang berlaku ialah ketegangan antara rakyat yang menganuti agama berlainan," katanya.
Beliau berkata demikian ketika diminta mengulas tindakan Kumpulan Artikel 11 yang mengandungi 13 pertubuhan bukan kerajaan (NGO) termasuk Majlis Peguam yang sedang menjalankan kempen seluruh negara bagi mendapat sokongan untuk meminda Perkara 121(A) Perlembagaan Persekutuan.
Kandungan Perkara 121(A) tersebut merujuk kepada peruntukan perlembagaan yang menghalang mahkamah sivil mencampuri bidang kuasa mahkamah syariah.
Pertemuan pertama kumpulan 13 NGO tersebut berlangsung di Johor Bahru, Johor pada 22 Julai lepas.Perdana Menteri berkata, pihak yang mengadakan perbincangan agama adalah kumpulan yang mahukan Suruhanjaya Antara Agama (IFC) diwujudkan.
"Yang meneruskan perdebatan agama itu ialah kumpulan yang mahukan IFC. Saya katakan IFC sangat sensitif."Mengenai IFC, saya sendiri minta tangguh, jika tangguh ia tak perlu diadakan perbincangan lagi."
"Bila dilaksanakan, inilah jadinya. Dulu tiada masalah, sekarang dah jadi masalah," kata Perdana Menteri.Malah beliau yang juga Menteri Keselamatan Dalam Negeri berkata, IFC ditangguh hasil daripada keputusan Jemaah Menteri pada tahun lalu.
Dalam hal ini, Abdullah berkata, MT UMNO berpendapat dan bersepakat bahawa IFC tidak perlu diadakan langsung kerana ia sangat sensitif.
Nazri anti Islam
Sidang Dewan Rakyat pada 17 Julau lalu hangat setelah Mohammed Nazri mengeluarkan kata-kata kesat kepada PAS dengan menyifatkan 'PAS bodoh' kerana terlibat dalam membantah forum yang dianjurkan kumpulan Artikel 11 di Pulau Pinang baru-baru ini.
Kenyataan Mohammed Nazri berhubung tuduhan PAS sebagai 'bodoh' kerana terlibat menghalang Kumpulan Artikel 11 mengadakan forum disifatkan sebagai satu tindakan yang anti kepada Islam, kata Ketua Pemuda PAS Salahuddin Ayob yang juga ahli Parlimen Kubang Kerian.
Beliau yang ditemui selepas membahaskan Rang Undang-undang Kanun Kesiksaan (Pindaan) 2004 di Dewan Rakyat berkata, kenyataan Mohammed Nazri itu jelas menunjukkan 'tohmahan' pelbagai pihak bahawa menteri itu anti Islam adalah benar.
Tidak pertahan Islam
Sambil melahirkan rasa kesal di atas kenyataan itu Salahuddin mengutuk tindakan Nazri yang dilihat tidak mempertahankan Islam tatkala ada pihak bukan Islam cuba menodai Islam dengan pelbagai usaha termasuk dengan siri-siri penerangan forum Artikel 11 ini, katanya.
Menurut beliau, PAS membantah keras kumpulan Artikel 11 adalah kerana kumpulan ini mempunyai agenda untuk memastikan individu yang beragama Islam bebas menukar agamanya atau dalam erti kata lain menghalalkan 'murtad'.
"Apa lagi yang tinggal kepada umat Islam jika hak ini (Perkara 11 Perlembagaan Persekutuan) dipinda>oleh itu berhak bagi kita mempertahankan hak ini dari dinodai kumpulan seperti Artikel 11 atau IFC," katanya.
Mengecewakan dan sudah diduga
Kenyataan Mohammed Nari itu amat mengecewakan, bagaimanapun seperti yang telah diketahui umum ianya menjadi kebiasaan kepada menteri itu untuk berkata sedemikian, kata Kamaruddin dalam kenyataannya yang terdahulu di Dewan Rakyat.
Mengenai tuduhan PAS melalui kumpulan yang dinamakan 'Badai' menghalang perjalanan forum anjuran Artikel 11, Kamaruddin berkata, Mohammad Nazri sendiri sebenarnya salah dalam tafsiran mengenai kebebasan kerana baginya menurut perlembagaan, Badai berhak untuk berdemonstarsi atau berhimpun.
"Hak untuk berdemonstarsi, berhimpun menyatakan bantahan adalah hak semua rakyat.Badai tidak membatalkan perhimpunan Artikel 11, tetapi pihak polis yang bertindak demikian," katanya.
Baginya, adalah satu kesilapan jika Mohammaed Nazri menyatakan Badai adalah pihak yang menghalang forum Artikel 11, sebaliknya yang menghalang adalah pihak polis yang memberi arahan membatalkannya, katanya.
Sementara itu Abdul Fatah Haron (PAS Rantau Panjang) yang turut diminta mengulas kenyataan Nazri itu berkata, beliau tidak kesal dengan kenyataan Nazri itu sebaliknya telah menduga sikap sedemikian ditampilkan Nazri.
'The focus should be on Damascus'
'The focus should be on Damascus'
By Rachel Shabi in Tel Aviv
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/010676D6-1F09-456F-8C16-6BD44499A644.htm
Monday 24 July 2006, 9:33 Makka Time, 6:33 GMT
Efraim Inbar, a professor of political science at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, says Israel's priority is to stop Hezbollah's rocket attacks on Israel and then disarm the group.
But he questions whether Israel is taking the right actions to achieve this goal
Inbar has written four books: Outcast Countries in the World Community, War and Peace in Israeli Politics; Labor Party Positions on National Security, Rabin and Israel's National Security and The Israeli-Turkish Entente.
He is director of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies and also a columnist for the Jerusalem Post.
Aljazeera net: What are the Israeli goals in Lebanon?
Efraim Inbar: The goals are simple: To remove the missile threat to Israel, to push Hezbollah out of South Lebanon and to try to damage its military capability as much as possible. The direct responsibility is with Hezbollah which has a clear intent to destroy Israel and is a declared enemy of Israel. The Lebanese government may be formally at war with Israel, but it does not pursue any measures against Israel. The problem with the government is that it is unable to extend its sovereignty to all the state, which allows Hezbollah to operate as an independent militia and to build a state within a state.
What do you think is the very minimum Israel will accept for a ceasefire?
Basically, the minimum conditions are the same as Israel's goals. But the US will decide when enough is enough and Israel will do what is acceptable to them. Between God, and us there is the United States. America, as well as the international community, is interested in the implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1559, which calls for the dismantling of Hezbollah.
Does the Israel public, in your view, consider the killing of now over 300 Lebanese, mostly civilian, as proportionate?
The general feeling in Israel is of support for the government.
The issue here is not the abduction of the two soldiers but that Hezbollah does not hesitate to threaten the life of so far a fifth of Israel's population – and says it has longer-range missiles that can reach more of the population.
In that context, it is the moral duty and the first obligation of the state to defend its citizens.
How many more deaths of civilians, on both sides, will the Israeli public tolerate?
First, each side's tolerance level for casualties on the other side is rather high.
If the goal is perceived as important, the Israeli public tolerance for deaths on our side is also high. In 1948, because of the importance of the goal – the establishment of a state – the death of 6,000 was perceived as tolerable. In 1982, after 600 Israeli casualties, the public called into question the whole operation in Lebanon. Now, the security of Israeli citizens is an important goal, which probably raises the tolerance level of Israeli society.
Personally, I’m not sure what we are doing is the right thing - I think the focus should be on Damascus and not on the poor Lebanese.
Is it likely that the Israeli government has been in contact with any Arab governments?
There may be consultation on various levels with Egypt and Jordan and with other countries like Tunisia, Morocco, in Oman and in Qatar. The diplomatic avenue is not closed at any time and there may be ongoing dialogue.
The last time Israel invaded Lebanon, it left scars that fed extremism in the region. Why does this not appear to be a consideration in the present offensive?
I’m not sure it's Israeli action that fuels extremism in the Arab world. It is primarily the failure of the Arab states to gradually make the transition to modernity, which creates social and political problems that lead to extremism. Islamic extremism is home grown.
The Israeli occupation of South Lebanon helped to establish Hezbollah, but in my view it was a secondary factor because there was already a certain measure of radicalisation within the Shia community before Israel arrived.
Hezbollah is now a much greater threat than before and we have to deal with the immediate threat rather than future concerns.
Would Israel consider attacking Iran or Syria?
The government that can make a difference is not the Lebanese government; it is the regime in Damascus that can cut off support for Hezbollah.
I advocate attacking Syria – to some extent we are wasting ammunition in Lebanon. But I'm not sure the Israeli government thinks in those terms. It has been making statements that it does not want to escalate the situation by attacking Syria.
Iran is too distant and so I think w'’re more likely to leave the Iranians to the Americans – for now
Is the peace process now dead?
Forget about it, it's over.
We are in a post two-state paradigm, primarily because the Palestinians failed to establish a functioning political entity. Similar to the Lebanese situation, the Palestinians allow the existence of independent militias.
The convergence plan is based on the assumption that there is no Palestinian partner for peace in the near future.
By Rachel Shabi in Tel Aviv
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/010676D6-1F09-456F-8C16-6BD44499A644.htm
Monday 24 July 2006, 9:33 Makka Time, 6:33 GMT
Efraim Inbar, a professor of political science at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, says Israel's priority is to stop Hezbollah's rocket attacks on Israel and then disarm the group.
But he questions whether Israel is taking the right actions to achieve this goal
Inbar has written four books: Outcast Countries in the World Community, War and Peace in Israeli Politics; Labor Party Positions on National Security, Rabin and Israel's National Security and The Israeli-Turkish Entente.
He is director of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies and also a columnist for the Jerusalem Post.
Aljazeera net: What are the Israeli goals in Lebanon?
Efraim Inbar: The goals are simple: To remove the missile threat to Israel, to push Hezbollah out of South Lebanon and to try to damage its military capability as much as possible. The direct responsibility is with Hezbollah which has a clear intent to destroy Israel and is a declared enemy of Israel. The Lebanese government may be formally at war with Israel, but it does not pursue any measures against Israel. The problem with the government is that it is unable to extend its sovereignty to all the state, which allows Hezbollah to operate as an independent militia and to build a state within a state.
What do you think is the very minimum Israel will accept for a ceasefire?
Basically, the minimum conditions are the same as Israel's goals. But the US will decide when enough is enough and Israel will do what is acceptable to them. Between God, and us there is the United States. America, as well as the international community, is interested in the implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1559, which calls for the dismantling of Hezbollah.
Does the Israel public, in your view, consider the killing of now over 300 Lebanese, mostly civilian, as proportionate?
The general feeling in Israel is of support for the government.
The issue here is not the abduction of the two soldiers but that Hezbollah does not hesitate to threaten the life of so far a fifth of Israel's population – and says it has longer-range missiles that can reach more of the population.
In that context, it is the moral duty and the first obligation of the state to defend its citizens.
How many more deaths of civilians, on both sides, will the Israeli public tolerate?
First, each side's tolerance level for casualties on the other side is rather high.
If the goal is perceived as important, the Israeli public tolerance for deaths on our side is also high. In 1948, because of the importance of the goal – the establishment of a state – the death of 6,000 was perceived as tolerable. In 1982, after 600 Israeli casualties, the public called into question the whole operation in Lebanon. Now, the security of Israeli citizens is an important goal, which probably raises the tolerance level of Israeli society.
Personally, I’m not sure what we are doing is the right thing - I think the focus should be on Damascus and not on the poor Lebanese.
Is it likely that the Israeli government has been in contact with any Arab governments?
There may be consultation on various levels with Egypt and Jordan and with other countries like Tunisia, Morocco, in Oman and in Qatar. The diplomatic avenue is not closed at any time and there may be ongoing dialogue.
The last time Israel invaded Lebanon, it left scars that fed extremism in the region. Why does this not appear to be a consideration in the present offensive?
I’m not sure it's Israeli action that fuels extremism in the Arab world. It is primarily the failure of the Arab states to gradually make the transition to modernity, which creates social and political problems that lead to extremism. Islamic extremism is home grown.
The Israeli occupation of South Lebanon helped to establish Hezbollah, but in my view it was a secondary factor because there was already a certain measure of radicalisation within the Shia community before Israel arrived.
Hezbollah is now a much greater threat than before and we have to deal with the immediate threat rather than future concerns.
Would Israel consider attacking Iran or Syria?
The government that can make a difference is not the Lebanese government; it is the regime in Damascus that can cut off support for Hezbollah.
I advocate attacking Syria – to some extent we are wasting ammunition in Lebanon. But I'm not sure the Israeli government thinks in those terms. It has been making statements that it does not want to escalate the situation by attacking Syria.
Iran is too distant and so I think w'’re more likely to leave the Iranians to the Americans – for now
Is the peace process now dead?
Forget about it, it's over.
We are in a post two-state paradigm, primarily because the Palestinians failed to establish a functioning political entity. Similar to the Lebanese situation, the Palestinians allow the existence of independent militias.
The convergence plan is based on the assumption that there is no Palestinian partner for peace in the near future.
10,000 Muslims attend forum on apostasy
10,000 Muslims attend forum on apostasy
Fauwaz Abdul AzizJul 24, 06 4:09pm Malaysiakini
More than 10,000 Muslims flooded the Masjid Wilayah in Kuala Lumpur to attend a forum that centred around the contentious issue of apostasy.
The roads surrounding the mosque were littered with hundreds of vehicles, bringing traffic in the area to a crawl. About 3,000 people filled the hall while the rest gathered outside.
Among the personalities who spoke at the forum titled ‘The Syariah and Current Issues’ were former Bar Council presidents Sulaiman Abdullah and Zainur Zakaria, Perak mufti Harussani Zakaria, constitutional expert Abdul Aziz Bari and Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (Abim) president Yusri Mohamad.
Other speakers were Syariah lawyer Kamar Ainiah Kamaruzaman, former Penang mufti Sheikh Azmi Ahmad, and forum chairperson Azmi Abdul Hamid (right), who heads the Malay-advocacy group Teras.
The speakers called on the authorities to continue with what they said was the historic tendency to strengthen the country’s Islamic institutions and not weaken them.
“We have every right to seek the continuation of this process of Islamisation,” said Teras’ Azmi, who also accused certain quarters of using apostasy to weaken that process.
On several occasions during the three-hour forum, tempers flared when the sound system broke down and those outside the mosque were unable to hear the speakers. This led the vexed crowd to chant Allahuakbar.
The overwhelming turnout had also caught the organisers by surprise. Also present were former finance minister Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and former deputy minister Ibrahim Ali.
The resolutions
Meanwhile, the forum resolved that:
[1] The authorities ensure that the current system and status of Islam as provided by the Federal Constitution be maintained and accepted by all persons;
[2] The Federal Constitution and other laws be strengthened to stop attempts to use the courts to weaken the position of Islam;
[3] All Muslims should act in unison in defence of Islam;
[4] Every threat to Islam signifies a threat to the dignity and position and the Malay Rulers who are the heads of Islam in every state and to the integrity of the Islamic institutions;
[5] Efforts to overhaul and erode the position of Islam in the Constitution and national laws should be stopped;
[6] The mass media should be ethical, professional and firm in not taking sides in issues involving Islam and not advocate the view of Malaysia as not being an Islamic state and Islamic practices as a merely matter of private morality. The media is also urged to give space for the Islamic religious authorities to express their perspectives and not sideline the voice of mainstream Islam;
[7] Religious rights and freedoms should be understood in the framework of Islam, not according to individual inclinations;
[8] All state and federal legislative assemblies should pass enactments that prevent the propagation to Muslims of religions other than Islam, and these should be implemented immediately. The government should reject efforts of the West and non-governmental organisations to coopt and use local NGOs, members of the academic, and individuals to influence laws and policies connected to Islam;
[9] Statements of support by certain Muslim leaders that Islam is an individual and private matter are of concern;
[10] Malaysian Bar Council has taken a partisan stand without considering the views of Muslim lawyers who make up more than 40 percent of the Malaysian Bar. The Council, in the name of human rights, has interfered in Islamic matters and this goes against the objectives of the founding of the Council.
Azmi said the resolutions would be submitted to the Council of Malay Rulers, the prime minister, members of Parliament and state legislators.
Fauwaz Abdul AzizJul 24, 06 4:09pm Malaysiakini
More than 10,000 Muslims flooded the Masjid Wilayah in Kuala Lumpur to attend a forum that centred around the contentious issue of apostasy.
The roads surrounding the mosque were littered with hundreds of vehicles, bringing traffic in the area to a crawl. About 3,000 people filled the hall while the rest gathered outside.
Among the personalities who spoke at the forum titled ‘The Syariah and Current Issues’ were former Bar Council presidents Sulaiman Abdullah and Zainur Zakaria, Perak mufti Harussani Zakaria, constitutional expert Abdul Aziz Bari and Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (Abim) president Yusri Mohamad.
Other speakers were Syariah lawyer Kamar Ainiah Kamaruzaman, former Penang mufti Sheikh Azmi Ahmad, and forum chairperson Azmi Abdul Hamid (right), who heads the Malay-advocacy group Teras.
The speakers called on the authorities to continue with what they said was the historic tendency to strengthen the country’s Islamic institutions and not weaken them.
“We have every right to seek the continuation of this process of Islamisation,” said Teras’ Azmi, who also accused certain quarters of using apostasy to weaken that process.
On several occasions during the three-hour forum, tempers flared when the sound system broke down and those outside the mosque were unable to hear the speakers. This led the vexed crowd to chant Allahuakbar.
The overwhelming turnout had also caught the organisers by surprise. Also present were former finance minister Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and former deputy minister Ibrahim Ali.
The resolutions
Meanwhile, the forum resolved that:
[1] The authorities ensure that the current system and status of Islam as provided by the Federal Constitution be maintained and accepted by all persons;
[2] The Federal Constitution and other laws be strengthened to stop attempts to use the courts to weaken the position of Islam;
[3] All Muslims should act in unison in defence of Islam;
[4] Every threat to Islam signifies a threat to the dignity and position and the Malay Rulers who are the heads of Islam in every state and to the integrity of the Islamic institutions;
[5] Efforts to overhaul and erode the position of Islam in the Constitution and national laws should be stopped;
[6] The mass media should be ethical, professional and firm in not taking sides in issues involving Islam and not advocate the view of Malaysia as not being an Islamic state and Islamic practices as a merely matter of private morality. The media is also urged to give space for the Islamic religious authorities to express their perspectives and not sideline the voice of mainstream Islam;
[7] Religious rights and freedoms should be understood in the framework of Islam, not according to individual inclinations;
[8] All state and federal legislative assemblies should pass enactments that prevent the propagation to Muslims of religions other than Islam, and these should be implemented immediately. The government should reject efforts of the West and non-governmental organisations to coopt and use local NGOs, members of the academic, and individuals to influence laws and policies connected to Islam;
[9] Statements of support by certain Muslim leaders that Islam is an individual and private matter are of concern;
[10] Malaysian Bar Council has taken a partisan stand without considering the views of Muslim lawyers who make up more than 40 percent of the Malaysian Bar. The Council, in the name of human rights, has interfered in Islamic matters and this goes against the objectives of the founding of the Council.
Azmi said the resolutions would be submitted to the Council of Malay Rulers, the prime minister, members of Parliament and state legislators.
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