Texas Director of Homeland Security, Steve McCraw revealed Wednesday that 6 yrs. after Sept. 11th, people have connected to Hezbollah, Hamas and al Qaeda have been arrested at the Texas border. What will it take to strengthen our border security?…

I wonder what prompted him to write it in the first place. Is he is just being a good dhimmie? -posted by
jmarcure

Hugh Fitzgerald provides this perception regarding Middle East Studies (aka MESA)
and coined the term

“MESA NOSTRA”

. . .

MESA, or as it is more accurately known around here, MESA Nostra (the Middle East Studies Association) in 1970 had a membership consisting of perhaps 5% Muslims. Now the Muslims among its members constitute 60%. But that is not the only important thing. Non-Muslims must work with and attend departmental meetings with these Muslim colleagues. How awkward it would be to be in the same department with people who will bear an eternal grudge against you if you dare say one word about Islam that they find is not to their liking, if you dare to present Islam as anything other than something wonderful, and if you dare to suggest that the Muslim and Arab view of the universe is not always and everywhere to be endorsed. Non-Muslims must rely on Muslim colleagues, who have and will always have power over them — whether for obtaining grants as a graduate student, or on a doctoral examination committee, or vetting your thesis, or recommending that one’s thesis be published by a certain press, or later giving one teaching assignments, and then voting on tenure. Many are not deemed suitably compliant, insufficiently “collegial,” as that curious criterion is now officially deemed important in judging one’s fitness for academic promotion and tenure — an absurdity that would have appalled Joseph Schacht and Franz Rosenthal and so many others. This is, of course, part of the simpering sentimentality that would have kept out so many great teachers and scholars, and favors the careful-to-offend-no-one mediocrity. Thus are whole departments ruined, degree by degree, appointment by appointment.

If we sign something that says “we admit that liberals are better-er and smarter-er than conservatives”, will they promise to stop trying to insipidly prove to everyone that their understanding of the world is more sophisticated than everyone else’s…

The overall problem is that too many people wish to be “tolerant” of bad behavior. If we don’t want terrorism–if we want to survive as a species as the ability to destroy increases as technology increases–we will have to come down hard on bad behavior. Our soft response to the rudeness of the Code Pinkos only leads them to worse and worse behavior. We will have to adopt Giuliani’s broken window theory to public discourse. Right now, we can probably cure the barbaric behavior of most of the Code Pinkos with a week of solitary confinement. I advocate this punishment for anyone who wants to act like a jerk at a political event. Stop them before they decide to toss bombs.

I think he’s motivated by a desire to prove that Islam does not promote violence. The idea that over a billion people believe in an ideology that condones intolerance and violence is just too much for some people to take. So they do all kinds of intellectual gymnastics in an effort to convince themselves and others that it’s really something else.

Krueger is being intentionally dishonest in his arguments. Even the WaPo should be ashamed of printing this garbage.

forest on September 14, 2007 at 12:54 PM

I really hate to sound like I’m defending him but I don’t think he is being dishonest. I do think he is being selective in his examples as well as not providing all the facts. His myth, “4. Terrorism is mainly perpetrated by Muslims”, points out the recent plot bust in Germany but as I recall they were Muslim. He tries to paint them as home grown like McVeigh which is very misleading. It’s as if their religion was meaningless because they were German citizens. The whole article is very misleading but I still don’t think he lies. I wonder what prompted him to write it in the first place. Is he is just being a good dhimmie?

The Jihad against Nigerians (1965 onwards) .. heroyalwhyness on September 14, 2007 at 10:30 AM

Back around 1984 I attended a church service in which the speaker was an ex-Muslim from Nigeria, now a Christian evangelist. He confirmed that the Nigerian Jihad was ongoing, and was an attempt by the Muslims to kill off enough non-Muslims to allow the Muslims to become the majority group, thereby seizing power “legally”.

… the history of Jihad … heroyalwhyness on September 14, 2007 at 10:30 AM

Pretty sad that there are only 3 responses by the “infidels” to the 40 Jihads perpetrated by the Muslims.

C’mon, fellow “infidels”, we are dropping the ball here!

radical Islamic terrorists are the worry du jour because of 9/11 and Iraq

No, actually radical Islamic terrorists are the “worry du jour” because they keep on committing acts of terrorism against everyone who doesn’t agree with them, and because they keep on telling us that more is coming.

“…the data show pretty clearly that the predominant religion of a country is not a good predictor of whether its people will become involved in terrorism.”

The question is about religious belief of individual terrorists, not the predominant religions of countries. Look at Thailand, the Phillipines, and most European countries. The predominant religion in these places is not Islam, but almost all of the terrorism that occurs there is committed by Muslims in the name of Islam.

Krueger is being intentionally dishonest in his arguments. Even the WaPo should be ashamed of printing this garbage.

I agree that it’s propaganda, but he is lying and doesn’t back up every point he makes. He says that “most terrorists are Muslim” is a myth, but he does nothing to prove it. He only provides a couple of examples of non-Muslim terrorists (who, btw, are not motivated by their religion like most Muslim terrorists).

Islam does not have a monopoly on terrorism, but most terrorists are Muslim, and almost all terrorists who act on the basis of religion are Muslim.

I meant having the figurative realization (that I’m sure Pearl had upon his capture) of: “I trusted these maniacs… how could I have been that catastrophically naive?”

Not the literal removal of the apparently non-functional organ attached to said professor’s neck.

profitsbeard on September 14, 2007 at 10:04 AM

You know, I’m a guest here too, but I’m going to guess that wishing anyone a “Daniel Pearl moment” is going to be utterly uncool with management.

A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often….

Here is Alan B. Krueger, who is the Bendheim professor of economics and public policy at Princeton University and the author of “What Makes a Terrorist”, displaying how to make an ass of himself in front of the world….

Thank you, crazy media guy, for opening my eyes to the terror. Simply because terrorism is a subjective term, anyone can be a terrorist. I’ll need some kind of “go code” for the askew hatted skateboarders.

He can also benefit from contextualizing the history of jihad . . .

It’s also a question of the sample size: if you think about the last few decades centuries and think about how many of the incidents were committed

The Jihad against Arabs (622 to 634)

The Jihad against Zoroastrian Persians of Iran, Baluchistan and Afghanistan (634 to 651)

The Jihad against the Byzantine Christians (634 to 1453)
The Jihad against Christian Coptic Egyptians (640 to 655)
The Jihad against Christian Coptic Nubians – modern Sudanese (650)
The Jihad against pagan Berbers – North Africans (650 to 700)
The Jihad against Spaniards (711 to 730)

The Reconquista against Jihad in Spain (730 to 1492)
The Jihad against Franks – modern French (720 to 732)

The Jihad against Sicilians in Italy (812 to 940)
The Jihad against Chinese (751)
The Jihad against Turks (651 to 751)
The Jihad against Armenians and Georgians (1071 to 1920)
The Crusade against Jihad (1096 – 1291 ongoing)
The Jihad against Mongols (1260 to 1300)

The Jihad against Hindus of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (638 to 1857)
The Jihad against Indonesians and Malays (1450 to 1500)
The Jihad against Poland (1444 to 1699)

The Jihad against Romania (1350 to 1699)
The Jihad against Russia (1500 to 1853)
The Jihad against Bulgaria (1350 to 1843)
The Jihad against Serbs, Croats and Albanians (1334 to 1920)
The Jihad against Greeks (1450 to 1853)

The Jihad against Albania (1332 – 1853)
The Jihad against Croatia (1389 to 1843)
The Jihad against Hungarians (1500 to 1683)

The Jihad against Austrians (1683)
Jihad in the Modern Age (20th and 21st Centuries)The Jihad against Israelis (1948 – 2004 ongoing)
The Jihad against Americans (9/11/2001)
The Jihad against the British (1947 onwards)
The Jihad against the Germans (1945 onwards)

The Jihad against the Filipinos in Mindanao(1970 onwards)
The Jihad against Indonesian Christians in Malaku and East Timor (1970 onwards)
The Jihad against Russians (1995 onwards)

The Jihad against Dutch and Belgians (2003 onwards)
The Jihad against Norwegians and Swedes (2003 onwards)
The Jihad against Thais (2003 onwards)
The Jihad against Nigerians (1965 onwards)
The Jihad against Canadians (2001 onwards)

The Jihad against Latin America (2003 onwards)
The Jihad against Australia (2002 onwards)
The Global Jihad today (2001 – ongoing)

The War on Terror against Jihad today (2001– ongoing)

Now, that pool of “respected, educated” academia has shrunk to mostly men and women of science (excluding “environmentalists”) whose work and theories can be checked against the Universe itself, because mathematics, chemistry, physics, etc., are apolitical and not subject to political relativism.

I call them the “hard” sciences. The late and not lamented Lysenko, whose purity of marxist thought got him appointed to being in charge of science in the USSR, notwithstanding, was unable to apply the Dialetic to high energy physics and other hard sciences, because the laws of physics and math are impervious to marxist dogma, as they are to capitalism, Catholicism, Protestantism or Islam.

This is neither the case for the “soft” sciences nor the “liberal arts” studies. The insights derived are entirely lodged in the politico/cultural zeitgeist of the researcher.

Princeton Prof Alan Krueger is NOT a “hard” scientist. He is the “Bendheim professor of economics and public policy,” whatever that is. But I will bet donuts that his work is inevitably tied to his political outlook. And I’m guessing, from reading his piece in WaPo and his “public policy” chair, that he is just another academic who is, like most of them, left of center.

I won’t say that he doesn’t know jack squat about the subject. Just that what he considers to be “myths” relies more on cherry-picked concepts and accepted dogma than on reality. And he is paying homage to the “terrorism is an acceptable nuisance” school of liberal revisionism in this article.