Jihad Watch, Dhimmi Watch and Dinesh D’Souza’s book – “Enemy at Home”

There are those, even after all this time since September 11^th, 2001, who are still thinking that Westerners, specifically Americans, are the cause of the violence within Islamic circles – not realizing that there are more than one faction or sect within the Islamic religion that dates back to post-Mohammad days. Briefly, Mohammad’s relatives increased the military that Mohammad had initiated the last ten years of his life. Beginning essentially to be an army of defense against its enemies, the Mecca merchant-rulers were upset with Mohammad and his new found revelations that upset the market place of the Middle East and once the center for various religions, primarily pagan.

Since September 11^th, 2001, there have been a growing number of books revealing the ideology of not only Islamic fundamentalists, but Islam in general. Some of it is not conducive of “moderate” Moslem practice of Islam, but with the continued silence of those Moslem that follow the way of peace, there has been a growing alarm concerning that fact. Blogs have been created to keep an eye upon the Jihad movement, Jihad Watch is one them and its counterpart – Dhimmi Watch. It is an international blog that is by Robert Spencer, author of books on the subject, as well as Hugh Fitzgerald.

And, what is Dhimmi? An old concept straight from the Qu’ran:

Dhimmitude is the status that Islamic law, the Sharia, mandates for non-Muslims, primarily Jews and Christians. Dhimmis, “protected people,” are free to practice their religion in a Sharia regime, but are made subject to a number of humiliating regulations designed to enforce the Qu’ran’s command that they “feel themselves subdued (Sura 9:29). This denial of equality of rights and dignity remains part of the Sharia, and, as such, is part of the law that global jihadists are laboring to impose everywhere, ultimately on the entire human race. The dhimmi attitude of chastened subservience has entered into Western academic study of Islam, and from there into journalism, textbooks, and the popular discourse. One must not point out the depredations of jihad and Dhimmitude; to do so would offend the multiculturalist ethos that prevails everywhere today. But in this era of global terrorism this silence and distortion has become deadly. Therefore Dhimmi Watch seeks to bring public attention to the plight of the dhimmis, and by doing so, to bring them justice.

In view of all this, it has been reported by Dhimmi Watch the following dissection of Reuters news reporting concerning Israel and the Palestinian issue, and only represents another incident where Reuters has not reported news objectively ….

Ryan Jones ably dissects this Reuters farrago for Jerusalem Newswire (via Israel Insider): Reuters on Monday reported matter-of-factly that Israeli oppression is fueling a Christian exodus from Palestinian Authority-controlled areas, when in fact the evidence points to Muslim intimidation as the primary culprit. Reporting from Bethlehem, special correspondent Alistair Lyon wasted no time in setting the anti-Israel tone of his piece, starting it thus: “Despairing of life under Israeli occupation, many Palestinian Christians are moving abroad, threatening their ancient links to Bethlehem and the land where Jesus was born.” Though very few of the Christians who spoke to Lyon explicitly blamed Israel for their situation, the reporter left his readers with no option but to view Israel as guilty by: 1. Painting Israel’s security fence, which surrounds much of Bethlehem, as an arbitrary measure aimed primarily at oppressing and humiliating the Palestinians; and 2. Stating, again in a matter-f-fact manner, that no one spoke to indicated that there is any Muslim of local Christians. In so doing, Lyon completely and brazenly ignored reams of reports over the past few years regarding Muslim intimidation of local Palestinian Christians and the shrinking effect it is having on that community.

National Review Online posted an interview by NRO editor Kathryn Lopez concerning Dinesh D’Souza’s new book The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11.

…In The Enemy at Home, D’Souza argues that “the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the nonprofit sector, and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world.[1]

The following is a transcript of that interview:

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Is the mess in Iraq the fault of Michael Moore?
DINESH D’SOUZA: No, of course not. But if America loses the Iraq war we are less likely to lose it over there in Baghdad and more likely to lose it over here in the corridors of Congress. Michael Moore’s radical ideology – the insurgents are the Minutemen, they are the freedom fighters, and they will prevail! – has now come to center stage, where it is guiding the actions of the Democratic leadership. Look how the so-called centrist Democrats are caving in one by one to the Left. A huge enemy at home has emerged that seems determined to stop Bush’s war on terror not because thy like Bin Laden or Saddam, but because they hate and fear Bush more. It is Bush and his conservative allies, not Bin Laden and his radical allies, who threaten the Left’s most cherished values. And now suddenly the Democrats, as a group, find it in their interest to inflict a horrendous foreign-policy defeat on Bush and thus ensure that they walk into the White House in 2008.[2]
LOPEZ: This weekend, a reviewer in the Washington Post summed up your new book as arguing “Falwell was onto something.” Is that a fair nutshell assessment?
D’SOUZA: Falwell’s point after 9/11 was that God was punishing America for its sins. My point is entirely secular: Why did the guys who did it, do it? Surely five years after 9/11, it is reasonable to ask this question. And both the Right and the Left have been operating under illusions. The radical Muslims are against modernity and science and democracy.[3] The radical Muslims are upset because of colonialism and the Crusades.[4] It’s all nonsense. That’s not what the leading thinkers of radical Islam say. And Bin Laden’s own views are quite different. In his Letter to America, issued shortly after 9/11, he said that America is the fount of global atheism[5] and it is imposing its morally depraved values on the world.[6] So Muslims must rise up in defensive jihad against America because their religion and their values are under attack. This aspect of Bin Laden’s critique has been totally ignored, and it’s one that resonates with a lot of traditional Muslims and traditionally people around the world. A second point is that unlike Falwell I don’t think ?America” is to blame. Muslims in Indonesia and Egypt and Pakistan don’t see “America,” they see the face of American popular culture that is projected by our television and movies and music. They see the dimension of America that in their view corrupts the innocence of children, and undermines the family, and promotes homosexuality as a normal way of life. In fact, this is the America of the cultural Left. What the Left considers “liberating,” much of the world considers a scandalous assault on modesty and decency.[7]
LOPEZ: Why shouldn’t I be offended by the suggestion that because I oppose abortion and gay marriage, I can easily ally myself with the mullahs in Iran? They would also kill a woman for fornification – I may be pro-abstinence but I stop way before Sharia law!
D’SOUZA: Nobody’s asking you to ally with the radical mullahs in Iran. I’d like to see them all deposed. Our concern should be with the traditional Muslims, who are the majority in the Muslim world. These people are also religious and socially conservative, and they are our natural allies. In fact, since the cultural Left in America is de facto allied with the radical Muslims, we as conservatives have no choice but to ally with the traditional Muslims. We cannot win the war on terror without them. No matter how many Islamic radicals we kill, it’s no use if twice as many traditional Muslims join them. Now building bridges to this group doesn’t mean changing our way of life, and if we are conservative there is nothing that needs to be changed. Our values are quite similar to those of traditional Muslims.[8] There’s no point chasing after “liberals” who believe in secularism and feminism and homosexual rights. Such people are quite rare and they have no constituency in any Muslim country. The traditional Muslims are our best bet. Besides, they’re not asking us to live like them. They’re asking us not to attack their religion, which conservatives do with depressing regularity. They’re asking us not to force secularism and separation of church and state on their society, another foolish cause to which some conservatives subscribe.[9] ‘And they would feel a lot better about America if they could see the “other” America, which I say, Red America, the America they don’t see on television, where people go to work and look after their families and subscribe to traditional values and go to church. Bush should project more of this America to the rest of the world, especially to the traditional cultures of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
LOPEZ: What’s the “indignation gap”?
D’SOUZA: The indignation gap refers to the vastly different temperature with which leftists and their allies attack the Islamic radicals compared to their attacks on Bush. They usually say, “Granted Bin Laden is not a very nice guy” or “True, the man wishes us no good,” but then proceed to attack Bush and the conservatives with unrestrained vitriol. Actually look at the Left’s uncontrolled fury toward my book. These people are going absolutely nuts. They have never said anything remotely this harsh about the Islamic radicals. That’s because I am attacking the Left’s values at home, and exposing a link between the Left and the Islamic radicals that is the great unspoken secret of American politics. Basically the Islamic radicals supply the terror and the Left uses the terror to demoralize the American people and urge them to pull American troops out of Iraq and the Middle East. So on the other hand the Left dislikes the values of the Islamic radicals, and on the other the Left needs the Islamic radicals to fulfill its core mission in America, which is to wipe out the Right and send us back to the margins of American politics.
LOPEZ: Could someone come away from your book think you’re more indignant toward Ted Kennedy than Osama bin Laden?
D’SOUZA: No. Certainly I prefer a tipsy incoherent Irishman to a Muslim mass murderer.
LOPEZ: You don’t like “war on terror” and “war on Islamic fascism” doesn’t sound right to your ear either. So what is it? Surely not a war against liberalism.
D’SOUZA: “War on terror” is a misnomer. It would be like calling America’s involvement in World II a “war on kamikazism.” Terrorism, like kamikazism, is a tactic. And “Islamofascist”[10] and “new Bolshevist” are misleading because those were Western ideologies with a largely atheist agenda. That’s why we used the term “godless Communism.” It’s understandable that we would take categories from the last war and project them onto our new enemy, but this is the classic error of ethnocentrism. What we face now is something very different, a war against Islamic radicalism. It’s a new kind of enemy with its own agenda and a critique of America that we certainly haven’t heard from the Nazi and the Communists.
LOPEZ: On Islam: It has been argued that the Koran [sic] itself is violent. That moderate Muslims, in fact, have to distance themselves from more than Osama bin Laden. Is it possible that you are part of the non-understanding-the-threat-we-face problem by suggesting that line of examination be shut down?
D’SOUZA: I’m not urging that any line of inquiry be “shut down.” I’m saying it’s foolish to blame Islam when Islam has been around for 1,300 years and Islamic terrorism has been a problem for the past 25 years. So is it even reasonable to blame Mohammad or the Koran? I realize that you can fish out this passage or that passage and make it sound like the Muslims want to convert or kill everybody. But that would be like taking passages out of the Old Testament to make Moses sound like Hitler. Besides, you have to look at what the Islamic empires actually did. There were Christians and Jews who lived under the various Muslim dynasties, from the Abbasid to the Ottoman. In fact, Jews were much safer in the Ottoman Empire than in just about any of the Christian kingdoms, such as that of Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain. The Mughals ruled northern India for 200 years. They could have forcibly converted the Hindus or killed all of them. But they did no such thing. So we have to be careful about simply describing a religion of one billion people as “violent.” This would be tactically imprudent even if it were true, but it is not true, so why repeat a canard that has a terrible effect of driving the traditional Muslims into the radical camp?
LOPEZ: Dinseh, you write that “American conservatives should join the Muslims and others in condemning the global moral degeneracy that is produced by liberal valus.” Um, what would that coalition look like? Ahmadinejad and Pat Robertson? That’s not exactly a ticket anyone but David Duke will run to rally behind.
D’SOUZA: Already there have been working relationships between traditional Christians and traditional Muslims in the United Nations and some other international forums to block liberal efforts to declare abortion as a right under international law. In fact, the U.N. Charter lists no such right, but this is part of the liberal campaign of cultural imperialism that is trying to force the values of the Western Left on the rest of the world. Planned Parenthood is distributing condoms to teenage girls on every continent. Leftist groups are suing to overturn restrictive abortion laws in South America. The Left is trying to force Turkey to liberalize its laws on homosexuality as a condition of joining the European Union. So here are opportunities for people who differ on theology but agree on morality to form an international coalition to block those bogus “rights” from being imposed on cultures that do not want them. I emphasize that I am not contesting any of the rights of classical liberalism.[11] But this is a new liberalism that is trying to smuggle its own political preferences and call them “rights.” Come to think of it, hasn’t the Left been doing that here in this country for several decades now? Here at home we have to fight these bogus “rights” ourselves, but abroad we have the entire national world as an ally. Why wouldn’t we want that? This has nothing to do with putting Pat Robertson and Ahmadinejad together, and everything to do with forming coalitions among mainstream groups across international boundaries.
LOPEZ: Why would you write a book like this? Isn’t it bound to be incendiary? Do we really need more of that?
D’SOUZA: The debate over the war on terror has gotten predictable and tired. Same old stuff that isn’t producing any results, at least not for us. Consider this. Our best conservatives have been trying for several years now to convince the Left that the Islamic radicals are the most illiberal people in the world. Really, we say, Osama bin Laden doesn’t like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank. Having demonstrated this, we are then frustrated that the liberals don’t “get it” and climb aboard our bandwagon. But the news flash: The liberals already know that the Islamic radicals don’t like them. They have made a tactical decision to ally with the radicals abroad to defeat the conservatives at home. No surprise that our great strategy has so far failed to produce a single convert. Isn’t it time to think freshly about all of this?
LOPEZ: What’s the one constructive point you hope people can manage to take from your book?
D’SOUZA: Bush is fighting two wars, one against the enemy abroad and the other against the enemy at home. There is no way to win the second war without winning the first war. The book spells out why this is critical and how it can be done.
LOPEZ: What are the odds Bill Maher (who you, of course, have some post-9/11 history with) has you on about this book?
D’SOUZA: Hey, I’d love to go one-on-one with Bill, who is a very sick man but also witty and smart. I think he’s one of the few guys on the cultural Left who has the guts to actually debate these issues. That’s more than I can say about some of these academic reviewers who are very muscular when they are launching attacks from their offices, but they never want to debate you, and on the rare occasions when this does happen, it’s like one hand clapping.

One of the lead blogs in the Progressive movement, especially in the academic world of our institutions of “higher learning” – we find D’Souza actually being called a racist [Campus Progress, January 29^th 2007]:

… known to conscientious commentators everywhere as “Distort D’Newsa” has been – far too long – one of the Right’s rising stars. Known for his bigoted-sounding theories on race, gender, and sexuality, D’Souza has been flown around to college campus after college campus by his benefactors at Young America’s Foundation and The Heritage Foundation,[12] spewing his shock-value material to budding college conservatives. D’Souza’s rise is the perfect illustration of the success that right-wing foundations have had in cultivating a generation of conservative thinkers and leaders by throwing money at them, supporting their academic work, and hooking them up with internships, government jobs, and the right conservative network.[13] … He served in the administration for only about a year, which was long enough for him to collect enough material to write his second celebrity bio ten years later, this time a fawning portrait of his former boss, titled Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader.[14] By 1989, he began receiving annual grants from the Olin Foundation, which funds the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy Research amongst other conservative intellectual beacons.[15] He now seems to be on Olin’s permanent payroll, receiving annual payouts, often of upwards of $100,000.[16]

The article then begins to blast at D’Souza’s The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society, published in 1995. …

… The book was received with a collective[17] gasp who have any appreciation at all for civil rights and the struggles of Americans to overcome discrimination. Ostensibly an attack on affirmative action[18] and multiculturalism[19] The End of Racism is a nasty attack on African-Americans and all aspects of African-American culture. D’Souza blames “black cultural defects” for what he predicts will be the ultimate failure of affirmative action. He creates a laundry list of the “dysfunctional” aspects of African-American culture: “high rates of criminal activity … the normalization of illegitimacy … the predominance of single-parent families … high levels of addiction to alcohol and drugs … a parasitic reliance on government provision … a hostility to academic achievement … and … a scarcity of independent enterprises.”[20] He attacks rap music for allegedly fostering a tendency toward violence through worship of the “cult of the bad nigger,”[21]a symbol of rebellion nurtured in the days of slavery. In addition, he cites “racial paranoia-a reflexive tendency to blame racism for every failure,”[22] “rage that threatens to erupt in any orgy of destruction or self-destruction,” “a heavy dependence on government,” “repudiation of standard English and academic achievement,”[23] “violence,” and the “bastardization of black America.” In sum, D’Souza’s book offers a remarkably offensive portrait of African-American culture and a reckless discussion of race and racism in America.[24]

Granted, there are some excerpts that even upset two African-American conservatives Robert Woodson Sr. and Glenn Loury[25], and so much so they ended their membership in the American Enterprise Institute where D’Souza was a fellow.[26] I have not been able to verify this relationship as of this writing. The article continues with a critical view of D’Souza’s latest book, The Enemy at Home. …

… the notorious political hack sinks to new lows. Armed with a highly selective and creative reading of bin Laden’s “Letter to America,” D’Souza insists that terrorists hate America, not our foreign policy but for our moral depravity.[27] Emphasizing with “traditional Muslims,” who are compelled to violence by secularism and scandalous Will & Grace episodes, D’Souza declares the cultural left responsible for 9/11.

I find it hard to swallow that Mr. D’Souza who was born in India is a bigot as described in the Progressive article. It should also be noted that Mr. D’Souza has criticized certain conservatives, the “hard right”, such as Ann Coulter, who he dated while in college and has distanced himself from her publicly calling her a “provocateur.”

Check out Dinesh D’Souza’s book Enemy At Home at the local library or get your own copy at Amazon and see for yourself what he is writing about.

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[1] And isn’t it strange, the Leftists in Hollywood are saying that Americans have caused the jihad mentality to escalate (terrorism) because of the American leadership interfering with situations in the Middle East – like what is going on in Iraq, for example, and in their anti-war rhetoric. Reality is that Hollywood, with its major films, is considered decadent and evil to a religious Moslem, which also represents their idea of the Christian “Revelations” – in which evil runs amok before the end of the world as we know it.

[2] And thus the scenario of what happened in the general election of 2006.

[3] This is only partly true – the Middle East people want to continue their theocracy because of their religious belief and traditional doctrine; yet there is nothing in the Qu’ran that prevents them from science or the study of it, nor do they mind using the varied instruments of modern technology. Remember, historically, while the West was under a superstitious mentality in what is referred as the “Dark Ages” – the Moslems experienced a golden age that produced important sciences like Algebra and the medical sciences was not prohibited or restricted like the counterparts in the West under Papal Rule via the Pope and the Vatican. It is only their theocracy that has remained outdated and not conforming to the freedom and liberties of a people that is the issue.

[4] As far as colonialism, a product of European countries a century or two ago, it is clear that this was the beginning of the troubles for the Middle East; but as far as the Crusades, it is only part of the propaganda education of their youth that this is reinforced – in reality, the Crusades was initiated by the Moslems who entered into an age of conquering. True, the Vatican was upset about the Holy City of Jerusalem, but it wasn’t until the Eastern Church (Byzantine Empire) had called for help from Constantinople (Istanbul) that the Crusades began. It, of course, continued for other reasons as the marauding Moslems were kicked out of Europe where they had infiltrated, Spain for example.

[5] Because of its democracy and its freedom of religion or freedom of non-religion policies combined with the separation of Church and State within its Constitution and general practices.

[6] One example of this would be Hollywood, as well as the content of some periodicals and magazines that have found its way from the West to the Middle East.

[7] Even Christians can agree with this point of view (and others).

[8] Thus, the reason why Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, called the Christians and Jews, “People of the Book.”

[9] Here D’Souza fails to realize that the Republic of Turkey was founded upon the principle of separation of Church and State – the fundamental principles of Democracy and the failings of Theocracy. The Republic of Turkey should be a prime example of democracy being successful and yet not interfering with traditional Islamic doctrine.

[10] Ken Renner, guest writer and occasional commentator here at LPJ has stated that he doesn’t like using the word or seeing it used (Islamofascism), generally for the same reasons that D’Souza explains. Now that I see it worded differently, I would have to agree with him. Fascism was the ideology of Hitler and Mussolini – both who were enemies of the organized Church, yet, because of the masses did not openly seek to stifle the Church – as long as it didn’t make a fuss against fascism. In the case of Islamic fundamentalists, their mantra is their form or doctrine of Islam – a religion. Of course, the term has become popular enough to be listed in dictionaries and places like Wikipedia.

[11] What the Democrat Party used to stand for before its takeover by the Progressives.

[12] The Heritage Foundation is a think-tank organization that is respected around the nation and has been instrumental and part of policy making of our government of White House administrations for a couple of decades.

[13] And the liberal-progressive leadership and organizations do not practice this? Progressives hate counter ideology, as well as any debate that would factually prove them wrong. Anger, name-calling and assassination of character is their rebuttal – for the most part. And these are the very same people that are behind the nonsensical laws like the “hate crime” bill that was pushed so hard by Senator Ted Kennedy.

[14] This title is not only descriptive, but truthful.

[15] At least they got one word right – “intellectual”.

[16] Anyone willing to have former President Clinton would easily have to pay $100,000 for his “lectures” and speeches by those who hold him dear. At least he is not being paid by unions for support of the progressive cause. Hypocrisy drips from these words of “intellectuals” on campus.

[17] Interesting descriptive word, commonly used about communism that the progressives are fascinated with as far as the father of socialism (and communism) – Karl Marx.

[18] Which has outlived its usefulness and allows citizens considered minority to be hired and receive extra benefits because of the pigmentation of their skin and/or their ethnic background instead of their qualifications.

[19] In the progressive (liberalist) sense that pockets of cultures have developed that ignore the fact that it was immigrants of American history that created the American culture and traditions in a sense of unification, whereas the progressive multiculturalism is not unifying. It is the same ideology that backs up those that are for giving 12 million illegal immigrants instant citizenship and other policy issues.

[20] All backed by statistics and scholarly work in the field of sociology. D’Souza addresses the problem in order to present a solution. Where is the solution from the Progressives? All we read here is denial of the truth.

[21] Apparently this writer hasn’t heard or ready the lyrics of the so-called “Rap” music; not to mention that most of the Rappers are from the “Hood” – never severing their ties with the criminal element.

[22] No one needs to cite the times and places or circumstances when the “race card” has been used. We have all seen it in varying degrees in the media and out court rooms.

[23] Successful African-Americans are called “Oreos” or “White Niggers” or “White Flunkies” or “Uncle Toms” by the “Black” community. This is encouraging individual improvement in their youth?

[24] In other words, an accurate description of the problem – notice that they do not cite those parts that offer a solution?

[25] One of the “upsetting” quotes from D’Souza’s book, The End of Racism – “The American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well. In books written by historians, as well as quotes from former slaves – they enjoyed the part of being called a freed slave, but didn’t relish the idea of leaving plantation life – for most were treated fairly well, and the circumstances of beatings and other abuse were rare. Sometimes during this period of history, things got intolerable, especially those belonging to abusive owners, or more correctly those hired to oversee the plantation operations. So that was the gist of the meaning, and because of the short part of the whole paragraph being quoted gives the reader the wrong impression. D’Souza does not condone slavery, he was just trying to make a point. And, as far as his stand against reparations for slavery (despite no one being alive that lived through it), he was absolutely correct – even educated conservative African-Americans thought it would be utterly foolish, not to mention another burden upon the taxpayer.

[26] Also referenced in the College Progressive article as well.

[27] Apparently this writer did not read the printed words of Mullahs of Iran and other places in the Middle East in their declaration as to why they do or believe in what they do, in their endeavor within Islamic fundamentalism.