Video with Franklin Graham talking about living under Sharia Law in Islamic countries.
 I spoke to Governor Palin by phone this afternoon. Lots of interesting material, but to me the most interesting takeaways were the following: 1) I asked about Palin's upcoming visit to Ft. Hood. "We had planned on that before the tragedy struck," she said. She commented on the trail of evidence linking the alleged Ft. Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Hasan, to militant Islam.
"There were such clear, obvious, massive warning signs that were missed," she said. "This terrorist, even having business cards" that identified him as an "SoA" or soldier of Allah. Palin blamed a culture of political correctness and other decisions that "prevented -- I'm going to say it -- profiling" of someone with Hasan's extremist ideology. "I say, profile away," Palin said. Such political correctness, she continued, "could be our downfall."
If the upcoming investigations into the attack reveal bad decision-making on the part of senior officials, Palin continued, those officials ought to be fired. Palin visits Ft. Hood on December 4. She plans to donate all the royalties from her book-signing there to the families of the victims. 2) I also asked Governor Palin about Attorney General Holder's decision to try September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohamed in federal court in New York City. "Does KSM deserve constitutional rights?" I asked. Palin's response: "Not no, but hell no." And she went on: "That was an atrocious decision," she said. "And it makes a mockery of our judicial system." She focused in particular on the fear that "war criminals" like KSM and his accomplices will use the trial as a "platform" to denigrate America. More Palin to come, including her thoughts on President Obama's trip to Asia and the role of the tea-party movement in the GOP ... Weekly Standard H/T: Atlas 
 Sarah Palin will visit Fort Hood during her book tour, the Wall Street Journal reports. Palin will visit the base on December 4, just after a book signing in Dallas.
The former Alaska Governor will also stop by Fort Bragg, North Carolina. As WSJ notes, Palin is picking her tour stop carefully: The Fort Hood stop will coincide with a visit to Dallas as part of a tour designed to take Palin to parts of the country where she is most popular. There are no scheduled stops in New York City or Los Angeles, for example, but she will sign books in places like Noblesville, Ind., and Roanoke, Va.
Though "Going Rogue" won't be officially released until Tuesday, leaked excerpts in which Palin goes after McCain's top aides have caused a stir.
 By Supna Zaidi
Many liberals are voting as I speak in hopes of ending what they perceive as an illegitimate "war on terror." To liberals, McCain is the old white guy who is one missing heart-beat away from a Palin red-neck presidency. The only difference between the last eight years and the next four, then, would be a skirt and caribou on the White House menu.
Barack Obama on the other hand, is Mr. International. For liberals he is the embodiment of post-colonial multiculturalism in JFK packaging. If elected, all nations that "crusader" George W. alienated will be friends with us again.
But the problem is that neither 9//11, nor the bombings in London or Madrid happened because of President Bush. The enemy has a clear strategy because it has a clear enemy, western democracy, which bin Laden has called the "principles of heresy" against Islam.
The war on terror began with the hostage crisis in Tehran, Iran in 1979 which positioned America as "the Great Satan" for subsequent decades and inaugurated the American presence abroad as a legitimate target for all Islamists who seek to divide the world into Muslim versus non-Muslim. The hostage crisis was followed by:
1. April 1983: 17 dead at the U.S. embassy in Beirut;
2. October 1983: 241 dead at the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut;
3. December 1983: five dead at the U.S. embassy in Kuwait;
4. January 1984: the president of the American University of Beirut killed;
5. April 1984: 18 dead near a U.S. airbase in Spain;
6. September 1984: 16 dead at the U.S. embassy in Beirut (again);
7. December 1984: Two dead on a plane hijacked to Tehran;
8. June 1985: One dead on a plane hijacked to Beirut;
9. 1993 World Trade Center bombing;
10. 1996: Khobar Towers attack;
11. 1998 U.S. East African embassies attack;
12. 2000 U.S.S. Cole attack in Yemen.
Stopping before 9/11 leaves many terrorist attacks from this list, but should be a clear reminder to readers in 2008 that whether one supported or hated the Bush administration, it did not create the war on terror.
It is very likely that now liberals will have to sit and absorb these violent attacks and create policy to defend the US against the "terror" that remains undefined 7 years after 9/11. Any promises of timelines, dreams of isolationism, or tea parties with Islamists like Ahmedinijad will go out the window when the above reality sets in.
If you didn't like the "war on terror", clean it up. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Pick an enemy and label it.
Islamism is the clearest term that distinguishes apolitical Muslims from Islamists. Let analysts in government call the war on terror - Islamist, jihadi, etc., so they can finally do their job. Acknowledging Islamism's origins from Islam forces Muslim governments abroad and even the Muslim American community here, to counter Islamist interpretations of the Quran, and offer Muslims a non-violent, democratically compatible interpretation of their faith. Moreover, it will finally allow an educational campaign to teach the western world what Islamism is.
2. Only after articulating who the enemy is, can the US create policy beyond military strategy.
Free speech is under attack every day through litigation and lobbying by Islamists. The Islamist goal to spread Sharia or Islamic law in the west challenges basic tenets of secularism, democracy and, specifically the separation of church and state doctrines in each case. Asking questions, debating each incident locally, or at the national level leaves critics at the mercy of Islamists, who accuse them of Islamophobia, defamation, or even racism. But, if the Islamic nature of the enemy is accepted in policy, the term "Islamophobia" will finally lose its viability. The word will no longer have its chilling effect on free speech.
Let's not forget that at a global level, 57 countries that make up the Organization of the Islamic Conference realize the value of throwing the word Islamophobia around. It is the OIC that continues to lobby for a Resolution Against Defamation of Religon," though most signatories are notorious for their ill-treatment of minorities in their own nations.
3. Muslim Nations Will Be Empowered to Fight the Enemy At Home.
The majority of victims in the war on terror are Muslims. Its time Muslims realized this and fought back. Just by example, consider Pakistan. Currently, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari calls the fighting against radical Islamists in Pakistan "our war" in interviews, almost defensively. It is as if the Pakistani people still need convincing that they are under attack. This is very odd, considering the dramatic bombings at the Lal Masjid Bombing and Marriot hotel this year in Islamabad, which were just two from over fifty attacks Pakistan in 2008 alone.
Yet, Zardari may have a point in focusing on reminding his citizenry of the point when one considers the rampant anti-American sentiment the various English, Urdu and Punjabi papers throughout the country. Islamism hurts Pakistan even more than the United States. If the US fought for a clear articulation of the enemy, then real coalition building would finally be possible. No matter how pious Pakistanis are, I guarantee the majority do not want Pakistan to become Talibanized in any way.
The US has to fight the war of ideas abroad by re-connecting this war on terror to the attacks from 1979, to 9/11 and the Marriot bombings in Islamabad to the same enemy, who see the west and non-Islamist Muslims as equal enemies. The US is merely the poster child of western cultural hegemony that Islamists hate because it is the sole superpower today. If the US disappeared today, the war on terror would continue because France or Britain would be in its place, with its freedom of speech, gender equality, defense of all faiths and minorities.
It is the liberals turn to fight this war. (Most likely since election results are still pending at the time of this writing). It won't go away by ignoring it or appeasing it. But liberals addressing it might finally bring the country together against it and allow us to win sooner than later. Source: Muslim World Today
 By Abdur-Rahman Muhammad I was checking out some of the blogs yesterday and came across an article at Muslim Matters that quite frankly turned my stomach. Its not entirely clear who authored the piece, but I hold the site’s owners, Yasir Qadhi, his associate Amad, and the rest of that crew responsible for its revolting content. The article sought to draw some type of moral equivalence between the religious beliefs of Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin with those of Osama bin Laden. Specifically, it mocked one of the religious practices of her church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, and resorted to fear mongering by portraying Palin’s Christian conception of the “end time” in a menacing way. Quoting a passage from a Wall Street Journal piece, the article derisvely mentions how they, "speak in tongues [see this video and article] and are part of a faith that believes humanity is in its ‘end times’ — the days preceding a world-ending cataclysm bringing Christian redemption and the second coming of Jesus ..." Read more ...Source: Singularvoice
By Robert Spencer Witless moral equivalence and hysteria from the estimable Juan Cole. Note, first, the sleight of hand that Cole tries to pull off by claiming that "on censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts." Palin disagrees with Cole on these issues, to be sure, but does she really oppose "democratic precepts" on them? Does she want to dismantle the American Republic and impose a totalitarian order, a la Sharia? I doubt it. But of course that is not the only difference, besides lipstick, between Palin and Osama. It is strange to have to spell this out, like explaining how to boil water to a particularly slow-witted chef. Palin, you see, does not advocate, pace Cole, the replacement of U. S. Constitutional law with religious law. She does not advocate, and does not plot, the mass murder of workers in office buildings. She does not promise people that they will be rewarded with unlimited sex in Paradise if they murder unbelievers. She does not teach that those who steal should have their hands amputated, that those who commit adultery should be stoned to death, or that those who leave her religion should be murdered. She does not advocate the consignment of women to veils, burqas, and confinement to the inner chambers of the home. Read more ...Source: Salon.com H/T: Jihad WatchJuan Cole
Latest recipient of The Dhimmi Award
 By SANA ABDALLAH
Published: September 05, 2008
AMMAN -- With the U.S. presidential elections just two months away, many Arabs and Muslims are increasingly worried that a victory for another conservative Republican administration will exacerbate the tensions and turbulence that have followed the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
The events and speeches at the Republican Party convention in Minnesota, which endorsed the candidacy of Arizona Senator John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, were given special attention in the Arab media, as commentators voiced fears that a McCain administration would pursue, perhaps more belligerently, the path of the current government.
As a rule, Arab governments in the region prefer to refrain from showing their preferences in U.S. elections, but the media, including the state-controlled TV and press, have made no secret of their desire to see a new leadership in Washington that is run by Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Senator Barack Obama.
While talking heads have said they did not expect either administration to be more sympathetic to the Arab and Muslim causes, many are now saying that Obama would be the "lesser of two evils," after having endured a George W. Bush administration that has launched an undefined and indefinite "war on terror" that is raging in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.
Particularly highlighted in the media Friday were remarks made by Palin in June that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the American troops there were "on a task from God."
"Our national leaders are sending soldiers out on a task that is from God," Palin told ministry students at her former church in a video that spread like wildfire across the Internet.
She asked her audience to pray for the troops in Iraq. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan," she said.
Analysts here commented that these sound bites, the first publicizing her foreign policy positions, were eerily similar to Bush's rhetoric when he embarked on the war on terror that started in Afghanistan and was redirected into a massive invasion and subsequent occupation of oil-rich Iraq.
Bush had irked millions of Muslims around the world when he called the war a "crusade," the term that denotes for Muslims a Christian battle against Islam.
Later, Bush was reported as telling leaders at a Middle East summit in Egypt's Sharm el-Sheikh that he was "driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George, go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan.' And I did. And then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.' And I did."
Although the "crusade" concept was later retracted, the military policy that the outgoing administration had pursued since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon remains to be seen as a Christian crusade against the Muslims, particularly among many Arabs.
McCain has also been public about keeping Iraq -- an Arab and predominantly Muslim country -- under U.S. occupation indefinitely, despite growing Iraqi demands to regain their sovereignty and for a clear deadline for a full withdrawal of American troops.
Independent Iraqi analysts say the political and religious ideology of the McCain-Palin ticket is not being viewed in a positive light in Iraq, where conservative Muslim Shiites dominate the population and the post-Saddam Hussein government institutions.
Some Iraqi and Arab politicians and pundits have privately ridiculed as ironic the fact that Palin is regarded in the United States as socially conservative while her unwed teenage daughter is pregnant.
Commentators warn that the vast social and religious gaps dividing the Muslim and U.S. Christian beliefs, particularly Evangelical ones, would be further widened if a McCain-Palin administration took office, because it could further politicize and militarize U.S. policy in the region.
Specific attention has been given to the fact that the 72-year-old McCain, if he wins the election, would become the oldest U.S. president to win the race, raising the odds for his demise in office resulting in the vice president taking over the running of a country that has spread its political and military power across the Middle East.
During his speech accepting the Republican Party's candidacy for the White House on Thursday, McCain vowed to bring change and that Palin was the right person to help him bring that change to Washington.
As far as those Arabs and Muslims, who are looking forward to the end of the Bush era are concerned, that change may very well be for the worse. Some have indeed expressed that the prospect of a McCain-Palin victory is nothing less than chilling. Source: Middle east Times
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