Update February 25: Jamie Glazov interviews Pamela Geller at FrontPage Magazine on the conference, here. Well worth reading.
Update February 23rd: Richard Falknor at Blue Ridge Forum also has an excellent post on this conference, here.
Yesterday I attended the anti-jihad conference put on by Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, which Ann posted on a few days ago. This two-hour program was not officially part of CPAC, though that’s where it took place. CPAC is the Conservative Political Action Conference. Pamela pointed out that the only official CPAC session that dealt with jihad was one on the opposite side called “You’ve Been Lied To: Why Real Conservatives are Against the War on Terror.” But I noted there was one called “What is a conservative foreign policy?” John Bolton was a speaker and he probably dealt with it in some way, and certainly Lt. Col. Allen West (Retired) did, since he spoke at the anti-jihad program and didn’t pull any punches (as I report further on).
I’m going to note below some of the points the speakers made, not trying to include everything. They were all knowledgeable, eloquent and courageous. I found it hard to understand some of the people for whom English was not their native language, but I got the gist of their talks.
1. Wafa Sultan is a psychiatrist originally a Muslim from Syria, now an American citizen and not a Muslim. She said: Islam is not just a religion but a political ideology. Neither George W. Bush nor Barack Obama has recognized this. Jihadists have reinvented themselves as mainstream civil rights activists in America.
The envoy Obama appointed to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Where is his first loyalty, to the U.S. or to Islam? The OIC is 57 countries working to stifle freedom. Does Obama support freedom of speech?
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has the power to effect change overnight. He needs pressure on him.
2. Stephen Cloughlin was a senior analyst for the Pentagon. His contract was not renewed; they disagreed with his conclusions about Islam. His job, he said, is not to define true Islam, but to define the beliefs the enemy holds. Everything is in publicly available books. He showed several titles, Islamic Laws of Warfare published in 1955; Islamic Jurisprudence, and others.
He spent quite a while talking about the doctrine of abrogation. That means that parts of the Koran that were written earlier are abrogated or overruled by parts written later. So when someone quotes verses in the Koran that advocate tolerance and peace, we need to know that these have been abrogated in favor of later verses that command Muslims to fight and slay the unbelievers.
Coughlin was just one of several speakers who pointed out how clueless American intelligence and military officials are about Islam and what the threat really is. They talked about political correctness and how it made it impossible to define the threat. A major theme of the conference was the danger to our freedom of speech, and how there is no free speech in Europe any more when it comes to Islam, and we are not far behind.
Coughlin pointed out that in Sharia law, slander means noticing anything that does not benefit Islam. So under Islamic law, associating Islam with Muslims who carry out acts of terrorism in the name of Islam is slander. (Does this sound like 1984, or maybe a surrealist play?)
Robert Spencer said that even at CPAC most people would say that Islam is peaceful, it just has some violent extremists. Conservative leaders marginalize Robert and his allies. The only weapon against this is the truth.
3. Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff is an Austrian woman who is, or might be, charged with hate speech offenses because she talks about Islam negatively. A magazine sent an undercover journalist to a seminar she was giving for the Freedom Party, and reported on it. Establishment people, including representatives of religions, were outraged at her words. They did not say that what she said was false; they said “You can’t say that.” Wolff has spent many years in Muslim countries so knows the problems firsthand.
The European Union Declaration of Human Rights, she pointed out, says (or is interpreted as saying) that freedom of expression must be balanced against community harmony. Criticism of a religion is called racism.
4. Anders Gravers is the head of a Danish organization, Stop the Islamization of Europe. He talked about the salami method of making demands — a little at a time. When Muslims in Scandinavia were few, they demanded little. As their numbers grew they demanded more, and each time a demand was fulfilled, which they always were, they demanded more and more. Their goal is to become dominant, and they show this in their behavior. There are gangs of Muslim young men who intimidate people on the streets and commit rape and other crimes of violence. The crime rate has risen sharply. Jews are beaten up; many have left Europe. There is a need to push back, such as holding demonstrations against the building of mosques, which have been successful in several instances.
5. Simon Deng is a Sudanese Christian who spent several years as a slave of Muslims and is now an activist for human rights in Sudan. He calls himself the voice of those who have no voice under Islamic law. He spoke eloquently of his love of freedom and his appreciation of the United States.
6. Lt. Col. Allen West is a retired war hero who is running for Congress in Florida. Introducing him, Pamela said we need to elect the right politicians, and we need to ask candidates if they understand jihad. West was a riveting speaker who got many standing ovations. He said people look to the conservative leadership to protect them. If they don’t, people will turn away.
He is sick of people using the term “war on terror.” We didn’t talk about the “war on kamikaze pilots” in WWII; we don’t fight against a tactic. We are not fighting with a strategic perspective. The drone attacks are not strategically sound. We are at war with an ideology and we need to understand it and their methods. Not every Muslim participates, but it is a Muslim ideology.
Bin Laden sent a letter to the United States in the 1990s telling us to convert, submit, or we’ll come and get you. Ahmadinejad recently sent a similar letter. These letters constitute a declaration of war but we have not recognized this.
Our soldiers are operating under restrictive rules of engagement. We need to develop strategic-level rules of engagement. An enemy tactic is to use our legal system to get us to shut up, and we have not developed a way to fight back, or even recognized what they are doing. Through our political correctness and multiculturalism we are paralyzing ourselves. (Speaker after speaker made this central point.)
The media need to stop using the word “profiling.” It is actually identifying the enemy.
We need to get the right kind of leadership here and in Europe. “When tolerance becomes a one-way street, it becomes cultural suicide.”
Amen, Lt. Col. West. Let’s hope he wins his election and inspires other politicians to speak out.