06 September 2007

What's in a Name?



A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, or so the Bard claimed.

I am not sure. Names have intrinsic power all their own. The world has been busy while we have drifted down the placid brown Potomac this last week, from the old secret installation at Fort Hunt to Germany, and the re-establishment of the Reich's security service as the defender of the pacifist post-war Bund.

Now it is September, we are all back to work, and yet we are once again in the heart of Europe, though in the painful present. Two plots have been disrupted this week, after months of intense investigation. One of them was uncovered in gentle Denmark, and of course the plotters were what I am forced to call “radical young Islamic men.”

We need a better term for these people, since I tire of typing four words when one should suffice. It is inefficient and wasteful.

“Bad Guys” is what the troops call them, or “Joe Jihadi,” and worse. I am open to suggestions; “Assholes” seems too course for polite discussion, and having a useful reference term is absolutely necessary as the phenomenon of this religious assault on secular society plays out.

I mean, if you had the choice between a life as a heroic jihadi, struggling for the True Faith, or becoming just another asshole, which one would be appealing?

It is so one-sided. Islam has a name for us, short and sweet. We are “Dhimmis,” though we don't admit it, since Sharia law is not yet in effect here. The notion of Dhimmitude comes from the dawn of Islamic expansion in the 7th century, when Mohammed's forces conquered the Jewish oasis at Khaybar in what is now Saudi Arabia.

The radical young Islamic men massacred many of the Jews and forced the rest to accept a pact ("Dhimma") which permitted them to retain their religion, but on the condition that they forfeit their land pay tribute to the conquerors. Over the centuries, the ideology of Dhimmitude expanded into a formal system of religious apartheid.

Under Sharia, there are a wide variety of official discriminations against the Dhimmis, some of which are quite startling to the Western mind.

A Muslim cannot be charged with the murder of a Dhimmi. Manslaughter would be the worst that could be considered. If you think that is strange, it has already been attempted as a defense in an American court, and taxi drivers in Minneapolis are refusing to accept inebriated customers based on their interpretation of Sharia, which they say is in effect at the airport.

That is an unsettling development for the town so near to the headquarters of Schlitz beer, which made Milwaukee famous.

It is worth contemplating, since the second disrupted plot was in Germany, this one a Turkish-German troika. The latter is the more interesting, from the perspective of what is to come.

Two of the three conspirators identified thus far were native-born Germans who converted to Islam. With the son of a Turkish guest-worker, the three traveled to training camps in Waziristan, in the al Qaida haven established in the autonomous tribal area of northern Pakistan.

There is so much to be learned in the unraveling of the plot. The bomb material was relatively sophisticated. The target was either Frankfurt commercial airport, or the big American base at Ramstein across the runway. The radicalization of two citizens through conversion is emblematic of the long-range strategic campaign of the old men who direct the radical-young-Islamic-men to outsource the production of terror to the residents of the west, who are not so easily identified.

How the plot was uncovered is both heartening and depressing. Germany was the home to the operational planners of 9/11. The legacy of the Nazis was the establishment of a kinder and gentler legal system, and an institutionalized blind spot for the activities of its citizens and guests.

Some of the information that tipped off the German authorities is said to have come from the Americans, and it was a good thing. The German bomb was going to be big.

The prospective Dhimmis still show signs of life, and I am happy that the Spooks were able to penetrate the communications of the radica-Islamic-young-men. Unfortunately, the way the plot was discovered was reportedly the product of the sort of phone and internet intelligence collection our courts are saying is illegal.

Whether Congress shuts it down or not, it is only a question of time until the old men who are manipulating the radical-men-young-Islamics get it right and once more get to blow up somthing big.

We ought to be ready for what is on the menu when they do, and not be surprised when it happens. The whole thing smells. Death before Dhimmi, right?

Or am I being insensitive?

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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