Last night, I made my way to the beach to watch the sun set and the moon rise. Every night, God paints a masterpiece in the skies. No two paintings are ever exactly alike. At first, one large cloud was English-Channel grey and black but it soon revealed a heart of smudged copper. That same cloud became suffused, irradiated, by soft, glowing pink.

And all was silent except for the cries of wheeling, gliding birds.

In the so-called “real” world: an imperial Russia set Georgia on fire; Kashmir remained on fire; the Taliban bombed a bus of civilians in Pakistan, killing at least 13 people; three female aid workers and their driver were killed in Afghanistan.

Humanity seems to be subtracting from, not adding to, beauty and harmony.

At the Olympic Games, world records were repeatedly broken. Male beach volleyball players were properly attired; their female counterparts wore eye-catching bikinis and I was mortified on their behalf.

I am not really on vacation. I wrote and published a Letter to the Editor in the pages of the New York Times which took issue with Bridget O’Rourke’s long piece about female suicide bombers. FOX-TV aired their important documentary on honor murders in America yet again. I am interviewed on camera. Therefore, the Chicago Tribune called to interview me on the subject. Since the mainstream media has so far refused to deal with the subject, I am pleased to be of service. And, I’ve just received the edited version of my academic article on the subject for Daniel Pipes’ excellent journal.

What’s it gonna be? Sky-gazing–or wrestling with fairly hellish footnotes?

Friends: I am near the sea now which I visit daily at dusk. It is my first vacation in more than a year. I plan to be posting some previously published material which still remains timely–perhaps timeless. But, breaking news may also interrupt my reverie at the beach from time to time.

I published this piece thirteen months before I began blogging for Pajamas Media. Again, it remain heartlessly up to date. Some developments have taken place: the heroic and almost unstoppable Rachel Ehrenfeld has persuaded the New York State legislature to pass legislation which protects writers who live and publish in New York State from being sued by Islamist “libel tourists” when they write the truth about Islam, jihad, or the funding of terrorism.

Front Page Magazine | August 14, 2007

When will the West awaken? Of course, I am not talking about your ordinary citizen or soldier but about our Talking Heads and other gate-keeping chatterers who simply refuse to “get it.”

Cambridge University Press not only recalls but has promised to pulp the book that authoritatively documents one Saudi billionaire’s funding of terror; many anti-jihadic writers and all our leading mainstream media have privately apologized to this same billionaire. Only Rachel Ehrenfeld has refused to “apologize” for telling the truth and has counter-sued him in an American court of law based on her First Amendment right to tell the truth. (She was initially sued in London where she lost by default; she chose not to appear in court). (Since I wrote this, Ehrenfeld lost in the New York State Court of Appeals on a technicality but she almost immediately and successfully turned to the New York State Legislature for a new law, now known as “Rachel’s Law.”).

At a recent conference in Los Angeles, sponsored by the American Freedom Alliance, Daniel Pipes announced his intention to start a legal defense bail fund for those who are sued by Islamists and their Western apologists for telling the truth. Not a moment too soon–although, regrettably, perhaps too late for Ehrenfeld. (It is not too late for Ehrenfeld since she is now trying to obtain federal legislation for all American writers in every American state). And, The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has begun a process of legal intimidation against my esteemed colleague, Robert Spencer. Accordingly, David Horowitz has launched a legal defense fund for Spencer. I have pledged money to this and advise us all to do the same.

Before this war is over, we will each need legal defense funds. And that’s if we’re lucky. Those in the Islamic East need bodyguards and air-lifts to safety in the West. But there is a pattern emerging in the West which we ignore at our own peril.

For example, a leading American publisher of law enforcement and counter-terrorism titles cancelled Dr. Nancy Kobrin’s book about Islamic suicide terrorism. I wrote the Introduction for it and together Dr. Kobrin and I “went public.” A number of other publishers emerged–but they quickly disappeared too. (The book now has a potential publisher. Stay tuned for more news).

I have been trying to find a publisher for a book titled The Islamification of America and guess what? No takers so far. I am ready to self-publish the work.

This is a very special kind of Gulag. The internet provides us with the most sophisticated and universal of platforms for such 21st-century “samizdats.”

We who write in the America are so far lucky. We are legally intimidated. We are silenced on campuses due to the “politically correct” ideologies that rule there. True, the American Jewish Committee recently paid for a full page New York Times ad signed by American college presidents who oppose the eternally-intended British boycott of Israeli academics and who bravely suggest that they be boycotted too. Well and good.

But guess who did not sign? Harvard, Yale, Vassar, California State University at Berkeley, Los Angeles, UCLA, San Francisco State, and of course, Norman Finkelstein’s old perch, De Paul in Chicago. (Maybe I’m wrong, maybe they did sign in a Harry Potter kind of way in invisible ink).

But this is nothing compared to what Muslim intellectuals (and women, rape victims, homosexuals, etc.) must endure in the Islamic world today. If they are lucky, they live in exile or in hiding and write under pseudonyms. A handful write openly and travel with bodyguards.

I am just told that Taslima Nasrin was, yet again, attacked by one hundred angry Muslim fanatics as she held a press conference in Hyderabad, India, to launch her new book. Nasrin, a physician and a feminist author who was born in Bangladesh, was once nearly lynched by a mighty mob there. She fled her country and lived in exile in Sweden and in hiding. Now, she lives in India where dozens of Muslim protesters, led by three lawmakers physically attacked her and her co-panelists. They demanded that India extradite her to Bangladesh (I guess for the kind of justice Bangladesh has meted out to that other hero, parliamentarian Chadhury, who was imprisoned and tortured because he wanted to visit Israel. He is currently on trial).

Her works have been banned in Bangladesh. She is being accused of being “anti-Islam.”

Islamists are moving against us in the West very carefully and in legal ways. In the overly revered “Third World” they speak in violence, their speech IS violence.

I hope that Taslima Nasrin remains safe and in India. And that the sleeping giant awakens before we have all been sued and censored into silence.

A Note: I retain the copyright to this article and you may also find it archived at my website www.phyllis-chesler.com

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Oh, this matter is indeed a bloody morass. Here is a piece that someone has just sent me about the “ethnic cleansing” of Serbian Christians by Muslims in Sarajevo.

Source http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Politics/?id=1.0.2396935759

Bosnia: Muslims dominate capital, claims Croatian MP

Sarajevo, 6 August (AKI) – The Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, once a symbol of ethnic diversity, has become an entirely Muslim city, a Croat deputy in the Bosnian Parliament, Branko Zrno, said on Wednesday.

“Sarajevo definitely isn’t a multi-ethnic city, but the city of one group, the Bosniacs (Muslims), ” Zrno told local media.

He pointed out that Serbs and Croats in Sarajevo have no institutional protection, and continue to leave the capital.

Zrno echoed allegations from Bosnian Serb leaders, including Serb entity Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, that non-Muslims in Sarajevo suffered discrimination and were denied their rights.

This just in from my colleague Dr. Andrew Bostom.

My blog from this past February on “moderate” Bosnian President Izetbegovic

It is worth recalling that our “moderate” Bosnian Muslim ally in the 1990s, was President Alija Izetbegovic. Mr. Izetbegovic was a youthful recruiter for Himmler’s Nazi Bosnian Muslim Handschar Division, pious Muslim polygamist with four wives (as David Binder’s N.Y Times obituary [10/20/03] noted, “He is survived by his first wife, Halida, who lives in Turkey; a son, Bakir; two daughters, Leila Aksami and Sabina; his second wife, Melika; and his third wife, Amira, whom he married in 1993 under Shari’a, the Islamic code of law. In February 1995, the newspaper Slobodna Bosna published congratulations to him on his fourth marriage, without naming the woman.”), and author of the 1970 Islamic Declaration—in which he openly avowed support for a revived Caliphate—under Shari’a—of necessity including, of course, a vigorous re-Islamization of the Balkans. 

http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2008/02/22/our-kosovo-folly-more-fulfillment-of-izetbegovic%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cmoderate%E2%80%9D-vision/

Our Kosovo Folly: More Fulfillment of Izetbegovic’s “Moderate” Vision?

February 22nd, 2008 by Andrew Bostom

Izetbegovic (d. 2003): Are We Helping to Realize His Caliphate Dreams ?

The intrepid Julia Gorin details why US support for an independent Kosovo is dangerous folly. Kosovo is a narco-jihadist vipers nest bent on ethnically cleansing its residual native pre-Islamic Serb inhabitants, in fulfillment of regional, and perhaps larger Islamic goals.

My forthcoming “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism” includes a poignant description of the chronic plight of Serbs under Muslim rule—a plight shared with Balkan Jewry, as per the system of dhimmitude—by the early 20^th century sociologist and geographer Jovan Cvijic. In La Peninsule Balkanique, Paris, 1918, his detailed psychosocial analysis of the Serbian and other Christian dhimmis under Muslim, including, notably Albanian rule, Cvijic described how the fear of recurrent violence accentuated their submission, engendering prototypical dhimmi adaptive behaviors:

[they became]…accustomed to belonging to an inferior, servile class, whose duty it is to make themselves acceptable to the master, to humble themselves before him and to please him. These people become close-mouthed, secretive, cunning; they lose all confidence in others; they grow used to hypocrisy and meanness because these are necessary in order for them to live and to avoid violent punishments. The direct influence of oppression and violence is manifested in almost all the Christians as feelings of fear and apprehension. Whenever Moslem brigands or evil-doers made their appearance somewhere, entire districts used to live in terror, often for months on end. There are regions where the Christian population has lived under a reign of fear from birth until death. In certain parts of Macedonia, they don’t tell you how they fought against the Turks or against the Albanians, but rather about the way that they managed to flee from them, or the ruse that they used to escape them. In Macedonia I heard people say: “Even in our dreams we flee from the Turks and the Albanians.” It is true that for about twenty years a certain number of them have regained their composure, but the deep-seated feeling has not changed among the masses of people. Even after the liberation in 1912 one could tell that a large number of Christians had not yet become aware of their new status: fear could still be read on their faces.

It is worth recalling that our “moderate” Bosnian Muslim ally in the 1990s, was President Alija Izetbegovic. Mr. Izetbegovic was a youthful recruiter for Himmler’s Nazi Bosnian Muslim Handschar Division,

Folks: To continue: Press on Dr. Bostom’s link above.

As for me: I’m on vacation and “going fishing” for while now.

EARLIER THE SAME DAY:

Folks: I am getting many articles on the Balkan Mess. I am still no expert but what must be admitted is this: The West, including America, has been “had” in terms of signing on to only one acceptable narrative: The Christian Serbs are the evil aggressors and the Muslim separatists and imperialists are the innocent victims. (Where have we heard this before?)

The truth: That all sides committed war crimes but not genocide is apparently too complicated to bear. Anyway, I am reposting an entire article that has just appeared. Once again, dear reader, tell me what you know and what you think about this.

READERS PLEASE NOTE: I will post no comments that insult other commentators or that insult me. Good will must be assumed or I must assume an absence of civility on the insulter’s part. Also please note: This is not a legal tribunal. And calls for “evidence” must bear this in mind.

What are the lessons we must learn from the article? Please read the Comments posted at the Trifkovic article below.

Source http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=673

Karadzic’s Arrest: Bosnian Myths Rehashed

by Srdja Trifkovic

The spirit of the media frenzy surrounding the arrest of the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on July 21 is based entirely on the doctrine of non-equivalence inaugurated in 1992: Serbs willed the war, Muslims wanted peace; Serb crimes are bad and justly exaggerated, Muslim crimes are understandable.

This doctrine was spectacularly reiterated a month before Karadzic’s capture, when the Muslim wartime commander of Srebrenica, Nasir Oric, was found not guilty by The Hague Tribunal of any responsibility for the killing of thousands of Serb civilians by the forces under his command in the three years before the fall of the enclave in July 1995. It is also apparent today, in the endless media repetition of Karadzic’s alleged bellicose intransigence before and during the Bosnian war.

UNRESOLVED ISSUE OF WAR GUILT

The imbalance is more than merely unfair. The talking heads gloating over Karadzic’s capture no longer need to suppress the thought that different U.S. policies could have prevented the horror of “Bosnia,” because no such thought—however pertinent in this case—ever occurs to them. Yet the fact remains that in the spring of 1992 the late Warren Zimmermann, the last U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia before its breakup and civil war, materially contributed—probably more than any other single man—to the outbreak of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The facts of the case have been established beyond reasonable doubt and are no longer dosputed by experts.

Nine months earlier, in June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence, a move that triggered off a short war in Slovenia and a sustained conflict in Croatia where the Serbs refused to accept Tudjman’s fait accompli. These events had profound consequences on Bosnia and Herzegovina, that “Yugoslavia in miniature.” The Serbs (34%) adamantly opposed the idea of Bosnian independence. The Croats (17%) predictably rejected any suggestion that Bosnia and Herzegovina remains within a Serb-dominated rump Yugoslavia.

Alija Izetbegovic, the leader of the Muslim community (43%), had decided as early as September 1990 that Bosnia should also declare independence if Slovenia and Croatia secede. On 27 February 1991 he went a step further: “I would sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina, but for that peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina I would not sacrifice sovereignty.” The process culminated with the referendum on independence (29 February 1992). The Serbs duly boycotted it. In the end just over 62 percent of voters opted for independence, overwhelmingly Muslims and Croats; but even this figure was short of the two-thirds majority required by the constitution. This did not stop the rump government of Izetbegovic from declaring independence on 3 March.

Simultaneously one last attempt was under way to save peace. The Portuguese foreign minister Jose Cutileiro organized a conference in Lisbon attended by the three communities’ leaders, Izetbegovic, Radovan Karadzic, and the Croat leader Mate Boban. The EU mediators persuaded the three sides that Bosnia-Herzegovina should be independent but internally organized on the basis of ethnic regions or “cantons.”

The breakthrough was due to the Bosnian Serbs’ acceptance of an independent Bosnia, provided that the Muslims give up their ambition of a centralized, unitary one. Izetbegovic appeared to accept that this was the best deal he could make—but soon he was to change his mind. When he returned from Lisbon, Zimmermann flew post haste from Belgrade to Sarajevo to tell him that the U.S. did not stand behind the Cutileiro plan. He said it was a means to “a Serbian power grab” that could be prevented by internationalizing the problem. When Izetbegovic said that he did not like the Lisbon agreement, Zimmerrmann encouraged him to renege. State Department subsequently admitted that the US policy “was to encourage Izetbegovic to break with the partition plan.” The New York Times (August 29, 1993) brought a revealing quote from the key player himself:

The embassy [in Belgrade] was for recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina from sometime in February on,” Mr. Zimmermann said of his policy recommendation from Belgrade. “Meaning me.” … Immediately after Mr. Izetbegovic returned from Lisbon, Mr. Zimmermann called on him in Sarajevo… “He said he didn’t like it; I told him, if he didn’t like it, why sign it?”

l

Please press on the link above to continue reading this long and thoughtful article.

Who can understand Balkan history–that cursed region whose fiery nationalisms led to World War One? Not I. East Europeans remember how especially brutal Muslim Nazi- and Arab-empowered soldiers were during World War Two. Yes, there once were some pockets of European-style assimilation and sophistication among Caucasus-based Muslims, Jews, and Christians in the region. Has anyone read the incomparably charming and popular novel, Ali and Nino: A Love Story written by the very Jewish Lev Nuissimbaum whose pen name was Khurbain Said? The romance captured everyone’s longing for operatic harmony between Christians and Muslims. (For the Jews, it was always more complicated). Tom Reiss has written a must-read biography of Nuissembaum titled The Orientalist: Solving The Mystery of A Strange and Dangerous Life.

But fiction and exceptions aside, ethnic and religious feuds have simmered and boiled over between the Christians of different nationalities in the Caucasus and between Christians and Muslims in the former Yugoslavia.

I have now received and posted the most challenging comments in response to my piece about the capture of Radovan Karadzic.

What I do know about the recent warfare in the former Yugoslavia is that many girls and women were brutally and repeatedly gang-raped. I know this because I spoke with their lawyers and with feminist counselors and I read everything about their plight that I could find. Had there been funding enough to protect the raped women witnesses, I might have testified to the Court in The Hague about Rape Trauma Syndrome.

Other than this, and like everyone else, I believed that, although atrocities were committed by all sides, that the Bosnian Serbs were the ones who mainly committed genocide, “ethnic cleansing” and the gang-rapes. Now, Mr. John Peter Maher writes here that the massacre in Srbrenica was a Big Lie propagated by masterful Muslim deceivers. Several other commentators, including Felix Quigley here compare this lie to the lie about a massacre in Jenin which never really took place. They claim that in fact, most of the allegedly dead Muslim boys and men made their way to Tuzla where they joined or were protected by Muslim jihadists.

I have begun to ask my sources whether any of this is true or whether none of this is true. So far, I have been told that “some” of this might be true; that “none” or “little” of it can be true; that this might be the beginning of a masterful disinformation campaign to support Karadzic’s testimony at trial; and that the disinformation campaign was begun long ago by Islamists who are covetously eying Europe.

Friends: This is not my area. Do I have any Balkan experts out there? If so, please weigh in.

Yaser Abdul Said, who honor murdered his two beautiful and brilliant daughters Sarah and Amina earlier this year in Dallas, is alive and well and has been using a calling card to allegedly threaten various Christian members of his formerly Christian wife’s family. He did so as recently as three weeks ago.

When FOX-TV recently aired their excellent documentary about honor murders in America, they showed a photo of the murdered girls’ mother when she married Yaser. She was fifteen years old and Yaser was thirty. “Tissy” (Patricia) Said looked young enough to be Yaser’s daughter. She now looks old enough to be Yaser’s mother.

I can only wonder why.

But, amazingly, in Dallas, Tissy is now allegedly living with another Muslim man–this one is from Iraq. No, they are not lovers. He is her protector and/or guard. I am told that Tissy has also sometimes been seen wearing hijab and has long ago been forgiven by her father-in-law, Yaser Said’s father, whom Tissy lives near and whom she often visits.

“Forgiven?” Yes, he has forgiven her for having run away with her daughters and their Christian, so-called boyfriends who were only trying to help the girls save their own lives.

Tissy’s Muslim captor/protector has allegedly threatened to kill some Christian members of Tissy’s family. Islam, Yaser and Tissy’s son has allegedly threatened to blow up Gail Gartrell’s house.

Gail Gartrell, whom I have quoted many times, and who is Amina and Sarah’s great-aunt, believes that Tissy’s flight with the girls may have been a planned ruse since, after all, she then subsequently lured them to their deaths. She has also been profiting from their deaths. “She played the sympathy card.”

For example, the Lewisville High School students took up a collection for both Tissy and Islam to help them “start new lives.” I am told that the total sum may have amounted to $1700.00 in cash. Tissy has allegedly used that money to buy gas, clothes, and to eat out. Tissy has also rented out her previous home to tenants who have been paying the rent. Tissy however has allegedly not been using that money to pay the bank and her tenants may eventually be evicted.

According to Gail Gartrell, at least three to four Christian relatives now confirm that Tissy was neither tearful nor filled with grief at the grave site of her two daughters.

They also confirm that when they went over to help Tissy fix up her latest marital home in order to rent it out that they discovered the following:

There were holes in the walls and doors punched there by both Yaser and Islam Said in fits of rage and to terrorize the girls. Their brother Islam, broke Sarah’s desk in half with a hammer, yelling that “the whore bitch deserved what she got.” These relatives confirm that Islam’s rage is highly volatile and “at fever-pitch 95% of the time,” and continues to this day.

Tissy took possession of Amina’s two computers. One is now hidden, the other she destroyed. Again, I can only wonder why.

Stay tuned. I may write more about the history of violence in the Said family. The reason this domestic “soap opera” is important to track is that this may be the first time that anyone involved in an honor murder in America is trying to re-create the family history and publicly share the unfolding details of how the Muslim parents, siblings, and extended Muslim family (uncles, etc.) behave both before and after an honor murder has been committed.

Yes, I wrote “Muslim parents.” Gail Gartrell now believes that Tissy converted to Islam long ago and therefore does not mind “lying to infidels” or collaborating in the honor murder of her own daughters.

People have all repeatedly asked me this question. Lately, their voices are more pained.

Westerners are in denial. And, the deniers are even more afraid of Jihad and terrorism than those of us who are crying out against it. Thus, like battered women, they seek to appease the violent offender; they also engage in self-blame in the misguided belief that if they do not “offend” their batterer that he will not batter them.

Thus, if the West had not published the “inflammatory” Danish cartoons and had not allowed the state of Israel to come into being and to stay right there, a mote in the eye of envious, corrupt, and lazy Muslim nations–then Arafat would not have launched his terrorist campaign, Muslim immigrants in Europe would not have launched their various Intifadas, and Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood would not have gained in strength.

Deniers also tend to blame it all on American foreign policy, Wall Street and the CIA. They rarely blame anything on Islamic gender and religious apartheid or on Jihad Rising.

What else other than fundamentalist Islam explains the Iranian stonings to death of perfectly innocent girls and women for the alleged crime of prostitution which is how female rape victims, those who dare allege rape, women who are not sufficiently “covered,” or who demonstrate for women’s rights– are all viewed. Read my book, The Death of Feminism for a longer discussion about this.

Read the foreign press. For example, I have just learned that the Saudi, UAE, and (to a lesser extent) Iranian governments will not allow female athletes to compete in the upcoming Olympics. This decision has nothing to do with the CIA. However, I would agree that America’s policy towards Saudi Arabia must radically change, both because of their mistreatment of women and in terms of our being held hostage to grossly inflated oil prices such that we have been funding the Islamist war against the West.

I have just also learned that the Pakistani-based Taliban has demanded that un-Islamic businesses “shut down” within fifteen days or “face dire consequences.” The businesses targeted are CD shops, internet cafes, and cable service providers. And, the Taliban are threatening any woman who is not wearing proper hijab with disfigurement by acid. (Read about it in the Daily Times of Pakistan).

Contrary to myth, the U.S. did not fund the Taliban to fight against the Soviet invaders. In fact, after the Soviet military withdrawal in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington simply washed its hands of Afghanistan. The Taliban did not even exist until about 1996, when Pakistan created them for its own purposes.

Finally, also in the Pakistani Punjab, (are we really allied with this awful country?–yes we are, and there is no choice), two Christian sisters, aged 10 and 13, were abducted by Muslim men who married them and forced them to convert to Islam. The local police refused to help the parents find their children. Now, a judge has ruled that the children cannot see their Muslim husbands or their Christian parents and has placed them in a woman’s shelter.

The persecution of infidels, forced conversions, and forced marriage to female children is typical of 7th century Islam which alas, is still alive and well today.

Folks: It’s not our fault. We didn’t break it (Islamic fundamentalism) and we may not be able to fix it. But we do have to prevent it from invading our shores. If not, all the Western women will be veiled, the intellectuals silenced, the technology used only for jihad, and not to spread modernity.