Author Mark Durie explains how we have embraced the dhimmi syndrome -- and what we can do to reverse the trend.

MT: A distinction is often made between Islam and Islamism. Do you feel that it’s a valid distinction, and is a reformed Islam possible?

MD: A thorough reading through the hadiths, sira and Koran led me to believe that reform in the sense of "improvement" is incredibly difficult. In medieval Christianity, reforming religion meant making it better by going back to its roots, back to the gospels. The problem is, if you reform Islam this way, you go back to Muhammad's message and example, and what you get is Wahhabism and al Qaida. Reform through reshaping Islam under the influence of external ideas, derived from non-Islamic sources, is conceivable, but the trend of the past 100 years has been just about all in the other direction.

If you put a young God-fearing Muslim in a room with an Islamic radical and an Islamic moderate, both trying to win over the young person's soul, the radical would win again and again. It is because the canon - hadiths, sira and Koran - are massively stacked in favor of the radical position. Yes, there are violent passages in the Bible too, but it is an uphill battle to build a violent theology based on them. With the Koran, building a violent theology is like rolling balls down a hill. It is a huge uphill struggle building a “moderate” Islamic theology on the basis of the Islamic canon alone.

I think some commentators - whose work I respect and admire - speak of “Islamism” because they don't want to dignify the radical cause by calling it “Islam.” Also, if they name the problem as “Islam,” it would seem too overwhelming. Nevertheless, I agree with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan and other ex-Muslims that the problem of radical Islam is the problem of Islam itself. The will to dominate is hard-wired into the core texts of Islam, and this cannot be excised from the heart of these texts without a traumatic assault on the fundamentals of Islam. So I don't like to speak about “Islamism.” To me it feels like a cop-out.

Often I meet people who want to be informed about Islam but will let their minds grasp the problem only if the solution is clear. This is hopeless. You must first live with the problem, even for a long time, before solutions will come. But I am convinced we will  find solutions to the challenge of Islam. That is why I wrote The Third Choice– out of conviction that facing the truth will bring liberty.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/71950/third-choice-mark-tapson

We can’t DEFEAT Islamic terrorism if Obama can’t even SAY ‘Islamic Terrorism’ – Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz gave Obama a slapdown on Fox News when he said that the West could not defeat “radical Islamic terrorism” if Obama can’t even utter the words “radical Islamic terrorism.”

Watch below:

http://therightscoop.com/we-cant-defeat-islamic-terrorism-if-obama-cant-even-say-islamic-terrorism-ted-cruz/

The Barbarians Are Inside, And There Are No Gates

As I write, Paris is under curfew for the first time since the German occupation, and the death toll from the multiple attacks stands at 158, the vast majority of them slaughtered during a concert at the Bataclan theatre, a delightful bit of 19th century Chinoiserie on the boulevard Voltaire. The last time I was there, if memory serves, was to see Julie Pietri. I'm so bloody sick of these savages shooting and bombing and killing and blowing up everything I like - whether it's the town where my little girl's favorite fondue restaurant is or my favorite hotel in Amman or the brave freespeecher who hosted me in Copenhagen ...or a music hall where I liked to go to hear a little jazz and pop and get away from the cares of the world for a couple of hours. But look at the photographs from Paris: there's nowhere to get away from it; the barbarians who yell "Allahu Akbar!" are there waiting for you ...when you go to a soccer match, you go to a concert, you go for a drink on a Friday night. They're there on the train... at the magazine office... in the Kosher supermarket... at the museum in Brussels... outside the barracks in Woolwich...


http://www.steynonline.com/7293/the-barbarians-are-inside-and-there-are-no-gates

MUST WATCH! Neil Cavuto calmly DISMANTLES ‘socially conscious’ math-challenged millennial demanding freebies

This interview with Neil Cavuto questioning a typical “social justice warrior” idiot is just amazing. He asks her real questions and demands real answers and numbers. And she can’t even.

http://therightscoop.com/must-watch-neil-cavuto-calmly-dismantles-socially-conscious-math-challenged-millennial-demanding-freebies/

FACING GOD What it tells us about Islam

The Judeo-Christian tradition recognizes the individual, apart from the mob. That individual is invited to meet and talk, face to face and utterly spontaneously, with God, without interruption from any earthly authority. That encounter is the life spark of Western Civilization.

We define, and recognize, by contrasts. I learn much about Christian prayer and Christian monasticism by comparing them with their opposites. I think of Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" and what it says about my faith – specifically, what it says about the Judeo-Christian concept of God, of man, and of prayer. I think of how that artwork and its implications contrast with other belief systems: modern Atheism, ancient Paganism, and Islam.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260737/facing-god-danusha-v-goska

Chris Christie on Drug Addiction

Were you moved by Chris Christie’s soliloquy about drug addiction? Christie is a great communicator and he offered some emotion-laden words about drug addiction in New Hampshire the other day. The video, dutifully reproduced here, has gone viral. Millions of people have seen it. I trust that they have all been moved as much as you and I have.

Christie was arguing for drug treatment. He was arguing against those who believe that addicts should not be treated. Unfortunately, this is a straw man argument. Everyone is in favor of more treatment for people who abuse drugs. No one really believes that we can solve the problem by tossing drug addicts into jail. 

Speeches that appeal to our emotions often induce us not to ask too many questions. If you do, you start sounding unsympathetic, lacking empathy. The more emotionally moving the speech the more likely we are to believe it; we let our feelings guide us and we take it on faith.

http://stuartschneiderman.blogspot.ca/2015/11/chris-christie-on-drug-addiction.html

The Search for Moderate Islam: Part I and Part 2 by Lawrence Auster

If we pursue the course of ecumenism, we will embark on a decades-long attempt to turn Muslims into moderate Muslims. The endeavor would become the central political project and moral commitment of our society, an obsessive, irrational quest that—like the Oslo "peace" process—we could never permit ourselves to abandon, no matter how many times it had failed. In the process we would empower Islam and lose ourselves.

If we pursue the course of civilizational defense, we will unstring Islam as a global force by decreasing Muslims' presence in the West and containing them within their historic lands. Once the two civilizations are no longer in each other's faces, our freedom and safety will no longer depend on our begging, cajoling, and bribing them to give up their deepest convictions. 

Which path is more promising? The path of civilizational realism, in which we recognize Islam as our eternal adversary and act accordingly, or the path of the civilizational peace process, in which we look on a billion Muslims as moderates who have somehow failed so far to realize that they are moderates, but who—we devoutly believe—will somehow discover that they are moderates if we keep trying hard enough to convince them of that fact?

http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=9781