Sorry, this entry is a bit overdue, but here it is, as promised, my notes from the "Terrorism" lecture I attended last Thursday the 28th with Robert Spencer. My description of the first session is here.

Attendance this time was quite a bit better and topped out at around 40 people. Very good, relatively speaking, although a few younger faces would have been nice. The Red Sox were kind enough to defeat the Cardinals in four straight, so I had no moral dilemma in deciding whether to attend or not. I know that was on the mind of at least one emailer, as well.

My notes aren't quite as complete this time, so this may be more of a general recap with lots of holes in it. Spencer allowed questions as we went which disrupted the flow a bit as far as note taking went.

An initial request for a show of hands for those who had attended session #1 indicated that very few had attended that introductory class, so the first few minutes were involved with a background re-cap...

...the War on Terror is like a "War on Bombs." Terror is a means, a weapon. What is needed is an examination of the root causes - these are not the root causes we're used to, of course.

Any War on Terror must address the real root-cause - Jihad. It is the responsibility of Muslims to wage war on Christians and Jews until they convert or submit to Islam. Sayyid Qutb said that no government has any right to exist unless it obeys Islamic Law. Any other way is by definition a rebellion against God and must be defeated.

This Jihad is the reason we are fighting. Everything else is pretext. American troops in Saudi Arabia, the existence of Israel...these are all just put-ups - window-dressing that's taken down and replaced very quickly and at the Jihadis' convenience. When one pretext doesn't serve anymore, they just find another one. The Jihad remains.

Islam's raison d'etre is to depose the governments of the unbelievers.

"Nice" Muslims either ignore, deny or are unaware of these doctrines of Islam.

Secularism arose, after much tribulation, out of a Judeo-Christian context. Islam rejects secularism and the separation of Church and State. It was a political religion from the start.

Jihad-Watch shows what AP, Reuters, etc...don't - that fighters in a wide range of locations - Chechnya, Iraq, etc... - are all fighting the same basic fight (Jihad) in their own locales.

A comment on the recent reports of CAIR running "sensitivity training" for the FBI - the FBI is being trained by men who openly support Hamas and want the US to become an Islamic State.

Now we come to the principles of "Taqiyya" or "Kitman."

In addition to mandating warfare, Islam also mandates lying. Muhammed said, "War is deceipt."

Koran 3:28: "Let not the believers take the unbelievers for friends rather than believers; and whoever does this, he shall have nothing of (the guardianship of) Allah..."

Koran 16:106: "He who disbelieves in Allah after his having believed, not he who is compelled while his heart is at rest on account of faith, but he who opens (his) breast to disbelief -- on these is the wrath of Allah, and they shall have a grievous chastisement."

10-15% of Muslims are Shi-ites. They developed out of the above verses the concept of Taqiyya as a defense against the Sunni majority. This so that they could pretend to be Sunnis and thus avoid retribution.

In more modern times, the Sunnis have also adopted this concept.

They use Taqiyya to divert attention from their true intentions. Hussein Ibish of the ADC, with whom Spencer has debated on television, is a master of this. For instance, he flat out stated that the business about apes and swine simply wasn't in the Koran, knowing that most Americans would simply never check, or would take a Muslim's word over Spencer's.

Stephen Schwartz says there's no need to re-write the Koran or the Hadith...so then how do you deal with all the bad stuff in there other than reinforcing "cultural literalism" (that what's in there was relevant for a certain time and place), but that only works when people don't - or can't - read the books.

Schwartz wouldn't argue the point when he appeared with Spencer however, saying instead that he had no obligation to answer questions from an ignorant non-believer. People use such ad hominem attacks because they work. These are Taqiyya tactics.

They play the victim, accuse others of being hate-mongers. They also use ambiguity - "We condemn terrorism...BUT..." CAIR bigwig Ibrahim Hooper never condemned Bin Laden, Al Qaeda or Hamas... It's all word games. Sheikh Tantawi might say he "condemns suicide bombing"...until you look up the exceptions and find he hasn't condemned anything at all.

An example of diversion from one of his debates with Ibish - "How can you condemn Islam when Hitler killed 6 million?" Spencer was unprepared with a good answer (that, in part, there's no global Christian Jihad network - no doctrine in Christianity to kill non-believers), so instead of discussing Islamic terror, they spent 20 minutes talking about Hitler. Mission accomplished for Ibish.

An example of the use of half truths: "Islam forbids suicide." We've all heard that...so why do people keep doing it? Because, of course, it's not suicide when you slay and are slain for Islam.

All major Islamic Jurists say that you can kill the non-combatants if they are aiding the foes of Islam. That is a broad mandate.

They exploit cognitive dissonance. They know we just don't want to believe the truth.

Asides: One of The State Department's weaknesses is that they simply don't "get" religion. They don't take it seriously or understand its power. No one had read a thing written by Khomeini when he took power in Iran.

John Paul Jones wrote about suicide attackers in the Mediterranean 200 years ago.

There are moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam. Moderate Muslims have no solid theoretical foundation upon which to base their beliefs.

That's where my notes end. The next, and final, session will be held on Thursday the 18th. I'm looking forward to it.

[I'd post scans of my notes, but my scanner seems to have screwed the pooch. Anyone know a good French doctor?]