War be with you
: Muslim Pundit has a remarkable post about the recruiters who stand outside British mosques and feed on the anger and hatred like bacteria heating up a compost heap:
I have always heard that prayer is to a man’s turbulent mind what water is to fire. Prayer is supposed to encourage the aura of tranquillity, and the feeling of inner peace. It is supposed to calm down and subdue the seething waves of anger, the fiery discontent that simmer in one’s heart. For a person to engage in prayer is to seek refuge in an uncertain world. After coming out of a temple or a church, I have observed people to be relatively silent, smiling; slowly making their way out to their parked vehicles, talking in low muffled voices. The calmness and the serenity of places of worship commune with our minds to create an environment of peace all around it. Indeed, it is also not surprising then that more people wait for alms at such places than anywhere else.
Except, at least, at the numerous mosques I have visited in Britain. Come Friday, and the aftermath of the Friday congregation is anything but serene. The increasingly usual programme is troubling: Emit hot air, even if at the expense of non-Muslims, and pray. I am surrounded by idiots. Secular Muslims understandably choose not to reveal themselves in this environment. And yet this is not the face of Muslim extremism. That is waiting patiently outside mosque entrances instead, in the form of certain groups using Friday to market the call for destruction, violence and mayhem around the world, under the pretext of so-called freedom-fighting. As hundreds of people file out neither content nor smiling, but seething with anger at their non-Muslim compatriots, they are ripe for the taking, as they go straight into the open arms of these wannabe macho-men. These extremists righteously hold their banners in one hand, and the Qur’an in the other, propagating their message through hate-filled leaflets and magazines, their screaming mouths distorting their faces, howling for indiscriminate retaliation against all Muslim and Western rulers under the belief that Godís justice is on their side. The entire corpus of their ideology is contained within their slogans….
Golf the Jihad Way
: Tony Hendra, a great humorist, had a great piece on NPR the other night, noting that among the hot words that sell book titles — golf, dog, cat, ‘the end of.’ Hitler — now add the hot word du jour: Jihad. Inspired. Put in your Amazon orders now for Hitler’s Jihad.
Today’s inappropriate Olympic observation
: This year’s women skaters are unusually gorgeous.
