Hmmmm

nofate...this is why I love this site, I learn so much from others...you and BD both have said a lot to ponder ect.

I know one thing, I wished CAIR and groups like them were gone out of this country, I was glad when some of them were served subpeonas awhile back, what comes of it, who knows, but they aren't any friends of ours as far as I am concerned.

I've been having troubles here with the site for a few days now (or it's my computer), I would put in the link about that, but heck, I am sure you already know about that anyway.

...anyway, I want to thank you for all the information, that is for sure.

"You've gone beyond the law"... Sen. Kerry~ Head of Foreign Relations Committee to Hillary at Sec.of State confirmation hearings~1-13-09 

As a "regular" guy who reads a lot, I've never met a muslim as far as I know.  I've been very insulated in that regard.  When I read accounts by military guys, they say similar to your take, that there are a lot of muslims that don't buy into the Bin Laden-Qutb-Khomeini-Ahmedenejad radicalism.  And I would absolutely wish for that to be true.  These would be the so-called "Moderate" muslims that we hear about, but don't see or hear much of in the MSM, which seems to be nearly blind to the effectiveness of groups like the muslim brotherhood, or the connections of groups like Hesbollah and Hamas to Iran and financial collection neworks in the U.S.  

I read writers in the alternative media like Andrew Bostom, whose book, "The Legacy of Jihad", I am wading through, and others like Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch, and some of the "apostate" muslims like Ibn Warraq or Ayan Hirsi Alli (sp?).  And from these sources, I get the sense that there is an essential difference between Islam and other religions:  Islam is a religion of conquest and will not stop until it is somehow taken over by more secular interests within the religion.  That does not seem likely given the historical underpinnings of Islam dating back to the founding, when the Jews of Qurayzah were massacred because they were not willing to submit and take up Mohammed's religious views:

September 622 C.E. marks a defining event in Islam — the hijra. Muhammad and a coterie of followers (the Muhajirun), persecuted by fellow Banu Quraysh tribesmen who rejected Muhammad’s authenticity as a divine messenger, fled from Mecca to Yathrib, later known as Medina. The Muslim sources described Yathrib as a Jewish city founded by a Palestinian diaspora population which had survived the revolt against the Romans. Distinct from the nomadic Arab tribes, the Jews of the north Arabian peninsula were highly productive oasis farmers. These Jews were eventually joined by itinerant Arab tribes from southern Arabia who settled adjacent to them and transitioned to a sedentary existence.

Following Muhammad’s arrival in Medina, he re-ordered Medinan society, eventually imposing his authority on each tribe. The Jewish tribes were isolated, some were then expelled, and the remainder attacked and exterminated. A consensus Muslim account of the massacre of the Qurayzah — one of the Jewish tribes of Medina — has emerged as conveyed by classical Muslim scholars of hadith (putative utterances and acts of Muhammad, recorded by pious Muslim transmitters), biographers of Muhammad’s life (especially Ibn Ishaq), jurists, and historians. This narrative is summarized as follows: Alleged to have aided the forces of Muhammad’s enemies in violation of a prior pact, the Qurayzah were subsequently isolated and besieged. Twice the Qurayzah made offers to surrender, and depart from their stronghold, leaving behind their land and property. Initially they requested to take one camel load of possessions per person, but when Muhammad refused this request, the Qurayzah asked to be allowed to depart without any property, taking with them only their families. However, Muhammad insisted that the Qurayzah surrender unconditionally and subject themselves to his judgment. Compelled to surrender, the Qurayzah were lead to Medina. The men with their hands pinioned behind their backs, were put in a court, while the women and children were said to have been put into a separate court. A third (and final) appeal for leniency for the Qurayzah was made to Muhammad by their tribal allies the Aus. Muhammad again declined, and instead he appointed as arbiter Sa’ad Mu’adh from the Aus, who soon rendered his concise verdict: the men were to be put to death, the women and children sold into slavery, the spoils to be divided among the Muslims. 

"The Legacy of Jihad" review at Amazon reveals:

...how, for well over a millennium, across three continents—Asia, Africa, and Europe—non-Muslims who were vanquished by jihad wars, became forced tributaries (called dhimmi in Arabic), in lieu of being slain. Under the dhimmi religious caste system, non-Muslims were subjected to legal and financial oppression, as well as social isolation. Extensive primary and secondary source materials, many translated here for the first time into English, are presented, making clear that jihad conquests were brutal, imperialist advances, which spurred waves of Muslims to expropriate a vast expanse of lands and subdue millions of indigenous peoples. Finally, the book examines how jihad war, as a permanent and uniquely Islamic institution, ultimately regulates the relations of Muslims with non-Muslims to this day.

In an article at RedState.com, Bostom mentioned an apparently common WOT view and went on to explain why that view is flawed, based on Islamic sources:

PC: In a recent speech President Bush insisted that the “ideology” of the terrorists, who “distort the idea of jihad,” is “very different from the religion of Islam” and indeed “exploits Islam to serve a violent, political vision.” In your view, is the President’s assessment sound?

AB: The President’s comments regarding jihad were a profound disappointment. Indeed, such words could have been written and uttered by the most uninformed, or deliberately disingenuous apologists for this devastating institution, which is uniquely Islamic, well over a millennium old, and still wreaking havoc today.

The origins of the Muslim institution of jihad are found in the Qur’an. Sura (chapter) 9 is devoted in its entirety to war proclamations. There we read that the Muslim faithful are to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them. . . . Fight against such as those who have been given the scripture as believe not in Allah. . . . Go forth, light-armed and heavy armed, and strive with your wealth and your lives in the way of Allah. That is best for you, if ye but knew.” From such verses in the Qur’an and in the hadith, Muslim jurists and theologians formulated the Islamic institution of permanent jihad war against non-Muslims to bring the world under Islamic rule (Shari’a law).

The consensus on the nature of jihad from major schools of Islamic jurisprudence is clear. Summarizing this consensus of centuries of Islamic thought, the seminal Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun, who died in 1406, wrote:

In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty because of the universalism of the mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force. The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense.

Only Islam, Ibn Khaldun added, “is under obligation to gain power over other nations.” (my emphasis)

Even the supposedly mystical, therefore often thought of as "peaceful" Sufi branch of Islam is included in the path of Jihad as Bosom explained at American Thinker:

Al—Ghazali, Medieval Sufism, Jihad and Dhimmitude

Let us begin with a towering figure in Muslim intellectual history, Al—Ghazali (1058—1111), who was born at Tus in Khurasan, near modern Meshed, Iran, and became a renowned theologian, jurist, and mystic. Al—Ghazali's early training was as a jurist, and he continued to have an interest in jurisprudence throughout his career, writing a work the Wadjiz, dated 1101, i.e., in the last decade of his life. The eminent Islamic scholar W.M. Watt stresses Al—Ghazali's Muslim orthodoxy. Watt maintains that Al—Ghazali was [3]

...acclaimed in both the East and West as the greatest Muslim after Muhammad, and he is by no means unworthy of that dignity...He brought orthodoxy and mysticism into closer contact...the theologians became more ready to accept the mystics as respectable, while the mystics were more careful to remain within the bounds of orthodoxy.

Al—Ghazali, a Sufi orthodox Muslim, and follower of the Shafi'i school of Islamic jurisprudence, wrote this about jihad war and the treatment of the vanquished non—Muslim dhimmi peoples, in the Wadjiz: [4]

[O]ne must go on jihad (i.e., warlike razzias or raids) at least once a year...one may use a catapult against them [non—Muslims] when they are in a fortress, even if among them are women and children. One may set fire to them and/or drown them...If a person of the Ahl? al—Kitab [People of The Book — primarily Jews and Christians] is enslaved, his marriage is [automatically] revoked...One may cut down their trees...One must destroy their useless books. Jihadists may take as booty whatever they decide...they may steal as much food as they need...

[T]he dhimmi is obliged not to mention Allah or His Apostle...Jews, Christians, and Majians must pay the jizya [poll tax on non—Muslims]...on offering up the jizya, the dhimmi must hang his head while the official takes hold of his beard and hits [the dhimmi] on the protruberant bone beneath his ear [i.e., the mandible]... They are not permitted to ostentatiously display their wine or church bells...their houses may not be higher than the Muslim's, no matter how low that is. The dhimmi may not ride an elegant horse or mule; he may ride a donkey only if the saddle [—work] is of wood. He may not walk on the good part of the road. They [the dhimmis] have to wear [an identifying] patch [on their clothing], even women, and even in the [public] baths...[dhimmis] must hold their tongue....

We now have the spectre of Islamist doctors and other professionals, engineers, etc. using jihad to further the spread of Islam.  From the Spectator.co.uk:

Our study, focusing on Arab and Pakistani doctors (the latter both at home and abroad) revealed that throughout much of the Islamic world, medicine and religion are bound together in a manner that has largely disappeared in the West. For Western doctors, medicine may draw on religious ethics; but for Muslim doctors, it draws on religious ethics and on the Islamic view of the universe. Furthermore, many Muslims associate healing with their religious leaders, and in the more traditional Islamic countries the imam is typically the first (and often the last) person consulted by the ill, and prayer or faith-healing prescriptions are the only therapies.

Muslim Brotherhood literature such as the work of Sayyid Qutb (1906-66) propagates the view that Islam and science are inextricable from one another, and that a fundamentalist view of religion will lead to a revival of Muslim science, such as existed in the Islamic golden age, more than half a millennium ago. For this reason the MB now targets professionals.

Furthermore, the political success of the Egyptian Brotherhood, Hamas and Hezbollah is seen in some quarters as a product of their capacity to provide medical and other social services in countries where state budgets are grossly inadequate and corrupted. Islamists have been quick to understand this dynamic as a means to manipulate the masses. Many observers claim that Hamas gained its strength st the ballot box on the back of its social services. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and its splinter groups, including Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), gained a high profile among the poor by providing health care in exchange for opportunities to recruit neighbourhood youth in extremist ideology. Al-Zawahiri is a product of EIJ; the road from his conception of ‘Islamic free clinics’ to al-Qa’eda was not long.

I guess my problem with the original article about our military being unable to read up on and publicly discuss analyses of jihadist military doctrine is that it seems to be self defeating.  It is as if the enemy is driving the curriculum of the people tasked to defend us.  Like if the Japanese or Germans prior to WWII were able to drive the training program of future officers simply by complaining that the curriculum was not friendly to German or Japanese people.  I just find this whole thing screwy. 

"The future is not set.  There is no fate but what we make for ourselves."

michaelyon-online.com