M2RB: Ronnie James Dio, live at The Spectrum, Philadelphia, 1986
When there's lightning – you know it always brings me down
Cause it's free and I see that it's me
Who's lost and never found
I cry out for magic – see it floating in the air
But it's fear - and you'll hear
It calling you beware – look out
No sign of the morning coming
There's no sight of the day
You've been left on your own
You are a Rainbow
Rainbow in the Dark
Rainbow in the Dark
Rainbow in the Dark
A Rainbow in the Dark
Too many mornings
Rainbow in the Dark, dark, dark
I see you’re all, you’re all, you’re all Rainbows
You are Rainbows in the Dark
By Andrew C McCarthy
The embrace of the Muslim
Brotherhood by President Obama, aided and abetted by the Republican
establishment, is not new. It is the culmination of a gradual surrender
whose silhouette was already evident nearly twenty years ago. I wrote
about it in Willful Blindness,
a memoir about the start of our nation’s confrontation with Islamic
supremacism as a domestic threat — back in the early Nineties, when I
led the prosecution of the Blind Sheikh’s New York jihadist cell, which
carried out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Is our wayward course
one that can be corrected? The ongoing controversy over Islamist influence on our government will probably answer that question.
Spotlighted are concerns
raised by five conservative members of the House of Representatives
about (i) Brotherhood-friendly government policymaking and (ii)
government officials, such as the State Department’s Huma Abedin, who
have longstanding Islamist ties. The crossroads at which we’ve arrived,
however, involve a lot more than any single government official or
policy. Let me be stark: Our liberty and security are threatened, and
the questions not only of whether GOP leaders comprehend the stakes, but
also of whether the Republican Party remains a worthy home for
defenders of liberty, have become very real.
A little history, to measure how far we’ve veered. When we tried Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman
and his cohorts in 1995, the overarching charge was that all 12
defendants, plus dozens of unindicted coconspirators, conspired to wage a
war of urban terrorism against the United States. Beyond the Trade
Center attack, this campaign included a more ambitious plot to bomb New
York City landmarks (e.g., Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, UN complex,
FBI’s lower Manhattan headquarters, some U.S. military installations,
etc.), as well as sundry schemes to kidnap or assassinate current and
former government officials, murder the president of Egypt, and the
like.
Here is the crucial part that you need to understand: The Blind
Sheikh and his subordinates were not merely “violent extremists,” seized
by some sort of psychological problem. They were Islamic supremacists.
Yes, their methods were barbaric; but that does not mean they were
insane or irrational. Indeed, had that been the case, they would have
been not guilty by reason of mental incapacity.
To the contrary, we proved that their actions were rationally motivated by Islamic supremacist ideology,
an easily knowable interpretation of Islam, drawn directly from Muslim
scripture, that commands its adherents to coerce societies into adopting
sharia. Sharia is Islam’s totalitarian framework for how societies are
to be ruled. It is not just a set of spiritual guidelines; it is a comprehensive social and legal system,
said to be Allah’s gift and directive to mankind. It governs all human
activity — not just prayer and worship, but financial, social, familial,
political, military, and even hygienic activity.
Here are two salient facts. Once you grasp them, you’ll know everything you need to know to understand the rest of the dispute:
(a) Not all Islamic
supremacists (or “Islamists”) are violent, but the goal of all Islamic
supremacists is the same: to coerce the acceptance of sharia. The methods of
pursuing that goal vary: sometimes terrorism is used, sometimes non-violent
avenues are exploited — meaning, Islamic supremacists co-opt legal processes,
the media, educational institutions, and/or government agencies. But regardless
of what methods an Islamic supremacist uses, his goal never changes: He aims to
implement sharia. In Islamic supremacist ideology, sharia is regarded as the
mandatory, non-negotiable foundation that must be laid before a society can be
Islamized. Sharia is not “moderate”; therefore, you are not a “moderate” if you
want it, no matter what method you use to implement it. For example, if you are
an Islamic supremacist and you want to repeal the First Amendment in order to
prohibit speech that casts Islam in a negative light, you are not a “moderate”
— even if you wouldn’t blow up buildings to press your point.
(b) Islamic supremacism
is not a fringe interpretation of Islam. It is probably still the minority
interpretation in North America. Nevertheless, it is the predominant
interpretation of Islam in the Middle East. Poll after poll shows us that
upwards of two-thirds of Muslims in countries like Egypt and Pakistan want
their governments to adopt and strictly enforce sharia. This is why the Islamic
supremacist parties in the “Arab Spring” countries are currently enjoying such
success in elections.
With that as background, understand that in the aforementioned 1995
trial, we proved that the reason the Blind Sheikh was able to run a
terrorist organization — despite the fact that his physical infirmities
rendered him incapable of performing any physical acts that would be
useful to terrorists — was his globally renowned mastery of Islamic law.
Omar Abdel Rahman is not a nut suffering from a psychological disorder.
He has a doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence, earned by graduating with
distinction from al-Azhar University in Cairo, the legendary seat of
sharia scholarship since the Tenth Century. When he preached that
Muslims were obligated to force non-sharia governments to adopt sharia,
by terrorism if necessary, he drew these instructions directly from Islamic scripture,
and his instructions had extraordinary persuasive force precisely
because he was, undeniably, an internationally recognized authority on
Islamic jurisprudence. The government would have you to believe Barack
Obama or George Bush or Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Condi Rice or
Janet Reno knows more about Islam and its sharia than Omar Abdel Rahman
does. That is ludicrous.
We seemed to get that 20 years ago, but observe the measure of how far off-course we’ve drifted:
(a) In 1995, we demonstrated that (i) the Blind Sheikh was attempting to impose sharia, (ii) that he drew directly and accurately from Islamic scripture his instructions that Muslims must impose sharia, by violence if necessary, and (iii) his Muslim followers were animated by these instructions to push for the imposition of sharia standards, using terrorist attacks, among other methods. That was the crux our our case. For proving this in federal court, the Clinton Justice Department honored my colleagues and me with the attorney general’s highest award.(b) Today, by contrast, for doing exactly the same thing — namely, for arguing that an authoritative interpretation of Islam directs adherents to impose sharia, by violence if necessary, in order to lay the groundwork for changing a non-Islamic society into an Islamic society — I am routinely accused of promoting hatred and “Islamophobia.” Such accusations, applied to assertions of what used to be seen as fact, do not come only from the Obama Left (including its Clinton administration veterans — the State Department, run by Hillary Clinton, and the Justice Department run by Eric Holder, Clinton’s deputy attorney general). The smears are echoed, and in many cases led, by prominent members of the Republican establishment.
I haven’t changed. The threat against us hasn’t changed. The government has changed.
The Obama administration and the Republican establishment would have
us live a lie — a lie that endangers our liberties and our security. The
lie is this: There is a difference between mainstream Islamic ideology
and what they call “violent extremism.”
The vogue term “violent extremism” is chosen very deliberately. To be
sure, we’ve always bent over backwards to be politically correct. Until
Obama came to power, we used to use terms like “violent jihadism” or “Islamic extremism”
in order to make sure everyone knew that we were not condemning all of
Islam, that we were distinguishing Muslim terrorists from other Muslims.
(In a more sensible time, we did not say “German Nazis” — we said
“Germans” or “Nazis” and put the burden on non-Nazi Germans, rather than
on ourselves, to separate themselves from the aggressors.) But now, the
Obama administration and the Republican establishment prefer to say
“violent extremism” because this term has no hint of Islam.
According to the Obama Left and the Republican establishment
(personified today by the likes of Sen. John McCain and many, but by no
means all, former high-ranking officials from the Bush 43
administration), the only Muslims we need to be concerned about are
terrorists, and there is nothing relevant in the fact that they happen to be Muslims.
“Violent extremists” are not motivated by a coherent ideology, much
less by scriptures from “one of the world’s great religions.” Instead,
they are seized by a psychological disorder that inexplicably makes them
prone to mass-murder attacks.
The fall-out from this line of thinking is that we must conclude
mainstream Islam, everywhere on earth including the Middle East, has
nothing to do with violence, and therefore, it is “moderate,” and even
“admirable.” Sure, it may be advocating the adoption of something
called “sharia,” but we needn’t worry about that. After all, we have
Western scholars of Islamic studies (mostly working in university
departments created by lavish donations from Saudi royals) who will tell
you that sharia is amorphous and evolving — such that nobody really
knows exactly what it is, anyway. Consequently, nothing to see here,
move along. You are to accept as an article of faith that there is no
reason to believe people steeped in mainstream Islam will resist real
democracy or that they will remain hostile to the United States. And,
yeah, sure they are opposed to Israel, but that is just a “political
dispute” about “territory”; it has nothing to do with ideology or
mainstream Islam per se.
This is why there is such an energetic effort on behalf of the Obama
administration and leading Republican establishment figures to portray
the Muslim Brotherhood as a “largely secular” organization that you should think of
as a “pragmatic,” “moderate” “political party” (or a series of
“political parties,” “think tanks” and “political action committees”).
You are not to see it the way it sees itself, and the way it actually
is: an ideological movement rooted in the mainstream, supremacist
interpretation of Islam that is undeniably regnant in the Middle East.
This is why the Obama administration and the Republican establishment
work so hard to ignore the Brotherhood’s anthem: “Allah is our
objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our
way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” This is why they labor to obscure the connection between the Brotherhood and Hamas, the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch. This
is why they are now trying to revise our understanding of Hamas: To
borrow not only from Obama officials but from the meanderings of such
top Bush administration figures as Condi Rice, you are subtly encouraged
to start viewing Hamas as not a terrorist organization but a political “resistance” movement, engaged in some regrettable violence that is vaguely justifiable because Israel is an illegal, oppressive occupier.
Under this delusional view of our threat environment, the Muslim
Brotherhood is not an ideological enemy to be feared but a political
organization to be negotiated with and accommodated. You know, just like
any other political entity. Thus, our security is not furthered by
heightened surveillance of Islamic organizations (very much including
Brotherhood organizations) that preach supremacist ideology. Islam, you
are to understand, is not a problem. Rinse and repeat: The only problem is violent extremism, which has nothing to do with Islam.
Furthermore, in the world according to the Obama Left and the
Republican establishment, since our security is not threatened by
Islamist organizations, we must “partner” with them. After all, they
simply must be innately non-violent; thus, the reasoning goes, if we
accommodate them politically (i.e., accede to their calls for
incremental acceptance of sharia), they will work with us in good faith
and strive to keep young Muslims away from violent extremists. Funny,
but it seems that even though Islam has nothing to do with “violent
extremism,” young Muslims and violent extremists somehow keep finding
each other.
When Senator McCain and his lemmings rebuke House conservatives for
purportedly attacking Huma Abedin’s “patriotism,” there are two things
at work. First, when the facts are against you — as they usually are
against Sen. McCain — demagoguery and character assassination are the
most effective response: The compliant, Islamophilic media will help
intimidate your opponents into silence. We all are very familiar with
this tactic. But we often miss the second tactic, which is more
important because it goes directly to our conception of “patriotism.”
That second tactic is this: the Obama Left and the Republican
establishment would have you accept the following premise: anti-American
Islamic supremacists are not an ideological threat but a mere political
movement; therefore, American government officials who want to treat
them as a mere political movement — to negotiate with them and
accommodate them — are not endangering America; they are strengthening America.
Consequently, if you dare suggest that this is a lunatic way of looking
at things, you are a McCarthyite demagogue, not a patriot. According to
the Obama Left, the Republican establishment and their complicit media,
it is for them, not you, to define what “patriotism” means. Thus Huma
Abedin becomes the “patriot” exactly because of her connections to
Islamists; Michele Bachmann becomes the “demagogue” exactly because she
dares suggest that Islamists are an ideological threat.
This is the crossroads at which we now find ourselves. On one side are national security conservatives, myself included,
who reluctantly accept the stubborn fact that Islamic supremacist
ideology is incorrigibly hostile to America and the West. We take the
Muslim Brotherhood at its word that it is seeking to destroy the West
and destroy Israel, and that it is doing so based on a divine injunction
that is easily traceable to Islamic scripture. We understand that there
are other ways of interpreting Islam, and we wish those other ways were
predominant. But we believe American national security requires
grasping that Islamic supremacism is the predominant Islam of the Middle
East; it is the Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the world,
very much including its organizations operating in our own country. We
understand that Islamic supremacist ideology inspires not only violent
jihad but also non-violent campaigns to supplant Western culture with
Islamic culture — such as, for example, the campaign waged by the
Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Brotherhood to restrict free
speech; their campaign to have sharia-compliant finance broadly
accepted in the West; and their campaign to delegitimize Israel as a
“racist occupier” while recasting Hamas, the Brotherhood, and even
Hezbollah (a Shiite terrorist organization) as “political parties” and
“resistance” movements.
On the other side of the divide are the Obama administration and the
Republican establishment. They insist that there is nothing inherently
supremacist about Islam, which is an ur-tolerant “religion of peace.”
Violence, they maintain, not only has nothing to do with Islam but is,
in fact, “anti-Islamic.” They see the Muslim Brotherhood not as a threat
but as a political organization. You are to understand that the
Brotherhood has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. To the extent
it supports Hamas, that is because Hamas is engaged in resistance, not terrorism.
To the extent Brotherhood leaders unabashedly proclaim that they will
“conquer Europe” and “eliminate and destroy” America by “sabotage,” in
what they brazenly call a “civilization jihad,” such rhetoric is to be
expected and excused because Islamic culture is steeped in hyperbole and
religious imagery. They don’t really mean it the way it sounds, you
see, and, once we all understand each other better, that unfortunate
rhetoric will fade away.
At a time not long ago, before the hard Left took over the Democratic
Party, there was a style of strong national-security Democrat (in the
mold of Scoop Jackson or even Jack Kennedy) who would have seen the
position to which the Obama administration and the Republican
establishment adhere as dangerously delusional. Unfortunately, there are
no longer enough of those Democrats in government to appeal to.
On the other hand, there remain many national security conservatives
in the Republican Party. They are alarmed and extremely worried about
the threat the ascendancy of Islamic supremacism poses to our liberty
and security. They also see this threat magnified, to an intolerable
degree, by the inroads the Muslim Brotherhood has made in the Republican
establishment and in our government. As to the latter, we are not just
talking about the State Department — not by a long shot. So profound is
the influence of the Obama/Republican-establishment philosophy over the
Defense Department, for example, that the Pentagon could not bring
itself to refer to any aspect of Islamic supremacist ideology in a
lengthy report on the attack at Fort Hood — a jihadist atrocity that
killed 13 Americans, twice as many as were killed in the 1993 World
Trade Center bombing.
If the Republican Party has decided to take its cues from
establishment proponents of this reckless philosophy, if GOP leaders can
no longer tell the difference between hostile anti-American operatives
and benign political actors, then the Republican Party has become an
obstacle to liberty and security, not a vehicle for their preservation.
As is the case with crushing government debt and out-of-control
government spending, it appears that the GOP is choosing to be part of
the problem, rather than the solution, when it comes to the threat of
Islamic supremacism. Certainly, that is a choice party leaders are
entitled to make. But if it is the one they have made, why should
conservatives concerned about liberty and security bother with the
Republican Party?
Related Reading:
Questions About Huma Abedin
I like this version, too. Dio's voice is stronger. From the late night television show, "The Rock Palace" in 1983:
Rainbow In The Dark - Ronnie James Dio
When there's lightning – you know it always bring me down
Cause it's free and I see that it's me
Who's lost and never found
I cry out for magic - see it dancing in the light
It was cold - lost my hold
To the shadows of the night
There's no sign of the morning coming
You've been left on your own
Like a Rainbow in the Dark
A Rainbow in the Dark
Do your demons - do they ever let you go
When you've tried - do they hide - deep inside
Is it someone that you know
We're just a picture – we’re an image caught in time
We're a lie - you and I
We are words without a rhyme
No sign of the morning coming
‘Cause you've been left on your own
Like a Rainbow in the Dark
Rainbow in the Dark
When there's lightning – you know it always brings me down
Cause it's free and I see that it's me
Who's lost and never found
I cry out for magic – see it floating in the air
But it's fear - and you'll hear
It calling you beware – look out
No sign of the morning coming
There's no sight of the day
You've been left on your own
You are a Rainbow
Rainbow in the Dark
Rainbow in the Dark
Rainbow in the Dark
A Rainbow in the Dark
Too many mornings
Rainbow in the Dark, dark, dark
I see you’re all, you’re all, you’re all Rainbows
You are Rainbows in the Dark
Cause it's free and I see that it's me
Who's lost and never found
I cry out for magic - see it dancing in the light
It was cold - lost my hold
To the shadows of the night
There's no sign of the morning coming
You've been left on your own
Like a Rainbow in the Dark
A Rainbow in the Dark
Do your demons - do they ever let you go
When you've tried - do they hide - deep inside
Is it someone that you know
We're just a picture – we’re an image caught in time
We're a lie - you and I
We are words without a rhyme
No sign of the morning coming
‘Cause you've been left on your own
Like a Rainbow in the Dark
Rainbow in the Dark
When there's lightning – you know it always brings me down
Cause it's free and I see that it's me
Who's lost and never found
I cry out for magic – see it floating in the air
But it's fear - and you'll hear
It calling you beware – look out
No sign of the morning coming
There's no sight of the day
You've been left on your own
You are a Rainbow
Rainbow in the Dark
Rainbow in the Dark
Rainbow in the Dark
A Rainbow in the Dark
Too many mornings
Rainbow in the Dark, dark, dark
I see you’re all, you’re all, you’re all Rainbows
You are Rainbows in the Dark
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