The global jihad against speech-aided and abetted by our enemedia-was the primary subject of discussion at the SION conference this past Tuesday, and the panels assembled represented the full spectrum of thought and action that is being suppressed as a result of the collaboration between government officials-both elected and unelected-intent on “managing” our ever-diminishing pool of  liberty, the custodians of the fifth estate, and the presumptive caliphate which is using them as its ideological cat’s paw. The mobs overwhelming embassies in North Africa and the Middle East and slaughtering American citizens represent the physical violence that most associate with the term jihad, yet there is another more potent element of jihadist doctrine which involves employing coercive means more subtle than car bombs, rocket propelled-grenades, and Kalashnikovs.

The most powerful and efficacious weapon against jihadist ideology is, in fact, the truth. Which is why the vanguards of Islam and their accomplices go to such great lengths in order to suppress the means through which the truth is disseminated. That was the main theme of the second panel of the Stop Islamization of Nations Congress, which comprised men and women from England-until recently, one of the most resilient bastions of free expression on the planet-and Australia, a much younger parliamentary democracy whose citizens find themselves caught beneath a resurgent Islamic tidal wave facilitated by its leaders abandonment of sound immigration policy.

Debbie Robinson, of the Q Society, gave us a detailed overview of the parlous situation Australians find themselves in due to the proliferation of Muslim immigrants faithful to the Koran now living on a continent built upon British common law. The most recent  manifestation of this danger can be found in Muslim Brotherhood acolytes calling for the summary execution of the filmmaker who, in their eyes, committed blasphemy, exploiting the very freedom which they could never hope to enjoy in one of the many despotic Muslim nations from which they emigrated.

However, the question of sharia law’s application in Australia is not one of recent vintage, despite the befuddled media coverage of jihadi demonstrations in that nation’s capital this week. In fact, it is a question which has become so embedded within national discourse that a former Chief Justice of Australia has publicly rejected the notion that sharia law can coexist with the laws of his country. You need look no further than the scourging  a convert to Wahabbism received at the hands of his masked attackers to realize that this isn’t a theoretical debate for Australians. Is it really that far-fetched to conceive of a day when the punishment meted out to a member of the Burns’ Gang in the drama The Proposition might befall the unfortunate recipient of justice from a sharia court?

That question is even more pertinent to the men who came to New York City from England, which some would characterize as Ground Zero in the war between Islamic supremacism and Western societal norms.

Kevin Carroll of the English Defense League-seen above-described some of the battles in this titanic struggle. Currently running for sheriff in a newly created constituency, Mr. Carroll and other members of the EDL have been subjected not only to physical attacks-some so violent as to require hospitalization-by crypto-fascist, Marxist goon squads and their Islamist accomplices, but have been persecuted by the English authorities, which view those exercising their rights to assemble lawfully and express support for the United Kingdom as posing more of an exigent threat than those organizing terror plots in what is now the hub of pan-Islamic nationalism and jihad within Europe.

The extent to which the inherent rights exercised by Englishmen and women have been curtailed in the name of insulating Islam and its practitioners from any substantive criticism was brought home by Tommy Robinson, the founder and leader of the English Defense League. A life-long resident of town of Luton in the county of Bedfordshire, England,  Robinson embodies the selfless patriotism and commitment to family that were once hallmarks of the English working class. Unfortunately, today he represents a besieged minority under attack on the streets, in the courtroom, and in the yellow press for defending what the intelligentsia consider antiquated notions of Englishness. Instead of resisting the Islamists and their leftist shock troops who are threatening the lives of Robinson and his family, the British police have instructed him to remove himself from Luton-his childhood home-lest he antagonize the Muslim supremacists behind  one of England’s numerous, unofficial Sharia law zones.

The skewed priorities of UK law enforcement-which view the EDL as posing a more exigent threat than the intellectual progeny of Bin Laden did not come as a surprise. What did strike me though was Tommy Robinson’s almost apologetic defense of the gifts he brings to bear in this struggle against Islamic nationalism and its infection of contemporary Europe. He made the inexorable point that, unlike the rest of the continent, Great Britain-with a few notable exceptions-does not have any towering intellectuals or courageous political leaders to rally public opinion on behalf of the Enlightenment values which are now imperiled. The political class within the UK is effectively neutered, spinelessness being virtually a prerequisite for public office, as Tommy and his cousin Kevin Carroll pointed out during their speeches.

The same can be said of most British pseudo-intellectuals, who are equally culpable for the disastrous cultural and spiritual degradation of contemporary Great Britain. The political extermination Northern Irish classicist, poet and parliamentarian Enoch Powell experienced at the hands of England’s opinion-shapers for daring to question the status quo is one of the main reasons why the fight against Islamist ideology is being led by men like Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll, although I don’t believe either man has to qualify the vitally important elements of courage and honesty in identifying the problems facing Britain they both bring to this task. After all, the battle over whether sharia law and Islamic doctrine should prevail over the values of the Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution will be decided in the streets and the homes of ordinary Britons, not intellectual salons in London.

That said, the address delivered by George Igler, the creator of the Discourse Institute, outlined the intellectual argument against the UK’s increasingly restrictive view of individual liberty. At least, that liberty not enjoyed by Islamic ideologues. The son of parents who experienced the absence of liberty firsthand behind the Iron Curtain of Communist Hungary, Igler recognizes the inherent tenuousness of liberties that most Westerners have taken for granted for centuries. His speech focused upon the ways in which British bureaucrats and politicians had distorted the relationship between man and state, pointing out that our sufferance of government is tied exclusively to the protection of inalienable-and non government-derived-rights. This compact has been abrogated by a state that now views its function as maintaining stability in inter-communal relations, which means that some groups, e.g. Muslim immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bosnia-as well as their offspring-are given protection from the critical speech of groups like the EDL. This fundamental negation of rights illustrates why conferences like the Stop Islamization of Nations Congress are so urgent at this moment in time.

They, along with the Discourse Institute, wouldn’t be necessary if the “free” press exercised its right to dissent from political and religious orthodoxy, rather than attempting to hunt down individuals who blasphemed Islam or to blacken the name of patriotic citizens who want to ensure that their children enjoy the same freedoms they once did. But the fact remains that we are not only facing an aggressive, resurgent political Islam, but a much greater threat posed by those who would do away with our patrimony from England, and ultimately, Greece, in order to placate the sensitivities of an ideology with whom no mutual reciprocity exists and which, according to its holy book-none can be achieved.

In Part III of our report, we’ll be examining how the threat of Islamic jihad is experienced by those in the continent from which the armies of Mohammed first emerged.

One of the more disturbing developments in recent years has been the concretization of an alliance between the multiculturalist left and reactionary Islam that has existed in one form or another for decades. Perhaps the ground zero of this phenomenon is the snowbound state of Minnesota.

So it should come as no surprise that local administrators of a cherished Great Society program, Head Start, in that state recently decided to impose a unilateral ban upon Santa Claus. This decision has, not surprisingly, led to a backlash against the politically correct  bureaucrats who reversed years of local tradition and, perhaps somewhat  shockingly, an equally vehement denunciation of that decision by the Moslem Somali community, which has, predictably, experienced blowback from the departure of St. Nick.

Although the propensity of Somali-Americans to turn their backs on their adopted country and inability to assimilate has been well-documented, I find myself compelled to take the side of the people whose immigration to this country I would have more than likely opposed. The denial of Santa Claus seems to have been a misguided attempt by the multicultural bureaucrats who run this local Head Start program to ingratiate themselves with a benighted community of exotic foreigners who occupy the top rung of adulation in the hierarchy of liberal empathy. 

The problem is that encouraging the large scale immigration of a religious minority that sees its faith as inherently superior to those of its neighbors, while simultaneously maintaining a post-Western, multicultural society that eschews the “melting pot” and cultural assimilation, leads to inevitable conflict. The Somali immigrants who are returning to their homeland  to fight under the banner of al-Shabaab-an Al Qaeda affiliate seeking to oust the Western-backed transitional government in Somalia-and the furor surrounding what would have been an innocuous Christmas visit by Santa Claus even a decade ago, are merely two manifestations of a much deeper, more troubling problem. 

There is a clash of civilizations that is taking place in America’s heartland, and no amount of Midwestern politeness or attempts to ignore the obvious will change that fact. We can either discard generations of multicultural thinking and attempt to integrate these Somalis into the fabric of American life, or we can start to impose reasonable limitations on the amount of intake from a country whose values are worlds apart from those of ordinary Americans. Either way, this problem needs to be addressed before it’s too late. Otherwise, we will have even more disturbing Christmases to look forward to in the future.

• The Sweden Democrat party is poised to gain seats in the Swedish parliament and take part in forming a new government. The Sweden Democrats primary platform plank is opposition to unrestricted immigration. 19 percent of Sweden’s population is made up of immigrants or the children of immigrants. While Finns and other Scandinavians have been traditional immigrants in the past and have assimilated easily, newer Muslim immigrants have brought with them crime and a refusal to accept Swedish liberal humanitarian values. A controversial commercial illustrates the problem, showing a race between an elderly woman and a group of women in burqas pushing strollers.

• After speaking at a dinner for the Hispanic Congressional Caucus on Wednesday to pledge his commitment to amnesty for illegal aliens, President Obama met privately with Hispanic lawmakers to reiterate his support. Commenting on the Dream Act, which would grant amnesty to illegal aliens brought into this country while they were children, the White House said,”The president noted that it is time to stop punishing innocent young people for the actions of their parents, especially when those youth grew up in America and want to serve this country in the military or pursue a higher education they have earned through academic excellence.” The Obama administration has consistently spoken, if not acted, in favor of stronger border enforcement, but has never acknowledged the disastrous effect any amnesty would have on border security.

• The political machinations surrounding the Dream Act are very Machiavellian. DREAM is being bundled in the same Defense appropriations bill as the rescission of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, which bans open homosexuals from serving in the military. This has prompted at least one pundit to rue the Democrats having adopted an effective and unworthy Republican tactic of making political theatre of the nation’s legislative business. Democrats can pander to homosexuals and Hispanic, all while forcing Republicans to vote against funding American soldiers. Utah’s Republican Senators Hatch and Bennett have already indicated that they will vote against the DREAM Act, which they had previously supported, in its current incarnation.

• Idaho Congressional politics took a very nasty turn with a commercial accusing Republican Raul Labrador of profiting from his legal work for illegal aliens. Labrador countered that his opponent, Democratic incumbent Paul Minnick, was a hypocrite, since Mr. Minnick retained Mr. Labrador’s law firm for help in finalizing the adoption of “his foreign born child.” Mr. Minnick has an adopted daughter form China.

• Rattlesnakes don’t like company when they eat. They are quick to strike at prey, but wait for the venom to take effect before they take their time in eating that prey.