Bestselling author William Kent Krueger still has passion for writing, every single day

Even after awards for “Ordinary Grace” and the Cork O’Connor series, William Kent Krueger gets up every morning and writes. 

By Laurie Hertzel Star Tribune

AUGUST 15, 2014

http://www.startribune.com/

GLEN STUBBE • GSTUBBE@STARTRIBUNE.COM

For years, writer William Kent Krueger has been writing his books in St. Paul coffee shops – for a long time at the St. Clair Broiler, and now at the Como Park Grill in his new neighborhood.

No one is truly ordinary, of course. But it would be easy to be fooled by William Kent Krueger.

To look at him as he sits in the front window of the Como Park Grill — tapping at his laptop, sipping his coffee — is to see someone who could be any guy in any coffee shop anywhere. He wears a khaki ballcap, a faded denim shirt and a neatly trimmed beard, and when he glances up, his blue eyes are merry and gentle. He looks like a nice guy. He is a nice guy.

But observers cannot see inside his head: They can’t see the steely determination that drives him, or the dark thoughts of betrayal, conspiracy, kidnapping, rape and murder that fascinate him.

“When you’re a writer, you’re always looking for conflict,” said Krueger, known to his friends as Kent. “It’s conflict that drives great stories.”

Krueger sees conflict, or the potential for conflict, everywhere; it is his stock in trade. He is the author of a string of mysteries starring Cork O’Connor, a private detective who lives in a remote town in northern Minnesota. Over time, Cork has survived blizzards and Lake Superior storms, tracked down bad guys, rescued a baby, encountered a beheaded dog, lost his wife in a plane crash, nearly lost his son to a shooter, been shot himself. Through it all, he has been at odds with himself, his Irish half not always in sync with his Ojibwe half.

Yeah, conflict.

“Windigo Island,” Krueger’s 16th novel (and 14th Cork O’Connor book), will be published Tuesday. It is the mystery of a young Ojibwe girl whose body washes up on an island in Lake Superior and whose friend has disappeared, and it delves into the world of the sexual trafficking of young teens.

Krueger’s last five novels have made the New York Times bestseller list and sell all over the world. (His seventh novel, “Thunder Bay,” is called “Roar of Blood” in Japan.) He is just “a few good months away from selling his 1 millionth book,” said his publicist, David Brown of Atria Books, to whom Krueger has dedicated his most recent book. He is tied with Louise Erdrich for winning the most Minnesota Book Awards — five.

But his heart belongs to his 2013 stand-alone novel, “Ordinary Grace” — not a Cork O’Connor mystery, but a quiet coming-of-age story set in southern Minnesota during the summer of 1961. It won several national awards, including this year’s Edgar Award for best novel, and became the favorite of book clubs and “one community-one reads” across the country.

It’s the book that was pushing inside Krueger for years, trying to get out.

That steely determination

Krueger was almost 50 when he sold his first two books, “Iron Lake” and “Boundary Waters,” in a bidding war. That heady success (“one of the most exciting moments of my whole writing career,” he said) came after 15 years of diligent, daily work.

“I served a very long apprenticeship,” he said.

For those 15 years, Krueger got up early every morning, walked two blocks to the St. Clair Broiler (then his neighborhood coffee shop) and wrote for precisely one hour and 15 minutes.

“At 7:15 I closed my notebook, paid for my coffee, and went outside, because at 7:20 a bus would pick me up and take me to the university where I worked,” Krueger said. “I did that day in and day out.”

Over those 15 years, he had some modest successes. He sold some short stories, won a Bush artist fellowship, giddily quit his job to write full-time — and fairly quickly went back to work. But he kept writing, arriving at the Broiler every morning as they unlocked the doors at 6 a.m.

“I was able to establish discipline, but I became aware of the fact that I was doing a great deal more,” he said. “I was feeding myself. I was feeding that artistic hunger in me.”

Now 64, he makes his living writing books. He is a popular speaker, and his book tours take him all over the country. But he still gets up every day at the crack of dawn, walks to the coffee shop and writes. He writes when he’s on vacation, and when he’s on book tours. He writes for four hours on weekdays, two on weekends.

“I’ve seen him at conferences,” said Gary Shulze, co-owner of Once Upon a Crime Bookstore in south Minneapolis. Between sessions, Krueger isn’t socializing — “he’s in the nearest coffee shop, typing away. He doesn’t take a break. He works his butt off.”

No ordinary book

That discipline is what allowed Krueger to write “Ordinary Grace,” a novel he had been thinking about for years.

“The summer I was 13 years old is a summer I have always remembered extremely well,” he said. “I wanted to go back and recall that summer.” He also wanted to write a story “that would allow me to explore more deeply questions for a spiritual journey.”

“Ordinary Grace” is told by a narrator named Frank Drum who is looking back on the summer he was 13. (“Frank is the me I wish I would have been,” Krueger said. “Frank doesn’t follow the rules. I was a Boy Scout.”) The story hinges on several deaths that happened that summer and the repercussions for Frank and his family.

The process of writing the book was unusual for him. “I always think the Cork O’Connor novels out pretty much completely before I begin to write them, so I know how they begin and how they end,” he said. “I didn’t do that with ‘Ordinary Grace.’ The story just rolled out of me. I just followed it. I would come here in the morning not having any idea what I was going to write that day, but just believing that whatever it was was going to be right.”

He worked on it for three years, carving out time between writing Cork O’Connor mysteries. He had no contract for the book, which he found liberating. “I would write whatever I wanted to write. I was doing something that I was so compelled to do.”

The reviews were almost entirely positive. The Detroit Free Press compared it to “To Kill a Mockingbird”; the Star Tribune praised its deep characters; the Washington Post said his “elegy to innocence is a deeply memorable tale.”

Has its publication changed Krueger’s life? His approach to writing? Nah. He still gets up early, walks to the coffee shop, writes for hours.

He is working on a companion book called “This Tender Land,” which is set in the same place, and he thinks there will be a third book, but he doesn’t yet know what that is. Meanwhile, he has a contract for at least one more O’Connor book and hopes there will be more. “I have no intention of abandoning Cork,” he said.

But “Ordinary Grace,” he said, “freed me. I don’t have to write only Cork O’Connor novels now. I’m liberated. I can write whatever I want to write.”

Every morning. Starting at 6 a.m.

On Twitter: @StribBooks

“

When Courage Is Needed, American Men Can Still Rise to the Occasion

By David French — August 24, 2015

http://www.nationalreview.com/

Chris Norman, Anthony Sadler, Spencer Stone, and Alek Skarlatos receive the Legion D'Honneur from French President Francois Hollande at the Elysee Palace, in Paris. (AP)

In the post-9/11 world, these are the questions that men ask themselves all the time: “What would I do if I saw the worst happen? Would I be able to act? Would I have the courage?” For years after 9/11 we drew inspiration from “Let’s roll,” the words that launched the first American counteroffensive in the War on Terror, the fight for Flight 93. Now we have another inspiration, one with a happier ending: “Let’s go!”

The scene was straight from our worst nightmares. Last Friday, a terrorist boarded a crowded French train carrying an AK-47 and enough ammunition to kill dozens. His fellow passengers had no weapons. When he opened fire, the personnel responsible for the train fled, barricading themselves inside an engine car. But three Americans — one national guardsman, one airman, and one college senior — didn’t hesitate. The guardsman, Alek Skarlatos, called out “Let’s go, go!” and they charged. His friend, Airman First Class Spencer Stone, reached the gunman first, tackling him. The gunman fought back with a box cutter, nearly severing Stone’s thumb and slashing his neck.

But by that time, help had arrived. Skarlatos started beating the terrorist with his own weapon, college senior Anthony Sadler piled on, and a British man, Chris Norman, overcame his own initial instinct to hide and joined the fight. Together they subdued the attacker, hogtying him facedown on the ground. But Stone wasn’t finished. Though bleeding profusely himself, he gave immediate first aid to an injured passenger, clamping down on a severed artery and holding it until doctors arrived.

Thus did the front pages offer proof of a reality that’s often obscured in the seeming avalanche of bad cultural news: American men still have courage. Yes, there are exceptions — like the men who stood by, apparently without regrets, as a young man was stabbed to death for his smartphone in a Washington subway car. But in the years since 9/11, America has sustained its longest war on the strength of a completely volunteer fighting force, and on that French train it wasn’t just service-members who rose to the occasion. A college student and a British consultant joined the melee as well.

We all have a choice. Through our passivity, through our dependence, or through our own spiritual, mental, or physical decline, we can be this person, a subway stabbing witness:

What I don’t wish is that I had somehow tried to attack the assailant. I am a little bit larger than he was, but I would not have won. It’s scary, because if we had been sitting closer and had seen the attack start I probably would have tried to help, and would have been stabbed.

Or through determination, resolve, and sheer courage, we can aspire to be this:

There was no thought of heroism as the men sprang into action, however. “What happened and what we did, it just feels unreal,” Mr. Skarlatos said in the Skype interview. “It felt like a dream, or a movie.” 

In the train carriage, Mr. Stone was the first to act, jumping up at the command of Mr. Skarlatos. He sprinted through the carriage toward the gunman, running “a good ten meters to get to the guy,” Mr. Skarlatos said. Mr. Stone was unarmed; his target was visibly bristling with weapons.

A nation that excuses the cowardice of the men on the Washington Metro will get more cowardice. On Reddit, after a subway witness admitted to his own deplorable lack of courage, commenter after commenter excused his inaction and urged him to get therapy to deal with the terrible thing that he’d seen. Thankfully, however, that kind of excuse-making is drowned out by the thunderous applause for true courage.

A trainload of passengers owe three American men their lives. We owe them our thanks. Because of their example, men — young and old — are asking themselves the hard questions about their own courage, perhaps laying the foundation for bravery if or when their moment comes. They charged when others cowered. They led and other men followed. Courage is contagious, and each moment of courage makes us less soft, makes us a harder target, and sends a message to our enemies. Americans still know how to fight.

— David French is an attorney, a staff writer at National Review, and a veteran of the Iraq War.

RELATED: In the Future, We May All Be Called Upon to Fight Terrorism

See something? DO something!

Glenn Harlan Reynolds7:55 p.m. EDT August 23, 2015
http://www.usatoday.com/


Anthony Sadler, Spencer Stone, Alex Skarlatos and U.S. Ambassador to France Jane Hartley in Paris on August 23, 2015 (Photo: Thomas Samson, AFP/Getty Images)

"Three Marines stop terrorist on French train" was the gist of the first headlines on this weekend’s counterterrorism story. But when the actual facts came out, the story got even better.

As it turns out, it wasn’t three Marines. It was two U.S. service members — from the National Guard and the Air Force — and their civilian buddy from middle school. And they had the help of a traveling British businessman.

The three were riding on a train from Amsterdam to Paris when a gunman — an Islamist from Morocco who had visited Syria and was flagged as a possible jihadist— started shooting. One of the Americans, Airman 1st Class Spencer Stone, 23, sprinted at the gunman and tackled him. The others, Oregon National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, 22, and Sacramento State University student Anthony Sadler, 23, joined in.

As Skarlatos recounted in a Sky News interview from his hotel in Arras, northern France: "I just looked over at Spencer and said, 'Let's go!' Spencer got to the guy first, grabbed the guy by the neck, and I grabbed the handgun, got the handgun away from the guy and threw it. Then I grabbed the AK (assault rifle), which was at his feet, and started muzzle thumping him in the head with it."

Stone was cut by the attacker behind his neck, and his thumb was nearly sliced off as the man was wrestled to the ground by the Americans. Sadler said: "The gunman pulls out a box cutter and slices Spencer a few times." He added that the attacker "never said a word."

To Americans who remember Sept. 11, 2001, this kind of response — even down to the “let’s go” — echoes the story of Todd Beamer and the passengers of Flight 93. It’s the right response, of course, to terrorists who threaten innocents.

As Brad Todd wrote days after 9/11, it was the response of ordinary Americans on this flight that meant a repeat of the attacks was much less likely: “Just 109 minutes after a new form of terrorism — the most deadly yet invented — came into use, it was rendered, if not obsolete, at least decidedly less effective. ... United Flight 93 did not hit a building. It did not kill anyone on the ground. ... Why? Because it had informed Americans on board who'd had 109 minutes to come up with a counteraction. And the next time a hijacker full of hate pulls the same stunt with a single knife, he'll get the same treatment and meet the same result as those on United Flight 93. Dead, yes. Murderous, yes. But successful? No.”

Meanwhile, the expensive global security establishment failed to stop 9/11, and —despite having the French-train gunman flagged as a possible jihadist— did nothing to stop this weekend's attack. And that’s a lesson.

Bureaucracies have their place, but they don’t deal well with diffuse threats such as terrorism. By the time “first responders” get there, it’s usually too late. But there’s one group of “responders” who don’t have to go anywhere, and that’s the group already on the scene. In conventional analysis, and in the terrorists’ hopes, those people are called “victims.” But as the three Americans on that French train demonstrated, victimhood isn’t the only response.

And there’s more. The purpose of terror is to terrorize. But responding appropriately has the opposite effect. The response of British businessman Chris Norman, who helped subdue the attacker, illustrates this: “Norman said his first reaction was to hide," The Fiscal Times reported. "But after he saw the Americans fighting the attacker, he said he went to help them.”

Fear is contagious. But so is courage. People should respond not like a herd of sheep but like a pack of wolves. When the follow-up report on the 2001 attacks came out, J.B. Schramm noted in The Washington Post that "on Sept. 11, 2001, American citizens saved the government, not the other way around.” Intelligence agencies failed. Air defense systems failed. But: “Requiring less time than it took the White House to gather intelligence and issue an attack order (which was in fact not acted on), American citizens gathered information from national media and relayed that information to citizens aboard the flight, who organized themselves and effectively carried out a counterattack against the terrorists, foiling their plans. Armed with television and cellphones, quick-thinking, courageous citizens who were fed information by loved ones probably saved the White House or Congress from devastation.”

Nonetheless, when the government reacted, the money went into enriching and strengthening those bureaucracies instead of, as Schramm urged, educating and training American citizens. Perhaps this latest incident will serve as a reminder that there is another way. At the very least, it should remind citizens that while you can’t rely on the government to be everywhere you are, you yourself are always there.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors. To read more columns like this, go to the Opinion front page.

TRAITOR SENATORS TOOK MONEY FROM IRAN LOBBY, BACK IRAN NUKES

Daniel Greenfield
http://www.frontpagemag.com/
August 25, 2015



Senator Ed Markey (D - Mass.)

Senator Markey has announced his support for the Iran deal that will let the terrorist regime inspect its own Parchin nuclear weapons research site, conduct uranium enrichment, build advanced centrifuges, buy ballistic missiles, fund terrorism and have a near zero breakout time to a nuclear bomb.

There was no surprise there.

Markey had topped the list of candidates supported by the Iran Lobby. And the Iranian American Political Action Committee (IAPAC) had maxed out its contributions to his campaign.

After more fake suspense, Al Franken, another IAPAC backed politician who also benefited from Iran Lobby money, came out for the nuke sellout.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the Iran Lobby’s third Dem senator, didn’t bother playing coy like her colleagues. She came out for the deal a while back even though she only got half the IAPAC cash that Franken and Markey received.

As did Senator Gillibrand, who had benefited from IAPAC money back when she first ran for senator and whose position on the deal should have come as no surprise.

The Iran Lobby had even tried, and failed, to turn Arizona Republican Jeff Flake. Iran Lobby cash had made the White House count on him as the Republican who would flip, but Flake came out against the deal. The Iran Lobby invested a good deal of time and money into Schumer, but that effort also failed.

Still these donations were only the tip of the Iran Lobby iceberg.

Gillibrand had also picked up money from the Iran Lobby’s Hassan Nemazee. Namazee was Hillary’s national campaign finance director who had raised a fortune for both her and Kerry before pleading guilty to a fraud scheme encompassing hundreds of millions of dollars. Nemazee had been an IAPAC trustee and had helped set up the organization.

Bill Clinton had nominated Hassan Nemazee as the US ambassador to Argentina when he had only been a citizen for two years.  A spoilsport Senate didn’t allow Clinton to make a member of the Iran Lobby into a US ambassador, but Nemazee remained a steady presence on the Dem fundraising circuit.

Nemazee had donated to Gillibrand and had also kicked in money to help the Franken Recount Fund scour all the cemeteries for freshly dead votes, as well as to Barbara Boxer, who also came out for the Iran nuke deal. Boxer had also received money more directly from IAPAC.    

 In the House, the Democratic recipients of IAPAC money came out for the deal. Mike Honda, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Iran Lobby backed the nuke sellout. As did Andre Carson, Gerry Connolly, Donna Edwards and Jackie Speier. The Iran Lobby was certainly getting its money’s worth.

But the Iran Lobby’s biggest wins weren’t Markey or Shaheen. The real victory had come long before when two of their biggest politicians, Joe Biden and John Kerry, had moved into prime positions in the administration. Not only IAPAC, but key Iran Lobby figures had been major donors to both men.

That list includes Housang Amirahmadi, the founder of the American Iranian Council, who had spoken of a campaign to “conquer Obama’s heart and mind” and had described himself as “the Iranian lobby in the United States.” It includes the Iranian Muslim Association of North America (IMAN) board members who had fundraised for Biden. And it includes the aforementioned Hassan Nemazee.

A member of Iran’s opposition had accused Biden’s campaigns of being “financed by Islamic charities of the Iranian regime based in California and by the Silicon Iran network.” Biden’s affinity for the terrorist regime in Tehran was so extreme that after 9/11 he had suggested, “Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran”.

Appeasement inflation has since raised that $200 million to at least $50 billion. But there are still no strings worth mentioning attached to the big check.

Questions about donations from the Iran Lobby had haunted Kerry’s campaign. Back then Kerry had been accused of supporting an agreement favorable to Iran. The parameters of that controversial proposal however were less generous than the one that Obama and Kerry are trying to sell now.

 The hypothetical debates over the influence of the Iran Lobby have come to a very real conclusion.

Both of Obama’s secretaries of state were involved in Iran Lobby cash controversies, as was his vice president and his former secretary of defense. Obama was also the beneficiary of sizable donations from the Iran Lobby. Akbar Ghahary, the former co-founder of IAPAC, had donated and raised some $50,000 for Obama. 

It’s an unprecedented track record that has received very little notice. While the so-called “Israel Lobby” is constantly scrutinized, the fact that key foreign policy positions under Obama are controlled by political figures with troubling ties to an enemy of this country has gone mostly unreported by the mainstream media.

This culture of silence allowed the Iran Lobby to get away with taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times before the Netanyahu speech asking, “Will Congress side with our President or a Foreign Leader?”

Iran’s stooges had taken a break from lobbying for ballistic missiles to play American patriots.

Obama and his allies, Iranian and domestic, have accused opponents of his dirty Iran deal of making “common cause” with that same terror regime and of treason. The ugly truth is that he and his political accomplices were the traitors all along.

Democrats in favor of a deal that will let a terrorist regime go nuclear have taken money from lobbies for that regime. They have broken their oath by taking bribes from a regime whose leaders chant, “Death to America”. Their pretense of examining the deal is nothing more than a hollow charade.

This deal has come down from Iran Lobby influenced politicians like Kerry and is being waved through by members of Congress who have taken money from the Iran Lobby. That is treason plain and simple.

Despite what we are told about its “moderate” leaders, Iran considers itself to be in a state of war with us. Iran and its agents have repeatedly carried out attacks against American soldiers, abducted and tortured to death American officials and have even engaged in attacks on American naval vessels.

Aiding an enemy state in developing nuclear weapons is the worst form of treason imaginable. Helping put weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists is the gravest of crimes.

The Democrats who have approved this deal are turning their party into a party of atom bomb spies.

Those politicians who have taken money from the Iran Lobby and are signing off on a deal that will let Iran go nuclear have engaged in the worst form of treason and committed the gravest of crimes. They must know that they will be held accountable. That when Iran detonates its first bomb, their names will be on it.

 Tags: Barack Obama, Deal, iran nuclear program

Book Review: Insidw Jihad by Dr. Tawfik Hamid

Danusha V. Goska

http://www.frontpagemag.com/

August 24, 2015

Here's my four-sentence review of Dr. Tawfik Hamid's new book Inside Jihad: How Radical Islam Works; Why It Should Terrify Us; How to Defeat It. Buy this book. Read this book. Refer to this book. Share this book.

I've read and reviewed counter-jihad classics by bestselling experts including Robert Spencer, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Bernard Lewis, Andrew Bostom, Wafa Sultan, Brigitte Gabriel, Mosab Hassan Yousef, and Phyllis Chesler. I think highly of each. This is how good Inside Jihad is. If someone said to me, "I want to read just one book about jihad." I'd give that reader Dr. Hamid's book.

Inside Jihad is brief. Hamid's style is direct and fast-paced. He says what he needs to say without sensationalism, emotionality, literary ambition, or apologies. He pulls no punches. 

Tawfik Hamid was born and raised in Egypt, the most populous Middle Eastern country. He was raised Muslim. Hamid's mother was a teacher; his father, a surgeon and a private atheist who taught him to respect Christians and Jews. The family observed the Ramadan fast but had little other religious observance. Arabic is his first language and he has studied the Koran in the original Arabic. From 1979-82, he was a member of Jamaa Islamiya, a terrorist group. He met Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of al-Qaeda. 

Hamid grew up under Gamal Abdel Nasser's pan-Arab socialism. Nasser wanted to modernize Egypt. He suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood, executed one of its leaders, Sayyid Qutb, and curtailed travel to and from Saudi Arabia, fearing Wahhabi influence.

The 1973 Oil Embargo sparked a revival of Islam. Muslims concluded that Allah rewarded Saudi Arabia for the Saudis' strict religious observance. Allah's reward was the Saudi ability to humble the United States.

Islamization in Egypt "started mildly enough." Hamid warns the reader to pay careful attention to slow Islamization. He says that the same methods that were used in Egypt are now being used in the West. "The more we surrender" he warns "the more Islamists will demand."

The camel's nose under the tent was something few could object to: individual prayer. Previously, if an employee interrupted his workday to perform one of Islam's mandated five daily prayers, it was perceived as bizarre. Now it was admirable.

Another straw in the wind: the hijab. In school photos taken before the 1970s, many Egyptian girls are without hijab. After America's humbling in the oil shock, more and more girls began to wear hijab. Men stopped wearing gold wedding bands; gold was deemed "un Islamic" for men. More toxic Islamizations, including Jew-hatred, followed. Imams preached that Jews are monkeys and pigs and that they poisoned Mohammed.

Islamization on campus also began in an innocuous way: Islamists used the moments before class began to talk about Islam. One day, the Christian professor of one class said that it was time for discussion of Islam to stop and the academic hour to begin. The Islamists called the professor an infidel and broke his arm. "The Christian students were terrified," Hamid reports.

"I remember the first time I looked at a Christian with disdain," Hamid reminisces. He was reading a required textbook. The book told him that Mohammed said, "I have been instructed by Allah to declare war and fight all mankind until they say 'No God except Allah and Mohammed is the prophet of Allah.'" Hamid, who had previously had Christian friends, turned to a Christian student and said, "If we applied Islam correctly, we should be doing this to you."

Jamaa Islamiya actively recruited medical students like Hamid. It took six months for Hamid to become "sufficiently indoctrinated."

Hamid details several lures that recruiters used to bring young people into their movement:

• fear of hell,
• a demonization of critical thinking,
• a sense of superiority over non-Muslims,
• suppression of any emotional life outside of Islamism,
• suppression of sexual expression,
• a promise of sex for jihadis,
• and upholding of Mohammed as the perfect example, beyond criticism.
•  

Author Don Richardson estimates that one in eight verses in the Koran mentions Hell. By contrast, the Old Testament mentions Hell once in every 774 verses, and it is never described as graphically as it is described in the Koran. Hamid quotes Islamists using many Koranic passages that vividly describe Hell to terrorize potential members: "garments of fire shall be cut out for them … burning water will be poured over their heads causing all that is within their bodies as well as the skins to melt away … they shall be held by iron grips; and every time they try in their anguish to come out of it, they shall be returned and told 'Taste suffering through fire to the full!'" Infidels in Hell will eat thorns and drink scalding water as if they were "female camels raging with thirst and disease." Their intestines will be cut to pieces.

Another method used to Islamize recruits was "al-fikr kufr" – "one becomes an infidel by thinking critically."

Recruiters flattered recruits, telling them that they were superior to non-Muslims. "Take not Jews and Christians for friends," they quoted from Koran 5:51. Jews are monkeys and pigs: Koran 5:60. Those who worship Jesus are infidels: Koran 5:17. Do not offer the greeting "As-salamu alaykum," or "peace be with you," to Christians or Jews; whenever you meet Christians or Jews in a road, force them to its narrowest alley: Sahih Muslim. Muslims who did not carry out jihad were also inferior.

Terror recruits' emotional outlets were cut off. They were forbidden from creating or consuming music, dance, or visual art. They were discouraged from having sex, but lured with promises of great sex in paradise. The houris – dark-eyed virgins – are graphically described in Muslim literature as very soft, without complaint, and easily satisfied. Houris regain their virginity immediately after sex. Men are promised organs that never go limp. Mohammed, recruits were assured, could have sex with eleven women in an hour.

Finally, the example of Mohammed himself was not to be questioned. Mohammed married a six-year-old. He raped war captives, in one case immediately after decapitating the captive's brother and father and after she had witnessed her mother being carried off also to be raped. Mohammed approved of the dismemberment of Um Kerfa, a poetess who criticized him. Mohammed is the "perfect example, worthy of emulation." Muslims today must unquestioningly approve these behaviors.

Hamid's fellow extremists were aware that Muslim countries were no longer in the cultural forefront. Islam had spread as far as Spain and India in only the first century after Mohammed's death. Terror recruits believed that early Islam's success was caused by strict adherence to Islamic doctrine. They believed that their strict observance could bring back Islam's early dominance.

Some wonder how women could be recruited into a movement that keeps them in an inferior position in relation to men. Hamid clarifies: Muslimahs were told that they would be superior – to infidel women.

Hamid expounds uncompromisingly on the power and importance of hijab. He insists that when prominent Westerners such as Nancy Pelosi and Laura Bush travel to Muslim countries and wear hijab, they are making a grave error. Hijab is not "a neutral, or merely traditional, fashion statement." Hijab's purpose "is not modesty or to encourage observers to focus on a Muslim woman's personality." Hijab exists to proclaim "deep Islamic doctrinal connections to slavery and discrimination. Western women who cover themselves are unwittingly endorsing an inhumane system." Hijab's purpose, Hamid argues persuasively, is to create a society where superior free Muslimahs are visually distinct from inferior infidel slave women.

Islamists "despise women who did not wear hijab. We considered them vain … we believed they would burn in Hell." Further, "the hijab serves to differentiate between slave girls and women who are considered free … it creates a feeling of superiority among the women who wear it." The Koran promises that women who wear hijab will not be "molested." Women without hijab are slaves and can be raped without guilt.

Australia's foremost Muslim cleric restated this Islamist position in 2006. In Sydney, fourteen Muslim men gang-raped non-Muslim women. Sheikh Taj el-Din al-Hilali said that it was the victims' fault. "If you take out uncovered meat" and cats eat it, the cats are not to blame. Women possess "igraa," "the weapon of enticement."

Hamid emphasizes that hijab is both vanguard and emblem of Islamic supremacy. During their 1953 meeting, the first thing Sayyid Qutb asked Nasser to do was to force women to wear hijab. A YouTube video documents this conversation. In the video, Nasser is speaking to a large assembly. When he repeats Qutb's demand, the crowd laughs. One wag shouts out, "Let him wear it!" Nasser points out that Qutb's own daughter does not wear hijab. The crowd laughs even more, and bursts into applause. This video is at least fifty years old. It is a reminder that fifty years ago, countries like Egypt and Iran were modernizing. Women, in cities at least, could be seen in public in miniskirts and without hijab.

Hamid reports that the Muslim Brotherhood does not announce its end goal openly. "They pose as peacemakers … The Muslim Brotherhood will accept circumstances that offend their beliefs – temporarily – if doing so will advance their goals." They will – temporarily – permit western dress for women and alcohol consumption. This is all part of taqiyya. The Muslim Brotherhood has a four stage plan: at first, merely preach. Then, move on to participation in public life. Next, consolidate power "while faking legitimacy." Finally, enforce sharia.

A few turning points turned Hamid away from Islamism, for example, when a fellow terror recruit described his plot to bury alive an Egyptian police officer.

Hamid had been studying the Bible so that he could better debate Christians. Jesus' words haunted him. "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" He asked himself, what profit to Islam if it subjugated the entire world but lost its soul? "Exposure to the Bible was crucial in helping me question the violent aspects of Salafist teaching."

His medical studies also gave him pause. "I wondered if the divine DNA molecule was violent. Did it attempt to conquer the rest of the cell? Did it try to force other cellular components to behave like itself? It did not. Rather, it worked harmoniously within an organism to create and sustain life."

The clincher for Hamid was "the existence of alternative forms of Islamic teaching." Hamid met Muslims called "Quranics," who reject the hadiths. The Quranics "stood against killing apostates, against stoning women for adultery, against killing gays. They viewed the Islamic Conquests as immoral and senseless." The Quranics "allowed me to think critically." "If this alternative sect had not been available, it would have been much more difficult for me to resist jihadism."

After recounting his own history, Hamid turns his attention to the international scene. Hamid makes mincemeat of a slew of Islam-apologetic arguments. He insists that it is utterly wrong-headed to blame Islamism on poverty, global warming, lack of education, discrimination, Islamophobia, dictatorial regimes, colonialism, imperialism, or the treatment of Palestinians by Israel. President Obama's statement that ISIS is "not Islamic," was the "most ill-informed utterance of all."

Hamid stresses that one must attend to what Muslims say to each other, in Arabic, about their faith, not just what propagandists in the West say in English to a media that never seems to hit Muslims with any hard questions. Hamid cites the example of prominent Saudi Sheikh Sale al-Fawzan. Al-Fawzan says that "slavery is part of Islam" and "slavery is part of jihad, and jihad will remain as long as there is Islam." Anyone who tries to extract slavery and jihad from Islam is an "infidel." Familiarity with such pronouncements would have prepared the world for ISIS' practices.

Dr. Hamid's righteous indignation – and his courage – reach heroic heights when he castigates his fellow Muslims, not just for being passive in the face of terror, but for secretly applauding it. "A large percentage of Muslims today passively approve of Islamic terror," he says. "They minimize it, shift the blame, or do nothing." They are "secretly proud." Terrorism gives them "a sense of victory and power."

Muslims often can't bring themselves to perceive terrorists as bad people. "It is widely believed that a Muslim who fulfills the Five Pillars of Islam is virtuous" – whether he's a terrorist or not. "Islamists cannot be bad Muslims because they perform the superficial rituals."

Hamid unpacks in detail several different taqiyya strategies Muslim apologists use to mislead Westerners into thinking that they oppose terrorism while in fact supporting it. Hamid lists seven questions that must be answered by any spokesperson for Islam. Every American politician should read these pages; voters should photocopy them and mail them to elected officials. Students should have them on hand before they head off to college.

"Many Muslims seem to have this tendency to point fingers at anyone but themselves," he observes. Islam fosters a "culture of deflection" that "makes it very difficult for Islam to correct itself." Many insist that Muslims did not carry out the 9-11 attacks. It was the Jews! They insist. "This denial is a form of passive terrorism." Hamid writes perceptively that "Redemption from shame is not and can never be the product of denial. It comes rather from honestly admitting fault and then confronting it openly."

I'll mention that Islam, unlike Christianity, lacks the ritual of confession. For two thousand years, Christians have been following scriptural dictates to confess their sins to others, and to atone for them. Self-examination is valued in Christian-influenced cultures – enough so that politicians caught in scandals are often advised to appear on the highest-rated talk show that will book them and to offer a "mea culpa," a phrase from Catholic confession. There is no comparable Muslim ritual.

Hamid is equally gloves-off in his criticism of the West. He reminds the reader of how gradually and innocuously Islamization had begun in Egypt. He says weak Western military response to jihad is comparable to using too few antibiotics to treat an infection. Surviving bacteria become resistant, and more virulent. He lambastes moral relativism. He utterly rejects comparisons between jihadis and fundamentalist Christians and Jews. Hamid singles out one voice – that of pseudo-scholar Karen Armstrong – for special condemnation. He accuses Armstrong and others like of her "paving the way for Islamic barbarity." Armstrong is "spectacularly representative of the multicultural revisionism and moral backsliding that are helping to cripple efforts at genuine reform of Islam."

His critique of Western liberals' enabling of jihadis is echoed in many memoirs by Islam-critical Muslims and former Muslims, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali. "It is strange how Christianity is constantly assailed by Western progressives" including the American Civil Liberties Union. "The ACLU said nothing about installing Islamic footbaths in restrooms … at a taxpayer-funded public institution in 2007." Hamid sticks his hand in a real hornet's nest: immigration. He believes America should change its policies to weed out jihadis.

Dr. Hamid remains a Muslim. He loves his religion, and he wants to save it. By writing this book and speaking out as he has, he is risking his life to do so. The final portion of the book offers his complete re-interpretation of Islam and the Koran, and his plan for defeating extremism.

Muslims like Dr. Tawfik Hamid inspire my hope and admiration. In his excellent book, one sentence struck me as most poignant and worth lengthy pondering. "I often wonder how al-Zawahiri would have turned out if his childhood religious education had promoted love instead of hate and violence." Dr. Hamid is doing his part to re-interpret his beloved natal faith, Islam, in a peaceful and loving way. One can only wish him good fortune in that herculean effort.

 Tags: Islam, Jihad, stealth jihad

Why Progressives Are Wrong to Revere Margaret Sanger

Paul Kengor / @DrPaulKengor / August 21, 2015 

http://dailysignal.com/

Margaret Sanger bust on display at the Smithsonian Institute

Margaret Sanger is a saint in the feminist church. She is a charter member of the progressive hall of fame. Liberals revere this woman who preached “race improvement” and denounced what she called “human weeds”.

Hillary Clinton glows that she is “in awe of” Sanger. She said so in 2009 upon receiving Planned Parenthood’s “highest honor” that year: its coveted Margaret Sanger Award.

Likewise effusive was Nancy Pelosi when she proudly accepted the award in 2014.

Speaking to Planned Parenthood a year earlier, President Barack Obama, hailed the organization founded by this racial eugenicist committed to creating a “race of thoroughbreds” and purging America’s “race of degenerates.”

“Thank you, Planned Parenthood,” and “God bless you,” said Obama to a giddy crowd of ecstatic women. The president commended Planned Parenthood’s “extraordinary” and “remarkable work,” and told the women they do a “great, great job.”

The love by liberals for Planned Parenthood and its founder seems to know no bounds. A professor, blogging at the New York Times, has argued for placing Margaret’s mug on the $20 bill.

And alas, even the Smithsonian, America’s museum, boasts a handsome bust of Sanger in its stately National Portrait Gallery.

Margaret is there enshrined in the Smithsonian’s vaunted “Struggle for Justice” exhibit.

This brings me to my reason for writing here today: a group of angry African-American pastors are demanding the removal of Sanger’s bust from the Smithsonian.

The letter from Ministers Taking a Stand states:

“Perhaps the Gallery is unaware that Ms. Sanger supported black eugenics, a racist attitude toward black and other minority babies, an elitist attitude toward those she regarded as ‘the feeble minded;’ speaking at a rally of Ku Klux Klan women; and communications with Hitler sympathizers. Also the notorious ‘Negro Project,’ which sought to limit, if not eliminate black births, was her brainchild.”

The pastors quote an infamous December 1939 letter from Sanger to Dr. Clarence Gamble of the Eugenics Society, where, in the context of discussing the Negro Project, Sanger wrote: “We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out the idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

The succinct, powerful statement from the pastors adds: “Despite these well-documented facts of history, her bust sits proudly in your gallery as a hero of justice. The obvious incongruity is staggering!”

Amen to that.

Liberals must be baffled by this, confusedly scratching their heads.

This isn’t the esteemed Planned Parenthood foundress they learned to admire in their college classrooms.

Margaret Sanger, a racist? Huh? They never heard that in American History 101.

Where could these crazy charges possibly come from?

The answer is a myriad of authoritative sources. For starters, one might consult Sanger’s own words. On pages 366-367 of her 1938 autobiography, published by W.W. Norton, one of the leading New York publishing houses, she spoke warmly of her May 1926 speech to the women’s chapter of the KKK in Silverlake, New Jersey.

Sanger seemed eager to speak to the group. After getting off the train, she was escorted by car along windings roads to a literal barn hidden in the country. There, the undeterred Planned Parenthood matron waited patiently for nearly three hours while her white-hooded sisters engaged in their incendiary routine. She observed “figures parading with banners and illuminated crosses.

I waited another twenty minutes. It was warmer and I did not mind so much.” “Eventually,” recorded Sanger of the toasty atmosphere, “the lights were switched on, the audience seated itself, and I was escorted to the platform, was introduced, and began to speak.”

Sanger was tight-lipped regarding what she shared with the klanswomen at their rally, though apparently she was extremely successful and satisfied with herself:

“I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered. The conversation went on and on, and when we were finally through it was too late to return to New York…. It was nearly one before I reached Trenton, and I spent the night in a hotel.”

The Planned Parenthood founder’s KKK talk was a smash hit. Not only did it go very late, after a long wait, but it earned Sanger a dozen new invitations from the klan-sisters. The KKK was quite excited about the work of Planned Parenthood’s founder.

Thus, it hardly comes out-of-nowhere when a group of African-American pastors today asks the Smithsonian: “How can a person like Sanger, who found common cause with the racial agenda of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), be ranked among true champions of ‘justice?’”

Precisely.

Such words pierce the liberal heart like a dagger. As many conservatives have experienced, when you point out to liberals that Planned Parenthood aborts (by far) a disproportionate number of unborn African-American babies, they go wild with rage and name-calling. You’re apt to be reflexively called everything from a fascist to (hey, why not?) a racist.

For liberals, facing such a stark reality precipitates uncontrollable, irrational outbursts. You can get called every name in the liberal playbook for raising this one.

As we watch weekly the ghastly Planned Parenthood video expose released by the Center for Medical Progress, in which Sanger’s organization’s “medical personnel” nonchalantly discuss dissecting baby parts while gleefully sipping Chianti and nibbling a Caesar’s salad, bear in mind that most of these babies are African-American. Which among them might have been another Rosa Parks, Ben Carson, Martin Luther King Jr., Arthur Ashe, or even Barack Obama?

These African-American pastors know that. Indeed, they show that 70 percent of Planned Parenthood abortion clinics are located in minority neighborhoods. Thus, they’re undertaking their own expose. Their letter, they say, will be but one “in a series of actions we will be taking to expose the evil of honoring Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood.”

Again, amen to that.

If liberals genuinely care about justice, they should join these African-American pastors in seeking the removal Margaret Sanger’s bust from the “Struggle for Justice” exhibit at America’s preeminent museum.

This woman is not worthy of enshrinement.

>>> To read more on this topic: 13 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger 

The Iran Deal and Obama’s Fatally Misguided View of the World

By David French — August 21, 2015

http://www.nationalreview.com/

It’s increasingly clear that the key terms of the Iran deal — the terms that deal in any way with verifying Iranian nuclear activity, past and present — are a joke. As the text of a side agreement released released by the AP yesterday confirms, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will actually rely on Iran to inspect itself at the crucial Parchin nuclear site, providing “mutually agreed” upon photos, videos, and environmental samples to IAEA monitors. And the deal’s broader monitoring regime eschews “anytime, anywhere” inspections in favor of a process that provides Iran written notice of requested access to suspicious sites, followed by a weeks-long dispute-resolution process that still won’t guarantee such access is granted.

Put plainly, under the terms of the deal, Iran makes promises that it does not have to keep. In exchange, it receives sanctions relief, access to international arms markets, and the ability to build ballistic missiles. This isn’t a nuclear agreement, it’s an economic treaty — an economic treaty almost perfectly designed to advance President Obama’s very particular worldview.

If more than six years of Obama’s foreign policy have taught us anything, it’s that he’s thoroughly adopted the academic Left’s view of America’s international troubles — the view that such troubles are largely America’s own fault. Our Islamic-supremacist enemies, this thinking goes, exist because we and our allies have marginalized the dissenting, “authentic” voices of the Middle East in favor of propping up oppressive, unrepresentative secular dictators in the region. By switching sides from such “establishment” dictators to the “authentic” voice of the region’s people, we can bring these dissenters into the international community, deprive terrorists of recruits, and usher in a new era of international relations. The truly extreme holdouts — the “tiny few” who are irredeemable terrorists — can then eventually be dealt with by international law enforcement.

Obama’s foreign policy fits this thinking to a tee: In Libya, he and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped depose Moammar Qaddafi by transforming allied squadrons into the jihadist militias’ air force. In Egypt, Obama and Clinton quickly threw longtime American ally Hosni Mubarak under the bus and wrapped both arms around the short-lived Muslim Brotherhood government, sending American taxpayer-funded F-16s and M1 Abrams tanks to Egypt even as the Brotherhood violated the Camp David accords and forged closer ties with Hamas. In Gaza, the administration has consistently condemned Israeli acts of self-defense (though Israel uses tactics often more restrained than those dictated by America’s rules of engagement) and presented cease-fire proposals more in line with Hamas’s demands than Israel’s needs. In Syria, the administration came dangerously close to deploying American pilots as al-Qaeda’s air force to help topple the Assad regime.

The pattern keeps repeating itself. When it comes to Mideast unrest, the administration repeatedly backs the more Islamist “street” over the more secular establishment. But what if the Islamic supremacists are the establishment? Then, the administration stands with the Islamists. American arms flowed to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government, but deliveries were frozen for months after the world’s largest political protests helped eject the Brotherhood from power, replacing it with a government dedicated to fighting jihadists. Similarly, America stood by as Iran’s mullahs crushed the Green Revolution, missing a chance to depose a decades-old enemy regime. Obama believes there can’t be peace until the Islamists are mainstreamed.

Yet the president refuses to understand the supremacists. They don’t want to join the Family of Nations, they want to be the Family of Nations. No one claims America’s Middle Eastern policy has been perfect. We’ve made our share of mistakes in the region. But the theology of Islamic supremacy goes back to the founding of Islam, and its list of grievances predates the discovery of the New World, much less American “meddling” abroad.

Obama woos, and the mullahs laugh. In fact, they don’t even disguise their hatred of the United States as they chant “Death to America” and vow to continue their policies of terror and aggression. Obama is saving his most desperate gamble — the greatest test of his worldview — for the end of his presidency. He wants to mainstream the Islamic Republic of Iran, in the hopes that they will subsequently mainstream themselves, in essence becoming a religiously devout, Muslim version of the famous “Coexist” bumper sticker.

Thus, Iran’s unenforceable promises aren’t truly part of the nuclear deal — they’re the pretext for normalizing relations, for embracing Iran in the hopes that it will embrace us back. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been ostracized and marginalized. Like any good university leftist, Obama wants to be inclusive. And for a time it just might look like Iran returns our embrace — right until we feel the knife in our back.

— David French is an attorney, a staff writer at National Review, and a veteran of the Iraq War.