Friday, October 03, 2014

The Council Has Spoken! This Weeks' Watcher's Council Results



The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

“We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.

The Ambassador [of Tripoli] answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise
- (Letter from the commissioners, John Adams & Thomas Jefferson, to John Jay, 28 March 1786}” ― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson.

"...it is the duty of those who have accepted them [Allah's word and message] to strive unceasingly to convert or at least to subjugate those who have not. This obligation is without limit of time or space. It must continue until the whole world has either accepted the Islamic faith or submitted to the power of the Islamic state" - Bernard Lewis in The Political Language Of Islam, 1988.

..We -- with Allah's help -- call on every Muslim who believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded to comply with Allah's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson. - Osama bin-Laden, World Islamic Front Statement, 23 February 1998

 

Thanks to the jihadist beheading 'workplace violence' in Oklahoma and other recent events, Islamist terrorism was very much on some Council member's minds among them Bookworm Room, whom came out with Is it time to dig out the bullets packed in pig grease? (And let's identify the real Islamophobes.) *UPDATED* , a funny yet right on target essay about the question of whether pork ammo ought to be used against jihadis.

Here's a slice:

Practically from the moment after September 11, 2001, people started saying that the most effective way to fight Muslims was to lace American ammunition with pork.  Finally, in 2013, an Idaho company came up with pork-laced ammunition for non-military customers:
Jihawg Ammo today announced release of the industry’s first truly defensive ammunition.
Not only does Jihawg guarantee that all of their ammunition meets or exceeds S.A.A.M.I. standards for velocity, penetration, and accuracy, they also coat each projectile with a special ballistic paint infused with pork to make it “Haraam” or unclean to a radical Jihadist.
This makes Jihawg Ammo the only commercially available ammunition with the added deterrent factor of eternal damnation for fundamentalist Islamic Jihadist.
The response was swift: Islamophobia! Ignorant, Islamophobic hicks thought that they could out-think the religion of peace. These bullets were the equivalent of a Muslim-directed genocide. And they were insulting!!

In the remainder of this post, I’ll explain why the military should start using pork-laced weapons (or spread rumors that they’re doing so), as well as explaining why those exposed to pork-laced bullets are the real Islamophobes.

Clearly, the U.S. military will never use pork.

But maybe it should….

At American Thinker, Clarice Feldman directs readers to Louis René Beres’s article for the Gatestone Institute, The Jihadists’ Promise: Power over Death. Boiled down to its essence, the article explains that the Quran holds, and fervent Muslims believe, that this life is but a way-station to the real world, which real world is an afterlife complete with unending, exquisite, and quite carnal, earthly pleasures. In other words, Muslim fanatics don’t have a death cult; they have an (After)Life Cult. Their entire goal is to shuck this mortal coil in such a way as to ensure that they go straight into the arms of those seventy-two virgins (or raisins).

Christians, too, have an afterlife, but (as I understand it), they do not envision it as the carnal pleasures of this life, only on steroids.  It is, instead, a higher form of existence. Moreover, you don’t get there by killing but, instead, by living this life well. Both Christians and Jews (who do not have a specific heaven) believe that, to the extent that God has blessed us with life, we have a moral obligation to cherish and enjoy life as a prerequisite to ascending to a higher level upon our death. The Judeo-Christian culture has, if you will a (This)Life Cult as a necessary prerequisite to an (After)Life Cult.

Much more at the link.

In our non-Council category, the winner was the one and only Mark Steyn with a piece that may very well become a modern classic,Winning Heads And Minds submitted by The Noisy Room submitted by The Noisy Room.Umm, let's just say it a real head's up and cuts to the heart of the matter.


Here are this week’s full results. Only Ask Marion was unable to vote this week, but  was not affected by the 2/3 vote penalty:

Council Winners

Non-Council Winners


See you next week!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. and every  Tuesday morning, when we reveal the weeks' nominees for Weasel of the Week!

And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.

It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it...or any of the other fantabulous Watcher's Council content.

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