CAIR-bots versus Erdman's World: Islam's crusade against the West - Oil and Gas - Energy - Opinion

Yesterday, CAIR's Daily Whine emailing contained a section reprinting protests from their Muslim claque to Market Watch about the column reprinted below.

First, read some of the protests reprinted in the Daily Whine:

I was shocked at the level of ignorance and hatred shown in the comments. Is this how we are going to fight terrorism! Remember, we can not win this war against terrorism unless we all work together.-- A. Hadi Khan, Aug. 9, 2005

What a shame to let someone like Mr. Erdman to write in your network about Islam and the Moslems in a divisive way, he is a prime candidate of those who contribute hate out of character flaws or ignorance.-- A. Bamashmus, Aug. 9, 2005

I am truly disappointed by the inflammatory article in the MarketWatch edition. This is exactly what promotes hatred. Rather than helping the situation you are causing to create more problems and issues. I urge you to please re-look at what you publish and see first if it is the truth and if it helps mankind.-- Vaseem Anjum, President & CEO SchoolCity Inc., Aug. 9, 2005

Now read what Paul Erdman actually wrote and compare.

Erdman's World: Islam's crusade against the West - Oil and Gas - Energy - Opinion

Commentary: Jihadists now targeting Saudi Arabia, oil

By Paul Erdman
Last Update: 5:23 PM ET Aug. 8, 2005


HEALDSBURG, Calif.
(MarketWatch) -- The violence being inflicted on the world by Islamic jihadists keeps escalating in terms of frequency and spreading in terms of geography.

It is not just the inhabitants of New York, London or Madrid being targeted.

Now it is the House of Saud, keepers of Islam's most holy cities, Mecca and Medina, which has been added to the list of infidels who have moved to the top of the list of the jihadists.

In recent days both the Americans and British have been forced to close their embassies and consulates in Saudi Arabia due to the seriousness of these threats.

Should the jihadists succeed in overthrowing the government of Saudi Arabia, which has been allied with the United States since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, they would seriously undermine the economic stability of a world that now depends upon Saudi oil to a greater degree than ever before.

Danger of ignorance

What should be apparent to all is that we are not dealing with a few thousand religious renegades led by the likes of Osama bin Laden. We are facing the wrath, overt and covert, of a sizable percentage of the Islamic world -- which totals over a billion people. To think of them in terms of some sort of radical Islamic cult, as most of us have been led to do, is to demonstrate ignorance of the Quran, which is to Islam what the Old and New Testaments of the Bible are to Judaism and Christianity.

The Quran explicitly states that one of the prime missions of Islam is the elimination of infidels in a process defined as a jihad, or holy war. As the world is on the verge of perhaps finding out, the definition of "infidel" is not restricted to Jews and Christians but includes Muslims, in this case the House of Saud, who have allied themselves with the West and thus turned their backs on the "true believers" of the world of Islam.

In the United States it has become politically incorrect in intellectual and political circles to even think in terms of a War between Civilizations. Yet that is precisely what we are talking about here.

The Quran is the root source of the escalating Islam terrorism.

Historically, what we are seeing today is nothing new. Due to a total lack of education in these matters -- who of you has studied the history of Islam or even read one paragraph from the Quran? -- most Americans are oblivious of the fact that the military forces of the world of Islam reached the gates of Vienna twice -- in both the early 16th century at the time of the Lutheran Reformation and again as late as1683. Likewise, few Americans are even conscious that Islam occupied Spain for many centuries and that the last refuge of Islamic intellectual thought and exploration at the end of the Middle Ages was not Cairo or Baghdad but Cordoba.

But, finally, where all this is concerned, an educated voice of reason and clarity has emerged in the Anglo-Saxon world, that of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Faced with an assault on his county from within conducted by British nationals who have joined the rapidly growing ranks of Islamic jihadists, he has told the world that as far as his country is concerned, the rules of the game have changed. Even naturalized British citizens will be deported, mostly to Jordan, if convicted of being party to Islamic terror plots. And serious thought is now being given to charging three leading British Muslim clerics with treason because of their fostering of jihadist thinking in their mosques.

Eye on Britain

In my opinion, we Americans should pay close attention to what Tony Blair and the British do in order to stem this new threat. They have been through this before, then their very national existence was threatened by fascism and the Nazis. They led the day in countering this threat, which, after America belated joined forces with them, led to ultimate victory.

Together we then faced the threat of Soviet-led communism and entered a decades-long period of Cold War that finally led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Now we are once again being threatened by forces totally alien to us -- this time, unfortunately, with both religious and racial overtones. As regretful as the presence of these overtones is to those of us who fully espouse civil and religious liberties, they cannot blind us to the reality and sources of the threat.

'Play it safe' How to cope with all this?

"Know thy enemy," we are told, and then keep a very close eye on him. This we appear to be doing with increasing skill, as evidenced by the fact that nothing has happened here since Sept. 11, 2001.

But nothing has changed in regard to our greatest economic vulnerability -- the need to import almost 60% of the oil we must have if our current way of life is to be preserved.

Should the jihad be allowed to succeed in Saudi Arabia, and the outside world be deprived of 14% of its oil supply overnight, the effect on all of us will be stunning and immediate.

As all this gradually sinks in, the price of crude oil and its derivatives is bound to continue to increase, as is general uncertainty regarding the future. These are hardly conditions that allow either stocks or bond market to flourish.

My conclusion: These are times in which the wise investor will simply sit back and play it safe. Capital preservation is the current name of the game.

Paul Erdman has done his homework, and CAIR-bots don't want you to know. This contemporary intellectual heir to Dr. Joseph Goebbels wants to play your ignorance like a Wurlitzer. To the extent any American lets himself or herself remain ignorant about Islam, given the great materials now available, they dhimmi right into the hands of groups like CAIR.

Americans need to read, and we need to beat CAIR and its ilk into plowshares.