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29 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lessons We Must Learn, 28 Mar 2007
Lebanon used to be a bright spot in a very dark Middle East. It was a rare democracy with a Christian majority. Muslims and non-Muslims could live together in peace and calm, even at the political level. It was a beacon of hope and freedom to the surrounding Arab nations. The Lebanese had the highest standard of living in the area. In many ways it seemed more like a Western nation, and Beirut was known as the Paris of the Middle East.
But all that changed in 1975 when radical Muslims from surrounding nations declared jihad on the Lebanese Christians, and poured into Southern Lebanon to set up a Muslim state. Radical Muslims who hated democracy and wanted to impose Sharia law turned the Lebanese oasis into a hell hole.
Among those who lived through the terror was one young Maronite Christian girl, Brigitte Gabriel. She was ten years old when the rape of Lebanon began. For the next seven years she and her family would spend most of their time living in an underground bomb shelter, enduring the onslaught of Islamist anger and fury.
She witnessed firsthand the murder, rape, hatred and genocide of a once-great land. She experienced the terror, ethnic cleansing, and dictatorship of Muslim radicals. And she also saw how these Islamists masterfully controlled and manipulated the media, to make it look like they were the good guys, and the Christians and Jews were the source of evil in the region.
This book tells her story in chilling and moving detail. But the book is much more than a personal story. It is also a warning. It is a warning to America and the West that the very thing that happened to Lebanon is now happening to all Western democracies. Radical Muslims have declared a holy war against the West, and made clear their intention of destroying it.
Radical Muslims made their intentions known about Lebanon, and they did what they said they would do. They are now telling us their intentions about the West. And they are working to carry out those intentions. Gabriel asks, will we learn from the experience in Lebanon? Or will the West close its eyes and pretend the threat of radical Islam does not exist?
The recent incursion of Israel into Lebanon must be seen from the backdrop of the story told in this book. The hatred and venom that Muslims have for Jews is carefully discussed here. The desire of 150 million surrounding Muslims to drive 5 million Jews into the sea is a daily reality for the Israelis.
And as Gabriel shows, the same media manipulation and deception is taking place now, as it did three decades ago. A favourite tactic of the Palestinians then, like Hezbollah now, is to set up rocket attacks from Christian villages. After the rockets are fired, the Islamists quickly pull out, knowing full well Israeli reprisals will then fall on innocent Christian habitations. And the media of course will be there to record the Jewish "barbarism," while ignoring the initial terrorists attacks.
The horrible tactics and the frightening aims of the Islamists are here carefully laid out. So too are the lies and the deception Islamists are quite happy to resort to. There are even Arabic terms for these: taqiyya and kithman.
Radical Muslims are willing to present themselves as victims and oppressed peoples. And apologists for the Islamists, and those who loathe their own Western heritage, readily find reasons to blame the West for Islamic terrorism. Somehow the West is to blame for acts of Islamist outrage.
Yet as Gabriel reminds us, it is foolish to suggest that we must somehow address their grievances. "Their grievance is our freedom of religion. Their grievance is our democratic process." These radicals have repeatedly made their goals known: they seek to destroy Western democracies and set up an Islamic state. Says Gabriel, "Unless we take them at their word, and defend ourselves accordingly, they will succeed."
And she reminds us that there is a sacred obligation to impose Islam on the entire world. This is not a distortion of Islam, nor the ideas just of extremists, but the very heart of mainstream Islam. "It is mandated by the holy writings of Islam, as interpreted by a vast majority of the classical authorities."
Indeed, we must reject the myth of moderate Islam. While there are many moderate Muslims, the religion itself is not moderate. Religious and political freedoms are just not hallmarks of Muslim societies. Indeed, the "only social liberal thinkers in the Muslim-Arab Islamo-fascist world are dead ones".
In this important book Gabriel documents the many Islamist assaults on the West, and asks why we even allow terrorists to live in our own countries, as they prepare to carry our their acts of carnage and destruction. The parallels between what is now happening in the West and what took place in her homeland are too ominous to be ignored. Yet the West seems intent on doing just that.
Gabriel says we must wake up to the fact that a war has been declared against the West. Do we have the will and the resolve to defend our way of life, or will we simply give up without a fight?
She closes her volume with a number of hard-hitting recommendations if the West is to prevail in this conflict. These include much stricter border controls, development of alternative energy sources, and security profiling of high-risk groups.
These and other stringent steps must be taken if we want to win this battle against the Islamic terrorists. Mere conciliation, arbitration and diplomacy will not reduce the threat. The radical Muslims do what they do because they hate. And until we learn that lesson the casualties will continue to mount, and freedoms will continue to be snatched away.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Arresting autobiography and a warning to the West, 18 Oct 2007
This disturbing book is similar in structure to Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Now They Call Me Infidel by Nonie Darwish, being part autobiography and part warning to the West. The autobiographical section deals with the author's childhood in Lebanon which was happy and idyllic until the war broke out in 1975. Her family experienced seven years of hell as the political war soon became a religious war against Christians waged by the PLO and Lebanese radical Islamists.
It became a nightmare of murder, atrocity and destruction. She also witnessed at first hand how the terrorists manipulate the media, for example by deliberately launching missiles from amongst civilians then blaming Israel for the retaliation that followed. They played the victim card very well, exploiting the clueless or complicit mass media at every turn. A good analysis of this phenomenon is available in The Other War by Stephanie Gutmann. When the Israelis invaded in 1982, the family finally managed to escape the horror by finding refuge in Israel. There they experienced kindness and compassion; she eventually became a journalist, married an American and moved to the USA.
The second part examines the history of the global jihad and how its hydra heads are sprouting in the West. The author considers Lebanon the early testing ground for the global ambitions of the Jihadis. In this section she delves into the Koran and compares the Western with the Islamist concepts of, among others: truth, life and human dignity. Pointing out the major differences, she shows how the radicals are using Western values like tolerance, the rule of law and free speech against the West. What happened in Lebanon is starting to happen in Europe and the USA while the demonization of Israel and the USA is getting worse in the mass media of the Islamic world. For gruesome examples of this, please see Peace: The Arabian Caricature of Anti-Semitic Imagery.
Ignorance and political correctness are contributing to the escalating danger and the fifth column in our midst are those self-loathing westerners - mostly tenured termites in academia - who blame the democracies and talk piously of the "legitimate" grievances of the terrorists. The author says we must not appease but face facts: their grievances include our freedom of speech and religion, democracy, the rule of law and the gender equality in our societies. She also claims that moderate Muslim organizations in the USA are not as moderate as they pretend. A very important point Gabriel makes is that although most Muslims are peaceful, Islam itself is not a peaceful religion. The books Islamic Imperialism: A History by Efraim Karsh and The Truth about Muhammad by Robert Spencer explore the historical facts in more detail.
The book concludes with recommendations for policymakers in the West, such as the banning of hate education where it is occurring now, vigilant border and immigration controls, security profiling of radical organizations and a serious effort to find and harness alternative energy sources. Other warnings to the West include The Force of Reason by Oriana Fallaci, Londonistan by Melanie Phillips, Unholy Alliance by David Horowitz, Menace in Europe by Claire Berlinski and While Europe Slept by Bruce Bawer. On account of her first hand experience, Brigitte Gabriel's book is a must-read for all those who care about the future of our civilization.
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24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant, 18 Oct 2006
First hand account of life in Lebanon. Gives insight into today's issues from an insider perspective. Goes beyond the surface treatment we receive in the daily news. Must read !!
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