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RealClearPolitics - Articles - Where Are We?: "An editorial in this newspaper yesterday called attention to the case of a man in the “new Afghanistan”, named Abdul Rahman, who is being tried for apostasy under Shariah law. He secretly converted to Christianity 16 years ago, while working with a Christian aid mission, and now members of his own family have outed him. Under Shariah, anyone who converts from Islam is guilty of apostasy, which has always been punished by death. It is the reason Christian missionaries have had so much less success in the Islamic world than elsewhere -- for the Muslim convert must choose Christ and martyrdom in a single step. He can save his life by reconverting to Islam, but then he is denying Christ, as Abdul Rahman refuses to do.

I mention this case because it perfectly illustrates the impossibility of establishing a Western secular order in a country where Shariah is recognized as law. Or as the learned Bernard Lewis put it, as discreetly as he could, in his book Islam and the West: “The primary duty of the Muslim as set forth not once but many times in the Qur'an is ‘to command good and forbid evil’. It is not enough to do good and refrain from evil as a personal choice. It is incumbent upon Muslims also to command and forbid -- that is, to exercise authority.”

This is at the root of the “clash” between the worldviews of our West and the Islamic East. Because our societies were built on Judaeo-Christian foundations, we take it for granted that it is wrong to kill someone for his religious beliefs. Whereas Islam holds it is wrong not to kill him, for abandoning Islam. (On the other hand, the right to convert TO Islam has been universally affirmed.)"

WEALTH OF NATIONS: A Third Industrial Revolution (03/10/2006): "...Offshoring will be good for us in the end, but it could be a huge and wrenching phenomenon, painful for very many people, and a much bigger thing than generally acknowledged..."

Surveillance State: "They just paid a hefty chunk of their credit card balance. And they learned how frighteningly wide the net of suspicion has been cast.

After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but the amount available for credit on their account hadn't changed.

So Deana Soehnge called the credit-card company. Then Walter called.

'When you mess with my money, I want to know why,' he said.

They both learned the same astounding piece of information about the little things that can set the threat sensors to beeping and blinking.

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted."

Will America Pass the Baton? by Robert Samuelson: "We may be close to a critical economic juncture. It's the moment when America's frenzied consumers relinquish their role as ``locomotive'' for the rest of the world. All that spending and borrowing have juiced the U.S. economy and, through swelling trade deficits, the global economy. We know this buying binge can't continue forever. Families and nations can't indefinitely overspend their incomes by ever-increasing amounts. Spending and income must ultimately move closer together, not farther apart."

Niagara Falls Interactive Photo Essay - Slate

Europe vs. Radical Islam - Alarmist Americans have mostly bad advice for Europeans. By Francis Fukuyama: "Time is getting short to address these questions. Europeans should have started a discussion about how to integrate their Muslim minorities a generation ago, before the winds of radical Islamism had started to blow. The cartoon controversy, while beginning with a commendable European desire to assert basic liberal values, may constitute a Rubicon that will be very hard to re-cross. We should be alarmed at the scope of the problem, but prudent in responding to it, since escalating cultural conflict throughout the Continent will bring us closer to a showdown between Islamists and secularists that will increasingly look like a clash of civilizations."

Oncoming: What the Mohammed Cartoons Portend - David Warren, Ottawa Citizen: "Even after the experience of the Great War, and the Depression, people on the eve of the Hitler war could not appreciate what was coming. It is only in retrospect that we understand what happened as the 1930s progressed -- when a spineless political class, eager at any price to preserve a peace that was no longer available, performed endless demeaning acts of appeasement to the Nazis; while the Nazis created additional grievances to extract more.

This is precisely what is happening now, as we are confronted by the Islamist fanatics, whose views and demands are already being parroted by fearful “mainstream” Muslim politicians. We will do anything to preserve a peace that ceased to exist on 9/11. Not one of our prominent politicians dares even to name the enemy."