Happy Fourth of July  

The most senior judge in England--Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips (oh, please)--tonight gave his most Lordly, Chief and Just blessing to the use of   sharia law to resolve disputes among Muslims.

Another reason to be glad we declared independence.

Kathryn Lopez' Q&A with me this week at NRO probes places in The Death of the Grown-Up (the second, culminating half of the book) that the majority of reviewers ignored--from John Leo in the Wall Street Journal on pub date last August to Midge Decter in The Claremont Review this winter, with many in between. Whatever the reason (didn't read, didn't want to read), the debate  over political correctness, infantilization and how they relate both to each other and to our woeful responses to Islam and Islamization was never joined.  Here  are Kathryn's excellent questions  on the subject and my response.

Lopez: What is the real culture war?

West: “The real culture ...

This Fourth of July, light a firecracker for Geert Wilders--a true son of liberty.

From today's column:

THE HAGUE, The Netherlands -- Having run the polite-but-grim gauntlet of Dutch government security to gain access to Geert Wilders, I finally understood what the 24-hour security requirements of the man's continued existence really mean: To make the survival of Western-style liberty in the Netherlands his political cause, this Dutch parliamentarian has to live under high-tech lock and key.

This stunning paradox, with no end in sight, illust ...

Jordan, trying to extend the reach of sharia (Islamic law)  from the umma to  the West, is actually bringing criminal "FItna"-related charges against Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders (whom I interviewed on my travels  for this week's column to come). Alas, the Dutch government isn't reacting with the kind of "How dare you?" statecraft to stop this overreaching outrage in its tracks. So far, instead of setting off a loudly public round of righteous indignation and contempt, the Dutch government is promising a  "diplomatic" response, and hasn't even

...Kathryn Lopez at National Review Online.

From the London Telegraph:

A police force has apologised to Islamic leaders for the "offensive" postcard advertising a new non-emergency telephone number, which shows a six-month-old trainee police dog named Rebel.

The German shepherd puppy has proved hugely popular with the public, hundreds of who have logged on to the force's website to read his online training diary.

But some Muslims in the Dundee area have reportedly been upset ...

One question I was asked in Europe recently was why the US doesn't appear to suffer from the same Islam-related friction currently threatening social cohesion in European cities. We don't see car-be-ques blazing in American cities; nor  we seem to battle over burqas with quite the same intensity. As for the threat of Islamic terrorism, the perception, despite 9/11, is a low-profile one. Do we have a better integrated Islamic population? Is there less strife due to a possibly higher, on average, rate of education among American Muslims vs. their European co-religionists?  Clearly, the consensus is that  Islam in America is something quite different from Islam in Europe.

To be sure, some Europeans have become far more acutely aware of the stark differences between Islamic and Western law and culture than ...

This is a picture of Afghan Islamic leaders signing a letter to affirm that, as the USAID website featuring the photo puts it,  the US taxpayer dollars being dispersed are "legitimate and sharia-compliant."

Phew.

Please explain the "strategy" here:

The United States government issues sharia-compliant micro-loans to Afghan opium growers NOT to grow opium. This US-tax-dollar-financed capitulation to Western-subversive Islamic law--woo-hoo! anyone awake out there?--isn't exac ...