Jihadi Du Jour: Pay Every Penny Save Israel

What Iran really thinks... of Pepsi.

Islam and Capitalism: are they compatible?

...Jihad Watch recently noted that "[Grover] Norquist, a former Executive Director of the College Republicans and current head of Americans for Tax Reform is, along with his devoutly Muslim new wife, Samah Al-Rayyes, the founder of the Islamic Institute, which advocates the compatibility of Islam with free enterprise and capitalism."

Islam is indeed compatible with "free enterprise" if by "free enterprise" one means the appropriation of economic power, and state money, by those who first inherit, or manage to acquire, political power. It has been noted before that in the Western world, those who first make money but then want something else -- fame, glory – ultimately enter politics. In the Muslim Middle East (and elsewhere as well) the only way to make money, real money, is to seize power, or be in the circle of those who have that power.

Mubarak's Friends-and-Family Plan distributes American Jizyah, taking a large cut for itself -- for the Godfather and company. In Jordan, long-suffering American taxpayers used to pay all sorts of bills for King Hussein, the "plucky little king' who drove around in his sports cars, flew around in his planes, and in the West, in the best hotels, had the most expensive call girls visit him, seriatim. American taxpayers pai, unknowingly, for all of it. In Qatar, there is the family that has taken to describing itself as the "royal" family -- as J. B. Kelly nas noted, these sheiklets of statelets were once called, by the British, simply sheikhs, or in some cases "The Ruler," as in "The Ruler of Bahrain," but now they keep giving themselves promotions so that they are almost all of them now "royalty." Very funny, but not so funny is the way that the Al-Thani family in Qatar, the Al-Sabah in Kuwait, the Maktoum (buying all that New York real estate, on enotes) of the United Arab Emirates, and all the others, including the late Sheikh Zayid and his descendants in Abu Dhabi, appropriate much of whatever statelet they pretend to be the head of through some presumed venerable dynasty.

Of course the most egregious and comical example is that of a country named after a single family by that family: Saudi Arabia, named after the Al-Saud. How much is raked off the top, bottom, and sides (and please, trim the eyebrows as well), by the princes and princelings and princelettes, and all their numerous courtiers and consorts (Khashoggis, Bin Ladens, the lot of "contractors" and "defense consultants" who serve the all-important role of being conduits for bribes to assorted Al-Saud family members, who don't want everything to be official).