Harmonic convergence. "Arabs Fly Nazi Flag near Hevron," by Gil Ronen for Israel National News, May 20 (thanks to Avi):

Hundreds of residents of Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem, were astounded Monday morning to see an oversized Nazi flag flying next to a mosque in the Arab town of Beit Omar.

The residents notified the IDF.

A resident, Uri Arnon, told the Tazpit News Agency: "I felt we were going back 75 years, losing our hold on the land. The Arabs no longer feel the need to hide their murderous tendencies, announcing out loud that they wish to annihilate us."

An IDF spokesman said that the flag was hung on an electrical line, and that they were waiting to professionals to come and remove it.

This is the usual propaganda that Iran's official new agencies pump out by the pound, but it is worth noting yet again for the incurably politically correct that no land concession or "settlements" moratorium on the part of Israel will bring peace. This is because the jihadists who are set against Israel will never give up until Israel is utterly destroyed. All Israel can do is be stronger and smarter than they are (the latter isn't hard), and hang tough.

"Islamic Jihad Urges Muslim Confrontation with Israeli Aggressions," from Iran's Fars News Agency, May 19:

TEHRAN (FNA)- Representative of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement to Tehran Nasser Abusharif strongly condemned the recent Israeli air raid on Syria, and called on all Islamic states to confront the Zionist regime's aggressive moves to prevent similar events in future.

Speaking to FNA on Sunday, Abusharif said the recent Israeli airstrike on Syria was "a blatant violation of an independent state."

"We in the Islamic Jihad Movement condemn the attack and, of course, this opposition should not be limited to criticism and condemnation in words. Rather, we want confrontation with this occupying enemy because we blame a major part of the regional problems on this occupying regime and the western plots which are hatched and exercised in support of this regime."

"Arab and Islamic nations could counter this Zionist enemy through unity and solidarity and prevent it from repeating its aggressions against Muslim territories," the Palestinian figure stated.

"It is the time for the Islamic Ummah (community) to confront this cancerous tumor and wipe it out from the region."

Earlier this month, Syria said the Israeli regime had carried out an airstrike targeting a research center in a suburb of Damascus after heavy losses were inflicted on al-Qaeda-affiliated groups by the Syrian army. According to Syrian media reports, Israeli rockets struck the Jamraya research center.

The Israeli aggression was Tel Aviv's second strike on Syria in three days and the third in the last five months.

The Jamraya facility was also targeted in an Israeli airstrike in January.

The Arab Spring unleashed these forces. Now they are pressing forward to final victory. "Teargas and shots in air as Tunisian police clash with hundreds of Salafi protesters (VIDEO, PHOTOS)," from RT, May 19:

A young protester has died and least 15 people injured, including 11 policemen, after Tunisian security forces clashed with Salafis who gathered despite the ban. Police fired teargas and shots into the air to disperse the stone-throwing crowd.

Violence broke out in the central city of Kairouan and in the capital, Tunis.

Clashes in the Tunis suburb of Ettadhamen erupted between nearly 500 supporters of Ansar al-Sharia and law enforcements as protesters started throwing stones.

The Salafis were chanting, "The rule of the tyrant should fall," according to Reuters.

Teargas was also reportedly used in Kairouan, as Salafis threw stones at the police from behind the wall of a mosque.

Group’s spokesman Seifeddine Rais, the group's spokesman, was arrested at dawn on Sunday as he went jogging in front of police, according to a police source, who described his behavior as a "provocation," Al Jazeera reported.

According to local reports a young man, identified as a supporter of Islamist group, died in the street clashes in Ettadhamen.

Some 11 policemen and four protesters have been reported wounded in clashes.

The annual rally was expected to have drawn up more than 40,000 people to attend this year's annual congress.

The recent protest that turned violent comes two days after the government banned the Islamist group from holding its annual congress in the central city of Kairouan.

On Friday the government ruled the group had "shown disdain for state institutions" and was "a threat to public security".

“The congress is postponed to another date undecided yet,” Habib Al-Lawz, a leader from the ruling Ennahda party, told a local Radio station on Saturday.

Despite the ban, the group vowed the meeting would take place, but said they would gather at a different location, in an impoverished suburb of Tunis instead of Kairouan, where security forces were deployed in strength on Saturday.

On its Facebook page, Ansar al-Sharia notified its supporters the congress has been moved to Ettadhamen.

Earlier, the movement told to stay away from Kairouan.

"To the attention of our brothers who are coming to Kairouan from other regions... the head of Ansar al-Sharia informs you of the need to cancel all these trips given the seriousness of the security situation," the group said on its website.

As a precaution, there was a heavy police presence at tollbooths along the main highway from the capital to the central city of Kairouan....

The "moderate" Palestinian Authority has a grievance against free journalists, and in the U.S., it is our cultural custom to satisfy Muslims who have grievances. A dedicated team of pro-jihad, pro-Islamic supremacist journalists, including Christiane Amanpour, Spencer Ackerman, Lisa Wangsness, Manya Brachear, Bob Smietana, Kari Huus, Dave Weigel, Michael Kruse, Eli Clifton, Alex Kane, Alex Seitz-Wald, Adam Serwer, Max Blumenthal and others, should relocate to Baghdad. Then Mahmoud Abbas and other PA leaders could be assured of warmly favorable coverage.

"PA continues crackdown on journalists in W. Bank," by Khaled Abu Toameh for the Jerusalem Post, May 18 (thanks to Maxwell):

Despite promises to honor freedom of the media, the Palestinian Authority is continuing its crackdown on Palestinian journalists in the West Bank.

In the past week, PA security forces interrogated and detained two journalists: Haroun Abu Arrah and Omar Arqoub.

Abu Arrah, who was born in Jenin and lives in Ramallah, was detained by the PA’s General Intelligence Security [GIS] for interrogation.

“I went to the headquarters of the GIS two days after receiving a summons,” Abu Arrah told the SKeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom.

“They asked me provocative and personal questions, such as whether I was having or had sexual relationships. I told the interrogator that this was none of his business. He replied: You better answer the questions.”

Abu Arrah said he was also questioned about a comment he had posted on Facebook about the summons he received to report to the GIS.

He said the interrogator presented to him a printed copy of the Facebook comment.

“The interrogation lasted for two-and-a-half hours after which I was released without knowing why I had been summoned in the first place,” Abu Arrah said.

Earlier this year, Abu Arrah, who is also a film producer, was arrested for 10 days by the GIS for insulting PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

“There was a press conference in Oslo, Norway, where I asked President Mahmoud Abbas directly whether he was aware that people were dying in PA and Hamas prisons,” Abu Arrah said. “The president replied that he did not know about this. So I told him that he should stop it.”

The journalist said that shortly after he returned to the West Bank he was arrested for “extending my tongue” against Abbas.“I spent 10 days in solitary confinement,” Abu Arrah recalled. “In the first two days they confiscated my mattress and prevented me from sleeping.”

He said that the PA security forces have since been harassing him and asking his employers to fire him.

The second journalist, Arqoub, was arrested for 11 days by the GIS, whose agents also confiscated his laptop. He was questioned about a documentary film on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails that he is working on....

Yet another convert to Islam misunderstands her new, peaceful religion, and still no mosque or Islamic school in the U.K. has any program to teach against this understanding of Islam they supposedly reject. "Terror link of 7/7 widow and 'bomb factory,'" by Ted Jeory for the Express, May 19 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Suspicions have grown that Muslim convert Samantha Lewthwaite, now known as the White Widow due to her fugitive status in East Africa, was actually one of the masterminds behind the killings in 2005. Immediately after the explosions which murdered 52 people on the London transport system, she said she "abhorred" the actions of her dead husband Jermaine Lindsay, whose bomb detonated near King's Cross on the Piccadilly Line.

However, the middle-class Muslim convert from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, has since risen to a senior status in the Al Shabaab movement in Kenya and Somalia, a terror group affiliated to Al Qaeda.

Believed to be behind its funding and propaganda, the 29-year-old has assumed cult status among her jihadi followers for her characteristic street-slang rants at non-Muslim "kuffar".

An arrest warrant was issued for her last May after she failed to appear in court in Kenya to face bomb-making charges.

Her alleged co-conspirators are two other Britons, her second husband Habib Saleh Ghani, from Hounslow, west London and Jermaine Grant, from east London, who remains in custody in Kenya after his arrest in December 2011.

At the time of Grant's arrest, he reportedly told police that Lewthwaite was "the boss".

They are all accused of possessing chemicals and "conspiring to improvise an explosive device with the intent to cause harm to innocent civilians"....

Setting the historical record straight. "Naqba — Commemorating a Self-Inflicted Tragedy," by Daniel Mandel in Algemeiner, May 19:

Today, Palestinians and their supporters, as they have done increasingly over the years, mark what they call the naqba (Arabic for catastrophe). It was on this day 65 years ago that Israel came into existence upon the expiry of British rule under a League of Nations mandate.

That juxtaposition of Israel and naqba in not accidental. We are meant to understand that Israel’s creation caused the displacement of hundreds of thousand of Palestinian Arabs.

But the truth is different. A British document from early 1948, declassified only weeks ago, tells the story: “the Arabs have suffered a series of overwhelming defeats…. Jewish victories … have reduced Arab morale to zero and, following the cowardly example of their inept leaders, they are fleeing from the mixed areas in their thousands.”

In other words, Jew and Arabs, including irregular foreign militias from neighboring states, were already fighting and Arabs fleeing even before Israel had sovereign existence.

Thus, on May 15, what is now called the naqba consisted, not of an Israeli act of forcible displacement of Arabs, but of neighboring Arab armies and internal Palestinian militias responding to Israel’s declaration of independence and Britain’s departure with full-scale hostilities. Tel Aviv was bombed from the air and the head of Israel’s provisional government, David Ben Gurion, delivered his first radio address to the nation from an air-raid shelter.

Israel successfully resisted invasion and dismemberment — the universally affirmed objective of the Arab belligerents — and Palestinians came off worst of all from the whole venture. At war’s end, over 600,000 Palestinians were living as refugees under neighboring Arab regimes.

So the term naqba is misleading. Indeed, it smacks of falsehood, inasmuch as it implies a tragedy inflicted by others. The tragedy, of course, was self-inflicted.

As Israel’s UN ambassador Abba Eban was to put it, “Once you determine the responsibility for that war, you have determined the responsibility for the refugee problem. Nothing in the history of our generation is clearer or less controversial than the initiative of Arab governments for the conflict out of which the refugee tragedy emerged.”

However, the Palestinians do not mourn today the ill-conceived choice of going to war to abort Israel. They mourn only that they failed....

The story below is graphic. But it has to be told, as it graphically illustrates the human cost of Islamic child marriage and the treatment of women and girls as commodities.

"The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with 'Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)." -- Bukhari 7.62.88

Muslims take this seriously and imitate Muhammad in this. Article 1041 of the Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran states that girls can be engaged before the age of nine, and married at nine: "Marriage before puberty (nine full lunar years for girls) is prohibited. Marriage contracted before reaching puberty with the permission of the guardian is valid provided that the interests of the ward are duly observed."

The Ayatollah Khomeini himself married a ten-year-old girl when he was twenty-eight. Khomeini called marriage to a prepubescent girl "a divine blessing," and advised the faithful: "Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house."

The Qur'an also allows for marriage to pre-pubescent girls, stipulating that Islamic divorce procedures “shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated” (65:4).

"The 8-years-old bride who was brutally killed on first night of her wedding," by Mustafa Kazemi on Facebook, May 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

ADVISORY – This article includes information that may be undesirable, discomfort & upset some audiences.

The 8-years-old girl whose story you’ll read in coming lines did not make it to the 2nd night of her wedding nor did she make it to her 9th or 10th birthday.

Her name unknown, my source telephoned me last week at 9:30 pm to tell me her story. At the first I thought it’s just going to be a short conversation but later it was unveiled that the story is different.

The story came from a village in Khashrood district of Nimruz province in Afghanistan.

A medical doctor assigned in the main hospital in Zaranj city, the capital of the province, who wished to remain unnamed confirmed that he was “made aware” of the incident and that it was “too late to do anything for her” as well the “remote area didn’t allow them to do anything”.

The girl was one of the several daughters of a man in his late 30s. For an unknown reason he gave his daughter to the Mullah of their village for a big amount of money. It is also common in Afghanistan's rural areas or 3rd level provinces/cities to marry young girls to old men, and trading their daughters for their debts or other items.

The mullah is in his late 50s and is the mosque guy of the village where this incident happened.

The mullah is already married and has many children too.
The two families hold a tribal meeting, agree on the price that the groom’s family pay to the bride’s family, and they set a date for wedding.

In rural areas like this here there are no engagements or any ceremonies beforehand like there are some in the metropolitan and urban areas.

The two families planned a wedding party, the wedding and Nekah (The religious process in which a woman is officially married to a man) took place and the 8-years-old bride became the 50-years-old Mullah’s 2nd wife.

The celebration party was over and the sun downed – the time to have sex (not make love) with the 8-years-old bride.

The girl was just 8 years old and everybody understands the fact that she knows nothing about sex or wedding or making love or virginity or sexual related topics; not even at a basic level for two reasons, one being that she’s just a child – not even a teenager and that in that part of the country, nobody knows anything about these things nor they are given trainings or education about a healthy sexual life.

The mullah takes off the bride’s clothes as well as his owns and with apparent so much happiness approaches her for sexual intercourse with the 8-years-old bride.
Because of the Mullah’s huge physique which gave him a big penis, he threw himself on her and started to penetrate the girl’s vagina.

After several tries that led him to failure to penetrate her vagina, the Mullah was frustrated.

He failed because the 8-years-old girl who was about to die was physically thin and had a very tight vagina opening.

Sourced from the Mullah’s animal behavior, he took out the sharp knife that he always carried with himself in his pocket and tore apart the girl’s vagina from the clitoris side upwards as well as tore it downwards towards her anus in order to make the vagina larger enough so he can enter his penis into her vagina.

Naturally, she started to bleed in a very bad amount, but the mullah was too annoyed for not being able to have sex with her, to care for what he did or her bleeding or her wounds that he gave her.

The girl had her scarf stuffed in her mouth, crying and trying to not raise her voice because others were there in the room adjacent to or outside.

It is a rule in some of the areas in Afghanistan that the groom brings out a piece of cloth that he cleaned his wife’s hymen blood with it as a proof that the girl was virgin.

Mullah entered his penis into the girl’s severely bleeding vagina and had sexual intercourse with her on a blood-covered bed, and then got up and cleaned himself with a cloth.

The girl, who now has lost everything, was bleeding and there was nobody to help her neither could the Mullah ask for help as it was a shame for him and the girl’s family (who were sitting over a cup of tea in the other room, would kill him).

Our 8-years-old bride bled and went into a traumatic shock because of both forced sex as well as severe bleeding. She had lost so much blood, this I can tell for certain.

She bled and bled as herself was in trauma shock until morning and early in the morning around 5 when the sun was about to rise, she passed away.

According to the Mullah, she was pale and her eyes were open when she died. The bed, as he described, was all red with her blood and she was lying in her blood only. No cloth beneath her was recognizable and everything was in dried blood because a whole night had passed on the blood.

She was pale because she had lost all her body’s blood. Her eyes were open as she was shivering when she died and her hands were tied in a praying position, saying her death time prayer.

The Mullah called in the same person and asked him to clean up the mess around and prepare a reason to tell the others for her death. Because the man was a close friend or family of the mullah, he did whatever he could, including every piece of cloth that was bloody.

They wrapped her in a piece of white clothes and called the others that she has passed away.

That morning her family mourned her death in the saddest manner without looking for proper explanation about her death, and then took her to wash her body as a religious ritual.

Because the Mullah had a great influence on the village, none of the women who washed the girl's body dared to ask or seek the reason for the wounds around her vagina.

By 10 am or so they rallied the now-dead 8-years-old bride to the graveyard and buried her.

Her life ended.

The close friend of mullah, who knew everything, was very upset and shared the story with my source that then called me and told me the story.

Another doctor that I asked in Zaranj said that he wasn’t aware of the case, but he remembers that he used to treat the now-dead bride when she was 4 or 5 years old.

This doctor also asked me to not name him anywhere but only said that he was “deeply saddened that incidents like that still happen in Afghanistan”.

He called it one of the reasons of Afghanistan no going forward: People’s idiocy and uncivilized behaviors and traditions.

This story reached to me was told the exact way as it happened by the Mullah to a very close friend of him after the girl’s dead body was buried. According to the Mullah, he had a “bad conscience” about it.

Mustafa Kazemi
War Correspondent
Afghanistan

In "Islam Vs. Islamism: A Case for Wishful Thinkers," by Walid Shoebat at PJ Media, May 18, Shoebat provides a full case for not using the misleading and inaccurate term "Islamism." I wrote on this question here; Pamela Geller here; and Andrew Bostom here.

“Our killer question is ‘How do you propose to defeat Islamism?’ Those who make all Islam their enemy not only succumb to a simplistic and essentialist illusion but they lack any mechanism to defeat it.”

This is what historian and Middle East analyst Daniel Pipes asks in his recent Washington Times article.

To support his argument, Pipes makes an unsubstantiated claim that a majority of Muslims are moderate and that Islamism is only,

supported by 10-15 percent of Muslims…

So how and why did he come up with such numbers? Pipes uses different studies and surveys about which he himself confesses: “These ambiguous and contradictory percentages lead to no clear, specific count of Islamists.” Why then use such statistics? It is only to serve the major argument he made in my first paragraph.

And there are more “confessions.” Pipes writes: “Out of a quantitative mish-mash, I suggested just three days after 9/11 that some 10-15 percent of Muslims are determined Islamists.” This is in itself contradictory and is even absolutely nonsense mathematically as he clearly admits. To further support this conservative number, Pipes adds:

 Indonesian survey and election results led R. William Liddle and Saiful Mujani in 2003 to conclude that the number of Islamists “is no more than 15 percent of the total Indonesian Muslim population.”

He did this while he ignored his other statement:

In contrast, a 2008 survey of 8,000 Indonesian Muslims by Roy Morgan Research found 40 percent of Indonesians favoring hadd criminal punishments (such as cutting off the hands of thieves) and 52 percent favoring some form of Islamic legal code.

So here we have 52% of Indonesians are extremists, not 15%.

Yet even that doesn’t determine the correct percentages to separate Muslims from Islamists. To say that “views on 9/11″ or “supporting Hadd” (Islamic punishment) is the yardstick to measure the percentages is also absurd and mathematically false. What if a Muslim doesn’t support 9/11 or Hadd but supports the idea that it takes two women in a court of law to equal the testimony of a man? Will Pipes count him as a moderate Muslim or an extremist Islamist? If he chooses “moderate,” then Pakistan got it right. No matter what Pipes chooses, it debunks all his unsubstantiated claims about moderate Islam.

What if a Muslim couldn’t care less about Sharia, jihad, and 9/11, yet he kills his sister for marrying a Jew? Is he a “Muslim” or is he an “Islamist”?

And what if we even use terrorism as a yardstick as Pipes prefers; in Saudi Arabia and across the Muslim world, you have many who do not support al-Qaeda. Are these then counted as moderates? In Pipes’ view the answer is “yes.” But this is false. Last week I had an exchange with Sheikh Faisal Al-Harbi, who chastised me on such issues,stating that his clan (Al-Harbi) would not support terrorism. Indeed, on his clan’s official website they denounce al-Qaeda, adding:

Jihad for the sake of Allah is to go to war with the infidels and the polytheists to remove these and enforce Unitarianism. That is after inviting them to Islam and they reject the invitation (Da’wa). This Jihad is then organized and supervised by the Imam.

That cannot be placed in the moderate Islam camp. In light of this and my other arguments, Pipes’ percentages are escalating dramatically.

The true number for Islamists is 100%. Here, let me add more beef to my claim. What if a Muslim denounces today’s jihad, sharia, Islamic state and all? Is he then moderate?

Hardly. The Muslims who take this position take it by claiming that only the Khalifa or the Mahdi can establish these. Take Hisham Kabbani, for example, a Sufi Muslim scholar whose photo Pipes posted.

Islam is the fourteen-century-old faith of a billion-plus believers that includes everyone from quietist Sufis to violent jihadis.

Nonsense. Kabbani is Sufi and is in fact a Mahdist as all Sufi Muslims are. In his work Approach of Armageddon (page 231), he writes of an entire invasion of Israel and believes as Ahmadinejad does:

Hadith indicate that black flags coming from the area of Khorasan [Iran] will signify [that] the appearance of the Mahdi is nigh.

The “black flags” from “Iran” mean the end of Pipes. Just name the Sufi scholar and I can usually find their Arabic writings and prove they are moderate for the time being. Sheikh Maulana Nazeem Kibrisi, another major Sufi scholar, was found in Turkish speaking with the fervor of Adolf Hitler (watch here). Kibrisi was no small-time Sufi either; in a speech given in Germany to Turkish students, with tens of thousands gathered – including then-prime minister-to-be Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Erbakan of the Refah Islamist party – Kibrisi is found saying:

Glory and blessing to the Lord of the two worlds who is the cause of these days. Definitely, the victory belongs to Islam. This flood of people here is a sign of the rise of the glorious Islam. Do they not think that this a great sign? When the great sign appears [Mahdi] the world will shake. Our forefathers made the earth tremble. This gathering is a memento from our forefathers… You are the grand sons of the Ottomans who will make the world tremble again. If the Ottomans do not come back the unbelievers will never be brought down to their knees…history is made of recurrences, certainly our glorious era has come, the day being born belongs to Islam…as long as we have Allah we do not need America, nor do we need the unbelievers in Europe, nor do we need the unbelievers nor will we go their path.

What about Al-Ghazali, the famous theologian, philosopher, and paragon of mystical Sufism whom the eminent W. M. Watt describes as “acclaimed in both the East and West as the greatest Muslim after Mohammed, and he is by no means unworthy of that dignity”? Scholars like Pipes know the truth, yet completely ignore it. Al-Ghazali said:

One must go on jihad (i.e., warlike razzias or raids) at least once a year… one may use a catapult against them when they are in a fortress, even if among them are women and children. One may set fire to them and/or drown them…. If a person of the Ahl al-Kitab [People of The Book—Jews and Christians, typically] is enslaved, his marriage is [automatically] revoked.… One may cut down their trees/…One must destroy their useless books. Jihadists may take as booty whatever they decide…they may steal as much food as they need.

Pipes even went as low to claim that Muhammad was a “Muslim not an Islamist” and even distinguished him since, “Islamism represents the transformation of Islamic faith into a political ideology.”

By switching Muhammad from “Islamist” to “Muslim, Pipes must then answer a crucial question: is Islam defined by its founder or by Mr. Pipes? Muhammad defined Islam as “Al-Islamu deen wa dawla” (“Islam is a religion and a state”). Pipes then must remove the “and” to substantiate his false case.

Then Pipes makes even more blunders:

Islamism relies heavily on conspiracy theories to interpret the world, on the state to advance its ambitions, and on brutal means to attain its goals.

All this from an historian who ignores that much of Islam, including the Quran, the Hadith and Islamic history, is littered with “conspiracy theories” in order “to advance its ambitions” by “brutal means.”

So here is my answer to Mr. Pipes’ question: We will fight Islam with the bible, history, our Constitution, and our laws and even militarily if we must, while working with any Muslim to bring them on our side of the fence, including terrorists. I was one myself. We will not do this by creating an end that justifies the means. Pipes insists we provide a solution, which according to him is only done by mischaracterizing the problem at hand, which is: it’s Islam, stupid, and it’s 100% all the Muslims that believe in it. To add more from history — Mr. Pipes’ favorite subject — Islam was defeated when the Ottoman Empire was dismantled. And in those times, they didn’t use Pipes’ strategy of differentiating between Islam and Islamism. Sir Winston Churchill said:

Mohammedanism [Islam] is a militant and proselytizing faith.

Is Pipes wiser then Churchill?

I rest my case.

Grievance theater

An unmitigated triumph of jihad propaganda, with willing aid from France 2. "Second intifada icon Muhammad Al-Dura didn’t die in 2000 shooting, Israel claims," by Mitch Ginsburg for the Times of Israel, May 19:

Muhammad al-Dura, the Palestinian child who appeared to have been shockingly killed at his father’s feet in Gaza on September 30, 2000 — an iconic image that helped fuel the Second Intifada — was not harmed by Israeli forces and did not die in the exchange of fire, according to an Israeli government report released Sunday, three days before a French court rules on a related matter.

“Contrary to the report’s claim that the boy was killed, the committee’s review of the raw footage showed that in the final scenes, which were not broadcast by France 2, the boy is seen to be alive,” the Ministry of International Affairs and Strategy report stated regarding the television report.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who tasked the ministry with assembling the report in 2012, said the accusations aired on France 2 were “a manifestation of the ongoing, mendacious campaign to delegitimize Israel.”

Minister of International Affairs and Strategy Yuval Steinitz called the accusations baseless and said the affair was “a modern-day blood libel against the State of Israel.”

The 55 seconds of edited footage, filmed two days after Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, contributed to the October 2000 protest in which 13 Arab citizens of Israel were killed and quickly became the defining image of that Palestinian uprising against Israel.

The picture of Dura, apparently dead across his father’s knees, was shown for days on Arab and international TV stations and was cited as inspiration by both Osama bin Laden and the killers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Israel initially did not dispute that IDF troops had inadvertently killed the child. “It could very much be — this is an estimation — that a soldier in our position, who has a very narrow field of vision, saw somebody hiding behind a cement block in the direction from which he was being fired at, and he shot in that direction,” Maj. Gen. Yom-Tov Samia said at the time.

Only months later did the army complete an investigation that it said showed with certainty that, if Dura was killed, it could not have been from shots fired from the IDF position.

All in the family. "Kenya police shoot dead 'terror couple' who wounded 5 police officers in grenade attack," from the Associated Press, May 19 (thanks to Block Ness):

NAIROBI, Kenya – Police shot dead a couple suspected to be terrorists after they threw four grenades, wounding five officers in an overnight stand-off, a police official said Sunday.

Following a tip, investigators raided the apartment where the couple was staying in the Githurai Kimbo area on the outskirts of Nairobi Saturday evening and ordered them out of their house, said Boniface Mwaniki, the head of the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit.

The couple refused to surrender, threw grenades and used their eight-month-old baby as a human shield, said Mwaniki.

Police fired tear-gas repeatedly into the house, said a resident of the building. The baby was removed from the house unconscious and two grenades were found in the house, said Augustine Nthumbi, the officer in charge of the Githurai Kimbo.

The incident highlights the threat of Islamic extremist violence in Kenya.

No kidding, really?

The man killed was Kenyan national Felix Otuko, who was suspected of carrying out two grenade attacks in October 2011 — the first of a string of grenade and gun attacks in Kenya, said Mwaniki of the police anti-terrorism unit.

Mwaniki said Otuko was a member al-Shabab cell with another Kenyan national Elgiva Bwire Oliacha, also known as Mohammed Seif, who is serving a life sentence in jail for grenade attacks in Nairobi on Oct. 24, 2011 which killed one person and injured 20 others.

Investigations showed that Oliacha supplied Otuko with the grenades for the two attacks, Mwaniki said....

Boko Haram has murdered 2,000 Nigerians, torched churches, terrorized untold numbers of Infidels, and John Kerry urges the Nigerian army to treat it gently. They will not, however, return the favor. "John Kerry urges Nigeria army 'restraint,'" from the BBC, May 18 (thanks to Justin):

US Secretary of State John Kerry has urged the Nigerian army to show restraint and not violate human rights as it pursues an offensive against Islamist militants in the north-east.

Mr Kerry said there were "credible allegations" of "gross human rights violations" by the Nigerian military.

This week Nigeria launched its biggest offensive since the Boko Haram group began its insurgency in 2010.

A state of emergency is in force in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno states.

"The United States condemns Boko Haram's campaign of terror in the strongest terms," Mr Kerry said in a statement.

"We urge Nigeria's security forces to apply disciplined use of force in all operations, protect civilians in any security response and respect human rights and the rule of law.''
Camps targeted

More than 2,000 people have died in the violence since 2010, most of which is blamed on Boko Haram....

But to discuss the murderous ideology behind all this -- that would be "Islamophobic"!

"Attacks kill 16 in Iraq, 8 police kidnapped," by Sameer N. Yacoub for Associated Press, May 18 (thanks to Kenneth):

BAGHDAD (AP) — A string of attacks killed at least 16 people in Iraq on Saturday, while gunmen abducted eight policemen guarding a post on the country's main highway to Jordan and Syria, the latest in a wave of violence to grip the country.

The shootings and bombings follow three days of attacks that killed 130 people in both Shiite and Sunni areas in scenes reminiscent of retaliatory attacks between the two groups that pushed the country to the brink of civil war in 2006-2007. The spike in bloodshed in recent weeks has raised fears the country may be heading toward a new round of sectarian conflict.

Tensions have been worsening since Iraq's minority Sunnis began protesting what they say is mistreatment at the hands of the Shiite-led government, including random detentions and neglect. The mass demonstrations, which began in December, have largely been peaceful, but the number of attacks rose sharply after a deadly security crackdown on a Sunni protest camp in northern Iraq on April 23.

Majority Shiites control the levers of power in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. Wishing to rebuild the nation rather than revert to open warfare, they have largely restrained their militias in the past five years or so as Sunni extremist groups such as al-Qaida have frequently targeted them with large-scale attacks. But the sharp jump in attacks on Sunni areas, including bombings on Friday that killed at least 76 people, has fueled concerns of renewed retaliatory killings.

In Saturday's deadliest attack, gunmen broke into the house of an anti-terrorism police captain in the southern suburbs of Baghdad, killing the officer and his family in their sleep. Police officials identified the dead as Cap. Adnan Ibrahim, his wife and two children, aged eight and 10.

The attackers fled the scene, and killed another policeman who tried to stop them at a nearby checkpoint....

More fruit of the glorious Obama-endorsed "Arab Spring." And look at how the Associated Press covered this atrocity.

"Two Christian Churches in Egypt Attacked By Muslims This Week," by Mary Abdelmassih for AINA, May 18:

(AINA) -- The escalation of Muslim attacks on Christian churches in Egypt continues unabated. This week two attacks were carried out, one in Alexandria and one in Menbal in Upper Egypt -- both allegedly prompted by harassment of Muslim women. Yesterday the church of St. Mary, in the Dakhela district, west of Alexandria, was attacked by Molotov cocktails and bricks, causing the gate to burn and the breaking of most of the stained glass windows. One Copt was killed and several injured.

According to the official police explanation, the Copt Basem Ramzy Michael was seen by the Muslim Hamada Alloshy, a registered criminal, allegedly extending his body from his balcony to gaze at the flat of Alloshy's sister, who lives on the ground floor. A quarrel broke out and when the church was attacked, hundreds of Copts hurried to the area to defend the church, among whom was 36-year-old Sedky Sherif, a father of three children. According to his nephew Rabah, who was with him at the time of his death, 1000 Copts were present and were attacked by over 20,000 Muslims, who were firing bird shots at them and throwing bricks. While the church was being attacked the Muslims were shouting "Allahu Akbar." Security forces were sent out to diffuse the situation and disperse the crowd. They made several arrests on both sides.

According to the Security report, the Copt "died of fright," suffering a heart attack after hearing the sound of gun fire. According to his family and those who saw him, his body was full of bruises and marks from bird shots.

The family and relatives of Sedky Sherif waited this morning at Kom el Dekka morgue to receive his body and the results of the autopsy. A death certificate was issued quoting cause of death as "under investigation." Weesa Fawzy from Al-Kalema Human Rights Center said that this was the first time that a death certificate is issued and the cause of death is still under investigation. "Has he been seen by the forensics team or not, so how are they still investigating when the body is already buried?"

Coptic Mina Milad Saber, 19 years, was severely injured in yesterday's attack and underwent brain surgery, but this morning he was found shackled to his bed by the police for fear he might escape, although he is still in a coma.

Most Christians who were injured during the attack either went privately for treatment or quietly left hospital, "as it will end by them being arrested too," said Weesa Fawzy.

On May 13, in the village of Menbal, district of Matay, north of Minya province, a Muslim mob stormed the village church of Prince Tadros el-Mashreki and assaulted a person inside. They hurled stones and broke everything inside the church, including doors and windows. The mob then went along the streets looting and destroying all Coptic-owned businesses and pharmacies and torching cars. The Copts were also threatened to be expelled from the village. According to witnesses, any Copt who was met by the mob in the street was beaten up.

Attorney Dr. Ehab Ramzy, former MP, said that Menbal has a Muslim majority while Manshiet Menbal, 10 kilometers away, has a Coptc majority. In the afternoon of that day three Muslim youths went to Manshiet Menbal and harassed Coptic girls as they came out of church. "As they drove by, the Muslims threw plastic bags filled with urine at the girls," Ramzy said. "The Coptic youth defended the girls and, being outnumbered, the Muslims left." A couple of hours later Muslims congregated and attacked the church and the Coptic minority in village of Menbal.

"The two villages have nothing to do with each other, and Copts in Menbal have nothing at all to do with the quarrel that took place in Manshiet Menbal. They were attacked just because they are Christians," said Ramzy. Two Muslims were arrested from Menbal, and there is talk of a "reconciliation" meeting to be held. "Now security are looking for Christians to arrest them as a bargaining chip for this forthcoming "reconciliation" meeting," said Dr Ramzy.

Another "lone gunman" who was not acting alone at all, but as part of the global jihad and Islam's international war against the Jews. "France detains suspect in Toulouse killings investigation," from Reuters, May 18:

PARIS (Reuters) – French anti-terror judges ordered the detention on Saturday of a man on suspicions he aided an al Qaeda-inspired gunman prepare for a shooting spree last year, a judicial source said.

Mohamed Merah killed four Jews and three soldiers in and around the southern city of Toulouse in March 2012 before he was shot dead by police.

Anti-terror judges have put the unnamed 25-year-old detained man under formal investigation to determine whether he helped Merah steal a scooter that was used in the shootings.

Merah’s brother Abdelkader has also been in detention since March last year on suspicion of complicity in terrorism, murder and theft. He denies being an accomplice in the killings. Under French anti-terror laws suspects can be held for up to four without charges while an investigation is carried out....

What fun the Sharia supremacists will have when they begin to turn on their Leftist patrons and helpers. "Couple jailed for sex outside marriage in Dubai," by Bassam Za’za’ for Gulf News, May 18 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Dubai: A couple has been sentenced to a year in jail for sex outside of marriage, after the man’s wife reported them to police.

The man’s wife was in the couple’s marital home in Discovery Gardens on November 29 at the time of the incident. She was in the living room while the pair were in the bedroom.

The hotel manager and his partner pleaded not guilty when they appeared before the Dubai Misdemeanour Court. They said they got married in Ukraine on August 1, 2012 and provided the judge with a copy of their marriage contract.

“It is true that we were having consensual sex… but I was not on good terms with my wife and we had marital problems that were leading us to divorce,” the manager said in court.

Records said the manager provided the judge with Sharia court papers certifying that he divorced his wife in December 2012.

“My husband is a Hindu and he is not allowed to have two wives at the same time. We had agreed to divorce but he was supposed to provide me with housing, which he didn’t. I was staying in the house temporarily until we settled things. When he brought his lover with him, I asked him to kick her out. He didn’t,” the man’s ex-wife said.

The Ukrainian woman is believed to be seven months’ pregnant.

Records said the 35-year-old Indian manager started having sex outside of marriage with his 22-year-old Ukrainian girlfriend in March 2012 while still married to his 32-year-old countrywoman.

The manager said that he was not satisfied with his marriage and he asked for a divorce when his Ukrainian girlfriend got pregnant.

The couple claimed that they had consensual sex nearly 60 times since they first met. The defendants asked the court to acquit them because they were married and didn’t have sex outside of marriage.

According to Tuesday’s judgement, the court decided the pair had sex outside marriage as they confessed their relationship blossomed in April 2012, while the manager got divorced in December.

The pair will be deported following the completion of their jail terms, said presiding judge Mohammad Shawqi....

Kidnapping infidels and releasing them for ransom or killing them, as well as enslaving them if that option is deemed most advantageous for the Muslims, is fully sanctioned in Islamic law: "As for the captives, the amir [ruler] has the choice of taking the most beneficial action of four possibilities: the first to put them to death by cutting their necks; the second, to enslave them and apply the laws of slavery regarding their sale and manumission; the third, to ransom them in exchange for goods or prisoners; and fourth, to show favor to them and pardon them. Allah, may he be exalted, says, 'When you encounter those [infidels] who deny [the Truth=Islam] then strike [their] necks' (Qur'an sura 47, verse 4)" — Abu’l-Hasan al-Mawardi, al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah (The Laws of Islamic Governance), trans. by Dr. Asadullah Yate, (London), Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd., 1996, p. 192.

The Qur'an allows for the owning of sex slaves:

If you fear that you will not act justly towards the orphans, marry such women as seem good to you, two, three, four; but if you fear you will not be equitable, then only one, or what your right hands own; so it is likelier you will not be partial. (Qur'an 4:3)

This verse is the basis for Islamic polygamy, allowing a man to take as many as four wives, as long as he believes he is able to “deal justly” with all of them. But justice in these circumstances is in the eye of the beholder. Ibn Kathir says this the requirement to deal justly with one’s wives is no big deal, since treating them justly isn’t the same as treating them equally: “it is not obligatory to treat them equally, rather it is recommended. So if one does so, that is good, and if not, there is no harm on him.”

The verse goes on to say that if a man cannot deal justly with multiple wives, then he should marry only one, or resort to “what your right hands own” – that is, slave girls.

The Qur'an commentator Maulana Bulandshahri explains the wisdom of this practice, and longs for the good old days:

During Jihad (religion war), many men and women become war captives. The Amirul Mu’minin [leader of the believers, or caliph – an office now vacant] has the choice of distributing them amongst the Mujahidin [warriors of jihad], in which event they will become the property of these Mujahidin. This enslavement is the penalty for disbelief (kufr).

He goes on to explain that this is not ancient history:

None of the injunctions pertaining to slavery have been abrogated in the Shari’ah. The reason that the Muslims of today do not have slaves is because they do not engage in Jihad (religion war). Their wars are fought by the instruction of the disbelievers (kuffar) and are halted by the same felons. The Muslim [sic] have been shackled by such treaties of the disbelievers (kuffar) whereby they cannot enslave anyone in the event of a war. Muslims have been denied a great boon whereby every home could have had a slave. May Allah grant the Muslims the ability to escape the tentacles of the enemy, remain steadfast upon the Din (religion) and engage in Jihad (religion war) according to the injunctions of Shari’ah. Amen!

This is by no means an eccentric or unorthodox view in Islam. The Egyptian Sheikh Abu-Ishaq al-Huwayni declared in May 2011 that “we are in the era of jihad,” and that as they waged jihad warfare against infidels, Muslims would take slaves. He clarified what he meant in a subsequent interview:

...Jihad is only between Muslims and infidels….Spoils, slaves, and prisoners are only to be taken in war between Muslims and infidels. Muslims in the past conquered, invaded, and took over countries. This is agreed to by all scholars--there is no disagreement on this from any of them, from the smallest to the largest, on the issue of taking spoils and prisoners. The prisoners and spoils are distributed among the fighters, which includes men, women, children, wealth, and so on.

When a slave market is erected, which is a market in which are sold slaves and sex-slaves, which are called in the Qur’an by the name milk al-yamin, “that which your right hands possess” [Qur’an 4:24]. This is a verse from the Qur’an which is still in force, and has not been abrogated. The milk al-yamin are the sex-slaves. You go to the market, look at the sex-slave, and buy her. She becomes like your wife, (but) she doesn’t need a (marriage) contract or a divorce like a free woman, nor does she need a wali. All scholars agree on this point--there is no disagreement from any of them. [...] When I want a sex slave, I just go to the market and choose the woman I like and purchase her.

Right around the same time, on May 25, 2011, a female Kuwaiti activist and politician, Salwa al-Mutairi, also spoke out in favor of the Islamic practice of sexual slavery of non-Muslim women, emphasizing that the practice accorded with Islamic law and the parameters of Islamic morality.

...A merchant told me that he would like to have a sex slave. He said he would not be negligent with her, and that Islam permitted this sort of thing. He was speaking the truth….I brought up (this man’s) situation to the muftis in Mecca. I told them that I had a question, since they were men who specialized in what was halal, and what was good, and who loved women. I said, “What is the law of sex slaves?” 

The mufti said, “With the law of sex slaves, there must be a Muslim nation at war with a Christian nation, or a nation which is not of the religion, not of the religion of Islam. And there must be prisoners of war.”

“Is this forbidden by Islam?,” I asked.

“Absolutely not. Sex slaves are not forbidden by Islam. On the contrary, sex slaves are under a different law than the free woman. The free woman must be completely covered except for her face and hands. But the sex slave can be naked from the waist up. She differs a lot from the free woman. While the free woman requires a marriage contract, the sex slave does not--she only needs to be purchased by her husband, and that’s it. Therefore the sex slave is different than the free woman.”

While the savage exploitation of girls and young women is an unfortunately cross-cultural phenomenon, only in Islamic law does it carry anything approaching divine sanction. Here is yet another human rights scandal occasioned by Islamic law that the international human rights community and the mainstream media cravenly ignore.

"Boko Haram timeline: From preachers to slave raiders," from the BBC, May 15 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan has declared a state of emergency in three north-eastern states as militant Islamists intensify their offensive against the government.

The insurgency, led by Boko Haram, has killed some 2,000 people since 2009. It has spread across the mainly Muslim north and central Nigeria.

With the attacks becoming increasingly sophisticated, there is growing concern that Boko Haram is receiving backing from al-Qaeda-linked militants in other countries.

Here, BBC Africa's Farouk Chothia looks at the changing nature of the conflict.

Boko Haram has increased its focus on smaller towns in north-eastern Nigeria in recent months after the military drove many of its fighters out of Maiduguri - the capital of Borno state, which was the group's main base.

Boko Haram militants have since infiltrated nearby towns, with little resistance from the army.

In a well-planned attack on 7 May 2013 in Bama, some 70km (44 miles) from Maiduguri, about 200 heavily armed men stormed a military barracks, police station and government buildings.

Fifty-five people were killed and 105 prisoners were freed in the raids. Significantly, the militants launched the attack in armoured vehicles mounted with machine guns.

It suggests that they are becoming better-resourced and they can adapt to the changing terrain. Easy to use motorcycles are the trademark for Boko Haram attacks in cities.
A Nigerian soldiers stands beside a burnt house after the army clashed with Boko Haram insurgents in Borno state. Photo: April 2013 The military attacked Baga, near Chad's border, where militants had reportedly built up a presence

The Bama violence came a few weeks after Boko Haram attacked a military patrol in Baga, a nearby town in which it is said to have also built a presence, forcibly recruiting youth into its ranks.

The military retaliated by launching a raid on the town, accusing residents of harbouring the militants.

Nearly 200 people died in the raid, and thousands of buildings were destroyed, leading to claims by rights groups that the military had used excessive force - an allegation it has repeatedly faced as it tries to quell the insurgency launched in 2009.

The army denied the allegation, and blamed Boko Haram for the deaths of 37 people.
First 'slaves captured': May 2013

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau released a video on 13 May 2013, saying Boko Haram had taken women and children - including teenage girls - hostage in response to the arrest of its members' wives and children.

It is unclear whether the hostages are the relatives of government officials or civilians.

Mr Shekau said the hostages would be treated as "slaves", fuelling concern that Boko Haram is adhering to the ancient Islamic belief that women captured during war are slaves with whom their "masters" can have sex....

And on the Tanzania mainland as well. "Anti-Christian Hostility High in Zanzibar as Tanzania Mainland also Heats Up," from Morning Star News, May 18 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

ZANZIBAR, Tanzania (Morning Star News) – Islamic extremist attacks and land grabs on this semi-autonomous island off the coast of Tanzania have continued unabated even as violence has increased on the mainland.

The May 5 bombing of St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Arusha killed a 45-year-old woman, a 16-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl. Of the two Tanzanians and four foreigners arrested – now officially identified as one from Saudi Arabia and three from the United Arab Emirates – only one Tanzanian national reportedly remains in custody as a suspect.

While Islamic extremist activity has increased in Tanzania, Christians on the Zanzibar archipelago have recently suffered attacks by Islamists and the separatist group Uamsho (Re-awakening). Uamsho, the Association for Islamic Mobilization and Propagation, has issued explicit threats to Christians on Zanzibar Island since October 2012.

At midnight on April 20, Islamic extremists in Kianga, 16 kilometers (11 miles) from Zanzibar City, demolished most of the Pool of Siloam church building, a church leader said. Three suspects were arrested, only to be released after three days.

“When we tried to follow up the case, we found out that some of the information concerning the pulling down of the church was missing,” church pastor Israel Baraka Elijah told Morning Star News. “Hence, we decided to give up all together.”

Damages were estimated at $2,500, he added. Muslim extremists had attacked the church building before, setting part of it on fire on Feb. 19 and battering it with sledge hammers in November 2011.

Buildings aren’t the only targets. Suspected Islamic extremists on Feb. 17 shot and killed the Rev. Evaristus Mushi, a 56-year-old Roman Catholic priest, in the Mtoni area outside Zanzibar City. The murder came nearly two months after the Christmas Day shooting of another Catholic priest, the Rev. Ambrose Mkenda, that seriously injured him. Uamsho had left leaflets threatening to kill church leaders of the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Tanzania Assemblies of God and Pentecostal Church denominations.

The Islamist group is fighting for full autonomy of the Zanzibar archipelago; it arose after Zanzibar’s primary opposition, the Civic United Front, formed a government with the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party in 2010.

How Uamsho’s separatist agenda could overlap with Islamic extremists’ objectives on the mainland remains to be seen, but the Zanzibar-based group has increased in stature by appealing to Islamist sentiments. While Tanzania’s population is 34.2 percent Muslim and 54 percent Christian, according to Operation World, the Zanzibar archipelago in the Indian Ocean about 25 miles off the Tanzanian coast is more than 97 percent Muslim.

Islamists burned several church buildings in various parts of Tanzania last October after an argument between two children about the Koran resulted in a Christian boy allegedly defiling Islam’s sacred book (see Morning Star News, Oct. 19, 2012). In Kigoma, on the western border, two church buildings were set ablaze on Oct. 14, 2012, and the roof of another one was destroyed. In Dar es Salaam, where two boys’ argument over the Koran set off the violence, three church buildings were set on fire on Oct. 12, and another was destroyed on Oct. 18.

The attacks on church buildings came after Muslims began falsely asserting that Christians had sent the Christian boy to the Muslim boy to urinate on the Koran in the Mbagala area of Dar es Salaam on Oct. 10, sources said.

On Oct. 17, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania leaders released a statement saying church buildings had also been set ablaze in Mdaula, Mto wa Mbu, Tunduru and Rufiji. The Mbagala attacks, they stated, resulted from inflammatory statements by local religious leaders....

This AP story suggests that both sides threw birdshot and Molotov cocktails and that the Christians began the conflict, but this is wildly unlikely. Muslim mobs brutalize Christians in Egypt on an increasingly frequent basis. The Christian community is small and embattled and doesn't go around picking fights. "Egypt Muslim-Christian Clashes Leave 1 Dead," from the Associated Press, May 18 (thanks to all who sent this in):

CAIRO — Egyptian security officials say clashes between Muslims and Christians in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria left one man dead of a heart attack.

Officials say the clashes in the city's el-Dekheila suburb erupted when a Coptic man allegedly sexually harassed a Muslim woman.

Sounds like exactly the sort of charge that Islamic supremacists would trump up: their mythology is full of licentious, sexually predatory non-Muslims looking for their chance to prey upon good, modest Muslimas.

Residents of the area fired birdshot and threw Molotov cocktails at one another during the Friday night fighting.

Police say Christian resident Sherif Sedky died of a heart attack during the clashes. Police forces were beefed up around the local church Saturday in case of further violence....

Apparently the Boston jihad mass murderer Tamerlan Tsarnaev practiced shooting in New Hampshire, perhaps in preparation for a different kind of jihad attack. "FBI questions former Chechen rebel living in Manchester about repeated meetings with Boston bomber," by Pat Grossmith for the New Hampshire Union Leader, May 16:

MANCHESTER - Boston Marathon suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev went target shooting at a Manchester firing range and met up with an exiled former Chechen rebel living in the Queen City a month before the attack that killed three and wounded more than 260, according to a Voice of America report.

FBI agents on Tuesday searched the Manchester home of Chechnya native Musa Khadzhimuratov, and examined the hard drives on his computers, VOA reported. Police in Manchester confirmed the FBI agents searched Khadzhimuratov's home, according to the story, but Manchester Police Chief David J. Mara said police will not confirm anything because it is not their case.

The FBI, Mara said, also are not commenting on the matter.

At the Manchester apartment building where Khadzhimuratov lives, a woman responding to the buzzer by intercom said Khadzhimuratov was not home and will not be talking to reporters.

A resident who lives at the Eastern Avenue apartment complex said the FBI showed up about 8 a.m. Tuesday and did not leave until late in the afternoon.

Agents dressed in suits were posted at the front and back entrance to the Eastern Avenue apartment building at Hillview Apartments, preventing people from entering the building, she said.

About six other agents wearing white jumpsuits and black gloves entered the apartment where Khadzhimuratov lives with his wife, her parents and two or three children.

"I thought they were exterminators," said the resident. She only realized they were FBI after someone overheard an agent telling one of Khadzhimuratov's children, "Don't get scared. We're FBI and we're going to talk to your father."

The Khadzhimuratovs keep to themselves, the resident said, and do no socialize with other tenants. She thought his wife works but does not believe Khadzhimuratov is employed. He is paralyzed from being shot in the back in his native Chechnya.

Khadzhimuratov told a VOA reporter that FBI agents went to his home Tuesday with search warrants and took DNA sample and his fingerprints.

He said he repeatedly met with Tsarnaev over the past several years and that the FBI first questioned him on April 29, two weeks after the deadly attack. Tsarnaev died in a shootout with police while his brother, Dzhokhar, 19, was wounded and later captured.

Khadzhimuratov told the VOA reporter FBI agents asked him about Tsarnaev's target shooting at a Manchester firing range, which was linked to http://www.gunsnh.com/index.php – the home page for the Manchester Firing Line Range.

Cliff Ellston, compliance officer for the firing range, said it is the company's policy not to talk to the media.

The FBI also wanted to know about Tsarnaev's purchase of large amounts of fireworks from a Seabrook store on Feb. 6, Khadzhimuratov told VOA.

He said Tsarnaev visited him about three to four weeks before the bombings. He said he thinks the FBI believes he tried to help him when he was up in New Hampshire but he denied doing that or having any involvement in the bombings.

The FBI, he said, told him he was not a suspect in the Boston bombing case.

He said he came to the United States from Chechnya in 2004 through a United Nations program. He is paralyzed from the waist down from gunshot wounds suffered in Chechnya in 2001, according to the VOA article.

He said he first met Tsarnaev seven years ago at the annual meeting of the Chechen Society of Boston. Tsarnaev visited him three times in Manchester and once came with his wife and child.

He told VOA he never discussed Tsarnaev's Islam beliefs with him or any politics.

And in a New York Times puff piece trying to portray Khadzhimuratov as a victim, we get these details showing his allegiances:

Mr. Khadzhimuratov, 36, said he understood why investigators would want to take a look at him. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, along with his wife and daughter, stopped by Mr. Khadzhimuratov’s apartment a few weeks before the bombing, the last of several encounters. And long before coming to the United States in 2004, Mr. Khadzhimuratov was a bodyguard for Akhmed Zakayev, a prominent secular Chechen separatist leader who now lives in London....

Mr. Khadzhimuratov has been turned down repeatedly for a green card because of his previous association with the Chechen rebels, though his wife is an American citizen. Among the videos archived on Mr. Khadzhimuratov’s Russian YouTube page were a few that touched on Caucasus insurgency, including addresses by two militant leaders, Doku K. Umarov and Said Buryatsky, and video of a sniper attack on the police by militants in Dagestan.

This AP story uses "conservative" to refer to the pro-Sharia Muslims who blocked this women's rights law. That's in accord with common journalistic practice, which refers to religious people of any religion as "conservative" and to more secular types as "liberal." The common journalistic practice runs into a contradiction, however, with the global alliance between Islamic supremacists and the forces of the Left. That leads the mainstream media to term opponents of Sharia "right-wing" and even "far-right," their all-purpose term to semaphore to readers that we are bad people and decent folks should stay away from us. But that means that in the U.S., opponents of Sharia are "conservatives," while in Afghanistan, proponents of Sharia are "conservatives." If ever (and this will never happen) a counter-jihad, anti-Sharia movement arose in Afghanistan, AP's collective head would explode.

Anyway, note that the Sharia supremacists block a law banning child marriage. This is because Muhammad consummated his marriage with Aisha when he was 54 and she was 9, and he is the supreme example for conduct (cf. Qur'an 33:21), so his example is normative and cannot be questioned. And the law also would have prevented the prosecution of rape victims -- one of the most noxious manifestations of the fact that in Islamic law, men are not called upon to exercise any self-control at all. Their conduct is entirely the woman's responsibility. If she gets raped, it is her fault.

"Conservative Afghan lawmakers block legislation protecting women’s rights," from the Associated Press, May 18 (thanks to all who sent this in):

KABUL, Afghanistan — Conservative religious lawmakers in Afghanistan blocked legislation on Saturday aimed at strengthening provisions for women’s freedoms, arguing that parts of it violate Islamic principles and encourage disobedience.

The fierce opposition highlights how tenuous women’s rights remain a dozen years after the ouster of the hard-line Taliban regime, whose strict interpretation of Islam once kept Afghan women virtual prisoners in their homes.

Khalil Ahmad Shaheedzada, a conservative lawmaker for Herat province, said the legislation was withdrawn shortly after being introduced in parliament because of an uproar by religious parties who said parts of the law are un-Islamic.

“Whatever is against Islamic law, we don’t even need to speak about it,” Shaheedzada said.

The Law on Elimination of Violence Against Women has been in effect since 2009, but only by presidential decree. It is being brought before parliament now because lawmaker Fawzia Kofi, a women’s rights activist, wants to cement it with a parliamentary vote to prevent its potential reversal by any future president who might be tempted to repeal it to satisfy hard-line religious parties.

The law criminalizes, among other things, child marriage and forced marriage, and bans “baad,” the traditional practice of selling and buying women to settle disputes. It also makes domestic violence a crime punishable by up to three years in prison and specifies that rape victims should not face criminal charges for fornication or adultery.

Kofi, who plans to run for president in next year’s elections, said she was disappointed because among those who oppose upgrading the law from presidential decree to legislation passed by parliament are women.

Afghanistan’s parliament has more than 60 female lawmakers, mostly due to constitutional provisions reserving certain seats for women.

There has been spotty enforcement of the law as it stands. A United Nations analysis in late 2011 found only a small percentage of reported crimes against women were pursued by the Afghan government. Between March 2010 and March 2011 — the first full Afghan year the decree was in effect — prosecutors filed criminal charges in only 155 cases, or 7 percent of the total number of crimes reported.

The child marriage ban and the idea of protecting female rape victims from prosecution were particularly heated subjects in Saturday’s parliamentary debate, said Nasirullah Sadiqizada Neli, a conservative lawmaker from Daykundi province.

Neli suggested that removing the custom — common in Afghanistan — of prosecuting raped women for adultery would lead to social chaos, with women freely engaging in extramarital sex safe in the knowledge they could claim rape if caught.

Another lawmaker, Mandavi Abdul Rahmani of Barlkh province, also opposed the law’s rape provision.

“Adultery itself is a crime in Islam, whether it is by force or not,” Rahmani said.

He said the Quran also makes clear that a husband has a right to beat a disobedient wife as a last resort, as long as she is not permanently harmed. “But in this law,” he said, “It says if a man beats his wife at all, he should be jailed for three months to three years.”...