Jihad Watch

Emulating Muhammad's profound hostility toward music. "Student beaten to death for playing music," from Big News Network, March 20:

A student has died after being beaten to death by pro-Taliban radicals at a Pakistani university.

The beating, which occurred earlier in the week, culminated in the death of Anan Khan, who attended the University of Engineering & Technology in Peshawar.

He was severely beaten with several other students at the university by members of a student wing of the hard-line Jamiat-e Islami party.

Witnesses have said the IJT attacked Adnan for playing music.

Members of the IJT have a record of breaking up music appreciation functions and dance parties on the campus.

"Western jihad is here to stay." Well, certainly he is right as long as the current elite remains in power. "Jihad as American as apple pie, says US-born cleric," from AFP, March 20:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Violent jihad, or Islamic holy war, is "becoming as American as apple pie," US-born fugitive cleric Anwar Al-Awlaqi said in an unauthenticated message released Friday.

"Western jihad is here to stay," warned Awlaqi as he commented on a blonde American who dubbed herself "JihadJane" and has pleaded not guilty to trying to recruit Islamist militants to murder a Swedish cartoonist.

"Jihad is becoming as American as apple pie and as British as afternoon tea," the US-Yemeni cleric said in an English-language message posted on militant forums and released by the US-based SITE monitoring agency....

"Eight years after 9/11 and the declaration of war against terrorism, jihad is still reaching the shores of Europe and America. Not from the outside, but from within. Jihad is not being imported but is being homegrown," read the message attributed to Awlaqi.

He also referred to Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and to Colleen LaRose, the 46-year-old Pennsylvania resident who dubbed herself "JihadJane."

"The US has spent billions to protect its airlines but they couldn't prevent Umar Farouk, and the West has been profiling until 'Jihad Jane' shattered whatever trust was left in the value of profiling," the message read.

"A blond, blue-eyed, small framed, middle-aged female. It couldn't get any further from your typical 'terrorist' profile."...

That's why law enforcement officials should be targeting the ideology and the belief-system. But they aren't. And they won't.

Naivete. "Moderate Muslims speak, but they are rarely heard," from the Houston Chronicle, March 18:

Recently two events have occurred that describe opposing views of how some Muslims see the world. The reactions of Muslims in the United States to these two events will affect how their non-Muslim fellow citizens view this new and growing minority.

One of the events occurred March 7 when Adam Gadahn, an American-born "spokesman" for al-Qaida, called for terrorist attacks on American targets, including "mass transportation systems." Many non-Muslims will hear about this through the widespread media coverage it got and will wonder, "Where are the moderate Muslims among us? Why don't they speak out?"

But they have been speaking out. For example, the Muslim Public Affairs Council issued the following statement March 7: "MPAC rejects this latest call for criminal acts by al-Qaida, considering it a failed attempt to deliver its bankrupt ideology to Western Muslims, who have continued to reject terrorism in all its forms."

The Islamic Society of North America has also emphatically rejected Gadahn's statement: "American Muslims ... reject al-Qaida's attempts to lure our young men and women to their revolutionary fantasies. ... Adam Gadahn and his masters have deviated from justice by calling for the indiscriminate murder of vast numbers of people on American soil."

The other event occurred March 2, when Pakistani-born Sheikh Tahir ul-Qadri, a prominent theologian, launched a seminal fatwa in London condemning terrorism in all its forms. "Terrorism is terrorism, violence is violence and it has no place in Islamic teaching and no justification can be provided for it, or any kind of excuses of ifs and buts. The world needs an absolute, unconditional, unqualified and total condemnation of terrorism."

This is only one of many such statements that have been issued by Islamic scholars since 9/11, but it is significant because it is one of the few that was issued in English and publicized in the United Kingdom, where most British-born extremists have family or cultural links within the Muslim community.

Regrettably, our news media will probably devote significant coverage to Gadahn's statements, and too few non-Muslims will hear of the condemnations of his statements issued by American Muslim groups, or of ul-Qadri's fatwa. [...]

We are part of a group of Jews and Muslims who have come together to understand each other's narratives under the auspices of Interfaith Ministries and the Institute for Sustainable Peace....

What could go wrong? Plenty.

MPAC was formed out of the Islamic Center of Southern California, whose leaders are known members of the Muslim Brotherhood. MPAC's Senior Advisor, Maher Hathout, has close ties to the Brotherhood.

ISNA, for its part, has admitted ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

The Muslim Brotherhood "must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions." -- Mohamed Akram, "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America," May 22, 1991, Government Exhibit 003-0085, U.S. vs. HLF, et al. P. 7 (21).

And what more enjoyable way could they have found to sabotage our miserable house than to sucker the naive kuffar into buying that groups like MPAC and ISNA are really opposed to jihad?

Here we go again: more smooth lies, half-truths, detours and deceptions -- anything to keep us from looking squarely at the jihad doctrine as delineated by the Qur'an and Sunnah. It's interesting that Philip Jenkins gets a big feature on NPR for claiming that the Bible is more violent than the Qur'an -- when NPR offers the opposing view, featuring someone who says that the Qur'an is more violent than the Bible, we will know that the End Times have begun. "Is The Bible More Violent Than The Quran?," by Barbara Bradley Hagerty for NPR, March 18 (thanks to all who sent this in):

As the hijackers boarded the airplanes on Sept. 11, 2001, they had a lot on their minds. And if they were following instructions, one of those things was the Quran.

In preparation for the suicide attack, their handlers had told them to meditate on two chapters of the Quran in which God tells Muslims to "cast terror into the hearts of unbelievers."

"Slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them," Allah instructs the Prophet Muhammad (Quran, 9:5). He continues: "Prophet! Make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites! ... Hell shall be their home, an evil fate."

When Osama bin Laden declared war on the West in 1996, he cited the Quran's command to "strike off" the heads of unbelievers. More recently, U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan lectured his colleagues about jihad, or "holy war," and the Quran's exhortation to fight unbelievers and bring them low. Hasan is accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, last year.

Given this violent legacy, religion historian Philip Jenkins decided to compare the brutality quotient of the Quran and the Bible.

Defense Vs. Total Annihilation

"Much to my surprise, the Islamic scriptures in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible," Jenkins says.

Jenkins is a professor at Penn State University and author of two books dealing with the issue: the recently published Jesus Wars, and Dark Passages , which has not been published but is already drawing controversy.

Violence in the Quran, he and others say, is largely a defense against attack.

"By the standards of the time, which is the 7th century A.D., the laws of war that are laid down by the Quran are actually reasonably humane," he says. "Then we turn to the Bible, and we actually find something that is for many people a real surprise. There is a specific kind of warfare laid down in the Bible which we can only call genocide."

It is called herem, and it means total annihilation. Consider the Book of 1 Samuel, when God instructs King Saul to attack the Amalekites: "And utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them," God says through the prophet Samuel. "But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey."

When Saul failed to do that, God took away his kingdom.

"In other words," Jenkins says, "Saul has committed a dreadful sin by failing to complete genocide. And that passage echoes through Christian history. It is often used, for example, in American stories of the confrontation with Indians -- not just is it legitimate to kill Indians, but you are violating God's law if you do not."

Jenkins notes that the history of Christianity is strewn with herem. During the Crusades in the Middle Ages, the Catholic popes declared the Muslims Amalekites. In the great religious wars in the 16th, 17th and 19th centuries, Protestants and Catholics each believed the other side were the Amalekites and should be utterly destroyed.

'Holy Amnesia'

But Jenkins says, even though the Bible is violent, Christianity and Judaism today are not for the most part.

"What happens in all religions as they grow and mature and expand, they go through a process of forgetting of the original violence, and I call this a process of holy amnesia," Jenkins says.

They make the violence symbolic: Wiping out the enemy becomes wiping out one's own sins. Jenkins says that until recently, Islam had the same sort of holy amnesia, and many Muslims interpreted jihad, for example, as an internal struggle, not physical warfare....

So is it just that simple? Religious texts teach violence, and so believers commit acts of violence that they believe will please God, until they just forget that the texts that teach violence are actually in their Scriptures? And what exactly makes them do this forgetting? Setting aside the fact that the Old Testament passages Jenkins cites are specific commands for a particular times and place, not universal commands for all believers for all time to make war against unbelievers, as we see in the Qur'an, it is also true that Jenkins completely ignores the fact that it was Jewish and Christian principles involving the dignity of the human person as made in the image of God that led to the spiritualizing of violent passages in the first place. He also neglects to mention that when these passages were used in history to justify violence, this was contrary to their mainstream interpretations both before and after the periods in which the violence was committed.

In Islam, by contrast, there is such a sharp dichotomy between the believer and the unbeliever (cf. Qur'an 48:29, which tells the Muslim to behave mercifully to fellow believers, but harshly to unbelievers), that the spiritualizing of violent Qur'anic passages has never taken place. Jenkins claims that "until recently, Islam had the same sort of holy amnesia, and many Muslims interpreted jihad, for example, as an internal struggle, not physical warfare." In reality, the two understandings have never been considered mutually exclusive by Islamic scholars. Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and great proponent of violent jihad, mandated Sufi spiritual exercises for the early Brothers, so that they would not neglect the aspect of jihad as internal struggle. The Chechen jihad was long led by Sufis -- the great proponents of that internal jihad.

And it simply isn't true that until recently, the prevailing understanding among Muslims was that jihad is an internal struggle, but now that is changing. Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, Assistant Professor on the Faculty of Shari'ah and Law of the International Islamic University in Islamabad, his 1994 book The Methodology of Ijtihad offers a quite different explanation of why jihad may appear to be a relatively recent phenomenon. He asserts: "The primary goal of the Muslim community, in the eyes of its jurists, is to spread the word of Allah through jihad, and the option of poll-tax [jizya] is to be exercised only after subjugation" of non-Muslims. But if this is so, why hasn't the worldwide Islamic community been waging jihad on a large scale up until relatively recently? Nyazee says it is only because they have not been able to do so: "the Muslim community may be considered to be passing through a period of truce. In its present state of weakness, there is nothing much it can do about it."

Perhaps Philip Jenkins would be so kind as to explain to Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee how he misunderstands Islam. Or perhaps Waleed El-Ansary, who is cited later on in the NPR piece, would take on the job:

That may be the popular notion of jihad, says Waleed El-Ansary, but it's the wrong one. El-Ansary, who teaches Islamic studies at the University of South Carolina, says the Quran explicitly condemns religious aggression and the killing of civilians. And it makes the distinction between jihad -- legal warfare with the proper rules of engagement -- and irjaf, or terrorism.

"All of those types of incidences -- [Sept. 11], Maj. Nidal Hasan and so forth -- those are all examples of irjaf, not jihad," he says. According to the Quran, he says, those who practice irjaf "are going to hell."

The problem with El-Ansary's slick explanation, of course, is that the Qur'an actually never "condemns religious aggression and the killing of civilians" -- if those civilians are non-Muslims. The NPR article offers no supporting citations. I invite all Muslim readers of this site (and non-Muslim Islamic apologists) to offer verses to support this assertion in the comments field below, and I will check in from time to time and examine each one that is offered in light of the mainstream and authoritative tafasir, or Muslim commentaries on the Qur'an.

So what's going on here? After all, we all have images of Muslim radicals flying planes into buildings, shooting up soldiers at Fort Hood, trying to detonate a bomb on an airplane on Christmas Day. How to reconcile a peaceful Quran with these violent acts?

El-Ansary says that in the past 30 years, there's been a perfect storm that has created a violent strain of Islam. The first is political: frustration at Western intervention in the Muslim world. The second is intellectual: the rise of Wahhabi Islam, a more fundamentalist interpretation of Islam subscribed to by Osama bin Laden. El-Ansary says fundamentalists have distorted Islam for political purposes.

"Basically what they do is they take verses out of context and then use that to justify these egregious actions," he says.

Contradiction: the word "fundamentalist," which is misapplied to Islam in the first place, usually means someone who takes the text literally. But here El-Ansary would have us understand that the "fundamentalists" in Islam are misusing the texts. So then how are they fundamentalists at all?

El-Ansary says we are seeing more religious violence from Muslims now because the Islamic world is far more religious than is the West.

Wait a minute. The Islamic world is more religious, and yet so few people seem to notice that the Islamic jihadists are taking all these Qur'anic verses out of context?

Still, Jenkins says Judeo-Christian cultures shouldn't be smug. The Bible has plenty of violence.

"The scriptures are still there, dormant, but not dead," he says, "and they can be resurrected at any time. Witness the white supremacists who cite the murderous Phineas when calling for racial purity, or an anti-abortion activist when shooting a doctor who performs abortions....

15,000 Islamic jihad attacks, about half a dozen murders of abortionists in the last thirty years, and they're equivalent. Right.

In this article, David Pugliese does his best to portray Ghulam Rasol as an illiterate, manipulated naif, operating (no doubt) according to a twisted, hijacked version of Islam -- a classic Misunderstander of the Religion of Peace™. In reality, however, what Ghulam Rasol did was entirely in accord with Islamic law. His going to Afghanistan to fight the Infidels was in line with the Islamic doctrine that jihad becomes obligatory upon all Muslims whenever a Muslim land is attacked. (Provocations by Muslims from that Muslim land don't factor into this equation -- if the non-Muslim enemy strikes back, that constitutes an invasion of Muslim land.) All the schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree that when a non-Muslim force enters a Muslim land, jihad becomes the individual obligation of every Muslim (fard 'ayn) rather than a collective obligation of the entire umma, from which one is released if others are taking it up (fard kifaya). Bulghah al-Salik li-Aqrab al-Masalik fi madhhab al-Imam Malik ("The Sufficiency of the Traveller on the Best Path in the School of Imam Malik,") says this:

Jihad in the Path of Allah, to raise the word of Allah, is fard kifayah [obligatory on the community] once a year, so that if some perform it, the obligation falls from the rest. It becomes fard `ayn [obligatory on every Muslim individually], like salah and fasting, if the legitimate Muslim Imam declares it so, or if there is an attack by the enemy on an area of people.

The Hanafi, Maliki, and Shafi'i schools of Sunni jurisprudence further declare that jihad, once it is fard 'ayn, is no different from prayer and fasting -- in other words, to engage in warfare with non-Muslims in that case is a religious devotion that cannot lawfully be evaded. Hashiyah Ibn `Abidin, an authoritative text of the Hanafi school, says that jihad is "fard 'ayn if the enemy has attacked part of the Islamic homeland. It thus becomes an obligation like salah [prayer] and fasting which cannot be abandoned."

"Would-be suicide bomber explains himself," by David Pugliese for Canwest News Service, March 20:

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Several months ago, Ghulam Rasol packed his bag and quietly slipped out of his village in northwest Pakistan.

He did not tell his parents, his brother or sister what he was doing or where he was going. They still don't know what happened to him.

Rasol decided to leave after being told by mullahs, who had come to his village outside Peshawar, that Afghanistan had been occupied by foreign troops. It was his duty as a good Muslim to kill those infidels, he was told.

The 20-year-old had never been out of Pakistan. He knows little about Afghanistan. Yet he decided it was his responsibility to his religion that he should wage jihad by becoming a suicide bomber.

Rasol acknowledges he has never met a foreigner. He can't tell the difference between a Canadian, U.S. or British soldier. Nor does it matter to him.

"I cannot distinguish between foreigners and we don't care from which country they are from," he explained through an interpreter. "Whoever is not Muslim are infidels for us." [...]

He decided to devote his life to jihad because the mullahs had told him it was his responsibility to do so. After that Rasol was taken to a nearby madrassa, or religious school, where he received his "education."

"They told us that in Afghanistan jihad is allowed, it is legal and they said: 'Go to Afghanistan and start jihad,' " he said. "They told us that we are Muslim and that in Afghanistan there are infidels, so it's our responsibility to go to Afghanistan and do jihad." [...]

He informed the mullahs at the madrassa he didn't want to kill fellow Muslims but he was willing to fight international troops. "I was ready to blow up myself among Westerns," he said. [...]

"It is not for a believer to kill a believer unless (it be) by mistake" -- Qur'an 4:92

"Ah, now I get it." As do so few in the West. "Terror TV: Latest Hamas kiddie hate show outrage," from the New York Daily News, March 20:

Get this straight: Whether Israel builds 0 or 1,300 or 13,000 homes in Jerusalem, it is a democracy ready to return to the negotiating table in good faith tomorrow.

But Hamas, the terror organization that controls Gaza, has no such interest. Witness the rocket fired from Gaza into Israel on Thursday, killing a man. Witness the incitements to hatred that Hamas refuses to relinquish.

This last is most vividly seen on children's television. There, the folks who brought you the jihadist bee and the martyr mouse are pushing full-steam ahead.

This month, Hamas' Al Aqsa TV aired a children's puppet show that told the tale of a sweet little boy, Alloush, who learns about a mosque that Jews seek to turn into a synagogue. The innocent child reports this news to his wise Uncle Hassan, who sets Alloush straight about what's in store for the mosque:

"The Jews come to defile it," he declares, announcing "a real catastrophe for the Arab and Islamic world."

Hassan issues a rallying cry:

"Alloush and dear children, each one of you must tell his father, his grandfather and the rest of his family that they should all arise as one. They must rise up against the criminal Zionists, who are planning to destroy Jerusalem and to turn the Islamic waqf [a building or land used for Muslim religious purposes] into something bad. We must rise against the Zionist criminals, the enemies of Allah, and liberate Jerusalem and all the holy places. Do you hear, Alloush?"

The little boy responds: "Ah, now I get it."

Of course he does. But does the Obama administration?...

Of course not.

"First-hand accounts from locals in the lawless areas of Pakistan close to the Afghan border, combined with those of Pakistani officers in the region, suggest that there is no shortage of Islamic foreigners willing to join the fray." Here is yet another indication that Islamic belief is what fuels jihad activity around the world, not nationalist sentiment. Otherwise, what would Arabs and Uzbeks be doing waging war in Afghanistan? "Arabs throw in their lot with 'global terrorists' in war against the infidel," by Anthony Loyd in The Times, March 20 (thanks to Kris):

They have been attacked from the air by American drones and on the ground by the Pakistan Army. Hundreds have been killed or injured on the battlefields of Afghanistan -- but the foreign fighters, or "global terrorists" of the North West Frontier Province, remain a formidable presence.

First-hand accounts from locals in the lawless areas of Pakistan close to the Afghan border, combined with those of Pakistani officers in the region, suggest that there is no shortage of Islamic foreigners willing to join the fray. Britain claims that these fighters are still the source of 75 per cent of terror plots against it.

Among this disparate group are al-Qaeda's Arab fighters, with a reputation for being well heeled and well mannered; Uzbeks from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), regarded as tough, rough and poor; and the Punjabis of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), viewed by their hosts as arrogant but militarily competent.

One Pakistani brigadier told The Times last week that his men had encountered more than 1,500 Uzbek militants during operations last autumn in South Waziristan. Another brigade commander said that 10 per cent of the 300 militants that his men had recently killed in Waziristan were foreign, including Arabs. [...]

However, not everyone is happy with their presence. "It's because of them that the army has come to our land and destroyed our homes," one local tribesman said. "Because of them our businesses are wrecked. Because of them we live as internal refugees.

"I've met ordinary people who say that they'd even welcome Israel or India if they helped us get rid of these Arabs and their friends."

Yikes! Even Israel or India?

And such a challenge would likely fall on deaf ears anyway, given the "Muslim view" that birth defects arising from such marriages are "a consequence of Allah's will, and they may therefore approach it with fatalism."

"Rise in marriages between cousins 'is putting children's health at risk,'" by Frances Gibb in The Times, March 20 (thanks to Kris):

The dangers of marriage between first cousins are to be highlighted by a leading professor, with a warning that their children are at risk of genetic defects.

Baroness Deech, a family law professor and crossbencher, will call next week for a "vigorous" public campaign to deter the practice, which is prevalent in Muslim and immigrant communities and on the rise. She will reignite a debate started five years ago when Ann Cryer, MP for Keighley, drew attention to the number of disabled babies being born in the town and called for cousin marriage to be stopped.

Fifty-five per cent of British Pakistanis are married to first cousins and in Bradford the figure is 75 per cent. British Pakistanis represent 3 per cent of all births in Britain but one third of children with recessive disorders. [...]

"The local estimate was that 75 per cent of Bradford disabled children had cousin parents and the rate of cousin marriage in the UK Pakistani community is increasing," Lady Deech will say. [...]

Yet there are cultural differences or ignorance about disabled children, she says. Women may be blamed in some minority cultures for being childless or having disabled children; while the "Muslim view . . . is that it is a consequence of Allah's will, and they may therefore approach it with fatalism". [...]

She says: "There is no reason, one could argue, why there should not be a campaign to highlight the risks and the preventative measures, every bit as vigorous as those centring on smoking, obesity and Aids." While there was reluctance to "target or upset Muslims over cousin-marriage issues" the practice was not mandated by religion, only permitted, so it is not at heart a religious issue, she argues....

Short-sighted dhimmi realpolitik is not solely the province of the West. John VI Cantacuzenes Alert: "Putin vexes US over Iran nuclear power," by Daniel Dombey and Isabel Gorst in the Financial Times, March 18:

Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister, promised on Thursday that Moscow would help Iran complete a civil nuclear power station by this summer, drawing criticism from Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state.

His remarks highlighted the continuing differences between the two powers over how to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions. Mrs Clinton was visiting Moscow on a trip partly designed to increase the pressure on Tehran by showing America's unity with Russia.

But Mr Putin told a meeting held in Volgodonsk, southern Russia, that work to complete the Bushehr plant on Iran's Gulf coast would soon be complete. "The first block of the Iranian atomic power station must be launched this summer," he said.

Asked about Mr Putin's remarks, Mrs Clinton said it "would be premature to go forward with any project at this time, because we want to send an unequivocal message to the Iranians".

However, she added: "We have consistently said that Iran is entitled to civil nuclear power. It is a nuclear weapons programme that it is not entitled to."...

And she seems to think that will be an easy distinction to draw and maintain.

A ridiculous article that, unfortunately, reflects all-too-common assumptions. "President Obama Seeks to Bridge Differences with Islam," by Jerome Socolovsky for VOA News, March 18 (thanks to Mackie):

U.S. President Barack Obama has again postponed his trip to Indonesia because of pressing issues in the U.S. The trip is part of his ongoing effort to reach out to Muslims worldwide. Last year, he gave a speech in Cairo that was considered a landmark in the effort to bridge differences between Islam and the West. Many Muslims believe he should do more [sic]

No one seems to think that Muslims have any responsibility to "bridge differences between Islam and the West." No, everyone, from Barack Obama to Jerome Socolovsky, and everyone in between, knows that the conflict is all the West's fault. Note how Jerome Socolovsky frames the conflict:

Frictions between Islam and the West often flare up - like when when a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed - or when Muslim girls in Europe went to school wearing veils, or new minarets in Switzerland were banned.

Note that he mentions nothing about, say, "frictions" "flaring up" when Muslims, acting in the name of Islam and jihad, murder thirteen Americans in cold blood at Fort Hood, or murder two American soldiers in Little Rock, Arkansas, or murder one and wound five in a Jewish Community Center in Seattle, or plow into a crowd of students, trying to murder as many as possible, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Etc.

No, none of that makes "frictions" "flare up." Instead, "frictions" only "flare up" when a Danish newspaper has the temerity to publish cartoons of the "Prophet Mohammed" -- as the mainstream media universally designates him these days, as if we're all Muslims now. Jerome Socolovsky gives no hint that he, or any reasonable person, may think that it's sheer madness or worse to go around murdering innocent people, or even demanding free speech restrictions, because of a few cartoons. As far as he is concerned, the cartoons -- not Islamic jihad mass murders -- make "frictions" "flare up."

And as if cartoons of Muhammad weren't bad enough, Europeans -- xenophobic and benighted as ever -- get angry when "Muslim girls in Europe went to school wearing veils." See how Jerome Socolovsky loads the dice? No mention of jihad terror attacks -- oh, no. Instead, "frictions" only "flare up" when poor little Muslim girls in Europe simply want to live according to the tenets of their own culture. How cruel and ethnocentric those Europeans are! They even banned "new minarets in Switzerland" -- no mention, of course, of how much more severely restricted is non-Islamic religious practice all over the Islamic world.

And then there comes this sage observation:

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have also complicated America's relationship with the Islamic world.

As longtime Jihad Watch readers know, I have never favored the foredoomed democracy projects-cum-social work exercises in Iraq or Afghanistan, but Jerome Socolovsky's assumption here seems to be that the adventures in both countries were some kind of unprovoked provocation. He makes no mention of 9/11, or of the Taliban's depredations, or of Saddam Hussein's reckless belligerence.

Last year, President Obama went to Cairo hoping to change that. He extended the traditional Muslim greeting, and said while he is a Christian, his father's family includes generations of Muslims. "I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning, between the United States and Muslims around the world," he said.

He declared that the U.S. is not at war with Islam, but is against violent extremists who exploit the tensions between Islam and the West.

Those tensions go all the way back to the Crusades - when Christian armies invaded the Holy Land.

True to form, Jerome Socolovsky makes no mention of the 450 years of jihad attacks that had conquered and Islamized over half of Christendom long before the first Crusade was even called, and to which the Crusades were a late and small-scale defensive reaction.

But there have also been times of harmony like in medieval Spain....

Even Maria Rosa Menocal, in her hagiographical book The Ornament of the World, admits that "times of harmony" went only so far in Muslim Spain, which institutionalized discrimination against Jewish and Christian dhimmis: "The dhimmi, as these covenanted peoples were called, were granted religious freedom, not forced to convert to Islam. They could continue to be Jews and Christians, and, as it turned out, they could share in much of Muslim social and economic life. In return for this freedom of religious conscience the Peoples of the Book (pagans had no such privilege) were required to pay a special tax -- no Muslims paid taxes and to observe a number of restrictive regulations: Christians and Jews were prohibited from attempting to proselytize Muslims, from building new places of worship, from displaying crosses or ringing bells. In sum, they were forbidden most public displays of their religious rituals." (Pp. 72-3)

So much for a paradise of tolerance and multiculturalism. Historian Kenneth Baxter Wolf observes that "much of this new legislation aimed at limiting those aspects of the Christian cult which seemed to compromise the dominant position of Islam." After enumerating a list of laws much like Menocal's, he adds: "Aside from such cultic restrictions most of the laws were simply designed to underscore the position of the dimmîs as second-class citizens."

But Jerome Socolovsky, ignorant of all this, goes on to say that Obama needs to hop to it, abandoning Israel and stopping defending ourselves against the global jihad:

Professor Ahmad El Tayeb of Al Azhar University in Cairo said the President's speech there was a landmark. "I was there, and I admired that speech very much. But we are still waiting to see practical results," he said.

He says the U.S. shouldn't side with Israel or fight wars in Muslim countries....

Yeah, that'll fix it.

Please take 12 minutes and 45 seconds and watch the two YouTube segments from a show hosted by Michael Coren. Part 1 is above. Part 2, which I will discuss in a future piece, is here.

Thank you.

Now we can continue.

Recently Michael Coren, host of a discussion program on Canadian television, had on three guests to discuss Islam: Tarek Fatah, the well-known (in Canada) Muslim Moderate, and two non-Muslim guests, Steve Gilchrist and Joan Crockatt. The program began with the usual career-promoting banter. Michael Coren observed that Tarek Fatah, author of "Chasing the Mirage," was about to come out with his second book, the subtitle of which, Tarek Fatah said, was "Unveiling the Myths That Fuel Muslim Antisemitism." Coren jocoseriously said that Fatah had the best publisher in the world, the very one that so intelligently published Michael Coren.

Pleasantries were swiftly over; it was time to be serious, about a serious subject. Coren mentioned that this discussion - all 12 minutes and 45 seconds of it - was prompted by a recent debate, held in a Toronto synagogue, between Wafa Sultan and Daniel Pipes, about the usefulness of relying on the notion of the "Moderate Muslim." Wafa Sultan argued that the concept itself was of cold comfort, even dangerous, while Pipes - a prominent proponent of a distinction he finds between "Islam" and "Islamism," argued, as he always has, that "moderate Muslims" are not part of the problem but part of the solution.

Coren then quotes Tarek Fatah as saying that when he had heard Wafa Sultan describe Muhammad as "a child-rapist," those "words stunned me, like a jolt of electricity." And what's more, Wafa Sultan insinuated "that my Islamic faith was filth" by stating that she was "clean of Islam." Apparently Tarek Fatah, who exhibits a certain shakiness with English here and there, does not think the word "clean" can mean "free of," and he can only think in levi-straussian le-cru-et-le-cuit polarities. And of course many in the audience, unless they are paying close attention and know something about Islam, are likely to think, why yes, how wantonly cruel of that awful Wafa Sultan, how mean to insult this man's faith, what with his soft-spoken earnest look and rumpled suit and rumpled tie, and pleasingly plump appearance (no lean-and-hungry Tariq Ramadan here).

The thing about this is, if someone came up to me and said, Hey, let's bomb a synagogue, I just wouldn't go for it. Ever. Under any circumstances. No matter how much I got "badgered."

War Is Deceit Update: "Synagogue Bomb Suspects: The Feds Put Us Up to It!," by Jonathan Dienst and Hasani Gittens for the NBC New York, March 19 (thanks to all sent this in):

Defense attorneys say an alleged plot to bomb New York synagogues was hatched and directed by a federal informant.

Lawyers for four men from Newburgh have filed a motion to dismiss the terror indictment against them.

They said the informant badgered the defendants until they got involved in the plot.

They said the informant chose the targets, supplied fake bombs for the synagogues and a fake missile to shoot down planes. The motion said he also offered to pay the defendants, who attorneys alleged weren't inclined toward any crime until the informant began recruiting them.

"The government well knew that their case had been a government-inspired creation from day one and that the defendants had not been independently seeking weapons or targets," the motion said....

Living large at Gitmo

"...raising concerns among security officials that the terrorism suspects could pass sensitive data to terrorists in the future, according to U.S. officials."

Uh, yeah.

Will the self-deception and dhimmi idiocy never end?

"Gitmo suspects allowed laptops while in custody," by Bill Gertz at the Washington Times, March 19 (thanks to all who sent this in):

The Pentagon allowed five captured al Qaeda members currently held at the Guantanamo Bay prison to use laptop computers in detention, raising concerns among security officials that the terrorism suspects could pass sensitive data to terrorists in the future, according to U.S. officials.

The computers, without Internet access, were provided to Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other suspected 9/11 conspirators at the prison at the U.S. naval base in Cuba after approval by senior Pentagon officials in September 2008.

The battery-powered laptops were kept in the detainees' cell areas, and limitations on their use were imposed, defense officials said. The practice continued until January, when charges against the five were temporarily dropped after Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the men would be tried in civilian court, not by military commission.

Mr. Holder then backed off plans to hold trials in federal court in New York City and said this week that a decision on where to conduct the trials is expected in the coming weeks.

In addition to Mohammed, the other al Qaeda members who were given computers were Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi.

The computer access was granted by Guantanamo authorities before an Oct. 6, 2008, ruling by Marine Corps Col. Ralph H. Kohlmann, a military judge, that formally granted the five terrorism suspect the right to use computers, said Col. Les Melnyk, a Pentagon spokesman....

Why quietly? Best not to call too much attention to your dhimmitude. Then some folks who still have an attachment to the human rights that are trampled by Sharia might object. "U.N. Drops Muslim Brotherhood Figure From 'Terrorist Finance' List," by Mark "Must Be Loving This" Hosenball for Newsweek, March 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

The U.N. Security Council has quietly dropped Youssef Nada, a prominent financial and diplomatic representative of the Muslim Brotherhood, from an international sanctions list directed at curbing the activities of alleged terrorist financiers. The delisting of Nada, by the Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee, was announced by this official notice posted on the Security Council's Web site. In addition to Nada himself, the notice declares that two businesses associated with him, Waldenberg AG of Liechtenstein and Youssef M. Nada & Co. GMBH of Vienna, also have been removed from the U.N. sanctions list.

The Security Council's announcement does not explain why the council decided to drop financial sanctions against Nada and his companies--sanctions intended to curb their ability to conduct financial activities anywhere in the world. But Victor Comras, a former adviser on financial sanctions to the U.S. State Department and, later, an adviser to the committee that produced the sanctions lists, says he find the U.N. action troubling. "To my mind this is a great mistake. I'm kind of mystified by it," Comras told Declassified. When Nada was put on the U.N. sanctions list, it was done with great public fanfare, Comras said. But when the U.N. decided to take his name off, it was done with a minimum of public discussion.

In an e-mail, Comras added: "Even though Nada may no longer be involved in funding Al Qaeda, he has made it clear a number of times that he will continue as a major financial supporter of Hamas . . . As you know, Nada never really suffered from the [U.N. listing]. He continued to live well, travel, and, most likely, to access and manipulate his assets through his family and others." Nada has previously denied any involvement with Al Qaeda.

Comras also noted that given the fact that all listing and delisting decisions by the U.N. sanctions committee have to be unanimous, at some point, in his view, the Obama administration would have had to signal that it was willing to go along with Nada's delisting. Nada and his companies were placed on a terrorist-finance sanctions list maintained by the U.S. Treasury before they were added to U.N.'s list; according to the list currently available on the Treasury Department's Web site, Nada and his companies are still on it.

In a statement, a Treasury spokesperson said that the U.S. has supported "the removal of those individuals who are no longer appropriate for listing pursuant to that specific regime." But the spokesperson added that Nada remains on the Treasury's U.S.-only sanctions list....

Well done, Lee Baca! You've done a terrific job ignoring the fact that CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case -- so named by the Justice Department. You've also ably bypassed the fact that CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. You show no awareness of the fact that several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. I am sure you have no idea, or don't care, that CAIR's cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Honest Ibe Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements.

And for all that, you now reap the praise of your masters. Congratulations!

"Headley, 49, had denied the charges but changed his plea to avoid the death penalty or extradition to India, Pakistan or Denmark."

Jihad Watch reader Paul comments: "Heh. Didn't really believe all those promises of the celestial Playboy Club, did we now, Daood?"

"US citizen David Headley admits role in Mumbai attacks," from the BBC, March 18 (thanks to all who sent this in):

A US citizen has pleaded guilty to scouting targets for the 2008 attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai.

David Headley, at his trial in Chicago, also admitted plotting to attack a Danish newspaper that published a cartoon many Muslims deemed offensive.

Headley, 49, had denied the charges but changed his plea to avoid the death penalty or extradition to India, Pakistan or Denmark.

The attacks on Mumbai in November 2008 left more than 170 people dead....

Prosecutors said Headley, a Pakistani-American, had made several surveillance trips to India and Denmark.

According to court documents, he passed on information to his contacts with the Pakistan-based Islamic militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The group has been blamed for organising the Mumbai attacks....

He is alleged to have told prosecutors that he had been working with Lashkar-e-Taiba since 2002.

He was first charged with plotting to attack the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten after they angered Muslims by publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

Headley changed his name from Daood Gilani in 2006 after he was told by members of Lashkar-e-Taiba that he would be travelling to India to carry out surveillance duties for the group, prosecutors said.

Turning an ally into an enemy and enemies into allies. Which side is he on? Read more about this in my forthcoming book with Pamela Geller, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War On America.

"Obama blocks delivery of bunker-busters to Israel," from the World Tribune, March 18 (thanks to Pamela):

WASHINGTON -- The United States has diverted a shipment of bunker-busters designated for Israel.

Officials said the U.S. military was ordered to divert a shipment of smart bunker-buster bombs from Israel to a military base in Diego Garcia. They said the shipment of 387 smart munitions had been slated to join pre-positioned U.S. military equipment in Israel Air Force bases.

"This was a political decision," an official said....

No kidding, really?

In traditional Islamic theology there is the idea that the teaching on jihad was revealed in stages: first, tolerance; then, defensive warfare; then, offensive warfare to establish Sharia over the world. Many, many Islamic authorities, ancient and modern, teach this -- and it belies the soothing Religion of Peace™ lies and half-truths that Islamic apologists peddle so successfully in Western countries. Here is yet another Islamic authority teaching the same thing. "This is an article from online Arabic magazine Moheet, which has offices in Egypt and the UAE." "Moheet: 'The Purpose of Jihad Is to Establish the Word of Allah,'" from Translating Jihad, March 18:

[...] Why It Is Considered Our Sixth Pillar of Islam - Jihad Is Ordained to Establish the Word of Allah
Moheet - Iman al-Khashab, 13 Mar 2010

Jihad in the path of Allah is a mainstay of the religion and a great religious duty, as the Prophet (PBUH) said: "The most important thing is Islam, and it is supported by prayer, and its apex is jihad in the path of Allah." Allah has commanded us in many verses (of the Qur'an), and urged us, as has also our Prophet (PBUH), regarding the issue of jihad. The Prophet desired it himself, and urged (others) to it. He declared its virtues so often that some scholars consider it the sixth pillar of Islam, due to its importance, which is attested by how often it appears in the Qur'an and hadith.

Jihad is an ancient religious duty, for Moses (PBUH), who struggled (jahada) to lead the children of Israel (out of Egypt), said to his people: "O my people! Enter the holy land which Allah hath assigned unto you, and turn not back ignominiously, for then will ye be overthrown, to your own ruin" (Qur'an 5.21). That is what happened to them, and Allah punished them. But in the end, after the death of Moses (PBUH), they waged jihad and conquered the holy house (Jerusalem), entering it through jihad in the path of Allah.

* * *

[Dr. Jamal al-Marakobi] added: "After that, Allah mandated jihad, rather than widespread destruction, as a punishment for the infidels who refused to worship Allah Almighty and disdained he who had created them. For jihad was the tradition (sunnah) of the prophets, from the first centuries until the coming of our prophet Muhammad (PBUH). For Muhammad went out with this law, which is jihad in the path of Allah, to establish the word of Allah and do away with shirk (polytheism) and infidelity. Allah said: "Fight them on until there is no sedition (fitna), and the religion is wholly Allah's, but if they cease, let there be no hostility, except to those who practice oppression" (Qur'an 2.193). This is the wisdom behind waging jihad, in order that Allah alone be worshipped, as (the Prophet) (PBUH) said: "I have been sent with the sword to ensure Allah is worshipped."

Dr. al-Marakobi said: "Allah obligated the ummah (Islamic nation) to jihad in the path of Allah, but it was ordained in stages. For in the days in which the Prophet (PBUH) and the Muslims were in Mecca, they were forbidden from waging jihad, and were obliged instead to (peacefully) propagate Islam. The Prophet (PBUH) was in Mecca for thirteen years after receiving the mission to call the people to Allah Almighty, and was not commanded to fight, but was forbidden from it, despite what he and his companions suffered at the hands of the infidels.

They were forbidden from jihad during this period because they did not have sufficient strength, and their enemy was stronger than they were. If they had fought at that time, their enemy would have overpowered them. When the Prophet (PBUH) emigrated to Medina, and found the Ansar (i.e. supporters; name given to Muslims from Medina), Allah authorized jihad for them, but it was not a commandment, as Allah Almighty said: "To those against whom war is made, permission is given (to fight), because they are wronged--and verily, Allah is Most Powerful for their aid" (Qur'an 22.39). After that, they were commanded to fight those who fought against them, but still refrain from fighting those who did not fight against them, as the Almighty said: "Fight in the path of Allah those who fight you, but do not be the aggressors, for Allah loveth not aggressors" (Qur'an 2.190).

The Muslims were initially commanded to fight only those who fought against them. However, later they were commanded to fight not only those who fought against them but also those who did not, in order to establish the word of Allah. This was a requirement so long as the Muslims had sufficient power, were prepared, and had a state ruled by the Prophet of Allah (PBUH). The purpose of jihad is not simply to gain authority, or expand the kingdom, or get money, or kill people. The purpose of jihad is to establish the word of Allah. For if the infidels accept the call of Islam and return to their Creator, they will not be attacked. But if they rebel they must be fought so that their wickedness and infidelity may cease, and they may receive their punishment, although their punishment with Allah will be so much more severe and horrible in the fire of hell, for they are infidels and polytheists, who despise the worship of Almighty Allah....

Read it all.

Of course, Obama does accept the Palestinian narrative. In "The President's Middle East Playbook" at The Intermediate Zone, March 17, Avi Davis provides some important background on Obama's current bullying of Israel:

[...] Almost anyone who lives in Jerusalem knows that the area in dispute, Ramat Shlomo, is a Jewish neighborhood and has been so for thirty years. It is surrounded by other Jewish neighborhoods and no Israeli in their right mind would consider surrendering it in any final peace deal with the Palestinians. Giving up Ramat Shlomo would be the equivalent of giving up the world famous Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, the tony Jerusalem suburb of French Hill and even the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. All three are just as integrated into the Jewish identity of Jerusalem as Ramat Shlomo. Only by accepting the Palestinian narrative - that all of Jerusalem belongs to the Palestinians, could anyone possibly envision the suburb as future Palestinian territory.

The punditocracy is awestruck by the apparent petulance of it all. What, they are all asking, did he hope to gain? Was the intention to dress down Netanyahu and bring him into line? Well, the Israeli prime minister is defiant and there is no sign whatsoever he will accede to the administration's demands that he cancel the permit. This stance has rallied much of the country behind him. Rather than weakening the Israeli leader, as Obama might have hoped, he has only added to his political capital.

The Palestinians watch in delight as they wait for the Americans to deliver Israeli concessions without having to do anything but chew on their falafel. They win either way. If the peace process continues to stall they can continue to wait, which is their modus operandi anyway. If Obama finally gets Netanyahu to say uncle, they will be dealing with a castrated Israeli leader viewed as unable to control his own foreign policy.

The Arab League, those irredentist potentates, are no doubt rolling around on their palace beds in glee. They had made clear to Obama that there could be no further progress in Middle East peace without resolving the grievous wound to Arab pride caused by the Arab-Israeli dispute. Ramat Shlomo has become their poster child for Israeli transgression and so now they are winning too, convincing an American president to do their bidding....

Read it all.

The local imam incited the Islamic supremacists to attack the Christians. So yet another imam is exposed as a Misunderstander of the Religion of Peace™. Why didn't his Qur'anic study tell him to respect the People of the Book, and not to wage jihad against or expect them to assume dhimmi status? Aren't Islamic apologists in the West forever telling us that the only people who believe that Muslims hold to jihad against Jews and Christians, and in dhimmitude, are greasy Islamophobes? How is it then that so many Muslims, including even imams, turn out to be greasy Islamophobes?

"Egyptian police arrest 13 Copts, victims of attack by Islamic extremists," from Asia News, March 18 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Cairo (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Egyptian security forces have arrested 13 Coptic Christians - including four minors, subsequently released - victims of the attack on 12 March. They are being charged with illegal religious assembly, damage to public property, arson and assault. About a dozen Muslims, from a total of 2000 perpetrators, have been detained over the assault against 400 Coptic faithful at the Church of St. Michael in Mersa Matrouh in the north-west of Egypt.

The violence was sparked by extremists, incited by the local Imam, Mohamad Khamis Khamis, during Friday prayers. From the microphones of the mosque of Al-Ansar, located near the church of Saint Micheal, near the building that housed the Copts, the Islamist leader urged the faithful to "holy war" against the Christian place of worship, ordering its destruction, and calling for the expulsion of the "infidels."

The crowd was trapped inside the church and the Copts attacked them, raiding the homes before setting them on fire. The raid resulted in the wounding of 23 Christians, including two seriously, so who have been sent to Victoria Hospital in Alexandria, 200 km away. Sources of the local church denounced the complete devastation of 18 houses, four shops and 18 cars. "These people are completely ruined," says the activist Wagih Yacoub.

The attack on the Coptic Christian community lasted over 14 hours. The - delayed - intervention of the security forces prevented carnage. The police transported the parishioners from the church, located in the suburb of Rifiyah, to their homes, which they are patrolling to prevent new attacks by extremists.

Matta Zakaria, a local priest, reported to the agency AINA "the arrest of four children, aged between 13 and 17 years by the police." By "deception", the agents conducted the youths to the police station asking them to identify the Muslim assailants. Among young people there was also a young man who was not in church during the assault. The boys speak of "insults and beatings" by police, who ordered the release after the intervention of Copt several priests. The police have opened a file of investigation against those arrested - Christians and Muslims - on charges of illegal religious assembly, damage to public property, arson and assault. The pre-trial detention will last 15 days....

CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case -- so named by the Justice Department. CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR's cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Honest Ibe Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements.

The fact that this gang of Islamic supremacist thugs, liars, smear artists and stomach-stapled beekeepers opposes this textbook is a huge mark in its favor.

"Muslim group calls textbooks discriminatory," by Jon Hurdle for Reuters, March 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Muslim activists launched a campaign on Wednesday against a series of educational books that they say promote anti-Islamic sentiment among U.S. school children.

"The World of Islam," a 10-book series, encourages young readers to believe Muslims are terrorists and seek to undermine U.S. society, said the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation's largest Muslim advocacy organization.

One book contains the passage: "For the first time, Muslims began immigrating to the U.S. in order to transform American society, sometimes through the use of terrorism."

So what's the problem? Is CAIR saying that Muslims have committed no acts of terror in the U.S.? Tell it to Nidal Hasan. Tell it to Abdulhakim Muhammad. Tell it to Naveed Haq. Tell it to Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar. Etc.

Moein Khawaja, civil rights director for CAIR in Pennsylvania, said the group has gotten dozens of complaints about the books from Muslim parents around the country.

He said he was not aware of any discrimination against Muslim children due to the books, which are intended for middle- and high-school students.

The books were published in late 2009 by Mason Crest Publishers of Broomall, Pennsylvania, which worked with the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute to ensure their accuracy. It was unclear if the books are in use in any schools.

Khawaja said at a news conference that the books are "rife with incorrect information and fear-mongering" and called the FPRI a "pro-war think tank that has vigorously advocated for the Iraq war in the past and continues to defend that position."

INSTITUTE DISAGREES

Founded in 1955, the institute says on its website it is a non-profit group devoted to research on international affairs. It counted among its board members Alexander Haig, U.S. secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan, who recently died.

FPRI vice president Alan Luxenberg denied the books were anti-Islamic.

"This assertion is without basis, and there is no better way to ascertain the truth than to read the books," the institute said in a press release.

Luxenberg said the terrorism quote had been taken out of context and that it followed five pages on the history of Muslim immigration to the United States that said only some U.S. Muslims became radicalized, starting in the 1980s.

Luxenberg is the author of one of the books, "Radical Islam," the cover of which features a machine gun and a Muslim head scarf, with what looks like bloodstains underneath the scarf and the title word "Radical."

In its defense, the institute noted a quote in "Radical Islam" that reads: "The Western world must ally itself with the Muslim world in the war on radical Islam."...

Yeah, that's worked so wonderfully so far.

One thing you can say in support of Jon Hurdle, Reuters reporter: he is the first mainstream media reporter I've ever seen to include some shadow of a hint, however inadequate, that all may not be on the up-and-up with CAIR:

Critics have accused CAIR of being a front for the Palestinian Hamas faction and of receiving funding from the Arab world.

She has been in custody since October, this says. Why are we only hearing about all this now?

An update on this story. "U.S. 'Jihad Jane' Pleads Not Guilty to Terrorism," from Reuters, March 18:

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - A Pennsylvania woman who called herself "Jihad Jane" pleaded not guilty on Thursday to charges of providing material support to terrorists and conspiring to kill in a foreign country.

Colleen LaRose appeared in federal court in Philadelphia accused of plotting with others over the Internet to kill a Swedish cartoonist who depicted the Prophet Mohammed in a way that was offensive to Muslims, and of wanting to become a martyr to Islam.

LaRose, 46, from Pennsburg, Pennsylvania, has been in custody since October. A grand jury indictment against her, unsealed on March 9, says that she recruited men online to wage "violent jihad" or holy war, in South Asia and Europe.

She told co-conspirators that her appearance as a blonde-haired white woman would allow her to "blend in with many people" and avoid being detected as an Islamic terrorist, the indictment says.

Yeah, sure. As if anybody were giving Arab or Pakistani men extra scrutiny.

CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case -- so named by the Justice Department. CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR's cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Honest Ibe Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements.

Nor is that all that can be said about CAIR. See more here.

But just try telling it to the blinkered dhimmi who is the sheriff of Los Angeles.

"Sheriff Baca argues with Republican congressman about Islamic group," by Robert J. Lopez in the Los Angeles Times, March 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca argued with a Republican congressman from Indiana during a hearing Wednesday when the lawmaker questioned his relationship with an Islamic nonprofit group.

Baca was in Washington testifying before the House Committee on Homeland Security when he was questioned by Rep. Mark Souder about attending fundraisers for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, officials said....

The exchange between Baca and Souder was recorded by a reporter for KPCC-FM (89.3). To hear the recording, click here.

"There's a substantial difference between protected speech and government officials going to fundraisers for organizations that do speech that is radical. And Sheriff Baca, you've been 10 times to the fundraisers for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which even the FBI has separated themselves from," Souder said, according to the recording.

Baca shot back, citing his service in the Marines and support of Israel, according to the report. "The security of Israel has always been at the forefront of my thinking," he said. "And for you to associate me somehow through some circuitous attack on CAIR, is not only inappropriate, it is un-American."

Whitmore said department records show that Baca attended two CAIR fundraisers in recent years.

"Just because they are Muslim Americans does not mean they want to destroy Israel or the U.S.," Whitmore said.

Right. But what about all the evidence?

Her jihad against free speech got nowhere, but other Muslims continue to pursue it in other ways. "'JihadJane' said to have confessed" by Derrick Nunnally, John Shiffman, and Kathleen Brady Shea for the Philadelphia Inquirer, March 18 (thanks to all who sent this in):

The Montgomery County woman who calls herself "JihadJane" has confessed to the FBI about her alleged role in a plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist, according to two people close to the investigation.

Colleen LaRose confessed to FBI agents shortly after her October arrest at Philadelphia International Airport, where she had just arrived from London, said the two sources, who spoke on conditon of anonymity.

LaRose, 46, whose arrest was kept quiet until related arrests last week in Ireland, is scheduled to be arraigned this morning at the federal courthouse in Philadelphia....

"...while the whole wide world is fast asleeeeeep..."

Yikes! C-Span has put its archive online, including all eight of my appearances going back to 2002. You can watch any or all of them here.

The two highlights, if you ask me (and I know you didn't), are my two-against-one debate with non-Muslim Islamic apologist Dinesh D'Souza and "moderator" Suhail Khan at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2007, and the Heritage Foundation speech about Muhammad in 2006.

But you may prefer my bravura renditions of "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning" or "Won't Get Fooled Again." Oh, those aren't online yet?

The dhimmitude and self-censorship on Facebook's part, however, may not be a given in this case. The creator of the site says he is redesigning it and that it will be back. We'll see. Free Speech Death Watch Update: "'Allah is'... angering Muslims?," by Rachelle Kliger for The Media Line News Agency, March 17:

Thousands of Muslim Facebook users have pushed to remove an Arabic-language Facebook page created by a user taking on the identity of Allah, or God.

The user claimed he/she was an atheist and believed in no God but him/herself, saying that Muslim prophets would be able to connect with users through the site and answer their questions, according to news reports.

The page, displaying warped Koranic verses and making fun of Islam, soon garnered a 600,000 strong following and drew thousands of responses to its status updates, many of them scolding the creator.

Campaigners who said it was an insult to Islam and to God demanded Facebook remove the page and some even urged users to boycott Facebook altogether.

While campaigners are viewing the removal of the page on Tuesday as an indication of their success, the creator of the controversial profile page said she (or he) removed it to create a new look.

Olivier Bassile, chief executive of Reporters Without Borders to the European Union and head of the organization's Belgian office, said censorship of the material was the wrong strategy by Facebook, if Facebook did indeed remove the page under pressure.

"It's related to freedom of expression," he told The Media Line new agency. "It was only logical that one day Facebook and other social media would face this pressure because the traditional media is already suffering from this pressure."...

Dr. Abeer Najjar, a media researcher at the American University of Sharjah, said she would not consider the response by Facebook of removing the page as indication that freedom of speech was under threat, as long as the request came from the public, but she warned that such calls are often used by governments to legitimize censorship.

"The problem is that when the public asks for it, it encourages the authorities and gives them legitimacy to censor other things," she told The Media Line. "The fundamental problem is that it empowers the governments and gives them a green light for more censorship."

Uh, yeah.

The United Arab Emirates' Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) went as far as to instruct all Internet service providers in the UAE to block the offensive page, following numerous calls and complaints from Internet users who were angry about the site.

Counter campaigns to the Allah page drew more than 100,000 people, including the "20 million campaign to close down the group of the heretic who claims he's God" that drew more than 52,000 and other campaigns that called on Muslim users to boycott the popular website....

"Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but he was a true Muslim Hanifa, and he was not of the polytheists" -- Qur'an 3:67

While ignorant non-Muslim Westerners burble about the "three great Abrahamic faiths," in the Islamic tradition the other two "great Abrahamic faiths" have no legitimacy whatsoever: the Biblical prophets were all actually Muslims, and Judaism and Christianity are illegitimate twistings of their original Islamic teachings. Judaism and Christianity are thus completely delegitimized.

This historical appropriation, which is far from the first of its kind, is of a piece with that delegitimization. Not only were Mary (and Jesus) Muslims, but they were "Palestinians." So now a nationality invented in the 1960s for the purposes of political manipulation is fitted out with some historical heroes. And this is all only fuel for the jihad against those who, in an act of projection astounding in its scope, are then portrayed as the ones actually doing the historical delegitimization and appropriation.

"Fatah proud of womem [sic] fighters, Martyrs, and Virgin Mary," by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook for Palestinian Media Watch, March 17:

In its official statement in honor of International Women's Day, the Fatah movement listed a group of "Palestinian" women of whom it is proud: Martyrs, fighters, prisoners and the Virgin Mary.

Turning Virgin Mary and Jesus from Judeans (Jews) into "Palestinians" is a basic part of the Palestinian Authority's revision of history. The PA leadership has for years been attempting to create a Palestinian-Islamic history in the Land of Israel. This is not an alternative interpretation of modern history; rather, it is an invented history from long before Islam was founded (610 CE) and long before the Romans tried to sever Jewish ties to the Land of Israel/Judea by renaming it "Palestine" in the year 135 CE. Although historically meaningless, turning Jesus and the Virgin Mary into Palestinians is a repeating theme of PA historical revision.

The following is the Fatah Communications and Education Authority statement in honor of International Women's Day from the official Fatah website:

"If we are proud of the holiness of our land, then we are proud and pride ourselves that the first and most important holy woman among the nations and peoples is from the holy land: The Virgin Mary - the woman of love and peace - is of the nation of Palestine, whose roots are grounded in the depths of history. Our movement takes note of its pride in all the women Shahidas (Martyrs), prisoners, Palestinian fighters, who have become a model of sacrifice and a school that teaches the meaning of giving and of sacrifice."
http://www.palvoice.com/index.php?id=23043
[Fatah website, March 8, 2010]

In Human Events I discuss the arrests of Jihad Jane and Jihad Jamie, and the implications of those arrests that the mainstream media is, true to form, ignoring:

Last week two American Muslim women were arrested for their involvement in a plot to murder the Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks. One has since been released, but the cases of both women raise questions for Muslim groups in America and law enforcement officials - questions that are not being adequately answered.

Both "Jihad Jane" -- Colleen (or Fatima LaRose)-- who has been charged with recruiting suspects for "violent jihad" and conspiring to kill Vilks, and "Jihad Jamie," Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, who has since been released, are American women who became, out of despair, desperation, or the search for some great cause, converts to Islam.

Terror analysts have devoted a great deal of time to discussing how both were "radicalized" via the Internet. This calls for a new variation on an old truism. Just as guns don't kill people (people kill people), so also the Internet doesn't radicalize Muslims: Islamic jihadists radicalize Muslims.

And these bored suburbanites didn't have to go to the Internet to get "radicalized." As long ago as January 1999, the Naqshbandi Sufi leader Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani declared in a State Department Open Forum that Islamic supremacists controlled most mosques in America: "The most dangerous thing that is going on now in these mosques," he said, "that has been sent upon these mosques around the United States - like churches they were established by different organizations and that is ok - but the problem with our communities is the extremist ideology. Because they are very active they took over the mosques; and we can say that they took over more than 80% of the mosques that have been established in the US. And there are more than 3000 mosques in the US. So it means that the methodology or ideology of extremist has been spread to 80% of the Muslim population, but not all of them agree with it."

Terrorism expert Yehudit Barsky affirmed the same thing in 2005, saying that 80% of the mosques in this country "have been radicalized by Saudi money and influence." The Center for Religious Freedom found in 2005 a massive distribution of hateful jihadist and Islamic supremacist material in mosques in this country. And in June 2008 federal investigators found that the Islamic Saudi Academy in Virginia, despite promises to stop teaching such material, was still using books that advocated that apostates from Islam be executed and that it was permissible for Muslims to kill and seize the property of "polytheists."

This is the kind of teaching that Jihad Jane and Jihad Jamie imbibed. Jihad Jamie, despite her apparent non-involvement in the plot to murder Vilks, appears to be passing on this hatred to her six-year-old son, Christian (now Walid). Her mother, Christine Holcomb-Mott, recounted that the boy "said that Christians will burn in hellfire. That's what they are teaching this baby." Paulin-Ramirez's stepfather, George Mott, also a convert to Islam, said of young Walid: "He's in an Islamic school. They're teaching him hate."

According to Mott, the boy told him: "We are building pipes [pipe bombs], like the Fourth of July!" And he asked Paulin-Ramirez: "What are you going to do, strap a bomb on and blow up something?"

Her answer was direct: "If necessary, yes."

Direct, yes, and chilling, because nothing is being done about it. Law enforcement and government authorities assume, without any evidence to support their assumption, that the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the U.S. reject and abhor such perspectives. Yet despite their protestations of moderation, American Muslim advocacy groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) have done absolutely nothing to develop any response to the Islamic "radicalism" that converts to Islam encounter on the Internet - or in American mosques.

The one thing that can and should be done would be to call American Muslim groups to account, and demand that they institute in mosques and Islamic schools comprehensive, honest, verifiable programs teaching against the jihad doctrine and Islamic supremacism.

But officials will never do this. They would prefer to pretend that the jihad doctrine and Islamic supremacism do not exist. And so we will see many more desperate American housewives becoming Jihad Janes and Jihad Jamies.

We're not talking "interior spiritual struggle," either. "Purported al-Awlaki message calls for jihad against U.S.," by Paula Newton for CNN, March 17:

London, England (CNN) -- American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki is calling for jihad against America, claiming "America is evil" in a new audio message obtained exclusively by CNN.

"With the American invasion of Iraq and continued U.S. aggression against Muslims, I could not reconcile between living in the U.S and being a Muslim, and I eventually came to the conclusion that jihad against America is binding upon myself just as it is binding on every other Muslim," he says in the recording that runs more than 12 minutes.

Al-Awlaki is believed to be hiding out in hills of southern Yemen with the protection of his very powerful family tribe.

CNN could not authenticate the recording as being by al-Awlaki, but sources have told CNN that they believe the voice on the recording is him and that the recording is genuine.

Al-Awlaki's voice in the recording is measured and clear as he takes on the cadence of a preacher. He singles out Muslim Americans for a provocative message:

"To the Muslims in America, I have this to say: How can your conscience allow you to live in peaceful co-existence with a nation that is responsible for the tyranny and crimes committed against your own brother and sisters? How can you have your loyalty to a government that is leading the war against Islam and Muslims?" [...]

But as Pamela Geller says: "They can cut a thousand, a million tongues, but you can't cut out the truth about Islamic jihad."

Attackers kill 12 in latest Nigeria fighting," by Jon Gambrell for Associated Press, March 17 (thanks to Pamela):

LAGOS, Nigeria - Attackers killed 12 people Wednesday morning in a small Christian village in central Nigeria, officials said, cutting out most of the victims' tongues in the latest violence in a region where religious fighting already has killed hundreds this year.

The attack almost mirrored the tactics used by those who carried out similar massacres in Christian villages last week when more than 200 people were slaughtered.

Under the cover of darkness and a driving rain, raiders with machetes entered the village of Byie early Wednesday, setting fire to homes and firing gunshots into the air to drive frightened villagers into the night, witness Linus Vwi said.

"It was raining. They took that advantage," Vwi said.

Vwi said he and about 20 neighbors rushed into the surrounding wilderness, cowering in bushes as they listened to screams.

He said the attackers spoke Fulani, a language used mostly by Muslim cattle herders in the region. Officials and witnesses blamed Fulani herders for the killings last week.

Fulani community leader Sale Bayari denied that Fulanis took part in those killings, though he said the community suffered a similar massacre recently.

Six people were wounded in the overnight raid and taken to a local hospital, said Mark Lipdo, leader of a regional Christian nonprofit group. He said attackers burned down 15 homes during the violence.

The dead included seven women, four children and one man, Lipdo said. Attackers removed the tongues of most of the victims, witnesses said.

It was unclear why attackers took the victims' tongues. In Nigeria, killers sometimes take body parts of their victims for black magic or "juju" rituals, later using them as charms.

Attacks this month come after more than 300 people -- mostly Muslim -- were killed in January violence in the nearby city of Jos and its surrounding villages....

Much as AP would like to portray this as an outbreak of ethnic or religious violence in which both sides are equally at fault, in reality the Muslims have been the aggressors all along. The last paragraph quoted above is simply a lagniappe about retaliatory violence, inserted so as to avoid appearances of "Islamophobia."

In Pakistan, jihadists are folk heroes. And so is Adolf Hitler, for largely the same reasons: genocidal Jew-hatred, militarism, etc. Yet the execrable libelblogger Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs had the mendacious temerity to smear anti-jihadists as neo-Nazis. "The Führer Cult: Germans Cringe at Hitler's Popularity in Pakistan," by Hasnain Kazim in Spiegel, March 17 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Germans are popular in India and Pakistan, but not always for the right reasons. Many in South Asia have nothing but admiration for Adolf Hitler and still associate Germany with the Third Reich. Everyday encounters with the love of all things Nazi makes German visitors cringe.

Pakistan is the opposite of Germany. The mountains are in the north, the sea is in the south, the economic problems are in the west and the east is doing well. It's not hard for a German living in Pakistan to get used to these differences, but one contrast is hard to stomach: Most people like Hitler.

I was recently at the hairdresser, an elderly man who doesn't resort to electric clippers. All he has is creaky pair of scissors, a comb, an aerosol with water. He did a neat job but I wasn't entirely happy.

I said: "I look like Hitler."

He looked at me in the mirror, gave a satisfied smile and said: "Yes, yes, very nice." [...]

Sometimes it's better to keep quiet about one's German origins. It's embarrassing because people here think they're doing you a favor by expressing their admiration for the Nazi leader. I suspect most Indians and Pakistanis have no idea what this man did. They see him as the bold Führer who took on the British and Americans.

More likely, they love him because he murdered Jews, the worst enemies of the Muslims (cf. Qur'an 5:82).

In the Islamic world, not just in Pakistan but right across from Iran to northern Africa, anti-Semitic sentiment of course plays a role. Conversations with German visitors rapidly turn to the injustice being suffered by the Palestinians who were robbed of their land. [...]

A few days ago a white Mercedes built in the 1970s was driving ahead of me in the center of Islamabad carrying a family of seven. On the back was a sticker bearing a black swastika in a white circle. Underneath it read: "I like Nazi." [...]

English editions of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" can be found in bookshops even in the most remote parts of India. And Indian schoolbooks have been known to celebrate Hitler as a great leader.

Once my wife and I visited the cafe in the beautiful Hotel Imperial in New Delhi. It has a garden lined with palms, excellent tea and friendly waiters in uniforms that recall the colonial era. A young man served us. The name tag on his uniform attracted my interest so I asked him why he had this rather unusual name for an Indian man. "Oh, my parents named me after a great historic person," he explained.

The name, in black letters on a golden plate, read: Adolf.

Will the Islamophobia never end? "Iraq: Christian killed in northern city of Mosul," from AKI, March 17 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Baghdad, 17 March (AKI) - Masked gunmen on Wednesday shot dead an Iraqi Christian in the northern city of Mosul, the Assyrian Christian website Ankawa.com reported. The city has been at the centre of a number of attacks targeting Christians in recent months.

Yaqub Adam, a 54-year-old father was hit by a hail of bullets fired from a pistol with a silencer. He was murdered near the shop where he worked as a glassmaker.

It was the first Christian killing since Iraq's national elections on 7 March and came less than a week after 122 Christian families returned to Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province.

Around 800 families had left their homes in Mosul in the past few months to seek safety in villages in the surrounding province, Mosul's bishop Monsignor Emil Shimoun Nona, told Adnkronos International (AKI).

Over 40 Christians have been killed in Mosul in the past three months in bomb and gun attacks in a resurgence of the violence which killed 40 Christians and caused more than 12,000 to flee in 2008....

The Turks are irked.
The Turks are irked.
Who would dare to irk the Turks?
One who smirks, "You're genocidal jerks!"

And so now, in a move reminiscent of those who say in effect, "Say that Islam is a religion of peace or we'll kill you," the Turks are saying, "Say we didn't commit genocide against the Armenians or we will start persecuting the Armenians." And remember, the Armenian genocide itself started with mass expulsion orders. Hrayr Karapetyan, an Armenian MP, certainly sees Erdogan's statement as heralding another genocide: "The statement once again proves that there is an Armenian genocide threat in present Turkey."

"Turkey threatens to expel 100,000 Armenians over 'genocide' row," by Damien McElroy for the Telegraph, March 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Turkey has threatened to expel 100,000 Armenians from the country in response to the US branding the First World War killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as "genocide". [...]

Tensions with Armenia have recently escalated as a well-organised worldwide campaign has persuaded the American Congress and Swedish parliament to adopt resolutions condemning the incidents as "genocide".

An Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day Bill has also been put before the House of Commons and Mr Erdogan has warned Gordon Brown that relations would suffer if parliament passes it.

Turkish law already makes discussion of genocide an offence punishable by imprisonment.

"There are currently 170,000 Armenians living in our country. Only 70,000 of them are Turkish citizens, but we are tolerating the remaining 100,000," said Mr Erdogan.

"If necessary, I may have to tell these 100,000 to go back to their country because they are not my citizens. I don't have to keep them in my country." [...]

Mr Erdogan said its neighbour should distance itself from the overseas community leading the lobbying.

He said: "Armenia has an important decision to make. It should free itself from its attachment to the diaspora. Any country which cares for Armenia, namely the US, France and Russia, should primarily help Armenia to free itself from the influence of the diaspora."

But yesterday there was uproar in Armenai [sic] over the suggestion of deportations. Hrayr Karapetyan, an Armenian MP, condemned Mr Erdogan's remarks as blackmail.

"The statement once again proves that there is an Armenian genocide threat in present Turkey, thus world community should pressurise Ankara to recognise [the] genocide," he said....

Patrick Sookhdeo's book Global Jihad: The Future in the Face of Militant Islam came out in 2007, and no book before or since has rivaled it as a single-volume resource for Islamic teachings on jihad. That makes this book truly essential reading for anyone who is tired of the politically correct fog of misinformation that envelops us everywhere about the threat we are facing, and who wants to know the truth.

The scope and range of this book is unique. Sookhdeo, who has won justified renown in Britain for his stands in defense of human rights against Islamic supremacism, opens the book with an evaluation of some of the fashionable explanations for Islamic jihad terrorism: the legacy of colonialism, poverty, demographic pressures, local political conflicts, Israel and the Palestinians, a loss of identity among alienated and marginalized youth, honor and shame, the Western invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the war on terror and other issues relating to Western foreign policy, the corrupt secular West and its polluting impact, and many others. Then he reproduces a question that a Muslim journalist in the U.K. asked after the July 7, 2005 jihad bombings in London: "Why was it four Muslims who blew themselves up? Why have other marginalised communities not produced suicide bombers?"

Then Sookhdeo answers the question: "The answer to this question lies in the legitimacy that the Muslim source texts, classical Islamic theology, and paradigmatic early Muslim history give to violence against non-Muslims and to the ways in which modern Islamists, drawing on these sources, have formed ideologies which justify violence in a modern context."

Global Jihad then supplies key extracts from the Qur'an and Hadith, as well as from the teachings of early Islamic scholars and jurists from the various Sunni and Shi'ite madhahib -- and they teach, with a remarkable unanimity, the necessity for Muslims to wage war against unbelievers and subjugate them under the rule of Islamic law. Sookhdeo also explains key Islamic doctrines related to that of jihad, including the dar al-Islam/dar al-harb division and the idea that the whole world belongs to Muslims and is only rightly ruled by an Islamic state. He traces the historical development of the theology of jihad, delineates the types of jihad and their objectives, and relates the jihad doctrine to both Sunni and Shi'ite eschatology. This book even contains expositions of Islamic theology regarding matters attendant to jihad, such as the treatment of prisoners and the acceptability of beheading. There are also illuminating sections on the doctrine of taqiyya, the sufferings of dhimmi populations subjugated within the Islamic state, and the Islamic justification for suicide bombing.

But this is much more than simply a book of illuminating Islamic theological and legal texts, however useful these are. Sookhdeo surveys the contemporary Muslim debate on the nature of jihad, profiles modern-day reformers (and some who claimed the title with less than convincing justification for doing so), and explores various responses to modern-day jihad activity.

So this book is a uniquely useful resource for anyone who wants to understand what we are up against, right? Right. So it was no surprise when Sookhdeo began to be attacked by those who want to make sure that non-Muslim Westerners do not come to a clear understanding of the threat we face. The venomous antisemite and historical revisionist Ben White attacked the book in an odd review that noted correctly that Sookhdeo contended that "the primary motivation of terrorists and suicide bombers is theological" and then purported to refute that contention not by showing that Sookhdeo had misrepresented Islamic theology, but that jihadists cited political issues in their communiques -- thus demonstrating only that Ben White has no clue whatsoever about the inherently political character of Islamic theology.

This was enough, however, for the Islamic supremacist blogger Yusuf Smith (Indigo Jo), who showed up here a few years back in a most illuminating exchange (read the comments), to dub Sookhdeo "the Sookhdevil" -- resulting in Sookhdeo being threatened with death by some of Indigo Jo's coreligionists. Yusuf did not, of course, call them devils.

It was all par for the course -- and showed in a particularly vivid manner that Global Jihad, as meticulously researched and exhaustively documented as it is, is right on the mark.

"Good women are obedient....As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them." -- Qur'an 4:34

But...but...doesn't Qaher Sharif know that Islam protects women's rights? He must be some kind of Islamophobe!

"Algeria: Prison for Violent Husbands Is Against Koran, Mufti," from ANSAmed, March 15 (thanks to Block Ness):

(ANSAmed) - ALGIERS, MARCH 15 - The proposal to introduce prison terms for men who beat their wives goes against the Koran and the teachings of the prophet Mohamed, according to the head of Algeriàs Superior Islamic Council. Qaher Sharif fiercely criticised the bill presented to the head of state Abdelaziz Bouteflikàs by the head of the Consultative Council on Human Rights Farouk Qustantiti. "This man's aim is to violate a law of the Koran and of the Sunnah, and he meddles in subjects that are beyond his competence", Sharif said in an interview with the Arab-language edition of the daily newspaper El Khabar. "Hés done it before with the death penalty, and now with beatings," he added, asking "what difference can it make to him what goes on between a man and his wife?" The President of the Islamic Council said that he was stunned by Qustantinìs proposal, because "God has already pointed out precisely the way that a husband must behave towards his wife". He quoted verses 34 and 35 of the Surah on women, in which men are advised to "admonish women, confine them to their bed and beat them" should they commit "nushooz", a term signifying both infidelity and a refusal of sexual intercourse. Sharif pointed out that the text is so precise that it indicates the method of punishment to be used against the wife, and that this should be neither "too insistent, nor provoke disfigurement".

But the protests, the cries of racism and "Islamophobia," are sure to come -- and then Quebec authorities are likely to cave. "Muslims seeking female clerk can 'line up again,'" by Graeme Hamilton for the National Post, March 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

MONTREAL -- In recent years, the few fully veiled Muslim women who had dealings with Quebec's health-insurance board could choose to be served by a woman to avoid exposing their faces to a man outside their family.

But in the latest example of the province's growing resistance to the accommodation of minority religious practices, the insurance board on Tuesday announced the end of the policy after the provincial human rights commission said it has no duty to acquiesce.

"From now on, for a woman who is veiled with a niqab or a burka and comes to our office asking to be photographed by a woman, the answer is no," said Marc Lortie, spokesman for the Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec. "Line up again, or come back another day." [...]

"If you want to integrate into Quebec society, here are our values," Immigration Minister Yolande James told reporters last week. "We want to see your face." Ms. Ahmed has filed a complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission. [...]

"Generally speaking, staff at Ontario service centres are very aware of cultural requirements and diversity and we do our best to accommodate individual situations," said Alan Cairns, a spokesman for the Ministry of Government Services.

The furor over the still rarely seen niqab is a clear sign that Quebec's debate over the "reasonable accommodation" of religious and ethnic minorities has returned with full force....

Yep. And it's going to keep on returning.

They have tried to defend themselves by saying they only were waging jihad, and jihad is not illegal in Pakistan. "Pakistani court charges 5 Americans with terrorism," by Zarar Khan for Associated Press, March 17 (thanks to Visvas):

ISLAMABAD - A Pakistani court charged five young Americans on Wednesday with planning terrorist attacks in the South Asian country and conspiring to wage war against nations allied with Pakistan, their defense lawyer said.

The men -- all Muslims from the Washington, D.C., area -- pleaded not guilty to a total of five charges, the most severe of which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison, defense lawyer Hasan Dastagir told The Associated Press....

The men, aged 19 to 25, were charged by an anti-terrorism court inside a prison in Sargodha, the city in Punjab province where they were arrested in December. They were reported missing by their families in November after one left behind a farewell video showing scenes of war and casualties and saying Muslims must be defended.

Their lawyer has said they were heading to Afghanistan and had no plans to stage attacks inside Pakistan.

The court also charged the men with planning attacks on Afghan and U.S. territory, said Dastagir. The charges did not specify what was meant by U.S. territory but could be a reference to American bases or diplomatic outposts in Afghanistan.

The men also were charged with contributing cash to banned organizations to be used for terrorism and with directing each other to commit terrorist acts.

"This last charge carries life in prison while the rest of the charges have lesser punishments," Dastagir said....

"Malcolm Moss, national chair of the Prison Officers' Association, said: "We are seeing more and more Muslim gangs in our prisons. Often Muslims who go to prison are forced into gangs for their own protection. And that culture takes over a wing, takes over an area of the prison. We see it as a real danger, now and for the future of prisons." -- from an article here

Notice how Malcolm Moss, though he is not one of those denying the problem of the takeover of British prisons by Muslim prisoners, can't quite state head-on what the real worry is.

For example, these Muslims who take over in prisons constitute a "real danger" -- but not just, as Moss states, "now and for the future of prisons." They constitute a danger, much more importantly, for all of British and, indeed, for the Western societies within which, as holders of British passports, they can now freely move and operate . After all, eventually most prisoners are released. And those who were Muslim to begin with, but perhaps did not take Islam quite to heart, have had a chance in prison to take it quite to heart. And what is more disturbing is that those who entered prison as non-Muslims, but accepted Islam in order to avoid being treated brutally by Muslim fellow prisoners, may -- rather than simply slough it off as they would their prison garb, once they are again out in the world -- come out as True Believers. Often what begins as an act of protective coloration ends up transforming the person who started out thinking he was merely making a temporary compromise in order to stay alive -- and that means he, and others like him, will emerge as Muslims, but Muslims who even when they were non-Muslims were at war with society and its norms.

Comments by David G. Littman, NGO Representative to the United Nations in Geneva: Association for World Education (AWE) and the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ) :

The following joint statement was drafted & delivered by DGL for WUPJ on 16 March:

* * * * *

WORLD UNION FOR PROGRESSIVE JUDAISM

United Nations Human Rights Council -13th session (1-26 March 2010)
Statement by David G. Littman - Tuesday (am) 16 March 2010 (22nd meeting)
President (Chair): Ambassador Alex Van Meeuwen (Belgium)
Item 4: Human Rights situations that require the Council's attention

Sir, there is a serious human rights principle that requires the Council's urgent attention now.

We would remind all delegates of that fateful period of appeasement in the 1930s when the League of Nations closed down soon after the new grandiose Palais des Nations had opened. While fear stalked the streets of Europe, on the stage of history, a mad leader (Führer) was allowed to run amok.

One man was not blinded by duplicity or fear and he spoke out for freedom at that moment of truth. In a 28 June 1939 speech [Carlton Club, London], Winston Churchill used a metaphoric image that is pertinent today when related to a controversial president who constantly reiterates - while seeking nuclear power - that another Member State should be "wiped off the map". And there is another OIC leader-for-life who has called for our host country to be split into pieces - and then went further with a ghoulish call for a Jihad against Switzerland - and all this in defiance of the UN Charter - article 2:4

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state or in any manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

Who knows how many demented Jihadist bombers might be tempted by these religious-sounding calls to seek 'martyrdom' - and an irresistible heavenly reward - by trying to blow up the UN corridors of power. Churchill's words on Hitler relate to this mania which requires the Council's urgent attention:

Is he going to blow up the world or not? The world is a very heavy thing to blow up! An extraordinary man at a pinnacle of power may create a great explosion, and yet the civilised world may remain unshaken. The enormous fragments and splinters may clatter down upon his own head and destroy him...but the world will go on.

As threats against Member States are also an attack on the human right to life, the Human Rights Council has a sacred duty to condemn such unacceptable calls to Jihad, which are in total violation of the Purposes of the UN Charter and of the International Bill of Human Rights. They should be severely reprimanded by this Council and by other UN bodies and persons.

Silence here & now would make of us all the accomplices of terrorism and tyranny.

Thank you Mr President.

As always, what's standing in the way here is Muhammad's own example -- a "beautiful pattern of conduct," per Qur'an 33:21. Muhammad married Aisha when she was six, and consummated the marriage when she was nine. For this cleric, condemning child marriage would thus run the risk of implying Muhammad did something wrong, or that his example is less relevant for Muslims in modern times. In a land where churches are firebombed over the use of the word "Allah," one can imagine there being some fallout over that.

In any event, keeping the status quo on child marriage laws lets the Sharia-inclined have it both ways: there is a symbolic law on the books for the sake of appearances, but a religious loophole to get around it in practice.

"Malaysian minister rejects child marriage reform," from Agence France-Presse, March 16:

KUALA LUMPUR -- Malaysia's religion minister on Tuesday defended Islamic laws that allow girls under 16 to marry, amid a controversy over two youngsters who were married off to middle-aged men.

The issue has flared in Malaysia after reports that two girls aged 10 and 11 were wed in the conservative northern state of Kelantan last month. They have now been removed from their husbands.

Rights groups have called for the reform of Islamic laws that allow marriage under the age of 16 if religious officials give their consent. Sharia law runs in parallel with civil law in multi-ethnic Malaysia.

"There is no need to amend the law," Jamil Khir Baharom, a cabinet minister in charge of religious affairs, told reporters.

"The law already exists... marrying someone aged 16 and below requires the consent of the court. The court does not simply grant the consent," he said.

"Maturity is a subjective question. It depends on the development of the person. Maturity is not based on age solely."

But 11 years old is 11 years old.

Pressure group Sisters in Islam has called for an end to child marriages, saying the practice was "unacceptable" but continued in Malaysia because of a "belief that Muslim girls can be married off once they reach puberty".

"The minimum age of marriage for Muslim girls must be raised to 18 to be in compliance with the Child Act which defines children as those below the age of 18," it said in a statement.

Other citizens in the multicultural country -- where the population is dominated by Muslim Malays -- are not permitted to marry before the age of 18.

Malaysian authorities are investigating the case of the two girls in Kelantan, both linked to a man who is accused of leading an Islamic cult.

He is accused of marrying the 11-year-old girl and giving away his 10-year-old daughter to a family friend.

Sharia court officials told the New Straits Times Tuesday the 11-year-old's marriage was not approved in court.

But if it had been, a grown man's marriage to an eleven-year-old could have been quite alright under the law.

The girl was found outside a mosque in the nation's capital over the weekend and is now being treated in hospital.

Women, family and community development minister Shahrizat Abdul Jalil has spoken out against the practice.

"A child of that age does not have the choice or capacity to give her full consent and, as such, child marriage is viewed within the context of force and coercion," she said in a statement to AFP.