Jihad Watch

Cab drivers who refuse service according to Islamic strictures are engaging in false advertising if they style themselves as a regular taxi service, which would be expected to admit service animals. They may well also be in breach of contract with their licensing authority. "Muslim cab driver refuses guide dog in Letchworth," from The Advertiser, February 2 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

A blind man says he was refused use of a taxi in Letchworth because the Muslim driver would not allow his guide dog in the car.

Stevenage resident Sean Dilley had been at Letchworth Sports and Tennis Club in

Muddy Lane with his guide dog Chipp on Sunday evening for a blind tennis demonstration.

Friends had organised for a taxi driver to pick up the 29-year-old after the event and take him back to Letchworth rail station.

But when the driver arrived shortly after 7pm to pick him up, he refused to let Sean and Chipp in the car.

"The driver turned up and said you are more than welcome but I’m not taking your dog," said Sean, who has been blind for 15 years.

"He said it was because he was a Muslim. I was horrified. This sort of thing happens all the time and it’s not acceptable."

The debate between Sean and the driver was caught on camera by a friend.

It has been reported that some strands of Islam teach that dogs should be avoided because the animal's saliva is considered to be impure.

Sean is a freelance broadcaster and parliamentary lobby correspondent for talkSPORT and last year made a film for the BBC’s Daily Politics show highlighting how many businesses and restaurants refused entry to guide dogs.

He called the taxi firm Gary’s Taxis to complain but was told the driver was within his rights.

But Sean believes that the driver was breaking disability discrimination law by refusing to take them and has reported the matter to North Herts Council, which licenses taxis in the district.

"I have a lot of energy and I know the law, and yet I find battling this sort of thing exhausting," he said.

"There must be many elderly or vulnerable people who can’t do that and just put up with it.

"Often it’s difficult to prove what happened though but this time we’ve got video evidence of what happened."

The Advertiser was unable to contact the taxi driver and Gary’s Taxis would only say "It’s a matter between the council and the driver."

Cllr Bernard Lovewell, the council’s portfolio holder for housing and environmental health, said: "We are currently investigating a complaint regarding an alleged incident with a North Herts licensed hackney carriage driver and a customer with a guide dog.

"Until we have concluded the investigation we cannot comment further.

"We would like to reassure residents that council-licensed taxi drivers should not refuse a blind or partially sighted person from getting in to their taxi on the grounds that they wish an assistance dog to accompany them."

Should not, or must not?

This is all the more disturbing following a similar recent incident in which a video conference with Salman Rushdie at a literary fair had to be called off.

Behavior that is rewarded is repeated, and society will be poorer for it as dissent becomes physically dangerous. "After Muslim protests, Kolkata Book Fair cancels Taslima Nasrin book launch," by Molly Driscoll for the Christian Science Monitor, February 2:

After receiving threats, the Kolkata Book Fair canceled the launch of Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin’s new autobiography "Nirbasan," which had been scheduled to debut at the fair this week. Muslim leaders had protested her appearance there because of one of Nasrin’s previous books, titled “Lajja” (translated to “Shame”), which has been viewed by some of the Muslim faith as offensive.

Nasrin has enraged them before by demanding women's rights. Two people died in riots over her article "Let's Think About the Burqa" in 2010. In that article, she called for women to burn their burqas, and noted:

"Some 1,500 years ago, it was decided for an individual's personal reasons that women should have purdah and since then millions of Muslim women all over the world have had to suffer it," and: "Why are women covered? Because they are sex objects. Because when men see them, they are roused. Why should women have to be penalised for men's sexual problems? Even women have sexual urges. But men are not covered for that."

The CSM report continues:

Tridib Chatterjee, the secretary for the Publishers and Booksellers Guild, which is in charge of the Kolkata Book Fair, told The New York Times that the launch was canceled not only because of threats received, but because the AC Hall, the space where the launch was to take place, was not prepared.

“We took the decision to cancel the book launch in the larger interests of the people,” Chatterjee told The New York Times. “We cannot jeopardize the safety and security of thousands of visitors to the book fair.”

The launch then took place at the stall of the People’s Book Society, the publishing company that was releasing Nasrin’s new book, though not in connection with the fair's organizers. Other authors at the book fair, including writer Nabarun Bhattacharya, launched the book at the stall unofficially. A rally occurred later at the fair, protesting the threats against Nasrin.

Nasrin was forced to flee her home country of Bangladesh in 1994 after the release of "Lajja" provoked attacks and death threats. She lived in Europe and North America for some time before moving to Kolkata, but after being attacked again and becoming the subject of riots due to a fatwa against her in the city, she moved to New Delhi, and then left India for Sweden after she said some members of the police force told her to leave the country.

Nasreen said she was taken aback that the cancellation had not prompted more outrage from the city’s residents.

“Are Kolkatans becoming cowards?” she asked the Times of India.

All totalitarian states have an edge of comic-opera absurdity, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is certainly no different. "Cardboard cut-out Ayatollah Khomeini tours Tehran," from the BBC, February 3 (thanks to David):

As the countdown to the 33rd anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution gets under way, a cardboard cut-out version of the revolution's founder has gone on a tour of the capital city, Tehran.

The idea was to re-enact the first moments of Ayatollah Khomeini's arrival back in the country after exile in Paris.

But within a short time jokes about the cut-out began circulating on social networking sites.

It's Friday afternoon, and as always, the devil cannot endure to be mocked. So let's have a few jokes here as well -- maybe a caption contest is in order...

Fox News Detroit ran an incredibly irresponsible, unfair and biased piece on TV last night (video above), along with a similarly flawed news article. The thrust of both is that the Mokdad family is angry about our Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference, coming up April 29 in Dearborn, Michigan. They're insisting that Jessica's murder was not an honor murder, and Fox reporter Alexis Wiley gives the impression that the only person saying it was an honor killing is Pamela Geller. Wiley doesn't bother to present any of the evidence that it was an honor killing.

So Pamela Geller posted the facts here. She also went into the comments field of the news article and left some of that evidence. What happened then was quite revealing:

Pamela Geller · New York, New York

The evidence that this was an honor killing was left out of this story. The last recorded dispute between Jessica Mokdad and her stepfather was over over the wearing of the hijab (head scarf) (http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=article&cat=Community&article=4322), which he originally forced her to wear (just as in Aqsa Parvez's honor killing). She didn't want to wear it, thereby bringing shame on him and the family. This report is typical for the mainstream media and unworthy of FOX, which, while not perfect, is generally much better than its competitors: Alexis Wiley doesn't bother to give even a shred of the evidence that it was an honor killing, and instead gives the impression that it is something I am making up. She doesn't mention that initial reports were quite clear -- a shocking thing for the mainstream media -- that her stepfather killed Jessica because she "wasn't following Islam" (report from TwinCities.com reprinted here: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/05/jessica-mokdad-islamic-honor-killing-in-michigan.html) and was "not adhering to Muslim customs" (http://www.startribune.com/local/121175819.html).

The Daily Mail reported: "Devout Muslim stalks his step-daughter over four states 'before killing her for being too Western'.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1383603/Devout-Muslim-stalks-step-daughter-states-killing-Western.html#ixzz1lIMmyrp3.

The Daily Tribune Reported: News.
Stepfather charged with murder in Warren, upset victim didn't adhere to Muslim customs.

http://www.dailytribune.com/articles/2011/05/03/news/doc4dbff0f36037f544732591.txt

And Alexis Wiley's own report for FOX Detroit reported it as an honor killing as well: Wiley reported, "He forced her to wear a traditional head scarf instead of allowing her to make that decision on her own, and when she stopped wearing a scarf, friends say he became furious."

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/alexis_wiley/20-year-old-woman-dead;-stepfather-charged-with-murder

But Wiley gives no hint of the existence of these reports or her own. Why? Who is paying off Alexis Wiley? Or is it that she is scared, intimidated, afraid to "offend Islam"? Or is it that her political correctness makes it impossible to think of Muslims as anything but victims?

Reply · 2 ·

· 13 hours ago

• 

  Kayla Chuba · Henry Ford Community College

  ok u need to leave her name out find another story! She meant alot to me and hearing this is just bull crap she is in heaven now just leave her name out of everything.You honestly have no clue what your talking about

  Reply · 3 ·

  · 13 hours ago
• 

  Pamela Geller · New York, New York

  Kayla Chuba You were her friend. You do know.
  
  FOX News, April 11, 2011 reported you saying the following:
  
  "He forced her to wear a traditional head scarf instead of allowing her to make that decision on her own, and when she stopped wearing a scarf, friends say he became furious.
  
  "She just wants to express herself the way she wants and not what he wants," said friend Kayla Chuba.
  
  That's why her friends helped her escape.
  
  "She packed up all her stuff. She told me she put it in a bush. She acted like she was taking out the garbage so he wouldn't see all her stuff packed," Chuba said.
  

  Reply ·

  · 12 hours ago
• 

  Kayla Chuba · Henry Ford Community College

  yes i know what i said but of course they didnt put everything I said. There is more to the story and its not right to use her name. Jessy loved Islam and she was very proud to be a muslim. That girl meant alot to me and to alot of people and you are hurting her family and friends this is not right and I will fight for her no matter what.

  Reply · 2 ·

  · 12 hours ago

Why did Kayla Chuba change her story? And if "they didn't put down everything [she] said," what else could she have possibly said that would mitigate the fact that he was angry with Jessica for refusing to wear the hijab (which was also the immediate cause of the honor murder of Aqsa Parvez)? Did someone speak to Kayla Chuba and tell her she needed to change her story? And why was Alexis Wiley so compliant in putting together a story that exonerated Islam from any role in the killing -- even though her new story contradicts her old one?

Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir is already wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and war crimes, and continues to be protected by the Arab League and OIC.

"Sudan bombs US-funded Bible school, forcing students, teachers to flee; US condemns attack," from the Associated Press, February 3:

NAIROBI, Kenya — Sudan’s military bombed a Bible school built by a U.S. Christian aid group, prompting students and teachers at the school to run for their lives in the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan state.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations condemned the attack.

Pictures obtained by The Associated Press on Friday showed that two stone school buildings were demolished in the attack. No one was hurt or killed despite the fact school was in session.

Ryan Boyette, a former aid worker who lives in Sudan and is now leading a team of 15 citizen journalists, spoke to a teacher at the site of Wednesday’s attack in the Nuba Mountains. The teacher, Zachariah Boulus, told Boyette that he couldn’t find his wife and children after the attack because everyone ran into the mountains for safety.

Boyette said that two of eight bombs dropped hit the school.

The Heiban Bible College was built by Samaritan’s Purse, a North Carolina-based aid group. Samaritan’s Purse President Franklin Graham said the attack was carried out by the Sudanese Air Force.

“Please pray for the safety of believers, and that God would intervene,” Graham said.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said she was outraged by what she called a “heinous” bombing.

“It was the first day of school, and the campus was full of students, teachers and families,” Rice said in a statement. “While miraculously no one was killed, this attack-involving eight bombs dropped from the air-underscores the viciousness of Sudan’s ongoing military campaign in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states.”

The Nuba Mountains have been an area of conflict between Sudan’s military and a rebel group formerly aligned with South Sudan for months. Tens of thousands of people have fled the violence. Rice said the conflict is affecting more than 500,000 people.

If the conflict continues, it could precipitate a famine, Rice said. Sudan is preventing aid groups from accessing parts of Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile states.

Regardless of the official reasons for her imprisonment, this is about apostasy, and she will almost certainly be hounded for her entire time in prison to recant her conversion to Christianity, as has been the case with Youcef Nadarkhani. Also reminiscent of Nadarkhani's case is the mountain of charges into which her apostasy has been translated: "collaboration with foreign-dependent groups, broad anti-Islamic propaganda, deceiving citizens by formation of what is called a house church, insulting sacred figures and action against national security."

The government may attempt to make the case a matter of security rather than conscience, but they are not fooling anyone -- not even themselves. "Iranian Christian convert sentenced to two years in prison," from Mohabat News, January 29 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

A Christian convert whom security authorities arrested in her home was sentenced to two years in prison by the Revolutionary Court in Tehran.

According to reports sent by reporters of Iranian Christian news agency, Mohabat News, Ms. Leila Mohammadi, a Christian convert who resided east of Tehran, was sentenced to two years of imprisonment after enduring 5 months of uncertainty in notorious Evin prison.

Her trial was held on 18 January in Revolutionary Court in Moalem street where she was charged with "collaboration with foreign-dependent groups, broad anti-Islamic propaganda, deceiving citizens by formation of what is called a house church, Insulting sacred figures and action against national security." However she was acquitted of collaboration with foreign-dependent groups because the judge believed she had done that unintentionally. For the other charges she was sentenced to two years in prison and the ruling was delivered to her.

After the verdict was issued knowledgeable sources reported that her attorney announced that the case was sent to the high court of Tehran province to be reviewed.

Leila Mohammadi, was arrested after a number of security agents raided her home on 30 July, 2011 at 10:30 P.M. in Kianshahr town, east of Tehran. The agents thoroughly searched her house and also confiscated some of her belongings.

Ms. Mohammadi was taken to Horr custody center which belongs to the Iranian police forces. From there, she was transferred to Evin prison. On 28 December 2011, she was released on a bail of 150,000 USD after 74 days in harsh conditions in solitary confinement in Evin prison.

It is being reported that some other people were also arrested in relation to this case. According to this report, some days after Ms. Mohammadi's arrest, another person called Parviz G. was also arrested by security agents. Again, in this case they thoroughly searched Parviz G's house and seized his belongings including his computer. He was freed after spending three days in Evin custody center and being subjected to interrogations and signing a disclaimer. It seems that his arrest was related to evangelical activities of his wife "Masoumeh" who was linked to the case of Leila Mohammadi.

Did he forget he just said that? "Israel a ‘cancer’ and ‘will be cut’: Iran," from Zee News, February 3:

Tehran: Iran's Supreme Leader says his country will assist any nation or group that "confronts" Israel, describing it as a "cancer”.

The remarks by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came during a Friday prayer ceremony in Tehran broadcast on state television.

Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters, says that Iran has helped the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas in their fights against Israel, and will aid others who do so.

He describes Israel as a "cancer" and says, "It will be cut."

Iran's Khamenei said the Islamic Republic would not yield to international pressure to abandon its nuclear course, threatening retaliation for sanctions aimed at Iran's oil exports.

"Threatening Iran and attacking Iran will harm America ... Sanctions will not have any impact on our determination to continue our nuclear course ... In response to threats of oil embargo and war, we have our own threats to impose at the right time," Khamenei told worshippers in a speech broadcast live on state television.

"I have no fear of saying that we will back and help any nation or group that wants to confront and fight against the Zionist regime (Israel)."...

"Radio Vatikan. The Voice of the Pope and the World Church," the German-language division of Vatican Radio, is not as politically correct as the Pope himself -- who became very quiet after apologizing for quoting the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologos, who said in 1391: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Yesterday, February 2, 2012, there were, for example, two articles about the ethnic cleansing of Christians in Africa: "Nigeria: The Muslims could do more (to stop Boko Haram)" and "Egypt: Extremists attack Copts".

I have translated the text introducing a radio programme on "Bosnia: The Ethnic Cleansing of Catholics" (from German):

Until the early nineties there lived 820,000 Christians in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Since the Balkan War broke out, their number has shrunk by nearly half, to 460,000 people. The exodus of Catholic Croats from Bosnia-Herzegovina does not stop: because of countless everyday problems, constant tension and a growing Islamic radicalism.

According to Al Jazeerah Malmö, Sweden "will be the first Scandinavian City with a Muslim majority". Twenty-two bomb explosions in three years (August 2008 to June 2011) and a long row of killings in broad daylight are typical signs of Muslim presence: Malmö is becoming Scandinavia's Baghdad.

Sweden is terrified by a long row of murders committed in broad daylight. In most cases, both the killer and the victim are Muslims. The murders should thus be seen as public executions, often happening according to the sharia's honour codes. In connection with a recent murder (the sixth in two months), Malmö's mayor stated that "The killings are a result of the parallel world that has emerged in Malmö, where some people take the right to judge that another human being deserves death."

Examples of the politically correct madness that lures the Swedes into voting for Muslim immigration:

A newspaper recently pixellated dark-skinned criminals pink, to erase their dark skin colour:

A couple of years ago a newspaper publish pixellated pictures of criminals -- so that nobody was able to recognize the people that the police were looking for help to find:

Thanks to the award-winning blog Uriasposten.net for the pictures and documentation (here and here).

Not to mention "a more hostile, more Islamic, more sensitive Middle East, one more [attuned] to public sentiment, less controlled by the regimes, and less susceptible to international influence."

There is aid and investment. We have leverage in Egypt, for example, that we do not appear to be using on any number of issues. "Some 200,000 missiles aimed consistently at Israel, top IDF officer says," by Amos Harel for Haaretz, February 2:

About 200,000 missiles are aimed at Israel at any given time, a top Israel Defense Forces officer said on Thursday, adding that Iran's ability to obtain nuclear weapons was solely dependent on the will of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

he remarks by Military Intelligence Chief Major General Aviv Kochavi came after IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz said on Wednesday that the threats facing Israel have increased and intensified in recent years due to regional instability.

Speaking to the Herzliya Conference, Gantz said that Iran's nuclear program is a "global problem and a regional problem," adding that Tehran's attempts to acquire nuclear weapons must continue to be disrupted.

On Thursday, Kochavi, speaking at the opening session of the Herzliya Conference's closing day, spoke of the growing threats Israel was facing: "a more hostile, more Islamic, more sensitive Middle East, one more attune to public sentiment, less controlled by the regimes, and less susceptible to international influence."

The chief of military intelligence then indicated that about 200,000 missiles were aimed at Israel at any given time, adding, however, that "Israel's military deterrence is intact."

Referring to Israel's concerns over Iran's nuclear ambitions, Kochavi presented a relatively tame estimation of a possible timeline en route to an Iranian atomic bomb, saying that the project depended more on the will of Iran's Supreme Leader than on any technological advancement.

"If Khamenei issues a command to achieve a first nuclear explosive device, we estimate it would take another year before that's achieved," the top IDF official said, adding that "if he asks to translate that ability to obtain a nuclear warhead, that would take another year or two."

Kochavi also reiterated the IDF estimate that Iran is in possession of more than 4 tons of low-grade enriched uranium as well as almost 100 kilograms of uranium enriched at 20%.

"If those are enriched more, to a 90% level, that would be enough for 4 atomic bombs," the IDF officer said.

The military intelligence chief added that the sanctions on Iran "are taking their toll. There's 16% unemployment, 24% annual inflation, and practically no growth," he said adding that "at this point the pressure isn’t leading Iran to a strategic shift."....

If the nuclear program were just about electricity, Iran would not be selling its people down the river. Nor would it be bending over backwards in secrecy and subterfuge just to annoy the West.

On January 29, 2012, Denmark got a new newspaper: The Short Newspaper. It was created partly as a reaction to the large amount of political correctness in the mainstream media. It is published by journalist Ralf Pittelkow and his wife Karen Jespersen, a member of parliament for a conservative party and former Minister. Together they have also published several Islam-critical books: "The power of Islam" and "Islamists and Naivists" being the latest. The Short Newspaper is only published on the internet, but has already attracted a surprisingly large amount attention. Dozens of influential and well-known writers from the Conservative establishment are contributing to the newspaper -- many of them for free. Let us hope that this great idea will spread to other countries.

Islamic schools mushroom because Muslim parents do not want their children to be exposed to non-Islamic values, and because they in general want to avoid integration into our societies. Muslim schools, Muslim nursing homes, Muslim graveyards -- and being separated from having Danish colleagues, either because of unemployment or from working alone as taxi drivers or at Muslim-only workplaces (such as pizzerias) -- makes it possible to remain almost untouched by Danish culture and non-Muslims from cradle to grave.

Translated from The Short Newspaper, January 31st 2012: "Muslims leave state schools":

More and more parents with an immigrant background are moving their children from state schools to private schools. The trend is particularly strong among Muslims, and the influx into Muslim private schools have increased sharply. In just three years, there has been an increase of 25 percent of Muslim private schools, and the number of pupils in such schools is now at nearly 4,000.

This contributes to parallel societies. Muslim children do not get together with other children at school, which is a very important contribution to integration. They come to live in their own world, which creates rifts between them and the Danish society and its values.

PETALING JAYA: Zulkifli Abdul Hir, born in Muar in 1966, was a telecommunications engineer trained in the United States.

Zulkifli, whose aliases included Marwan and Musa, was believed to be the head of the Kumpulan Mujahidin Malaysia (KMM), accused of being a senior member of the regional terror network Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and blamed for multiple bomb attacks in the Philippines.

He was a protege of JI bomb expert Dr Azahari Hussin, a Malaysian killed by an Indonesian anti-terrorism unit on Nov 9, 2005.

He was wanted for his role in leading KMM in a Southern Bank robbery in Petaling Jaya in May 2001, and the murder of Lunas assemblyman Dr Joe Fernandez and the bombing of a Hindu temple in Pudu, both in 2000.

He fled to Indonesia where he was believed to be involved in the Bali bombing in 2002, which claimed more than 200 lives. It is thought that he then escaped to Jolo Island in Southern Philippines in 2003.

In the Philippines, he cooperated with Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to attack and bomb several American interests and military bases there.

This led him to being placed in the top 10 list of the world's most wanted terrorists with a US$5mil (M15mil) bounty on his head.

He was also high on the Philippines police's wanted list after two of their personnel were killed in a clash when they attempted to approach his hideout near Manila in August 2006.

Marwan had also been accused of helping to secure funds and weapons for Abu Sayyaf from foreign donors.

In March 2010, the Philippines marines launched an assault against Marwan, killing at least seven al-Qaeda linked militants in a raid at Laminusa Island, off southern Sulu province.

However, he managed to escape.

In October last year, Marwan fled from a military assault by the Philippines, which killed three Abu Sayyaf commanders and two other militants near the Indanan town in southern Sulu province.

His brother-in-law, Taufik Abdul Halim, was caught when he tried to set off a bomb at Plaza Atrium in Jakarta in 2001.

However, he ended up losing part of his right leg when the bomb exploded prematurely.

MUAR: The mother of Jemaah Islamiyah leader Zulkifli Abdul Hir, who was killed in a raid by the Philippine authorities, wants the body of her long-lost son brought home for burial here.

Aminah Abdul Aziz, 64, who lives in Kampung Jeram Masjid in Bakri, said if it was indeed true that her son had been killed in the Philippines, she wanted the Malaysian and the Philippine authorities to help bring his body back.

“I was shocked to be informed of his death as I have not received any news or heard from him since he left home over 12 years ago.

“He was an engineer with a telecommunications company in Kuala Lumpur. But one day, he came home with his wife and three children. He told me he wanted to send his family to Kluang. Soon after that, he disappeared,” she said at her house.

Zulkifli, also known as Marwan, had a RM15mil bounty on his head and was among those killed during a raid in a militant camp on a southern Philippine island yesterday.

Aminah, who now lives with an Indonesian maid, said she had prayed every day for Marwan's return, hoping that her son would leave the Jemaah Islamiyah struggle.

She said she had been told by relatives and some police personnel that her son had joined the regional terrorist network some years back and was living in the Philippines.

“If it is true that he has died, please bring his body home to Muar,” she appealed.

Those who think that financial sanctions or an oil embargo can stop the desire of Muslims to acquire nuclear weapons are simply wrong, or perhaps blind and deaf.

Iran continues to enrich uranium, creating components for a nuclear bomb. It threatens to destroy entire countries, and at the same time wants to prove to the world community and the International Atomic Energy Agency experts that it is not constructing a nuclear bomb.

The fate of not only the Middle East region but the entire world depends on how we evaluate this problem.

Immediately the question arises: if Iran is not making a nuclear bomb, why impose financial sanctions?

If we believe that the Iranian nuclear program has a military character, financial sanctions and an oil embargo will not stop it. They are very easy to bypass.

Iran shares borders with several countries with which it has if not beautiful relationships, then at least normal ones.

Turkey openly opposed the oil embargo. Azerbaijan, although it understood the threat of Iranian domination, could not resist this. Central Asian countries and other countries in the Caspian Basin, "known for their democracy," have well-established economic, financial, and military ties with Iran. These ties are not now being destroyed, as their destruction would not be in accord with how those countries understand their best interests.

President Barack Hussein Obama has been pretending that he is opposed to Iran's nuclear program. If the current U.S. administration really wanted to isolate the Iranian financial system or to impose an embargo on oil from Iran, the first area where it would try to negotiate would be with Iran's neighbors.

What kind of blockade may be involved, when no one knows whether imported Iranian crude oil is going to Russia, Azerbaijan and Georgia? Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, Iran's neighbors on the Caspian basin, also have economic and political interests in the region. Iranian financial institutions have branches in all these countries. Iranian petrochemical dealers are among the top sellers who do business in these markets of petroleum stations.

For example, Iranian banker Saeid Balehtjoo has a senior Iranian bank in Azerbaijan, "Royal Bank." He also has a seat on the stock exchange of Turkmenistan. See also here. This bank has close contacts with terrorist organizations and their money launderers. I met Saeid Balehtjoo in Baku. He actively supported the jihad in the North Caucasus.

I can cite only one example of how the Iranians can circumvent financial sanctions from the West, but I think this will be enough to understand that this is possible. How can they avoid sanctions? It is very easy...

For example, a few months ago, the Georgian media actively discussed a big deal. The Iranian Central Bank wanted to purchase one of the prosperous banks in Georgia. After the U.S. administration announced that it may establish sanctions against the Iranian Central Bank, Georgian businessmen still maintained close ties with Iran, and others from Azerbaijan also engaged in this business. Of course, this could not have been done without the knowledge of each country's leadership. Many businessmen involved in the Caucasus deal with Iran but then conceal their activities. No action against on Iran's neighbors and no sanctions can bring about the desired result.

Portal izrus.co.il recently reported: "The head of Israeli military intelligence (AMAN), Major-General Aviv Kohavi, said today that Iran has a quantity of enriched uranium enough to produce four nuclear bombs, as well as 200,000 ballistic missiles. The Iranian threat to Israel is more obvious than ever, Kohavi said."

Will the sanctions stop the mullahs and Ahmadinejad? You be the judge...

A side note: On January 30, Georgia's President Saakashvili met with President Obama. It is interesting that now in Georgia a very topical theme is the construction of the mosque of Sultan Aziz. Saakashvili is trying to imitate Obama. For several years there has been a dispute over whether to build the mosque or not, but it was during Saakashvili's visit to America that the Georgian government declared that the mosque would be built. This is a Georgian version of the Ground Zero mega-mosque in the center of Batumi. Its construction shows the negative influence of Barack Hussein Obama on Georgian authorities.

"Liberals were the big losers" -- that is, those who believe in a freer society, not totalitarian-minded Western liberals. Yet the learned analysts and deceiving Islamic supremacists still applaud the "Arab Spring" transformation of the Middle East, despite the Sharia horrors that are in the offing -- or maybe because of them.

"Islamist-led opposition wins majority in Kuwait," from AFP, February 3:

KUWAIT CITY — Kuwait's Islamist-led opposition has won a landslide majority in Kuwait's snap polls by securing 34 seats in the 50-member parliament, officials results released on Friday showed.

Sunni Islamists took 23 seats compared with just nine in the dissolved parliament, while liberals were the big losers, winning only two places against five previously.

No women were elected, with the four female MPs of the previous parliament all losing their seats.

Voters punished pro-government MPs, reducing them to a small minority, especially 13 former MPs who were questioned by the public prosecutor over corruption charges.

The opposition scored strongly in the two tribal-dominated constituencies, winning 18 of the 20 available seats. Kuwait is divided into five electoral districts, with each electing 10 lawmakers.

Minority Shiites who form about 30 percent of the native population saw their representation reduced to seven MPs from nine, with four of them from Islamist groups.

The snap polls were held after the ruler of the oil-rich Gulf state dissolved parliament following youth-led protests and after bitter disputes between the opposition MPs and the government.

The protests also led to the resignation of the former prime minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmad al-Sabah, who was later replaced by another senior member of the ruling family.

OPEC member Kuwait has been rocked by a series of political crises over the past six years, leading to the resignation of seven governments and dissolution of parliament on four occasions.

“It’s not a crime to marry the person we want to. But back home, our elders think women are their property. We can’t do things we want to do."

"Insult and honour: Tribal predators hunting down newlyweds in Karachi," from the Express Tribune, February 2 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

KARACHI: Back home, Z and N saw their siblings dragged outside, shot in broad daylight, and buried at night without a funeral—so that their family could continue to live with ‘honour’ in the village and amid the clan.

Now in Karachi, the couple hides in a one-room house in a wholly unfamiliar neighbourhood. They fear a similar fate.

“My family declared us karo kari just because I married of my own choice,” said 23-year-old Z, bursting into tears. “We have come to Karachi for protection.”

Couples who choose to marry of their own free will and in return are declared untouchables for ‘defaming’ the family name, are leaving their hometowns in rural Sindh to seek refuge in the metropolis. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan states that during the last two months, around five married couples have fled to Karachi from Jacobabad, Larkana and Sukkur. Z who hails from Naudero, and her husband from Shikarpur, are the fifth couple, who came here earlier this month.

Their tale is not a typical love story. They did not fall in love in lush green fields but met only at family gatherings and talked occasionally on the phone. However, the decision to spend their lives together came abruptly when Z’s father decided to marry her to a 60-year-old man in exchange for a hefty amount.

On the night of January 12, Z escaped from home, boarded a bus and got married to N in Sukkur the next morning. “We sent our marriage certificate to our families hoping that they would be happy for us,” N says. “While my family reluctantly accepted, Z’s family called a jirga and declared us karo kari.” They wanted them to be brought back and killed.

Years ago, Z’s pregnant sister met a similar fate after she overslept on her train and missed her stop. The family accused her of running away from home with a lover. On the other hand, N’s brother, who was in the army, was killed only because he liked a girl from another clan.

Thus, for Z and N, the only choice they had was to come to Karachi, and file a petition in the Sindh High Court, seeking protection. But the danger is not over. They do not go outside as the people hunting for them have reached the city.

“It’s not a crime to marry the person we want to. But back home, our elders think women are their property. We can’t do things we want to do. At least in the city, we can breathe freely,” said Z from behind her burqa, perhaps the thinnest protection she has for now.

Taranum Khan of the HRCP says that almost all of such killings, which took place in the city last year, were of couples who had fled their villages. “If people think that they can be safe in Karachi, they are wrong. Their families hunt them down here and kill them,” she said.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, in 2011, around eight men and five women were killed in Karachi for these very reasons. In Sindh, 227 people, 136 women, 125 men, and 13 children faced this rough form of tribal justice....

Still more converts to Islam misunderstand their new, peaceful religion. And yet, despite the frequency of such instances, no one, anywhere, is calling upon Muslims to institute instruction classes for converts to Islam to help safeguard them from this curious misunderstanding. "German converts plead guilty to smuggling bomb instructions into Britain," by Duncan Gardham for the Telegraph, February 2:

Two German Islamic converts have pleaded guilty attempting to smuggle the same bomb-making instructions used by the London Stock Exchange bombers into Britain.

Christian Emde, 28, and Robert Baum, 24, from Solingen in Western Germany were stopped as they entered the country on a ferry to Dover in July.

Sources told the Daily Telegraph the men were on a watch list because they were active in extremist circles in Germany.

They eventually told police they were traveling to London and Birmingham to meet unnamed individuals.

A search of their rucksacks revealed a large quantity of extremist literature stored on a hard drive and a laptop computer, including an article called “How to make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom,” from the al-Qaeda magazine, Inspire.

The same recipe for a pipe bomb was used by the four men who pleaded guilty this week to plotting to blow up the London Stock Exchange.

The men were said to have a “passion for guns” and their backpacks contained numerous gun manuals written in English, Arabic and German.

Other articles included “39 ways to support jihad” by Anwar al-Awlaki, one of the former leaders of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular who was killed in a drone attacks last year.

Another article was entitled “The Ultimate Mowing Machine” and described how blades could be fixed to a truck to cut down pedestrians.

Emde had “vast quantities of Jihad and terrorism booklets and pamphlets” an earlier hearing was told and Baum had “similar but fewer articles.”

Both men are Islamic converts. Emde converted in 2003 and Baum two to three years ago.

Emde was the moderator of a website in Germany which opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was said to have an “interest in terrorism” but claims he did not download the material to distribute it or for the purposes of terrorism.

Timothy Green, for Emde, said the material was "freely available" on the internet and was thought not to be illegal in Germany.

At their preliminary hearing, the men refused to stand up to face the charges.

Speaking through an interpreter Baum said: "To stand up would be an act of worship which is forbidden in Islam.”...

Sitting down in an Infidel court is an act of piety, as is murdering Infidels.

In my Crisis column this week I review Ibn Warraq's extraordinary new book, Why the West Is Best:

Why the West is Best: A Muslim Apostate’s Defense of Liberal Democracy. By Ibn Warraq, Encounter Books, 286 pages, $19.

One principal reason why the Islamic jihad is advancing with such confidence around the world today is because its chief competitor, the West, has lost its nerve. The iron and unquestionable dogma of multiculturalism has eaten away at its self-confidence and left only a relativism that walks to the brink of excusing genocide. Instead of defending its principles of liberal democracy and attempting to convince the Islamic world of their virtue and utility, the U.S. and Europe appear to stand for no principle more noble or compelling than majority rule. If, in any given country, a regime takes power dedicated to implementing a vision for society that is absolutely opposed to basic notions of human dignity and human rights, that’s fine with Washington and Brussels, as long as the majority voted for it.

And so the U.S. intervened military in Iraq and Afghanistan only to oversee the adoption of constitutions in both countries that enshrine Sharia as the highest law of the land. This was tantamount to tacit U.S. approval for stonings, amputations, restrictions on the freedom of speech and freedom of conscience, and the institutionalized discrimination against women and non-Muslims, since all of this is mandated under Sharia. Anything else, particularly any defense of the humane values of Judeo-Christian and/or Catholic civilization such as was once mounted against the Communist bloc on Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America, would have been seen as ethnocentric and parochial.

But now a man of the East who came to the West as a youth and gradually realized that it stood for a vision of the human person and human society that far surpassed anything in his native culture has written a courageous and insightful new book that shows that the West can and should stand for more than mere head-counting, and above all, should stand up for itself: Ibn Warraq’s Why the West is Best: A Muslim Apostate’s Defense of Liberal Democracy.

Ibn Warraq is a Pakistani ex-Muslim who writes under a pseudonym as a consequence of Islam’s death penalty for apostasy – and because his previous books have roused the ire of Islamic hardliners. His 1995 manifesto, Why I Am Not A Muslim, was a searing criticism of the brittleness, brutality, and barbarism of Islamic culture; he followed that with a series of scholarly collections that struck at the very foundations of Islamic faith, including The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, What the Koran Really Says, and The Origins of the Koran. His work, however, is not just about what he rejects, but what he accepts: his defense of the West and its values began with the brilliant Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism and now continues with Why the West is Best.

Ibn Warraq writes with an unusual depth, elegance and breadth of erudition, enhanced by an extraordinarily perceptive eye; thus one of the most remarkable and winning chapters of a book that is remarkable and winning throughout is its first, an examination of how daily life in New York City, even in these anxious days, manifests some of Western civilization’s finest qualities: efficiency and sense of responsibility; a love for humanity and its best manifestations, such as music, humor, and intellectual curiosity; a genuine multiculturalism, and above all, a living respect for freedom. “The multifarious interests of free men and women,” he observes, “are mirrored in the extraordinary number of activities available for the enthusiast, the curious, the intellectually and culturally alert….New York stands as a concrete definition of Western civilization in its energy and creativity, its air of unlimited possibility.”

But Ibn Warraq’s notion of unlimited possibility is not mere libertinism. He notes that while “the origins of the modern West are often seen in the Enlightenment,” its cultural splendors and the habits of mind it encourages must also be traced to Athens, Rome, Jerusalem, and “Judeo-Christianity,” which “added a sense of conscience and charity, tempering justice with forgiveness, and the concept of linear rather than cyclical time, which allowed for the possibility of progress. The Middle Ages brought a deeper synthesis of Athens and Rome with Jerusalem, laying the foundations for the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, the Enlightenment, and pluralistic liberal democracy.”...

There is more.

Now, remember, these are the "moderates." That is, of course, unless they have been taken over by ancient Aztecs, as this rhetoric would tend to imply. "Palestinian kids created as 'fertilizer,' to saturate the land with blood," by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik for Palestinian Media Watch, January 31:

Dying for the sake of "Palestine" as an ideal, even for Palestinian children and youth, remains part of Palestinian discourse.

This week, official Palestinian Authority TV reported from a Fatah celebration in a refugee camp in Lebanon and chose to focus on the following slide shown at the celebration. Fatah's message was that children are created so that their blood will be "fertilizer" to saturate the land:

"Our children are our glory and honor,
they were created to be fertilizer for the land of Palestine,
and for our pure land to be saturated with their blood."

Earlier this month, a PA-Fatah celebration in Ramallah featured a performance with the same message. In front of senior PA leaders, including Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, young children and youth performed a song that included the following words:

"My pure land, I shall saturate you with my blood...
redeem you with my life."

Palestinian Media Watch has reported extensively on the PA's teaching of children to die as Martyrs for "Palestine." During the PA's terror campaign (the "Intifada," 2000-2005), the PA encouraged children to aspire for Martyrdom death as a central part of its message to children. Today, the message that children should die for "Palestine" is less prominent, but still found in PA schoolbooks and is expressed in cultural settings through song and dance. [...]

PA TV narrator: "In the refugee camp Ein Al-Hilwe [in Lebanon], a rally was held in celebration of the [47th] anniversary [of Fatah]. A political symposium was also held on the occasion of the event."

Text on slide at event:
"Our children are our honor and glory,
they were created to be fertilizer for the land of Palestine,
and for our pure land to be saturated with their blood"
[PA TV (Fatah), Jan, 24, 2012]

The following is an excerpt of a song performed by children at an event marking the 47th anniversary of the Fatah movement. PA leaders applaud kids sing "I shall saturate you with my blood... redeem you with my life":

Present at the ceremony: Prime Minister Salam Fayyad; Secretary General of the Presidential Office, Al-Tayeb Abd Al-Rahim; Secretary of the PLO Executive Council, Yasser Abd Rabbo; District Governor of Ramallah and El-Bireh Laila Ghannam; Fatah spokesman Ahmed Assaf.

Song by the Raji'in group (children and youth):

"How beautiful you are, my country
The love in my heart for you is great
You have brought up and educated
generation after generation,
You waited patiently and discovered your heroic children
Oh, my pure land, I shall saturate you with my blood
I shall live and die upon your green ground
Your ground satiates us, your goodness satisfies us
I shall redeem you with my life, oh my land
Your embrace warms us
Your ground satiates us, your goodness satisfies us
I shall redeem you with my life, oh my land
Your embrace warms us"

Applause by PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, Secretary General of the President's office Tayeb Abd Al-Rahim and PLO Secretary General Yasser Abd Rabbo.
[Live PBC broadcast from Ramallah, PA TV (Fatah), Jan. 5, 2012]

Human shields, partly for strategic purposes, and partly for propaganda purposes. "Israel: 1 in 10 houses in south Lebanon used for arms storage," from the Daily Star, February 2:

BEIRUT: Israeli Intelligence estimates that one in every 10 houses in south Lebanon serves as a missile storage facility or a launch pad for destructive devices against the Jewish state, Israel’s chief of military intelligence, Gen. Aviv Kochavi, warned Thursday at a security conference. "One in every 10 houses in south Lebanon is a storage facility for missiles or rockets or a launch pad for devices that are increasingly accurate and destructive,” AFP quoted Kochavi as saying.

South Lebanon is a major stronghold for Hezbollah, which in 2006 fought Israel in a 34-day conflict that ended following the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 that called for an end to hostiles between Lebanon and Israel.

The resolution also calls for the establishment of a zone free of armed personnel between the Blue Line and the Litani river.

"From Lebanon, Syria and of course from Iran, they can hit the heart of our cities, and the whole region of Tel Aviv is within their reach," Kochavi told those participating in the conference.

Hezbollah was not available for comments.

The Israeli general also warned his country faces growing threats from more conventional weapons, including "some 200,000 rockets and missiles," in the hands of Israel’s enemies, the agency reported.

This is not Israel’s first claim that south Lebanon is being used for attacks against it. During the 2006 July-August war between Lebanon and Israel, the Jewish state accused Hezbollah of using southern residential neighborhoods as launching pads for attacks against its army.

It has also accused the resistance group, which declared victory in the aftermath of the July war, of using southerners as human shields.

The U.N. has pressured Lebanon to disarm all non-state actors, particularly Hezbollah. In December U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon stressed the need for the implementation of U.N. resolutions that call for the disarmament of non-state actors, and said arms outside the jurisdiction of the state threaten the country’s stability.

It will take more than asking once. Hizballah is the only group from the Lebanese civil war that failed to disarm, in defiance of Resolution 1559.

Hezbollah has maintained that its arms are the only way to defend Lebanon against frequent Israeli aggression, citing the tripartite formula of the “army, the people, and the resistance” as the optimal defense strategy.

That's what the army is for -- defending Lebanon. Hizballah's arms are self-serving, also allowing them to defend themselves from the Lebanese army, if that became necessary.

This self-righteous instability will eventually impoverish the entire society, both materially, as angry mobs destroy what they will, and intellectually, as dissent becomes physically dangerous. An update on this story. "Calls to Behead Indonesian Atheist Alexander Aan," by Presi Mandari for the Jakarta Globe, February 2 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Jakarta. A defiant declaration of atheism by an Indonesian civil servant has inflamed passions in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, pitting non-believers and believers against each other.

The trouble began when civil servant Alexander Aan posted a message on the Facebook page of Atheist Minang, a group of Indonesians with godless beliefs. It read: “God doesn’t exist.”

The post so enraged residents in Aan’s hometown of Pulau Punjung in West Sumatra province that an angry mob of dozens stormed his office and beat up the 30-year-old.

To add insult to injury, police then arrested him and now want to press blasphemy charges that could see him locked up for five years.

Muslim extremists have called for Aan to be beheaded but fellow atheists have rallied round, and urged him to stand by his convictions despite the pressure.

“Dear Alex, stick to your beliefs. This country has no right to restrict your faith,” Fahd Singa Diwirja wrote on the same Facebook page, where Aan is one of the administrators.

“You’re facing narrow-minded people, but this is the true Indonesia, a fertile ground for the spread of fundamentalism,” Diwirja added, advising Aan to escape persecution by seeking asylum in a European country.

Jakarta. A defiant declaration of atheism by an Indonesian civil servant has inflamed passions in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, pitting non-believers and believers against each other.

The trouble began when civil servant Alexander Aan posted a message on the Facebook page of Atheist Minang, a group of Indonesians with godless beliefs. It read: “God doesn’t exist.”

The post so enraged residents in Aan’s hometown of Pulau Punjung in West Sumatra province that an angry mob of dozens stormed his office and beat up the 30-year-old.

To add insult to injury, police then arrested him and now want to press blasphemy charges that could see him locked up for five years.

Muslim extremists have called for Aan to be beheaded but fellow atheists have rallied round, and urged him to stand by his convictions despite the pressure.

“Dear Alex, stick to your beliefs. This country has no right to restrict your faith,” Fahd Singa Diwirja wrote on the same Facebook page, where Aan is one of the administrators.

“You’re facing narrow-minded people, but this is the true Indonesia, a fertile ground for the spread of fundamentalism,” Diwirja added, advising Aan to escape persecution by seeking asylum in a European country.

Aan has also gained the support of the US-based International Atheist Alliance.

The group, together with Atheist Minang, has written to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, calling on him to ensure that the blasphemy allegations are dropped.

“This is a law that has been used to promote mob violence and intimidation against those who do not agree with ... vigilante groups,” said the letter, copies of which were also sent to the United Nations and Human Rights Watch.

Aan’s proclamation has been removed from the page, but the Facebook group has doubled to 2,000 since the controversy made local news reports.

Most of the postings, however, are diatribes against Aan and his supporters.

“These atheists should be beheaded, that’s what they deserve,” wrote a man who identified himself as Putra Tama, a Muslim from neighboring Jambi province. [...]

Local police chief Chairul Aziz said this week that Aan, who had written on his Facebook page that he was brought up as a Muslim, had expressed his willingness to revert to Islam but that it would not be enough to escape punishment.

“He expressed his intention to convert to Islam but he has not performed an Islamic declaration of faith. Even if he does so, he still can’t escape from justice due to his blaphemous act,” Aziz said.

He said Aan could face additional charges, including falsely declaring himself a Muslim when he applied for a civil service job years ago.

There's an interesting Catch-22, considering that atheism is not legally recognized, and openly stating his beliefs got him charged with blasphemy.

The Islamic Society Forum (FUI), an umbrella group for several hard-line groups, said that a five-year jail term for Aan would not suffice. “He deserves the death penalty, even if he decides to repent. What he has done cannot be tolerated,” said Muhammad al-Khaththath, FUI’s secretary-general....

All Israel settlements violate international law, said Ban Ki-moon. All of them. And for that he got stones and shoes thrown at his car. If he had said that some settlements were acceptable, I suppose his car would have been blown up.

Gratitude to the Infidels Alert: "All talk, no action as Israel's settlements remain a sore point," by Ruth Pollard in the Sydney Morning Herald, February 3:

...Ban was clear regarding the UN's position on settlements.

''All Israeli settlements are contrary to international law … and prejudice final status issues,'' he said.

Israel ''should refrain from further settlement for the sake of ongoing peace talks''.

"UN Chief Receives Shoeing in Gaza," by Gavriel Queenann for Israel National News, February 2:

An angry crowd hurled shoes and stones at United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's convoy as it entered Hamas-run Gaza on Thursday.

The crowd also struck the vehicles with signs bearing slogans accusing Ban of bias towards Israel, among others. No one was injured in the incident and the convoy simply pushed through the crowd and sped away. Ban is visiting the region to try to jumpstart the long-stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

His visit comes on the heels of a similar failed visit by European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton who said she feared the "window for talks" was "closing." Both demanded Israel make "goodwill gestures" to the PA and Hamas while making no similar demands on officials in Ramallah and Gaza City.

Israeli officials say they are willing to restart talks without preconditions from either side immediately. However, the growing sentiment among many Israelis is that there is no good faith partner for peace on the PA side and that any agreement signed will be worthless.

PA officials continue to demand Israel agree to the pre-1967 lines, release all Arab terrorists held in Israeli prisons, and freeze construction in the 'disputed territories' for a second time before talks begin. Many Israelis see such terms as little more than total surrender before talks - and even more concessions - are undertaken in the name of peace.

On Thursday, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon responded to international pressure to restart talks and make "goodwill gestures" by saying that Israel would not make peace at the cost of its own existence....

Hizballah intends to ensure they serve their sentences in absentia as well, and there appears to be no political will in Lebanon to demand otherwise. One of those indicted has boasted that authorities know where he lives, but cannot arrest him. The track record so far calls into question whether "all reasonable steps" were really taken to bring them into custody.

"Hariri assassination suspects to be tried in absentia," from CNN, February 2:

(CNN) -- The special court investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri announced Wednesday it will try the four accused killers in absentia.

The trial chamber of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, headquartered in the Netherlands near The Hague, said it concluded that "all reasonable steps have been taken to secure the appearance of the accused and to notify them of the charges against them."

The efforts included multiple attempts by Lebanese authorities to find the four men at homes and workplaces, the chamber said. It also noted that the identities of the four men and their indictments received "massive publicity" in Lebanon, making it clear the men were being sought.

The chamber did not announce a date for the trial, but it will be at least four months away.

The United Nations-backed tribunal indicted the four men in June 2011 and made their identities public in July.

Hariri was killed in February 2005 when a bomb struck his motorcade in Beirut. The blast ripped apart his armored car and destroyed the motorcade, killing 21 other people and wounding 231.

All four suspects are charged with conspiracy aimed at committing a terrorist act.

The indictment says the alleged ringleader was Mustafa Amine Badreddine, while another man, Salim Jamil Ayyash, allegedly headed the "assassination team," responsible for physically carrying out the attack.

They are also charged with committing a terrorist act by means of an explosive device; two counts of intentional homicide with premeditation by using explosives; and attempted intentional homicide with premeditation by using explosives.

Hussein Hassan Oneissi and Assad Hassan Sabra were responsible for preparing a false claim of responsibility, the indictment says. They are charged with being accomplices to the same four counts.

Investigators used mobile phone data to place Ayyash and other members of the assassination team near locations where Hariri was in the days prior to his death, the indictment says. Similar data placed the men near points along the route of Hariri's convoy on the day of the bombing...

At least 73 people were killed and hundreds injured. And of course we all know that Islam is a Religion of Peace, and therefore it simply isn't possible that its peaceful and moderate adherents would ever be moved to violence. It must therefore be the fault of...the Zionists!

"Egyptian MP Mustafa Bakri: America and Israel Are Responsible for Port Said Soccer Bloodbath," from MEMRI, February 2 (thanks to Wimpy):

Following are excerpts from a statement by Egyptian MP Mustafa Bakri, which aired on Sawt Al-Sha'b TV on February 2, 2012.

Mustafa Bakri: Our country is entering a state of anarchy. This anarchy is caused by America, Israel and the former regime. Look at the New Middle East scheme. Don't talk about all the minute details. What happened in Port Said is a continuation of what happened in Muhammad Mahmoud Street, in Al-Qasr Al-Ayni Street, across from the government, across from Maspero, and in the soccer match against Tunisia. They are all connected. It is an attempt to bring this country down.

Wherever Sharia experiences a resurgence, the observable effect is that tolerance decreases and harassment of all kinds increases. Muslims are certainly not immune, especially if they belong to sects at variance with the dominant practice of the country, such as Sufis, Ibadis (also facing persecution in Libya), Ahmadis, or Shi'ite minorities in Sunni countries and vice-versa.

Those who would go after Christians and Jews will eventually come for their fellow Muslims who for whatever reason are found ideologically impure. "Freed from Gaddafi, Libyan Sufis face violent Islamists," by Tom Heneghan for Reuters, February 1:

(Reuters) - Freed from Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year dictatorship, Libya's Sufi Muslims find themselves under renewed pressure from violent Islamists who have been attacking them and their beliefs as heretical. The desecration of graves belonging to Sufi saints and sages in recent months have put the peaceful Sufis on the defensive, prompting some to post armed guards at their mosques and lodges to ward off hardline thugs.

But the birthday of Islam's Prophet Mohammad, one of the highpoints in the Sufi calendar, is on Saturday and Libyan Sufis are determined to take their traditional processions through the streets to show they will not be cowed.

At a meeting of Sufi scholars to plan the celebrations, Sheikh Adl Al-Aref Al-Hadad said even being driven out of his zawiyah (Islamic school) late last year by Islamists known as Salafis would not deter him from marching.

"I'm worried but I'm not afraid," said Al-Hadad, whose Tripoli school was stormed by armed men who burned its library, destroyed office equipment and dug up graves of sages buried there. They turned the school into a Salafi mosque.

On January 13, extremists crashed a bulldozer through the walls of the old cemetery in the eastern city of Benghazi, destroyed its tombs and carried off 29 bodies of respected sages and scholars. They also demolished a nearby Sufi school.

Sheikh Khaled Mohammad Saidan, whose Dargut Pasha Mosque faces Tripoli's port, said most Islamists in post-Gaddafi Libya disagreed with Sufis, but peacefully. "But there are no police around and you never know what some people might do," he added.

Sufi lodges from around Tripoli will march on Saturday through narrow alleys of the walled old town, waving flags and chanting poems in praise of Mohammad to the beat of cymbals, drums and tambourines.

To the puritanical Salafis, these practices amount to bida (innovation) and shirk (idolatry), both grave sins that must be stopped, by force if necessary.

Sufism, a mystical strain in both Sunni and Shi'ite Islam, dates back to the early days of the faith. Apart from their prayers, Sufi devotions include singing hymns, chanting the names of God or dancing to heighten awareness of the divine.

Revered saints, scholars and holy people are buried in shrines and some are honored with annual pilgrimages. While many Islamic scholars say this is admissible, puritanical schools of Islam such as Saudi Arabia's Wahhabis or the Afghan Taliban consider it heretical. [...]

Libya's Sufis also worry they are being outflanked politically. Many new religious officials have Salafi leanings, they say, and are appointing Salafi imams to mosques vacated by pro-Gaddafi preachers. Salafi preaching is now widespread on Libyan television and radio, they say.

Salafis have also begun denouncing traditional imams to the authorities, prompting them to be replaced by hardliners. "About half the imams here have been replaced by Salafis," said one imam at a large Tripoli mosque where Salafis in the congregation are campaigning against celebrating Mawlid.

Political parties are starting to form, including the Muslim Brotherhood. Libyan Salafis have not yet announced if they plan to launch a party and contest elections, as in Egypt....

The new spokesman is reportedly the German convert Omar Scheister. "Nigeria arrests Boko Haram spokesman Abul Qaqa," from BBC News, February 1:

Police in Nigeria say they have arrested the spokesman of the Boko Haram militant group which has carried out scores of attacks recently.

A police official said the man, known by his nom de guerre Abul Qaqa, was arrested in the north-eastern city of Maiduguri, in Borno state.

The official told the Associated Press news agency the militant was captured after police tracked his mobile phone.

More than 150 people were killed by Boko Haram militants last month.

A series of co-ordinated explosions ripped apart police buildings, passport offices and immigration centres around the northern city of Kano.

It was one of the bloodiest attacks by the group so far.

Boko Haram has said it wants to overthrow the national government and install an Islamic state.

Its members have frequently attacked police stations and other symbols of state power, but the group has also bombed churches and killed hundreds of people - including many Muslim and Christian civilians.

Officials are trying to confirm the identity of the man arrested on Wednesday.

"We are still taking to him. Since 'Abu Qaqa' is a pseudonym for the Boko Haram spokesman, we want to be sure of who we have with us," an unnamed official told Reuters news agency.

Abul Qaqa has often spoken to journalists in the wake of militant attacks.

More glories of the Arab Spring -- and remember, this is the kind of anti-free speech law that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), with the willing cooperation of the Obama Administration, is trying to bring West.

This man has had a 40-year career making fun of all sorts of people and things, but only now has he run afoul of the law.

"Egyptian film star sentenced for insulting Islam," from Reuters, February 2:

CAIRO - The Arab world's most famous comic actor, Adel Imam, has received a three-month jail sentence for insulting Islam in films and plays, a court document showed on Thursday.

Imam, who has frequently poked fun at authorities and politicians of all colors during a 40-year career, has one month to appeal the sentence and will remain out of jail until the appeal process is concluded.

The sentence Wednesday evening came weeks after Islamists swept most seats in a parliamentary election. The case was brought by Asran Mansour, a lawyer with ties to Islamist groups, and had languished in court for months, judicial sources said.

Mansour accused the actor of offending Islam and its symbols, including beards and the Jilbab, a loose-fitting garment worn by some Muslims, the Egyptian news portal Ahramonline reported.

Among films and plays targeted by the lawyer were the movie "Morgan Ahmed Morgan" and the play "Al-Zaeem" ("The Leader"), the report said.

Imam was also handed a fine of 1,000 Egyptian pounds ($170) in absentia, the court document showed. He could not immediately be reached for comment.

I tried to tell you. "Christians fear losing freedoms in Arab Spring," by Oren Dorell and Sarah Lynch for USA Today via the Tucson Citizen, January 30:

From her home in a labyrinth of stonewalled alleyways, Samia Ramsis holds a key chain bearing the face of the Virgin Mary as she sits in her yellow pajamas on the morning of Orthodox Christmas.

Sunlight pours in through a window. Outside, visitors come to look upon the spot where Egypt’s Christians — most known as Copts — believe the Holy Family found refuge after fleeing Bethlehem and assassins sent by King Herod to kill the baby Jesus.

Once crowded with Christians, Cairo’s Coptic quarter where Samia lives with her husband, Mounir, and two children is home to fewer than 50 Christian families.

“We know many Christians have left,” says Mounir Ramsis, speaking not only about this quarter but about all of Egypt. “But we love this country and will stay until death.”

The Arab Spring uprisings that have toppled secular dictatorships in the Middle East and North Africa have unleashed long-suppressed freedoms that have allowed Islamic parties to gain a share of political power they have been denied for decades. Their rise is creating near-panic among ancient Christian communities that dot the Muslim world and predate Islam by centuries.

•In Tunisia, where the regime of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted last year after 32 years in power, the dominant political party, Ennahda, has worried some of Tunis’ 22,000 Catholics by vowing to tilt the country’s yet-to-be-written constitution toward sharia, or the detailed and often harsh system of Muslim theocratic laws.

•In Libya, Christians are uneasy as the powerful head of the Tripoli Military Council, Abdul Hakim Belhaj, who once led an Islamic militia with links to al-Qaeda, has said he plans to run for office in elections scheduled for April.

•In Afghanistan, no new building permits have been issued for churches, and the last church open to the public was demolished over the summer. In Iraq, the Christian community has decreased by two-thirds since 2003 amid bombings of churches and assassinations of priests.

•And Christians in Syria, where Muslims have risen up against President Bashar Assad, have been subjected to murder, rape and kidnappings in Damascus and rebellious towns, according to Christian rights groups, including Open Doors, which helps Christians facing persecution.

Many had hoped for better in an Arab movement that proponents said was about replacing tyrannies with democracies.

“The outlook is grim,” says John Eibner, CEO of the California-based human rights group Christian Solidarity International.

“If the current trajectory continues, it’s reasonable to think that within a generation these (Christian) communities will not look like functioning communities,” Eibner says. “They’ll look more like the once-flourishing Jewish communities” across the Arab world that are all but gone.

Nowhere is the irony more profound than in Egypt, where an estimated 8 million Christians live with more than 70 million Muslims.

Christians demonstrated alongside Muslims early last year to oust Hosni Mubarak. Before Mubarak’s overthrow, Christians had suffered from years of church burnings and murders at the hands of radical Muslims who want an Islamic state free of religious minorities. And after the ouster, the military regime that has been running the country has refused to make any arrests in attacks on Christians.

Mina Bouls, 25, a Copt who fled to Philadelphia, recalls cowering with his mother in 1997 as a mob stoned the family home and chanted anti-Christian slogans. But the difference then was that Mubarak ordered the military to protect Christian communities and jail extremists, Bouls says.

In October, Copts organized a protest in downtown Cairo over the authorities’ failure to investigate attacks, including the bombing of a church in Alexandria on New Year’s Day 2011 that killed 20 people. The military attacked the demonstrators and 17 Christians were run down and killed by military vehicles, according to Human Rights Watch.

Bouls wants to bring his family to the United States because he says he is petrified by the new society forming in Egypt. The first free elections in decades held in the past two months handed power not to moderates but to members of the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Salafi candidates, who combined took nearly 70% of seats.

“If people try to rule the country with the Koran, with sharia law, that means they look to us as second-class people,” Bouls says....

The exodus came amid 60 church bombings and the deaths of 900 Christians, says William Warda, chairman of the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization in Baghdad.

“We consider that genocide,” he says.

Malik says Western nations must stand up for the rights of Christians, who he says may be cleansed from lands where democratic elections are used to oppress minorities rather than empower them.

Malik says it must be done “in a way that is not misperceived on the other end.” However, “the West should not be cowed.”

Should not be, indeed. But probably it will be.

How many are the lies that Egypt’s military regime has forwarded concerning its role in attacking and killing Egyptian demonstrators since it usurped power a year ago?

There were, for instance, the lies concerning the Maspero massacre, where the military slaughtered Christian Copts who were protesting the constant attacks on their churches—including by running them over with armored-vehicles.

Despite all the video evidence [apparently now removed by YouTube], the military regime insisted that it would “never, never” run over civilians; that the very idea was “impossible, impossible!” It even showed a video of a military-vehicle running amuck, claiming it was hijacked by Coptic protesters (it was later revealed that an Egyptian soldier was, in fact, inside driving).

More recently, Mohamad Tantawi, the head of the military—and de facto head of Egypt—insisted that the widely circulated video of soldiers beating, stripping, and kicking a female protester is “entirely fake”—a ludicrous assertion, even if Jimmy Carter supports it.

Who is the latest victim to be scapegoated for the military’s crimes against its own citizenry? None other than the U.S.A.

Ongoing accusations that American officials were involved in killing Egyptian civilians have prompted the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to deny it through a January 27 press release:

As we have stated in previous press releases, there is absolutely no truth to reports that U.S. embassy employees or diplomats were involved in hit-and-run incidents using U.S. diplomatic vehicles, injuring or killing protestors in January 2011 in Cairo. There is also no truth to statements alleging that the keys inside U.S. diplomatic vehicles are coded and can only be used by U.S. Embassy employees. On January 28, 2011, however, a number of our U.S. Embassy vehicles were stolen. After these vehicles were stolen, we heard reports of their use in violent and criminal acts. If true, we deplore these acts and the perpetrators. Egyptian authorities have conducted an investigation that has led to the recovery of some of these stolen vehicles.

Who is behind these accusations? The military? As mentioned, it did make similar accusations against Coptic protesters, saying they hijacked and manned the military-vehicles that ran over fellow Copts at Maspero—only to be exposed as lying by Al Dalil.

While it is not altogether clear who is behind these accusations—this report indicates a lawyer of a former Egyptian official being tried, while older reports mention “communiqués”—it is, of course, the military regime that stands to gain by this latest case of blaming the other.

The message changes with the audience. When the Brotherhood's members are talking among themselves, or to Arab and Muslim audiences, there is a very firm, if not openly antisemitic, line against peace with Israel.

It is plausible, though, as part of the Ikhwan's gradualist approach, that the Camp David Accords will see an incremental erosion, and their contents will be used as leverage in attempts to blackmail Israel into concessions. The accords are, after all, a two-part package, tying conditions for "peace" in the broader Middle East to peace with Egypt.

"German FM: Brotherhood committed to peace with Israel," by Mohamed Abdel Salam for Bikya Masr, February 1:

CAIRO: German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle renewed on Tuesday his support for more openness and respect towards the new democratic Islamic forces in Egypt.

He said in statements during a visit to Cairo, where he met with the head of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, Prime Minister Kamal Ganzoury, Foreign Minister Amr Kamal, and the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) Mohamed Morsi.

He described his meeting with Morsi as “encouraging” and said that the latter stated clearly his belief in pluralism, and stressed that the FJP party is committed to maintaining peace with Israel.

Westerwelle met on the second day of his visit to Egypt, with Tantawi, who emphasized his commitment to the roadmap towards democracy.

His visit also came as thousands of anti-military protesters continue to demonstrate in central Cairo, demanding an end to the military junta’s rule over the country.

Westerwelle will next visit Israel as a part of his Middle East tour and the Palestinian territories on Wednesday.

Tensions between Egypt and Israel have been tense in recent months following the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. The natural gas pipeline to Israel has been attacked 10 times since the uprising, and protesters attacked and raided the Israeli Embassy in Egypt in September following a cross-border raid by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) killed at least four Egyptian soldiers.

Don't you hate it when your tensions are tense?

Still more misunderstanders of the Religion of Peace

Will the Islamophobia never end? "Terrorists admit plot to bomb London Stock Exchange and US Embassy," by Duncan Gardham for the Telegraph, February 1 (thanks to David):

Four al-Qaeda inspired terrorists have pleaded guilty to plotting a Christmas bomb attack on the London Stock Exchange, the American embassy and the home of London Mayor Boris Johnson.

Two of the men conducted a surveillance trip around central London and also talked about launching a Mumbai-style attack on Parliament.

A “target list” was found at the home of the ring-leader which listed the names and addresses of Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, as well as two Rabbis and the American Embassy. It had on it the letters ‘LXC’ for London Stock Exchange.

Torn pieces of paper showed a sketch of what is believed to be a car bomb.

Three other men met with the plotters and planned to travel abroad to get more training before returning to launch further attacks. Another two men pleaded guilty to associated charges.

The men, from London, Stoke and Cardiff, were inspired by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular (AQAP) and used their English-language magazine Inspire as a guide.

In Stoke the gang talked about attacking local pubs and clubs but decided to travel abroad to get more training.

In East London, Mohammed Chowdhury, 21, the ring leader, and Shah Rahman, 29, were under surveillance as they toured central London sites for six hours between 3.30pm and 9.30pm on November 28 2010.

They got off a bus in Trafalgar Square and walked along Whitehall towards Westminster. They were observed looking at Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, Blackfriars Bridge and the Church of Scientology on Queen Victoria Street.

After visiting a McDonalds restaurant on Cannon Street in the City of London, the two men boarded a bus back towards East London.

In the bedroom at Chowdhury’s flat in the Isle of Dogs, police found a handwritten target list on a folded piece of A4 paper on the computer desk.

The Stoke group have their origins in Pakistan, while the London and Cardiff groups were originally from Bangladesh.

The three groups were inspired by Anwar al-Awlaki, one of the leaders of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular, who died in a drone attack last year.

The defendants made contact with each other through dawah – proselytising - or by Paltalk or other internet messaging.

Meetings took place in November and December 2010 at which the defendants planned to use explosive devices to attack significant locations in London and around the country.

Their plans could be carried out without much preparation and were very difficult to intercept, sources said.

The London and Cardiff groups were keen to act quickly, at first talking about sending mail bombs through the Royal Mail and then deciding on a plan to set off bombs in the toilets of the stock exchange.

The Stoke group talked about persuading others to take bombs into pubs in their area so that they would explode.

Abdul Miah, 25, said to be at the centre of the Cardiff gang, and his brother Omar Latif, 28, pleaded guilty to taking part in the Stock Exchange plot. Gurukanth Desai, 30, pleaded guilty to attending meetings.

Mohibur Rahman, 27, from Stoke pleaded guilty to possession of a document containing information useful to a person preparing an act of terrorism.

The charges relate to two editions of al-Qaeda’s English language Inspire magazine.

Usman Khan, 20, Mohammed Shahjahan, 27, and Nazam Hussain, 26, all from Stoke pleaded guilty to preparing acts of terrorism....

If the Western intelligentsia takes notice of this at all, it will be to excoriate the "bigotry" and "provocation" by the Christians at the carnival, and to call for restrictions on the freedom of speech to guard against "denigration of religion." No one will call on the Muslim community to stop reacting with violence to mockery, but to accept the fact that in a pluralistic society, some people will do things to which they object, and the proper response is genuine tolerance, not arson and riots.

"Church set on fire after carnival," from the UKPA, January 31:

An Orthodox Christian church famed for its valuable icons was set alight in southern Macedonia overnight amid religious tension between Christians and minority Muslims over a carnival in which Orthodox Christian men dressed as women in burkas and mocked the Koran.

Firefighters extinguished the fire on Monday night in the two century-old Sveti Nikola church, near the town of Struga. The church's roof was destroyed but its icons were not damaged, the fire service said.

Hours before the fire, Muslim leaders had appealed for calm among community members.

The January 13 Vevcani festival prompted angry, sometimes violent demonstrations by Muslims, who are nearly all ethnic Albanian and make up 33% of the country's 2.1 million population and accuse the majority of stoking hatred against them.

Maybe if they cut back on the violent demonstrations and church burnings, they'd find the majority hating them less.

Ethnic tension has been simmering in this small Balkan country since the end of an armed rebellion in 2001, when ethnic Albanian rebels fought government forces for about eight months, seeking greater rights for their community. The conflict left 80 people dead, and ended with the intervention of Nato peacekeepers.

The Vevcani carnival, said to have been held for some 1,400 years, attracts thousands of visitors. Local residents traditionally wear elaborate, frequently sarcastic masks, with some of the most common costumes including devils and demons.

But this year's perceived mockery of the Koran and the burka costumes caused outrage.

On Saturday, protesters attacked an inter-city bus heading from Struga to Vevcani, throwing rocks at the vehicle but injuring nobody. They also defaced a Macedonian flag outside Struga's municipal building, replacing it with a green flag representing Islam. On the same day, perpetrators attacked a church in the nearby village of Labunista, destroying a cross standing outside.

Macedonian Muslim leaders called for restraint but also accused the government of promoting Islamophobia.

Deputy Prime Minister Musa Xhaferi said such incidents "create discord" and "violate mutual respect and trust."

When the uprising was useful to them, they did not hinder it, and they supported it. Now they've got a good thing going and the usefulness of the revolution and of public dissent as a means to an end has run its course, unless the Ikhwan decides to leverage it against the military in its own power struggle. "Egypt Islamists stop protesters on way to parliament," from Agence France Presse, January 31:

CAIRO — Hundreds of Egyptian protesters demanding the end of military rule were prevented on Tuesday from reaching parliament by backers of the Muslim Brotherhood, which holds the majority in the assembly.

"We are standing here as a human shield, because if the protesters go any further, they will clash with the police. They want to enter parliament, what do you expect me to do?" Muslim Brotherhood member Hamdy Adbdelsamad told AFP.

Behind him, anti-military protesters chanted against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that took power when Hosni Mubarak was ousted by a popular uprising last year.

Activists had called for a march from Cairo's Tahrir Square -- the symbolic heart of the Egyptian uprising -- to parliament to press the newly-elected MPs to implement the goals of the revolution.

They want the ouster of the military junta, an end to the military trials of civilians, the restructuring of the interior ministry and a guarantee of freedoms and social justice.
Islamist and secular protesters stood side by side in Tahrir Square during the 18 days of protests that toppled Mubarak in early 2011.

But tensions have risen between them since parliamentary elections propelled the long-banned Muslim Brotherhood to the centre stage of politics, with its Freedom and Justice Party now controling 47 percent of the assembly.

Secular protesters accuse the Islamists colluding with the ruling military to maintain their new-found power.

"Badie, you are selling the revolution!" the anti-military protesters chanted, in reference to Mohammed Badie, the Islamist movement's supreme guide.

"The Muslim Brotherhood youth are blocking all roads to the parliament, preventing the anti-military protesters... There are huge numbers of them standing in rows like militias," one anti military protester told AFP....

Muhammad said: "I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslim." - Sahih Muslim 19.4366.

Of course, it would be bad for business for the Saudis to say they're giving them the boot for daring to gather in prayer and worship, so they have invoked another rule, against the mingling of unrelated men and women. Not that they look any less ridiculous for it.

Once again, just for fun, someone should tell authorities that a man of Jewish background has slipped into the country and, according to local reports, is in the habit of joining these gatherings "wherever two or three" come together. It could make for a good all-points bulletin, not to mention the subsequent headline: "Saudis desperate to find Jesus."

An update on this story. "Ethiopian Christians to be deported from Saudi Arabia," from BBC News, January 31:

Some 35 Ethiopian Christians face deportation from Saudi Arabia for "illicit mingling", the global rights body Human Rights Watch (HRW) says.

Police arrested the group - including 29 women - after raiding a prayer meeting in the second city of Jeddah.

The women were subjected to strip searches and the men beaten and called "unbelievers", according to HRW.

In 2006, the Saudi government promised to stop interfering with private worship by non-Muslims.

The group was arrested in a private home as they gathered to pray during the run-up to Christmas, celebrated by Ethiopian Orthodox Christians on 7 January.

HRW spoke to a man and two women by telephone from the prisons where they are being held.

They say they have been charged with mixing with unmarried persons of the opposite sex - even though HRW says Saudi Arabia has no law defining "illicit mingling".

Mixing of the sexes is not allowed in public - but normally permitted in private unless for "the purpose of corruption", according to the religious police.

The ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom bans the practice of any religion except Islam - but in recent years pledged to leave people of other faiths alone if they worshipped in private homes....

Talk is cheap, and "war is deceit."

It won't be the Afghan government that fills the security vacuum. As became the template for the decade to follow in other countries, the U.S. greatly underestimated the Afghan population's support for the Taliban, for Sharia, and for jihad for the sake of imposing it. That is in large part because the U.S. greatly underestimated the content of Sharia, accepting a sugar-coated, vapor-ware Sharia -- what is at best an academic, drawing-board conception of what Sharia, could, would, or should be according to agenda-driven apologists, and at worst an outright lie -- as what it really has been in practice all these centuries.

"Taliban "poised to retake Afghanistan" after NATO," by Hamid Shalizi and Mirwais Harooni for Reuters, February 1:

KABUL (Reuters) - The U.S. military said in a secret report that the Taliban, backed by Pakistan, are set to retake control of Afghanistan after NATO-led forces withdraw, raising the prospect of a major failure of Western policy after a costly war.

Lieutenant Colonel Jimmie Cummings, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, confirmed the existence of the document, reported on Wednesday by Britain's Times newspaper and the BBC.

But he said it was not a strategic study.

"The classified document in question is a compilation of Taliban detainee opinions," he said. "It's not an analysis, nor is it meant to be considered an analysis."

Nevertheless, it could be interpreted as a damning assessment of the war, dragging into its 11th year and aimed at blocking a Taliban return to power.

It could also be seen as an admission of defeat and could reinforce the view of Taliban hardliners that they should not negotiate with the United States and President Hamid Karzai's unpopular government while in a position of strength.

The U.S. military report could boost the Taliban's confidence and make its leaders less willing to make concessions on demands for a ceasefire, and for the insurgency to renounce violence and break ties to al Qaeda.

But Britain's Kabul Ambassador William Patey wrote on his Twitter feed that "if elements of the Taliban think that in 2015 they can take control of Afghanistan they will be in for a shock." He did not say if he was referring to the document.

Hours after the Times report, the Afghan Taliban said that no peace negotiation process had been agreed with the international community, "particularly the Americans."

More on this story.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that prior to any negotiations, confidence building measures must be completed, putting pressure on Washington to meet demands for the release of five Taliban in U.S. custody.

The hardline Islamist movement also said it had no plans to hold preliminary peace talks with Afghanistan's government in Saudi Arabia, dismissing media reports of talks in the kingdom.

The U.S. military said in the document that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) security agency was assisting the Taliban in directing attacks against foreign forces.

Reasserting control over the country would be more difficult a second time for the
Taliban, however, with Afghan police and soldiers expected to number about 350,000 beyond 2014 and some foreign troops likely to remain, including elite forces.

It seems all but miraculous that no one has claimed "Pakistanophobia" as the root of these reports of Pakistan's double game. "Secret NATO Taliban report revives Pakistan fears," by Nick Paton Walsh for CNN, February 1:

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Pakistan continues to support the Taliban in Afghanistan, a secret NATO report says, according to a journalist who has read it, despite years of Pakistani denials and American pressure to stop backing the insurgency

The Taliban depend on Pakistan for support, even though they do not necessarily welcome it, Times of London reporter Jerome Starkey said Wednesday, citing the report.

The leaked NATO document revives the longstanding accusation that elements in Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency are aiding the insurgency in Afghanistan.

It says the ISI knows the whereabouts of all senior Taliban commanders, Starkey said.

"It is a marriage of convenience," he said. The Taliban see Pakistan as manipulative, but they see no alternative to accepting its support, he said.

The Taliban are absolutely confident of victory, he said the report found, based on 27,000 interviews with more than 4,000 detainees ranging from senior Taliban commanders to Afghan civilians.

They also include mid- and low-level Taliban, al Qaeda, and foreign fighters, he said.

NATO downplayed the importance of the report Wednesday, after it was leaked, while Pakistan rejected key conclusions entirely....

Pakistan's number-one export in 2011 was angry denials.

Just days ago, it had sounded like this plan had faltered when the Taliban refused to agree to a cease-fire before starting talks. These are no small fish, either; some are prominent detainees considered "high-risk." It is less clear from this report whether their release would be part of a quid-pro-quo exchange of actions for actions, or closer to earlier reports that spoke of nebulous "confidence building" measures and appeared to offer U.S. actions in exchange for pledges from the Taliban.

"US confirms possible release of Taliban from Gitmo," by Ann Gearan and Kimberly Dozier for the Associated Press, January 31:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged Tuesday that the United States may release several Afghan Taliban prisoners from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an incentive to bring the Taliban to peace talks.

Meanwhile, Afghan officials told The Associated Press that a plan to give Afghanistan a form of legal custody over the men if they are released satisfied their earlier objection to sending the prisoners to a third country.

Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper told Congress Tuesday that no decision had been made on whether to trade the five Taliban prisoners, now held at Guantanamo Bay as part of nascent peace talks with the Taliban. He and CIA Director David Petraeus did not dispute that the Obama administration is considering

transferring the five to a third country.

U.S. officials and others had previously spoken only vaguely, and usually anonymously, about the proposal to send the prisoners to Qatar, a Persian Gulf country that has asserted a central role in framing talks that might end the 10-year war in Afghanistan. The lead U.S. negotiator trying to coax the Taliban into talks had also publicly acknowledged the possibility of a release, but said there was no final decision.

The prisoners proposed for transfer include some of the detainees brought to Guantanamo during the initial days and weeks of the U.S. invasion that toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2001. At least one has been accused in the massacre of thousands of Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan, according to U.S. and other assessments, but none are accused of directly killing Americans.

"I don't think anybody harbors any illusions about it, but I think the position is to at least explore the potential for negotiating with them as a part of this overall resolution of the situation in Afghanistan," Clapper said during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

The Obama administration has recently embraced the possibility of negotiation with the Taliban much more openly, saying that although they remain cautious they are also encouraged that the militants may be ready to bargain. Peace talks, if they come to pass, would include the elected Afghan government and, at least at the outset, representatives of the U.S. government. With nearly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and a war and development budget in the billions of dollars, the U.S. remains the largest power broker in Afghanistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai supports a prisoner release as a means to build confidence among the Taliban militants that talks are worthwhile, but he had balked at the U.S.-backed plan to send them to Qatar instead of home to Afghanistan. That plan appeared to undercut his authority and offend Afghan sovereignty, Afghan officials said. Karzai yanked his ambassador from Qatar, saying Qatar had not kept him properly informed....

Mohammmad Shafia murdered his daughters and his first wife and then raged about his daughters: "God's curse on them for generations....There can be no treachery, no violation more than this. They committed treason from beginning to end. They betrayed humankind. They betrayed Islam."

Midday Monday I got this email, with the subject line "URGENT: NBC Nightly News Request":

Message: Hi there—

My name is Shannon Urtnowski and I work with NBC Nightly News. We are working on a spot for tonight about honor killings, and I understand this is on the rise in American, among other countries. We were hoping to speak with an expert who can tell us more about this today. IF you can please reach out to me just as soon as possible, I would
appreciate it.

Many thanks--

Shannon Urtnowski
NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams

I emailed her back, and she responded: "We'd like to try to see if we might be able to set up a camera interview with you in a bit." We spoke on the phone, and I explained to her the information that you can find here: that Islamic law stipulates no penalty for a parent who kills his child, and several Muslim countries have relaxed penalties for honor killings, with Islamic clerics resisting attempts to stiffen those penalties. I also gave her information on other Islamic honor killings in the U.S. and Canada: Noor Almaleki, the Said sisters, Aqsa Parvez, Jessica Mokdad, etc.

Urtnowski took it all in and told me she would set up studio time for me to be interviewed on this. She even asked me for contact information for a nearby studio, which I gave her. But shortly thereafter, Urtnowski called me back and said that NBC had decided to go with an expert closer to the correspondent's Chicago location, and so I wouldn't be appearing after all.

I was not at all surprised by that, of course. Nor was I surprised when NBC's story aired and it contained no mention of Islam, despite Mohammad Shafia's own words, but instead spoke about "patriarchal societies" and the Shafias' "strict religious family," religion unspecified. See the Newsbusters report here.

There was nothing surprising in NBC's coverage of the Shafia murders at all. It was just another example of how the mainstream media routinely whitewashes Islamic violence, and essentially lies to the public about the nature, extent and magnitude of that violence. It is no wonder that the public is thereby rendered largely clueless and complacent, and that Islamic honor killings are occurring with increasing frequency in the West, with no one daring to challenge the Muslim community to work against the beliefs that give rise to them.

In FrontPage this morning, I discuss the Taliban's recent efforts to present a kinder, gentler face to the West:

Apparently the Taliban are softening, even allowing girls to get an education. Clearly this heralds an opening to the West, a heady indication that their most repressive days are past them, and that soon they will take their place among the free people of the earth. Soon they will be following the teachings of Naomi Wolf and Thomas Paine.

Yaroslav Trofimov, in a piece that ran Sunday in the Wall Street Journal, noted that Maulvi Qalamuddin, who headed the Committee to Protect Virtue and Prevent Vice back when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, has completely changed his tune regarding the education of girls. Where once he oversaw the shutting-down, sometimes violently, of girls’ schools, now he says: “Education for women is just as necessary as education for men. In Islam, men and women have the same duty to pray, to fast—and to seek learning.”

Anyone who believes this, or believes that Maulvi Qalamuddin believes it, should contact me, as I have a lovely bridge to sell you. “War is deceit,” said Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, according to a famous hadith, and the Taliban are listening. But the Taliban are to be forgiven for thinking that this sort of thing would play well in Washington, for it very likely will. After all, Joe Biden is still the Vice President – the amiable dunce who recently said: “Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us.”

In other words, the Taliban might win, so we have to surrender and act as if we’re just fine with that. And the alternative? Hamid Karzai, who got so annoyed with his American patrons last year that he threatened to join the Taliban himself. The Karzai government, that has been so helpful in “cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us” that an increasing number of American and allied soldiers have recently fallen victim to surprise attacks from Afghan army forces that are supposed to be on our side....

Read it all.

Yesterday afternoon Human Events posted my piece about recent shameful events in New York:

The mainstream media, led by the New York Times, and the Islamic supremacist Hamas-linked hate group the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) are doing all they can to whip up a frenzy about the NYPD’s showing of a relatively tepid but accurate counter-terror film, The Third Jihad, to police officers.

Lost in the hysteria is the question of whether there is anything inaccurate or false in the film – yet those who are demanding apologies and reeducation from the NYPD have demonstrated not one inaccuracy in it. No one who is protesting against this film is going beyond the claim that it is “Islamophobic.”

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg immediately apologized, saying that showing the film to New York police officers manifested “terrible judgment.” Police commissioner Raymond Kelly apologized also: “I offer my apologies to members of the Muslim community, in particular, who would find the film inflammatory and its airing on department property, though unauthorized, to be inappropriate.”

In a sane world, Kelly and Bloomberg would not be apologizing at all. They’d be saying, “Yes, we showed the film, and we’re going to keep showing it, and what of it? If the Muslims in New York are upset about it being inaccurate, let them demonstrate its inaccuracy by taking positive steps to fight in their own community against the stealth jihad activity that the film documents.”

For the whole controversy is predicated on the assumption that The Third Jihad is whipping up hysteria about a non-existent threat. In reality, it covers much the same ground that I cover in my book Stealth Jihad, in which I show that the agenda of infiltration and subversion on the part of the Muslim Brotherhood and its allied groups is very real.

In a captured internal Muslim Brotherhood document, Brotherhood operatives in the U.S. are told that they “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 God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

And at a Muslim event in California in 1998, CAIR cofounder and longtime Board chairman Omar Ahmad was quoted as saying: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”

Nor are these isolated statements. Yet the initial New York Times article about the showing of this film, as well as all the coverage that has followed, was based on the assumption that no Muslim in the U.S. believes or acts upon such ideas. And the Times deplored that “at least 1,489 police officers, from lieutenants to detectives to patrol officers, saw the film.” Apparently they will all need to be reeducated.

Instead of considering whether or not the film is accurate, the mainstream media has scolded Bloomberg and Kelly for their failure to reach out to New York’s Muslim community. But here again, in a sane world, the Mayor and the NYPD would not be expected to reach out to the Muslim community and prove their good will. The Muslim community would be reaching out to the Mayor and the NYPD, eager to prove its good will. And the Mayor and the NYPD would be telling Hamas-linked CAIR that its counterterror cooperation was not enough, instead of letting this execrable Islamic supremacist Hamas front dictate New York City’s counterterror operations.

But now CAIR smells blood, and is going in for the kill. They’ve announced that Kelly’s apology was not enough, and are calling for his resignation. They’ve already succeeded, courtesy of Barack Obama’s compliant Justice Department, in eliminating any truth about Islam and jihad from national FBI training, and are now trying to eliminate it everywhere.

The outcome will be a cadre of agents and police officers full of politically correct nonsense that will render them clueless, complacent, weak and supine in the face of jihad activity. And so the jihad in the U.S. will advance unimpeded.

And so New York, by means of this controversy, is on the verge of taking yet another decisive step toward completely banning the truth about jihad and Islamic supremacism, thereby rendering New Yorkers, and all Americans, more vulnerable than ever to that jihad.

I appeared tonight on the Michael Coren Show on Sun TV and discussed the Shafia honor killings and the media whitewash of Islam's role in them.

Video courtesy Blazing Cat Fur.