February 2004 Archives

Kissing the Qur'an probably won't help this time

Adel Smith is trying to make Christianity illegal in Italy. The statements quoted below from the Pope and Ratzinger are merely expressions of the Christian Faith. If this most frivolous of all frivolous lawsuits goes forward, it should also render illegal Islamic statements about Muhammad's being the last and perfect revelation, correcting and abrogating all previous ones. From AP, with thanks to Susan and Mrs. Obelix:

A Muslim activist sued the pope, a top cardinal and other church officials Saturday, claiming their comments about the superiority of Christianity violated the Italian constitution.

Activist Adel Smith said he was seeking a court condemnation of the comments but no monetary or other punitive damages.

Smith, who is president of the Muslim Union of Italy, has previously made headlines here for his court battle to have a crucifix taken down from his son's classroom. Several other Islamic organizations distanced themselves from that effort.

In his latest legal effort, Smith said Pope John Paul II and other church officials have violated the Italian constitution which proclaims that all religions are equal under the law. Italy is officially secular, but largely Roman Catholic.

Smith cited a passage of John Paul's 1994 book, "Crossing the Threshold of Hope," in which the pope writes that the "richness of God's self-revelation" in the Bible's Old and New Testament's has been "set aside" in Islam.

The suit also cites comments by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican's orthodoxy watchdog, who in a 2000 document said the faithful of other religions were in a "gravely deficient situation" concerning their salvation compared to Catholics.

Calls placed to the Vatican spokesman weren't immediately returned Saturday.

Fox News reports that the Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf claimed responsibility Sunday for a ferry explosion and fire that killed at least two people, though 180 more were missing, according to a radio report.

MARIVELES, Philippines — The Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf claimed responsibility Sunday for a ferry explosion and fire that killed at least two people, though 180 more were missing, according to a radio report.

The Radio Mindanao Network said Abu Sayyaf spokesman Abu Sulaiman claimed Friday's explosion was revenge for government attacks in the southern Mindanao area. Abu Sayyaf has often called the radio network in the past.

Fire raced through the Superferry 14 on Friday shortly after it left Manila for central and southern islands, killing one person and injuring 12 others. Witnesses reported a powerful explosion that sparked an inferno.

The fire occurred the same day that two alleged Abu Sayyaf members were convicted of kidnapping an American in 2000 and another was arraigned in a separate mass abduction.

Remember that American kidnapping? No? You're in good company. But Abu Sayyaf has kidnapped and even killed other Americans in the Philippines as well.
Before 9/11, Americans tended to slough off overseas terrorist attacks on Americans, our embassies, and even our soldiers, sailors and Marines. Such attacks were merely passing outrages somewhere out there beyond our borders, and indifference allowed our enemy to thrive and grow. With the War on Terror slipping steadily in the polls as an important issue to voters, that is something to think about.

Here's a feelgood story from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle about clearing away post-9/11 misconceptions about Islam. Of course, the main misunderstanding is about jihad:

On Sept. 11, 2001, just after he watched the World Trade Center towers fall on television, Aly Nahas received a call from a rabbi offering him shelter.

The rabbi was a friend of Nahas’ who was worried that people might take out the horror of that day on local Muslims. But rather than seek shelter, Nahas rushed to the Islamic Center of Rochester, where he was a volunteer.

When he got there, his rabbi friend, two priests and a minister were waiting. Within two hours, the group held a news conference to assure the public that the Muslim community condemned the attacks. In the year and a half after Sept. 11, Nahas gave 45 lectures on Islam. . . .

Carman hopes that the two-hour sessions, which include an hour lecture as well as time for questions, help demystify Islam. One important misconception, he said, is about jihad. The Egyptian-born Nahas said that jihad, often used synonymously with terrorism, essentially means to strive to better oneself.

That's wonderful. I am sure that Nahas's non-Muslim audience will go away feeling reassured. I hope that the Rochester paper will run a follow-up story about Nahas's activities among Muslims, in which he convinces them that the radical understanding of jihad as violence against unbelievers is wrong on Islamic grounds. I wonder what Nahas would say about the almost daily stories posted at Jihad Watch in which Muslims commit violence and call it jihad. Until those Muslims are confronted and that understanding of jihad definitively refuted, dialogues like the one described in this story are essentially meaningless.

Becoming a reality?

A 13-year-old would-be suicide bomber. From AP:

Israeli security forces arrested three Palestinian youths who planned to carry out a suicide attack out of anger over Israel's West Bank barrier, relatives said Sunday.

The youths, ages 13 and 14, were among the youngest ever arrested for planning suicide attacks. Parents of one of the boys expressed outraged that militant groups had taken to drafting young boys to carry out suicide attacks.

Most suicide bombers have been in their 20s. The youngest was 16 years old.

The army did not immediately comment.

Mohammed Abu Mahsen said his 13-year-old son, Tarek, along with his friends, Jaffer Hussein, 13, and Ibrahim Suafta, 14, left a letter saying they planned to carry out a shooting attack at an Israeli military checkpoint or army base, he said.

The 13-year-olds claimed to be members of Islamic Jihad, while Suafta said he belonged to the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a militant group linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, family members said. The boys were arrested last Thursday.

"I want to carry out an attack against (Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon's fence. This fence, we will blow it up also, the Islamic Jihad youth movement," Tarek wrote in the letter.

"We want you to give out candies and don't cry for us and hold a big demonstration," he added, referring to traditional salutes given to "martyrs" who die for the Palestinian cause.

Aieeee!

Even in the supermarket, delicate Muslim sensibilities require discrimination against non-Muslims. To keep a Muslim child from being defiled by picking up a can of pork, Muslims in Brunei are asking that products for non-Muslims be hidden away. From BruDirect, with thanks to Nicolei:

Members of the public particularly shoppers in a prominent supermarket in Kuala Belait are expressing discontent over the arrangements of “non-halal” foods which are placed not far from the daily needs items of Muslim customers at the supermarket.

A number of customers here stated that the arrangements of food for non-Muslims at the stated shop are placed near essential products such as soaps and detergents and next to daily use items such as tissue paper and other goods.

One customer who refused to be named stated that the racks on which are placed the non-halal foods should be moved far away from aisle frequented by Muslim customers.

The customer said that on one occasion his 7-year-old daughter was at the said supermarket to buy instant noodles when she unknowingly picked up a can from the rack to ask him about its contents.

"I was shocked to see that the word ‘pork’ was inscribed on the can that she was holding. The can was taken from a rack which was placed just across the rack from which I took the instant noodles," he claimed.

He had pointed out the matter to the workers there, but till now the problem remains.

When the supermarket was visited again, it was found that racks containing a number of canned and plastic packaged foods for non-Muslims were still placed alongside racks holding washing soaps and tissues, and facing the rack displaying varieties of instant noodles.

The shop owner should have understood the situation surrounding the community and is advised to consider the full interests of the customers, particularly in terms of sale item arrangements.

What's that? You thought British Muslim women had the same rights as anyone else in Britain? Guess again. Some Muslim men aren't happy about it, but Muslim women have just been granted a whole list of new rights by Britain's Sharia Council. From AsiaNews.co.uk, with thanks to Nicolei:

DETAILS of a new Islamic marriage contract that will protect women's rights have been unveiled for the first time in the North West. At a meeting of top mullahs and Islamic scholars in Bury it was predicted that mosques throughout the UK will use the new contract and revolutionise Islamic marriages.

Called the nikah namah provisions in the contract include:

l A wife's right not to have children
l Equal rights in divorce
l A wife's right to work and control over her own pay . . .
l Outlawing all verbal, physical and sexual abuse by the husband
l The right of a wife to visit relatives in the UK or abroad

The draft contract is the work of the UK Shariah Council and the Muslim Parliament of Britain - organisations that have voiced their concern that Muslim women can get a raw deal from existing Islamic marriage custom. . . .

The response from men was less welcoming and some were shocked over its clauses.

One man, who did not want to give his name, said he was amazed at some of the women's rights proposed.

He said: "The purpose of an Islamic marriage is to have a family but the contact is saying that a woman cannot get pregnant unless she wants to. How can that be increasing the Muslim line in the family?"

Molana Barkatullah said he knew that some men would be unhappy about it.
He added: "During the time of the Prophet, women were given rights for the first time and some of the men found that hard to deal with, but they eventually accepted these rights. That was 1400 years ago and it will happen again."

Hambali

Hambali, who has been involved in many Asian terrorist adventures, has been charged in Cambodia. From AP, with thanks to Nicolei:

Asia's top terror suspect, Hambali, and eight other alleged Muslim militants were charged yesterday with attempted murder in an unspecified terrorist plot to bomb targets in Cambodia.

A Cambodian court levelled the charges against Hambali and three others in absentia midway through the trial of five men who were arrested last year for allegedly training terrorists and planning attacks in the country.

Though the five were originally charged with terrorism, Judge Ya Sokhan changed the charge to 'attempted premeditated murder with the goal of terrorism' after a defence attorney argued that Cambodia had no anti-terrorism law.

The five men were ordered to remain in detention pending a new trial. No date was set.

In another surprising twist, the judge said Hambali and three others - identified only as Ibrahim, Zaid and Zakariya - faced the same charges.

It was the first time their names were mentioned in connection with the case.

Prosecutor Yet Chakriya told the court that all the suspects were 'plotting a plan to cause explosion, destruction of property and human life' in Cambodia.

He did not elaborate, and officials would not give details about the alleged plot.

The attempted murder charge carries a life imprisonment sentence - the same as the earlier terrorism charge. . . .

Hambali, an Indonesian whose real name is Riduan Isamuddin, is said to be a key leader of the Jemaah Islamiah, Al-Qaeda's South-east Asian arm. He is believed to have spent several months in Cambodia last year and reportedly used the country as a staging ground from which to launch regional terror attacks. He was arrested in Thailand last August and is now in US custody.

It was not immediately clear where Ibrahim, Zaid and Zakariya were or what they were accused of doing.

The suspects present in court yesterday were Esam Mohammed Khidr Ali of Egypt, Abdul Azi Haji Chiming and Muhammad Yalaludin Mading of Thailand and Sman Ismael of Cambodia. Another Egyptian, Rousha Yasser, 33, also known as Yasser Elsayed Mohamed, is a fugitive.

Their trial stemmed from their membership of the Umm Al-Qura group, which operated a Saudi-funded Islamic school outside Phnom Penh.

Prosecutors accused them of using the school as a cover for training terrorists and planning attacks against Western interests in Cambodia.

This Pakistan Times op-ed by Yamin Zakaria contains familiar moral equivalency arguments, but it is notable for what it says about the meaning of jihad. It's a bit different from the sanitized version offered by Muslim spokesmen in the West. (Thanks to Twostellas.)

Jihad can be both defensive and offensive, preferably by the Islamic state. At times, the distinction between the two modes of operation is blurred, depending on the political and military situation. At present it may be academic to discuss offensive Jihad, as the Islamic state does not exist in the world today. In addition the Muslims are facing an onslaught in their own lands, but nevertheless, it is worth examining it briefly to clarify some of the misconceptions.

Offensive Jihad

The Islamic state reserves the right to use military force against foreign states that engage in persecuting Muslims or, preventing the spread of Islam within their lands. Note, in principle there is no concept of forceful conversion of non-Muslims to Islam. Even today, there are non-Muslims in most of the majority Muslim countries.

Note that jihad should "preferably" be waged by the Islamic state — evidently, under some conditions others can wage it as well. Also, Zakaria's point about forced conversion is absolutely true: forced conversion is against Islamic law. Under Islamic law, which is not fully enforced in most majority Muslim states today, non-Muslims are allowed to live in Islamic states as inferior dhimmis.

In any case, this understanding of jihad is used by radical Muslims worldwide today to justify their actions.

The headscarf controversy comes to the US. It's a strange incident: it seems that this instructor had a policy against headgear in class, as it obstructed the view of other students. So he asked a Muslim girl to remove her headscarf. Now he has resigned under pressure, to the delight of the Council on American Islamic Relations. But was this really an anti-Islamic incident? From NBC4TV, with thanks to Twostellas:

An Antelope Valley College instructor resigned Thursday, a week after ordering a Muslim student to take off her religiously mandated head scarf or leave class, school officials said.

Robert Daniel, described as a part-time instructor, taught an introduction to computer science information course. He resigned in writing this morning, school officials said.

The college's Board of Trustees was expected to decide Friday night what action to take against Daniel. The school said other instructors will be brought in to teach the two spring semester courses that had been assigned to Daniel.

Daniel could not be reached for comment.

Fajr Burhan is a 19-year-old electrical engineering student. She was born in Phoenix but her parents are from Syria. About five years ago, Burhan began wearing the traditional Muslim hajib head scarf.

Burhan said the garb had never been a problem at the school until last week, when Daniel told her to remove the hajib.

Daniel told her "to either stay and follow his rules (by removing the scarf) or leave the class," Burhan said.

Burhan is in her last semester at Antelope Valley and hopes to graduate this year and transfer to UCI. To graduate, she needed to pass the course Daniel taught.

Burhan said Daniel made the demand knowing the scarf's religious significance, although she acknowledged that Daniel told her he does not allow hats or headgear because they can block the view of other students.

After a discussion with Tom Miller, the school's dean of business and computer studies, Burhan returned to class wearing the hajib, but said Daniel ignored her when she tried to answer questions.

Interim AVC President Jackie Fisher, who said the school does not have a dress code and has a zero-tolerance policy on discrimination, later apologized to Burhan.

Ra'id Faraj of the Southern California office of the Council on American- Islamic Relations applauded the move.

"It's really bizarre that we would encounter this in a college," Faraj said.

Brushing aside abundant evidence that Islamic schools in Pakistan have become training grounds for terrorists, Pakistani Information Minister Rashid Ahmed defended the schools (madaras) as vital for the safeguarding of Islam. Oh, and don't worry about nukes. Pakistan's "nuclear assets are in safe hands." From NNI, with thanks to Twostellas:

Minister for Information and Broadcasting Sheikh Rashid Ahmed has lauded the role of Madaras in the promotion of Islam.

Addressing an International Peace and Martyrs Conference at Jamia Sirajia Nazamia here Friday, he said that most of the Madaras are play real role in the service of Islam, but one or two have to be restructured and government has evolved a strategy to safeguard the Islam and the country.

He said that our nuclear assets are in the safe hands and we will not hesitate to play the historical role if Pakistan faces any danger. . . .

He rejected the impression that Pakistan is a terrorist country and its Madaras are promoting terrorism and said that our Madaras are the biggest NGOs, they are not promoting terrorism, but work to safe guard Islam.

More damaging words and implausible explanations from Sheikh Al-Hilali. From Smh.com.au, with thanks to LGF:

The powerful leader of Australia's 300,000 Muslims, Sheik Taj el-Din Al Hilaly, has praised the September 11 terrorist attacks as "God's work".

The controversial Mufti also appears to have lent support to Arab suicide bombers in an inflammatory sermon during a Middle East lecture tour.

Sheik Al Hilaly, who is based at the Lakemba mosque, last week vehemently denied that he called for a jihad against Israel in one of his sermons. But a translation of a sermon, delivered at the Sidon mosque in Lebanon and obtained by The Sun-Herald, is littered with references to Arab martyrs and Americans being punished by God.

Sheik Al Hilaly spoke of an "Islamic revolution", and told his audience not to be surprised if one day a muezzin called out "Allah is Great!" from the "top of the White House".

"September 11 is God's work against oppressors," he said. "Some of the things that happen in the world cannot be explained; a civilian airplane whose secrets cannot be explained, if we ask its pilot who reached his objective without error: 'Who led your steps?'

"Or if we ask the giant that fell: 'Who humiliated you?' Or if we ask the president: 'Who made you cry?' God is the answer."

Declaring there was a "war on infidels" around the world, the Mufti praised the boy who, "despite his mother's objections", went to war to become a martyr.

Bemoaning the lack of "real men" in the Arab world, he said the "true boy" was one who told his mother not to cry for him if he died. The boy who cried: "Oh mother, jihad has been imposed on me and I want to become a martyr [was a son of Islam]." The boy would cry to his mother: "Oh mother, I'm going with a stone in my hand to become a martyr."

After seeking clarification from Sheik Al Hilaly in Egypt, his spokesman, Keysar Trad, said the Mufti had taken bits from poems, which he often incorporated into his sermons.

The September 11 reference meant that "evil can reach everywhere and everything", and the power of terrorism should not be belittled. Stating that September 11 was God's work against oppressors meant "people only do these things when they feel oppressed".

He denied the Mufti had supported suicide bombers, saying the "boy with a stone" could not possibly mean that.

A week ago, the Australian Federal Police decided against investigating the Mufti's overseas activities.

The war on terror is expanding into Africa. From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

The United States is scaling up its military presence in Africa as concern mounts over terrorist threats - both immediate and future - on the continent, the deputy head of American forces in Europe said Friday.

"The threat is not weakening, it is growing," Air Force Gen. Charles Wald said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from Luanda, Angola. "We can't just sit back and let it grow."

The focus on Africa is part of major restructuring as U.S. forces in Europe reposition for the war against terror. . . .

European Command is not looking to station large concentrations of troops on the continent, Wald said. But it intends to make its presence felt through joint exercises, training initiatives and other exchanges.

U.S. forces have also negotiated access to a number of sites, including air strips in Angola and Gabon, that can be used for stopovers, refueling, or to position troops and equipment.

Wald said this will allow U.S. forces to respond with light, mobile troops - whether for peacekeeping, crisis response or a specific terrorist threat.

"We're actually going to get more capability with less force because of our ability to move around fast," he said.

Key to the effort is supporting the development of regional security groups, im-proving the capabilities of African police and soldiers, and building relationships with governments and militaries, Wald said. . . .

Wald's trip includes stops in regional military powers Nigeria and South Africa; oil-rich Angola, Gabon, Sao Tome and Principe; and Algeria and Niger, whose vast desert expanses are seen as a potential haven for terrorists.

At the same time, U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Kohler, the European Command's point man on planning for force reconfiguration, has been visiting the Saharan nations of Mauritania, Mali and Niger.

More civilians murdered in the jihad in Israel. From the New York Post, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

A young Israeli couple driving on the road between two West Bank cities were shot to death last night in a drive-by ambush by suspected Palestinian terrorists, Israeli authorities said.

The unidentified husband and wife, believed to be in their late 20s, were traveling between Hebron and Beersheba when their car came under fire.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility from any Palestinian faction.

The violence came during in a week of escalating tensions as Palestinians fiercely protested Israel's construction of the West Bank barrier.

Israel considers the controversial barrier, which is one-fourth completed, as a protection against Palestinian homicide bombers, while Palestinians claim it is nothing more than a land grab.

In the Gaza Strip yesterday, a bicycle-riding Palestinian homicide bomber blew himself up near a military jeep outside the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom.

There were no other casualties, the army said.

The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

Earlier, in Jerusalem, Israeli police clashed with stone-throwing Palestinians in a square outside the al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam's holiest sites.

Israeli police spokesman Gil Kleiman said officers fired rubber bullets and tossed stun grenades after hundreds of Palestinians tried to stone worshippers standing below the compound at the Western Wall, the most sacred site of Jewish prayer.

A Lebanese patriarch sees a threat to Lebanese culture from Islamization. From Zenit News Agency, with thanks to Nicolei:

Cardinal Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir, patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites, warns that an attempt is being made to Islamize public and private education in Lebanon.

In a Lenten message to the faithful and all the population of Lebanon, published on the patriarchate's Web page (www.bkerke.org.lb), the Maronite patriarch invites the Lebanese to a "clear cooperation characterized by transparency."

Cardinal Sfeir focuses on problems that affect the Lebanese governing class, including corruption, nepotism and the impossibility of making free decisions.

To safeguard coexistence in a democratic system, the people must have the right to "ask for explanations from" those who govern them, he said.

The cardinal lamented that drugs, alcoholism and gambling are ever more widespread in the country, making it harder for families to ensure the education of their children.

Cardinal Sfeir is especially concerned about the attempt to Islamize both public and private education, given that the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization -- a sort of Muslim UNESCO -- is allowed to operate in the country and exercise its influence on the Lebanese school system.

Such Islamization of education is "a threat not only to schools but to all of Lebanese culture," he said.

To promote Islamic education as an absolute ideal for schooling is to ignore that in Lebanon "there are two religions, two cultures and two civilizations at work, pertaining to Christianity and Islam," the cardinal said. "Both together form one people."

Would Al-Qaeda be short-sighted enough to destroy the ultimate source of worldwide funding for jihad? From the World Tribune, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Saudi Arabia has bolstered its forces in the Eastern Province after an alert of an Al Qaida attack on the kingdom's oil fields and nearby Shi'ite communities.

Saudi opposition sources said Riyad has reinforced National Guard troops and has constructed barriers around the regional capital of Qatif. The sources said the main concern is that Al Qaida would launch a suicide car bombing in the city.

So far, Saudi authorities have closed off sections of the Shi'ite-populated city of Qatif. Police also banned cars to the Al Qalaa section of that city.

The Al Qaida threat comes amid an effort by the state-owned Saudi Aramco to increase oil production at Qatif, Middle East Newsline reported. The effort has been plagued by safety difficulties because of the proximity of the oil fields to Shi'ite communities.

Saudi opposition sources said Al Qaida has been encouraged by Saudi clerics to launch attacks on the Shi'ite minority amid demands for equal rights with the Sunni majority. They said ruling clerics in Saudi Arabia have been concerned that the destruction of the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein would result in a Shi'ite-dominated Iraq that would encourage separatism in Saudi Arabia.

Al Qaida has already issued several fatwas, or religious rulings, that encourage violence against Sh'ites. On Jan. 14, Sheik Salman Al Odeh, a pro-Al Qaida Saudi cleric, termed Shi'ites infidels and enemies. Another pro-Al Qaida cleric, Sheik Safar Al Hawali, warned the Shi'ites that they would be massacred while others called for the removal of Shi'ites from all government positions.

Despite obfuscations and denials by many Muslims in the West, jihad is (as I demonstrate in Onward Muslim Soldiers) a quite coherent and comprehensive set of laws for warfare against non-Muslims and their treatment as dhimmis after the successful conclusion of that war. These laws cover virtually every aspect of that warfare, and they are still part of the Sharia — they have not been set aside or repudiated by any Muslim sect. This is underscored by a question on Ask-Imam.com answered by the South African Mufti Ebrahim Desai. It takes violent jihad, slavery, and the rape of slave women for granted — since, after all, they are declared legal by the Sharia. (Thanks to LGF.)

In the "Jihads" (Islamic wars) that took place, women were also, at times, taken as prisoners of war by the Muslim warriors. These women captives used to be distributed as part of the booty among the soldiers, after their return to Islamic territory. Each soldier was then entitled to have relations ONLY with the slave girl over whom he was given the RIGHT OF OWNERSHIP and NOT with those slave girls that were not in his possession. This RIGHT OF OWNERSHIP was given to him by the "Ameerul-Mu'mineen" (Head of the Islamic state.) Due to this right of ownership, it became lawful for the owner of a slave girl to have intercourse with her.

It may, superficially, appear distasteful to copulate with a woman who is not a man's legal wife, but once Shariah makes something lawful, we have to accept it as lawful, whether it appeals to our taste, or not; and whether we know its underlying wisdom or not. It is necessary for a Muslim to be acquainted with the laws of Shariah, but it is not necessary for him to delve into each law in order to find the underlying wisdom of these laws because knowledge of the wisdom of some of the laws may be beyond his puny comprehension. Allah Ta'ala has said in the Holy
Quraan: "Wa maa ooteetum min al-ilm illaa qaleelan" which means, more or less, that, "You have been given a very small portion of knowledge". Hence, if a person fails to comprehend the underlying wisdom of any law of Shariah, he cannot regard it as a fault of Shariah (Allah forbid), on the contrary, it is the fault of his own perception and lack of understanding, because no law of Shariah is contradictory to wisdom.

Nevertheless, the wisdom underlying the permission granted by Shariah to copulate with a slave woman is as follows: The LEGAL possession that a Muslim receives over a slave woman from the "Ameerul-Mu'mineen" (the Islamic Head of State) gives him legal credence to have coition with the slave woman in his possession, just as the marriage ceremony gives him legal credence to have coition with his wife. In other words, this LEGAL POSSESSION is, in effect, a SUBSTITUTE of the MARRIAGE CEREMONY. A free woman cannot be 'possessed', bought or sold like other possessions; therefore Shariah instituted a 'marriage ceremony' in which affirmation and consent takes place, which gives a man the right to copulate with her. On the other hand, a slave girl can be possessed and even bought and sold, thus, this right of possession, substituting as a marriage ceremony, entitles the owner to copulate with her. A similar example can be found in the slaughtering of animals; that after a formal slaughtering process, in which the words, "Bismillahi Allahu Akbar" are recited, goats, cows, etc.; become "Halaal" and lawful for consumption, whereas fish becomes "Halaal" merely through 'possession' which substitutes for the slaughtering.

European Muslim leaders like Dyab Abou Jahjah of the Arab European League, as I show in Onward Muslim Soldiers, fiercely oppose any attempt to integrate Muslims into European society. But now, for the first time, a Norwegian court has declared that illegal. From Aftenposten, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

An Oslo court has convicted an African-Norwegian not only for abusing his Algerian wife but also for preventing her from integrating into Norwegian society. It's the first time a Norwegian court has ruled such practices as illegal, and the offender was sentenced to three years in jail.

Prosecutors are calling the sentence "very important" for efforts to ensure the rights of immigrants, especially women, and promote integration.

The 48-year-old offender has been in Norway for 30 years. Nine years ago, he married an Algerian woman 20 years younger than he was and brought her to Norway as well.

The court claimed in its ruling that he then launched years of physical abuse against his wife and prevented her from leaving their home without his permission. If she did leave home, she was ordered to cover her face and hair.

He also abused the couple's children, and when his wife started attending Norwegian classes at the advice of juvenile authorities, he picked her up directly after the class to prevent her from mingling with other students.

She eventually broke out of the marriage and brought charges against him with the help of public prosecutors.

They used a 102-[year-]old law that states that a man can be punished with prison if he fails to exercise his duties towards his spouse or their child. Given the state's efforts to promote integration and prosecute domestic violence, Hanne Kristin Rohde of the Oslo Police District said "we saw that we had to try" invoking the little-used law.

The man tried to appeal his conviction, but his effort was rejected. The length of his sentence, considered harsh in Norway, is under appeal, however.

Two pizzeria workers have been arrested in Paris. From AP:

Anti-terrorism judges placed two Paris pizzeria workers under investigation Friday in a probe into radical Islamic training camps set up in France during the 1990s, judicial officials said.

Mustapha Boussaffa of Tunisia and Hazdine Sayeh, a French-Algerian, were being investigated for "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise," the officials said on condition of anonymity. In France, being placed under investigation is one step short of formal charges.

Boussaffa ran a pizzeria that is believed to have become a meeting place for radical Muslims and Sayeh worked there, the officials said.

The men, who are both about 30, were taken into custody Tuesday in the Paris region during the investigation into a network of Islamic radicals that once ran training camps for new recruits, the officials said. One camp was set up in the late 1990s in the Fontainebleau forest south of Paris.

The men are believed to have played only marginal roles in the case, the officials said.

The wider probe focuses on the death of anti-Taliban military commander Ahmed Shah Massood in Afghanistan. The anti-terrorism judges are looking into an alleged support network for Massood's killers.

Massood was slain Sept. 9, 2001, in northern Afghanistan, two days before the terror attacks in the United States, by two men posing as journalists.

Willie Virgile Brigitte, a French man extradited from Australia in October, is believed to be at the heart of the case. He is suspected of running false passports to Massood's assassins.

Brigitte organized the survival training lessons in Fontainebleau and spent months in al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to French judicial officials.

The Saudi tourist site saying that Jewish people were ineligible to apply for visas was up as late as last night; I sent it to a friend at 7:44 PM yesterday. But now image-conscious Saudis have taken it down. Does that mean their policy has changed? That question is as yet unanswered. From AP:

Rep. Anthony Weiner, a frequent critic of United States policy toward Saudi Arabia, said Thursday that the Middle East country's new visa policy outlined on a tourist Web site should be quickly condemned by American officials.

The Web site, promoting a new Saudi program to offer tourist visas to encourage more foreign visitors, lists four groups not entitled to tourist visas, including "Jewish People."

The Saudi government has traditionally only issued travel visas for employment, Hajj pilgrimages, and other visits with official sanction.

In addition to Jews, the Web site by the Supreme Commission for Tourism also says it will refuse visas to anyone with an Israeli passport or a passport that has an Israeli stamp.

"It is very difficult to see the Saudis as anything other than a backward country with backward ideals and this reaffirms that," said Weiner. "I think the administration should take a hard look at this Web site and decide whether a country that has these policies should be considered our ally."

Weiner said the U.S. should close its doors to Saudis until they "clarify" their immigration policy.

A lot of people complain about Christian missionaries, but I have never heard of them doing military recruiting. This is just another example of activities going on in mosques that must be halted if terrorism is ever going to end. From AP:

Muslim missionaries from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Pakistan have been visiting mosques in East Africa to recruit young men for holy war.

Moderate Muslim leaders say the part-time preachers go from mosque to mosque spouting sermons of hate, then offer young men a chance to wage holy war in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan.

A moderate Muslim leader in Tanzania says most older clerics try to warn their congregations that the extremists distort Islam.

Most people in Zanzibar follow a mystical form of Sufi Islam, which emphasizes peace and harmony, so they tend to reject the missionaries' fiery rhetoric.

But the missionaries appeal to a frustrated minority who believe Islam is at war.

Gamal Abdel-Hafiz, the FBI agent who allegedly refused to tape a fellow Muslim, has been reinstated. Did he really refuse to tape a Muslim? He says he was misunderstood. From MSNBC, with thanks to LGF:

Overturning the action of its senior disciplinary officer, the FBI has reinstated a high-profile Muslim agent who had been fired last year amid a swirl of controversy over allegations of conflicting loyalties in the war on terrorism, NEWSWEEK has learned. . . .

But congressional aides noted that it comes at a time when the bureau is under fire for its failure to recruit more Muslim and Arabic-speaking agents. The move also comes barely two months after Abdel-Hafiz filed a lawsuit against a current and former FBI agent, as well as ABC News for making statements in a December 2002 broadcast that left viewers with the impression he was a “sympathizer to terrorism and other religious fanatics.”

Until only a few years ago, Abdel-Hafiz had been one of the bureau’s prized counterterrorism assets, winning promotions and commendations for his work on such cases as the bombings of the Khobar Towers military barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996 and the Navy destroyer USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in October 2000.

Promoted to the post of deputy legal attaché in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in February 2001, Abdel-Hafiz was a pivotal figure in the investigation into the September 11 terror attacks. He also extracted a crucial confession that led to the arrest of the so-called Lackawanna 6—six Buffalo, N.Y.-area men who had attended an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, a case that has been publicly touted by top Justice Department officials as one of the Bush administration’s biggest successes in the war on terrorism. “You couldn’t ask for a better job by an FBI agent,” Paul Moskal, the FBI spokesman in Buffalo, told NEWSWEEK last fall about Abdel-Hafiz’s work on the Lackawanna 6 case.

But Abdel-Hafiz’s career turned sour in the fall of 2002, when a fellow FBI agent in Chicago, Robert Wright, accused him of refusing to cooperate in an earlier 1999 case targeting fundraising by the militant Palestinian group Hamas. Wright claimed that Abdel-Hafiz, who was then assigned to the bureau’s Dallas field office, had refused his request that he wear a hidden wire in a meeting with a suspect in the case on the grounds that “a Muslim does not record another Muslim.” Abdel-Hafiz has insisted that his comment was misunderstood and that his reluctance to wear the wire stemmed from his concerns that it could undermine his effectiveness in the Muslim community and jeopardize his family if word got out that he had done so. In any case, Abdel-Hafiz pointed out that his supervisor at the time, Danny Defenbaugh, then the special agent in charge of the Dallas office, made the final decision that Abdel-Hafiz should not wear a wire in the Hamas investigation.

Wright’s allegations, first made at a Washington press conference and later repeated in his December 2002 interview with the ABC News show “Primetime Live,” led to increased scrutiny of Abdel-Hafiz’s work in Riyadh. By then, Abdel-Hafiz’s chief supervisor, Wilfred Rattigan, had converted to Islam. When both Abdel-Hafiz and Rattigan flew off to Mecca for the hajj, a top FBI official in Washington complained and an auditing team was dispatched to review the office’s work. During the course of the audit, Abdel-Hafiz told NEWSWEEK, the chief inspector from headquarters concluded that there was too much “clutter” in the office and ordered the “shredding” of over 2,000 documents related to the September 11 terror investigations. Although most of the documents were duplicated in the FBI’s computers, a small number were not, according to Abdel-Hafiz. These consisted of between 50 and 100 letters written by Saudi security officials responding to FBI requests for information about terror suspects. When the FBI was forced to ask the Saudis for new copies of the letters, the Saudis—who were being severely criticized in Congress for failure to cooperate on terrorism cases—complained to senior U.S. officials.

When was the last time you heard of the U.S. Army building a church, or a synagogue? What's that? A wall of separation? Well, the wall is down in Afghanistan, where a plaque in front of one mosque proclaims: "Matachina mosque, reconstructed in 2002... with the help of the American people." From AFP, with thanks to Daniel Pipes:

"Matachina Madrassa" reads a rusty, battered metal plaque. A metre away is a brand-new stone on which is written in fresh lettering: "Matachina mosque, reconstructed in 2002... with the help of the American people."

On November 16, 2001, during the heat of the US-led war against the Taliban regime, at least 34 people lost their lives here. The dead included fighters but also religious students, women and children, killed during the bombardment of this Islamic school and mosque in the suburbs of Khost.

Reconstructed

The building has since been reconstructed almost identically with the financial support of the United States army.

Some rubble and a toppled brick wall are the only evidence of the bombing.

And a new mosque has been rebuilt on the site of the carnage. A wooden door, decorated with Arabic writing, opens on to a large, empty vault. Inside, a painted niche indicates the direction of the holy city of Mecca, towards which the faithful pray.

An already dusty plastic floor covering sits between the imposing stone pillars supporting the building. The only exaggerated decoration in this spartan decor is a made-in-China plastic gold clock fixed high on the wall.

Nobody ever comes

"Nobody ever comes into this mosque, what are you doing here," asks a soldier from a neighbouring garrison.

The mosque's guard lives just metres from the building, in a mud-brick home. The door is padlocked shut. "The man has gone to pray in another mosque."

The new Matachina mosque is almost always empty. Hardly refinished, it is already abandoned as the faithful prefer to pray elsewhere.

So the American taxpayers financed a mosque in Afghanistan as a gesture of good will, and nobody goes to it anyway. I hope the Army will henceforth stay out of the mosque-building business.

Some Muslims seem to have no trouble turning from calls for the freedom to wear headscarves in France to denying the freedom not to wear them elsewhere. From AP, with thanks to Twostellas:

Three Islamic rebel groups in Indian-controlled Kashmir have demanded that women in the region wear head-to-toe veils and that all beauty parlors close, a newspaper reported Thursday.

The groups want restaurants to shut partitioned areas supposedly reserved for families - but in reality also used by young couples. It also wants tutoring centers, which prepare teenagers for college examinations, to segregate girls and boys, the Times of India newspaper said.

The demands were made by the Al-Madina Regiment, which the newspaper described as a collection of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Al-Umar and Hezb-ul-Mujahedeen militant groups.

The rebels have been fighting Indian security forces since 1989, seeking independence for Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan. More than 65,000 people have died.

Anyone failing to meet the demands by March 1 would "face the consequences," the newspaper quoted Al-Madina Regiment chief Umar Khalid as saying.

Similar demands have been made in the past - and few are adhered to.

Muslim women in Jammu-Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, usually don't wear head-to-toe burqa veils and instead cover their heads with loose scarfs.

This "Muslim-Christian violence" is rather predictably one-sided. From AP, with thanks to Peter Rockas:

Suspected Muslim militants armed with guns and bows and arrows killed at least 48 people in an attack on a farming village in central Nigeria. Most of the victims died as they sought refuge in a church, police said. The latest bout of Muslim-Christian violence in the region occurred Tuesday night in Yelwa, a mainly Christian town in Nigeria's Plateau State, police commissioner Innocent Ilozuoke said.

Army and police reinforcements helped restore calm, Ilozuoke told a news conference Wednesday in Jos, the state capital.

The killings appeared to be the latest retaliatory attack in a sporadic conflict that has rocked the central region since an outburst of sectarian violence in 2001, pitting Christians against Muslims in once-peaceful Jos. In the initial outburst in Jos more than 1,000 people died in one week.

Since then, several hundreds more have died as rival Muslim-Christian militias attacked isolated villages and towns.

Is terrorism really the last desperate resort of the poor? Dawood Ibrahim has 430 million dollars. From Asia Times, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

While all attention is focused on Osama bin Laden and his cohorts allegedly cornered in western Pakistan, in India there is an equal amount of interest in the one man who is wanted just as desperately - Dawood Ibrahim. . . .

The hunt for Dawood is taking place following Pakistan's realization that flushing out terrorists and jihadi elements has become a necessity for its own survival. Pakistan has currently amassed 20,000 troops along the Afghanistan border for what is being believed to be a decisive battle against bin Laden and al-Qaeda militants. But what might be more than a coincidence is that Pakistan's sudden willingness to flush out Dawood comes amid reports in the Indian media that a timely tip-off by the Indian intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) helped foil a third assassination plot against Musharraf. Two abortive attempts have been reported in the past few months. There is, however, no doubt in anyone's mind that Dawood is indisputably the number one criminal wanted by India, and what has rankled is that he has for long used Pakistan as a base. . . .

It is the nature of the crimes attributed to Dawood that place him at the top of India's most wanted wish list. The son of a police constable, he is the prime suspect in masterminding a series of bomb blasts that occurred in a single day in 1993 in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the financial heart of India, killing 260 people and injuring 1,000. . . .

It is estimated that in Mumbai alone, Dawood and his family own assets worth US$430 million. This includes several buildings at prime locations such as Colaba, Crawford Market, Bhendi Bazar, Bandra, Oshiwara and Versova. Many of these are benami (fictitious names), which makes it difficult to seize them. The family has several builders, stockbrokers and jewelers fronting for it. Apart from this, Dawood has vast business interests in the hospitality industry in the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Australia and India. Several shopping malls in the West and Australia are also reportedly owned by the family. Dawood has also allegedly began operating an airline from a Central Asian republic.

The New York Post (as if you couldn't tell from the headline) reviews a new book about female suicide bombers, Barbara Victor's Army of Roses (Rodale Press). (Thanks to Jeffrey Imm.)

The Israeli occupation, Victor finds, does not fully explain Palestinian terrorism. Rather, its roots lie in the "culture of death" that Palestinian leaders have promoted. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been at the forefront of fusing martyrdom with patriotism. The popularity of these groups prompted Yasser Arafat to authorize his own al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade to engage in terrorism and in 2002, Arafat began calling for the recruitment of women as Shihada (female martyrs) to create "an army of roses that will crush Israeli tanks."

Not to be outdone, Hamas, normally religiously conservative, issued a fatwa permitting women to become suicide bombers. . . .

This book explodes the myth that Palestinian terrorism would cease if Israel's occupation ended. Terrorism now functions in Palestinian society in ways that are independent of Israel.

The lesson is that peace will necessarily require a sea change within Palestinian society, one that, unfortunately, shows little sign of occurring.

There is a great deal of value in this MEMRI report on Muslim Anti-Semitism, but one passage in particular caught my eye, as I discuss this phenomenon at length in Onward Muslim Soldiers:

It is indeed unfortunate that the status of the Jews as a tolerated minority in the Muslim world before the advent of Zionism has come to figure prominently in the competition between Jews and Arabs to enlist public opinion. The lay reader is often at a loss between the arguments on both sides. On the one hand, he hears that Jews (and Christians) had the status of a protected minority under Islam, and that Jews in Muslim Spain enjoyed a golden age of peace and prosperity; on the other, he is told that Jews and Christians had no legal equality and were never anything other than second-class citizens. These conflicting versions are put into a balanced perspective by Bernard Lewis:

Even at its best, medieval Islam was rather different from the picture provided by Disraeli and other romantic writers. The golden age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam. The myth was invented by Jews in 19th-century Europe as a reproach to Christians – and taken up by Muslims in our own time as a reproach to Jews.

Like most powerful myths, this story contains an element of historic truth. If tolerance means the absence of persecution, then classic Islamic society was indeed tolerant to both its Jewish and its Christian subjects – more tolerant perhaps in Spain than in the East, and in either incomparably more tolerant than was medieval Christendom. But if tolerance means the absence of discrimination, then Islam never was or claimed to be tolerant, but on the contrary insisted on the privileged superiority of the true believer in this world as well as the next.

Read it all. (Thanks to Jeffrey Imm.)

An official webpage on the U.S. State Department site celebrates "Muslim Life in America." I looked in vain for similar pages celebrating Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and Buddhist Life in America.

Daniel Pipes, whose own site alerted me to this (with thanks to LGF), points out that "the State Department provides links to and thereby endorses groups that the federal government has either effectively shut down (the American Muslim Council), is currently investigating (Islamic Society of North America), or has arrested multiple employees of (Council on American-Islamic Relations). Additionally, other organizations on the list (Council on Islamic Education, Islamic Institute, Muslim Public Affairs Council) were long ago exposed as sympathetic to militant Islam."

No links, however, to danielpipes.org. Or Jihad Watch.

She will try again, and kill even children. From the Telegraph:

A woman suicide bomber arrested by Israeli forces as she prepared to blow up a Tel Aviv bus station vowed yesterday to carry out a successful "martyr attack" as soon as she is freed from jail. "Yes, I will do it again if I can," said Obeida Khalil, 27. "When I put the suicide explosives belt on I felt very happy, very content. I was angry when they caught me because I was not able to be a martyr.

"I wanted to be the first female martyr and to kill as many Israeli soldiers as possible. I chose the bus station because my brother blew himself up there."

There have been seven female Palestinian suicide bombers. Two of them alone have claimed 25 lives. Another 24 bombers, including Khalil, have been stopped before they could strike.

Speaking to The Telegraph in her cell in HaSharon prison near Netanya, Khalil, a member of Islamic Jihad from the village of Beit Wazan, near Nablus, said she had been pushed to act because of the Israeli occupation and the "murder" of her fiance.

"Four days before our wedding, he went up on the roof and he was shot dead by an Israeli helicopter. If we had been married, then I would have had children. I would have done other things for the jihad besides being a martyr.

"But before he died we had discussed being martyrs by blowing ourselves up together. With the help of God, we said, maybe both of us would do it and then we would be together forever."

Khalil is one of 74 female Palestinian prisoners kept in a special wing at HaSharon. It is divided between prisoners linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in one segregated group and Hamas and Islamic Jihad inmates in the other. They are kept locked up 21 hours a day in tiny shared cells and allowed three hours exercise in the wing's central yard. One prisoner had a baby and will be allowed to keep him until he is two.

Kaiera Sa'idi, 26, serving a life sentence for driving a suicide bomber, said she knew what she was doing might mean she would never see her four children again. "But I felt it was my duty and I believe God will take care of them."

Most of Khalil's time is spent reading the Koran, doing needlework and preparing what she feels she must do when released. Arrested 20 months ago, Khalil is serving a five-year sentence. Relatives are not allowed to visit because several family members have been suicide bombers.

Her mother, she said, understood why she wanted to kill herself. "Every Muslim wants to be a martyr. It was in me before I was born. The Israelis took my land and our state was conquered.

"People in Europe do not understand us but if they lived in Palestine they wouldn't ask questions about why we do what we do."

Although Khalil wanted to blow up soldiers in her planned attack in Tel Aviv she said it was legitimate to kill Jewish children because one day they would serve in the Israeli army.

Milan's Duomo: possibly a target

Several imams have been arrested on suspicions of terror plotting in Italy. The spectacle of religious teachers being arrested for this kind of activity has become so commonplace as to escape notice. But it points up vividly the problem that Muslims face globally: radicalism is coming from those who should be most familiar with the supposedly peaceful teachings of the religion. Global reform is needed, but it is not at all on the horizon. From the BBC, with thanks to Jean-Luc.

Italian police have arrested three North Africans suspected of plotting to bomb Milan's metro and a cathedral in the north of the country. Arrest warrants had been issued for five men from Morocco and Tunisia, who served as Muslim religious leaders in the city of Cremona.

The suspected cell members are under investigation for conspiracy to commit "international terrorism". . . .

The crackdown targeted an alleged cell linked to a mosque in the city of Cremona.

Investigators believe the men planned to blow up the Milan metro stop below the cathedral in December 2002 and also to bomb the Cremona cathedral.

"The subversive cells have maintained themselves over time, working out of the mosque of Cremona and led by the successive imams," Brescia's attorney general said.

Another ex-imam of the Cremona mosque was arrested last October, after being accused by Morocco of links to the suicide bombings in Casablanca that killed 45 people in May.

Gulf News thinks that the notorious Zarqawi letter is a forgery, for some interesting reasons.

The London-based daily Al Hayat recently published a letter allegedly written by Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, America's most sought after man in Iraq due to his connections with Al Qaida.

The US has placed a reward of $10 million on his capture.

If true, the letter provides invaluable insight into the workings of a terrorist's mind. Its publication has stirred much debate and received wide condemnation - as well as scepticism - from Arab writers and intellectuals.

Some analysts have expressed doubt over the letter's authenticity, since all of Al Qaida's content is marked by optimism for future actions and plans.

This particular letter, according to critics, more or less harbours pessimism as it repeatedly mentions how all doors are being shut in the face of the mujahideen. The contents of the letter are highly inflammatory and full of religious overtones.

Gulf News publishes this letter to give the reader some understanding of the writer's perspective, and it should be read in this context.

The letter, according to the website Elaph, was found on a man - captured by Kurdish troops - who they claim was a close confidante-cum-messenger of Al Zarqawi. The man captured was en route to delivering the letter to his supporters in Iraq.

The Jordanian Al Zarqawi was sentenced in absentia in 2000 by a Jordanian court to 15 years in prison for his role in plotting to carry out a series of attacks against Western interests in Jordan.

The US State Department last year also labelled Al Zarqawi as one of the most senior Al Qaida leaders with close ties with Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri.

Addressed to 'two brothers', a reference that is assumed to be made to bin Laden and Al Zawahri, the letter maps out in detail the agenda for the coming four months in carrying out attacks against the Americans. It calls for turning Iraq into a new battlefield against the Americans.

It further details the ethnic break-up of Iraqi society, describing each group in detail, whether they are supporters of Al Qaida or not, and how they are to be treated accordingly.

Gulf News has translated excerpts of the controversial letter.

The harsh situation of Christians in postwar Iraq. From VOANews, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

Many Iraqis who fled to Syria for safety before, during and just after the war in Iraq say they still are afraid to go home.

Nearly a year after the war in Iraq, Seita Daoud sits in a sparsely furnished, badly heated apartment in a poor neighborhood of Damascus. She says she is afraid to go home. "It was not easy to leave my country," she says. "I was born in Iraq. I raised my children there. But it is too hard and too uncertain there now."

A few days after Baghdad fell to U.S. forces, Seita Daoud packed up her family of nine and headed for safety across the border in Syria. She had already sold off most of their possessions, keeping only a few family photos, including a portrait of her husband who had died years before.

Speaking the ancient language of her Assyrian Christian community, Seita says she is still not sure what to do. "I am ready to go back," she says, "but first I must be sure of security to raise my children. They all left their schools and their jobs. What will we find when we go back," she asks.

Seita is not alone. She says most of her Assyrian Christian neighbors, several hundred families, are here in Damascus with her. "Some," she says, "have arrived in the past few months. They say Iraq is too unstable for religious minorities."

Her son Yvan is blunt. "We number fewer than two-million," he says, "with no strong tribal leaders or big politicians to protect us."

U.S. officials and members of the Iraqi Governing Council insist ethnic and religious minorities, which make up about three-percent of the population, will be legally protected by any future government.

Yvan is not convinced. He says minorities suffered under Saddam Hussein and he does not want to see it happen again.

He acknowledges that Iraq's majority Shiite Muslim community was harshly persecuted by Saddam Hussein. Now, he worries how Christians and other religious minorities would be treated if strict Islamists gain control of a future government.

His mother worries more about the violence and lack of jobs. "Where would we find work," Seita asks. "You need a connection to get work with the Americans." But she shakes her head. "And, those who do work with the Americans are afraid," she says, "because the Americans are targets and Iraqis working with them are too."

For 26-year-old Taygor, the decision to leave was easy. Like other university students, he says he had to sign up for military training and he did not want to fight to defend Saddam Hussein. He left school and Iraq well before war began. "Saddam ruined our lives. He ruined our society," Taygor says. "Everything that is happening now is a result of what he did when he was in power."

Taygor cheered when the U.S.-led coalition took control of his country, but he says he has no desire to go back even now that Saddam Hussein is gone.

Neither does 33-year-old Anwar Deriyawish, another Iraqi Christian from Baghdad. The former welder lived in a rented house with his wife and children. "I have nothing there. Why should I go back," he asks.

Anwar has applied for a visa to Australia, but speaks no English and is not optimistic he will ever go there.

In contrast, Seita Daoud has no doubts she and her children will return to Iraq one day. She just cannot say when that day will come.

Megawati (AFP)

The US and its allies are behaving with "exceptional injustice" toward Muslim countries, says Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri. From Smh.com.au, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

Mrs Megawati sought to contrast the way Indonesia had used the law to find and prosecute its terrorists with the "unilateral" US-led invasion of Iraq. The remarks opened an international conference of Islamic scholars, which her government partly funded.

"It may be due to either coincidence or intention, but an exceptional injustice is apparent in the attitude and action of big countries towards countries [whose] major populations are Muslims," she told 300 delegates from Islamic universities and governments around the world.

Indonesia, she said, had the right idea:

Indonesia was a genuinely moderate Muslim society that used the justice system to oppose terrorism, such as the bombings in Bali, she said. "The nation resolutely repudiates and legally prosecutes those perpetrating acts of violence against others, despite their conviction that those are religious acts."

Hmm. What about the light treatment meted out to Abu Bakar Bashir?

Megawati was also exercised about France:

Although France had staunchly opposed the Iraqi invasion, she said it was guilty of perpetrating a "far smaller" injustice towards Muslims by its recent move to restrict women and girls from wearing the Islamic head scarf.

Such discriminatory acts would be seen as test cases in Muslim countries to judge whether "those big countries are serious in practising the human rights they have preached to the whole world since the past 20th century".

What tests, if any, meanwhile, would Muslim countries themselves have to take regarding human rights? Megawati did have a few comments:

But she also criticised Islamic society and said it too needed to change and present "a more peaceful facade". She urged Islamic leaders to become more open to ideas and technological advances in the West that were leaving Islamic societies behind.

"Islamic scholars need to formulate and develop a socio-religious conception that is more open, more inclusive, which provides space to the pluralism of mankind that is so diverse."

Indonesia's 40 million strong Islamic group Nahdlatul Ulama organised the meeting with government help to redress the "stigmatisation of Islam as a religion that accommodates acts of violence", a conference document said.

If Nahdlatul Ulama really wants to do that, it will have to address jihad ideology. I doubt that was on the agenda.

Until Muslim groups worldwide face up to the involvement of "Islamic teachers" in terrorist acts, and do something to prevent it, military actions will not win a decisive or lasting victory in the war on terror. From Reuters:

An Indonesian court on Wednesday sentenced an Islamic teacher, believed to have been a leader of the most feared militant group in South-east Asia, to three years in jail for hiding one of the Bali bombers.

Abu Rusydan, who is believed by authorities to have taken over cleric Abu Bakar Bashir's role as leader of the shadowy Jemaah Islamiah (JI) group six months before the deadly 2002 Bali bombings, was found guilty of involvement in acts of terror.

Prosecutors had asked for nine years in jail for Rusydan.

"The defendant has been proven guilty of purposely carrying out acts of terror by giving leeway to a terror suspect and hiding information on a terror crime," Judge Machmud Rochimi told the South Jakarta court.

About 200 supporters of the 43-year-old Central Java religious teacher chanted "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) after the verdict was read out and punched their fists in the air.

Rusydan was charged with hiding Mukhlas, top controller of the Bali blast operation, while he was on the run from the police.

Prosecutors had told the court Rusydan led a meeting a few days after the blast that killed 202 people and a participant heard Mukhlas say "the perpetrators of the Bali bombings were us".

Prosecutors say Rusydan became JI caretaker after Bashir took over leadership of the Indonesian Mujahidin Council, a hardline Islamic group advocating full implementation of Islamic sharia law in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country.

Rusydan has admitted he led the meeting and helped Bashir but has denied he had anything to do with a terror organisation.

About 30 people, including many accused of being JI members, have been convicted for their role in the Bali attacks, the worst since the September 11 strikes on the United States.

Three, including Mukhlas, have been sentenced to death.

A separate Jakarta court in September found Bashir guilty of treason and sentenced him to four years, but said accusations he was JI's chief were unproven. A higher court later acquitted Bashir of treason and reduced his jail term to three years.

So said British Home Secretary David Blunkett, who also had some choice words for opponents of anti-terror measures. From the Australian, with thanks to Nicolei:

A TERRORIST attack in Britain was inevitable, British Home Secretary David Blunkett said.

Security measures alone were not sufficient to stop the threat, he said. Asked if such an attack was a question of "when, not if", Blunkett told BBC television: "Yes, it's the view that's been expressed by the head of the (home) security service", Eliza Manningham-Buller.

Blunkett said that a suicide attack was "the most likely" scenario in Britain, which has been a staunch supporter of the US in its so-called war on terror.

Blunkett told the BBC that Prime Minister Tony Blair "and I have confirmed that whatever we do - and we are doing everything we can - we can't guarantee and nor should we pretend to that we can protect ourselves forever by security alone.

"But we can do a damn good job if we enable the security services to be able to apprehend people before rather than after they have committed the act," Blunkett said, adding: "In this country the threat is extremely real."

His comments came the day before he was due to publish a controversial paper setting out possible options for introducing tough new counter-terrorism laws in Britain.

The proposed measures were expected to feature radical proposals such as lowering the standard of proof in terrorist-linked court cases and introducing secret trials heard by security-vetted judges.

The plans have been fiercely criticised by human rights campaigners.

But Blunkett argued that Britain now faced a threat different from that of attacks carried out by Northern Ireland paramilitary groups during decades of violence in the British-ruled province.

"Whatever they (such groups) did, and it was horrendous, they actually always tried to save their own lives."

But they were not "as terrorism is from Al-Qaeda and the network around it, geared up to suicide bombers who can take our lives at any time in ways that we never perceived before.

"So prevention rather than simply prosecution and punishment have to be the way forward. Because prosecution and punishment to a terrorist who is prepared to take his or her own life as well as everyone else's is a meaningless concept."

Blunkett said that the document he was to unveil today "explains more of how al-Qaeda cells organise and operate".

"Without this information, we cannot have an informed debate about how to balance our security with our rights," he said in an interview with Britain's domestic Press Association.

Blunkett called for a debate to produce solutions to the international terrorist threat, a step he admitted risked attracting the derision of his political opponents.

"I am fed up with what little debate we have in this country being dictated by the campaigners and lawyers who only say how rights are being damaged rather than come up with some solutions. In short, I want answers and ideas, not just brickbats."

Blunkett added: "I live with constant, never-ending worry day and night about the threat we face and whether we are doing everything we can to make this country as safe as possible."

The Home Secretary was also expected to unveil details of a 50-per-cent expansion of Britain's home security service, known as MI5, which is to hire 1000 new staff to counter the threat of terrorism.

I have long argued that the worldwide jihadist movement is not restricted to any single organization. Now, after virtually everything has been blamed on Al-Qaeda for awhile, this is being acknowledged. From AP, with thanks to EPG:

Al-Qaida is damaged seriously, but it has spread its radical agenda to other groups that now pose the leading threat to the United States, CIA Director George Tenet and other intelligence chiefs said.

Tenet described a terrorist organization lacking central leadership and squeezed financially. Al-Qaida remains determined to attack U.S. interests, however, and still is capable of carrying out assaults on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001, he said Tuesday.

In addition, dozens of smaller Islamic extremist organizations with ties to al-Qaida have emerged, in places like Libya, Iraq and Uzbekistan, to constitute the next wave of terrorist threats, Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee in an annual public session on national security threats.

"The steady growth of Osama bin Laden's anti-American sentiment through the wider Sunni extremist movement and the broad dissemination of al-Qaida's destructive expertise ensure that a serious threat will remain for the foreseeable future, with or without al-Qaida in the picture," Tenet said.

At Tuesday's politically charged hearing, given recent debate over the intelligence community's prewar assessments on Iraq's weapons, Tenet and other officials walked gingerly through questions on the intelligence agencies' cooperation and effectiveness. They touched on instability in countries from Haiti to Afghanistan, although Iraq dominated much of the discussion.

On Iraq, Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said allies of deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein are thought to be responsible for most anti-U.S. attacks. Foreign fighters, including those from al-Qaida, have carried out some of the most significant attacks and may be behind the high-casualty suicide bombings largely against Iraqi targets, he said.

"Left unchecked," Jacoby said, "Iraq has the potential to serve as a training ground for the next generation of terrorists."

Further, many in the country's Sunni minority, which prospered during Saddam's Baath party control, have yet to decide whether to support the U.S. coalition or the resistance, Jacoby said. "The key factors in this decision are stability and a future that presents viable alternatives to the Baathists or Islamists," he said.

Largely ignoring an appeal from the committee chairman, Pat Roberts, R-Kan., to focus on current threats, Republican and Democratic lawmakers questioned the intelligence chiefs about intelligence mistakes before the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Iraq. The agencies' performance in those crises has called into question the reliability of intelligence and the Bush administration's pre-emptive strike doctrine.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, asked Tenet how, since a National Security Strategy promulgated in September 2002 set up a strategy of pre-emption, Bush and other administration officials used words like "grave and gathering threat" to describe the level of Saddam's danger to the United States. International law traditionally requires that a threat be "imminent" before a nation can defend against it.

"If it wasn't an imminent threat in your mind, how would you have characterized or assessed the threat?" Snowe asked.

Tenet said intelligence analysts were "quite worried " about surprise attacks and what they didn't know, given Saddam's history of deception. Estimates also indicated he had biological and chemical weapons, and other programs. "Whether it stands up or it doesn't stand up over the course of time is something we're going to look at quite carefully," he said.

"People voted to authorize the use of force based on what we read in these reports," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. "It's a pretty bitter pill to swallow, particularly with a pre-emptive war."

After the hearing, Roberts told reporters that "everybody would have some second thoughts" about the rationalization for war, but he believes that Saddam posed a national security threat, "in some ways even more dangerous" than expected, due to the deterioration of his leadership.

Also at the hearing:

-Tenet said officials have uncovered plans to recruit pilots and evade security measures in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe. In the last year, officials also have seen an increase in threats from more sophisticated chemical, biological and radiological weapons. They've learned of widely disseminated instructions for an improvised chemical weapon, he said.

-When asked if the country is safer today than a year ago, Tenet, Jacoby and FBI Director Robert Mueller all said yes. Mueller later cautioned that threats may be more significant because of the decentralization that followed the undoing of many terrorist leaders and their sanctuaries in Afghanistan. He said the country is safer, however, because of government protection.

-Tenet rejected suggestions that the CIA did not follow up on a 1999 German intelligence tip about one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, a first name and a phone number. "You got a name, named Joe, and here's the phone number," Tenet said. "We didn't have enough, but we didn't sit around."

-Tenet praised "great cooperation" from Muslim leaders, including Pakistani Gen. President Pervez Musharraf, who "remains a courageous and indispensable ally who has become the target of assassins for the help he's given us."

The more civilians are killed in those buses and restaurants, the better Hizballah likes it. From the Dow Jones Newswire, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Hezbollah is paying bonuses for each person Palestinian suicide bombers kill, the head of Israel's parliamentary defense and foreign affairs committee said Tuesday.

Committee chairman Yuval Steinitz told Dow Jones Newswires that the Lebanese guerrilla group is rewarding the cell organizers for each victim of suicide bombers.

Steinitz confirmed an Israel radio report citing the head of the Shin Bet security
service, Avi Dichter, who appeared before the committee earlier Tuesday, saying Hezbollah was making the payments. The Iranian-backed Hezbollah has been helping to finance attacks carried out by groups affiliated with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement since the Palestinian uprising against Israel broke out nearly 3 1/2 years ago.

But more recently, Hezbollah has begun paying individual terror cells a "bonus" of several hundred dollars for each individual victim killed, Steinitz said.

Hezbollah refused to comment on the report.

Steinitz said Israel is unsure how much money in total the Lebanese guerrilla group has paid to finance uprising-related terror activity.

Palestinian militants didn't immediately comment on the report, but have previously said that Hezbollah has said the payment depends on the size of the attack, although there is no fixed scale for victims.

The militants have said they get monthly payments from Hezbollah for basics such as ammunition and cellular phone cards, as well as larger lump sums of tens of thousands of dollars for individual attacks.

Israel and Hezbollah have been bitter enemies since Israeli troops occupied southern Lebanon more than two decades ago. Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, and a Jan. 29 prisoner swap that also led to the release of 400 Palestinians from Israeli prisoners, haven't reduced the tensions.

Bounty payments for acts of terrorism are a familiar item on the Mideast landscape. Two years ago, then-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein began paying $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers, more than doubling previous payments of $10,000.

Israel also accuses Saudi Arabia of sponsoring Palestinian terror through payments to Islamic charities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Saudi Arabia says the money is used for humanitarian purposes only.

A spokesman for the Al Aqsa martyrs' brigade, a militant group loosely affiliated with Arafat, later denied they were getting bonuses for killing more people.

Said Abu Mujahed: "Hezbollah is supporting the Al Aqsa brigades and the intifada financially as the Jews all over the world are supporting Israel. They are supporting us on the basis that they are Arabs and Muslims and they are supporting their brothers in resisting the occupation."

However, he said they weren't getting a lot of money from Hezbollah. "We get just enough to survive and struggle."

Wage jihad, fight the Crusaders, topple the apostates of the House of Saud -- that's right, it's a new issue of the Al-Qaeda magazine "Voice of Jihad." From the SITE Institute, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

The 11th issue of the al-Qaeda biweekly “Sawt al-Jihad” [Voice of Jihad] online magazine has been released. In this issue, we find three main points of emphasis:

This issue places great emphasis on propaganda, especially through the internet. Time and again, the magazine states that one of the great successes of the mujahideen in the past year was managing to spread their ideas and mobilize public support, despite the Saudi regime’s effort to stop them. In this context, the new Al-Qaeda video entitled “Badr Al-Riyadh” is referred to at length, with great emphasis on its impact. This video, we learn, has set the stage for a new phase, in which people will move from passively supporting the mujahideen to actively joining them in their holy war against the infidels.

As is characteristic of the magazine, we find the usual rhetoric calling on all Muslims to “fight the crusaders” in Saudi Arabia and in Iraq and to sacrifice themselves as martyrs for this holy cause.

The magazine continuously reemphasizes its clear, unambiguous hate-filled stand against the Saudi royal family ruling Saudi Arabia. They are presented as traitors who are collaborating with the “crusaders,” and must be dealt with accordingly.

Propaganda

In an article summarizing the achievements of the mujahideen, the “most prominent victory” at this stage is ascribed to the mujahideen’s ability to “prove the truth of their belief.” The article goes on to explain that “this theoretical and theological war stands in the center of the current struggle.”

This statement sheds some light on the mujahideen’s view of their main objectives over the past months. Performing attacks against western targets was important, but the main objective had been that of mobilizing public support and gaining grass root legitimacy among the Muslims, despite the “vicious campaign against the mujahideen which has been carried out lately” by the “renegade regime.”

Crowning these informative efforts was the video, “Badr Al-Riyadh.” “This video had a great impact on the tyrants of the Peninsula, it baffled them, it destroyed everything they had done… Months, and even years of organized deceit went to waste in a mere 90 minutes.”

Furthermore, this movie, we are told, has set the stage for a new phase, in which the mujahideen will move from gaining public support to mobilizing it for the holy war: “God willing, this will be the start of a new phase, the most prominent characteristic of which will be the movement of the jihad firebrand into the midst of the people.” Instead of only passively sympathizing with mujahideen, people will move to “giving all possible support to the mujahideen, standing by them with heart and soul, with prayers and by urging sons to become time bombs and heroic commandos against the crusaders and their allies…”.

According to this article about the video, between three and four hundred thousand people downloaded the movie from the internet in less than five days, parts of the video were broadcast by various TV news channels, and the video was also copied “in great numbers” on video cassettes and distributed all over Saudi Arabia.

Fighting the Crusaders

Opening the new Hijra year 1425, the 11th issue of the magazine begins with a summary of the “great events in the land of the two holy Mosques [Saudi Arabia],” in which “The mujahideen brigades set out to fight the crusaders and launch painful attacks against them…giving them a taste of what the Muslims are being subjected to everywhere by the criminal infidels, be it in Palestine, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, or Kashmir.” The article describes and glorifies the two attacks that were carried out in the past year against western targets in Riyadh—the attack on the residential compounds in May and the attack on the Mahyah residential complex in November. The magazine stresses that despite their small number, “the quality of these attacks, as well as their actual and media impact, was great, creating havoc in the calculations of the crusaders and of their collaborators in the region.”

In subsequent articles our attention is directed to the great power the Mujahideen have accumulated in the past year, managing “to establish training camps…, accumulate weapons, missiles, new equipment, and multiply the number of cells…; truly, they have become a country within a country!”

Characteristically, we also find fervent calls upon the Muslims to join this holy war: “We will bring our ardently desired Ummah back to the times of glory and honor…We will continue on this path until Allah will bring this about, or until we die…We will put all our efforts into fighting the crusaders, in order to raise the flag of the religion, so that the holy law of Allah, the Creator of the Worlds, may rule…O, Muslims, perform your duty! Persist, persevere, and fight. Place your trust in Allah, so that you may be successful.”

Stand against Saudi Royal Family

It is impossible to overlook the hate-filled position held by the magazine against the Saudi regime, in general, and the Saudi royal family, in particular. In fact, such is its contempt for the regime that the magazine consistently abstains from referring to the family by its name, instead degradingly calling it “Al-Salul,” meaning “the infiltrated family.” The magazine further attacks the royal family, stating, “the collaborating governments of the [Arab] Peninsula have rendered logistical support to the crusading American army in its fight against Iraq” and are still continuing to do so.

The issue maintains that the way to handle a situation in which a country has been occupied and is being employed as a base for launching operations against Islam is clear. This country must be fought, “together with all who collaborate with it.” Throughout the magazine, the Saudi government continues to be denounced in the context of aiding the Americans, arresting holy warriors, launching media campaigns against them, and doing all in their power to stand in their way.

The tragic story of Shafilea Ahmed is not necessarily one of honor killing; however, the girl was upset enough at the prospect of an arranged marriage to swallow bleach. As young Muslims in the West are increasingly caught between two cultures, we will see more of such stories. From the Telegraph, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

The parents of Shafilea Ahmed, the murdered Asian teenager, upstaged detectives yesterday when they gatecrashed a televised police briefing to deny that they were guilty of a so-called "honour killing".

Senior officers had just given details of how their daughter's badly decomposed body was found concealed in undergrowth when Iftikhar Ahmed, 44, and his wife, Farzana, 41, arrived with their legal team.

The couple, from Warrington, both of whom are on police bail after being arrested on suspicion of kidnap, were weeping and dabbing their eyes with handkerchiefs as they entered a privately-hired suite in a Cheshire hotel.

Det Chief Insp Geraint Jones, who is leading the investigation, looked surprised at their arrival and refused to allow them to sit at a table positioned in front of a Cheshire Police screen. A few minutes later, clearly embarrassed by the interruption, he and his team left the building.

Neither of the Ahmeds spoke during their protest. However, through their solicitor they insisted they were in no way involved in the death of their "beautiful and irreplaceable daughter".

They went on to accuse police of having become blinkered by a racial stereotype which dictated that as Asian parents they must have been involved in their daughter's murder. This was a course of action, they claimed, that was allowing "the real culprit" to remain at large.

Shafilea, 17, disappeared six months ago, shortly after returning from a trip to Pakistan where she had resisted the overtures of a distant cousin to take part in an arranged marriage.

While in Pakistan she became so distraught she swallowed a quantity of bleach. This burned her gullet so severely that she required hospital treatment both there and once she had returned to Britain. Shafilea spent most of Sept 11, 2003, at Priestley Sixth Form College and later went to a local call centre where she worked four nights a week.

Her mother picked her up and drove her home. She went to bed, as she did every night, with her seven-year-old sister. When the household awoke she had gone. She was reported missing eight days later by her former teachers at Great Sankey High School.

Cheshire Police have been convinced almost from the outset that Shafilea was kidnapped and possibly murdered. At press conferences they consistently refused to rule out the possibility that she was the victim of an honour killing.

Instead, they portrayed the "intelligent, ambitious and popular" teenager as a girl torn between traditional family ties and the Western culture she sought to embrace.

At home she spoke Urdu and observed Muslim prayers with her three sisters and younger brother. But at the same time she idolised R&B singers, wore tight jeans and secretly stored the mobile telephone numbers of male friends at college.

When under pressure, blame the Zionists. The Tehran Times is resorting to this in the face of IAEA findings about Iran's nuclear program. From MEMRI, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

"Pressured by U.S. officials and supported by the Zionists, some officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its official website have started fabricating lies about the Iranian nuclear program, and even allowing some secret news about the Iranian nuclear program to leak to Western media. Such moves show the Iranian officials should have considered suspending cooperation with the IAEA rather than suspending enriching uranium.

"Recently, diplomats from the Vienna-based IAEA have warned about the increasing U.S. pressure on the IAEA top officials, including its director Muhammad El-Baradei and some inspectors, in order to egg on them [sic] to give a negative report on Iran's cooperation with the IAEA. Even an expert from the IAEA told the Mehr News Agency about secret meetings between the IAEA senior officials and some envoys from the U.S. and Israeli intelligence services in recent weeks. The expert even didn't rule out the possibility of bribing or threatening IAEA officials by these secret services.

"Some observers in Vienna have evaluated the U.S. pressure on El-Baradei as so high that he has become depressed and passive. Even a Western diplomat from the UN nuclear watchdog has said there is no certainty the statements aired inside the IAEA headquarters are not eavesdropped. Some evidences including recent statements by El-Baradei, stressing the necessity of tough inspection of the members' nuclear sites, especially after unfounded allegations by the U.S. officials over Iran's nuclear program and a wide coverage of these rumors by the Western media despite a close cooperation between Tehran and the IAEA would clearly show that the agency has been degenerated into an international political tool for pushing forward the U.S. unilateral policies in the world. There are some other indications to substantiate the point."

From the Observer, with thanks to Susan:

Ayse was 14 when she was smuggled into Britain and forced to marry her cousin. Family members turned out in large numbers to welcome her at the illegal ceremony in a north London public hall.

'They kept whispering in my ear to ask why I wasn't smiling,' recalls Ayse, now 20 and living in a refuge in east London. 'I told them I was terrified and desperate, that I was just a child and far too young to get married. I pleaded with them to help me escape, but no one saw anything wrong in what was happening. I begged my husband not to marry me, but he told me I had no choice.'

Despite being two years below the British age of consent, Ayse was moved into her cousin's family home, where she lived openly as his wife in the local Kurdish Turkish community.

'I was all alone in a foreign country, unable to speak the language,' she said. 'I was trapped. Until I escaped, I didn't even realise that marrying at 14 wasn't legal in Britain: everyone I knew in London regarded it as normal.'

In the two years before she reached 16, the sex Ayse was coerced into having with her cousin was statutory rape. 'It was disgusting, awful,' she said. 'I used to scream and cry all night. I was too young, too tender. It killed me inside. Life became meaningless.'

Ayse's new family refused her permission to continue school and kept her a virtual prisoner in their home. During her four-and-a-half year marriage, Ayse was treated as a servant by her new family and prevented from speaking to anyone outside their immediate circle.

As she matured, Ayse became increasingly desperate and, after twice attempting suicide, found the courage to climb through a window and flee.

'I knew the cost escaping would have on my life. I now live in fear of being tracked down and killed by my husband's family. I have been rejected by my family back home and by the Kurdish community here. As a young girl, I could not face the thought of how my life would be if I escaped. But once I became a woman, I developed the strength to take that step.'

Authorities have long battled to stop the traffic in underage British girls taken back to their country of origin to be married off by their parents. But an Observer investigation has discovered that a growing number are now being married without leaving Britain. The ceremonies are known as community marriages.

'They're happening and numbers are growing,' said Peter Cripps, head of the Community Safety Unit at Shoreditch police station in east London. The Metropolitan Police is one of the few forces to admit that such marriages take place on its territory.

'I'd say we were at the stage with community marriages now that we were at with honour killings six years ago. That is, the idea is so horrible and incredible most people don't accept they're happening. Six years ago, honour killings were barely even talked about, but now the police are getting convictions. Basically, we're waiting for community marriages to hit the news the same way, then we expect a flurry of cases.'

Community marriages are held in accordance with the religious laws of many south Asian, Turkish, Middle Eastern and north African cultures. After the ceremony, the girl is moved into the home of her 'husband'. She is raped in the name of marital sex, frequently abused by her new family and allowed to attend school only if it would attract the attention of the law if she left.

Ann Cryer, MP for Keighley, has demanded an urgent meeting with the Minister for Children, Margaret Hodge, next week to discuss the issue. Cryer, who drove through Labour's action plan on forced marriages now wants to create similar guidelines for underage community marriages.

'Entire communities are complicit in this,' she said. 'And unless the Government does something about it, a rapidly increasing number of underage girls will be forced into situations where they are subjected to statutory rape in the name of culture and tradition.'

Cryer learnt this specific form of forced marriage existed only when she received a call from a school concerning a 15-year-old who is now believed to have been married to a 41-year-old relative.

'A young girl had gone to her teachers one Friday before Christmas, saying she didn't want to go home because she suspected her parents intended marrying her off that weekend,' she said.

But when the teachers phoned social services, they were told the earliest appointment available was the following Tuesday. 'The school protested, but social services were unmoved,' Cryer said. 'It was a completely inappropriate response and we've launched an investigation.'

The teachers were eventually forced to take her back home. Their intervention, however, seemed to have dissuaded the parents from carrying out their plans, but a few weeks later the school contacted Cryer again. 'Apparently the child's demeanour has completely changed in the past few weeks,' she said.

She has begun missing school for long periods of time and when she attends, a man waits for her at the gates at break times, lunch and after school. 'When she does turn up, she is completely introverted,' said Cryer. 'It's like she's in deep trauma or shock.'

Cryer is investigating, but her attempt is complicated by the fact the child is now refusing to talk. 'If the case is going to stick, we have to persuade the girl to give evidence against her family and if we go in, all guns blazing, she could deny the whole thing,' she said.

The hermetic nature of the communities involved means that in the vast majority of cases no one who is not a close family friend is aware that any specific ceremony is taking place.

'We know this happens a lot, but it tends not to come to wider notice until much later when the girl seeks help and is able to find a way of doing so,' said Dave Macnaghten, who sits on the Association of Chief Police Officers' forced marriage steering group. 'Unfortunately, if that happens at all, it takes place many years afterwards when the girl has found the maturity and courage to escape.'

Even those who live and work in the community have been unable to solve the problem 'We don't hear of the cases where the marriage takes place in this country any more than the authorities do,' said Houzan Mahmoud, a domestic violence adviser for the Middle East Centre for Women's Rights. 'These communities have become ghettoised. The girls don't know where to go for help. They believe the prestige of their whole family is at stake.'

Celebrating 9/11 at the Royal Scottish Academy. From AFP, with thanks to "Allah":

Art show organisers have defended a sculpture of Mickey Mouse flying a plane into the World Trade Centre, saying it was about "making you think".

Mickey's Taliban Adventures is one of almost 300 pieces in the Royal Scottish Academy's student exhibition in Edinburgh, which opened to the public on Saturday.

The exhibition by final-year and postgraduate students from Scotland's art and architectural schools also includes a short film showing the dying moments of a poisoned mouse.

The Twin Towers work - based on the attack on New York on 11 September 2001 in which 2752 people died - was made by Alan Bennie of the Edinburgh College of Art.

It shows the Disney figurehead flying a toy plane into cartoon-like foam models of the World Trade Centre, which have been given eyes to lend them a surprised expression, as well as flames made of felt.

"I don't think it's a particularly shocking piece," said Colin Greenslade, exhibitions co-ordinator for the Royal Scottish Academy.

Universal icon

"The Twin Towers have become an icon and everyone has their own feelings about it, whether they knew people who were involved or can just remember where they were when it happened," he said.

"This is about making you think."

The film of the poisoned mouse, by student Jock Mooney, is exhibited next to a statement explaining the circumstances, following complaints from animal rights activists.

In it, Mooney said the mouse had already been poisoned when he found it outside his flat and that his film was intended to show the effects of the methods used to get rid of rodents.

Al-Qaeda is still full of threats and murder — oh, and they're not too happy about France and that headscarf thing, either. From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Audiotapes purported to be from Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant aired on Arabic TV stations Tuesday, one taunting President Bush and threatening more attacks on the United States, the second criticizing France's decision to ban Islamic headscarves in schools.

Portions of separate audiotapes attributed to Ayman al-Zawahri were broadcast a few hours apart on Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera, competing pan-Arab satellite channels based in the Persian Gulf. Officials at both stations said they had aired only excerpts judged newsworthy. The two stations said they had received different tapes.

In Al-Jazeera's tape, the voice believed to be that of al-Zawahri challenged Bush's claim to have liberated Iraq and indicated al-Qaida is still running operations from Afghanistan.

"We remind Bush that situation is not stable in Afghanistan, or else how do we wage, with God's support and might, our attacks on your troops and agents. ... How do we send our messages that challenge you and reveal your lies," the tape said.

"We remind Bush that he didn't destroy two-thirds of Al-Qaida. On the contrary, thanks be to God, al-Qaida is still in the holy war battleground raising the banner of Islam in the face of the Zionist-Crusader campaign against the Islamic community," it added.

In his State of the Union address in January, Bush said "nearly two-thirds" of al-Qaida's known leaders had been captured or killed.

"Bush, fortify your targets, tighten your defense, intensify your security measures," the voice warned, "because the fighting Islamic community — which sent you New York and Washington battalions — has decided to send you one battalion after the other, carrying death and seeking heaven."

The audiotape aired by Dubai-based al-Arabiya also criticized France's decision to ban religious symbols in public buildings, including headscarves worn by Muslim women. The law is expected to go before the French Senate early next month, where little opposition exists.

"The decision of the French president to issue a law to prevent Muslim girls from covering their heads in schools is another example of the Crusader's envy, which Westerners have against Muslims," the voice said in Al-Arabiya's tape. "This envy boils in their hearts and overflows in their chests and they pass it on to the generations."

Both stations identified the voice on their tapes as that of al-Zawahri, and both said they had received the material on Tuesday. Officials at both stations spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Al-Arabiya official said his station's analysts believed the voice to be al-Zawahri's and that the station believed it was authentic primarily because of the source from which it received the tape, which he would not disclose. The Al-Jazeera official said only that his station had received the material over telephone lines and that al-Zawahri's voice was familiar to his staff.

The voice on both tapes sounded identical. The tone and rhetoric were familiar from previous videotapes and audiotapes also believed to be from al-Zawahri, though it was not possible to independently confirm the speaker's identity.

Al-Zawahri, an Egyptian-born physician, is thought to be in hiding along with bin Laden in the mountains somewhere along the rugged border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The tapes come at a time when Pakistani forces backed by helicopters were searching villages in a remote border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan where bin Laden and Taliban suspects are believed to be hiding. The fugitives were believed to have taken refuge among tribes.

The voice on Al-Arabiya's tape singled out Egypt's foremost religious leader, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, the grand sheik of Al-Azhar, calling his support of the French decision "a scandal."

Tantawi issued an edict early this year asking Muslim women living in France to comply with French laws on religious symbols. His first remarks defending the ban were made Dec. 30, so the tape would have been made sometime after that.

The French decision has sparked protests across the Islamic world.

A French Foreign Ministry official, responding to the tape, reiterated Tuesday his country's position that the law is meant to protect the country's secular foundations and is not directed at Muslims or any particular religion.

Al-Qaida is blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. Tapes by the group have focused on the wars with the Americans and their allies in Afghanistan and Iraq. France has strongly opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

The last time a videotape of al-Zawahri was released on Arab television was in September. It showed the bearded, turbaned cleric climbing down a craggy mountainside with bin Laden.

The CIA had a chance in 1999 — and blew it. From the New York Times:

American investigators were given the first name and telephone number of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers two and a half years before the attacks on New York and Washington, but the United States appears to have failed to pursue the lead aggressively, American and German officials say.

The information — the earliest known signal that the United States received about any of the hijackers — has now become an important element of an independent commission's investigation into the events of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said Monday. It is considered particularly significant because it may have represented a missed opportunity for American officials to penetrate the Qaeda terror cell in Germany that was at the heart of the plot. And it came roughly 16 months before the hijacker showed up at flight schools in the United States.

In March 1999, German intelligence officials gave the Central Intelligence Agency the first name and telephone number of Marwan al-Shehhi, and asked the Americans to track him.

The name and phone number in the United Arab Emirates had been obtained by the Germans by monitoring the telephone of Mohamed Heidar Zammar, an Islamic militant in Hamburg who was closely linked to the important Qaeda plotters who ultimately mastermined the Sept. 11 attacks, German officials said.

After the Germans passed the information on to the C.I.A., they did not hear from the Americans about the matter until after Sept. 11, a senior German intelligence official said.

"There was no response" at the time, the official said. After receiving the tip, the C.I.A. decided that "Marwan" was probably an associate of Osama bin Laden, but never tracked him down, American officials say.

The Germans considered the information on Mr. Shehhi particularly valuable, and the commission is keenly interested in why it apparently did not lead to greater scrutiny of him.

The information concerning Mr. Shehhi, the man who took over the controls of United Airlines Flight 175, which flew into the south tower of the World Trade Center, came months earlier than well-documented tips about other hijackers, including two who were discovered to have attended a meeting of militants in Malaysia in January 2000.

The independent commission investigating the attacks has received information on the 1999 Shehhi tip, and is actively investigating the issue, said Philip Zelikow, executive director of the commission.

American intelligence officials and others involved with the matter say they are uncertain whether Mr. Shehhi's phone was ever monitored.

An American official said: "The Germans did give us the name `Marwan' and a phone number, but we were unable to come up with anything. It was an unlisted phone number in the U.A.E., which he was known to use."

Kenneth Timmerman in Insight has valuable background on Khaled Saffuri, a man whose influence has reached to the White House:

The rise of Khaled Saffuri to political prominence within the U.S. Muslim community has all the ingredients of a Horatio Alger success story. Brought up as a stateless exile in Kuwait, Saffuri came to America as a student in 1982, went to college in San Diego, and soon gravitated into the world of Muslim activism.

A talented fund-raiser and behind-the-scenes power broker, Saffuri built bridges to politicians in both parties by generously contributing to their election campaigns, from California libertarian Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in the GOP to Rep. Cynthia McKinney, the hard-left Georgia Democrat. He has worked to get President Bill Clinton to intervene in Bosnia. He has taken members of Congress on trips to Arab countries. He has lobbied hard but quietly against pro-Israel legislation. In 1998, along with Republican activist Grover Norquist, Saffuri established the Islamic Institute in Washington with the stated purpose of promoting free-market ideals in the Muslim world and of bringing American Muslims into the Republican Party.

Recognition of his role came with a thunderclap during the 2000 presidential campaign, when Karl Rove named him the Bush campaign's point man for Muslim outreach. With George W. Bush in the White House, Khaled Saffuri had arrived.

By all accounts, Saffuri put his new prominence to use, promoting the friends who had helped him achieve his newfound status and advocating for the issues about which they cared. One by one, he introduced them to President Bush and his entourage. With Saffuri frequently smiling in the background, they proudly posed for campaign photographs and, later, attended White House events.

Now, however, some of the very people Saffuri introduced to Bush and Rove are in federal prison on terrorism-related charges. Others have been expelled from the country. Still other former colleagues and donors have become subjects of a massive federal probe into U.S. funding of terrorist organizations that is code-named Operation Greenquest.

In a series of interviews with Insight over the course of more than two years, Saffuri and his supporters claim he has been given a bum rap by critics who point to the alleged terrorist ties as a reason why the White House should distance itself from Saffuri and his friends.

Norquist, the conservative fund-raiser and antipork president of Americans for Tax Reform, insists that any attempt to tie Saffuri to terrorist supporters is "guilt by association." Those who make such accusations, Norquist tells reporters, are "racists and bigots."

But Saffuri's ties to radical Islamists and apologists for terror are neither superficial nor coincidental. An Insight investigation has uncovered a consistent pattern of fund-raising and influence operations in which Saffuri played a prominent role side by side with Abdurahman Alamoudi, a well-known Muslim activist who was Saffuri's employer at the American Muslim Council (AMC). Alamoudi was arrested last September on charges of illegally taking cash payments from the government of Libya in exchange for lobbying the Bush administration to lift sanctions against the Qaddafi regime.

Alamoudi also was one of the leaders of a vast network of Hamas supporters operating across the United States under the guise of American Muslim activist groups.

At a rally in front of the White House on Oct. 28, 2000, Alamoudi told the audience that reports he was a supporter of Hamas were accurate. "Anybody support this Hamas here? Anybody's [sic] is a supporter of Hamas here? Anybody's [sic] is a supporter of Hamas here? Hear that Bill Clinton? We are all supporters of Hamas! Allah akbar [God is great]! I wish to add here I am also a supporter of Hezbollah!"

On June 2, 2000, the U.S.-based al-Zaitounah newspaper interviewed Alamoudi in English on his pro-Hamas activities at the AMC. "Our position with regard to the peace process is well-known," he said. "We are the ones who went to the White House and defended what is called Hamas." According to the Jerusalem Post, Alamoudi attended a leadership conference in Beirut in January 2001 along with top leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda. These and other Alamoudi actions and statements were cited by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Brett Gentrup in a September 2003 affidavit in support of Alamoudi's arrest.

Saffuri tells Insight that Alamoudi won praise from American Jewish leaders for his work on Bosnia in the 1990s. "I have a letter from 1997 from the AJC [American Jewish Committee] to Alamoudi and cc'd [copied] to me," he says. Saffuri promised to send Insight a copy of the letter, but an aide later reported he was unable to locate it. Officials at the AJC could find no trace of such a letter either. Saffuri also told Insight that the AJC "joined" the American Task Force on Bosnia, which AJC officials say is untrue.

"The only time Jewish organizations did something - not really together - but in coordination with Muslim groups were demonstrations against the genocide in Bosnia," says Yehudit Bartsky, an aide to AJC President David Harris. But that cooperation evaporated in 1994, once statements by Alamoudi and other Muslim leaders condemning the Oslo agreements became public. "Everybody was shocked to see they were opposed to Oslo, which all the Jewish organizations supported at the time," she says. After the horrific spate of suicide bombings in 1996, which the AMC and other Muslim organizations refused to condemn, those ties - such as they were - evaporated. "So 1997 would be really late," Bartsky adds.

Saffuri tells Insight that the suicide bombings used by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas and others is "a condemned tactic. It's horrible, it's wrong, it's un-Islamic, it's unethical, because you're targeting innocent civilians."

Saffuri claims he broke with Alamoudi "after a year-and-a-half of bickering and arguing." But the arguments weren't over Alamoudi's support for suicide bombing, but over the latter's demand for a strict Islamic lifestyle in the office. "When I came, I was the first one to hire women without cover," Saffuri says. "Most people would hire from the mosque. I told him this was wrong. I hired peoples with skills. I ended up leaving because I couldn't work with that style of work."

Another key Saffuri ally, Sami Amin al-Arian, was arrested on Feb. 20, 2003, by federal agents in Tampa, Fla., because of his alleged ties to Palestinian terrorists. Like Saffuri, al-Arian is a Palestinian who came to this country from Kuwait. He was the subject of a long-standing criminal investigation because of the leadership role he allegedly played in Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group that has claimed responsibility for the murder of hundreds of Israelis and more than a dozen Americans, and that raises money for terror in the United States [see "Controversial Professor Arrested in Florida on Terrorism Charges," posted March 4, 2003, at Insight Online].

Al-Arian was one of a group of Muslim leaders who met with President Bush in the White House in May 2001 as part of White House outreach to the Muslim community. The person who helped set up that meeting and who chose the participants was Khaled Saffuri, White House officials tell Insight.

The official PA radio is contradicting official condemnation of the latest bus bombing. From IMRA:

Voice of Palestine Radio (VOP) (that is run by the PA and under the tight control of Yasser Arafat) referred to the man who committed the bombing of the bus in Jerusalem yesterday as a martyr ("shahid") in their news programs. They treated him royally both yesterday and today.

Shahid is an honorary term given to someone who dies in battle. It is not conferred to a criminal. If the act was considered a criminal act then he would not be termed a martyr "shahid".

It should also be noted that the pro forma condemnation broadcast in Arabic on VOP never said anything against the person who carried out the attack itself. Instead the "condemnation" explained the act - blaming it on Israel and voicing concern regarding its timing.

It is also noteworthy that yesterday's bombing was repeatedly described on VOP as "an explosive operation" without any negative terminology associated
with it. In sharp contrast, the announcement of the demolition of the "martyr's house" by the IDF was termed "barbaric" with VOP urging Palestinians to come out of their houses to show resistance to the "racist Israeli threats".

At 6:00 PM last night, right before the main evening news program last night, PA TV broadcast film clips openly encouraging attacks against Israelis. For example, they ran a clip of a small child no older than 6 - 7 years old singing to himself "by stone or by knife I will attack the enemy".

The clip was several minutes long and this chorus was repeated many times. The clip demonstrates that the PA is actively encouraging attacks - even by youths.

Joel Mowbray has more insight on the Ryan Anderson case. From the Jewish World Review, with thanks to Nicolei:

To those who worry about the extremism that Saudi influence can foster here in the United States, the joint Muslim community at Washington State University and the University of Idaho — just nine miles apart — might provide a classic case study.

It also happened to be the home of detained National Guardsman Ryan Anderson, aka Amir Talhah, when he converted to Islam five years ago.

Anderson, who was nabbed while allegedly trying to pass secret information on to al Qaeda through an Internet chat room, graduated from Washington State University in 2002. Though the strength of his ties to the local Muslim community is unclear, there is no denying that it could have provided the perfect breeding ground for a radical Islamist.

And perhaps not coincidentally, there is a strong Saudi influence.

Last year, the FBI made several arrests while investigating alleged terror activity in Pullman, Washington (home to WSU) and Moscow, Idaho (home to UI). Because of the close proximity and the relative small numbers of Muslim residents (fewer than 200 total), the two towns have essentially a single Muslim community, according to many local Muslims.

Four people total were arrested. Two were affiliated with WSU and two with UI. Three were arrested as material witnesses and have since been released.

Still at large, though, is Saudi national Abdullah Aljughaiman, who was a lecturer at UI and received his religious training King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Investigators have been unable even to speak with him, however, because he is most likely in Saudi Arabia, where he's off-limits to U.S. authorities.

At the probe's center was Sami Omar al-Hussayen, a graduate student and computer whiz at UI who was also seen as a leader in the local Muslim community. The Saudi national, who goes to trial this spring, is charged with visa fraud, making false statements, and providing material support of terrorism.

The terrorism charge does not seem to have adversely affected al-Hussayen's popularity in the local Muslim community. Several Muslims in the Pullman-Moscow area contacted by phone spoke favorably of the alleged abettor of terrorism. One who had attended the preliminary hearings opined, "The evidence against him doesn't seem that strong."

In addition to allegedly designing web sites for two radical sheikhs with direct contact with Osama bin Laden, al-Hussayen is charged with handling financial and administrative functions for supposed charities that allegedly supported terrorism.

The most chilling part of the indictment, though, is a section describing an e-mail group managed and edited solely by al-Hussayen, in which an appeal was made for information from Muslims in the U.S. military that would aid terrorist attacks on American personnel, including the murder of a "specifically identified high-ranking American military official."

Although the charges do not tie the Saudi national to 9/11, some evidence surrounding al-Hussayen is troubling. Reportedly found on his computer hard drive were thousands of photos of the World Trade Center, both before and after September 11.

Then there's the family connection.

According to court documents, al-Hussayen's uncle traveled to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia and "stayed in the same hotel in the Herndon, Va., area as three of the Sept. 11 hijackers of Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon."

Though northern Idaho or eastern Washington might seem like a strange destination for students from the Middle East, roughly one-half of the Muslims in Moscow, Idaho and one-fourth in Pullman, Washington are Saudis, according to estimates of several local Muslims.

The Saudi ties appear to be longstanding. When the mosque at WSU was built in the late 1970's, most of the funding came from the Gulf — principally from Saudi Arabia — according to a longtime Muslim resident in the area.

What remains uncertain at this point is what role the local Muslim community had in impacting Anderson's Islamic development. Several local sources claim he was a member of the Muslim Students Association, whose national organization was Saudi-created and funded. (Al-Hussayen was president of Idaho's MSA chapter.)

Several members of Washington State's MSA deny that Anderson was an active member, however, including past MSA president Irshad Altheimer. Altheimer said that he accompanied Anderson to mosque services for a month during Ramadan in 2000, but that he never saw much of the now-detained National Guardsman after that.

Investigators are not ruling out a connection to the local Muslim community in eastern Washington and northern Idaho. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Boise, Idaho said that no ties have yet been found, but quickly added, "Our investigation is still ongoing."

Diana West has some acute and perceptive insights on Sharia and Iraq:

Another big story has come out of Iraq with little media fanfare -- and this is one with colossal implications.

Recently, L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. official in Iraq, toured a new women's center in Karbala. (The center occupies a former Ba'athist Party headquarters -- nice touch.) There, citing a 2003 United Nations report that pegged the poverty and non-productivity of the Arab-Muslim world to the repression of half its workforce -- women -- under Islamic sharia law, Bremer touted the equal rights and full participation of women in the new Iraq.

This topic was apt, particularly since the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council voted in late December to withdraw Iraqi family law matters from their secular jurisdiction and place them under an undefined Islamic sharia law. Such a legal maneuver could subject women to underage marriages, polygamous marriages, on-the-spot divorces ("I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you," is all a husband has to say in certain sharia proceedings), unfair inheritance laws and other terrible inequities.

Bremer has not approved the Islamization of Iraqi family law. (Nor, as Paul Marshall reported at National Review Online, has Bremer intervened in the Islamization of Iraq's universities, nor the peremptory removal of a female deputy minister for whom hardliners refused to work.) Against such a political backdrop, Bremer discussed the current draft of the interim Iraqi constitution, which is due Feb. 28. The draft designates Islam the state religion of Iraq, Bremer said, and "a source of inspiration for the law" -- not the only source of inspiration for that law.

What would happen, Bremer was asked, if Iraqi leaders write an interim constitution inspired exclusively by Islamic law? "Our position is clear," Bremer replied in an unforgivably underreported answer picked up by the Associated Press. "It can't be law until I sign it." This statement strongly suggests Bremer would veto an Islamic charter -- which, of course, he should for the sake of liberty and justice for all Iraqis. Equal rights before the law do not exist under Islamic law. One citizen, one vote does not exist under Islamic law. Freedom of worship does not exist under Islamic law. Minorities -- that is, non-Muslims -- enjoy rights and protections at the pleasure of the Muslim community that are ever-subject to the capriciousness of a rights-canceling fatwa. Indeed, Islamic law is not the basis of a religion, as the Judeo-Christian world understands religion, but is rather the basis of a controlling ideology that is nothing short of totalitarian.

Sharia's adherents, of course, would disagree. In a January article about the Governing Council's family law decision, every judge and lawyer the Los Angeles Times interviewed in Baghdad insisted on the superiority of sharia law to civil law.

"Sharia is from God, the law is man-made, and sharia is better because what comes from Allah is fixed," said Kadhim Jubori, 55, who has practiced family law for 33 years in Baghdad. ("I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you" is fixed?) Fixed or not, U.S. efforts to tend democracy's roots in Iraq would wither under any sharia-based constitution.

This would bode ill, but not just for Iraq. The fact is, as columnist Charles Krauthammer said recently in a magisterial address to the American Enterprise Institute, "You win by taking territory -- and leaving something behind." We won Iraq by taking territory -- and now must leave the basis for democracy behind. Not sharia.

Such a policy -- Krauthammer calls it "democratic globalism" -- combines realism with an idealistic commitment to human freedom, tempered, he cautioned, by "strategic necessity." That means that the United States commits blood and treasure only in "places central to the larger war against the existential enemy, the enemy that poses a global mortal threat to freedom."

Fifty years ago, that described Germany and Japan, vortexes of fascism. Both nations, Krauthammer noted, "were turned, by nation-building, into bulwarks against the next great threat to freedom, Soviet communism." Today, he continued, the new global threat to freedom is "the new existential enemy, the Arab-Islamic totalitarianism that has threatened us in both its secular and religious forms for the quarter-century since the Khomeini revolution of 1979." He continued: "Establishing civilized, decent, non-belligerent, pro-Western polities in Afghanistan and Iraq ... would, like the flipping of Germany and Japan, change the strategic balance in the fight against Arab-Islamic radicalism."

Krauthammer admits we may fail even as he insists we must try. Certainly, the first thing to do is for Bremer -- and the American people -- to be prepared to veto a sharia-based constitution in Iraq.

Now comes a report that the hunt is continuing and intensifying. From the Dow Jones Newswires, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

U.S. spy chief George Tenet made a secret visit to Islamabad last week as American and Pakistani troops began a major operation to hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda fugitives believed to be hiding along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, U.S. and Pakistani officials said.

The director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency met with senior Pakistani military and intelligence officials as Pakistan's leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, started deploying thousands of his nation's troops into the semi-autonomous tribal region of Waziristan. The territory has become a sanctuary for al Qaeda fighters who fled Afghanistan after the U.S. toppled the Taliban regime in 2001.

U.S. troops are searching for al Qaeda leaders inside Afghanistan. Pakistani officials have said the operation on their side of the border with Afghanistan will be the biggest yet to hunt for Mr. bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders. But Pakistani officials have denied some media reports that American troops would be participating in the offensive inside Pakistani territory.

Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun has some pointed observations about the situation in Australia. (Thanks to Kevin.)

IT goes like this. First, Australia's Mufti, Taj El-Din El-Hilaly, praises terrorists in Arabic.

Then, when his words leak out, the sheik's spokesman, Keysar Trad of the Lebanese Muslim Association, tells us in English how we've again got the peace-loving cleric all wrong.

Roll the tape. Just before the September 11 attacks, Hilaly was filmed by SBS in his Sydney mosque endorsing suicide bombers.

Afterwards, Hilaly went to Lebanon and signed a statement by clerics endorsing suicide attacks in Israel -- like those which have killed so many civilians.

Trad tried to explain away both incidents, just as he this week claimed Hilaly was again taken out of context by reports this week of his visit to Lebanon.

Those reports said he'd again called for a jihad against Israel, praised suicide bombers as "martyrs", and met the head of Hezbollah, a terrorist group he called a "model for all the Mujahideen in the world".

And how credible is Trad as an apologist for this?

After all, Trad was a translator for the extremist Islamic Youth Movement of Australia, which has been linked to al Qaida.

And although denouncing terrorism himself, he is a zealot who has called Australians "the descendants of ... criminal dregs".

Lovely. So why do Muslims call Hilaly their Mufti?

From the Simon Wiesenthal Center (with thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

Monday, February 23, 2004

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder

We join with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in demanding your public rebuke of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation, the flagship of your Social Democratic Party, for funding the three-day Beirut International Conference on 'The Islamic World and Europe: from Dialogue towards Understanding that featured speakers from Hezbollah and Hamas - two terrorist organizations that murder Jews and promote the most libelous anti-Jewish canards including the 'Blood Libel' and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. As you know these organizations are blacklisted by the European Union for their murderous activities. Other speakers included one associated with the Moslem Brotherhood who is notorious for sowing the seeds of Jew hatred in France; another is believed to have ties to al-Qaeda, and a leading Hamas idealogue and former activist in Islamic Jihad.

All this happened simultaneously while Germany’s Foreign Minister Fischer gave his speech at the European Commission’s Antisemitism Conference in Brussels where he sought to reassure Elie Wiesel and other Holocaust survivors that your nation stands in solidarity against the antisemitic venom emanating from the Arab world.

Chancellor Schroeder, if the Foreign Minister’s speech is indeed German policy, it is a message that needs to be delivered not so much to Jews, but to the Arab Nations. We await your public rebuke of the Foundation and a commitment that Germany will no longer invest any more of its funds and prestige to legitimize mass murderers and Jew haters.

You can add your name to this petition here.

The Taliban is attempting to keep the jihad alive in Afghanistan by murdering construction workers. The focus on non-combatants accord with the provisions of Islamic law that forbid killing them unless they are considered to be aiding the war effort. This is used to justify bombings on buses in Israel, and by Osama for his attacks in the U.S. From the Guardian:

An Australian helicopter pilot was killed and a British security officer seriously injured in southern Afghanistan yesterday after their team, working for an American construction company, was attacked by a gunman. An American woman employed to build cottage hospitals was also seriously injured in the attack, while another Briton, a security guard, was unharmed, a US diplomat in Kabul said yesterday.

The diplomat said the helicopter belonged to the Louis Berger Group, an American company carrying out road-building and other construction projects in southern Afghanistan, where the remnants of the former Taliban regime and other Islamic extremist groups are active.

Mullah Mohamed Omar, the Taliban's fugitive leader, has pronounced death penalties on anybody, Afghan or foreign, working to support the government of Hamid Karzai.

Khalid Pashtoon, a spokesman for the government of Kandahar province, where the attack occurred, said the team of four foreigners and an Afghan interpreter were inspecting a school in a remote village about 40 miles south-west of the province's capital, Kandahar.

After inspecting the school, the team boarded the helicopter, which was then attacked by a man with a Kalashnikov rifle. He fled after killing the pilot and injuring two other foreigners.

"The helicopter had not taken off when it was attacked," said Mr Pashtoon.

Abdul Samad, a man claiming to speak for the Taliban, told the Associated Press news agency that the militia was responsible for the attack.

American troops, more than 10,000 of whom are stationed in Afghanistan, airlifted the wounded to Kandahar airbase, where they were being treated, the diplomat in Kabul said.

Louis Berger group has been awarded some of the most lucrative reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban two years ago.

This includes a $250m (£135m) contract to resurface one of the country's main roads, which runs from Kabul to Kandahar, but the project has been blighted by the Taliban's frequent kidnapping of foreign and Afghan workers.

More than 550 people have died in an insurgency blamed on the militia in less than seven months, and Taliban fighters have vowed to step up the campaign in the run-up to democratic elections in June.

I was starting to think that the message John Kerry's campaign sent to an Iranian news agency was just a blanket email in which the Iranians were included, but was not specifically a message to the mullahs. That may be true. But Kerry's wife is a major donor to a group that funds all sorts of organizations the mullahs would love. From WND:

If John Kerry becomes president, the first lady will have a track record of support for the causes of radical, anti-American groups – including Islamists, terrorist-defense law firms, abortionists and homosexual activists – that, by comparison, would make much of the country nostalgic for the days of Hillary Clinton, a study of her philanthropy patterns by Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin concludes.

One of heiress Teresa Heinz Kerry's favorite charities is the Tides Foundation, a 28-year-old grant-making institution that funds to the tune of hundreds of millions radical groups that, among other things, protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq, demand open U.S. borders, provide the legal defense of suspected terrorists and promote the spread of Islamist ideology in the U.S.

Heinz Kerry, worth an estimated three-quarters of a billion dollars, working through the Howard Heinz Endowment, oversaw the donation of more than $4 million to the Tides Foundation between 1995 and 2001, reports G2 Bulletin, a premium, online intelligence newsletter published by WorldNetDaily.

While John Kerry criticizes the way President Bush has conducted the war in Iraq, he actually cast a Senate vote to support it. Yet, Tides' Iraq Peace Fund and Peace Studies Fund supports the War Resisters League and Ramsey Clark's International Action Center. Clark actually offered to defend Saddam Hussein. His center also sponsored International ANSWER and United for Peace and Justice, both of which were run by long-time communist revolutionaries.

The Democratic Justice Fund, created through the efforts of Tides and George Soros, seeks to ease U.S. restrictions on Muslim immigration from countries designated by the State Department as “terrorist nations.” Tides also supports the Council for American Islamic Relations, a group that bills itself as a “Muslim civil rights group,” but one whose leaders have links to the terrorist group Hamas.

CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad openly stated in 1994, “I am a supporter of the Hamas movement.” Community Affairs Director Bassem K. Khafagi has been arrested for visa and bank fraud. Randall Royer, a communications specialist and civil rights coordinator at CAIR, was arrested along with a group of Islamic radicals in Virginia for allegedly planning jihadist activities. CAIR has defended terrorist fronts posing as “charities” – some of which have shut down by the Bush administration.

Tides supports the National Lawyers Guild, which began as a Communist Party front. Last October, Lynne Stewart, an indicted terrorist NLG lawyer, gave a rousing closing speech at the organization's convention. Stewart was arrested for helping her client, convicted 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, communicate with terrorist cells in Egypt.

"And modern heroes, dare I mention?" she said. "Ho and Mao and Lenin, Fidel and Nelson Mandela and John Brown, Che Guevara, who reminds us, 'At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.' Our quests like theirs are to shake the very foundations of the continents."

Heinz Kerry not only serves as chairman of the Howard Heinz Endowment, she also sits on the board of the Vira I. Heinz Endowment.

The Earth Island Institute is a recipient of Heinz cash. Three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America by Islamists, the group published a statement on its website rationalizing the terrorist actions. Under the headline, "U.S. Responds to Terrorist Attacks with Self-Righteous Arrogance," the statement explained that the destruction of the World Trade Center, the crash at the Pentagon, the four airline hijackings and the 3,000 Americans killed "was not an 'attack on all American people,'" but "an act of anger, desperation and indignation." . . .

In addition to its support of CAIR, Tides supports the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Arab American Action Network.

A group called "Barrio Warriors" is also a recipient of Tides grants. This race-conscious Hispanic organization calls for the "liberation of Aztlan," the American southwest, including California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas.

The world is gradually waking up to the fact that Al-Qaeda is far from the only radical Islamic group out there. This new tape takes responsibility for several recent bombings in Iraq, and purports to come from a "new" terror group, Ansar Al-Sunnah. "A key purpose of the video is for propaganda — to attract recruits and raise money. 'The tape shows a more sophisticated organization that is thinking well beyond the roadside bombings of tomorrow'" says an analyst. From MSNBC:

On Feb. 1, two suicide bombers simultaneously destroyed two Kurdish party headquarters in Irbil, Iraq. More than 100 people were killed.

On Nov. 20, a truck bomb in Kirkuk killed five.

On Sept. 9, there was another deadly suicide car bombing in Irbil — this time at U.S. intelligence headquarters.

All the violence is claimed to be the work of a new terror group named Ansar al Sunnah, which U.S. intelligence believes is trying to unite all Islamic militants in Iraq.

A tape now circulating on the Internet attempts to put the group on the map — showing terrorists preparing for suicide missions. “We will hit the American forces!” one militant proclaimed through a translator.

According to terrorism expert Ben Venzke of Intelcenter, “This is the first time we’ve seen them actually put a face on the current series of attacks that are occurring in Iraq.”

Based on their dialect, most of the terrorist fighters appear to come from outside Iraq. At least two are seemingly from Saudi Arabia.

Their goal? One translator’s voice on the tape says, “The goal is not only to get rid of the occupiers of Iraq, but to establish an Islamic state.”

One sequence displays the identity cards of Spaniards and Canadians whom the group claims to have killed, including Spanish intelligence officers ambushed on a highway near Baghdad.

A key purpose of the video is for propaganda — to attract recruits and raise money.

“The tape shows a more sophisticated organization that is thinking well beyond the roadside bombings of tomorrow,” Venzke added.

Senior U.S. officials say this group is a threat and its claims are credible. They say the group’s propaganda has actually helped U.S. forces figure out who’s doing what and who’s to blame for much of the violence.

More on the global reach of radical Islam, from the New York Times. (Thanks to Filtrat.)

Government forensic investigators examining how terrorists manufacture improvised explosives have found indications of a global bomb-making network, and have concluded that Islamic militant bomb builders have used the same designs for car bombs in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, government officials said this week.

"Linkages have been made in devices that have been used in different continents," said one forensic expert involved in the intelligence effort. "We know that we have the same bomb maker, or different bomb makers are using the same instructions."

The previously undisclosed intelligence operation has expanded on studies of past cases like investigations of the thwarted shoe-bomb attack aboard a Paris to Miami flight in December 2001. In a test, detonation of a similar bomb on a grounded aircraft blew a 2 feet by 2 feet in the fuselage — a potentially catastrophic event aboard a pressurized plane in flight.

In another example of the investigators' work, bomb analysts have collected fragments from hundreds of improvised devices detonated in attacks in Iraq, including large car and truck bombings and smaller assaults using explosives packed in empty artillery shells and even concrete blocks. That project has led to a better understanding of the devices and to efforts to provide commanders in Iraq with faster countermeasures to help protect American troops.

But there are many questions still unanswered about who is behind various bombings, including some of the major suicide bombing attacks in Iraq. Intelligence analysts have said they believe that Al Qaeda has been weakened by the campaign against terrorism and lacks a central command, as well as financial and recruiting structures. But the bomb investigations suggest that the terrorist network still may be disseminating bomb-making skills to a generation of militants who have fanned out around the world.

Many bomb makers may have learned how to make improvised explosives in the 1990's at Osama bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan, and the methods taught there may now be showing up elsewhere.

Intelligence analysts did not say there was evidence of a single controlling entity behind the construction of the larger car and truck bombs often used in the most deadly attacks, although they suggested that there might not be many people with the technical skills to build larger bombs.

AP reported that the rejection of the polio vaccine by a polio-ravaged Nigerian state was due to anti-American sentiment and conspiracy theories. That is true, but it is also true that these fears are being stoked by the local Islamic authorities: "But fears mounted last year after Datti Ahmed, a Kano physician who heads a prominent Muslim group, the Supreme Council for Shariah in Nigeria, said polio vaccines were 'corrupted and tainted by evildoers from America and their Western allies.'" From News24.com, with thanks to pgrockas:

Polio left Dauda Abdullahi with twisted limbs, unable to walk. But he refuses to allow his children to be immunised against the disease that crippled him three decades ago.

"Only Allah can save us. I don't trust medicine," the 42-year-old roadside shoemaker said.

Immunising toddlers with mouth drops has reduced the number of polio cases from 350 000 children annually in the 1980s to fewer than 800 worldwide last year. Yet the virus is spreading again from Nigeria, where UN officials say a third of the world's cases are the result of a vaccine boycott.

Amid rising Muslim-Western tensions worldwide, Nigeria's Muslims are heeding allegations that the vaccine is a US plot to spread Aids or infertility.

Since October, three northern Nigerian states have banned door-to-door vaccinations until they are satisfied the vaccines do not contain harmful substances.

"Since September 11, the Muslim world is beginning to be suspicious of any move from the Western world," said Sule Ya'u Sule, speaking for the governor of Kano, one of the states where the vaccine is banned. "Our people have become really concerned about polio vaccine."

UN and Nigerian federal government officials stress the vaccines have repeatedly been proven safe. But detractors don't believe it, and meanwhile polio strains are spreading from northern Nigeria's trading centre of Kano to at least seven nearby countries where the disease was previously eradicated, says the World Health Organisation's Bruce Aylward.

Dozens of recent cases

Aylward, WHO's global co-ordinator for the polio eradication campaign, cited dozens of recent cases in Ghana, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad and Cameroon.

On Sunday, Nigeria sent a team of 12 scientists, government officials and Muslim leaders to South Africa, Indonesia and India to spend a week witnessing tests that would dispel the suspicions.

Muslims in Nigeria's arid north have become increasingly wary of vaccine initiatives since 1996, when families in Kano accused New York-based Pfizer Inc of using an experimental meningitis drug on patients without fully informing them of the risks.

The company denied any wrongdoing and a US court dismissed a lawsuit by 20 disabled Nigerians alleged to have taken part in the study, but a US appeals court revived it late last year.

Zubairu Shaba, a former journalist who has lobbied the Nigerian government for compensation on behalf of the Pfizer patients' families, said he and others distrust the entire Western medical establishment.

'They prefer to die'

"So many families won't go to hospitals again. They prefer to die," Shaba said. "We are suspicious of people who come to our doors with liquid for our children's mouths. We don't know who they are or what they want."

Not everyone agrees. "I've heard lots of people saying bad things about polio vaccine. I don't believe it," 22-year-old Habiba Nara said as a nurse at a clinic in northern Nigeria put vaccine drops in the mouth of Abubakar, her screaming 40-day-old baby boy.

Community health worker Jammai Bala says she encourages the nervous "to believe in God".

But fears mounted last year after Datti Ahmed, a Kano physician who heads a prominent Muslim group, the Supreme Council for Shariah in Nigeria, said polio vaccines were "corrupted and tainted by evildoers from America and their Western allies".

Subsequent tests initiated by the federal government in Nigeria and South Africa proved conclusively the vaccines were free of all harmful substances, officials say.

Muslim groups rejected the results. Kano state officials insisted their own scientists tested the vaccines and found trace amounts of oestrogen and progesterone, female sex hormones which the officials feared could cause infertility.

Jama'atu Nasril Islam, an influential Muslim group, said it sponsored its own tests in Britain and India and got similar results.

Modern day Hitlers

"We believe that modern-day Hitlers have deliberately adulterated the oral polio vaccines with anti-fertility drugs and contaminated with certain viruses which are known to cause HIV and Aids," Ahmed said.

Aylward, the UN official, says any test results showing hormones are "false positives" arising from improper testing methods or the mixing of foreign materials during testing.

Even hormones at the levels alleged by critics would be of "absolutely of no health consequence" and amount to less than the amount found naturally in mothers' breast milk, Aylward said.

From CNN:

A suicide bomber on Sunday killed at least seven passengers on a crowded bus in Jerusalem at the height of rush hour, according to police in the city and Israeli ambulance services.

Jerusalem police spokesman Gil Kleiman said the suicide bomber also died in the terrorist attack, which wounded more than 50 people, 11 of them seriously.

The blast happened in West Jerusalem about 8:30 a.m. (1:30 a.m. ET) on Sunday, the first day of Israel's working week.

Video showed the number 14 bus with its windows blown out and its interior mangled, as rescue workers removed the wounded and remains from the vehicle.

One of the people killed in the attack was an 18-year-old high school student identified by the Jerusalem daily Haaretz as Lior Azulai, a pupil at the Gymnasia Rehavia. Nine other students at the school were wounded in the blast, Haaretz reported.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades -- the military offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement -- claimed responsibility for the blast in a statement.

The group said the attack was in response to a February 11 Israeli military incursion into Gaza, in which 12 Palestinians were killed in gunbattles. The Israeli Army said the Palestinians were all armed, and that its forces were fighting the terrorist infrastructure. Palestinians say many of the killed were civilians.

Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks against Israeli civilians and military targets, and is designated by the U.S. State Department as a foreign terrorist organization.

Jeffrey Imm has forwarded to me an apology from the Presbyterian church for anti-Semitic remarks made by a Muslim speaker sponsored by a Presbyterian group, speaking at Wooster College in Ohio.

The following statement is made by the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, the Office for Interfaith Relations and the Office for the Middle East and Europe of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in response to concerns about a presentation made at the College of Wooster last October. The speaker appeared through a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) program that itinerates individuals involved in peace and justice efforts in other countries to presbyteries, synods, and Presbyterian colleges and seminaries to help Presbyterians understand concerns for peace around the world.

FOR RELEASE, February 10, 2004

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), by action of its General Assembly, has adopted and re-affirmed clear policies abhorring, renouncing and opposing
all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism.

Consistent with those policies, the church's Peacemaking Program, Office for Interfaith Relations and Office for the Middle East and Europe, unequivocally disavow remarks and images reportedly used by a speaker at a
church-sponsored event at the College of Wooster last October. We regret
that some in the audience may have been offended.

While the church cannot take responsibility for expressions made by an individual, it categorically rejects harmful attitudes or the use of demeaning language. It is committed to resist and overcome anti-Semitism and all other attitudes, expressions, or actions that deny or defame the full humanity of another.

In this regard, our offices restate the PC(USA)'s long-standing position affirming Israel's right to exist within legitimate and secure borders; calling for justice and the restoration of dignity and freedom for the Palestinian people; and advocating for an end to the Israeli occupation, a cessation of all forms of violence on all sides, and an urgent return to sanity through negotiation for an honorable and enduring peace in Israel and Palestine.

Sara P. Lisherness
Coordinator
Presbyterian Peacemaking Program
100 Witherspoon Street, Rm. 1625
Louisville, KY 40202-1396
888.728.7228 x5779
slishern@ctr.pcusa.org

From the BBC, with thanks to Nicolei:

Police in Pakistan's remote Northern Areas said on Friday that a ninth school in five days had been attacked and destroyed. Local officials have blamed hardline Islamists opposed to female education. Eight of the schools were for girls, although the latest - burned down in a village near the town of Chilas on Thursday - was a boys' school. Three people have been arrested, taking the total detained over the spate of attacks to 20. The schools attacked were mostly set up by non-governmental organisations with foreign assistance. The BBC's Haroon Rashid in Peshawar says observers view the attacks as a setback to efforts to promote literacy in the under-developed region. Thursday night's attack was on a two-room community school in a remote village called Akhrot, near Chilas, 120km south of the regional capital of Gilgit.

Police said unidentified people torched the school, destroying the furniture and wooden parts of the building. No one was injured.

On 15 February seven girls' schools under the government's Social Action Programme were destroyed in the Daarayle Valley.

On 19 February a primary school in Chilas was dynamited.

Some local officials blame people opposed to the education of girls.

However, others believe the latest incident shows a more general targeting of international aid agencies by people who regard the construction of community schools with their funding as un-Islamic.

Last year attacks at the offices of the International Fund for Agriculture Development (Ifad) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Chilas caused severe damage.

Local officials say they have formed committees to investigate the matter.

A senior government official in Gilgit told the Reuters news agency: "We have about 100 community schools and the attacks have not stopped girls from going to them."

The Northern Areas have a population of around 1.5 million.

The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country at 12% but efforts by aid agencies to raise it have been met with suspicion by some hardline Islamists.

This week's attacks came shortly after President Pervez Musharraf appealed to Muslim religious leaders to help curb extremism.

There are several jihadist video games out there. I wrote of a children's version a couple of years ago. This from the Telegraph, with thanks to EPG:

Perching on the edge of a chair in a darkened room in Beirut, seven-year-old Hassan el Zein takes aim with his pistol and pumps three bullets into the forehead of Ariel Sharon.

He leaves the Israeli prime minister for dead and moves into the next room, swiftly dispatching Shaul Mofaz, the defence minister of "the Zionist enemy", with a commando knife. Twenty more points.

"May Allah's blessings and peace be upon you," flashes across the screen in Arabic as stirring martial music urges Hassan on. An Israeli special forces soldier is blown up by a hand grenade.

Welcome to Champions computer arcade in Beirut's southern suburbs, the urban stronghold of Hizbollah, Lebanon's self-styled "Islamic resistance fighters" and the heroes of young Shi'ite Muslims such as Hassan.

This is the Haret Hreik district, Hizbollah's heartland. Behind the stacks of fruit and vegetables at the grocer's is a portrait of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the group's leader, wielding a Kalashnikov. Along the main road is a mosque with a Hizbollah-run hospital built around it.

Inside Champions, Hizbollah flags hang from the ceiling and there are pictures of Nasrallah and Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, the group's spiritual inspiration, in the entrance. The game is called "Special Forces" and has been produced by the Hizbollah Internet Bureau. Hassan and his friend Ali Dikmak, also seven, are eagerly awaiting an updated version that will feature more advanced weapons.

Although it is not as technologically advanced as some American products, Ali says it is his favourite because it shows Arabs can be strong. "I don't like Israelis and I want to shoot them because they're bombing us and they're bombing the Palestinians. I want to shoot them in real life as well. In this game the Israelis don't win - the resistance always wins."

Hassan Jomass, 21, who is helping out in the arcade, explained the purpose of the game. "It serves a certain goal. It's not just for fun. It's a way to teach the youngsters to know their enemy better and be patriotic."

Hizbollah recognised, he argued, that American games could corrupt the Lebanese youth. "Look," he said, pointing at a child playing Command and Conquer Generals at another console.

"This is even showing Arabs as terrorists."

Sure enough, the game's Global Liberation Army, an Arab guerrilla force, is described as preferring "underhand and sneaky tactics to defeat its enemies" while US forces "utilise high-tech weaponry and skill".

Hizbollah, which means Party of God, was founded in 1982 by young graduates of Shi'ite seminaries in Iran who were intent on taking Khomeni's revolution to Lebanon, then in the throes of a bloody civil war.

Believed by intelligence agencies to have been behind the 1980s kidnappings of people such as John McCarthy and Terry Waite, the group was also responsible for the killing of 241 American marines in a 1983 suicide bombing. Since then, Hizbollah has established itself as a social and political, as well as military, force in Lebanon. Its popularity surged when Israeli forces withdrew from the south of the country in 2000.

Although it aspires to an Islamic state, Hizbollah is happy to work with Lebanon's secular government - which sanctions it as the "resistance" against Israel - and use western inventions such as computer games to help to spread its revolutionary message. But many women in the southern suburbs do not wear the veil and close to Champions there is even a shop that sells sexy lingerie.

A beauty shop called Beckham features a huge faded photograph of the Real Madrid star. Such pragmatism and concentration on social programmes has helped Hizbollah quietly to increase its influence.

With the backing of Iran and Syria, it hopes in time to extend its fight throughout the Islamic world.

Can such actions be compatible with a free society? From the Hindustan Times, with thanks to TwoStellas:

Bangladesh has banned controversial feminist author Taslima Nasrin latest book for allegedly containing "objectionable" comments about Islam and Prophet Mohammad.

The government in a notification issued on Thursday banned the printing, reprinting, sale and stockpiling of the book, Shai Sob Andhakar (Those Dark Days) published last month in West Bengal.

The government banned the import, sale and printing of the book in the country because it contains "grave and objectionable comments about Islam and Prophet Mohammad" and "may cause hatred in the society," an official notification said.

The exiled author's autobiography was banned on the day it was to be released at the ongoing book fair in Dhaka on the occasion of language day. This is Nasreen's second book, which has been banned by the government in the last four months.

The new book is the follow-up volume of the controversial book Ka, which was banned late last year after the country's leading poet Syed Shamsul Haq filed a defamation suit alleging that the book portrayed him in bad light.

Nasreen, a physician-turned-writer now in exile, fled Bangladesh in 1994 after Islamic fundamentalists threatened to kill her following publication of her novel Lajja.

She is currently researching secularisation and women' emancipation in Islamic countries at Harward University.

Which Brigitte is to be believed? From The Australian, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

SUSPECTED French terrorist Willie Brigitte has retracted statements about his knowledge of a possible bomb plot in Australia, according to French judicial sources.

In his first detailed interrogation by investigating magistrate judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere about his activities in Australia, Brigitte went back on his initial statements made in October to officers of the French counter-espionage service, the DST.

At the closed-door hearing this week, Brigitte said the Pakistani national in Sydney who uses the alias Abu Hamza, who is at the centre of Australian investigations into an alleged foiled terrorist plot, had never told him about an explosives expert coming to Sydney.

According to his initial statements, Brigitte said the explosives expert might have been a Chechen named Abou Salah, whom he met in a training camp in Pakistan.

Brigitte also denied all statements French police say were made by his Australian wife, Melanie Brown, who was detained and questioned recently by French authorities before visiting her husband in a Paris prison.

The judicial sources said that in his latest interrogation by Judge Bruguiere, Brigitte claimed he spoke to Ms Brown about the US-Australian spy base at Pine Gap only because he and his wife were both ex-service personnel.

In contradiction to his wife's testimony, he claimed he did not receive a mysterious visitor every morning with whom he surfed the internet.

He said that, unlike Ms Brown's reported testimony, he had never burnt his passport with his Pakistani visa; he said he simply lost it. He was just burning papers on which were written prayers and religious phrases in the name of Allah.

Interesting court case going on in Australia. Two Christian pastors are on trial for "vilifying Muslims" during a 2002 seminar. But as they make their defense, they are going on the offensive. From The Age, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

Islam was an illegal religion because the Koran preached violence against Christians and Jews, a Christian group told a judge yesterday.

The group's barrister, David Perkins, said that Christianity was established under Australia's constitution and had special protection, especially through the blasphemy law.

Mr Perkins told the Victorian and Civil Administrative Tribunal that if the state's new religious hatred law intended to fetter the teaching of Christian doctrine it was invalid.

Victoria's Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 referred to lawful religion, and it was in that sense, he said, that by preaching violence Islam was disqualified.

"The Koran contradicts Christian doctrine in a number of places and, under the blasphemy law, is therefore illegal," he said.

In the first case under the act, the Islamic Council of Victoria has complained that Catch the Fire Ministries, Pastor Danny Nalliah and speaker Daniel Scot, also a pastor, vilified Muslims at a seminar in March 2002.

The Australian Mufti, Sheikh Al-Hilali, who reportedly called for jihad against Israel recently (as well as claiming that Australia was originally Muslim), is now singing a different tune — and Australia's Federal Police are accepting that he does not support an armed uprising against any state. From News.com.au, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

THE Australian Federal Police has rejected a request for a formal investigation into the conduct of Australia's most senior Muslim leader.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock yesterday asked the AFP to look into the activities of the Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali, the Mufti of Australia, while overseas.

Sheik Alhilali reportedly called for a jihad against Israel and met Hizbollah leaders during a recent visit to Lebanon.

An AFP spokeswoman said the force was not investigating Sheik Alhilali but refused to comment further.

"We are not investigating the matter," the spokeswoman said.

Prime Minister John Howard yesterday condemned Sheik Alhilali for incredible insensitivity over the meeting with Hizbollah.

Hizbollah's military wing is listed as a terrorist organisation in Australia but its political wing is not.

Mr Howard today denied he was out to get Sheik Alhilali but said he was seeking further information about what was said and attempting to get a copy of the speech.

"I'm not out to get him," Mr Howard told Sydney radio 2GB.

"As Prime Minister, I am reacting to something which on the face of it, from somebody who is the titular leader of 300,000 people in this country is quite unacceptable."

Sheik Alhilali last night told SBS radio's Arabic language program that he had not called for a jihad and did not support suicide bombing, a Sydney newspaper reported today.

M. A. Niazi in HiPakistan contributes a complex theological argument about whether or not Pakistan's President Musharraf has been speaking correctly about jihad. In the course of the article he makes a number of statements that are revealing in that he seems to assume that his readers will take them for granted. One is that jihad involves "weapons, and intent to kill." Another is that suicide bombing is jihad martyrdom, as declared by Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi of Cairo's prestigious Al-Azhar University.

Jihad (with weapons, and intent to kill) is an obligatory duty (farz). It can be either farz kifaya (in which the participation of some fulfills the duty of all) or farz ain (in which all have to participate). It is a farz ain when it falls within a certain distance of one's home, or if the Amir [the ruler of an Islamic state] or his duly appointed subordinate has ordered a general mobilisation, and a farz kifaya when the jihad is elsewhere. An Amir may call for volunteers either for a jihad beyond the borders of the Islamic state, but it is a moot point whether he can forbid anyone from going abroad to participate in a jihad elsewhere. Actually, the traditional Sharia does not account for borders, though it recognises the possibility of different subordinate Amirs administering different territories independently, and owing a token allegiance to a single Caliph. Therefore, even if one assumes that Musharraf is indeed an Islamic ruler within the context of Sharia, his right to order people not to participate in a jihad outside the territory under his control is dubious.

In other words, he has no right on Islamic grounds to prevent Pakistanis from leaving Pakistan to join Al-Qaeda or other radical Muslim groups in other countries.

It should be noted that the entire analysis above is based on a traditional view, which is no longer tenable because there is no Khilafat, not even in name. The Caliphate abolished by Mustafa Kemal in 1924 was a poor battered thing anyway, far, far removed from the original concept, but it still provided a legal, or rather sharai cover of sorts. Obviously, there is a need for ijtihad [new interpretation of the sacred texts] on the issue.

One clever way of avoiding ijtihad is to re-establish the Caliphate.

That is exactly what Osama and other radicals want to do, for precisely these reasons.

This would immediately restore the Islamic system to its correct footing. Theologically, in fact, it is still the only feasible solution, but there are political difficulties in its path too numerous to discuss. This solution has been proposed by a number of groups. In Pakistan, the most eminent is Dr Israr Ahmed's Tanzeem Islami, while the Hizbut Tahrir has recently set up a branch here. The Hizb is an interesting organisation, for it does not consist of sister parties (such as the Jamaat Islami in India, Pakistan, Kashmir and Bangladesh, which are separate and independent parties), but claims to be one single party spread throughout the Muslim world.

However, there is a practical difficulty. The Kashmiris, the Afghans, the Iraqis, the Palestinians and the Chechens cannot wait for Dr Israr or the Hizb to establish the Caliphate. They are faced with oppression and foreign occupation right now. They have no option but to engage in jihad, by whatever means available. This is why the Grand Mufti of Al-Azhar (no firebrand, but enlightened and moderate enough to support the Frnech headscarf ban) has issued a fatwa declaring suicide bombings not just a valid means of jihad, but its highest form. In fact, this is the only formal fatwa holding the field on this issue. Though many Muslims have condemned suicide bombings as suicide, no scholar has issued a prohibitory fatwa. And these jihads are a farz kifaya for Muslims outside these areas.

Note well: no scholar has issued a prohibitory fatwa [ruling] against suicide attacks.

This weekend a number of sources have been reporting a stepped up hunt for Osama bin Laden. Word from Pakistan is that they have soldiers combing the mountains. Word from London is that Osama is surrounded. Word from The Washington Post is that we are, of course, to blame.

UPDATE: U.S., Pakistan Deny They're Closing in on Osama

Skynews has a chilling look inside the mind of a female suicide bomber:

In the terrorist wing of Israel's Hasharon Prison, Obaydeh Khalil sat in her tiny cell and spoke calmly of murder.

"I wanted to kill as many of them as possible," she said. "To me all the Jews are soldiers and I want to kill them."

Obaydeh was just days away from carrying out a devastating suicide bombing when she was arrested by the Israeli security forces.

She is one of a frightening new breed of female militants who are prepared to die and kill for the Palestinian cause.

Adjusting her veil, the placid 27-year-old told me she had no reservations about targeting civilians. She was even prepared to kill children.

"If I had got to my target and there were kids there I would still have done it," she said. "I knew I would still go to heaven even if I killed children."

A new policy in Alabama is not in and of itself an example of dhimmitude, but it is interesting to contrast this with the French headscarf ban:

Responding to complaints from Muslims and Sikhs, Gov. Bob Riley's administration is changing a policy that prohibited the wearing of head scarves and turbans in driver's license photos.

The new policy says head coverings and headgear are acceptable for religious beliefs and medical conditions, but for no other reason. State Public Safety Director Mike Coppage said his department was delivering the rule change to county probate judges on Friday, and that it would take effect Monday.

Muslim women who had complained were glad to see the state's quick response. "This is a victory for religious freedom for everyone in this country," said LaTonya Floyd of Mobile.

The Washington Post reports that a member of a Virginia jihad group was acquitted. It seems that among other things he dozed off at a key meeting.
Those who doubt the relevance of the Kashmir conflict to the war on terror should be reminded that one of the key features of the war is a new kind of enemy: a loosely affiliated network of jihad warriors eager to go wherever the fight for radical Islam takes them. Today Kashmir, tomorrow — perhaps right here at home.

A federal judge yesterday threw out the case against a member of an alleged Virginia jihad network, ruling that prosecutors had failed to present any evidence that the man was involved in a conspiracy to train for jihadist combat abroad.

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema said that although Caliph Basha Ibn Abdur-Raheem subscribed to a "radical form of Islam" and played paintball in the Virginia countryside, there was no evidence that he was training for jihad. Prosecutors contend, and several witnesses have testified, that the paintball games played by the network of 11 men simulated warfare.

"He is an ordinary run-of-the-mill paintball player. . . . Paintball by itself is not an illegal enterprise. Many people do participate in paintball,'' said Brinkema, who noted that Abdur-Raheem had attended meetings of alleged co-conspirators but had dozed off at a key one.

Although Brinkema also dismissed various counts against the other three men on trial in Alexandria, she refused to drop the most serious charges, that some of them trained with a foreign terrorist group and that one had conspired to support al Qaeda and the Taliban.

This group had been spreading its message in American prisons, mosques, and Islamic schools. From the Washington Post, with thanks to EPG:

The Treasury Department ordered banks yesterday to freeze the accounts of the Oregon and Missouri branches of a large Saudi charity that U.S. officials say has been used to finance the al Qaeda terrorist network around the world.

FBI and Internal Revenue Service agents searched a home in Ashland, Ore., that is the U.S. headquarters for the charity, the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation. The search is part of an investigation into allegations that the Oregon branch was involved in money laundering and income tax and currency-reporting violations, Treasury officials said.

Over the past two years, U.S. and Saudi authorities have intensified a joint crackdown on al-Haramain offices around the globe after concluding that they had funneled money, personnel and equipment to al Qaeda. Branches in Bosnia and Somalia were shuttered in 2002, and last December others were closed in Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania and Pakistan.

U.S. officials continue to investigate the foundation's headquarters in Saudi Arabia. Several weeks ago al-Haramain's chief, Aqeel al-Aqeel, was fired by top Saudi clerical authorities amid growing suspicions about his role at the charity.

Lawrence Matasar, an attorney for the al-Haramain office in Oregon, said charity officials in that state are cooperating with the government in the investigation. "We believe no crimes have been committed," he said.

Al-Haramain's headquarters in Saudi Arabia launched its Oregon office in 1997 by funding the work of an Ashland landscaper, Pete Seda, who had been sending Korans to prison inmates. The two people now mainly under investigation are Seda and Soliman Albuthe, a Saudi citizen who also helped run the Oregon organization.

Officials are investigating numerous financial transactions involving Albuthe and Seda, also known as Pirouz Sedaghaty, including allegations of transporting large sums of undeclared traveler's checks across U.S. borders. Under U.S. law, anyone transporting $10,000 or more in or out of the country must declare it to customs agents.

Agents are looking into $131,000 that was wired by a man in London to the Oregon foundation, which then dispatched Albuthe to transport the funds by traveler's checks to Saudi Arabia. The transaction was not properly reported to U.S. authorities, according to an affidavit filed in court in Oregon. The funds were ultimately destined for Muslim fighters or refugees in Chechnya, it said.

The affidavit also disclosed that a federal grand jury has been investigating al-Haramain's U.S. operations.

The U.S. branch of the charity has mainly distributed Islamic books and videos to Americans, and also helped establish a mosque in Springfield, Mo., with more than $370,000 provided by the Saudi headquarters.

One of the top leaders of that mosque was Kamran Bokhari, a student at Southwest Missouri State University, who was also the U.S. representative of a radical London-based group called al-Mujahiroun, which supports al Qaeda, according to the Site Institute, a terrorism research group.

It's no secret that Al-Muhajiroun supports Al-Qaeda. They're quite open about it.

Common sense from Dan Greenberg in the MetroWest Daily News (thanks to Nicolei):

It has become almost impossible to have a detached discussion -- one that takes historical considerations into account -- about the war on terror, and the position of Iraq in the context of that war. Here, I would like to do my best to contribute to such a discussion.

Let's begin with some basic facts. First, for some time now, radical Islam has engaged in a brutal war on Western culture, seeking to eliminate all vestiges of that culture within the Muslim world and to undermine its existence in the Western world. This is a no-holds-barred attack, governed by none of the so-called "rules of war" that supposedly civilized nations claim to have put in place. There are no distinctions made between belligerents and non-belligerents; any and every person in the West is a target, apparently including even Muslims who live in the West or are at peace with the West.

Second, there is no single coordinated command structure to radical Islam. New terror groups form, old groups disband, but all have a common goal, and all applaud each other's successes and support each other's efforts. They try to infiltrate official Islamic governmental structures and, where this does not succeed, they gain cover and support through the threat of violence.

Third, these groups use a broad range of tactics and strategies to achieve their goals. They employ unfettered physical violence; they take advantage of people's greed in order to purchase their weapons and influence; and they use normal diplomatic means to insert themselves into international power politics.

Fourth, these groups gain succor from willing supporters and unwitting fellow-travelers in all countries, who aid them in achieving their goals.

Finally, the radical Islamists have gained strength and momentum in more recent years, thanks to the increasing availability of sophisticated weapons having far greater destructive power than any before. With each passing year, it has become easier to create or purchase weapons that can disable planes and tanks, that can spread disease and toxic chemicals, and even those that can create a nuclear disaster, either in the form of "dirty bombs" or in the more sinister form of atomic warheads.

For years, the terrorists have been refining their tactics and preparing for ever more destructive operations. Israel has been a fertile proving ground for them, and continues to be. Throughout the world, they have experimented with hijacking and destruction of planes and ships, bombing embassies and military bases, and individual assassinations of opponents.

Sept. 11, 2001 was distinguished from other days only in that it was a clear, unambiguous declaration of global war, just as Dec. 7, 1941 differed from preceding days and years in that it made Japanese intentions of world conquest manifest to everyone.

We are dealing with an insidious, cruel enemy that has spread its tentacles throughout the world. We are also dealing with particular places that are havens for these terrorists. It took no genius to identify Afghanistan as one such place, and the operation to neutralize that haven has indeed eliminated it as a safe base from which terrorists could operate unmolested.

Iraq was a much more insidious focal point, because in that country, the ambitions of a monstrous dictator coincided with those of the terrorists. Saddam Hussein was open about his intention to dominate the entire Middle East -- a new Babylonian empire, in his eyes -- and control Western access to its major source of energy, oil.

Using his own vast resources, he converted his plans into action, first by trying to conquer Iran, another major supplier of oil, and then, when that did not succeed, by turning south to conquer Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In the process, he supported radical terrorists operating against other governments in the Middle East, including Israel, and operating against the West in general.

He was assiduous in developing or obtaining every dangerous weapon known to man. He was the first Muslim ruler to develop a program for atomic weapons, which the Israelis were intelligent enough to hamper by destroying his main nuclear reactor 20 years ago. He developed chemical and biological weapons that he perfected by using them against his own people, and then against the Iranians.

When he was defeated in Kuwait by a wide coalition of powers, including many Muslim governments who felt threatened by him, he continued with his development programs throughout the 1990s, openly defiant of agreements he had made and repeated demands made by the United Nations Security Council.

To say that this regime was not a direct menace to the United States and to world stability in general is to bury one's head firmly in the sand. Perhaps we shouldn't have gone to war against the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, but only sought to find and prosecute in a court of law the bombardiers who dropped their bombs and torpedoes on the American ships. Indeed, why did we fight the Axis powers -- Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary -- at all? All they did was make a paper declaration of war on us in 1941; they didn't actually attack any American troops or cities.

Notice that I am not talking about Saddam Hussein being a "bad person." I am not even addressing the question of whether one should use military force to rid the world of horrendous mass murderers, of whom he ranks as one of the worst in history. We don't seem to have reached any sort of consensus on that question.

We certainly didn't go to war against Hitler or Stalin when they slaughtered their own people, or against the Hutus in Rwanda (or any of the other mutually murderous tribes in Burundi and the Congo). We intervened in the Balkans, ostensibly to prevent further "ethnic cleansing," but that reason was hardly plausible; the numbers involved there were far from comparable to those that were killed in other places, even during the same years.

No, the world has not decided that mass murderers have to be eliminated, nor have we in this country reached that point.

But we are certainly clear that we will do everything necessary to defend ourselves against declared enemies who have taken overt actions that threaten our safety and security. Radical Islam is top on the list, and Iraq was far and away the most dangerous and menacing official government that actively promoted the same belligerent goals.

Continued strange goings-on in the Yee case. From the Miami Herald:

For the fifth time, the Army on Tuesday delayed the pretrial hearing for a Muslim chaplain accused of mishandling classified information at the U.S. terror prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The Southern Command in Miami said Capt. James ''Youseff'' Yee's hearing at Fort Benning, Ga., will resume March 10 -- not today, as previously announced. Prosecutors sought the delay because the military has not completed a security review of potentially classified documents in the case, Southcom said.

Yee's civilian attorney responded that the government should drop its case, which began with the West Point graduate's arrest Sept. 11 in Jacksonville.

'I don't know what takes so long about completing this classification review, but it certainly supports our position that there is no `there' there,'' said Yee's civilian defense attorney, Eugene Fidell.

``Whatever else you can say about the downward trajectory of this case, this latest delay affords the government time to take a hard look at whether the time has come to pull the plug.''

Early in the case, investigators told Yee's Army attorney to prepare for an espionage trial. No capital crime charges were ever leveled. Yee, 35, is accused of mishandling classified material, adultery and downloading pornography onto his government computer, crimes that could carry a maximum 13-year sentence.

The latest delay, announced late Tuesday, was the fifth blamed on confusion over the classification of documents.

Army Col. David McWilliams, a Southcom spokesman, also disclosed a delay in another Guantánamo case -- hearings against Army Col. Jackie Duane Farr, 58, also slated to open today at Fort Gordon, Ga.

Charged Nov. 29 with making a false statement and failure to obey an order, Farr is the most senior military official caught up in last year's crackdown on mishandling of intelligence by soldiers and civilians working at Guantánamo.

Unlike Yee, who was confined for 76 days at a Navy brig, Farr was allowed to continue working as an Army officer at Guantánamo pending his investigation. Conviction on his charges could bring a seven-year jail sentence.

This one seems motivated by a desire to get votes. From Sify.com:

The BJP has strongly protested against the Mulayam Singh Yadav Government's decision to cut short school hours on Fridays to allow Muslim students to offer Jumma ki namaz.

The move is being perceived as an effort to appease the Muslim votebank ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. According to a Government order issued on February 16 to all schools and colleges affiliated to the UP Board, the school hours would now be from 8 am to 12 pm on all Fridays.

Reacting strongly to the "absurd Government decision", state BJP chief Vinay Katiyar, demanded that the Government order be withdrawn immediately.

"It smacks of the Government's appeasement policy. Mulayam Singh Yadav is scared of his shifting mass base in the coming Lok Sabha polls. Hence he's using such tactics to draw minority votes. Such a step will create a divide between Hindu and Muslim children in schools," he said.

Katiyar further said the BJP would take to the streets to protest this decision. He argued: "In that case even the bhakts of Lord Shiva would demand a holiday on Monday and devotees of Lord Hanuman would demand a holiday on Tuesday."

He said the party would stage an agitation in front of the Assembly. "The protest would continue till the Government withdraws the order," he added.

The order issued by the Principal Secretary, Education, Neera Yadav on February 16, says that the State Government, after due consideration, has decided to change the school timings on Friday's from 8 am to 12 pm.

The changed timing would be applicable to all aided, unaided, and Government-run primary schools, junior schools, high schools and intercolleges in the state. So far, school timings have been six hours -- from 8 am to 2 pm or 10 am to 4 pm, Monday to Friday, with Saturday being a half day.

District Inspector of Schools Vikas Srivastava said the order would be implemented with immediate effect in the state Capital and students can look forward to the new timings from this Friday.

Musharraf's anti-jihad jihad: too late?

What's this? Pakistan's Musharraf has called upon his countrymen to stop "loving Allah above everything else and resisting worldly temptations"? Well, not exactly. He has denounced the jihadi culture, and he, his hearers, and the rest of the world know what he meant: the culture of violence and murder that justifies itself by the traditional Muslim concept of jihad -- that is, warfare against unbelievers, as it has been understood by Muslims since the seventh century. From the BBC:

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has warned religious and political parties against promoting the culture of jihad, or holy war.

He said foreign nationals would not be allowed to use Pakistani territory to carry out militant activities in the region.

Speaking at a conference of several hundred clerics and religious scholars in Islamabad, the president said only by eliminating religious extremism can the growing perception about Pakistan being an intolerant society be changed.

Pakistan has arrested more than 500 al-Qaeda suspects who fled Afghanistan in the wake of US-led attacks that ousted the hardline Taleban regime in late 2001.

The president's hard-hitting and candid remarks about militancy and Islamic extremism in front of so many clerics left little doubt that the Pakistani military leader means business.

Intolerant society

His real targets were the relatively small number of militant groups that had been involved in sectarian violence within the country and were encouraging trouble in nearby countries like Afghanistan.

President Musharraf said a handful of extremists have taken the entire country hostage and were directly responsible for the growing perception in the world about Pakistan being an intolerant society.

They had been targeting religious minorities in the country, he said, and were spreading the culture of jihad in neighbouring states.

President Musharraf said there was no room for jihadi culture in the country and no individual or political party would be allowed to preach violence in the name of religion.

He said the tribesmen in the country's border region with Afghanistan have been warned against giving shelter to foreign militants and the armed forces have been instructed to take strict action against those using Pakistani territory to create trouble in neighbouring countries.

President Musharraf said even though Pakistan regards the ongoing insurgency in Indian administered Kashmir as a freedom struggle, it would like to resolve the outstanding dispute with India through the recently started peace process.

He described the elimination of extremism from the country as his biggest challenge and asked the religious scholars to support him in his mission to create a culture of tolerance in Pakistan.

Discrimination against women is so deeply ingrained into the Sharia in so many ways (women's testimony is devalued, they cannot marry or even leave the house without permission, they may be beaten (Qur'an, Sura 4:34), etc.), that many Islamic radicals consider the very idea of education for women to be an affront to Islam. This article shows how far some are willing to take this. Non-Muslims should take note, for these radicals would no doubt enforce the Sharia's provisions for dhimmis with equal ferocity, given the opportunity. From the Gulf Daily News, with thanks to Nicolei:

Islamic militants dynamited seven primary schools for girls in Pakistan's remote north in the past week in a bid to discourage female education, a government official said yesterday..

The attacks occurred in two districts of the Northern Areas but caused no injuries as they were carried out at night, a senior government official from Gilgit said.

Unknown men planted a low intensity explosive device in the three-room school building which exploded on Wednesday without causing any casualties, local police officer Zaheer Khan said.

"The attack caused minor damage to the building, but no casualties," he said.

It was the fifth incident in less than a week in which schools had been targeted.

He blamed the attacks on local tribesmen encouraged by "religious elements" opposed to education of girls.

"The majority of the people are supportive of girls' education but a tiny minority is opposed," said the official.

"We have about a 100 community schools and the attacks have not stopped girls from going to them."

Police said they had detained 16 people in connection with the attacks, six of which happened in Diamir district and the seventh in Chilas.

Khan said non-governmental organisations had set up several schools in Diamir district which Khan said had upset extremists in the region.

The latest attack, which badly damaged the school, occurred just three days after a group of men, angered over increasing activities of foreign-funded charity organisations, set fire to seven schools for girls, damaging the buildings and furniture.

However, it was not immediately clear whether the same people were behind Wednesday's attack, said Mohammed Jan, a government official in Chilas.

Those Virginia paintballers hoped to strike in the U.S. From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Testimony in the case of a Maryland man charged with trying to join the Taliban and fight U.S. troops indicates that he was asked by members of a militant Islamic group to perform a special mission inside the United States.

Yong Ki Kwon testified for the prosecution against Masoud Khan yesterday in Alexandria, Virginia.

Khan is being tried for conspiracy to levy war against the United States and conspiracy to support Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network. Three other defendants face lesser conspiracy and firearms charges. Prosecutors allege the group used paintball games near Fredericksburg in the summers of 2000 and 2001 to prepare for holy war against India and other nations with whom the United States is at peace.

Kwon testified that the exact nature of Khan's mission was never fully explained -- but that it involved gathering information, sending e-mails and spreading propoganda.

Kwon also testified that he and Khan went to Pakistan after the September eleventh terror attacks to train with a group seeking to drive India from the disputed Kashmir region. The group is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

From Fox:

Spc. Ryan G. Anderson, a National Guardsman accused of trying to aid the Al Qaeda terror network, has been formally charged, the Army said. Anderson, 26, a Muslim convert, was arrested last week after U.S. officials discovered he allegedly tried to give military data to Al Qaeda. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

According to the charging documents, Anderson disclosed information about U.S. troop strength, movements, equipment, tactics, weapons systems and methods of killing soldiers to U.S. military personnel he believed were members of the terror network. He also allegedly shared sketches of tanks and a CD with copies of his identification documents.

He was charged Feb. 12 — the day of his arrest — with three counts involving attempts to supply intelligence to the enemy, but that information was not made public until Wednesday, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Stephen Barger said.

In each count, Anderson was accused of "attempting to provide intelligence to the enemy" by disclosing information or making contact with U.S. military personnel.

Attempts to aid the enemy can be punished by death, according to the Uniform Military Code.

The charges did not allege that Anderson ever actually passed information to real Al Qaeda members.

Anderson, 26, of Lynnwood, is a tank crew member from the Fort Lewis-based 81st Armor Brigade. The 2002 Washington State University graduate converted to Islam in college. He joined the Guard on May 15, 2002, Barger said.

Barger refused to say whether the investigation was continuing or whether others might be involved. He also refused to discuss how Anderson's activities came to the Army's attention or how the Army set up the sting that led to his arrest. Anderson is being held at Fort Lewis.

In the first count, Anderson, also known as "Amir Abdul Rashid," is alleged to have attempted to provide information about U.S. Army troop strength, movements, equipment, tactics and weapons systems, as well as methods of killing U.S. Army personnel and vulnerabilities of Army weapons systems and equipment.

Anderson is also alleged to have communicated by "oral, written and electronic communication" to the supposed "terrorists" that "I wish to meet with you, I share your cause, I wish to continue contact through conversations and personal meetings."

A disquieting story about the propagation of jihadist "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" slander in the United States, unconscionable dhimmitude from a Presbyterian "peacemaking group" — and nothing but supine silence from officials at an American college. From Cleveland Jewish News, with thanks to EPG:

Last October, Samir Makhlouf, invited to speak at the College of Wooster, delivered a diatribe against Jews.

During his presentation, he presented the fraudulent, antisemitic screed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a factual book that "explains" how Zionists have been taking over the world's political, economic, religious and communication organizations.

Makhlouf's 15-20 minute slide presentation was rife with dead Palestinian bodies "proving" Israeli war crimes. The slide show ended with a Star of David morphing into a swastika, and had frames equating Zionism with Nazism. The "equals" sign was then replaced by a "greater than" sign, suggesting that Zionism was even worse than Nazism.

While no one disputes that this is what Makhlouf presented, to date, no one from the College of Wooster, or Presbyterian Peacemakers, the organization that provided the speaker, has issued an apology or acknowledged those who were offended by the presentation.

Bettysue Feuer, regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, says she has been working on this issue with the College of Wooster for quite a while. A public apology, she says, "would go a long way." Noting that Makhlouf is not the first antisemitic speaker the College of Wooster has hosted, Feuer says she is disturbed by the seeming lack of supervision over who is permitted to air their views.

"It's a shame there is not more sensitivity shown to the diverse population of the campus. To allow a speaker who shows such bigotry shows a real lack of understanding on (the College of Wooster's) part."

Feuer is also interested in knowing the criteria the Presbyterian Peacemakers use to choose their speakers.

Mark Wilson, a Jew who is a professor of geology at the college, says he was approached by a number of students following Makhlouf's presentations, one held during an ethics class, and another at an open public lecture. The students told him they "were rather amazed" by what they saw and heard.

Relatively few Jews attend the college, notes Wilson, so there didn't seem to be much of an outcry against Makhlouf's presentations. Nevertheless, he says, an apology should have been issued.

Also disturbing, Wilson adds, is the response some of the more virulently antisemitic speakers receive. "Fawaz Damra (imam of the Islamic Center of Cleveland and recently cited for lying about his ties to terrorist organizations) was invited here, and while I don't mind having him on campus, I was disturbed that no mention was made of his recent past."

While he's not sure how many students or faculty came to hear Damra, Wilson says there was a "very large turnout of people from the area who cheered him and cheered him."

The Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church, proclaims a "commitment to peacemaking" on its Web site. They profess "a journey of racial justice and understanding" as well as commitment to overcoming prejudice.

Sweet Young, an administrative assistant for the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, told the CJN that no one from the organization would be available to comment on the October presentation by Makhlouf until some time in February. She directed questions to Gordon Shull, who hosted the speaker in Wooster.

Shull, a Presbyterian and former professor at the College of Wooster, admits he understands some students may have been offended. He is also aware that non-Jewish students may have come away with erroneous and harmful information about the validity of the Protocols. However, he says, he "would not encourage them (Peacemaker organization) to issue an apology. I'm not into apologies or casting blame."

Shull sent out e-mails to the College of Wooster faculty intimating that the speaker's presence at the college was actually the responsibility of the Israeli government because the Palestinian speaker he had initially tried to get was unable to secure a travel visa. He repeated the charge several times in a phone interview with this reporter that he felt the speaker's appearance could be blamed on the Israeli government. Shull later called back saying he would like to retract that sentiment.

In further deflecting responsibility from himself, Shull said, "I regret that the director of the Hillel Foundation (Professor Peter Pozefsky) chose to be offended by it, rather than take it as a teachable event."

Pozefsky a professor of history who has assumed the Hillel post as a volunteer, has pretty much singly-handedly raised concerns to fellow staff and administration about speakers such as Makhlouf and Damra. He estimates that at least seven such individuals making antisemitic remarks have spoken at the college in the past few years.

"There are plenty of people who are willing to say this is awful, but no one is willing to put their necks on the line," he says. "I shouldn't be the only one making sure Jews aren't trashed on this campus."

Pozefsky likens the Makhlouf fiasco to the response he received to requests he raised before Damra came to speak. "I didn't want to censor him," he says. "I just wanted students to know who he was before he spoke."

Pozefsky e-mailed his concerns on the faculty listserve, but the response he got "was a combination of hostility and complacency." On one occasion, a colleague accused him of trying to violate free speech. Another time, he was accused of harassment.

After the Presbyterian Peacemaker presentation, Pozefsky found himself once again in the position of attempting to rectify the damage made by a speaker's slanderous allegations against Jews. While he didn't attend the lectures, some of the students expressed their concerns to him. One student told him that he found "the illusion Makhlouf painted about Jewish bankers and their domination of the West" particularly disturbing. So was a slide that read, "May God bless our martyrs; may they find peace in the heavens."

"There are very few Jewish students on campus," Pozefsky points out, "and they don't want to be activists or seem like crybabies." However, he notes, these young people are in the care of the college, and their feelings and well-being should be taken into consideration. Further, he says, non-Jewish students have gotten "terribly shamefully biased, unscholarly and misleading, stridently antisemitic information as part of their (college) education.

"If women or blacks were spoken about like this, or if someone came and spread homophobic hate speech, that would never be tolerated," he says. "Is this acceptable because it was directed toward Jews?"

R. Stanton Hales, president of the College of Wooster, did not return calls to the CJN. John Hopkins, assistant vice president for college relations and marketing, e-mailed the CJN to say that Hales will "make a statement once he has determined all the facts to his satisfaction." He did not give a date when that would be.

Dr. 'Azzam Al-Tamimi was, according to MEMRI, "a media monitor and news analyst at the U.S. government's Foreign Broadcast Information Service" from 1980 to 1985. He has also served as "a researcher for The Center for the Study of Democracy at Westminster University." He is a respected figure worldwide who is frequently asked to lecture on Islamic topics.

But some of his statements are not what one might expect from a U.S. government news analyst:

Al-Tamimi describes himself as a "sympathiser and supporter" of Hamas. "I know some of the senior figures in Hamas," he said. "Some were my friends, my classmates..." [3]

Palestinian political scientist Muhammad Muslih, however, defines Al-Tamimi in a study on Hamas's foreign policy as "a Hamas member." [4]

On Jihad and Suicide/Martyrdom Operations

In an article titled 'A Stroll in Hell ' published in early 1997, Al-Tamimi called upon the Arabs to open "the locked gates of Jihad:"

"... Don't they [the Arabs] understand that no might is more powerful than the might of Allah... ? Open the locked gates of Jihad to those who want to act for the sake of Allah, and unite the bridle of those who yearn for the gardens of eternity [i.e. Paradise]... Then they will see that the Jews who came from the corners of the earth dreaming of the promised paradise will go back to where they came from..." [5]

In an article titled 'Hizbullah's Gift to Palestine' published in mid-2000, Al-Tamimi explained the religious roots of suicide/martyrdom operations:

"A person that chooses, and comes forward willingly, to die by exploding himself in the face of his oppressors is neither desperate nor hopeless. Almost in every case... the Israelis are dealing with individuals who are most hopeful. They are aspiring to what they alone seem to have known with certainty to be the truth. To them, the eventual destiny of their short trip to Tel Aviv, Netanya, or other Zionist-infested Palestinian towns is eternal life in a world of divine bliss..." [6]

In an Internet chat forum in early 2003, Al-Tamimi expanded on the roots of suicide/martyrdom operations:

"... For us Muslims, martyrdom is not the end of things, but the beginning of the most wonderful of things. In the next life one is in an everlasting bliss, while in this life those after him continue to receive inspiration from him... The blood of martyrs provides nourishment and sustenance for those who continue the struggle. The cause will always be stronger when more sacrifices are offered. This is what the Israelis do not understand and will probably never understand...

"Every martyr that the Palestinians offer is a gain and not a loss, for he or she is alive and their blood provides constant inspiration for many generations to come. Eventually, it is the Israelis who will lose, for they did not come from Europe and other places around the world to die in Palestine. They came to live, and what sort of a life are they living…? Allah tells us in the Qur'an very clearly that if we suffer, they suffer too, but the difference is that we have something to hope for from our Lord and they have not..." [7]

Asked his opinion regarding Islamic scholars, especially from Saudi Arabia, who say that Palestinians are not allowed to blow themselves up because it is suicide, Al-Tamimi replied:

"This is their opinion, which happens to contradict the opinions of all the other scholars around the Muslim world. If we assume that their intentions are good, their understanding of what these operations are about is definitely skewed. Some people suspected that their fatwas [sic] are tailored to suit the political circumstances of the country in which they live. Allah knows best." [8]

In his article 'Hizbullah's Gift to Palestine'in mid-2000, Al-Tamimi draws upon the early Islamic ethos of martyrdom and refers to its religious roots, explaining why the Palestinians will be victorious like Hizbullah, Hamas, and the Islamic Jihad. He refers to the early Islamic traditions regarding the Battle of Al-Qadisiya (637), in which the Muslim commander Khaled Ibn Al-Walid faced the vastly greater Persian army commanded by Persian leader Kisra (Khusro). Khaled Ibn Al-Walid sent the Persian commander a letter on behalf of his leader, the First Caliph Abu Bakr telling him, "I have come to you with a people who love death as much as you love life." This message is one of the main tenets of the Islamist terrorist organizations, and is used frequently on various fronts of Jihad. [9]

"Like the Lebanese, the Palestinians were prepared to continue the struggle despite the clear imbalance of power. Like Hizbullah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad had the ability to recruit fighters whose love for death in the cause of regaining their people's rights exceeded the Israelis' love for a life of security, safety and comfort..." [10]

In an article titled 'Palestinian Islamist Azzam Al-Tamimi Defines Hamas, PLO Differences and Calls for Dialogue With Both' published in late 1998, Al-Tamimi explained that suicide/martyrdom operations are the cheapest weapon the Palestinians can use:

"As far as the military effort is concerned, it does not require much funding. What do you need, really? What sort of weapons does Hamas use? It's the human being. The courage of one man. It is the most valuable of resources. As for some of the operations, the suicidal operations, they require volunteers but the cost in money is near zero. The bomb-making technique is available to everybody. It's on the Internet and the material is available in any corner shop that sells fertilizers. Therefore there's no big deal, really. If you want to do something, you do it. Israel has no defense against Hamas..." [11]

In an article titled 'The Nature and Rationale of Hamas' published in mid-2000. Al-Tamimi explained that Hamas perceives its struggle as an 'act of worship' to be rewarded by Allah: "Islam is Hamas' ideological frame of reference... Such an outlook renders struggle a religious duty, not a nationalist or patriotic one. In other words, defending the land and honor of the Muslims is an act of worship for which God rewards a struggler in the form of victory in this life and eternity in Gardens of Eden in the life after death..." [12]

In an interview titled 'David versus Goliath' on Al-Jazeera television in October 2003, Al-Tamimi described the Hamas tactic of using human bombs:

"Don't forget, in the long-term the outcome of this conflict isn't about how many Palestinians die, it is about how many Israelis die. The Israelis can't fight or match the willingness of the Palestinian people to sacrifice their lives." [13]

On September 11 and the Taliban Regime

In an interview with the Spanish daily La Vanguardia titled 'I Admire the Taliban, They Are Courageous' in late 2001, Al-Tamimi claimed that the September 11 attacks brought joy to the Arab world. He begins by assuring the interviewer that "everyone" in the Arab world cheered upon seeing the Twin Towers fall. "Excuse me," says the interviewer, "did you understand my question?" Al-Tamimi: "In the Arab and Muslim countries, everyone jumped for joy. That's what you asked me, isn't it?" [14]

In an article titled "America's 'Crusade,'" published in late 2001, Al-Tamimi said that U.S. foreign policy was responsible to some extent for the September 11 attacks:

"The United States of America and some of its allies in Europe are not liked in many parts of the Muslim world because of their foreign policies and what is seen as their imperialist attitude... It is undeniable that the calamity that struck the United States on September 11 may have been a source of joy for some Muslims whose hatred for America prevents them from recognizing the savagery and inhumanity of this attack.

"U.S. policy makers may not be oblivious to this fact. They probably know, only too well, that if Muslims were actually responsible for the catastrophe, it is U.S. foreign policy that breeds and provokes such elements that are willing to go as far as killing themselves to inflict pain and humiliation on the United States. The leader of world democracy and protector of international law and human rights is seen by many Muslims in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa as supporting dictatorships and military junta that resist political reform..." [15]

Jihadist khutbas are not welcome in Denmark. From the Guardian, with thanks to Andy Bannister:

Denmark is tightening its immigration rules to make it harder for fundamentalist Muslim clerics to settle in the country and establish radical communities.

The move is designed to encourage Muslims to integrate into wider Danish society but is bound to attract criticism that it is discriminatory.

Indeed, it is bound to. But where is the guarantee that imams will not preach jihadist hatred in the mosques?

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the prime minister, said the measure would affect all religious groups, but a rightwing political party admitted it was principally intended to tackle Islamic extremism.

Denmark's 170,000 Muslims account for 3% of the population and are the second largest religious community after the Lutheran church, followed by four-fifths of the country's 5.3 million strong population.

"Access to obtaining a Danish residence permit for foreign missionaries has been too easy up until now," Mr Rasmussen said. "That is why we are putting forward new requirements for residing in the country."

Critics complained that the influence of radical imams had been exaggerated, while the government said it merely wanted to encourage integration.

"This is to make sure that they are worthy of the trust society shows by letting them in," a spokesman said yesterday.

Supporters of the measure accuse foreign clerics of urging Muslim immigrants to stick to customs such as wearing the veil, female circumcision and stopping women from working and learning Danish.

Mr Rasmussen's minority centre-right government relies on the anti-immigrant Danish People's party's to pass legislation. The proposed changes are part of a deal reached last year with the People's party and the opposition Social Democrats.

The new rules will require any person coming to Denmark on a religious visa to show that they are a "worthy" candidate, are educated, financially self-supporting and connected with one of 200 recognised religious communities.

The DPP, which proposed the changes, confirmed they were aimed to curb the activities of Muslim clerics, or imams. "In theory, these rules concern all clerics from all religions," said Peter Skaarup, a party spokesman. "But in practice, they target the imams."

Like France, the Netherlands and other western European countries, Denmark has been struggling with Muslim issues since before, but especially after, the September 11 attacks on the US.

Danish media have reported the case of an imam who praised Osama bin Laden in his Friday sermons.

This article chronicles the jihad activities of Hafiz Saeed and his Lashkar-e-Taiba organization in Pakistan, which threatens to derail the India/Pakistan peace process before it really starts. From KRT Wire:

Alighting swiftly from a smoky windowed minibus on the edge of a small park in central Islamabad, the man blamed by India for orchestrating the 2001 suicide attack against India's parliament seemed anxious to avoid attracting too much attention.

Hafiz Saeed, founder of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba organization and a member of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front for Jihad, had come to town to address a gathering to mourn the death of a militant fighter killed in Kashmir.

He must have been aware that another, highly significant meeting was taking place in Islamabad that day, one that made his presence in the capital a matter of acute political sensitivity.

Just an hour earlier, Indian and Pakistani diplomats meeting nearby had proclaimed the successful conclusion of their first round of peace talks, talks made possible in part by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's solemn promise to put an end to the activities of the extremists waging war against India in Kashmir.

But despite Saeed's attempts at discretion, there was no way to hide the gathering of 500 or so solemn, heavily bearded men who had assembled alongside one of Islamabad's smartest shopping centers to hear him speak. Brightly colored carpets were strewn around the grass, and banners were strung up around the park extolling the virtues of the "jihad" being waged against Indian rule in Kashmir. "Beat the infidels so harshly that they run away," said one.

Denouncing Musharraf's support for the United States in its proclaimed war against terrorism, Saeed told his supporters that the jihad for Kashmir "will continue until Kashmir is free."

"The time is near when all these oppressors will be crushed by this jihad," he promised.

The public appearance of such a prominent extremist, just as India and Pakistan were announcing their agreement on a new "road map for peace," underscored the difficulties that lie ahead, not only for the fledgling peace process but also for Musharraf's efforts to crack down on extremists.

Stephen J. Kohn in Arutz Sheva states plainly and courageously some obvious truths that are all too widely ignored these days: "This is the time for collective wisdom and judgment to declare that any manifestation and glorification of The Jihad World War must be fought, unceasingly and aggressively. To lose this war may indeed mean the end of civilization as we have known it, and perhaps the deprivation of immeasurable others who would otherwise have the opportunity to experience it."

It is uncomfortable linking together events that put us all at risk anywhere on our planet, but ignoring them is far worse. And "all" is not Jews or Russians or Australians or Americans — it is all of the developed nations and all that want to develop. It is all civilization as we know it that is at risk. It is also Iraqis who want to change over to a democratic society.

What is at risk is the preservation and promotion of rights that have emerged as a standard of behavior over millennia, as well as perhaps our survival. The rights of freedom, of equality, of tolerance, of the ability to think freely and act within limits of decency – whether defined by traditional religious values or common sense. At risk is our ability to wake in the morning and return in the evening without fear that our lives will be taken from us by the blind ferocity of those who hate the advances in civilization and all those, including fellow Moslems, who do not share their views.

When we hear that a leading Pakistani nuclear scientist has spread his knowledge to other governments, with malice and greed his objectives, the wise recognize that it is essential to initiate, to continue and to combat this scourge. The ignorant can bury the fear with the acceptance of an alien philosophy. But we will be burying the bodies of those whose deaths have been caused by an inability to face the reality of a war now underway.

It is hard to think of a common enemy that can chase us, relentlessly, but this enemy exists, and we have been too polite in defining its dimensions and potential horrors. It has been abetted by a blind Western mentality of know-nothingness, which justifies the death of innocents when it meets seemingly loftier goals. Goals not built of tolerance, but of blindness. Not of acceptance, but naivete. Not of enlightenment, but irresponsibility.

It is hard to hear of subway trains being blown up in Moscow, buses in Jerusalem, nightclubs in Bali, the Twin Towers in New York, American embassies in Africa, houses in the Philippines, or Iraqis in Baghdad and threats of future attack that seem to be unending. It should be hard to ignore the common links between them. It should be hard to ignore them because these assaults on humanity all have two - all too clear - common elements.

Firstly, in almost all cases, they are aimed at innocent civilians whose only common characteristic is that they fall into some ethnic group other than that of the Moslem terrorists that set off the bombs. It is racism at its most profound level.

Secondly, increasingly, there are links between the terrorists and a number of countries that allow them to operate with growing freedom, explicitly or implicitly. It is "non-collusive collusion" — the independence of the groups, but their shared goals joining them together – to create a lethal force that we cannot ignore.

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer's new article, "Jihad: The Real Terrorist Enemy," is available today at FrontPage. The title refers to the continued lack of clarity coming from Washington about just who America is fighting in the war on terror, and how this is causing domestic and international damage to the anti-terror effort — damage that could easily be avoided.

Bernard-Henri Levy writes in Opinion Journal (thanks to Jeffrey Imm) that Pakistan "--in the shelter of its alliance with an America that is decidedly not counting inconsistencies--could furnish al Qaeda with the means to take the ultimate step of its jihad." Indeed, it may already have done so.

We observed the Abdul Qadeer Khan affair, the incredible story of this Pakistani nuclear scientist who delivered over 15 years--freely and with impunity--his most sensitive secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Then we learned that President Musharraf in person, after an interview from which little or nothing has been divulged, ended up granting Khan his "pardon." Case closed? End of story? That's what the American administration, falling oddly in step with the official Pakistani doctrine, would have us believe. But knowing something of the case--and being the first French observer, to my knowledge, to have tried to alert public opinion to the extreme gravity of the situation--I believe that we are only at the very beginning this story.

Far from ending on Sept. 11, 2001--the day, we are told, on which "the world changed"--this terrifying nuclear traffic continued until well after: A last trip to Pyongyang, his thirteenth, was made in June 2002 by the good doctor Khan; not to mention the ship inspected last August in the Mediterranean, transporting elements of a future nuclear plant to Libya. The eyes of the world, emulating the eyes of America, were fixed on Baghdad, while the tentacles of nuclear proliferation were being extended from Karachi.

We will soon learn that far from being the overexcited, but in the end isolated, "Dr. Strangelove" that most of the press has described, Khan was at the center of an immense network, an incredibly dense web. There were Dubai front companies, meetings in Casablanca and Istanbul with Iranian colleagues, complicities in Germany and Holland, Malaysian and Philippine agents, and detours through Sri Lanka, with Chinese and London connections--a world of crime and dirty war that the West, mired in a big game that is beginning to get ahead of it, has so blithely allowed to develop.

We will find that, since Pakistan is steered by the iron hand of its secret service and its army, it is inconceivable that Khan operated alone without orders or cover. We will understand more precisely that we cannot repeat without contradiction that, on the one hand, the Pakistani nuclear arsenal is under control, and that not a warhead can budge without the authorities' knowledge, and, on the other, that Khan was acting alone, working on his own account, with no official connivance. To put it simply and disconcertingly: Pakistan's nuclear weapons need to be secured. They cannot--will not--be secured by Pakistan alone.

We will come back to Gen. Musharraf--and Pakistan being what it is, we will come back also to other generals and ex-generals, such as Mirza Aslam Beg and Jehangir Karamat, both former army chiefs of staff. But we must not shift our gaze from the president himself, whose knowledge of Khan's dark machinations no one in Islamabad doubts, and who, at the very moment of his confounding, celebrated Khan once more as a "hero." What does Khan know of what Gen. Musharraf knows? And what does Khan's daughter, Dina, who announced in London that she has suitcases of compromising files, know?

And at last, sooner or later, we will come to the real secret: that of al Qaeda; and of Khan's links to Lashkar-e-Toiba, the fundamentalist terrorist group at the heart of al Qaeda; and the fact that this "mad scientist" is first of all mad about God, a fanatical Islamist who in his heart and soul believes that the bomb of which he is the father should belong, if not to the Umma itself, at least to its avant-garde, as incarnated by al Qaeda. So let us not shrink from measuring the probability of a nightmare scenario: to wit, a Pakistani state which--in the shelter of its alliance with an America that is decidedly not counting inconsistencies--could furnish al Qaeda with the means to take the ultimate step of its jihad.

How much time will it take for all this to be said? How much longer will Islamabad's masquerade endure? Next month the American Congress will vote on the question of three billion dollars in aid to Pakistan: Will this aspect of things be taken into account? Will demands be made, at last, in exchange for this aid, for inspections of Pakistani sites, as well as the installation of a double-key system--a system that some of us here in Europe have been calling for?
These are just a few elements I offer--as part of a debate that has scarcely begun.

They weren't just playing paintball. Note also that they were recruited based on an Islamic religious appeal, right in Virginia. From AP:

Just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, three Americans spent a month on a remote Pakistani mountaintop, training with a militant Islamic group, AK-47 assault rifles and anti-aircraft guns and hoping to eventually fight in Afghanistan against U.S. troops, one of the men testified Tuesday.

Khwaja Mahmood Hasan described the scene during the trial of four members of what prosecutors call a Virginia-based "jihad network."

Hasan testified that he and the other two Americans _ Yong Ki Kwon and Masoud Khan _ left the training camp run by a Pakistani militant group called Lashkar-e-Taiba only after it became apparent that they would not be able to cross the border into Afghanistan and fight alongside the Taliban.

"We started hearing reports from the BBC that the war was coming to a quick end," Hasan testified, recalling his time at the mountaintop camp called ibn Masood. He said Taliban leader Mullah Omar was no longer calling for Muslims to come to Afghanistan's aid.

Khan, of Gaithersburg, Md., is one of the four defendants on trial and faces the most serious charges, including conspiracy to levy war against the United States and conspiracy to provide material support to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

Three other defendants face lesser conspiracy and firearms charges; prosecutors allege the group used paintball games near Fredericksburg in the summers of 2000 and 2001 to prepare for holy war against India and other nations with whom the United States is at peace.

Hasan and Kwon, who trained with Khan at the Lashkar camp, have already pleaded guilty to firearms and conspiracy charges and been sentenced to 11 years in prison. Both agreed to testify for the government as part of their plea agreements and could have their sentences reduced for their cooperation.

Khan's lawyers said in opening statements last week that their client, who was born in Pakistan, traveled to that country primarily to take care of family affairs and that his visit to Lashkar camps was simply a way to fulfill his Islamic duties of learning self-defense.

Yeah, that's it. Just as a hot war was breaking out between the U.S. and an Islamic regime, he decided to join up with forces allied with that regime to learn a little self-defense. But the fact that they were fighting the U.S. was no doubt purely coincidental.

Hasan said the three spent five weeks at three different camps run by Lashkar, which was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government in December 2001.

He said the group learned to use weapons including AK-47s, handguns and rocket-propelled grenades. They took turns firing an anti-aircraft gun at the side of a mountain.

Their first trip to the camp was thwarted by a government checkpoint, because Kwon's Korean nationality drew suspicion. They made it to the camp a second time when they were personally escorted by Lashkar's leader.

While at the camp, they once had to hide from Pakistani intelligence officers who swept through the camp looking for foreigners.

"They took us and hid us on the side of a mountain" for several hours when the when the intelligence officers made their sweep, Hasan said.

Hasan, a northern Virginia resident and graduate of Marymount University in Arlington, said he and the others trained in a group of 12 to 15 along with British and Saudi citizens.

Hasan said he decided to fight for the Taliban after a Sept. 16, 2001, meeting in Fairfax, Va., in which a Muslim scholar named Ali al-Tamimi told members of the paintball group that Islam required them to defend the Taliban against the imminent U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

The group viewed Lashkar as a means to obtain the training necessary to join Taliban fighters.

"I knew they (Lashkar) could get us to Afghanistan," Hasan said.

Also on Tuesday, an expert in paintball games testified for the defense that 8.7 million Americans play the sport.

Jessica Sparks, editor of Paintball magazine, said it is common for paintball players to learn basic tactics like providing cover fire and how to advance in formation.

Prosecutors have said such tactics are evidence the group was engaging in military training.

When dhimmis get out of line, they forfeit their contract of protection. One of the ways they do that is by proselytizing. Thanks to FreedomNowNews for forwarding this:

On Saturday, February 14, 2004 at approximately 4:30 pm local time in Baghdad, a van loaded with four Americans was attacked in an execution style attack. The attack occurred near the village of Mahmodia which is about one half hour south of Baghdad. The four passengers were: Pastor John Kelley, Pastor Kirk Di Vietro, Pastor David Davis and Pastor Garland Carey. Their van was sprayed with automatic weapon fire. The attack came from a small passenger car that was behind the van. The car passed the van on the right side and repeatedly sprayed the vehicle with bullets. Three of the men in the van received minor wounds, but Pastor John Kelly of the Curtis Corner Baptist, Wakefield Rhode Island, was killed in the attack. The driver of the van saved the lives of the other three men by evasive driving tactics and delivering the en to an Iraqi hospital. He was not injured, although the van was damaged considerably. The US Army got involved at the hospital and supervised their examinations and medical attention. A member of the US Consulate contacted me and delivered the three survivors safely into my hands at approximately 10:30 pm. They have each one talked with their families and they are resting today. We have been assured that they will be able to fly from Baghdad soon. I personally called Mrs. Kelley with this information. We are in contact with the US Military command and are awaiting instructions.

This was a tragic loss. Pastor Kelley has been a close associate of mine for many years. We have worked on a number of projects together in the work of the Lord. he was volunteer for this team, as were the other members. He requested permission to come and he has certainly been a blessing to all with whom he has had contact. My grief is without description. He was a great man. He served in the US Marines, pastored for more than 25 years and was a pillar of Christian manhood.

Robert Lewis, in Baghdad

If you would like to send a sympathy card to Mrs. Kelly, you may do so at
the following address.

Mrs. Kelley
Curtis Corner Baptist Church
591 Curtis Corner Rd
Wakefield, RI

The jihadis who killed Daniel Pearl seem to have been caught. From Reuters, with thanks to Nicolei:

Pakistani police have arrested two Islamic militants, including one suspected of involvement in the kidnap and killing of U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl, an officer says.

The two men, Sajid Jabbar and Mohammad Athar, were arrested in an overnight raid in the port city of Karachi and belong to the outlawed Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group, Fayyaz Leghari, chief of the investigation branch of Karachi police, told Reuters.

Another senior officer, who did not want to be identified, said Jabbar was suspected of involvement in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Pearl in 2002 as well as several other militant attacks.

"He carries a reward of 500,000 rupees on his head," the officer said.

He said Jabbar was a close associate of Asif Ramzi, another suspect in the murder of Pearl, who blew himself up while making bombs in Karachi in December 2002.

Leghari said Jabbar and Athar were suspected of planning fresh attacks in Karachi. "We have seized a huge amount of weapons and explosives from their possession," he said.

Athar was the chief of the Sindh provincial wing of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and wanted for at least 10 separate terror attacks, including sending parcel bombs to senior police officers.

"Their arrest is a big success for the police and a blow to the terrorists," Leghari said.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which has ties with the Taliban regime which formerly ruled Afghanistan and the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, is also blamed for a May 2002 suicide bombing in Karachi in which 11 French technicians and three Pakistanis were killed.

Pearl was kidnapped and murdered in Karachi in early 2002 while researching a story on Islamic militants against a backdrop of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

A British-born militant, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, better known as Sheikh Omar, was sentenced to death in July 2002 for masterminding his murder. Omar has denied the charge and lodged an appeal.

The Mufti of Australia and New Zealand, Taj Al-Din Hamed Abdallah Al-Hilali (the one who claimed Australia was originally Muslim), has come under fire for his remarks praising jihad and suicide bombing. His defense? His remarks were "taken out of context."

I couldn't begin to count the times that Muslim spokesmen have told me I am taking Qur'an quotes, or Hadith quotes, or the words of radical Muslims, out of context. It is an all-purpose defense, but it's a lazy and ultimately ineffective one. What possible context could justify or mitigate incitements to mass murder? And even if the Qur'an's injunction to "slay unbelievers wherever you find them" (Sura 9:5) really does only apply to some of the Prophet Muhammad's opponents, it is not being wrenched out of this context by "venomous Orientalists" like me, but by radical Muslims around the world who seem unimpressed by arguments that this behavior was restricted to Muhammad's day. And why are they unimpressed? Because the entire context of the Qur'an and the way it is traditionally interpreted by Muslims does not teach that this verse cannot be applied to contemporary situations. Moreover, if the Prophet behaved that way, his actions in this as in everything else are exemplary -- so even the argument used by the "out-of-context" folks doesn't blunt the force of this verse or keep it from being used by radicals.

What is needed is thoroughgoing reform that will rule out radical Muslim exegesis of the Qur'an as an option for Muslims. Shallow, tiresome bleats of "out of context" and "religion of peace" don't quite accomplish this.

From The Australian, with thanks to Kevin:

A SENIOR Liberal MP today urged the Federal Government to consider action against the leader of Australia's Muslims for praising Islamic suicide bombers and calling for a holy war against Israel. . . .

Christopher Pyne, parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Family and Community Services, said he was appalled and horrified by Sheik Alhilali's alleged support for violence.

But a spokesman for the Sydney-based Mufti said he had been taken out of context. . . .

The Mufti's spokesman in Sydney, Keysar Trad, said MEMRI had taken the Muslim leader out of context.

"The Mufti is a proponent of peace and peaceful solutions to any conflict," he told ABC radio.

"I spoke to him today and he assured me that the context in which he made his message was not in the way that it was reported by these people."

Mr Trad said the Mufti believed Muslim resistance fighters may target occupying military forces, but not civilians.

He said the Mufti was not urging people to carry out suicide bombings.

"He is saying, let's not condemn them because these people are making a major sacrifice to protect their country," said Mr Trad, of the Lebanese Muslim Association.

Nor was the Mufti calling for a war against Israel.

"He was not so much calling for a jihad in the nature of war, but in the nature of what will get that country to respect the United Nations resolutions."

Hmm. A peaceful jihad to force respect for UN resolutions. That's a new one.

Israel and Saudi Arabia have security fences to try to keep jihad terrorists out. Now Thailand is building one to keep them in. From Reuters, with thanks to Nicolei:

Thailand will build security fences along part of its 650-km (400-mile) border with Malaysia to try to stop militant Muslims escaping after attacking Thai forces, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said on Tuesday.

The army would build the fences across suspected escape routes used by militants in predominantly Buddhist Thailand's largely Muslim south, where a new wave of violence began last month when gunmen raided an army base, he said.

"We will focus on areas with cross-border smuggling problems which are not too many. We don't have to build fences all along the entire 600-km border," Thaksin told reporters in Bangkok.

A massive security operation has failed to catch the gunmen who stole more than 100 weapons, mostly M-16 assault rifles, in the attack, or the people who set ablaze 21 state schools in an operation officials believe was a diversion.

Since then, several Buddhist monks and police and civil servants of both religions have been killed by machete-wielding raiders or gunmen.

Some officials believe those behind the attacks may have links to Jemaah Islamiah, widely regarded as the Southeast Asian branch of al Qaeda.

In the latest border incident last Saturday, two people were shot dead in the southern province of Narathiwat province while Thaksin was talking to officials about how to halt the violence.

Police believe the attackers were connected to apparently resurgent separatist groups in a region that is home to most of Thailand's six million Muslims, almost 10 percent of the population. The attackers fled after the ambush.

El-Faisal

He was just interpreting the Qur'an, says Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal. From the BBC, with thanks to Nicolei:

A Muslim cleric jailed for urging followers to kill non-believers, Jews, Hindus and Americans has lost an appeal against his conviction. Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal was jailed for nine years last March for soliciting murder and using threatening and insulting words in taped lectures.

On Tuesday, the Court of Appeal, while upholding the conviction, reduced his sentence to seven years.

The 39-year-old had preached at Brixton mosque in south London.

El-faisal's trial was the first prosecution of a Muslim cleric in England.

When he was originally sentenced the Common Serjeant of London, Peter Beaumont, told him: "Instead of being a calming force you fanned the flames of hostility."

Koran interpretations

The judge also recommended el-faisal, of Stratford, east London, serve at least half his sentence before being deported.

The Jamaican convert to Islam told young British Muslims they would be rewarded with 72 virgins in paradise if they died in a holy war.

He was sentenced to seven years on three charges of soliciting the murder of non-believers, Jews, Hindus and Americans in his speeches.

And he was sentenced to an additional two years on charges of using insulting words and distributing tapes of insulting words.

During his trial he argued he was interpreting and updating the words of the Koran, the Islamic holy book.

Interesting defense. Did he think that if he could convince the Court that his hatred and incitement to murder was religious instruction, he would get a pass?

The seriousness of those who want to impose Sharia and all its restrictions (including the prohibition of music) upon Pakistan (where dhimmi Christians already have it bad enough) is illustrated by this Telegraph story about the terrorization of a Pakistani pop singer. It also contains interesting information about how these radical Muslims want to force women to wear the veil. (Thanks to Jeffrey Imm.)

Fame was no protection for one of Pakistan's most celebrated pop stars when he indulged in the "un-Islamic" practice of singing in public.

Gulzar Alam was beaten with rifle butts and fists when 20 policemen armed with AK47s raided a wedding party where he was performing.

"They are trying to be the Taliban," said Mr Alam. "They are trying to impose this Islamic system. But music is our tradition and it reflects our culture."

Covered in bruises, he was dragged to the cells in the frontier city of Peshawar and locked up for four hours before friends secured his release.

Mr Alam, 42, said: "The police said, 'This music is banned'. They swore at me. They treated me like a very low person. This province has become a police state."

Mr Alam had fallen foul of the Islamist coalition running Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. For the first time, extreme religious parties have won outright control of the government of this crucial area near the border with Afghanistan.

They have a simple manifesto: to reinvent the Taliban in a corner of Pakistan.

Since winning power less than 18 months ago the coalition has banned anyone from playing music or singing in public and confiscated thousands of music tapes from the bazaars. These were heaped on a huge bonfire in Peshawar and set alight by the local police chief.

Videotapes of test cricket matches were also thrown on to the flames because the authorities had noticed that shots of the crowds showed fleeting glimpses of unveiled women.

The ritual - a conscious imitation of the frequent bonfires of "un-Islamic" material staged by the Taliban regime in Kabul - was followed by the closure of Peshawar's only theatre.

Near the deserted Nishter Hall, once the centre of a community of 350 actors and musicians, a billboard carrying an advertisement for shoes was damaged. Black paint covered the faces of two women.

Across the province almost all billboards carrying pictures of women have been torn down or sprayed. At the Shabistan cinema in Peshawar colourful hoardings that once tempted passers-by with pictures of women clad in bright saris and men brandishing guns have been removed. Anodyne pictures of eagles and lions have replaced them.

Mr Alam believes that the Islamists are waging a vendetta against the entire artistic community. As the province's most famous performer, he has been singled out for harassment.

Two months after beating him up at the wedding party, police raided Mr Alam's house in Peshawar's Old City.

By chance, he was away, so they arrested his brother, Alam Khan, 25, and his sons, Salman, 19, and Shan, 13. They were beaten and held in the cells overnight on trumped-up charges of kidnapping two Afghan children.

When the provincial assembly meets next month the authorities will press ahead with the next stage of their campaign. They will introduce a law creating a new body modelled on the Taliban's "ministry for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice".

This will have sweeping powers to intervene in any area of life and uphold "Islamic standards". The law will also create a parallel police and judicial system to implement a Sharia Law Act passed by the provincial assembly last year.

"This is the most dangerous development," said Afrasiab Khattak, from the Pakistan Human Rights Commission. "It will allow the government to intervene in anything, without challenge from the courts." The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal coalition which runs the provincial government insists that there is no cause for concern. Malik Zafar Azam, the justice and parliamentary affairs minister, shies away from comparisons with the Taliban and points out the Islamists won 67 of the local assembly's 124 seats in free elections in 2002.

"We are doing what the people want us to do," he said. "We have given them security. You can go where you want in safety here."

The Islamists have also pledged to segregate tertiary education by building a new women's university in Peshawar, with women forced to wear veils. "The value of a person is in one's mind, not in what one wears," said Saman Mushtaq, 20, a business studies student at Peshawar University.

"They should not impose the veil upon us."

Before shrimp on the barbee, Foster's Lager, and Crocodile Dundee, evidently there was the burqa, the book, and the Prophet. MEMRI is reporting that the Mufti of Australia and New Zealand, Taj Al-Din Hamed Abdallah Al-Hilali, is claiming that Australia was originally Muslim land, settled by Afghans. The Aborigines are their descendants:

"The strange thing was that when our muezzin [who accompanied Sheikh Al-Hilali on his visit to Alice Springs] stood up to call for prayer, the old people of the town came out, and so did men and youths, and they looked different than the black Aborigines. They were a mixture of Afghan and Aborigine, as a result of marriages of Afghan men and Aborigine women. When the muezzin called 'Allahu Akbar,' they said, 'We have heard this song from our ancestors...' When they asked us 'What is this song you are singing?' we told them that this was an announcement of prayer time. When we asked them their names, they answered John, or Steve, but their names ended with Saraj Al-Din, Abdallah, or Muhammad..."

This sort of thing may just seem silly, or even cute, until one realizes that to anyone who takes the Sheikh's claim seriously, Australia is now Muslim land. Islamic law stipulates that Muslims possess by right any land that once formed part of the House of Islam; this is a key element of the claim to Israel put forward by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The same claim has been advanced, by the way, for America.

Al-Hilali, meanwhile, has already endorsed violent jihad in other contexts:

Following a meeting with Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Sheikh Al-Hilali said: "I blessed Hizbullah for liberating the prisoners and the bones of the Shahids and I praised it and its sacrifice. Hizbullah has become a model for all the Mujahideen in the world... Most of the Australian people do not support the policy of the Australian government, which has placed Hizbullah on the terror list out of submission to the U.S., and the Australian prime minister will pay the price for this in the next elections..." . . .

"We are proud of the Islamic resistance in Palestine, Lebanon, Kashmir, and everywhere in the world that seeks to achieve its legitimate rights in accordance with the international resolutions, the human rights conventions, and the U.N. resolutions...

"We are also proud of the Islamic resistance that liberated southern Lebanon, led by Hizbullah, the legitimate Lebanese national movement, that forced the Israeli occupation army to withdraw from southern Lebanon, dragging trails of disappointment and shame behind it.

"We are also proud of what Hamas and the Islamic Jihad are both doing in the occupied territories. We support the resistance and support, with all our might, the martyrdom operations carried out by the Palestinian liberation movements, operations that are a legitimate act against the cruel occupation, according to all international norms and conventions.

"Also, whoever carries out a martyrdom [operation] is a pure Shahid and one of the men of Paradise. Moreover, he stands at the head of the Shahids."

That is, of course, a suicide bombing.

Al-Hilali also memorably dubbed Bush, Blair, and Australian PM John Howard the "axis of evil." But who is really behind it all? One guess:

Sheikh Al-Hilali said on another occasion: "The media all over the world are controlled by Zionist fingers, particularly the Western media, and that includes Australia, in which the media are under Zionist hegemony. But in Australia, which unlike the West and the U.S. is multicultural, the media are less racist in their enmity to Muslims and Islam. This is evidenced by the fact that we won the last media battle in Australia and succeeded in forcing the Australian people to treat us with respect. We have not suffered from persecution or disrespect to the same extent that Islamic communities in Western countries and in America have suffered."

ADDENDUM: Susan has referred me to two particularly egregious examples of Islamic mythmaking about a pre-Columbian Muslim America. Go here and click on "History."

UPDATE: After being condemned by the Australian Prime Minister and many others, Hilali is denying he called for jihad at all. No one seems concerned about his claim that Australia was originally Muslim. (Thanks to Kevin and Jean-Luc.)

Canada has become a place where terrorists congregate. From the Globe and Mail, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

Canada has been branded a "favoured destination for terrorists and international criminals" by the research arm of the U.S. Congress.

Generous constitutional freedoms, weak law enforcement and lightly patrolled borders have made the country an inviting place for dangerous extremists to set up shop, says a new report by the Library of Congress in Washington.

"Canada has played a significant role as a base for both transnational criminal activity and terrorist activity," the report says.

The report, titled Nations Hospitable to Organized Crime and Terrorism, was completed in October by the congressional library's federal research division under an arrangement with the Central Intelligence, Crime and Narcotics Center. . . .

Numerous other countries, including leading industrialized nations like Britain, France and Germany, are also critiqued in the 234-page report, along with the likes of Algeria, Indonesia and Russia.

But only a handful of jurisdictions in the Western Hemisphere — Canada, Colombia, Mexico and the notorious tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay — are the focus of attention.

The report highlights the case of Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian-born Montrealer caught trying to slip across the border in 1999 to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. While planning the attack, Mr. Ressam supplemented his welfare payments by stealing cash and credit cards.

From Compass Direct:

Muslim protestors have attacked at least four churches over the past three weeks in the regions of East Java, West Java and North Sumatra, Indonesia.

A crowd of approximately 100 people attacked the Gereja Protestan Indonesia (GPI) church in East Bekasi on January 9. Government officials had given permission for the church to renovate an old house which they had used as a church since 1975. However, leaders of the local Amar Ma’arut mosque encouraged Muslim neighbors to protest against the renovations. Church members met with local government and mosque officials on January 12 and agreed to suspend renovations temporarily.

Meanwhile, two other churches were attacked in Surubaya in late December and early January, and a bomb was placed in another church in Medan, North Sumatra. Muslim protestors forced the two churches in Surabaya, East Java, to close their doors. The pastor of one of the churches received death threats from the attackers.

British MP Jenny Tonge, who ran into trouble last month for her remarks in "empathy" with suicide bombing, has done it again. She was sent by BBC Radio 4's Today show to meet families and victims of suicide bombers, and filed this report (thanks to Andy Bannister for the link).

My remarks last month, expressing empathy with suicide bombers, had been misinterpreted by the tabloids as meaning sympathy and approval.

It was, therefore, with some trepidation that I travelled from Jerusalem to the checkpoint out to Bethlehem and the Occupied Territories. . . .

In Israel, the armed forces have F16 fighter planes, helicopter gun-ships, tanks, even nuclear weapons.

The disparity was pointed out to me by a civil society group in Bethlehem, when I asked why Palestinians used suicide bombers.

"Tell the US to give us the arms that Israel has and we will stop such attacks," was the response.

What then is the explanation for suicide bombings against civilians in Chechnya, Kashmir, Bali, etc.?

We met up with some al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terrorists after lurking guiltily in Manger Square waiting for them to arrive.

We were taken to a safe Christian house, where two bearded, shaded, skull-capped men, one with a black Kalashnikov, sat on a sofa near a huge wall hanging of Jesus the Good Shepherd.

They had heard about my remarks and were pleased that I understood the reasons why they were terrorists, even "proud" of me. This was spine-chilling.

More re-assuring was the statement that they now accepted that Israel had a right to exist and their campaign would stop when Israel withdrew to its 1967 borders, removed settlements and returned Jerusalem to the Palestinians.

It is a different message from the one we have been used to.

Yet one to be taken at face value, Ms. Tonge?

We visited the family of a suicide bomber. The stories of indoctrination of little children right through their schooldays didn't seem to apply here.

The brothers of Mohamed showed no signs of this and his mother claimed she had no idea her son was planning this until the al-Aqsa Brigade delivered his "memorial" picture taken before the mission.

It is certainly true that suicide bombers are regarded as national heroes here, but what else do they have - born out of despair and the desire to resist occupation, laced with religious belief.

Civilian targets are chosen because there is no way of getting at military targets.

That may be the most credulity-straining phrase in this whole piece. It also blissfully ignores the many justifications issued by Islamic spokesmen for attacks against civilians, proclaiming that "there are no civilians in Israel."

We visited the spot where the Angel Gabriel "came down" to the shepherds in their fields and drove back to Jerusalem as a rainbow formed over the golden city - surely one of the most beautiful places on earth.

The next day back in Israel, I couldn't find anyone who was willing to see why the Palestinians resorted to suicide attacks.

You don't say!

Some of the Israeli arguments had truth in them, but it was all so negative.

Well then, how could they be true? The truth is always positive, of course!

Until, late in the day, we met a single mother whose 15-year-old daughter had been killed in the local supermarket by an 18-year-old female suicide bomber.

Grief-stricken, she had tried to contact the bomber's family, only to find they were "proud" of their daughter.

The idea that anyone could see this kind of thing justified in any way is barbaric.

But then she received a letter from a Palestinian mother expressing her condolences and asking for a meeting. Her young, civilian son had been killed by an Israeli soldier. They were going to meet.

I left this woman feeling that there was the first sign of reconciliation; we know there are many such people in Israel and Palestine, fed up with the stupidity of their leaders.

I hope these people win out in the end. But Tonge isn't helping.

"A clear terrorist threat still exists in East Africa, and greater military co-operation is needed to defeat it, a top U.S. general warned Monday during a visit to Ethiopia." This from AP, with thanks to Jean-Luc.

Gen. John Abizaid, whose Central Command is responsible for Afghanistan, Iraq and East Africa, said closer "military and intelligence co-operation" is needed between East African governments to prevent extremist groups like al-Qaida from gaining an "ideological foothold" in the region.

"The threat is clear, but the threat can be deterred and can be defeated," he told journalists in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

"This terrorist threat knows no boundary, and when we operate only on a nation-state basis we will be unable to really get at the heart of the terrorist problem, which is transnational."

Abizaid cited Somalia - which has had no central government since 1990 - as a potential trouble spot in the region.

"We know the terrorists gravitate toward ungoverned spaces, and these are areas where they look for the opportunities to gain recruits, establish safe-havens and move money," he said. "We certainly have indications to believe that people associated with these groups operate in and around areas such as Somalia."

Good thing they read the papers down at the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). From the Sydney Morning Herald, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

Australia's intelligence agency first became aware of a Somalian man - who is alleged to have links to terrorist financing organisations, is being prosecuted in the US and had visited Australia five times since 2000 - only after reading a media report about him last month.

ASIO's director-general, Dennis Richardson, told a Senate estimates hearing yesterday this was "not surprising" because the man, 41-year-old Omar Mohamed, was not on any terrorist database or movement alert list and his prosecution in the US was for immigration fraud.

Then where did the media get their info about him?

The fraud charges relate to Mohamed's failure to reveal on his US citizenship application that the Western Somali Relief Agency, of which he is president, received funds from Global Relief Foundation, a group listed in the US as a terrorist organisation.

Mr Richardson told the hearing that Mohamed visited Australia between December 2000 and December 2003. Since the media report, Mohamed's movements have been the subject of an ASIO investigation.

"They are of some interest, not in terms of fund-raising, but they are of some interest in terms of getting a better handle on the relationships he may or may not have had in Australia," Mr Richardson said.

According to the Strategic Foresight Group of Mumbai, the tiny minority of extremists is doing big business in Pakistan. From the Times of India, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

Pakistan's "terror-economy" accounts for Rs 264 billion, or 6.6 per cent, of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), a Mumbai-based think tank said in a report Monday.

Pakistan's "conflict economy" accounts for more than 10 per cent of its GDP, the report contended.

In what it described as a "comprehensive assessment of the cost of conflict between India and Pakistan", the Strategic Foresight Group said it had not only taken into account military expenditure and loss of trade, but also factors like economic costs, socio-political damage, diplomatic costs, human costs and even the "implications of the nuking of Mumbai and Karachi".

In the forward to the study, conducted by Ilmas Futehally and Semu Bhatt, former Pakistani foreign secretary Niaz Naik said: "It is the first time that we have such all encompassing information and analysis in one place on the implications of adversarial relations between India and Pakistan."

Excerpts from the report, released here Monday did not refer to the basis on which it had predicated its conclusions.

Some of the main observations of the report:

[. . .]

* Pakistan's GTP (gross terror-economy product) is Rs 264 billion or 6.6 percent of its GDP.

* Pakistan's Conflict Economy is more than 10 percent of GDP. The Conflict Economy includes GTP and military expenditure.

* Kashmir's GTP is estimated to be Rs 3.5 billion.

* Pakistan's jehadi forces are expected to increase from 200,000 at present to 300,000 at the end of the decade and the army from 620,000 at present to 646,000 at the end of the decade.

Paul Bremer has apparently weighed in against Sharia in Iraq. From AP:

The top U.S. administrator in Iraq suggested Monday he would block any interim constitution that would make Islam the chief source of law, as some members of the Iraqi Governing Council have sought.

L. Paul Bremer said the current draft of the constitution would make Islam the state religion of Iraq and "a source of inspiration for the law" — as opposed to the main source.

Many Iraqi women have expressed fears that the rights they hold under Iraq's longtime secular system would be rolled back in the interim constitution being written by U.S.-picked Iraqi leaders and their advisers, many of them Americans. U.S. lawmakers have urged the White House to prevent Islamic restrictions on Iraqi women.

Asked what would happen if Iraqi leaders wrote into the constitution that Islamic sharia law is the principal basis of the law, Bremer suggested he would wield his veto. "Our position is clear. It can't be law until I sign it," he said.

Bremer must sign into law all measures passed by the 25-member council, including the interim constitution. Iraq's powerful Shiite clergy, however, has demanded the document be approved by an elected legislature. Under U.S. plans, a permanent constitution would not be drawn up and voted on until 2005.

Bremer used the inauguration ceremony at a women's center in the southern city of Karbala to argue for more than "token" women's representation in the transitional government due to take power June 30.

"I think it is very important that women be represented in all the political bodies," Bremer said.

"Women are the majority in this country, in this area probably a substantial majority," he said, referring to the Saddam Hussein's 1991 purges of Shiite Muslim men. Those killings left the holy city of Karbala and other Shiite cities dotted with mass graves and brimming with thousands of widows.

I was uneasy when I read Lt. Col. Stephen Barger's reply to questions about Ryan Anderson's religion, and Joel Mowbray puts his finger on why:

When asked if recently “detained” National Guard soldier Ryan Anderson—who allegedly tried to pass on sensitive information to al Qaeda—was a Muslim, the unit spokesman, Lt. Col. Stephen Barger replied, “Religious preferences are an individual right and responsibility, and I really can’t get into it.”

On one level, of course, Barger is right. Sadly, however, Anderson’s religion may be the only prism through which his alleged behavior can be understood.

Various media reports have pegged Anderson as a convert to Islam. Why is this significant?

Because if he had converted to Buddhism or Hindu, for example, he almost certainly would not have not been caught up in a sting operation that found him trying to deliver to al Qaeda closely-guarded details about vulnerabilities and capabilities of armed tanks and Humvees.

This is obviously not to suggest that Muslims cannot be trusted or that, as a group, they should be viewed with suspicion. But it is just as true that Anderson’s reported conversion to Islam cannot be ignored.

We call our struggle against al Qaeda and the rest of the worldwide terror network the “War on Terror.” But to al Qaeda and its ilk, it is not a “war.” It is a Jihad.

In a Jihad, where the terrorists unite under the rallying cry of defeating the Infidels in the name of Islam, the most likely—if not the only—people to betray America in order to help the enemy are going to be Muslim.

That group of Muslims willing to commit horrific acts is certainly tiny, but a tiny number of Benedict Arnolds is all al Qaeda needs to wreak enormous havoc.

And as anyone who knows folks who have converted to any religion can attest, the converts often become, for lack of a better expression, hard-core. “Hard-core” indeed sounds harsh, as most passionate converts are devout in the best sense. Yet from the likes of John Walker Lindh and Jose Padilla, converts can become among the most radical.

Should Anderson have been denied the opportunity to serve his country because he is a convert to Islam? Of course not. But just as we give psych exams and various personality tests to soldiers, thorough examination of Islamic converts—at the least—would not seem to be such a bad idea. And for people working in sensitive positions, then rigorous screening would seem to be nothing if not prudent.

Some would undoubtedly scream “profiling.” But it is precisely because of “profiling” that authorities might be inclined to focus more on Arabs, meaning al Qaeda is more likely to prefer Muslims who are not Arabs.

As we witnessed with Asan Akbar, the Muslim Army Sergeant who killed two and wounded 14 of his fellow soldiers last year in Kuwait, it only takes one soldier to harm many innocents. And if he hadn’t been such a coward—he was found hiding in a bunker—he probably could have murdered many more Americans.

Questions of profiling aside, however, specific facts about Anderson should have prompted investigation long ago. The 26-year-old attended Washington State University, which the FBI believes has been a base of operations for people affiliated with al Qaeda.

Throughout 2002 and 2003, federal authorities probed a possible terror cell operating out Pullman, Washington (home of WSU) and the University of Idaho campus, which is just nine miles away in Moscow, Idaho. At least two current or former WSU students have been arrested.

Others were also arrested, including former Idaho football player Abdullah al-Kidd (born Lavoni T. Kidd), who was nabbed at Dulles International Airport, just outside of Washington, D.C., holding a first-class, one-way ticket to Saudi Arabia.

The man reportedly at the center of the investigation, Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, allegedly helped design website for radical Islamic sheikhs who had direct ties to Osama bin Laden and he also allegedly had on his computer hard drive thousands of photos of the World Trade Center, both before and after 9/11.

According to court documents, al-Hussayen’s uncle traveled to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia and “stayed in the same hotel in the Herndon, Va., area as three of the Sept. 11 hijackers of Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon.”

Graduating in 2002, Anderson attended WSU—where he converted to Islam—as the alleged terror activity was ongoing. The question investigators must not be shy about asking is: how did Anderson’s Islamic experience at WSU help shape him?

ADDENDUM: A fuller explanation by Bassam M. Madany.

The former British chancellor of the exchequer, Lord Norman Lamont, has criticized the French headscarf ban in a speech in Pakistan. Lamont talked some sense about Islamic terrorism, but then lapsed into nonsense. From HiPakistan, with thanks to Bassam Madany and Nicolei:

He observed that 9/11 dramtically [sic] increased awareness in the US and Europe of terrorists who claimed to be acting in the name of Islam. "Most Muslims are not fundamentalists, and most fundamentalists are not terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslims and proud of it. When Muslims ask why are Irish terrorists and Basque terrorists not described as Christian, the answer is simple. They do not describe themselves like that. Many in the West react in an enormous information vacuumm [sic]. Many see only media stereotypes portraying Islam through distorted lenses focussing purely on terrorists, religious extremists and oppressed women. Others see the religious revival of Islam throughout the world. They fear that fundamentalists, who too often they equate with extremists, want to turn every Muslim society into a theocracy fanning the flames of hatred against the West in order to wage Jihad and restore the Caliphate throughout a large part of the world," he said.

But then came the nonsense:

Mr Lamont said: "Islam's attitude towards other religions is more tolerant than that of Christianity. The Prophet (PBUH) and his community in Medina accepted the co-existence of Muslims, Jews and Christians. The Prophet (PBUH) discussed and debated with, and gave freedom of religious thought and practice to, Jews and Christians. When the Catholic rulers of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, drove out the Jews many found refuge in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire. When Muslims conquered Byzantine [sic] they were welcomed by some Christians who were persecuted as heretics. The Muslim conquerers proved to be far more tolerant than imperial Christianity had been. During the Crusades despite the conflict Muslims tolerated the practice of Christianity, an example not emulated by the other side. The Ottoman Empire, for the most part, is an example of the positive treatment of religious minorities in a Muslim majority context."

Lord Norman should look again at the history of dhimmitude, as I outline it in Onward Muslim Soldiers and as has been amply documented by the renowned historian Bat Ye'or in her books The Dhimmi, The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam, and Islam and Dhimmitude. It is nice to dream of Islamic tolerance, but the fact is that discrimination against non-Muslims is part of Islamic law and always has been. It does no good to anyone to pretend otherwise. What is needed instead of obfuscations like Lord Norman's is a forthright effort to reform Islamic law, so that it comes into line with true equality of rights as outlined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Australian commentator Tanveer Ahmed thinks it does. He writes in The Australian (with thanks to Nicolei):

Numerous perpetrators of the September 11 attacks, remember, were raised and educated in the West. A French study looked at the life of one of them, Moussaoui.

He came to France as a young child and had a relatively normal upbringing in the outer suburbs of Paris where there are large numbers of Muslim immigrants. He was an average student in school and showed no signs of pathological behaviour.

His first moves towards extremist Islam coincided with being discriminated against in the workplace and in leisure situations.

There was one clear incident where a bouncer denied him entry to a Parisian nightclub, telling him openly it was because he was an Arab. Moussaoui's brother tells the French sociologists that his interest in Islam began soon afterwards. The rest is history.

The study went on to hypothesise that extremist Islam was only an option when being French no longer seemed a possibility.

The man who kidnapped The Wall Street Journal writer, Daniel Pearl, was born in Britain, studied at an English public school and then at the London School of Economics - not known for its "madrasah" qualities. His parents were Pakistani migrants. Ahmed Omar Sheikh said he wasn't British or Pakistani, just Muslim. He said he could never be accepted by the "racist" British.

It is something I see in my younger, second-generation Arab or Asian psychiatric patients in Sydney. It is difficult for them to feel deep ties to the country of their parents. They see the pictures on the walls, may speak some of the language but ultimately have never lived there. And when they have visited, for the majority, it is the first time they have felt Australian.

But living in Australia, the recurring motifs of Australian life - sun, beer and sport - do not connect with the migrant experience. Nor do the myths and legends of outback Australia have resonance. Their non-white appearance is often commented upon at work or school. These are not usually racist or discriminatory remarks but highlight a sense of the foreign nevertheless. Perhaps notions of mateship and egalitarianism do resonate but they are not enough to drive home a feeling of being Australian.

What often fills the void is religion. This is where their search for identity finds a voice. And it is not necessarily Islam. Christianity or Buddhism can have just such a transformative effect.

But for groups that may suffer from feelings of exclusion or discrimination, Islam provides the deepest connection. Islam has become the religion of choice for the dispossessed, the poor or the oppressed.

From African-Americans to Afghan refugees, Islam cushions a feeling of disconnection. A religion now defined by its ability to turn feelings of frustration and defeat to outright defiance, it can win the hearts of those longing to belong.

I visited a weekly gathering of Muslims, led by a charismatic Egyptian cleric, that a young Arab patient began attending in Sydney. The patient was of Lebanese background and had been depressed. His malaise was deeply rooted in a feeling of disconnection.

But he seemed to be improving since attending these meetings. The group was dominated by those under the age of 30. Everyone I met had a university degree and spoke in an Australian accent.

Despite having plenty of great things to say about Australia as a country and a sense of gratitude at the opportunities they were given, many of the youths felt they could never be accepted as an Australian, that they would remain on the cultural fringes. They felt their ties could not extend beyond the economic.

But I saw no evidence of a turn towards extremism. This would require a stimulus from the outside world. For Moussaoui, it came when he was rejected from somewhere as apolitical as a nightclub. For others, it may be a missed promotion, an unjust encounter with the police or perhaps expulsion from school for inappropriate dress.

This ignores, of course, the role of traditional Islamic jihad ideology in fomenting this extremism. As Nicolei points out, "to blame Islamic militancy on their host/adopted nations is shift the blame from themselves and the religion that fosters jihad. Other migrants such as non-Muslim Indians, Chinese, Vietnamese, Black Africans face the same struggles as the Muslims, yet they do not turn to militancy to solve their problems."

From the Sun-Herald, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

A week after a Pakistani-born man was named publicly as a terror suspect he is still free, walking the streets of Sydney.

And it is almost four months since anti-terror forces searched the man's home in south-western Sydney, along with those of six others who were identified as key associates of terror suspect Willy Brigitte, who is in a French jail cell.

But despite accusations that the man, named as Abu Hamza, was part of a group allegedly planning a terror attack in Sydney, police are powerless to put him behind bars.

The Federal Government says it cannot detain him as he has not broken any law.

A spokesman for Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said that while there were "still concerns" about the Sydney group connected with Brigitte, their activities were restricted once they knew they were being watched.

The ABC's Four Corners program filmed Hamza last weekend as he went about his business in Lakemba. The program said Australian authorities were confident Brigitte and Hamza were involved in a terrorist plot.

Hamza has cut off his phone and moved house several times since he came to the attention of ASIO.

His lawyer, Stephen Hopper, said Hamza denies being involved in any terrorist group.

He said Hamza has an explanation for the photos and chemical inquiries that would point to something other than preparing a terrorist strike.

"But I can't discuss any of that as I am restricted in what I can say by the new ASIO laws," Mr Hopper said.

Mr Hopper said Hamza does admit to helping Brigitte settle in Sydney when he arrived here in May 2003, but said he did it as he is obliged to do so under the Muslim custom of helping a traveller.

A Spanish member of the tiny minority of extremists is going home from Gitmo. From the Sydney Morning Herald, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

The sole Spanish prisoner held at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, arrived at an air base near Madrid last night to face charges of belonging to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

Dubbed "the Spanish Taliban", Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, a 30-year-old Muslim from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta adjoining northern Morocco, had been held since his capture more than two years ago in Afghanistan.

He arrived at the Torrejon base on a Spanish air force plane with eight police escorts and was met by a judge.

From there he was driven to the country's top court, the Audiencia Nacional in the centre of Madrid, where a forensic doctor was to examine him.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell had said on Wednesday that the Spanish citizen would be repatriated at the request of the Spanish Government.

He was to undergo medical, physical and psychological tests for 10 days before being questioned.

Sources said the public prosecutor would seek jail for Hamed as an alleged member of al-Qaeda.

He is one of 660 prisoners from 42 countries, including 21 Europeans and two Australians, who have been held for more than two years in legal limbo at Guantanamo Bay.

Says Australian Muslim teenager Feda Abdo: "People think we have no choice -- that we are forced to wear it. Most young Muslim women choose to wear it."

That's great. But what if Ms. Abdo lived in an Islamic state — say, Iran? We recently saw that there, "Women had fought in the revolution so that their choices would be expanded. They had donned the veils at the demonstrations against the Shah to say that nobody could stop them from wearing the veil if they wanted. The Islamic regime reversed their statement and made it impossible for women to choose not to practice the hijab." Would Feda Abdo defend the rights of non-Muslims and non-practicing Muslims not to wear the hijab?

From the Daily Telegraph, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

More young Sydney women are choosing to wear the hijab, or head scarf, to show pride in their religion and encourage others to understand Islam rather than fear it.

At a time when the wearing of the veil has come under intense attack in Europe, Muslim women in Sydney are taking up the practice in unprecedented numbers.

Shops and internet sites selling the hijab have reported a spike in sales in recent months.

The shift in visibility of Muslim women in post-"war on terror" Australian society has also led to the introduction of a magazine aimed at twenty-something Muslim women, featuring fashion articles and cooking tips.

Nineteen-year-old student Feda Abdo said more of her friends were choosing to identify their religion.

"More Muslim women are taking a stand and asserting their identity," Ms Abdo told The Daily Telegraph.

"The hijab is an expression of your identity."

Ms Abdo has worn the veil for seven years since her parents allowed her to make a decision.

Her sister did not make the transition until she was well into her teens.

"People think we have no choice -- that we are forced to wear it," said Ms Abdo, who has two drawers full of scarves.

"Most young Muslim women choose to wear it."

Ms Abdo said that by wearing the veil, she was encouraging non-Muslims to ask questions about her religion and help them "understand".

Abdul Shukr, who runs an internet store selling "traditional" Muslim attire for men and women, said there had been an increase in demand in recent months.

"I do believe there are more and more Muslim, and non-Muslim, women donning the hijab," Mr Shukr said.

"The major international and Palestinian NGOs were conspicuously silent following the January 29, 2004 Jerusalem suicide bombing that murdered 11 people. Indeed, Oxfam, Miftah, HRW, and Save the Children, all of whom claim to advocate the universal human rights, failed to even produce a passing news item." This from NGO Monitor, with thanks to IMRA.

However, in sharp contrast to the above-mentioned NGOs, Amnesty International “strongly” condemned the attack, and demanded that, “Palestinian armed groups put an immediate end to suicide bombings and other deliberate attacks against civilians.” In addition, Amnesty noted that such “deliberate and systematic targeting of civilians constitutes crimes against humanity.”

It should be noted that Amnesty International released its condemnation of the Jerusalem suicide bombing on the same day the attack took place – a marked improvement over the organizations’ previous response to the November 15, 2003 Istanbul Synagogue bombings, which was voiced five days after the assault.

EMHRN, founded “to promote dialogue and respect for human rights and diverse cultures throughout the Euro-Mediterranean region”, simply recycled the above-mentioned Amnesty press release condemning the Jerusalem bombing. EMHRN reacted similarly to the November 15, 2003 Istanbul Synagogue bombings, when it re-posted press releases of Amnesty and HRW regarding the attacks.

The failure of the major international and Palestinian NGOs to explicitly condemn the latest Jerusalem suicide bombing and previous attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets both in Israel and abroad raises serious questions about their adherence to an unbiased human rights agenda.

Salim Mansur, a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario, has written an intriguing opinion piece in the Toronto Sun: "Islamism: Dirty little secrets." (Via Mathaba.net, with thanks to Ruth King.) I am not sure that he can sustain his contention that Muslim leaders have discarded the principles of Islam and reduced it to a nationalist entity, since from its beginning Islam has been political and has formed the basis for the laws of nations. But he is absolutely correct about Muslim anti-Semitism, apologies for tyrants, and the suffering that modern-day political Islam has caused for Muslims themselves.

In the latter half of the 20th century, the struggle for Islam's soul turned most bloody and relentlessly continues that way.

The seeds for this were sown in the first half of the last century, when most Arab-Muslim lands were under European rule.

It was then that many Muslim enthusiasts for reconciling traditional Islam with the scientific and democratic values of the modern world embraced the doctrines of nationalism in their most reactionary form, as found in post-1914 Germany.

The result reduced Islam into a nationalist identity for Arabs and Muslims. Many Muslim fundamentalists later incorporated this reactionary nationalism for their own purpose of constructing totalitarian states.

The pernicious effect of such a fusion of nationalism with religion was to empty Islam of its transcendent message of faith in a supreme God as the common ground of unity among all people.

In India, for instance, Islamic nationalism generated the whirlwind of communal carnage in the 1947 partition of the subcontinent. Wounds of that bloody division remain today.

But it was in the Middle East where nationalism fused with Islam into a political ideology - Islamism - whose effects have brought ruin to the region - and beyond.

The dirty secret apologists for this tragedy in North America and elsewhere refuse to address is how Muslims have suffered as a result of Islamism, have been driven from their homes, tortured and killed across the Arab-Muslim world.

There has been no systematic collection of this horrible data over the past five decades, but the numbers run into millions.

It matters little within the larger context of the struggle for Islam's soul whether Muslims have been primarily the victims of tyrannical authority in Muslim majority states, or of Islamists waging battles against corrupt power elites.

No one in the Arab-Muslim world during this period exceeded the bloody-mindedness of Iraq's fallen despot, Saddam Hussein, who blended a Nazi-type nationalism with his version of Islamism into a sheer hell for Iraqis.

More on the jihad in South America, courtesy Donald Rumsfeld. From WND, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Pentagon officials have confirmed human smuggling rings in Latin America are attempting to sneak al-Qaida operatives into the U.S., information first reported in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin more than a year ago.

In a Defense Department briefing Friday about National Guardsman Ryan Anderson, suspected of trying to give al-Qaida information about U.S. capabilities and weaponry, reporters were also told to expect Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to provide details on two other subjects: Guantanamo Bay prisoners freed only to rejoin al-Qaida and Taliban cells in Afghanistan and al-Qaida's Latin America connection.

No further announcements were forthcoming from the Pentagon, prompting some sources to wonder whether the administration was conflicted over this news – given President Bush's political problems with his illegal-alien amnesty program.

Before the U.S.-led coalition attacked Iraq last year, the U.S. State Department offered congressional testimony that both al-Qaida and the Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah were taking firm hold in "America's backyard."

Mark F. Wong, the State Department's acting coordinator for counterterrorism, told the House International Relations Committee about the threat posed by both groups in Latin America.

Yet, then the matter seems to have been dropped – perhaps for diplomatic reasons, perhaps for political reasons.

But last November, G2 Bulletin reported authorities in Silvio Pettirosi International Airport in Asuncion, the Paraguayan capital, reported the arrival of a growing number of visitors carrying European passports, but undoubtedly appearing to be more Middle Eastern than anything else.

Some of these "Europeans" could not even speak the language of their so-called mother land.

A police officer in touch with a Middle Eastern embassy said he had conducted a review trailing back on the moves of a certain Belgian, with a distinct Vallon name. This Belgian's trip began in Cairo on Egypt Air 203 en route to Milan. From there he continued to London on board a BA 209 flight, which continued to Miami where he boarded American flight 995 to Asuncion.

Details of the suspicious Vallon were passed on to the Paraguayan authorities and then to a number of western embassies and representatives of intelligence agencies. This case, described to G2B by a western diplomat, is a rare example. Due to the devious intricacy of such a trip the Paraguayan authorities cannot be absolutely sure how many of these "Europeans," speaking fluent Arabic, but just basic French, Spanish or English, had entered the country during the last few weeks. However, there was very little doubt most of these visitors went on to find their way to the triple border region where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet. This region, often described as a lawless area, is nicknamed by some intelligence station agents as "The Muslim Triangle meeting zone."

Intelligence experts have been warning since the late 1990s they had noticed a tendency among Islamic terrorists to operate from Paraguay, a landlocked country in the heart of South America, with a territory slightly smaller than California, and with geographic extremes perfect for hiding illegal activities. Information surrounding such activities arrived in the U.S. before 9/11 but failed to sound any alarms. Today dealing with Islamic terrorism in Latin America is still not considered to be of high importance and often even politically incorrect.

G2 Bulletin reported last fall the terrorists using Argentina are organized in active cells around the country with safe houses in neighboring Paraguay. An Argentinean document seen by G2B describes part of the drug-smuggling trail, as well as that of weapons and people. These elaborate trails run through a web of border crossings pointing also to the complex cooperation between various "smuggling experts." These belong to jihadi organizations such as al-Qaida, joining forces with local drug lords, developing and oiling their smuggling mechanism all the way to Mexico aiming ultimately to hit the U.S.

The Argentinean intelligence service assessment, privy among others, to European and Middle Eastern agencies, has reached a significant and grave conclusion, according to G2 Bulletin. It claims since 9/11 and the partial success in the war against terrorism, mainly in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Central Asia, the jihadi pendulum is tilting more and more toward South America. The reason terrorist cells in Paraguay, whether active or dormant, can continue to grow and flourish, is because of widespread corruption in South America.

Immigration is easy. There is a long tradition of harboring criminals. Even Nazi war criminals were welcomed for years.

The lawlessness and disorder in Paraguay, enabled operatives of such terrorist groups as al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas to feel safe, even in the heart of Asuncion. These organizations, and probably more, turned Paraguay into a logistical base, as one local journalist told G2 Bulletin: "It's easy. At this stage our country is not engulfed in a civil war or guerrilla campaign and, therefore, security forces are more prone to financial kickbacks."

At this stage, G2 Bulletin sources say, the growing danger is that of militant Islam penetrating Mexico, a country with an increasing Muslim community, including Muslim converts. Some of them have ties to the Mexican community and to illegal immigrants' smugglers operating in American states bordering Mexico, especially those with connections in the greater Los Angeles area and other major cities.

Anti-terrorism experts say extremist cells tied to Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaida network are operating in Argentina, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Uruguay. Although cooperation between al-Qaida and Hezbollah has been known for some time, the two groups have formed a much closer relationship since al-Qaida was evicted from its base in Afghanistan, according to G2 Bulletin.

Representatives of the two groups recently met in Lebanon, Paraguay and an unidentified African country.

Both al-Qaida and Hezbollah were active in the common border area of Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, according to an earlier statement of Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in hearings before the Foreign Appropriations Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, cited in a report from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Further to the south in Latin America, Hezbollah and the terrorist Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) are operating in the tri-border region of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. The suspected activities of these groups include counterfeiting U.S. currency and drug smuggling, with the area in which they function described as a "haven for Islamic extremists" by the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Asa Hutchinson, in testimony before the House International Relations Committee.

Egyptian intelligence experts active in combating Muslim militancy in Egypt and aware of the role of Egyptian militants in the ranks of al-Qaida and the Taliban, told G2 Bulletin last year that Islamic terrorists shifted their interest from training pilots in the U.S. to schools in South America, where they can study and train practically without any security agencies on their heels.

In addition, another source al-Qaida also found Latin America to be more hospitable as an environment to build laboratories to manufacture non-conventional weapon systems, primarily biological agents, and for testing their effectiveness.

More recently, al-Qaida has become deeply involved in cocaine and heroine trafficking, arms and uranium smuggling, counterfeiting CDs and DVDs and money-laundering activities in the tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. The tri-border region is known as the heart of Islamic activity in Latin America.

Of growing concern to some U.S. officials is the way the terrorists south of the border might use lax immigration standards to slip into the U.S.

Some 6 million people of Muslim descent live in Latin America and there are reports that many indigenous people are converting to Islam.

The terrorists even get some official support in Latin America, according to some sources. As WorldNetDaily reported, a Venezuelan military defector claims President Hugo Chavez developed ties to terrorist groups such as al-Qaida – even providing it with $1 million in cash after Sept. 11, 2001.

Air Force Maj. Juan Diaz Castillo, who was Chavez's pilot, told WorldNetDaily through an interpreter that "the American people should awaken and be aware of the enemy they have just three hours' flight from the United States."

Diaz said he was part of an operation in which Chavez gave $1 million to al-Qaida for relocation costs, shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

In Canada, a Muslim association got Bill Baker to speak; in Britain, "prominent Jews in Britain are being targeted in a wave of anti-Semitic harassment by far-Right and Islamic fundamentalist organisations." From the Telegraph, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

The home of Lord Triesman, the former general secretary of the Labour party, has been attacked by Combat 18, the neo-Nazi group. Uri Geller, the Israeli television personality, and Barbara Roche, the former Labour minister, have been the victims of graffiti and hate mail. The incidents have emerged as police prepare to release figures this week showing that Britain saw a significant rise in anti-Semitic incidents in 2003.

Mike Whine, the security spokesman for the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said that the problem of prejudice directed towards Jews on the European mainland was spreading to Britain. "Tensions in the Middle East and the rise of far-Right activity have come together to produce a depressing increase in anti-Semitic activity," he said.

Mr Whine, who works closely with the police to monitor anti-Semitic attacks on synagogues and Jewish graves, said that extremist Islamic groups are behind many anti-Semitic incidents. "There is reliable evidence from the police to prove that an increasing number of incidents are committed by sympathisers of the Palestinians and Islamists.

"The promotion of anti-Semitism by the Arab media and by Islamist organisations worldwide is having a significant effect on the attitudes of Muslim communities around the world towards the Jews." . . .

Abu Hamza, the hook-handed former cleric of Finsbury Park mosque, north London, was reported to the police yesterday for preaching alleged anti-Semitic comments about the Holocaust.

He is one of a number of extremist Islamic clerics who have been accused of encouraging anti-Semitic views among young Muslims.

In the course of a Boston Globe story about a dispute over a Muslim school and mosque that Muslims are planning to expand in Morton Grove, Illinois, this exchange is reported:

Many residents expressed concerns regarding what they called the "side issue" of outside funding. "I read that most of the mosques in France are being built with money from Saudi Arabia, from the Saudi royal family, and is that the case with you?" one resident asked Kaiseruddin, who has said that funding for the mosque would not come from outside the United States. Students often pass around collection boxes at Friday services.

John Mauck, a lawyer for the Muslim Education Center, says the learning process for residents has been gradual. "That's not the question that would be asked if the Vatican were sending money for a church," Mauck said of the Saudi funding question. "To say that type of thing, I think people aren't thinking through whether they're being biased in their fears."

"That's not the question that would be asked if the Vatican were sending money for a church"?? You know, there's a reason for that: there is no evidence that the Vatican is funding international terrorism, and doing it through churches. Can the same thing be said for Saudi Arabia and the mosques it has established in the United States and around the world?

One would think that after all the publicity that Wahhabis have received, Mauck would not have been able to get away with a howler like that. But of course this is consistent with the strategy being used Congressman Peter King: distract and divert. Rebut questions about terrorist activity by charging that the questioner is just a bigot.

More evidence of what most analysts still prefer to ignore: the power of religious appeals in recruiting and motivating terrorists. From Knight-Ridder, with thanks to Nicolei: "Iraqi teen tells how he joined Ansar al Islam."

Young, broke and living in a speck of a town where moss grows on the roofs of mud huts, Rebeen Ali decided to look for his way in the world.

After a few nights of arguing, his father, a local schoolteacher, forbade him to leave the house. But the 14-year-old Ali, tired of his hometown of Halabja, where graveyards are filled with the victims of Saddam Hussein's 1988 chemical attack, started out for the Iranian border, with plans to get construction work in Tehran.

Ali was stopped in Biyara by a checkpoint set up by members of Ansar al Islam, a radical Islamic group that had taken hold in the high reaches of the mountains of northern Iraq. They told him he was in big trouble. Before long, he had joined the group.

Ali's story took place between the summer of 2001 and the winter of 2002, but it's consistent with descriptions of how Ansar recruits, indoctrinates and trains fighters. Indeed, the lack of work and poor living conditions in Iraq, the ready supply of disaffected youth and the seduction of religious fanaticism haven't changed at all.

The Ansar members accused Ali of being a spy, of being an infidel. They shouted at him. They beat him. They threatened to kill him. For two hours, the threats and screams continued.

Then an older man walked in the room and in a calm, kind voice began to speak about Islam.

Trembling and crying, Ali was so shaken that he could hardly make sense of what the imam, or spiritual leader, was saying.

But slowly, the words began to filter through.

"He told me about paradise, about virgins, about Islam," Ali said.

The imam told him that, as a Muslim, Ali was part of a brotherhood that stretched back hundreds of years. He had an important role to play in the world, one that would bring prestige and glory. There were 70 virgins waiting for him in a promised land, a paradise just for him.

The conversation lasted for hours. At the end, Ali was taken to a little room and given some food and a blanket. The next morning, an Ansar official came by and said that while Ali wasn't a prisoner, they wanted to keep him for a few days to make sure he wasn't a spy. Ali was invited to attend religion classes.

Ali spent 15 days going between his little cell and a bare classroom. For the first time in his life, Ali began praying the prescribed five times a day. He had long considered the restrictions of the Muslim world backward and once planned to move to France to study. But now he realized the imam was right - he was a Muslim and had a duty.

Ansar offered to send Ali to training, where he learned about weapons and tactics for two months. He learned how to break down an AK47 and that he should keep his mouth open when firing a rocket-propelled grenade to avoid eardrum damage. He learned how to unscrew the cap of an artillery shell, pack in plastic explosives with two wires attached and then spool the wire to a simple battery that would serve as a detonator.

Ali spent about 11 months as a grunt soldier for Ansar, shooting off mortars and firing with machine guns at positions of fighters for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Some months he was paid $20, others $100.

After a feud about politics - Ali was tired of the fighting and wanted to join a less radical group - he left Ansar in late 2002, a few months before U.S. Special Forces and Kurdish troops drove Ansar from Iraq.

Ali is 16 years old now. He has shaved his beard and grown out his hair. He lives in Halabja with his parents and has found only occasional work as a handyman.

He says he has no regrets about joining Ansar. Would he join again?

Maybe, he said, shrugging his shoulders.

Predictably, the Council on American Islamic Relations wants the President to denounce Congressman Peter King. From HiPakistan, with thanks to Nicolei:

An Islamic civil rights and advocacy group on Thursday called on President Bush and other political and religious leaders to repudiate remarks by a New York's Republican congressman Rep. Peter T. King, who claimed that the vast majority of American Muslim community leaders are "an enemy living amongst us" and that "no (American) Muslims" cooperate in the war on terror.

This is overstated. On the other hand, in light of the fact that it was a Muslim — Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani — who first asserted (before a State Department Open Forum) that 80% of American mosques are controlled by extremists, it is by no means clear that King is simply indulging in uninformed ranting. The extent of support for Islamic terrorism among American Muslims has never been investigated, and it should be.

Mr King, who serves on the Select Committee on Homeland Security and the International Relations Committee, made the assertion on Sean Hannity's nationally-syndicated Radio talk show while promoting a book he had written recently.

"It is unconscionable that an elected official would defame America's Islamic leaders and ordinary Muslims, including those in his own district, just to sell a few more books for personal gain," said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad.

"President Bush and other political and religious leaders should repudiate these baseless smears and reject the growing exploitation of legitimate fears of terrorism to marginalize an entire community."

While promoting his new novel "Veil of Tears," King complained that "no (American) Muslims are cooperating" with law enforcement officials to combat terrorism.

He added: "I would say, you could say that 80-85 percent of mosques in this country are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists. Those who are in control. The average Muslim, no, they are loyal, but they don't work, they don't come forward, they don't tell the police."

Mr King's novel, which he described as "half truth and half fiction," deals with future terrorist attacks by "Muslim extremists" in Nassau County, New York. During his segment on Hannity's program, King was particularly critical of an unnamed mosque in Westbury, New York which he accused of failing to adequately condemn terrorism.

When questioned by Hannity whether he was really claiming that 85 percent of mosques in America are "ruled by the extremists," King said: "Yes. And I can get you the documentation on that from experts in the field.

Talk to a Steve Emerson, talk to a (Daniel) Pipes, talk to any of those. They will tell you. It's a real issue', I'll stand by that number of 85 percent. This is an enemy living amongst us."

Steven Emerson and Daniel Pipes are regarded by many Muslims as America's leading Islamophobes. Pipes has claimed that up to 15 percent of all Muslims are "potential killers" and that the enfranchisement of American Muslims presents "true dangers" to the United States. Both are strong backers of Israelis policies against the Palestinians.

Emerson and Pipes are only regarded as "Islamophobes" by those who use that ridiculous label to try to smear honest men who are courageous enough to speak out against radical Islam in the United States.

Mr King also said that while most American Muslims are loyal to this country: "They won't turn in their own. They won't tell what's going on in the mosques. They won't come forward and cooperate with the police."

Again, when credible sources allege that a Muslim FBI agent refused to tape his interrogations of terror suspects, saying, "A Muslim doesn't record another Muslim," there are reasonable questions that need to be answered. But no answers are forthcoming from CAIR.

CAIR's director Awad said that since being among the first to condemn the 9-11 terror attacks, American Muslim leaders have frequently worked with law enforcement officials on the national, state and local levels. He also invited King to meet with local and national Islamic leaders to learn more about Muslims in America and their contributions to society.

Majid Mohammadi explores the delicate and easily-wounded sensibilities of radical Muslims. As Muslims in Western Europe and the U.S. assert their right to maintain their culture and not assimilate, as Dyab Abou Jahjah of the Arab European League has insisted, we will see more of this sort of thing in the West: "In Saudi Arabia, for example, the Ministry of Commerce checks trademarks of imported goods to ensure there are no violations of religious law. . . . The criteria for recognizing something as “Western “ or “Christian” are totally subjective. A good example is the necktie, which is considered Christian and hence is forbidden in Iran; or the letter “X” that is forbidden in Saudi Arabia in trademarks because it is shaped like a cross. Everything disturbing the delicate sensibilities of Islamists is banned. Every summer, Iranian men have their arms spray-painted by Ansaar-e Hizbullah, the Iranian morality police, when they visit shopping areas in insufficiently conservative clothing. The same thing takes place in Saudi Arabia." In fact, this sensibility has already manifested itself in France, in attacks on girls not wearing hijab. From the Daily Star, with thanks to Nicolei:

On this Valentine’s Day, it is useful to examine how Western holidays and cultural habits are playing out in the Muslim world, particularly in two countries where a conservative version of Islam is buttressed by powerful religious establishments: Iran and Saudi Arabia. There are two strong ideological currents in both countries confronting one other. Reformers are offering more tolerant readings of Islam, against the proscriptions of religious establishments facing legitimacy crises.

The original arrangements between the Al-Saud and Mohammed Ibn Abdulwahab in late 18th-century Saudi Arabia, and between the Shiite ulama and the Qajar dynasty in early 20th-century Iran, were designed to resolve such crises of legitimacy. Clerics agreed to support the political leaderships, in exchange for Islam being made the ideology of the domain. Although this deal was breached in Iran during the Pahlavi era, culminating in the Islamic revolution, it was revived under the Islamic Republic. However, the new order was characterized by disagreements, first, between the Islamic left and right and, subsequently, between Islamists and reformists, amid a growing legitimacy crisis in an era of overwhelming democratic discourse.

These crises are best reflected in the policy toward public culture and morality. Morality and culture in Saudi Arabia and Iran are totally ideologized, and specifically enforced by religious policies of the state and government institutions, particularly “morality police” having a free hand in internal affairs ­ despite several catastrophic incidents where the actions of this “police” have led to violence against civilians, and indeed death. This free hand is granted because the Iranian and Saudi religious establishments offer legitimacy to the state. This has led to a crackdown on