April 2004 Archives

Mourners for the victims of the Srebrenica massacre

From Radio Free Europe.
Highlights of this 1995 UN debacle include an airstrike delayed because it was requested on the wrong form, a trade of 5,000 unarmed Muslims for 14 Dutch UN Peacekeepers, and UN commander Morillon's 1993 quotation, "I will never abandon you."

This will not win Muslim hearts and minds.

The Bosnian Serb government has disclosed the locations of six new mass graves containing the remains of victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

The head of a government-appointed commission, Milan Bogdanic, said the locations are presented in a preliminary report based on information obtained from the Defense and Interior ministries.

The disclosure of the new graves came after Bosnia's international administrator, Paddy Ashdown, recently ordered Serb authorities to cooperate with the commission or lose their jobs.

The commission has until mid-June to submit its final report on the events in Srebrenica, which, in a historic decision earlier this month, a UN court ruled was genocide.

During the massacre, an estimated 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Serbian paramilitary forces. So far, more than 6,000 bodies have been exhumed.

This American is not impressed. Luring innocent people to their deaths is an unspeakably evil act. From the London Telegraph

Seven alleged terrorists from Pakistan shot dead by Macedonian police two years ago were innocent people lured to their deaths in an attempt to win favour with the United States, the authorities said yesterday.

Police investigators said seven men, including a former interior minister and three former police commanders, had been charged with murder.

Mirjana Konteska, a police spokesman, said the Pakistanis had been smuggled into Macedonia from Bulgaria in March 2002 with the promise of help to reach western Europe before being killed. At the time, the security forces claimed to have eliminated a terrorist group plotting to attack embassies and diplomats in the capital, Skopje.

"That was an act of a sick mind," Miss Konteska said. "They lost their lives in a staged murder."

Fidel Castro has this funny feeling that someone is watching him (Photo AFP)

I don't like Fidel Castro or his beard, but this is a ridculous way to allocate resources.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Treasury Department agency entrusted with blocking the financial resources of terrorists has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's money, documents show.

Fortunately legislators on both sides of the aisle agree.

Sen. Max Baucus, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, requested the figures, which showed that at the end of 2003, OFAC had 21 full-time agents working Cuba violations and just four full-time workers hunting bin Laden's and Saddam's riches.

"Rather than spending precious resources to prevent Americans from exercising their right to travel, OFAC must realign its priorities and instead work harder to keep very real terrorist threats out of our country," said Baucus, D-Mont.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the tax-writing Senate panel, agreed.

"OFAC obviously needs to enforce the law with regard to U.S. policy on Cuba, but the United States is at war against terrorism, and al-Qaida is the biggest threat to our national security," Grassley said. "Cutting off the blood money that has financed Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden must be a priority when it comes to resources."

A US soldier stands guard at a checkpoint at the entrance of the restive town of Fallujah. (AFP)

This news from Fallujah via Scotsman.com. The U.S. Marines, one of world's most feared fighting forces and part of history's most impressively equipped military , could have easily leveled this mosque and this city, but did not.

America hopes restraint will win the battle of hearts and minds. I only hope that Sadr does not mistake our kindness for weakness. U.S. Marines were not meant for dhimmitude.

Radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr told worshippers at Friday prayers that he will not accept calls to tone down his anti-American rhetoric.

He accused the US of being “the enemy of Islam and Muslims and jihad is the path of my ancestors.”

Al-Sadr made the speech at a mosque in Kufa, a stronghold of his Al-Mahdi army.

American forces are surrounding Najaf, where al-Sadr is based. Tribal leaders and police are holding intensive talks in the city aimed at reducing tensions and preventing an American assault on the city, which is home to one of the shrines holiest to Shiite Muslims.

Lieutenant Colonel Pat White said US forces were holding back to give talks a chance and out of respect for Friday, the Islamic day of prayer.

“We want to show that we respect what that day means to the Islamic world,” White said, adding that forces were closely monitoring speeches that clerics were giving at prayer services.

Boston Harbor (AP)
Memo to all law enforcement agencies operating in the U.S. (including state, federal, and local):
We are all on the same team. Can we please work together?

BOSTON -- Local officials are again reacting to news Thursday that stowaways on LNG tankers that docked in Boston several years ago may have had terrorist connections.

NewsCenter 5's Lynn Jolicouer reported that federal documents recently released by the Department of Homeland Security show the illegal Algerian immigrants, who were involved with drug smuggling, may have had ties to terrorists indicted in a 1999 plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport.

Wednesday Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey publicized the memo, which said, "In early 2001 there was some suspicion of possible associations between stowaways on Algerian flagged LNG tankers arriving in Boston and persons connected with the so-called 'Millennium Plot.'

"Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends"

Reuters is quick to deny that religious and ethnic fighting in rural Nigeria has anything to do with religious and ethnic ties.

LAGOS (Reuters) - More than 100 people were believed killed and 1,000 wounded in fresh ethnic and religious fighting in central Nigeria, the Nigerian Red Cross said on Friday.

The death toll from Tuesday's fighting between Muslims and Christians in six remote farming villages on the border between Plateau and Taraba states has been slow to emerge, partly because the telephone lines are not working in Taraba.

Reuters, showing that it has forgotten the Miss World riot, the Kaduna massacres, and the implementation of sharia in Northern Nigeria says:

The Muslim Fulani, who live principally from cattle herding, and the Christian Tarok, who are subsistence farmers, are fighting mainly over land and cattle. Most of the killing is done with large cutlasses and in arson attacks.

If I thought that the hearings would help us formulate a more coherent defense against vioent jihad terrorism, I would be all for it. Instead, it seems more like a brawl on the deck of the Titanic. "What did you know and when did you know— glub, glub, glub...."

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney spent more than three hours behind closed doors Thursday with the Sept. 11 commission that is charged with finding ways to prevent a repeat of the worst terrorist attack in American history. "I answered every question they asked," Bush said.

He declined to disclose details of the Oval Office discussion, saying the commissioners would incorporate his and Cheney's comments in their final report, set for release about three months before the November election.

The president did say the meeting as "very cordial" and the commissioners were "very interested in the recommendations that they're going to lay out, and I'm interested in those as well."

A U.S. Marine begins dismantling a ring of concertina wire around a forward Marine base in Fallujah, Iraq Thursday, April 29, 2004. (AP)

A newsflash from AP

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) - U.S. Marines announced Thursday an agreement to end a bloody, nearly monthlong siege of Fallujah, saying American forces will pull back and allow an all-Iraqi force commanded by one of Saddam Hussein's generals to take over security.

Elsewhere, 10 U.S. soldiers were killed Thursday - eight of them in a car bombing south of Baghdad. Two were killed in a convoy attack in Baghdad and roadside bomb in Baqoubah, north of the capital.

The Fallujah deal came after intense international pressure on the United States to find a peaceful solution to the standoff that killed hundreds of Iraqis and became a symbol of anti-U.S. resistance in Iraq, fueling violence that made April the deadliest month for American forces.

Only last week, U.S. commanders threatened to launch an all-out attack on the city to root out an estimated 1,500 Sunni insurgents inside. Even after Washington decided to push ahead with political efforts instead, Marines and guerrillas continued to clash, with the heavy U.S. bombardment of the city the past two nights televised around the world.

Nihad Awad of CAIR

Joe Kaufman on CAIR and terror at FrontPage:

“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

This was the line from President George W. Bush’s September 20, 2001 Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People that set the ‘Bush Doctrine’ in motion. In the speech, this line made reference to foreign nations that harbored and/or supported terrorists. However, within the ‘war on terrorism,’ the line actually had a much broader meaning -- specifically towards those individuals and groups that supported the enemy right from our own shores.

According to Justice Department U.S. Code Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 113B, Section 2339A:

“Whoever provides material support or resources or conceals or disguises the nature, location, source, or ownership of material support or resources, knowing or intending that they are to be used in preparation for, or in carrying out [terrorist acts], or in preparation for, or in carrying out, the concealment or an escape from the commission of any such violation, or attempts or conspires to do such an act, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 15 years, or both, and, if the death of any person results, shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life.”

One group in particular, CAIR or the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an entity masquerading as a ‘civil rights’ organization, has called into question its own support for nefarious causes. The following will prove that, in late 2001, CAIR appeared to be in violation of United States law, as in regards to the providing of material support to terrorists.

In September of 2001, just following the worst terrorist attack ever suffered in modern history, CAIR placed on its website, under a picture of the World Trade Center in flames, a plea for donations. It read, “Donate to the NY/DC Emergency Relief Fund.”

Yet, when people clicked on the link, it did not take them to any NY/DC Emergency Relief Fund. No, it took them straight to the website of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, an Islamic ‘charity’ that was soon to be shut down by the United States for “raising millions of dollars annually for HAMAS.”

The fact that CAIR was toying with the emotions of persons wanting to give money to a fund that CAIR disguised as one related to the 9/11 attacks is despicable… The fact that CAIR was asking people to donate to an organization that was raising millions for a terrorist organization that regularly sends suicide squads to murder innocent people is criminal.

Later that month, on September 25, 2001, CAIR changed the link to explicitly ask persons to “Donate through the Holy Land Foundation.” And in addition, CAIR added a new link to its site, soliciting persons to “Donate through the Global Relief Foundation.”

The Global Relief Foundation, like the Holy Land Foundation, was soon to be shut down by the U.S. government on terrorism related charges. As stated by the Treasury Department, “The Global Relief Foundation has connections to, has provided support for, and has provided assistance to Usama Bin Ladin, the al-Qaeda Network, and other known terrorist groups.”

At the time of the Holy Land Foundation’s closure, on December 4, 2001, CAIR immediately took the Holy Land Foundation link off of its site. And less than a week after the Global Relief Foundation’s December 14, 2001 closure, CAIR removed that group’s link as well.

The question we now have to ask is, “Did CAIR know that these organizations existed as terrorist related entities, prior to CAIR removing the links?” Or, considering CAIR’s connection to both offending organizations, the more appropriate question would be, “How did they not know?”

Mousa Abu Marzook – Grandfather of CAIR

The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development was founded by HAMAS leader Mousa Abu Marzook, a man who was deported by the United States to Jordan in 1997. Marzook, who may very well be, today, second in command of HAMAS, also founded, in 1981, CAIR’s parent organization, the Islamic Association for Palestine.

This is important, when considering the previous questions asked, but – but – there is a much bigger connection to CAIR, with respect to the Holy Land Foundation.

Ghassan Elashi – CAIR Board Member

The Chairman of the Holy Land Foundation, before the group’s closure, was Ghassan Elashi. Elashi, in December of 2002, was charged with “selling computers and computer parts to Libya and Syria, both designated state sponsors of terrorism.”

Besides the Holy Land Foundation, Ghassan Elashi was also involved with CAIR. In fact, Elashi was one of the founding board members of CAIR’s Texas chapter. What this means is that CAIR didn’t just stick a link to the Holy Land Foundation on its website, but instead, CAIR was directly linked to the Holy Land Foundation itself!

Rabih Haddad – CAIR Fundraiser

Rabih Haddad was a co-founder of the Global Relief Foundation. Before being deported by the United States to Lebanon in July of 2003, Haddad had held various positions with Global Relief, including that of Executive Director and Public Relations Director.

And like Ghassan Elashi, Haddad was also active in CAIR. According to the Quaker organization, the group that runs the large charitable foundation, the American Friends Service Committee, Haddad had served as a fundraiser for CAIR.

Just as in the previous case, this shows that the Global Relief Foundation was not only a link on the CAIR website, but that CAIR was directly involved in the organization.

Considering this evidence, it would be somewhat difficult for CAIR to deny any knowledge of the two pseudo-charities’ nefarious involvements -- involvements that directly led to the murders of innocents abroad. This includes the December 2, 2001 suicide bombing of a bus in Haifa, Israel, murdering 15 and wounding 40 others… and the suicide bombing in an entertainment area in Jerusalem, which took the lives of 11 young people, just a day earlier.

Both incidents occurred, while CAIR was soliciting funds for the terrorist charities on its site. If CAIR was indeed involved, under the Justice Department code stated earlier, it could result in life imprisonment for all implicated.

But while it’s hard for CAIR to run away from its connections to the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation, because of the connections, it’s easy to understand why CAIR tried vigorously to defend and protect the groups.

CAIR called the closure of the Holy Land Foundation “unjust” and “disturbing.” And CAIR described the closure of the Global Relief Foundation as the racial profiling of an organization that “had established a track record of effective relief work.”

If CAIR wasn’t involved in the conspiracy, why would it go out of its way to defend terror related organizations? Any group that claims to value human rights would run as far away from these organizations as possible. But CAIR did not.

The reason seems clear. Now, it’s time for the United States government to investigate this matter.

Shoe bomber Richard Reid

Charles Colson writes about evidence that Western converts are playing an increasingly important role in Islamic terrorist efforts. (Thanks to EPG for the link.)

Anyone who has flown since September 11 has experienced the heightened security put into place as a result of the attacks. Most of us have adjusted to the new realities. And we’re not the only ones adjusting. The people responsible for the heightened security—al Qaeda—have also adjusted.

After September 11 officials stepped up their scrutiny of people seeking to enter the United States bearing passports from Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries. While civil libertarians and Muslim-American groups protested, al Qaeda adapted.

As Robert Leiken of the Nixon Center wrote in the New Republic, Osama bin Laden is replacing Muslim immigrants in his operations with Western converts to Islam. It’s easy to see why: “European nationals with European passports and faces” are less likely to arouse suspicions among American officials. What’s more, most Western Europeans aren’t required to obtain visas before traveling to the United States.

We saw a glimpse of this tactic in the case of British convert Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber.” More recently, a French Muslim convert is alleged to have ties to a suspect in the Madrid bombings. And, as Leiken tells us, there’s potentially a lot more where these two came from—that is, Europe.

That’s because Europe has seen the rise of what are called “protest converts” to Islam. As the French scholar Olivier Roy put it, these young people convert for the same reason that American kids get multiple tattoos and body piercings: “to stick it to their parents [or] to their principal.” Just as Europeans in the 1970s “went to Bolivia or Vietnam,” these kids convert. It’s a way “of identifying with a Third World cause.”

Al Qaeda targets these people. “They are full of rage, and they want to prove themselves.” They’re eager to “show other Muslims their worth.” And al Qaeda is only too happy to oblige them with radical imams publicly preaching violence and martyrdom, as articles in the New York Times this weekend underscored.

Remember, too, that this tactic isn’t limited to Europe. In prisons across America, thousands of inmates have converted to Islam. And, as I’ve said on previous broadcasts, the extremist form of Islam has found its way into our prisons as well. While the vast majority of converts have no interest in joining al Qaeda, September 11 teaches us that it takes only a few to pose a horrendous threat. Just take a look at the case of Jose Padilla, the American, who was converted in prison and accused of plotting to detonate a “dirty bomb.”

So, even if authorities find a way to cope with European converts, there’s still the problem of the home-grown variety.

These developments remind us that, whether we admit it or not, we are in a clash of civilizations with the Islamic world. That doesn’t mean that we are at war with every Muslim. What it means is that there’s something about Islam that poses a potential threat to our security and our way of life. If you doubt that, ask yourself whether you can imagine a graduate of Prison Fellowship’s full-time prison program setting off a dirty bomb.

We need to pray that our leaders can adapt to this frightening new reality. And we need to remind them that a religion where proving “your worth” consists of killing civilians shouldn’t be called a “religion of peace.”

Colson supplies some interesting links for further reading and information at the source site.

The LAPD is looking into it

From AP, with thanks to shoeshine:

LOS ANGELES - Federal officials have warned the LAPD about an unspecified potential threat to a Los Angeles area mall and said an attack may have been planned for Thursday.

"As of now, the information is uncorroborated and the credibility of the source is unknown," the police department said in a statement.

No specific shopping mall was named, but the warning indicated a mall near the Federal Building in West Los Angeles could be targeted.

The LAPD will increase patrols at shopping malls in the city and asked mall operators to beef up their security while a joint terrorism task force investigates. The department said it would have no further comment beyond the statement issued late Wednesday.

UPDATE: It was a hoax. From the Copley News Service, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

LOS ANGELES – A Tanzanian citizen has been arrested and charged with making up a terrorist threat about a Los Angeles-area shopping mall that led to increased police patrols last week, the FBI said yesterday.

Zameer Mohamed, 23, was arrested Thursday by the U.S. Border Patrol in Montana after crossing into the United States illegally from Canada, said Richard Garcia, assistant director of the FBI's Los Angeles office. Mohamed is being held in Montana and is expected to be transferred to Los Angeles.

Garcia said Mohamed has admitted he lied when he called the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on April 23 and told officials four people were headed to Los Angeles to carry out "an explosive attack" April 29 on a shopping mall near UCLA.

The hoax was an elaborate scheme to get back at Mohamed's girlfriend in Toronto and three of her co-workers, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court.

"It doesn't appear he was involved in any type of terrorist activity," Garcia said, adding that the investigation is continuing.

Mohamed believed his girlfriend owed him money, and he was angry at the other three people – two men and a woman – because they refused to talk to her about the issue, the complaint stated. Mohamed passed the names of the four to the Homeland Security Department "because he wanted to cause them problems and go to jail," according to the FBI.

In happier days

No sooner does he walk that he goes back into the slammer. "Spiritual leader" and terrorist Abu Bakar Bashir is set to be rearrested. From AP:

JAKARTA, Indonesia - The suspected spiritual leader of the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah terror group will be re-arrested after he is released from jail on Friday, a police spokesman announced. The cleric's supporters have vowed to resist the move.

Indonesian authorities earlier said Abu Bakar Bashir would walk free when his 18-month term for minor immigration offenses ends Friday, despite protests from the United States and Australia, which insist he's a terrorist.

National police spokesman Maj. Gen. Bashir Ahmad Barmawi said Thursday that there is new evidence against Bashir, including witness testimony about him attending a ceremony at a militant training center in the southern Philippines in April 2000.

"Investigators will detain Bashir after he is released from the Salemba Detention Center on April 30 because police already have strong evidence about his activities," Barmawi told reporters.

In March, the Supreme Court overturned a harsher treason conviction that would have kept the 66-year-old cleric behind bars for three years.

Any move to detain him could likely lead to protests by his supporters, who have vowed to resist any attempt keep him behind bars.

Dozens of Bashir's supporters have kept an around-the-clock vigil outside Jakarta's Salemba prison. They claim the United States wants him to remain in jail because of his vehement criticism of U.S. policy in the Middle East. ...

Indonesians go the polls to select a new president in July, and many politicians are loath to speak out strongly against Islamic radicals during the campaign.

Many of Indonesia's top Muslim groups and politicians have spoken in Bashir's defense and demanded that Washington stop meddling in the country's domestic affairs.

Last month, U.S. Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge claimed Bashir had "intense and deep involvement in the planning and execution of terrorist activities" and should be put on trial again. Australia's foreign minister, Alexander Downer, called Bashir a "loathsome creature" and urged Jakarta not to release him.

Bashir founded a religious school, Al-Mukmin, in Solo during the 1970s. Several of the militants involved in the Bali bombings and other attacks have either taught at or had other links to the school.

Now Indonesian Christians are charging that the church burnt down in jihad violence was actually torched by Indonesian soldiers. From the Sydney Morning Herald, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

Christians have claimed that Indonesian soldiers razed a church to the ground and looted houses in the fourth day of bitter religious fighting in Ambon.

More than 100 Ambonese Christians demonstrated outside police headquarters to demand action against at least five soldiers who they said had burnt the Nazaret Church early yesterday.

Several witnesses at the smouldering remains of the church insisted soldiers from the army's 111th Airborne Battalion had been involved in the attack.

Piet Hatu, whose lives 50 metres from the church, said he was one of about 30 people guarding the church when soldiers arrived around 7.30pm on Tuesday and said they would help protect it.

The soldiers stayed with them until around 2am when small bombs began exploding next to the church and the soldiers ordered everyone to leave. "They said it's too dangerous, we have to go. We went to the road about 50 metres away and waited and after about half an hour they burnt the church," he said.

He was adamant the soldiers had burnt it and eight houses, but said he did not see them doing so and had no proof.

He said it was possible the army had attacked wrongly believing that Christians like him supported the tiny separatist group, Republic of South Maluku, whose supporters staged a march on Sunday which sparked the violence.

The spokesman for the army's Maluku command, Major Paiman, denied the military had burnt the church. He agreed his men were there.

He did not know how many soldiers had been assigned to guard the church and by late yesterday he had heard no reports from them of what had happened.

For some reason I don't feel so welcome

Nigeria's Zamfara state has just announced a new set of laws, racheting up implementation of Islamic law, the Sharia.

Officials say blandly that in "phase two" of this implementation, "unauthorised" houses of worship will be closed. What constitutes an "unauthorised" place of worship? Any dhimmi house of prayer? Or those that aren't covered by dhimmi laws — i.e., African animists? Either one is an outrage to the freedoms of conscience and religion, but even the BBC isn't sure of the answer. That suggests that they weren't able to get any clarity about this from Muslim spokesmen. From the BBC, with thanks to "Allah":

All businesses in the state will have to shut down during the five daily Muslim prayers.

The state government also says that all "unauthorised" places of worship will be shut down under "Sharia phase two".

Zamfara was the first Nigerian state to introduce strict Sharia laws in 2000 and thousands turned out to welcome the new measures on Wednesday.

Death sentences

The BBC's Yusuf Sarki Muhammad in the state capital, Gusau, says it is not clear whether churches will be targeted for closure under the new measures.

He says there are many unauthorised places of worship in Zamfara, as elsewhere in Nigeria.

Most other states in the predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria followed Zamfara by introducing Sharia laws.

Thieves have had their hands amputated and several women have been sentenced to death by stoning for having extra-marital sex.

But no death sentences have yet been carried out.

The new laws led to clashes between Christians and Muslims, in which thousands of people died.

Another honor killing, this time in Turkey. From Reuters, with thanks to Cathy J. Palmer:

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish police have arrested a man and a dozen of his relatives on suspicion of murdering his 14-year-old daughter, a rape victim, to salvage the family's "honour", according to newspaper reports.

Turkey, a candidate for European Union membership, is under pressure from Brussels and from human rights groups, to crack down harder on "honour killings", which involve the murder of women by male relatives for bringing shame on the family name.

Nuran Halitogullari was taken captive and raped late last month by a man while she was going to a market in Istanbul. He kept her prisoner in his home for four days, the papers said.

Police then arrested him and returned Nuran to her parents, but the family decided she must die for "soiling" their name. Her father and 17-year-old brother strangled her with a wire.

They buried her body in a forest and also tried to kill her rapist but he was already in police custody. ...

Experts estimate up to 70 women are murdered annually in honour killings in Turkey, mostly in the conservative [i.e., firmly Islamic], mainly ethnic Kurdish southeast region. Scores of other women take their own lives under pressure or fear of attack.

Turkey's parliament is preparing to strike from the penal code clauses used to reduce sentences for murders committed in the name of honour. It is part of a wider drive to clean up Turkey's human rights record and promote its EU bid.

In another recent case which drew strong Turkish media interest, a 22-year-old woman was shot dead by her two brothers as she lay in a hospital bed in Istanbul recovering from an earlier assassination bid.

Guldunya Toren was killed for having a child outside wedlock after being raped by a cousin in southeastern Turkey.

In a sign of the changing times, Turkey's Muslim preachers recently condemned honour killings and said all forms of murder were a sin in Islam and were forbidden.

That's great. I hope they convince everyone in Turkey. But there is much evidence that this practice is justified on Islamic grounds. Last year Jordan's Parliament rejected a law stiffening penalties for honor killings because Islamic hardliners, according to Al-Jazeera, "said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values."

Amer Azizi

A connection between 9/11 and 3/11. (Thanks to Jeffrey Imm for the link.)

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- A Moroccan fugitive sought in connection with last month's Madrid train bombings has been indicted on charges of helping plan the September 11 attacks in the United States.

Amer Azizi helped organize a meeting in northeast Spain in July 2001 that key plotters in the U.S. attacks, including suspect suicide pilot Mohamed Atta, used to finalize details, Judge Baltasar Garzon said.

Azizi was initially included in an indictment Garzon handed down in September against Osama bin Laden and 34 other terror suspects. Azizi was charged then with belonging to a terrorist organization.

The new indictment charges Azizi with actually helping plan the September 11 attacks. Garzon accused Azizi of multiple counts of murder -- "as many deaths and injuries as were committed" on September 11.

The indictment was based on information provided by authorities in Britain, Turkey and the United States, Garzon said.

Azizi provided lodging for people who attended the July 2001 meeting in the Tarragona region of Spain and acted as a courier, passing on messages between plotters, Garzon said in the indictment.

The judge described Azizi as the right-hand man of Imad Yarkas, jailed in November 2001 on charges of leading a Spain-based al Qaeda cell that allegedly provided financing and logistics for planners of the September 11 attacks.

Azizi fled Spain in November 2001, shortly after a wave of arrests that netted Yarkas and more than a dozen other al Qaeda suspects.

The Interior Ministry released a photo of Azizi this month, calling him a suspect in the March 11 train bombings in Madrid, in which 191 people died and more than 2,000 were injured.

So what were they doing with the mildly poisonous chemical compound and maps of the U.S. Embassy? I guess we'll never know. (Thanks to Jeffrey Imm for the link.)

ROME, Italy (AP) -- An Italian court has acquitted nine Moroccans accused of plotting an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Rome. ...

The nine were arrested in February, 2002 on suspicions they were planning to poison the embassy's water supply.

A mildly poisonous chemical compound found at the Rome apartment where four of the suspects were living. Maps indicating the U.S. Embassy were found outside the same apartment.

They were charged with association aimed at international terrorism -- a charge introduced after the September 11 attacks as part of Italy's efforts to crack down on suspected Islamic terrorists.

Prosecutor Franco Ionta asked the court to convict four of the defendants, seeking a prison term of up to seven years and six months.

The remaining five should be acquitted for lack of evidence, Ionta said.

The defendants denied any wrongdoing.

An Indonesian anti-riot policeman (EPA)

Of course, this AP story portrays this as miscellaneous "sectarian violence," but it is nothing else but jihad and an attempt to treat Christians as dhimmis.

Christian provocation: they held a rally. Muslim response: one church and seven Christian homes torched. Now, of course, the Christians are fighting back, but the whole thing wouldn't have started if not for the Islamic assumption of superiority which brooks no displays from the dhimmis. Dhimmi Christians, according to Sharia, must not make public display of their feast days, display the cross, ring church bells, have processions, etc. (See 'Umdat al-Salik, o11.5.) So much for tolerance.

AP, AMBON, INDONESIA: Gunfire and explosions rocked the provincial capital of Ambon yesterday, leaving one dead, 13 wounded and a church in ruins as Christians and Muslims clashed for a fourth day in Indonesia's Maluku islands.

In Jakarta, national police spokesman Colonel Zainuri Lubis said the death toll from the violence had risen to 36 since Sunday. A total of 159 people were injured in that period, he said.

Shortly after dawn, unidentified assailants launched attacks in several districts of Ambon, with the heaviest fighting in areas that straddle the avenues between the Muslim and Christian communities.

Plumes of smoke could be seen rising from at least two places, and gunfire from snipers positioned atop buildings rang out across the divided city for several hours.

Police and the military were patrolling the streets, and most shops and banks were shut.

Ambon police chief Brigadier General Bambang Sutrisno insisted security was improving in the province, where Muslim-Christian violence three years ago killed 9,000 people.

"We believe things are getting better," he said.

A 22-year-old man was shot dead yesterday. Nine others were taken to a hospital in the Muslim part of town with gunshot wounds or blast injuries, medical orderlies said.

The Nazaret Protestant Church and seven nearby houses in a Christian neighborhood were torched by unidentified assailants just after dawn.

Witnesses said at least four people were injured.

Witnesses also claimed the military stood by as the church and nearby homes were burned down.

"We wanted to get our things from the house but the soldiers shouted `you cannot' and pointed their guns at us," said Jan Lukukay, a 53-year-old school teacher. "Why aren't they protecting us?"

The latest round of violence erupted on Sunday after several members of the region's small, largely Christian, separatist movement rallied in the city center. Muslims, who view such public displays as a provocation, assaulted the demonstrators, touching off the sectarian clashes.

The earlier conflict here galvanized militant Muslims across Indonesia -- and attracted Islamic fighters from around Southeast Asia and from the Middle East.

Many members of Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaeda-linked extremist group blamed for a series of deadly bombings in Indonesia, have told authorities that they fought in the conflict.

Unlike most of mainly Muslim Indonesia, the province's 2 million people are evenly divided between Muslims and Christians.

Christians complain that Muslim settlers from other parts of Indonesia have come to dominate government work and the retail sector, siphoning off jobs and business from Christians.

More threats and bravado. Note the avowedly religious positioning of the conflict. Contrary to what most Westerners would probably assume, it isn't just empty boilerplate or window dressing. In fact, it is a key element of the recruitment techniques used by Al-Qaeda and other groups. From the SITE Institute, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

SITE Institute,4/28/2004 - On April 27, 2004, the number one wanted man chased by the security forces in Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz Bin Issa Al Mukarran known as Abu Hajer, broadcast an internet video message on al-Qaeda’s online mouthpiece, “The Center for Islamic Studies and Research,” in which Abu Hajer called upon the mujahideen to fight the Americans wherever they are.

He said, “The Mujahideen’s first target is the Crusaders. As for their agents, the apostate Governors, their time will come soon, after we have finished with their masters. The martyrs convoys are continuing.”

The Crusaders, of course, are the Americans and their allies. The apostate Governers are those who rule in the Islamic world either not according to the fullness of Sharia (Syria, Egypt, etc.), or not in a manner to the jihadists' liking (Saudi Arabia, with its alliance with the U.S.).

He also stated, “Let the world know, and let America and its allies know that, with the help of God, we are on our way. When we strike, it is God who is striking. We are here to complete the mission started by our Prophet Mohammad (Peace be on him and his company) when they conquered the world and freed it from adoring slaves to adoring their Master. Let them know that our Jihad shall continue until they run out of strength, and God is stronger…”

“Let America know that those who forced it out of Somalia, struck it in Kenya and Tanzania, drowned its battleship in Eden, and made an example to the world out of it in Manhattan, those are thankfully still strong and are getting stronger in their determination and Jihad for the way of God and victory. Let America know that those who are fighting it in Afghanistan and are rubbing its nose in the mud in Iraq, will not accept the occupation of the Al Haramain territory. They will not accept establishing Crusaders’ military bases in it. Americans, since you dared Islam and Muslims, and planted your bases in the Arab Peninsula, the peninsula of Mohammad (Peace be on him). You ate its wealth and graces, and planted your agents in its. You went further in daring the Muslims by striking them in Afghanistan and Iraq using Al Haramain country for your operations. Because of all the above, we are everywhere watching you, planning our strikes. What you have seen so far, was nothing but small challenges. You have not had yet the real battle. It just started today.”

He continued in his address to the Mujahideen saying: “Mujahideen for the sake of God, your day has come. This is your enemy occupying your land, controlling its agents the apostates, using it as a base to fight Islam and Muslims. Fight them until you see their blood and their pieces as they did to your brothers in Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq. Now they are fighting their battles in the Arab Peninsula. Mujahideen, fight the Americans everywhere, with all of your power. Fight them as they fought you. Scare them as they scared your brothers. Make them cry as they made the widows and orphans cry. Fight whoever comes between you and the Americans, and agreed to fight the Mujahideen in defense of the assaulting Crusaders. Purify your path from them.”

Shabana Rehman (Aftenposten)

Shabana Rehman picked up Mullah Krekar. By the legs. She was trying to make a satiric point. He called it a "gruesome humiliation." Krekar, the jihadist leader who now resides in Norway, should know: he has done a few grueome things himself.

But what does this strange incident have to do with dhimmitude and jihad? Why, everything. For besides gruesomely humiliating this terrorist, Rehman has violated a fundamental tenet of the jihadists, most memorably expressed by Ayatollah Khomeini: "Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious."

From Norway's Aftenposten, with thanks to Jarle Synnevåg and Filtrat:

Norwegian-Pakistani humorist Shabana Rehman pulled a stunt during a public debate with Mullah Krekar, the controversial former leader of the militant group Ansar al-Islam that left the religious man fuming and threatening a lawsuit. Rehman, a popular stand-up comic who specializes in material based on culture collision, picked the mullah up off the ground, an act he called a gruesome humiliation.

The bizarre incident took place during a debate about Krekar's new book, a largely autobiographical work that tries to put his life and beliefs into perspective and give an alternative look at a man constantly embroiled in accusations of terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism.

Rehman, who was born in Karachi but raised in Norway since infancy, is controversial in her own right, constantly creating a stir with comedy material touching on immigration, integration, Muslim conflicts and traditions, feminism and sexual repression. ...

On Tuesday night as the debate was winding to a close, Rehman came on stage and said she wanted to carry out a "satiric test" to find out if Mullah Krekar was as strongly fundamentalist as some of his critics believe. When he approached her, she grabbed him and lifted him up in the air.

Krekar, who said that Rehman picked him up by reaching under his buttocks, became furious, grabbed the microphone and began speaking in Norwegian for the first time that evening.

"I do not have the right to carry her like that, she has no right to carry or touch me. She displays contempt for me. I cannot accept this," Krekar said, and promised to lodge a complaint via his lawyer. He demanded that all photographs of the incident be destroyed.

Rehman, who insists she lifted him by gripping him around the legs ("the only way for a woman 163 centimeters (5'4") to pick up a man that high"), told newspaper VG she also wanted to show that if she could lift him, he could hardly be a danger to national security.

The woman gathered in the audience laughed at the stunt but panel member Lar Gule, secretary general of Norway's Humanist Ethic League protested.

"The audience does not understand what an insult Krekar has been exposed to. This is very, very serious for Krekar, and Rehman especially should understand this," Gule said.

Rehman said she wanted to see if Krekar was as tolerant and relaxed as he claims to be, and admitted that she found his reaction confusing.

The terrorists have been busier than ever. From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

TOKYO (AP)--A total of 3,213 terrorist incidents and guerrilla attacks last year claimed 7,476 lives worldwide, according to a Japanese government study published in newspapers Thursday.

The number of attacks rose 17.5% from the previous year and marked a record high since the Public Security Investigation Agency started compiling data in 1991, according to the Yomiuri, Japan's largest newspaper.

The report blamed chaos in Iraq and the spread of terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists for the increase, the Yomiuri said. ...

By region, Asia and Oceania topped the list with 1,478 incidents, followed by the Middle East with 801 and the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe with 295, Kyodo News reported.

Many have pointed out that this is not really that big a deal, and that Sharia courts for private arbitration are no different from courts that judge according to Jewish law, as goes the comparison in this article (thanks to Jeffrey Imm for the link), or any other private, voluntary association.

It is the nature of Sharia that raises questions. The Jewish court, the article tells us, "deals with monetary, business and family disputes, but no criminal matters." But Sharia does deal with criminal matters. Who will decide, then, what elements of Sharia will come under the purview of these courts, and which won't? How will this decision be made? And once made, will it not be subject to revision in the name of multiculturalism, tolerance, and freedom of religion — resulting in an ever wider sphere of influence for Sharia?

Maybe that won't happen. But it would be reassuring to see from Canadian authorities some clear and satisfactory answers to such questions.

Toronto, ON, Apr. 28 (UPI) -- Muslims in the Canadian province of Ontario can soon turn to settling disputes in their own courts, known as sharia, the Washington post reported.

Muslim promoters of sharia arbitration said no cases have yet been decided but the process is set. Islamic leaders created an Islamic Court of Civil Justice last fall and it has chosen arbitrators who have undergone training in sharia and Canadian civil law.

"People can agree to resolve disputes any way acceptable," said Brendan Crawley, a spokesman for the Ontario Attorney General's office said in an interview. He said the arbitration act has a number of safeguards, including the requirement that parties enter into arbitration only on a voluntary basis, and any decisions by arbitrators are subject to court ratification.

Jewish courts, using similar methods, have long been operating in Ontario. Such a court, called a Beit Din, deals with monetary, business and family disputes, but no criminal matters.

Cecilia Holland (Compass Direct)

Proving once again that to jihadists, tolerance and pluralism only go one way, Muslim officials in Sudan have whipped a Christian girl for not wearing a headscarf. Where now are the Muslim voices that cried out for human rights and religious freedom in France? Why aren't they protesting this kind of thing?

April 28 (Compass) — Sudan’s Islamic regime in Khartoum lashed and fined a young Christian Sudanese woman in mid April for not wearing a headscarf in public in the capital city.

Cecilia John Holland, 27, was given 40 lashes on her back and fined 10,000 Sudanese dinars ($40) by the Sizana Islamic Court in Khartoum on April 14, sources in the capital confirmed to Compass.

A Christian born in southern Sudan, Holland was traveling by minibus to her home in the Khartoum suburb of Haj Yousif on the night of April 13 when she was arrested by a group of 10 public-order policemen, some in uniform and others in plainclothes.

She was just boarding the bus near Badr gardens in Khartoum Two at 9 p.m. when the police apparently spotted her. A police van pulled ahead of the bus, ordering the driver to stop, and Holland was dragged off the bus into the van.

When Holland tried to pull free, protesting that she was a Christian and a southerner, she was struck with a hard blow on the neck and forced into the van. Four other women were already detained there, all wearing scarves, although their attire was tight and revealing.

With temperatures in Khartoum ranging between 100 and 105 degrees F., Holland was wearing modest long sleeves and an ankle-length skirt, but her hair was uncovered.

The police told Holland she was being arrested for not wearing a scarf. No one in Khartoum, “even a non-Muslim,” she was told, was exempt from Islamic bans against wearing improper dress. ...

On the morning of April 14, the accused women were taken to the Sizana Islamic Court. There a policeman swore an oath on the Koran and then read out the charges against Holland and the other women. None of the accused women were allowed to say a word to the court.

According to the police version of Holland’s case, she was accused of “standing near a garden at night” and “not wearing a scarf on her head at 11 p.m.” The police refused to register that she was employed, writing instead that she was “jobless.”

Holland, who holds a diploma in catering from Khartoum Applied Sciences College, is employed as a catering officer for a local non-governmental organization.

Declaring Holland guilty, the Sizana court sentenced her to be lashed 40 times on her back and pay a fine of 10,000 Sudanese dinars. That afternoon, after being whipped and paying the cash penalty, she was released. The fine represented a third of Holland’s monthly salary. ...

Holland’s forced subjection to the restrictions and harsh punishments of Islamic law dramatizes one key issue now deadlocking a year of ongoing peace talks between the National Islamic Front government in Khartoum and the southern leadership of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).

Earlier this month, the Khartoum government refused to compromise on its insistence that Islamic law govern all Sudanese citizens residing in Khartoum. More than two million non-Muslim southerners live in and around the capital, displaced by the last 20 years of civil war between the African Christian-animist south and the Arab Muslim north.

So far the SPLM’s alternative proposals have been outright rejected, to either establish a separate enclave within the capital for southerners, or subject its non-Muslim Sudanese to the same secular laws to be followed in the south during a six-year period of self-rule.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir claimed on April 13 that southern negotiators had abandoned their demands and agreed to have “only one legislation” in Khartoum. According to an Agence France Press report, Bashir said the compromise came “after we gave them convincing guarantees regarding the cultural and religious diversities among the citizens.”

But a SPLM spokesman denied any such agreement, which would in effect make the south’s non-Muslims “second-class citizens” in the country’s political capital.

"Second-class citizens": i.e., dhimmis.

Bouziane (AFP)

It appears that the attempt to deport wife-beating advocate Imam Abdelkader Bouziane from France has collapsed utterly. But he still may face prosecution.

PARIS, April 28 (AFP) - The French government said Wednesday it would allow an Islamic imam it deported last week back into the country, but warned he faced legal action after making comments endorsing wife-beating.

The decision to permit the return of Abdelkader Bouziane, a 52-year-old Algerian who preached at a mosque in the western city of Lyon, followed a ruling by an administrative tribunal that the deportation was illegal.

Government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope said France would not oppose Bouziane's return, but added the imam "will have to answer to French justice for his acts and statements" if he does come back from Algeria, where he was sent to a week ago.

Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin said Tuesday that intelligence surveillance of Bouziane, who had lived in France for 24 years, showed he "belonged to a movement whose extremist elements justified terrorism."

He said comments Bouziane made to the April issue of Lyon Mag, a local magazine, in which he endorsed wife-beating and declared he was polygamous confirmed the government's decision to go ahead with a February deportation order based on the concern that the imam was a threat to public order.

Bouziane, who adheres to a version of Islam preaching a literal interpretation of the Koran, has already applied for a visa in Algiers, where he was held by Algerian police after arriving, the newspaper Le Parisien reported.

The case has proved an embarrassment to the government, which has deported several other imams in the past months but mainly because they urged a jihad, or holy war, against the West.

An administrative tribunal that reviewed the case after Bouziane's forced departure ruled that the government had acted illegally by not formally charging the imam with any crime and not giving him an opportunity to defend himself.

A second review upheld that verdict, despite the interior ministry supplying newly unclassified intelligence reports purporting to depict Bouziane as a dangerous radical.

Jihadist target?

Another air attack thwarted? Or was this "Egyptian national" with a "disguised" lighter simply disappointed that he couldn't place a phone call? From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

SALT LAKE CITY — A Delta Air Lines flight from Los Angeles to New York was diverted to Salt Lake City on Tuesday after a man with a butane lighter alarmed the flight crew, officials said.

The man, an Egyptian national heading to Cairo, was carrying a lighter that resembled a cell phone and allegedly refused to move a bag stowed beneath his seat.

Flight 1986 landed at Salt Lake City International Airport about 11 a.m., two hours after leaving Los Angeles International Airport.

The man, who was not identified, became "quite agitated" when told he could not use the phone," said Michael Fierberg, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration.

Because the lighter appeared to be disguised and the man resisted putting it away, a flight attendant notified the pilot, Fierberg said.

The plane's 139 passengers were taken off the craft to be re-screened while the man was questioned by FBI agents. He was later released, but Delta Air Lines refused to transport him to New York, Fierberg said.

An IDF soldier being brought into hospital in Be'er Sheva after being injured in a suicide car bombing in Gaza on Wednesday (Haaretz)

The jihad in Israel continues, of course. From Haaretz, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Four IDF soldiers were injured, two moderately and two lightly, when they foiled a major suicide car bomb attack Wednesday on Gaza Strip settlers. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, in which a jeep flying an Israeli flag and packed with as much as 300 kilograms of explosives drew the suspicion of Givati Brigade infantrymen on patrol near the Mor Bridge between the Kissufim crossing and the Gush Katif bloc of settlements.

Hamas identified the man driving the jeep as Tariq Khamayed, 24, of the Nuseirat refugee camp.

The IDF believes Khamayed planned to blow himself up against a bus or a convoy on the Kissufim-Gush Katif highway. The military had received general intelligence warnings of the possibility of such an attack.

The soldiers in a Givati company commander's patrol vehicle spotted the jeep as it headed through an off-road area toward a road connecting Kfar Darom and the large Gush Katif settlement bloc.

Syrian police survey the damage to the former UN building

Jihad attacks in Damascus. From The Telegraph, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Suspected al-Qa'eda gunmen launched co-ordinated attacks on a diplomatic district of Damascus last night, sparking a fierce battle with security forces on the streets of the Syrian capital.

Explosions and gunfire were heard close to the British ambassador's residence in the Mazzeh district that houses several embassies, while a building formerly housing United Nations offices was set alight.

Unconfirmed reports from witnesses said that masked men fired two rocket-propelled grenades at the former mission, setting it on fire. They are then said to have sprayed gunfire in all directions with assault rifles.

The random shooting hit a passing minibus which had no passengers and whose driver managed to escape, and five parked cars, which caught fire, witnesses said.

Late into the evening, smoke was seen billowing from Mazzeh and ambulances and police cars packed the area, which had been sealed by security forces. Witnesses said the violence started about 7.20pm and lasted more than an hour.

One local resident said that after the terrorists opened fire, a police car rushed to the scene and itself came under attack. The police returned fire and reinforcements, including plainclothes security forces, soon arrived. In the ensuing shoot-out, one of the two cars used by the assailants blew up, the witnesses said.

Syrian security forces are then said to have killed three gunmen and taken a fourth into custody. A member of the security forces was said to have been seriously wounded.

Police explosives specialists were brought in to examine the bodies of the dead gunmen to make sure they were not booby-trapped.

Amid conflicting reports of the number of explosions - perhaps as many as 15 - the state news agency, Sana, said that "a terrorist and sabotage group" had opened fire indiscriminately in Mazzeh. "The security services confronted them and are in full control of the situation," Sana added.

Syria's ambassador to the United States, Imad Mustafa, appeared to blame al-Qa'eda for the attack last night.

"We have been doing our best against al-Qa'eda," he said. "We share the same enemy [as America]. We aid the US in its fight against al-Qa'eda and terrorism."

Sana gave no details of the attackers, or of their intended targets. But the incident will seriously rattle the Syrian regime which has maintained an iron grip on security in the capital since putting down an attempted coup in the 1980s.

The Natanz facility in a satellite image (CNN)

Big surprise here. From CNN, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An Iranian opposition group with sources inside Iran's military is making public a list of the senior military personnel and military units it says are involved in Iran's secret nuclear weapons programs.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) says in a summary of its findings that Iran is rushing to complete a first nuclear bomb in "between one and two years."

The opposition group says the nuclear weapons effort by a special military unit functioning secretly outside the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization is under the personal supervision of the Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran's supreme ruler.

In a recent report, the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency said parts of Iran's nuclear program are under military control.

The Iranian government denies ever having a nuclear weapons program and says its facilities and programs are used only for the generation of electricity.

The Iranian opposition group's summary says the view of Iran's government is that "because of its problems in Iraq, the United States has no choice but to go soft on Iran."

The NCRI was the first to make public Iran's secret nuclear weapons research activities at sites in Natanz and Arak. The IAEA subsequently confirmed them.

While in London there is preferential housing for "Asians," in the Welsh Assembly posters warning people to be watchful for terrorist activity have been removed for fears that they'll offend Muslim sensitivities. From icWales, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

A STORM erupted last night after the National Assembly decided to remove police anti-terrorism posters from its headquarters because they were considered insulting to Muslim women.

Two Plaid Cymru AMs said the posters were unacceptable because they depicted two eyes between a black background that looked like a Muslim head scarf.

But last night Assembly authorities who agreed to remove the posters were accused of 'political correctness gone mad' as it was pointed out that the eyes were not those of a terrorist, but of someone being alert to danger.

The bilingual posters appeared at the Assembly offices in Cardiff Bay over the Easter recess. They carry the South Wales Police logo above a message headed 'Life Savers' that urges people to be vigilant and gives details of a telephone anti-terrorist hotline. AMs saw them when they returned from their break this week.

The poster image also appears on South Wales Police's website.

Plaid Cymru AM Jocelyn Davies complained about the posters at a closed meeting of the business committee yesterday and Deputy Presiding Officer Dr John Marek agreed to put the matter to the house committee. By the end of the afternoon, all the posters which had been put on noticeboards by officers from the police unit stationed at the Assembly had been removed.

Detective Chief Superintendent Geoff Cooper, head of South Wales CID, said, "This is a national poster campaign which has been distributed across the UK by the Metropolitan Police, and South Wales Police has produced a bilingual version which is currently being circulated throughout the force area.

"The posters have been designed to reassure the public and to request their help in reporting anything suspicious to us."

A police source said, "The objection to this poster is very bizarre. So far as we are aware this is the only complaint there has been across the UK.

"The eyes are not supposed to represent a terrorist - they are meant to depict someone who is being alert to the danger of terrorism. That's the whole point of it"

Monmouth Tory AM David Davies said, "It's political correctness gone mad. This poster has been displayed across the UK and nobody else has taken any offence. I think it's absolutely ridiculous and just goes to show that it is often not members of ethnic minority communities who make a fuss, but middle-class white liberals who should know better."

Ms Davies, the Plaid AM for South Wales East, said, "A member of our support staff first saw the poster and decided to take it down. Later my colleague Leanne Wood decided to take down all those she could see. I raised the matter at the end of the business committee because the eyes on the poster clearly look like those of a Muslim woman.

"I appreciate that the message is supposed to be about making people vigilant and that they eyes are meant to depict someone being alert. Nevertheless, at first glance they do look like a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf and the subconscious implication is that she could be a terrorist.

And that, of course, is utterly inconceivable, eh?

Heavily armed Thai soldiers guard the Krue Se mosque in Pattani province, southern Thailand (AP)

The jihad in Thailand has reached a new level of ferocity. The major media, of course, have no interest in telling you that the Muslim insurgents in Thailand are working from the same motivations as the jihadis in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Israel, and Kashmir, and Chechnya, and Nigeria, and Indonesia, and the Philippines, etc. etc. From AP, with thanks to nevermindlv:

(AP) Police gunned down scores of machete-wielding militants who stormed more than a dozen security outposts Wednesday, the bloodiest day of fighting yet in Thailand's troubled Muslim-dominated south. The death toll stood at least 112.

Only five security force personnel were among the dead. The rest were insurgents, mostly teenagers.

The eight hours of mayhem ended when police fired tear gas and rocket-propelled grenades into a mosque, killing 32 militants who, witnesses said, had been sheltering inside after running away from an earlier battle.

Television news reports showed the bodies of suspected Islamic fighters lying in pools of blood, some of them in front of police stations clasping machetes and wearing colored shirts and camouflage pants.

Gunfire echoed as armored personnel carriers cruised deserted village streets and commandos moved through forest. Policemen and soldiers, carrying automatic rifles, crouched as they ran across roads and ditches.

No group claimed responsibility for the highly coordinated assault by possibly hundreds of young militants, although past violence has been blamed on separatists seeking to carve a homeland in the Muslim-majority south of this predominantly Buddhist country.

The death count was dramatically lopsided.

Army chief Gen. Chaiyasith Shinawatra told reporters that 107 insurgent were killed and 17 were arrested. He said, three policemen and two soldiers were also killed while 15 policemen were wounded.

Soldiers and police — tipped off in advance — were waiting for the poorly armed assailants. Some had guns but most carried only machetes, said Lt. Gen. Proong Bunphandung, the chief of police for the south.

"The security officers have been patiently working with local people and gathering intelligence. We waited for the right time to achieve this success," he said.

Many parts of the region have been under martial law for months. Security was tightened Wednesday along the border with neighboring Malaysia, which has in the past denied allegations of harboring militants.

The violence erupted at 5 a.m. when the insurgents attacked more than 15 police bases, village defense posts and district offices in Yala, Pattani and Songkhla provinces in a bid to steal weapons. ...

However, Thaksin denied the attackers had connections to international terrorists.

"Most of the insurgents are youths from the southern provinces," he said. "Their acts are not linked with international terrorists."

It is likely that they didn't have ties to international terrorists — but they shared the same goals, motivations, and ideology. This is another indication that the problem of jihad terrorism is not simply a problem of Saudi Wahhabism.

For "Asians," read "Muslims": forty Muslim "elders" are slated to move into this "state-of-the-art London housing block." White pensioners will be excluded. The article makes it clear that this is going to be subsidized housing for Muslims, but the racial angle raises questions. Would a "non-Asian," "white" Muslim be allowed to retire there? Would an "Asian" non-Muslim be admitted?

From the Evening Standard, with thanks to Peter Rockas and Susan:

Race watchdogs have been called in to investigate a state-of-the-art London housing block that is being reserved for Asians only.

The development, which will provide sheltered housing for 40 Muslim "elders" when it opens in the East End this summer, has triggered controversy because white pensioners will be excluded.

The Commission for Racial Equality has now been asked to check whether the Sonali Gardens project breaks the Race Relations Act.

Criticism of the project comes from both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Tories warned today that the block was a form of "segregation" that could be seized on by the British National Party in its bid for votes in the capital, particularly in the East End.

The 40 new homes, together with a day centre, have been built in a joint project by Tower Hamlets council and Circle 33 housing association on the site of an old people's home that catered for all communities.

Three other new sheltered housing blocks in the borough are not earmarked just for Asians.

Critics point out that its specialist services, such as halal meals, Bengali-speaking carers and Islamic praying facilities, could be offered within a mixedrace development. Lib-Dem councillor Janet Ludlow said: "The most important thing is to make sure we are acting legally."

The 1976 Race Relations Act and its 2000 amendment state that a discriminatory service can only be offered if an authority can prove that a specific need is not currently being met.

But a recent council report admitted that the level of need among elderly Bangladeshis was "a hidden need".

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: "There would rightly be outrage if a council offered a whites-only housing block.

"I firmly believe that we should look to achieve integration rather than segregation in our society. This is the sort of thoughtless policy that feeds extremism."

Sirajul Islam, lead councillor for social services at Tower Hamlets, said: "We certainly do not advocate segregation in Tower Hamlets.

"But the 'one size fits all' approach to public services is no longer acceptable in 21st century Britain.

"Tower Hamlets is fortunate to have a diverse mix of communities and the council strives to ensure that its services are responsive to the differing and changing needs of its residents."

Arindam Banerji has a lengthy piece at Rediff.com entitled "The threat in the North East." What is most striking is what he reports about the openness of jihadi groups in India, Pakistan, and Kashmir. Most Westerners, including American Muslim advocacy groups, still refuse to acknowledge that there are avowedly religious Muslim organizations that teach these things. And of course moderate Muslims worldwide have yet to mount a response that is convincing on Islamic grounds.

One of the facts that has been reported by multiple sources is that the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, better known as the Lashkar-e-Tayiba raised Rs 780 million from donations from ordinary people, during last month's Eid celebrations -- far more, than previous years, according to The Friday Times.

This comes as somewhat of a shock, since the Lashkar, in its brochures, periodicals and posters, is not particularly shy about announcing its intentions or even depicting trophy pictures of dead Indians. While the Jaish-e-Mohammad has openly declared that 'jihad means killing,' the Lashkar has made its motto 'Killing Hindus is the way forward.' So ordinary Pakistanis openly and knowingly raised millions of rupees in a few weeks to support terror in India. Sort of clashes with the outward appearances of mehman-nawazi [hospitality] -- does it not?

Hemant Lakhani

From CNN, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

A British man accused of trying to smuggle shoulder-held missiles into the United States and offering to obtain a radioactive "dirty bomb" for terrorists will stand trial November 3.

Hemant Lakhani, who appeared in U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J., has been in custody since his arrest last August. ...

Lakhani, 68, of the Hendon area of London, was arrested in a sting operation involving an 18-month collaboration among officials in the United States, Russia and Britain.

The indictment against Lakhani claims the Indian-born Briton told an investigator that shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles he attempted to import into the United States "could be used most effectively in terrorist attacks against commercial aircraft in the United States if 10 to 15 commercial aircraft were shot down simultaneously at different locations throughout the country."

According to federal prosecutors, he boasted of sales to terrorist groups and thought he had struck a deal to sell a missile to a Somali group seeking to launch a "jihad" against a U.S. commercial airline.

He tried to sell the group 200 missiles, and later insisted they buy 50 after they received the first one, priced at $85,000.

The man claiming to represent the Somali group was instead a cooperating witness for the United States, the missile Lakhani brought into the country was a dud, and the undercover Russian authorities who sold him the missile were collaborating with U.S. officials in the sting.

Prosecutors brought further charges against Lakhani in December, claiming he offered to procure a variety of anti-aircraft weapons, tanks and radar systems, as well as a radioactive explosive device known as a "dirty bomb."

Parveen Sharif

From The Telegraph, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

The sister of the first British suicide bomber recruited by Hamas actively encouraged her brother, sending him an e-mail in case his resolve faltered at the last minute, an Old Bailey jury was told yesterday.

Omar Sharif, 27, and his 21-year-old friend, Asil Hanif, both British Muslims, slipped into Israel posing as tourists in April last year and checked into a hostel in Tel Aviv.

In their room they shaved their bodies "because martyrs want to be clean when they enter paradise", assembled the bombs, strapped them to their torsos and hid them under their clothes.

But before Sharif set out for a busy waterfront area he received an e-mail from his sister Parveen, 36.

It urged him: "We all have to be firm and focused with reality as time is slipping away, and there is really no time to be weak and emotional.

"Stay focused and determined."

Sharif and Hanif set out with their bombs and waited until the area got busier and there were more potential victims to kill and maim. Hanif detonated his bomb outside Mike's Place, a popular bar, killing himself, three others and injuring 65.

Sharif's bomb failed to go off and he fled, dumping it nearby. Twelve days later his body was found in the sea off the Israeli coast. "The circumstances of his death are not clear, although the post mortem findings are consistent with drowning," said Jonathan Laidlaw, prosecuting.

Parveen Sharif, a supply teacher, pleaded not guilty to inciting Omar Sharif to commit an act of terrorism and failing to disclose information about terrorism.

Incarnate Word University's doomed Crusader

The University of the Incarnate Word, a Christian school in San Antonio, Texas, has scrapped its nickname, "Crusaders," and the accompanying mascot. The University's website (thanks to urthshu for the link) has a long and involved explanation for the change, encompassing the history of the Crusades and more. This history, rather predictably, doesn't mention the 450 years of jihads that had overwhelmed Christian lands in the Middle East and North Africa before any Crusade was contemplated.

But ultimately the Crusader name goes down the memory hole at Incarnate Word in an effort to be "culturally and spiritually sensitive" and to avoid litigation:

One of the main reasons for the change, besides the desire to be more culturally and spiritually sensitive, is to avert the potential for future litigation for discrimination and/or harassment. The U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division has repeatedly ruled that harassment is itself discrimination. Numerous federal and state rulings have cited the “Hostile Public Accommodations Environment” Harassment Law relative to American Indian mascots and nicknames. The Public Accommodations Law is a civil rights law requiring officials to refrain from offending anyone based on race, religion gender or sexual orientation.

Certainly IWU has every reason to avoid litigation, but it's ironic that they are scrapping the "Crusader" name in an effort to be culturally and spiritually sensitive at a time when the historical enemies of the Crusaders, the mujahedin, are pressing forward aggressively all over the world — with little concern about being culturally or spiritually sensitive to the concerns of their historical and present-day non-Muslim victims. Given today's global climate, one might even have expected (despite the historic sins of the Crusaders, which I do not mean to mitigate) "Crusaders" to start popping up in various places, committed to defending their homes and families from jihad aggression. But instead, even Crusader mascots are rapidly disappearing.

I am not advocating formation of Crusader groups. But I do think that the rush of schools like IWU to disavow any connection to Crusaders is part of a larger tendency to remain in denial about the jihad aggression that threatens so many in the world today, and manifests an acceptance of the Islamic view of history (which has been aggressively thrust upon the West in recent decades) that blames (contrary to the facts of the case) the origin of conflict between Muslims and Christians upon the evil Crusaders.

From The Telegraph, with thanks to Filtrat, a harrowing first-person account of an attempted honor killing:

As a teenager in the West Bank, Soauad became pregnant by a local boy. He 'shamed' Palestinian family condemned her to death and she was set on fire by her brother-in-law. Every year, thousands of women in the Middle East die in 'honour killings'. Souad survived. This is her harrowing story

He came towards me and said, with a smile: "Hi. How goes it?" He was chewing a blade of grass. "I'm going to take care of you."

I hadn't been expecting that. I smiled a little, to thank him, not daring to speak.

Suddenly I felt a cold liquid running over my head; I was on fire. I slapped at my hair. I screamed. My dress billowed out behind me. Was it on fire, too? I smelt the petrol and ran, the hem of my dress getting in the way. Did he run after me? Was he waiting for me to fall so he could watch me go up in flames?

I'm going to die, I thought. That's good. Maybe I'm already dead. It's over, finally.

My name is Souad. My story began almost 25 years ago in my native village in the West Bank, a tiny place, in a region then occupied by the Israelis. If I named my village, I could be in danger, even though I am now thousands of miles away. In my village I am officially dead; if I were to go back today they would try to kill me a second time for the honour of my family. It's the law of the land. It's because I am a woman.

A woman must walk fast, head down, as if counting the number of steps she's taking. She may never stray from her path or look up, for if a man catches her eye, the whole village labels her a charmuta, prostitute. A girl must be married before she can raise her eyes and look straight ahead, or go into a shop, or pluck her eyebrows and wear jewellery. My mother was married at 14. If a girl is still unmarried by that age, the village begins to make fun of her. But a girl must wait her turn in the family to be married. The eldest daughter first, then the others.

Read the whole thing.

I hope that interest-free loans, if they are introduced, will be available to non-Muslim students. Otherwise they will be in the position of subsidizing the education of Muslim students out of their own loan payments. From The Guardian, with thanks to Nicolei:

Pressure is mounting on the Department of Education and Skills to provide a Muslim-friendly student loan.

Representatives of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies met with the education secretary, Charles Clarke, last week to discuss the problem, which affects students and their families who believe that taking out a student loan contravenes Islamic sharia law.

The law dictates that Muslims should not pay or receive interest on loans.

However, the Muslim community is split over whether student loans, which incur inflation-only levels of interest, are against sharia law. Student activists say that some Muslims are being asked to break their faith or forgo the opportunity for financial assistance during their studies.

The meeting follows new moves towards providing alternatives to suit Muslim families in the commercial sector. The HSBC bank has set up a Muslim-friendly mortgage and pension scheme which satisfies the demands of sharia law.

Hasan Salim Patel, of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, said representatives were given a clear message from the education secretary that the DFES would consider any alternatives to the traditional student loan which were put before it. ...

A spokesperson for the Department for Education and Skills said: "We appreciate the Muslim position on borrowing. But, it is important to remember that student loans do not incur a real rate of interest and the government does not make any profit out of these loans. The uptake of student loans amongst Muslim students compares favourably with other groups.

"We have no plans to introduce different loans for different groups but we are working closely with the Federation of Student Islamic Societies on other ways forward on this."

Zarqawi: among the plotters

From the New York Post, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

April 27, 2004 -- Diabolical al Qaeda terrorists confessed yesterday to plotting to attack the U.S. Embassy and other targets in Jordan with sophisticated chemical bombs that could have wiped out 80,000 people.

Azmi al-Jayousi, leader of the terror cell, said the fiendish plan also targeted the headquarters of Jordanian intelligence and the prime minister's office.

The plot aimed to use trucks loaded with explosives and chemicals to unleash massive poison clouds, Jordanian officials said.

The authorities said a group of 10 suspects planned to pack the truck bombs with deadly cocktails of 71 lethal chemicals - including blistering agents, nerve gas and choking agents - and then simultaneously crash them into their targets.

A Jordanian government scientist said the well-trained terrorists - who had acquired 20 tons of chemicals - had planned to combine just the right amount of explosives to spread the lethal clouds without destroying the poisonous chemicals.

In a confession aired on Jordanian state TV, al-Jayousi, the head of the Jordanian cell of al Qaeda, admitted he was schooled in explosives and poisons in Afghanistan, then plotted in Iraq with Jordanian militant Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, a close associate of Osama bin Laden.

"I took explosives courses, high level, poisons, then I pledged allegiance to [al-Zarqawi], to obey him without any questioning," said al-Jayousi, who had marks on his face and neck.

Another suspect, car mechanic Hussein Sharif Hussein, said al-Jayousi recruited him and asked him to buy and modify trucks so they could crash through gates and walls.

Upon exploding, the truck bombs would have released a toxic cloud that would have extended for three miles over Amman, the capital.

Al-Jayousi said he received $170,000 from al-Zarqawi via messengers from Syria to finance the truck-bomb plot and used part of it to buy tons of chemicals.

"According to my experience as an explosives expert, the whole of the intelligence department will be destroyed," al-Jayousi said.

The headquarters are within a mile of a large medical center, a shopping mall and a residential area.

In raids last Tuesday, Jordanian officials said they seized 20 tons of chemicals and explosives as well as three trucks with specially modified plows designed to crash through security barricades.

The chemicals included sulfuric acid, a powerful blistering agent that can also be used to increase the strength of explosions.

Bakri will be preaching there

Abu Hamza still can't preach there, but the Finsbury Park Mosque, where shoe bomber Richard Reid and other radical Muslims once worshipped, will soon be back in business. From The Sun, with thanks to Twostellas:

THE notorious North London powerbase of hook-handed preacher Abu Hamza is to reopen in three months.

The Finsbury Park mosque was closed in January 2003 when CS gas and a stun gun were found there. ...

Sheikh Omar Bakri, whose followers recently burnt the Union Flag, said: “I regularly gave sermons and I will do so again.”

This piece at the jihadist Kavkaz Center site is interesting for its denial that the Tajik Civil War of 1992-1997 was an "interethnic conflict," as most analysts assume. It also predicts that Tajikistan will become the base for jihad in Central Asia. Note the characterization of proponents of a secular state as kafirs (unbelievers).

Modern history of Tajikistan is interesting by the fact that here you can observe the first example of Jihad in the post-Soviet space after the collapse of the USSR (1991). Historians from among the unbelievers know about this Jihad as the Tajik Civil War of 1992-1997. They were assuming that the opposing forces in this war were 'Communists' and 'Islamists'. Others were claiming that the war was an 'interethnic conflict' between regional clans. ...

Opposing sides

The first side can be called the Kafirs (infidels). They have been represented by three regional groups, which founded the bloc: tycoons from Hojent, Kulyabians and Gissarians.

Hojent oligarchs represent the regional Communist elite and the corps of directors of the most Russified industrialized and densely-populated city, which used to be called Leninabad during the Soviet times (now the city of Hojent). During the Civil War they were the main sponsors of the army of Kafirs.

Kulyabians are natives of cotton-growing regions in the South. They were the main strike force of the Kafirs. Positions of criminal elements are too strong in Kulyab. They were the ones who provoked the Anti-Islamic Mutiny in June 1992. Many prominent field commanders of the army of Kafirs were Kulyabians, and so is the current president of the Republic, Emomali Rakhmonov.

Gissarians are natives of Gissar Valley near the Uzbek border, ethnic Uzbeks and intermediaries between Tajik Kafirs and Uzbek neo-communist regime of Karimov.

There is a reason why they are called Kafirs (infidels, unbelievers), for they all were supporters of a secular state. And Kulyabians were demanding that the calls to prayer over the radio are banned. They were also practicing burning the mosques of their opponents.

The second side can be called an army of Mujahideen (fighters). They were based exclusively in eastern regions: in Karategin (Garm) and Pamirs. Active participation of Pamirians showed that the Civil War was no 'interethnic conflict', for the Pamirians are no ethnic Tajiks at all. They are descendants of the ancient natives of Central Asia and are cognate more to the Afghan Pashto. Besides, Islamic units of Uzbek armed opposition were spotted in Karategin after the Civil War, when they showed themselves in 1999 while trying to cross into Uzbekistan through the territories of Kyrgyzstan (Kirgizia).

The only thing that Tajiks, Uzbeks and Pamirians had in common was Islam, which they were trying to revive in Tajikistan. Islamic revival started since 1979, when the Islamic Revolution started in Iran, and when units of Mujahideen (fighters) started to be formed in Afghanistan in response to the invasion by the 'limited contingent' of the Soviet Army. Moreover, the units of Tajik Mujahideen were not the least in the Afghan Resistance. For obvious reasons back then the youth of Tajikistan started joining Islam not only in the eastern parts of the country, but in the capital Dushanbe as well. Not all of the youth of course. Some young men depraved by the atheistic propaganda kept joining the ranks of criminal groups and they only saw a threat that reviving Islam was posing to their criminal activities. ...

It may seem that the Mujahideen in Tajikistan had lost. The Rakhmonov regime is still in power. The Tajik people are still separated by Russian customs. But it’s not all as easy as it seems to be. There are two facts that allow claiming that the Tajik Jihad was successful, even though not all of its consequences seem to be obvious.

Fact number one: mutiny by Colonel Hudoiberdyev in Hojent, November 3-10, 1998, which was openly backed by the Uzbek regime of Karimov. The mutiny was suppressed by the government, which in turn was backed by Tajik Mujahideen.

Fact number two: 1999, the attempt of units of Uzbek Mujahideen under the command of Emir Namangani to enter Uzbekistan from the Tajik territories (Karategin) through Kyrgyzstan.

All of it points at the power of Islamic democratic opposition in Tajikistan, at its ability to put up resistance to the influence of the Karimov regime and to have its own influence on the situation in Uzbekistan. So Tajikistan may quite possibly become the outpost of the Islamic Revolution in Central Asia.

Where are the worldwide denunciations from Muslims, outraged that mosques are being used this way? From the Gulf Daily News, with thanks to Twostellas:

The US-led coalition's civil administrator for Iraq yesterday charged that weapons were being stockpiled in mosques, shrines and schools in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, where wanted radical leader Moqtada Al Sadr is holed up. ...

"A dangerous situation is developing in Najaf where weapons are being stockpiled in mosques and shrines and schools," said Bremer. "This explosive situation threatens the general population there," he said.

But they deny responsibility for the Riyadh bombing

More threats from Al-Qaeda, from The Evening Standard:

One of the most senior figures in the al Qa'eda terror group has pledged that 2004 will be a year of attacks on America.

The comments appeared on an Islamist website and are believed to have come from Abdulaziz Issa Abdul-Mohsin al-Moqrin.

The website also carries a warning that Saudi Arabian rulers will be unable to prevent further attacks.

However, he also claims that al Qa'eda was not behind last week's suicide car bombing of a security building in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

Security officials believe that al-Moqrin is al-Qa'eda's leader in Saudi Arabia, with a major police operation currently attempting to capture him.

The Al Haramain Brigades, a Saudi militant group, have claimed responsibility for last week's Riyadh attack and said they were filling in for al Qaeda, which was preoccupied fighting "crusaders".

While jihadists in Afghanistan are threatening to kill those who vote, and those in Kashmir are cutting off ears, their compatriots in the Philippines are much more moderate. They are merely issuing guidelines for voters, trying to ensure that no female candidate gets elected. From Qatar's Peninsula Online, with thanks to Twostellas:

MANILA: About 125 Moro religious leaders calling themselves the Bangsamoro Supreme Council of Ulama (BSCU) have issued a “fatwah” (ruling), laying down guidelines for Muslim voters for the May 10 national and local elections.

BSCU head Sheikh Jamil Yahya, 59, spelled out the six-point religious diktat during the Friday prayers at the Grand Mosque in Marawi City.

Since Shariah is not applied in the Bangsamoro homeland, Yahya said, Muslims’ religious obligation is “to choose the lesser of two evils,” one who stands less as hurdle in the practice of Islam, dignity and freedom.

Parts of the fatwah are the prohibition in electing any woman candidate for any position ...

Yahya, known as staunch human rights advocate, graduated at the Madina Islamic University in Saudi Arabia.

Yahya also condemned the alleged persecution being suffered by the Moro people.

Abu Hamza

A few choice quotes from Abu Hamza al-Masri, the British radical Muslim leader. He seems to be calling for suicide attacks in Britain. From the Evening Standard:

Suicide bombings

Hamza says it is his followers' destiny to become "shaheed" (martyrs) and bring jihad (holy war) to "your own door".

"We ask Allah to make us mujahideen (holy warriors). We ask Allah to make us shaheed. Our immediate duty now is to correct our own homeland. So let us open our eyes, let us not go for jihad which is far away from our countries.

"Although it is good it is not as good as you do in your own door. You don't have to travel thousands and thousands of miles to become a shaheed - you can be shaheed right on your own doorstep. May Allah open our eyes for what's good for us - so we don't waste our Muslim blood far away."

Forging passports "I don't have papers ... you're all clever, you can make papers for yourself. This is also a part of jihad, this is part of the preparation."

On world domination

"The real weapons of mass destruction are the desire for martyrdom. Millions of you are ready to be shaheed. Half a million martyrdom shaheed is enough for Muslims to control the whole of earth forever. In the end of the day, Islam must control earth, whether we like it or not."

"All the Israelis are fighters. That's why anybody over 15 is a warrior and he should be killed

... It's about exposing these Zionist Jews who are now

On Israel doing the work of Hitler against ourselves and the nation."

On September 11

"Wherever you are, death will catch up with you - even if you are in high elevated safe towers.

"Where is their Superman? Who is to blame? The American government and their pressure cooker policy which exploded in their faces."

He adds later: "These scenes are going to repeat."

The Italian hostages (Reuters)

Now that they control Spain's foreign policy, the jihadists are attempting to gain control of Italy's as well. Their attempt to exact tribute from Berlusconi seems to have fallen through, and now they say that the freedom of the Italian hostages rests on the size of antiwar protests in Italy. From Reuters, with thanks to Diana Applebaum:

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's government and opposition leaders refused on Tuesday to bow to demands by kidnappers in Iraq who have threatened to kill three hostages unless Italians protest against their country's military presence there.

But relatives of the hostages pleaded with Italians to help set the men free and participate in rallies on Wednesday and Thursday, not to denounce the government but to call for the release of the three Italian security workers. ...

Leaders from across the political spectrum rallied around Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's center-right coalition, vowing Italy would not give in to blackmail.

"We, who were against the war, are completely opposed to any negotiation with kidnappers and terrorists. The government is continuing to work with seriousness and discretion for the release of the hostages," said Francesco Rutelli, leader of the center-left Daisy party.

Berlusconi's office said in a statement the government was doing all it could to secure their release.

But families and friends of the private security workers abducted two weeks ago said there was no time to lose.

"I'm asking that all the mothers and fathers in Italy do everything they can so that our boys can come home," said Angelo Stefio, the father of one of the hostages. "We need everyone."

Marches are being organized in the captives' hometowns for Wednesday and in Rome on Thursday, but it was not clear how much support they would get.

"We the Mujahideen and Pakistan Army are brothers." Nek Mohammed, a mujahid pardoned by the Pakistani government, is going back to jihad. But he promises not to work from Pakistani soil. From HiPakistan:

"Any Muslim can go to any country to wage jihad but Waziristan's soil will not be used to fire at Afghanistan," he told Dawn when asked whether he would continue his jihad in Afghanistan.

Asked whether he would cooperate with the government to get foreign militants registered by the stipulated April 30 deadline, the 27-year-old militant said: "There will be no operation and catching foreigners is not part of the agreement."

Nek Mohammad's assertions run counter to the impression given by the government official that the tribal militants who had been accused of sheltering and facilitating foreign militants would account for their foreign guests and get them registered with the authorities.

Also, Nek insisted that there were no foreigners in South Waziristan. "There is no Al Qaeda here. There are people from all races of Afghanistan. There are Afghan Uzbeks and Tajiks.

"Over three million refugees had come to take shelter in Pakistan and they are everywhere. Had there been a single Al Qaeda fighter here, the government would have caught one by now," he said. ...

Nek Mohammad is one of the five tribal militants pardoned by the government during a ceremony at a Madrassah on Saturday. The Corps Commander, Peshawar, Lt-Gen Safdar Hussain had flown into Shakai, a village about 17km to the north of regional headquarters Wana, to announce the clemency.

The tribal militant said there could be no guarantees between brothers. "We the Mujahideen and Pakistan Army are brothers," he said.

From Rediff.com, with thanks to Fanabba:

In a gruesome incident, militants beheaded the wife and daughter of a Special Police Officer in Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir, official sources said in Srinagar on Sunday.

The militants barged into Ghulam Hassan Qureshi's house in Bazipora village late on Saturday night and beheaded his 30-year-old wife Shaha and 8-year old daughter Misra. ...

Before fleeing, the militants planted an Improvised Explosive Device in the SPO's house, which was later defused by the Bomb Disposal Squad.

Quiz time! Is this a Muslim in America after 9/11 or an American in Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution?

The Guardian reports that Imam Ramee Muhammed, a Chicago native, is afraid to come home. (Thanks to Nicolei).

A US-born Muslim cleric who sought asylum in the UK four months ago has been detained and told he may be deported within days.

Imam Ramee Muhammed, 40, a preacher originally from Chicago, applied for asylum in January this year because he says he fears persecution if he returns to the US. But on Friday, days after an article on his case appeared in a Sunday newspaper, he was detained and his claim fast-tracked.

The heart of the matter is this:

An article published on the front page of last week's Sunday Express, headlined "Maddest asylum plea yet", claimed Mr Muhammed taught Richard Reid - the so-called "shoe bomber"- and had links with the radical preacher Abu Hamza..

Imam Muhammed claims the article is untrue and has complained to the Press Complaints Commission. He admits Richard Reid attended a lecture of his at the Finsbury Park mosque, but says that was six years ago and that he was lecturing on brotherhood.

"Brotherhood"? Hmmm. That's equivocal. Could it be the Muslim Brotherhood, the early twentieth century group that inspired and inspires today's top terrorist groups.

He says he knows Omar Bakri Muhammed, leader of the fringe group al-Muhajiroun, but has no links with him.

Ramee Muhammed is clearly trying to position himself as a moderate. But how moderate is he? Say! I have an idea! Suppose Imam Muhammed came back to the U.S. and started vociferously denouncing jihad ideology and radicals like Omar Bakri. He could be a spokesman for moderate Muslims everywhere. He could preach the universal brotherhood of man and the need for equality, dignity and freedom for all. I wonder what Ramee Muhammed would think of that idea — and if he rejected it, as he probably would, what would that make of his moderate claims?

After all, I told one Muslim on this board that I was in favor of "a flowering, a renaissance, in the Muslim world, including full equality of rights for women and non-Muslims in Islamic societies: freedom of conscience, equality in laws regarding legal testimony, equal employment opportunities, etc." He replied: "So, you would like to see us ditch much of our religion and, thereby, become non-Muslims." Hmmmm. You can read that exchange here.

Zarqawi

Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the jihad at sea. Note the religious characterization of the American forces: they "came to raise the Christian banner in Muslim countries."

DUBAI (Reuters) - A statement apparently from top al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility on Monday for a suicide boat attack on Iraq's Basra oil terminal at the weekend and vowed more attacks on coalition targets.

"We give you good tidings... your brothers with their boats targeted oil tankers in Mina al-Amiq and Mina al-Bakr," said the statement signed by Zarqawi and published on Muntada al-Ansar Islamist Web site.

Basra terminal, previously known as Mina al-Bakr, accounts for 85 percent of Iraq's crude exports.

Three U.S. navy sailors died from the attack in which bombers in three boats blew themselves up in and around the Basra terminal zone, one of the most heavily guarded facilities of its kind in the world. ...

"As what your brothers, the al Qaeda lions, did to the destroyer Cole in Aden port, they have repeated this attack in a new garb and with stubborn determination by striking vital economic links of the infidel and atheist states which came to raise the Christian banner in Muslim countries," it said.

"We tell you enemies of God, robbers of oil and riches and drug traders...O snakes of evil, we will exterminate and debilitate you by land, sea and air until God makes us victorious or until we die," the statement added.

Constantine Menges of the Hudson Institute on how the conflict between the mullahocracy and the democracy movement in Iran is playing out in Iraq. From the Washington Times:

On April 4, 2004, Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr, a pro-Iranian Iraqi cleric, called on his followers to "terrorize your enemy," meaning the Americans and all those Iraqis cooperating to bring about a constitutional government.

This led tens of thousands of the cleric's armed and unarmed followers to attack U.S. and Coalition forces in four Iraqi cities. This was a preview of the violence and turmoil Iranian covert action could inflict in the coming months.

This threat is the current September 11, because the administration has not yet "connected the dots" revealing Iran's secret but discernible activities.

Following removal of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, the Iranian clerical dictatorship began a covert effort to set up an allied Shi'ite Islamist extremist regime in 60 percent Shi'ite Iraq. Iran has prepared this for many years and recruited political, military and covert agent assets among the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites who fled Iraq to live in Iran.

The Iranian dictatorship is acting to bring about a "second Iran" in Iraq in five ways:

(1) Those Iraqi Shi'ite clerics who agree with the heretical Khomeini view that the clergy should rule society in all aspects are used by Iran to build a power base from their mosques and associated social services. Iran views as the future religious leader of Iraq Ayatollah Al Haeri, an Iraqi cleric who has lived in Iran for the last 30 years and who, when Baghdad was liberated last year, issued an edict telling Iraqi clergy not to cooperate with the United States.

(2) Iran established the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq as a political movement that could win elections or take power town by town with the help of covert Iranian funds and propaganda. This organization also has an Iranian-trained and -armed paramilitary group of about 30,000. Both the political and the armed wings began moving from Iran into Iraq in March 2003. Iran also funds the Dawa Party. Leaders of both these Iran-linked parties are on the Iraqi Governing Council.

(3) Iran is working covertly with Iraqi extremist Sheik al-Sadr to use political and coercive means, including murder, to intimidate and take over Iraq's Shi'ite leadership. The murders of several prominent Shi'ite clerical leaders who favored democracy and cooperation with the coalition repeats Iran's covert actions since December 2001 in post-Taliban Afghanistan. There, a number of moderate Muslim clerics and political leaders were killed. It was Sheik al Sadr who issued the call to violence in Iraq on April 4, 2004. The next day, the coalition announced an Iraqi judge had issued an arrest warrant for Sheik al Sadr for the April 2003 murder of the respected moderate cleric, Ayatollah Al Kohei.

(4) Hezbollah, the Iranian-supported and often -directed terrorist organization has moved hundreds of cadres into Iraq as reported since last November. They along with Hamas, another Iranian-supported terrorist organization, have opened offices in Iraq and are recruiting Iraqis to be the foot soldiers and suicide killers in the massive terrorist attacks planned against U.S. and coalition forces. Iran is most likely to order these to begin fully after the planned July 1, 2004, turnover of civil authority to the Iraqis. It also is quite likely Iran will use its links with Hezbollah and al Qaeda to facilitate major terrorist attacks inside the United States this summer and fall to try to force the U.S. out of Iraq and increase the odds of an electoral defeat of President Bush.

(5) Iran has spent heavily seeking to dominate radio and television broadcasting in Iraq. A survey by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty found Iran is the source of 33 of 59 AM broadcasts and of 41 of 63 AM/FM/TV broadcasts heard in Iraq. In comparison, the U.S.-supported Iraq Media Network has one television station, two radio stations and one newspaper.

The Bush administration must immediately counter Iran's covert assets and planned actions or risk major setbacks to its goals in Iraq. Indeed, if Iran brings about an anti-U.S., pro-Iranian Shi'ite extremist regime in Iraq, the risks to the United States and its allies from terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) would dramatically increase. And it would defeat the Bush "forward strategy for freedom" in the entire Middle East.

A first step is recognizing, analyzing and understanding the intent of Iran and its Iraqi allies and what they have done to date. Next, there is an urgent need to work with moderate Shi'ite leaders to build pro-democratic political parties and a broad pro-democratic political coalition that can withstand and overcome the pressures, coercion and terrorism of the pro-Iranian Shi'ite groups. This means revising the currently self-defeating and much-too-limited efforts to aid genuinely democratic Shi'ite and other political parties and groups.

The pro-democracy Iraqi media also needs to be enlarged, and, as a corollary, the pro-extremist, Iranian-funded media needs to be restricted. This is an inescapable element of the early stages of a post-dictatorship transition where anti-democratic groups and media have sources of support far greater than those now available to moderates.

It also is necessary to quickly arrest all extremist leaders advocating violence and disarm their thousands of armed followers. It is may be necessary to detain many of these armed extremists for some time, to assure they are cannot join anti-U.S. terrorist operations.

Such detention should be humane. Efforts should be made to educate these misguided people about the values of political democracy and tolerance and to counter lies they have been told by extremist leaders for the last year.

The best defense against Iranian destabilization of Iraq is helping Iran's people to politically liberate themselves from their dictatorship. While the Iranian regime has a 25-year record of effective and brutal terrorism and secret action abroad, it is weak, fragile and vulnerable at home. ...

President Bush has spoken eloquently and often about the Iranian people's right to freedom. Now he needs to instruct his State Department to cease all its open and secret "dialogue and engagement" activities with the clerical regime. These legitimatize the dictatorship and discourage those in Iran who might otherwise act to bring about a democratic future.

Taking these actions now in Iraq and encouraging the Iranian people to liberate themselves this summer could result in two democracies. Otherwise, there is grave risk the removal of Iraq's Saddam Hussein will ultimately result in two Irans — two Shi'ite extremist regimes in the region.

A bracing blast of anti-dhimmitude from Phil Lucas, Executive Editor of the Panama City News Herald. (Thanks to David Zohar.)

If straight talk of savagery offends you, if you believe in ethnic and gender diversity but not diversity of thought or if you think there is an acceptable gray area between good and evil, then turn to the funny pages, and take the children, too.

This piece is not for you.

We published pictures Thursday of burnt American corpses hanging from an Iraqi bridge behind a mob of grinning Muslims.

Some readers didn’t like it.

Mothers said it frightened their children. A woman who works with Muslim physicians thought it might offend or endanger them.

Well, we sure don’t want to frighten, offend or endanger anybody, do we? That’s just too much diversity to handle. I mean, somebody might get hurt.

We could fill the newspaper every morning with mobs of fanatical Muslims. They can’t get along with their neighbors on much of the planet: France, Chechnya, Bosnia, Indonesia, Spain, Morocco, India, Tunisia, Somalia, etc. etc. etc. Can anybody name three ongoing world conflicts in which Muslims are not involved? Today, where there is war, there are fanatical Muslims. We might quibble about who started what conflicts, but look at the sheer number of them.

One thing is sure. Muslim killers started the one we are in now when they slaughtered more than 3,000 people, including fellow Muslims, in New York City.

Madeline Albright, the former secretary of state and feckless appeaser who helped get us into this mess, said last week Muslims still resented the Crusades. Well, Madame Albright, if Westerners were not such a forgiving people, we might resent them too.

Let’s recap the Crusades. Muslims invaded Europe and when they reached sufficient numbers they imposed their intolerant religion upon Westerners by force. Christian monarchs drove them back and took the battle to their homeland. The fight lasted a couple of centuries, and we bottled them up for 1,000 years.

Now, a millennium later, Muslims have expanded forth again. Ask France. Ask England. Ask Manhattan. Two-and-a-half years ago fanatical Muslims laid siege to us. We woke up to the obvious. Our president announced it would be a very long war, then took the battle to the Islamic homeland. Sound familiar?

Let’s consider the concept of a “long war.” Last time it was 200 years, give or take.

Anybody catch Lord of the Rings? You know, the good part, the part that wasn’t fiction, the part that drew us to the books and movies because it was the truest part: the titanic struggle between good and evil, between freedom and enslavement, between the individual and the state, between the celebration of life and the worshipping of death.

That’s the fight we are in, and it never ends. It just has peaks and valleys.

There may be a silent majority of peaceful Muslims – some live here – but that did not save 3,000 people in the World Trade Centers, the millions gassed and butchered in the Middle East, the tens of thousands slain in Eastern Europe and Asia, the hundreds blown to bits in the West Bank and Spain, or the four Americans shot, burned and hung like sausage over the Euphrates as a fanatical minority of Muslims did the joyful dance of death.

Maybe we are so tolerant, we are so bent on “diversity,” we are so nonjudgmental, we are so wrapped up in our six-packs and ballgames that our brains have drained to our bulbous behinds. Maybe we’re so addled on Ritalin we wouldn’t know which end of a gun to hold. Maybe we need a new drug advertised on TV every three minutes, one that would help us grow a backbone.

It doesn’t take a Darwin to figure out that in this world the smartest, the fastest, the strongest, and the most committed always win. No exceptions.

Look at your spouse and children. Look at yourself in the mirror. Then look at the pictures from the paper last Thursday. You better look at them. Those are the people out to kill you.

Who do you think will win? You? Or them? Think you can take your ball and go home and they will leave you alone? Read a little history. Start with last week, last month, last year, and every other year back for half a century. Then go back a thousand years. Nobody hides from this fight.

Like it or not, that’s the way it was and that’s the way it is.

But many Americans don’t get it.

That’s why we published those pictures.

If they jarred you off the sofa, if they offended you, if they scared your children and sent you into a rage at mass murderers or heartless editors, then I say, it’s a start.

At least three buildings were set ablaze

This BBC story characterizes Islamic jihad violence as "Muslim-Christian clashes," but at least it gives an idea of what's going on in Indonesia. (Thanks to Susan and Filtrat.)

At least 10 people have died in renewed fighting between Christians and Muslims in Indonesia's Moluccan islands, police and witnesses say.

People fought with knives and stones, buildings were set alight and an Associated Press reporter says he saw two men hacked to death in the street.

It came as separatist Christians paraded in the capital, Ambon, to mark a failed independence bid 50 years ago.

More than 5,000 people have died since a sectarian conflict broke out in 1999.

The two groups signed a government-sponsored peace pact in 2002, which had appeared to be holding. ...

Witnesses said gangs of Muslim and Christian youths hurled stones at each other in the centre of the provincial capital on Sunday.

Gunfire was heard, as well as several small explosions.

Elias Khoury (Channel 2)

Elias Khoury, the father of George Khoury, the Christian Arab who was murdered last month by Islamic radicals who mistook him for a Jew, has courageously stated the truth: that the Palestinians' jihadist leadership is the worst enemy of the Palestinian people. Of course, the radical Muslims he is addressing would disagree that what they are doing contracts Islam and the Qur'an, but that doesn't diminish the courage and moral clarity of Khoury's remarks.

From the Jerusalem Post:

Elias Khoury, a prominent lawyer from the Galilee who has been living in Jerusalem for 30 years, made his appeal in reaction to the arrest of three young Palestinians who have confessed to the killing of his son. ...

In response to the suspects' argument that they committed the murder in order to appease God, Khoury said: "Religious leaders need first and foremost ... to see how these young people are influenced to take religious issues and distort them in the ugliest manner. This contradicts the will of God, the Koran, and Islam because they are taking matters into their own hands."

The father said he was extremely worried by the disrespect for human life, warning that the killings were destroying the interests of the Palestinians. "There is a complete loss of human values," he stressed.

"My message first of all to the religious leaders, the Palestinian leadership, Palestinian society, and to all the enlightened who still value human life in Palestinian society is that they must all rise, gather their courage and say 'Enough is enough.'"

Khoury called for an end to incitement by the Palestinian Authority. "We must begin educating our children and these young people about the right path which has respect for human life. We must teach them how a political culture should exist and how law and order should be observed and maintained," he said.

"These people are committing crimes and damaging Palestinian interests and the religion which they claim to represent or to serve. We need Islamic leaders who will rise and say these things in a loud and clear voice. By staying silent, they only damage Islam and Palestinian society."

Abu Hamza preaching on the street

A profile of the British radical Muslim group Al-Muhajiroun, whose activities I discuss in Onward Muslim Soldiers and have covered extensively here, and similar groups in Europe. This article is written from the perspective that American involvement in Iraq has dramatically increased these groups' size and influence. While that may be true, Al-Muhajiroun and others existed long before the Iraq war, as well as before 9/11 (as the article notes), and they recruit by presenting themselves as the exponents of pure Islam — an appeal that does not change in force with events in Iraq. From the New York Times, with thanks to Bruce Carradine:

LUTON, England, April 24 — The call to jihad is rising in the streets of Europe, and is being answered, counterterrorism officials say.

In this former industrial town north of London, a small group of young Britons whose parents emigrated from Pakistan after World War II have turned against their families' new home. They say they would like to see Prime Minister Tony Blair dead or deposed and an Islamic flag hanging outside No. 10 Downing Street.

They swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden and his goal of toppling Western democracies to establish an Islamic superstate under Shariah law, like Afghanistan under the Taliban. They call the Sept. 11 hijackers the "Magnificent 19" and regard the Madrid train bombings as a clever way to drive a wedge into Europe.

On Thursday evening, at a tennis center community hall in Slough, west of London, their leader, Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammad, spoke of his adherence to Osama bin Laden. If Europe fails to heed Mr. bin Laden's offer of a truce — provided that all foreign troops are withdrawn from Iraq in three months — Muslims will no longer be restrained from attacking the Western countries that play host to them, the sheik said.

"All Muslims of the West will be obliged," he said, to "become his sword" in a new battle. Europeans take heed, he added, saying, "It is foolish to fight people who want death — that is what they are looking for."

On working-class streets of old industrial towns like Crawley, Luton, Birmingham and Manchester, and in the Arab enclaves of Germany, France, Switzerland and other parts of Europe, intelligence officials say a fervor for militancy is intensifying and becoming more open.

In Hamburg, Dr. Mustafa Yoldas, the director of the Council of Islamic Communities, saw a correlation to the discord in Iraq. "This is a very dangerous situation at the moment," Dr. Yoldas said. "My impression is that Muslims have become more and more angry against the United States."

Hundreds of young Muslim men are answering the call of militant groups affiliated or aligned with Al Qaeda, intelligence and counterterrorism officials in the region say.

Even more worrying, said a senior counterterrorism official, is that the level of "chatter" — communications among people suspected of terrorism and their supporters — has markedly increased since Mr. bin Laden's warning to Europe this month. The spike in chatter has given rise to acute worries that planning for another strike in Europe is advanced.

"Iraq dramatically strengthened their recruitment efforts," one counterterrorism official said. He added that some mosques now display photos of American soldiers fighting in Iraq alongside bloody scenes of bombed out Iraqi neighborhoods. Detecting actual recruitments is almost impossible, he said, because it is typically done face to face.

And recruitment is paired with a compelling new strategy to bring the fight to Europe.

Members of Al Qaeda have "proven themselves to be extremely opportunistic, and they have decided to try to split the Western alliance," the official continued. "They are focusing their energies on attacking the big countries" — the United States, Britain and Spain — so as to "scare" the smaller states.

Some Muslim recruits are going to Iraq, counterterrorism officials in Europe say, but more are remaining home, possibly joining cells that could help with terror logistics or begin operations like the one that came to notice when the British police seized 1,200 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a key bomb ingredient, in late March, and arrested nine Pakistani-Britons, five of whom have been charged with trying to build a terrorist bomb.

Stoking that anger are some of the same fiery Islamic clerics who preached violence and martyrdom before the Sept. 11 attacks.

On Friday, Abu Hamza, the cleric accused of tutoring Richard Reid before he tried to blow up a Paris-to-Miami jetliner with explosives hidden in his shoe, urged a crowd of 200 outside his former Finsbury Park mosque to embrace death and the "culture of martyrdom."

Though the British home secretary, David Blunkett, has sought to strip Abu Hamza of his British citizenship and deport him, the legal battle has dragged on for years while Abu Hamza keeps calling down the wrath of God. ...

Despite tougher antiterrorism laws, the police, prosecutors and intelligence chiefs across Europe say they are struggling to contain the openly seditious speech of Islamic extremists, some of whom, they say, have been inciting young men to suicidal violence since the 1990's.

One chapter in Sheik Omar's lectures these days is "The Psyche of Muslims for Suicide Bombing."

The authorities say that laws to protect religious expression and civil liberties have the result of limiting what they can do to stop hateful speech. In the case of foreigners, they say they are often left to seek deportation, a lengthy and uncertain process subject to legal appeals, when the suspect can keep inciting attacks.

That leaves the authorities to resort to less effective means, such as mouse-trapping Islamic radicals with immigration violations in hopes of making a deportation case stick. "In many countries, the laws are liberal and it's not easy," an official said.

At a mosque in Geneva, an imam recently exhorted his followers to "impose the will of Islam on the godless society of the West."

"It was quite virulent," said a senior official with knowledge of the sermon. "The imam was encouraging his followers to take over the godless society."

While such a sermon may be incitement, recruitment takes a more shadowy course, and is hard to detect, a senior antiterrorism official said. "Believers are appealed to in the mosques, but the real conversations take place in restaurants or cafes or private apartments," the official said.

While some clerics, like Abu Qatada — said to be the spiritual counselor of Mohamed Atta, who led the Sept. 11 hijacking team — remain in prison in Britain without charge, others like Sheik Omar, leader of a movement called Al Muhajiroun, carry on a robust ideological campaign.

"There is no case against me," Sheik Omar said in an interview. Referring to calls by members of Parliament that he be deported, he added, "but they are Jewish" and "they have been calling for that for years."

Among his ardent followers is Ishtiaq Alamgir, 24, who heads Al Muhajiroun in Luton and calls himself Sayful Islam, the sword of Islam. He says there are about 50 members here but exact numbers are secret. ...

Mainstream Muslims are outraged by the situation, saying the actions of a few are causing their communities to be singled out for surveillance and making the larger population distrustful of them.

Muhammad Sulaiman, a stalwart of the mainstream Central Mosque here, was penniless when he arrived from the Kashmiri frontier of Pakistan in 1956. He raised money to build the Central Mosque here and now leads a campaign to ban Al Muhajiroun radicals from the city's 10 mosques. ...

Other community leaders look to the government to do something, if only to help prevent the demonization of British Muslims, or "Islamophobia," as some here call it. ...

In Slough, Sheik Omar spent much of his time Thursday night regaling his young followers with the erotic delights of paradise — sweet kisses and the pleasures of bathing with scores of women — while he also preached the virtues of death in Islamic struggle as a ticket to paradise.

He spoke of terrorism as the new norm of cultural conflict, "the fashion of the 21st century," practiced as much by Tony Blair as by Al Qaeda. ...

And he warned Western leaders, "You may kill bin Laden, but the phenomenon, you cannot kill it — you cannot destroy it."

"Our Muslim brothers from abroad will come one day and conquer here and then we will live under Islam in dignity," he said.

This is a parody. In Britain, they'll be real.

An outrageous example of British dhimmitude comes from The Guardian, with thanks to Allon Friedman and Jeffrey Imm. Quite aside from the question of whether such cards are justified or desirable, doesn't exempting an entire group from the requirement defeat their whole purpose — as well as create a special privileged class within British society?

Thousands of Muslim women will be exempted from having to show their faces on identity cards as the Government moves to allay fears among British Muslims that the new cards will be used to target them in the 'war on terror'.

As David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, faced attack for not allowing enough debate over the introduction of the first ID cards in Britain since the Second World War, officials made it clear that if Muslim women do not want to reveal their faces in public, that would be respected.

Instead of a photograph, there would be an exemption for certain people, who would only have to give fingerprint and iris-recognition data.

Although the exact type of information held on the card has still to be finalised in negotiation with other industrialised nations, Home Office sources made it clear that they backed the idea.

'We have had constructive discussions with the Muslim community and want to assure them we are sensitive to their points of view,' said a source close to Blunkett.

The Home Secretary moved after representations from the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). Officials on the council told The Observer that although they support the idea of identity cards they are concerned that they could be used to persecute ethnic minorities.

'As we have seen with the anti-terror laws and with stop and search, if powers are used in the wrong way they can have the effect of singling out a community for no good reason,' said a legal advisor to the MCB.

'We are not against ID cards as such, but we want to ensure that they are used properly.'

Blunkett will announce tomorrow a £3 billion scheme to introduce identity cards to Britain. Although at first the scheme will be voluntary, the Home Office will argue that the country should move to a compulsory scheme by 2012.

Mohamed Subeh (WHEC)

The FBI says he has terrorist ties, but this man's lawyer is charging anti-Arab racism. From Rochester, New York's 10NBC/WHEC-TV, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

The FBI says that there may be a possible terrorist link to Rochester. Law enforcement officials have arrested a local man whose being accused of lying to the government about a suspected terrorist who lived in Rochester.

Mohamed Subeh is free on $20,000 bond. He told News 10 NBC that he came to the US 15 years ago to start a new life. He has 5 American born daughters and says he has “no reason” to lie. But, the government isn’t buying it.

Subeh is a business owner and lives in a quiet Rochester neighborhood, but Friday the US Attorneys Office indicted him on 3 counts of giving false statements to the FBI.

The indictment claims Subeh knew a man interested in becoming a suicide bomber in Israel with the al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade. The terrorist group has claimed responsibility for numerous suicide bombings in Israel.

Subeh told News 10 NBC that that man is his 20-year-old brother Ismaeel. Subeh says the FBI has been questioning him about Ismaeel since he left the country for Israel last may. He says Ismaeel left to marry a woman in the West Bank, not to help a terrorist group.

Subeh’s attorney, Miguel Reyes says ... “we as a nation need to decide and to be honest that if we have changed our minds and we don't want Arabs in the US, we should be honest and tell them.”

Armstrong

The egregious Karen Armstrong, whose ahistorical, apologetic whitewashes of militant Islam I discuss in Islam Unveiled, sets up straw man after straw man and knocks them all down in this Chicago Tribune puff piece (thanks to Susan):

Among the biggest misconceptions Westerners have about Islam, she added, is that most Muslims are Arabs, that Muslims are inherently violent and that Muslims have long hated and feared the West.

"Arabs comprise only about 20 percent of the Muslim world," Armstrong said. "It isn't this 'impulsive religion' that is compelling people to do it (violence). This is the result of a troubled region where things have been allowed to fester on and on and on. The Middle East has been in turmoil for (at least) the last 50 years, and Islam, as well as Judaism, has gotten dragged into this unholy mess, sucked into this whirlwind."

Most Muslims aren't Arabs? Duly noted. Anyone with any knowledge of the subject knows that. Muslims are inherently violent? Of course not. But note that Armstrong doesn't deal here or in other writings (at least the ones I've seen) with the texts that radical Muslims use to justify violence against unbelievers. In Islam: A Short History she says the theology of violent jihad was set aside "in practice" — i.e., not in theory. It still remained part of Islamic thought, and has obviously been taken up again by a great many Muslims in the modern age.

The notion that Islam "imposes itself by force and violence and has always been against Christianity -- that is not true at all," she declared.

Right. It's true: forced conversions are forbidden in Islam, although this law has often been broken. But theorists of jihad throughout Islamic history and today have taught that jihad must be fought to establish the hegemony of Sharia — under which Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims will have second-class status as dhimmis. But no mention of any of this from Ms. Armstrong.

On one point, however, Armstrong might not be so tractable: Her disappointment at the language employed by President Bush in the wake of the attacks against the World Trade Center and his chronic use of the words "good" and "evil."

Such labeling "is buying into the same ideology as Osama bin Laden," Armstrong cautioned. "He also divides the world into two camps, into good and evil. You don't want to encourage this kind of polarized thinking. To say that anyone we don't like is 'evil' means we never have to examine our own behavior.

I'm all for being self-critical where self-criticism is called for. But objectively, wasn't 9/11 evil? And wasn't it evil apart from anything the American government, which was not in the WTC that day, may have done or not done? Evidently, Karen Armstrong doesn't think so, but I am unwilling to play these relativist games: the fact is that the mujahedin believe in good and evil too, and they are only going to be emboldened by the sympathy of people like Ms. Armstrong.

The LA Times this morning has an interesting piece about the outrage among Saudi Muslims that the recent bombings killed ... Muslims.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Abdelaziz Raikhan was fuming Saturday, standing alongside his pickup and surveying the abandoned shops and blasted apartment buildings of downtown, a zone still littered with twisted cars and chunks of rubble from the suicide bombing of a police headquarters.

"They're mentally ill, this crowd," he said of the Islamic militants who killed at least five people and wounded 148 on Wednesday. Raikhan, 30, works as a maintenance man for the Saudi security forces; luckily, he was on the other side of town when his office was blown up.

"There's not one American in this entire area," he said, sweeping an arm to take in a neighborhood eerily still, its streets laced with police tape. "Not one! What kind of jihad is this?"

Throughout the Saudi mainstream, the call has risen: This insurgency is not a jihad, because a jihad, or sacred struggle, does not kill fellow Muslims, let alone Saudis. Wednesday's attack, plainly meant to kill Saudi police and civilians milling through the tightly wound streets of downtown at rush hour, has infuriated Saudis.

This ascetic, oil-rich kingdom is stuck between the religious ideal of jihad, still widely embraced, and the bloody, nerve-wracked reality of a nation targeted by militants. Saudis curse the U.S. troops in Fallouja, Iraq, and praise Hamas suicide bombings in Israel even as they pass through metal detectors and steer their cars through the checkpoints that choke Riyadh's traffic to a standstill.

Many people here who have praised and supported jihad around the world are shocked to find themselves on the receiving end of a violence fueled by religious extremism.

"This is not against invading armies like Afghanistan or Iraq. This is against a legitimate system, against civilians and traffic officers," said Khaled Batarfi, an analyst at Saudi Arabia's Arab News and a childhood friend of Osama bin Laden. "We don't see this as jihad. We have the ability to differentiate between what's jihad and what's not."

Popular culture here is rife with the lore of holy warriors, and the last two decades have been punctuated by holy war: There was the fight against the Russians in Afghanistan. There was Chechnya, and now Iraq. Thousands of eager Saudi men streamed out of their homeland to fight in those distant battles. All of those causes, and especially the Palestinian intifada, are seen by many Saudis as righteous and, more important, tied to Islamic duty.

The Riyadh attack, they say, doesn't fit the bill, and many people bristle at the comparison. Jihad is waged against an invading army or an occupying force, they point out. It does not apply to Muslim-on-Muslim terrorism, they say.

The Taliban's Mullah Omar

A similar threat has been made — and carried out — by jihadists in Kashmir. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is particularly upset that women may vote. From AFP, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

Taliban insurgents have threatened to kill Afghans if they vote in September elections, an intelligence official said yesterday.

The threats were carried in pamphlets distributed in Logar province close to the capital Kabul, the official said on condition of anonymity.

"We advise all Afghans not to risk their lives for attending the elections," the pamphlets warned, according to the official.

"Women especially will face the death penalty if they try to take part in the elections. Husbands are responsible for the blood of their wives if they fail to stop them voting in elections."

Is every investigation of every crime against any Muslim ipso facto anti-Muslim persecution? From the Sydney Morning Herald, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

It was an act of "great heinousness" - the betrayal of trust in which four brothers and another man brutally gang raped two teenage girls they had befriended a week earlier.

As sexual assault crimes go, this was the worst in its category, Justice Brian Sully told the NSW Supreme Court yesterday.

Even more disturbing was that the brothers maintained their innocence throughout the trial, despite overwhelming evidence, insisting that they were victims of an anti-Muslim conspiracy and a police set-up.

Rehabilitation would be problematic: they were in "total denial" of the offences, according to a psychologist's report quoted by the judge, and had no remorse.

But in what became a test case - they were the first to be convicted and sentenced under new gang rape laws which carry a life sentence - Justice Sully did not impose the maximum penalty. He handed down sentences ranging from 22 years to 10.

The brothers - who can only be identified as MSK, MAK, MRK and MMK - were each convicted of nine counts of aggravated sexual assault in company. Another man, known as RS, was also convicted. He was found hanged in his prison cell last week.

The five lured two girls, known as LS, 17, and HG, 16, back to the brothers' Ashfield family home in the early hours of July 28, 2002. ...

After their sentences were handed down, one said in court: "We did not commit this crime, the crime was committed against us. The police set us up because we are Muslims, your honour."

A man in the public gallery yelled out: "F---in' dickhead."

Outside court, the brothers' father, a doctor, said: "What can I say? I think they are innocent but I don't know, maybe the jury is right, I don't know. I'm so stressed. I have four sons . . . who are like dead people for me now because they will be jailed. What will happen? They will not get an education, nothing. That will be their luck. Everything is decided by God."

Lodhi allegedly observed satellite images on a NSW Government planning website, detailing infrastructure and transport links

From the Sydney Morning Herald, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

The alleged mastermind of a planned terrorist attack in Australia used a NSW Government website to get maps, data and satellite images of potential targets, including Sydney's Centrepoint, the Parramatta CBD and transport systems.

"He was using it during office hours to look at things like the numbers of floors in a building," a former colleague of Faheem Lodhi told the Herald. "He was interested in areas dead smack in the middle of the city."

Lodhi, 34, also bought a map of the country's energy supply system, which gave details of the routes of gas pipelines and the location of power stations and high-voltage substations. The ready availability of information, including on city infrastructure, revealed by the case is expected to fuel the continuing debate about the terrorist threat and the application of new laws to investigations.

It has also emerged that when the deported Frenchman Willie Brigitte arrived at Sydney Airport on May 16 last year, Lodhi was waiting for him. Brigitte is said to have told French interrogators that he had regular meetings with Lodhi "to prepare a terrorist act of great size in Australia".

More antics from the irrepressible Abu Bakar Bashir, one of Indonesia's leading jihadists. From the Herald Sun, with thanks to Jean-Luc:

DUBAI: Jailed Indonesian militant Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir has rejected accusations of terrorism, while expressing admiration for al-Qa'ida leader Osama bin Laden, according to the Saudi weekly Al-Majallah.

"The American accusations are pure allegations," Bashir, 65, said from prison in an interview for today's edition of the magazine, which is published in London.
Bashir denied engaging in "terrorist activities" or being the head of the al-Qa'ida-linked Jemaah Islamiah terror group.

Police say they have enough to charge him for a string of terror attacks, including the October 12, 2002, bombings in Bali that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians. ...

"The United States wants to keep me in prison because they consider I am dangerous for their interests because I call for the implementation of Islamic Sharia law in Indonesia," Bashir told the Al-Majallah.

He also described bin Laden as "a hero of Islam" and US President George W. Bush and the American army as "henchmen of the devil".

Outside the apartment complex where the Pelteks lived (WHEC)

An honor killing in Scottsville, New York. What was the dishonor? Well, part of it was that his four-year-old daughter had been "sullied" by a gynecological exam. For this she had to be killed. From the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, with thanks to LGF:

April 24, 2004) — Ismail Peltek, who was indicted Friday on charges of second-degree murder in the April 15 slaying of his wife, Hatice Peltek, claimed he attacked his wife and daughters after learning that his brother had molested his wife and his 22-year-old daughter, according to court documents.

Peltek, 41, said he attacked his 4-year-old daughter because she had been “sullied” by a gynecological exam.

”I was concerned that my family’s honor was taken,” he allegedly told investigators. ...

His 39-year-old wife died after being stabbed repeatedly and bludgeoned on the head with a hammer.

His daughters suffered fractured skulls from hammer blows.

”If you had the opportunity to kill the family again, would you?” he was asked by Rochester police Officer Emre Arican, who was brought in to help investigators because he speaks Turkish.

”My female family, yes. My male family, no,” Peltek allegedly replied. ...

So-called “honor killings” of females are common in Turkey and countries of the Middle East, according to UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund. UNICEF defines the practice as one “in which men kill female relatives in the name of family ‘honor’ for forced or suspected sexual activity outside marriage, even when they have been victims of rape.”

After the shootings (AP)

Remember that strange story out of Kosovo, in which a Jordanian UN policeman started firing at Americans? It may have been just another part of the global jihad: Sgt. Maj. Ahmed Mustafa Ibrahim Ali may have been tied to the jihadist group Hamas. (Thanks to Jeffrey Imm for the link.)

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) — Authorities are investigating whether a Jordanian U.N. policeman who killed three American corrections officers in a gunbattle at a Kosovo prison had links to the Palestinian militant group Hamas, a senior NATO official said. As investigators tried to pin down Sgt. Maj. Ahmed Mustafa Ibrahim Ali's motive, a clearer picture of the April 17 attack emerged this week. Witnesses, U.N. officials, medical personnel and NATO officers, in interviews with The Associated Press, described a scene in which the officers were trapped between a locked gate and Ali's assault rifle.

Eleven officers were wounded before the officers shot and killed Ali, a Palestinian from Jordan. No one is certain what prompted him to open fire, but a survivor said Ali was smiling during his shooting spree, a U.N. source familiar with the investigation said. ...

A senior NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that besides the investigation into any links with Hamas, authorities were examining a trip Ali took to Saudi Arabia only a month before he joined the mission in March to see if it might be connected to the attack.

Jordan's government said Ali, 30, was a distinguished member of his homeland's special police unit and had been decorated for helping to ward off an attack on the Israeli Embassy in the Jordanian capital, Amman. The United Nations has refused to discuss details of the investigation.

Much is at stake for the United Nations in the outcome of the investigation because the police mission in Kosovo, and others like it, rely on throwing together officers from member countries regardless of political philosophy.

"The incident is so grave and appalling that it really calls into question the mission's integrity and unity," said Alex Anderson of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels, Belgium-based think tank.

Indeed.

Al-Bakra oil terminal (Reuters)

It's a busy day for the mujahedin in Iraq.

BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Suicide bombers launched two boat attacks on Iraq's vital Basra offshore oil terminal on Saturday, Iraqi officials said, but the British military said there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

One boat exploded alongside a ship tied up at the terminal, said British military spokesman Major Ian Clooey.

A second boat was intercepted by a U.S.-led coalition ship as it approached an exclusion zone around the terminal and there was an explosion soon after it was boarded, he said.

Iraq is almost completely dependent on the terminal -- which is in Britain's sector of responsibility in the country -- to export around 1.9 million barrels per day, providing badly needed state funding.

Bush and Bandar (AP)

Maybe this is why Washington has been willing not to notice so much sponsorship of jihad terrorism coming out of Saudi Arabia. From AP:

WASHINGTON - During the Iraq war, Saudi Arabia secretly helped the United States far more than has been acknowledged, allowing operations from at least three air bases, permitting special forces to stage attacks from Saudi soil and providing cheap fuel, U.S. and Saudi officials say.

The American air campaign against Iraq was essentially managed from inside Saudi borders, where military commanders operated an air command center and launched refueling tankers, F-16 fighter jets, and sophisticated intelligence gathering flights, according to the officials.

Much of the assistance has been kept quiet for more than a year by both countries for fear it would add to instability inside the kingdom. Many Saudis oppose the war and U.S. presence on Saudi soil has been used by Osama bin Laden to build his terror movement.

But senior political and military officials from both countries told The Associated Press the Saudi royal family permitted widespread military operations to be staged from inside the kingdom during the coalition force's invasion of Iraq.

These officials would only talk on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivity and the fact that some operational details remain classified.

From AP:

BAGHDAD - Volleys of rockets struck the capital's crowded Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Sadr City on Saturday, hitting a busy market, smashing into a home and killing at least seven Iraqis. Outside Baghdad, insurgents rocketed a U.S. military base, killing five soldiers.

Besides the deaths in the Sadr City rocket strikes, at least 26 Iraqis were reported killed in a bombing at Tikrit, clashes between Polish troops and Shiite militiamen in Karbala, U.S. raids overnight in Sadr City, and a roadside bombing south of Baghdad.

Five American solders were killed around dawn when two rockets fired from a truck hit the U.S. base at Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad, Air Force Lt. Col. Sam Hudspath said. U.S. helicopter gunships then destroyed the truck, the military said.

Six soldiers were wounded in the attack, three of them critically, the military said. ...

U.S. commanders have blamed Sunni Muslim insurgents for military-style rocket attacks on U.S. bases in the past. But people in the neighborhood blamed the Americans for Saturday's rocket barrages, which came after the overnight clash.

After the rocket strike, residents chanted: "Long live al-Sadr! America and the Governing Council are infidels!"

Here's an insightful piece by Walid Phares on this mess in Iraq: "Al-Qaeda's War on Iraq." Phares asks who is waging the war on Iraq, and then offers an answer:

Tuesday's deadly bombings in Basra provide us with the answer. In several mortar and car bomb explosions, directed against police stations and civilians, terrorist attacks killed more than 70 men, women and children and injured nearly 250. The slaughter was a vivid reminder of similar attacks in several cities around the world including Istanbul, Riyadh, Madrid, Bali and Moscow. Mass killing of civilians has all the al-Qaeda hallmarks. But the Basra massacre has even more to tell us.

In targeting police stations, the attacks were meant not only to kill security officers, but also to disrupt the present and future security of Iraq. The aim goes beyond the British troops deployed in this major Shiite city; the real targets are the Iraqis who must become the backbone of stability and normal civil society in Iraq. What the attackers want to achieve is the preemptive assassination of normality for a society in search of peace and progress.

In place of these security forces, which will be serving future democratically elected governments, the terrorists want to see fundamentalist militia at the service of some emir or other. Thus the forces of reaction desperately try to block the march toward the future. If the new Iraq rises, radical forces will be reduced to gangs, or at best, marginal radical factions, which could hope to get at best only a few seats in the representative assemblies. That future is what these killers are trying to forestall.

Al-Qaeda may be emboldened by its bloodshed around the world and particularly in Iraq, but the Iraqis are not the Spanish voters, totally blinded by their own media. The people of Iraq have lived under terror longer than al-Qaeda has been in existence. Ordinary Iraqis, who have no links to the Fallujah Fedayeen or supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr, have deep instincts. They have been gassed in Halabja, tortured in Baghdad and piled up in mass graves. They understand the terror message; they know who their real enemy is. Yesterday morning in Basra, they saw the monster devouring the lives of their children. Unlike the Spanish voters, they will not submit to al-Qaeda, for one simple reason: They know that there is a war against their freedom, and that war on Iraq is al-Qaeda's war.

In Washington, they discussed what to do if 100 or more members of Congress were killed. In London, there was a "specific threat" to the House of Commons. From The Telegraph, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

MI5 discovered a "specific threat" that terrorists were planning to use anthrax or ricin to launch a deadly attack in the Commons chamber, MPs were told yesterday. This helped to persuade them to vote in favour of spending £1.3 million on a permanent glass security barrier between the public gallery and rest of the chamber.

But the move was approved by a majority of only seven votes and many MPs complained about the initiative before it was put to a free vote.

Some argued that the screen would not work. Others claimed it would undermine the principle that, in a democracy, elected MPs should be accessible to their voters.

A temporary glass screen was erected during the Easter recess and yesterday Peter Hain, the Leader of the Commons, explained that it had been put up "in the light of clear security advice at the highest level".

He said he needed to explain to MPs "in plainest terms" what the consequences of ignoring the advice would be.

"If an al-Qa'eda group managed to throw a phial of anthrax or ricin into the chamber - or maybe even worse, a suicide agent released it, without anybody noticing, which we have been advised is quite feasible - the particles would immediately begin spreading.

"Because of the way air flows work, within minutes total contamination could occur.

"Decontamination procedures would then be activated. Everyone - not just members - would be locked in and decontaminated before being allowed to leave."

Mr Hain disclosed that the warning had come from Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5. She briefed the Commons Commission, the body in charge of administration, earlier this year.

Although Mr Hain did not disclose further details, Sir Patrick Cormack, a Tory member of the commission, told MPs that a "specific threat" had been identified.

He said the security services had called for a screen to be erected 15 months ago, but on that occasion the commission vetoed the idea.

The temporary screen, which cost £600,000, means people in the public gallery can see what is happening in the chamber and hear debates via loudspeakers. But they are separated by an airtight screen running from floor to ceiling, and the chamber and the gallery no longer share a ventilation system.

Yesterday MPs voted to replace the temporary screen with a permanent one next summer. It will be more effective and more aesthetic.

Mr Hain also said a comprehensive review of security at Westminster, including the issuing of passes to the 12,900 people who work in the building, had begun.

Sion Simon, a Labour MP, said he did not think the screen would be effective because it did not cover the front three rows of the public gallery. Some of these seats will be allocated to members of the public personally invited by an MP.

"If I was a fully-fledged infiltrator dedicated to annihilating our democracy and who had the wherewithall to get his hands on a phial of poison, I think I would probably have got enough initiative to write to my MP and ask him for a ticket in front of the screen."

From Treasury Secretary John Snow in Opinion Journal, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

One of the most critical things the 9/11 Commission hearings have brought to light is the important role the Patriot Act plays in helping to win the war on terror. We have heard a lot about "the wall"--a conceptual barrier that prohibited agencies such as the FBI and CIA from communicating freely with each other. That wall was knocked down when President Bush signed the Patriot Act in October 2001.

Sept. 11 compelled our nation to identify the areas we needed to bolster in order to secure our homeland. We have learned a number of very important lessons about the vulnerabilities in our financial system. First, that our ability to combat terrorist financing is linked with our ability to combat money laundering. Second, that we must remain vigilant in our continuing efforts to identify new ways in which terrorists and criminals will attempt to use our own financial system to fuel their agendas. And third, that our ability to obtain and share financial information is critical to our success in identifying and bringing down terrorist networks. ...

Under the Patriot Act, banks and other financial institutions are directed to bolster defenses in potentially vulnerable areas. As we strengthen our defenses against financial crimes in traditional financial institutions, such as banks, criminals and terrorists will look to other types of financial institutions or methods through which to move or launder their money. With that in mind, we continue to bring additional types of businesses under the umbrella of anti-money-laundering and anti-terrorist-financing regulation, thereby raising awareness of the issues and equipping these businesses with the tools to protect themselves. ...

Nonie Darwish has some excellent observations on the recent decision in Michigan to amend noise ordinances to allow the Muslim call to prayer over loudspeakers:

The Islamist movement in the United States has no intention of expressing sensitivity to the majority Judeo-Christian culture of America. Even 9/11 has not slowed them down, but might even have given more fuel to their cherished dream of seeing America and its government Moslem.

The City Council of Hamtramck, Michigan, gave its preliminary approval to the Bangladeshi al-Islah mosque to carry the Arabic call to prayer five times a day through a loudspeaker. The Moslem call for prayer, in Arabic, says: “Allah is great. I confess that there is no God but Allah. I confess that Mohamed is his messenger. Call for prayer, call for prayer.” This is repeated for two minutes.

Devout Moslems already know when it is time to pray and in this day and age there are certainly other ways to call people for prayers that conforms to noise regulation and respects the wish of the general public not to hear loudspeakers 5 times a day praising a God that is different from theirs and in whose name the terrorists of 9/11 committed their atrocity. How far are we Arab/Moslem Americans going to keep pushing the envelope to test America’s patience? To whose benefit these loudspeakers are being installed? Could the loudspeakers be another sign of an audacious, in-your-face conquest of America to please those who finance these mosques?

Americans are the most tolerant people in the world and it seems that the more tolerant they become, the more they are taken advantage of. How far will our tolerant Judeo-Christian culture be pushed around? And how many times will Christians give the other cheek to prove they love those who despise them?

Arab/Moslem Americans should reciprocate the tolerance and sensitivity to the rest of America. They should not demand from America to tolerate unwelcome loudspeakers even if the politicians in the city council want to please the Arab population for their vote. Mosques in the US should know better because in most Moslem countries, Jewish synagogues and Christian churches are not even permitted to be built, much less promoted via public-address loudspeakers.

At a time when American youth are dying to stabilize Iraq and bring democracy to a Moslem country, the last thing I want to see as an Arab American is my fellow Americans upset at us for forcing Koran read to them through amplifiers.

Mosques all over the Middle East have used and abused loudspeakers to spread not only the call for prayers, but also Friday sermons. In many Arab capitals you can often hear a prayer to destroy the infidels (non-Moslems) and the Jews, the enemies of God, over loudspeakers that are often used as tools of incitement and indoctrination. People in congested and noisy Arab cities such as Cairo often hear 3 or 4 mosque loudspeakers simultaneously since there could be 4 or more mosques in one square mile. The dawn prayer can come as early as 5 am and many Moslems in the Middle East hate it, but are too afraid to say anything about it.

Why is America importing fear, oppression and insensitivity to the American general public? There is a fine line between tolerance and self destruction.

Mullah Krekar on Al-Jazeera

Norway-based terrorist Mullah Krekar has a new book out. From Aftenposten, with thanks to Filtrat and Nicolei:

Mullah Krekar, former leader of the militant Kurdish group Ansar al-Islam, presented his book "Med egne ord" - In My Own Words - at a press conference on Thursday. The autobiography includes a series of shocking revelations, including the admission that Krekar tried to get funding from Osama bin Laden, newspaper VG reports. This 2004 Al Jazeera TV appearance by Mullah Krekar caused even more confusion when he was referred to as the head of the militant Ansar al-Islam, a connection he allegedly severed years before.

Other riveting tales from the spiritual leader, born Najmuddin Farah Ahmad, include how the teenaged Krekar took a pilot's head as a trophy in his early years as a liberationist guerrilla and memories of how Kurds endured vicious bombing from Iraqi Baathists and others.

Krekar hoped that bin Laden would help fund the Kurdish jihad-movement and met with the al-Qaida leader in Peshawar in Pakistan around 1990.

Krekar describes bin Laden as a silent man who was only known as a wealthy, potential benefactor. Krekar relates that he did not receive any financial assistance from bin Laden, and two later attempts by an emissary to raise funds for the Kurdistan resistance also met with failure.

Krekar claims that bin Laden preferred to back rebels in Afghanistan.

The controversial mullah, who is currently fighting an deportation order in Norway, writes effusively about his new homeland, telling immigrant readers living here that it is a Muslim duty to maintain the laws of their new home.

Krekar thanks Norway for its protection and patience and says that Muslims gaining residency in Norway and other western nations have a holy duty to observe the laws and rules that apply there.

The mullah also defends the ongoing resistance effort in Iraq against the American-led occupation forces, VG reports.

Meanwhile, more from the book: Mulla Krekar: Iraq in the clutches of 'new Nazis'. (Thanks to Nicolei.)

Arafat and Moratinos (AP)

Now that Spain has knuckled under to Islamic terror, thus announcing to the world its intention to reassume dhimmi status, to whom do US officials turn for help in mediating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Why, Spain, of course. And not just any negotiator the Spanish government may see fit to provide, but none other than Zapatero's Foreign Minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos.

Moratinos is the one who announced in March that he would "urge EU allies and Washington to seek a 'new strategy' to counter terrorism."

His comments came a day after US President George W. Bush had warned allies that "there is no neutral ground between good and evil," adding that the war on terror "is an inescapable calling of our generation."

For Moratinos, however, "our positions are a little different.

"We think we have to use very complex and different instruments" to counter terrorism, rather than simply force, he added in welcoming the "nuanced positions" of EU foreign policy head Javier Solana and Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission.

In Berlin on Saturday, Solana warned against a hysterical reaction to the threat of attacks in the wake of the Madrid bombings.

"We have to energetically oppose terrorism, but we mustn't change the way we live," Solana has told the German weekly Bild am Sonntag in an interview to appear on Sunday, adding "Europe is not at war."

Prodi for his part said that "conflict with the terrorists will not be resolved by force."

Evidently, then, they want to negotiate with the terrorists.

The primary example of how negotiating with a terrorist gives him legitimacy that only leads to more terror is Arafat, with whom Moratinos has met on many occasions.

From Reuters, with thanks to nabrahambi:

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's new foreign minister said on Thursday the United States had asked him for help in promoting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice asked Miguel Angel Moratinos to mediate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during a meeting in Washington on Wednesday, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

But Moratinos, who spent seven years as the European Union's special envoy to the Middle East, was cautious about the word "mediation" when questioned at a news conference later.

"The word 'mediation' is a word with a lot of diplomatic content. Mediations are when you have the mandate of the parties (or) a clear mandate of the international community," he said after talks with visiting French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier.

"What our American friends have asked me -- given my experience -- is that I should help them, that Spain should contribute within the European Union to create this new dynamic that has begun with the (Israeli) initiative to withdraw from Gaza. No more and no less," he said.

Similar efforts were being made by Barnier and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, said Moratinos, a member of Spain's new Socialist government which took office last weekend.

"I agreed to contribute my grain of sand to get out of this dilemma, (something) which is fundamental for the stability of the whole region," he said.

In Washington, a state department official said there was no question of a mediating role.

"In the meeting it was agreed they would help on the subject of the withdrawal from Gaza and reform in the Greater Middle East Initiative. They agreed to help us present these things as moments of opportunity," the official, who asked not to be named, said.

Barnier stressed Moratinos' knowledge of the people and the sensitivities of the Middle East.

"We need that experience (in the EU) to help the road map progress," he said, referring to a peace plan endorsed by the United States, the EU, the United Nations and Russia.

The EU tried to defuse tension with Washington over the Middle East last Saturday, saying Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip could be a "significant step" on the road to peace.

Victor Davis Hanson in the City Journal (thanks to David Zohar) makes some excellent points about the results of appeasement — and of standing firm:

Imagine a different November 4, 1979, in Teheran. Shortly after Iranian terrorists storm the American embassy and take some 90 American hostages, President Jimmy Carter announces that Islamic fundamentalism is not a legitimate response to the excess of the Shah but a new and dangerous fascism that threatens all that liberal society holds dear. And then he issues an ultimatum to Teheran’s leaders: Release the captives or face a devastating military response.

When that demand is not met, instead of freezing Iran’s assets, stopping the importation of its oil, or seeking support at the UN, Carter orders an immediate blockade of the country, followed by promises to bomb, first, all of its major military assets, and then its main government buildings and residences of its ruling mullocracy. The Ayatollah Khomeini may well have called his bluff; we may well have tragically lost the hostages (151 fewer American lives than the Iranian-backed Hezbollah would take four years later in a single day in Lebanon). And there may well have been the sort of chaos in Teheran that we now witness in Baghdad. But we would have seen it all in 1979—and not in 2001, after almost a quarter-century of continuous Middle East terrorism, culminating in the mass murder of 3,000 Americans and the leveling of the World Trade Center.

The twentieth century should have taught the citizens of liberal democracies the catastrophic consequences of placating tyrants. British and French restraint over the occupation of the Rhineland, the Anschluss, the absorption of the Czech Sudetenland, and the incorporation of Bohemia and Moravia did not win gratitude but rather Hitler’s contempt for their weakness. Fifty million dead, the Holocaust, and the near destruction of European civilization were the wages of “appeasement”—a term that early-1930s liberals proudly embraced as far more enlightened than the old idea of “deterrence” and “military readiness.”

So too did Western excuses for the Russians’ violation of guarantees of free elections in postwar Eastern Europe, China, and Southeast Asia only embolden the Soviet Union. What eventually contained Stalinism was the Truman Doctrine, NATO, and nuclear deterrence—not the United Nations—and what destroyed its legacy was Ronald Reagan’s assertiveness, not Jimmy Carter’s accommodation or Richard Nixon’s détente.

As long ago as the fourth century b.c., Demosthenes warned how complacency and self-delusion among an affluent and free Athenian people allowed a Macedonian thug like Philip II to end some four centuries of Greek liberty—and in a mere 20 years of creeping aggrandizement down the Greek peninsula. Thereafter, these historical lessons should have been clear to citizens of any liberal society: we must neither presume that comfort and security are our birthrights and are guaranteed without constant sacrifice and vigilance, nor expect that peoples outside the purview of bourgeois liberalism share our commitment to reason, tolerance, and enlightened self-interest.

Most important, military deterrence and the willingness to use force against evil in its infancy usually end up, in the terrible arithmetic of war, saving more lives than they cost. All this can be a hard lesson to relearn each generation, especially now that we contend with the sirens of the mall, Oprah, and latte. Our affluence and leisure are as antithetical to the use of force as rural life and relative poverty once were catalysts for muscular action. The age-old lure of appeasement—perhaps they will cease with this latest concession, perhaps we provoked our enemies, perhaps demonstrations of our future good intentions will win their approval—was never more evident than in the recent Spanish elections, when an affluent European electorate, reeling from the horrific terrorist attack of 3/11, swept from power the pro-U.S. center-right government on the grounds that the mass murders were more the fault of the United States for dragging Spain into the effort to remove fascists and implant democracy in Iraq than of the primordial al-Qaidist culprits, who long ago promised the Western and Christian Iberians ruin for the Crusades and the Reconquista.

What went wrong with the West—and with the United States in particular—when not just the classical but especially the recent antecedents to September 11, from the Iranian hostage-taking to the attack on the USS Cole, were so clear? Though Americans in an election year, legitimately concerned about our war dead, may now be divided over the Iraqi occupation, polls nevertheless show a surprising consensus that the many precursors to the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings were acts of war, not police matters. Roll the tape backward from the USS Cole in 2000, through the bombing of the Khobar Towers and the U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the destruction of the American embassy and annex in Beirut in 1983, the mass murder of 241 U.S. Marine peacekeepers asleep in their Lebanese barracks that same year, and assorted kidnappings and gruesome murders of American citizens and diplomats (including TWA Flight 800, Pan Am 103, William R. Higgins, Leon Klinghoffer, Robert Dean Stethem, and CIA operative William Francis Buckley), until we arrive at the Iranian hostage-taking of November 1979: that debacle is where we first saw the strange brew of Islamic fascism, autocracy, and Middle East state terrorism—and failed to grasp its menace, condemn it, and go to war against it.

That lapse, worth meditating upon in this 25th anniversary year of Khomeinism, then set the precedent that such aggression against the United States was better adjudicated as a matter of law than settled by war. Criminals were to be understood, not punished; and we, not our enemies, were at fault for our past behavior. Whether Carter’s impotence sprang from his deep-seated moral distrust of using American power unilaterally or from real remorse over past American actions in the cold war or even from his innate pessimism about the military capability of the United States mattered little to the hostage takers in Teheran, who for some 444 days humiliated the United States through a variety of public demands for changes in U.S. foreign policy, the return of the exiled Shah, and reparations.

But if we know how we failed to respond in the last three decades, do we yet grasp why we were so afraid to act decisively at these earlier junctures, which might have stopped the chain of events that would lead to the al-Qaida terrorist acts of September 11? Our failure was never due to a lack of the necessary wealth or military resources, but rather to a deeply ingrained assumption that we should not retaliate—a hesitancy al-Qaida perceives and plays upon.

Read the whole thing; it's well worth the time.

Wife-beating advocate Bouziane doesn't have to leave France — yet, anyway. From AP, with thanks to Susan:

LYON, France (AP) - A French court on Friday temporarily suspended a deportation order that has already led to the expulsion of a Muslim cleric who advocated wife-beating and stoning women.

The suspension was to remain in effect until a hearing on case, expected in a few weeks. The cleric, Abdelkader Bouziane, was deported to Algeria on Wednesday, and it was unclear what effect the ruling of the administrative court in Lyon might have.

Bouziane, 52, preaches at a mosque in the Lyon suburb of Venissieux. He was quoted in the April edition of Lyon Mag as saying a man could beat his wife ``under certain conditions, notably if the woman cheats on her husband.''

He was quoted as saying the Quran, the Muslim holy book, authorizes such punishment - an interpretation rejected by many Muslims.

He also said he was in favor of stoning women for offenses.

The comments drew condemnation from French officials and Muslim leaders and prompted Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin to order Bouziane's immediate expulsion.

The imam was first put on an expulsion list Feb. 26 for disturbing public order, but official said they decided to speed up his case after the remarks were published.

Villepin on Friday said he would give the Lyon court additional information to justify Bouziane's expulsion.

The Jews did it all! 9/11, 3/11, you name it. MEMRI gives us an example of fantastic and paranoid Jew-hatred from an Egyptian government daily:

In an article in the Egyptian government daily Al-Gumhouriyya titled 'The Secret Israeli Weapon,' deputy editor Abd Al-Wahhab 'Adas accused the Jews of perpetrating all terrorism throughout the world, including the Madrid bombings. The following are excerpts from the article:(1)

'The Zionist Jews are Behind All the Violent and Terror Operations that have Occurred Everywhere In the World'

"If you want to know the real perpetrator of every disaster or every act of terrorism, look for the Zionist Jews. They are behind all the violent and terror operations that have occurred everywhere in the world. [They do this] first of all in order to slap [the label of the attacks] on the Arabs and Muslims, and second to harm them, distort their image, and represent them to the world as terrorists who endanger innocents. What is even more dangerous is that after every terror operation they perpetrate, they leave a sign, clue, or traces meant to show that the perpetrators are Arab Muslims.

"Their most recent operation was the bombings in Spain. Spanish Interior Minister Angel Acebes said a videocassette in Arabic was found near one of the Madrid mosques, and in it the military spokesman of the Al-Qa'ida organization took responsibility for these attacks. But [Acebes] repeatedly contradicted [himself] by saying that the credibility of the cassette had not yet been proven... In addition, a van was found next to the Atocha train station in Madrid with traces of explosives and a cassette of the Koran.

"It is obvious that the Jews are the ones who placed these things, in order to prove to the entire world that the Arabs and Muslims are behind the bombings. But because Allah wanted to expose them and their games, the Spanish prime minister declared immediately after the incident that the explosives that were used in these [attacks] were of the same type used by the ETA organization in previous explosions!! This in addition to the U.S. statement that the cassette that was found was not genuine and did not belong to the Al-Qa'ida organization, but had been planted [to implicate] them."

'It Is the Jews, with their Hidden Filthy Hands, Who Play their Part with Expertise In Order to Harm the Arabs and Muslims'

"It is the Jews, with their hidden filthy hands, who play their part with expertise in order to harm the Arabs and Muslims and to intensify hatred towards them. They have experience in this area. All precedents attest to this. Their black history is the best possible proof that hatred toward the Arabs and the Muslims fills their hearts and blinds their eyes. They are behind all troubles, disasters and catastrophes in the world."

The Jews are Behind 9/11

"Actually, it is they who are behind the events of September 11. Proof of this is what was broadcast by the Canadian news agency on September 17 ... that prior to the events the CIA had received a report that the Mossad would carry out an attack operation on American territory, in a new attempt to divert attention from the barbaric Israeli operations against the Palestinian people.

"Further [proof] of this is the news in the American papers at that time, that 4,000 Jews of American origin who worked at the World Trade Center received instructions from the Mossad not to go to work that day.

Jordanians protest parliament's rejection of honor killings law

Remember, the Jordanian Parliament voted down a bill stiffening penalties for honor-killing. From WND, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

A Muslim Jordanian man stabbed to death his pregnant sister because she married an Egyptian man against the family's wishes.

Investigators arriving at the scene Tuesday said the suspect told them "he killed his sibling to cleanse the family's honor using a kitchen knife," the Jordan Times reported.

The unidentified woman was eight months pregnant when she was killed with 25 stab wounds to different parts of her body, the paper said.

Her death is the fifth "honor killing" in Jordan this year tallied by the Times, which counted 17 last year.

An initial investigation into Tuesday's killing revealed the victim married an Egyptian man one year ago and left for Egypt, but she returned home last week to give birth.

After killing his sister in the family home, the brother called the police and waited for them to come and arrest him.

As WorldNetDaily reported, last September two sisters were hacked to death by their Muslim brothers in Jordan in an "honor killing" that came one day after the country's parliament rejected a bill imposing tougher sentences for the crime.

That same month, a Muslim Kurdish refugee living in the UK was sentenced to life in prison for murdering his 16-year-old daughter because she had started a relationship with a Lebanese Christian boy and had become too "westernized."

An anthropologist's study last year said dozens and probably hundreds of brutal "honor killings" of Palestinian women and girls – most of whom are virtually blameless – annually go unreported.

James Emery says the women "are murdered in their homes, in open fields, and occasionally in public, sometimes before crowds of cheering onlookers."

From AP: Al-Sadr flexes his Islamic muscles.

KUFA, Iraq - A Shiite Muslim cleric threatened on Friday to launch suicide attacks if U.S. troops attack him and his forces in the holy city of Najaf.

Muqtada al-Sadr, was speaking during the Friday prayers sermon in Kufa, another Shiite Muslim holy city few miles from Najaf. The area is mostly controlled by his Al-Mahdi Army militia, whose members have clashed with U.S. troops several times since their uprising began on April 4.

"Some of the Mujahideen brothers have told me they want to carry out martyrdom attacks but I am postponing this," al-Sadr said in front of thousands of worshippers. "When we are forced to do so and when our city and holy sites are attacked, we will all be timebombs in the face of the enemy."

He condemned suicide bombings Wednesday in the southern city of Basra that killed 73 people because they targeted Iraqi police and civilians.

U.S. forces are deployed outside Najaf, but their mission to capture or kill al-Sadr has effectively been put on hold while negotiators try to resolve the standoff. U.S. commanders say they have no intention for the time being of entering Najaf, the holiest Shiite city.

Al-Sadr is wanted in the April 2003 killing of a rival cleric.

Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari

From MEMRI, with thanks to Steve Z, comes the assertion by Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, former dean of the Faculty of Islamic Law at the University of Qatar, that the term jihad is being misused by radical Muslims. He says that "Jihad, in its true sense as defined in the Koran and as implemented by the Prophet [Muhammad] and his noble companions, is a means of defending differences, pluralism, and diversity."

Hmm. Sounds as if the Prophet Muhammad was sort of a Proto-John Kerry. But if Al-Ansari is right, of course, then the defeat of radical Islamic theology, which is used every day to recruit terrorists, is at hand. All that moderate Muslims have to do is go to the radicals with a Qur'an and a sira (biography of the Prophet) and show them how he defended differences, pluralism, and diversity.

Unfortunately, however, the assessment of Ibn Warraq is correct: "For every text the liberal Muslims produce, the mullahs will use dozens of counter-examples [that are] exegetically, philosophically, historically far more legitimate." I have written an entire book about the meaning of jihad and radical Islam's use of the term; suffice it here to quote just one tradition of Muhammad:

Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war ... When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them. ... If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya [the special tax for non-Muslims]. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them. (Sahih Muslim 4294)

Doesn't seem quite like encouraging pluralism to me. It would have been interesting if al-Ansari had attempted to answer objections of that kind, rather than just blandly asserting that the Prophet teaches diversity. Anyway, here is the report on what he did say:

In an article in the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, former dean of the Faculty of Islamic Law at the University of Qatar, stated that modern Islamic Fatwas (religious legal opinions) distort the meaning of Jihad to justify an aggressive ideology. The following are excerpts of his article:(1)

Jihad's True Definition: 'A Means of Defending Differences, Pluralism and Diversity'

"Following a kind invitation from the Kuwaiti Ministry of Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs, I participated last month in the seventh annual meeting on innovation in modern and future Islamic ideology.

"The meeting was attended by leading ulama [religious Muslim scholars] from across the Islamic world. The meeting was called to discuss 'Islam and Regional and Global Cooperation.' I was asked to prepare a paper on 'Trends in Understanding the Concept of Jihad and the Confusion Regarding this Term in Fatwas In Light of the Interests of the Muslim people.' This is a lengthy title, and what it meant was to clarify the true meaning of Jihad and how the Fatwas are confused about what [should be] considered Jihad and what should not, in light of contemporary applications.

"My paper dealt with basic elements of the contemporary applications [of Jihad]. Cooperation is not a matter of choice, but rather a vital necessity in an age in which interests dovetail, and no one country, no matter how powerful, can be self-sufficient, and the guardians of backwardness, who scare us off from opening up, on the pretext of safeguarding [our] unique identity, are actually going against the Koranic text...

"Jihad, in its true sense as defined in the Koran and as implemented by the Prophet [Muhammad] and his noble companions, is a means of defending differences, pluralism, and diversity. That is, it is [a means] of defending freedom of choice [as is written in the Koran] 'There is no coercion in Islam'...[2:256] From the beginning, Jihad has been defined by two goals: The first was a response to aggression and oppression [as told in the Koran 22:39]: 'To those against whom war is made, permission is given (to fight), because they are wronged; and verily, Allah is most powerful in assisting.' The second [goal] is the liberation of the persecuted peoples from tyrannical regimes, as happened to the Persian and Byzantine peoples."

From Expatica:

AMSTERDAM — A majority of MPs believe that the disputed El Tawheed mosque in Amsterdam, which sells a book urging Jihad, the killing of gays and the beating of women, should be closed if it is proven to have committed prosecutable offences.

Amid growing objections to the mosque, a parliamentary majority made up of the Liberal VVD, Christian Democrat CDA and populist LPF are now gunning for its closure. The Democrat D66 is not excluding the possibility of the mosque's closure either.

But the public prosecution must first determine if the mosque should be investigated. The Amsterdam Council is demanding that such an investigation be carried out, newspaper De Telegraaf reported on Friday.

Liberal VVD MP Geert Wilders said if the prosecution decides against investigating the mosque, Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner should instruct the prosecution to do so. If Donner refuses, Wilders will submit a motion demanding an investigation.

It was revealed earlier this week that the mosque is selling a book by Sheik Aboe Baker Djaber El Djezeïri, which advocates the right of a husband to beat his wife if she is disobedient.

Furthermore, the book "The Way of the Muslim" asserts that gay people should be thrown from the roof and stoned.

The Dutch Parliament is to hold an emergency debate about the El Tawheed mosque next week.

Earlier this month the mosque was at the centre of a storm about another book available at its open day organised to help combat its negative public image.

That book, "Fatwas of Muslim Women", says that women who lie deserve 100 blows and that the husband's duty of care for his wife is negated if she refuses him sex or leaves the home without his permission. One of its most controversial aspects is the call for Muslim girls to be circumcised

"My God, bin Laden is so handsome"

From the New York Times: glorification of jihad and Osama among Saudis.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, April 22 — On Wednesday morning, just hours before a suicide bomber demolished a Saudi police building in downtown Riyadh, the family of a young man was accepting congratulations for his death in the jihad over the border in Iraq, the one that enjoys no small support here.

"He went to Iraq seeking martyrdom because of the recent events there," Abdullah al-Enezi said of his younger brother Majid, who was training to be a computer technician.

"America's unjust policy toward the Muslims is the main reason," Mr. Enezi said by telephone from the family home in Al Kharj, a town just south of Riyadh. "Everyone feels this humiliation; he's not alone, there are so many young men who wish they could cross over into Iraq to join the jihad, but they can't. Thank God he was blessed with the ability to go."

In Saudi Arabia, a strategic ally of the United States, violence against the occupation in Iraq is seen by many as jihad, or a holy struggle, but virtually no one accepts violence as jihad when it unrolls here at home, in the heart of what is supposed to be the most Muslim of countries.

In Iraq, attacks by American troops serve as evidence to some that the United States occupation of a Muslim land must be reversed. Requests for God to avenge American actions pour down from mosque minarets, and some women university students sport Osama bin Laden T-shirts under their enveloping abayas to show their approval for his calls to resist the United States.

But many Saudis consider the attack here on Wednesday a shocking and unsettling crime, especially since the attackers chose for their first major government target an office building that virtually every adult male must visit to collect a license or car plates.

A group calling itself the Brigade of the Two Holy Mosques posted an unverifiable claim of responsibility on two Web sites on Thursday, bragging — in language that closely echoed Al Qaeda's — that the attack rained devastation on the "criminal, apostate" Saudi government and warning of further strikes. Some viewed the claim as dubious because it did not name the suicide bomber.

The toll rose to five overnight, apart from the bomber, after a police captain died, the Interior Ministry announced. Saudi television also showed a pitched gunfight between security forces and militants in a residential neighborhood in the coastal city of Jidda in which three militants were reported killed.

"May God curse you, you vermin, you people of filth and not jihad," said a posting on one of the same Web sites where the responsibility claim was posted, adding, in case anyone missed the point, a picture of coffins draped in American flags over the caption, "This is jihad."

Experts on the topic believe that most Saudis do not view the two battles as even remotely related.

"When people see Israeli operations in Palestine and the American cruelty in Iraq, they feel angry and frustrated," said Abdullah Bejad al-Oteibi, a former fundamentalist now working as a legal researcher. "They cannot control their anger and they admire bin Laden, so that is why many people volunteer for jihad. But when there are operations here, people feel angry and betrayed."

No officials or analysts have a firm command of how many operate in either sphere. Although it is likely they rely on similar theological underpinnings to justify their actions, anyone acting within Saudi Arabia would have to be far more radical to overcome the heavy sanctions against killing fellow Muslims.

"They might be the same group of people, from the same pool of jihadis," said Jamal Khashoggi, an expert on Islamic groups and an adviser to Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to London.

"But to recruit somebody to fight in Saudi Arabia is way more difficult than to fight in Iraq," he noted. "You have to be really militant to believe that a country where religion is practiced day and night is apostate."

The difficulty, some experts believe, refers back to a slightly different interpretation of the concept of jihad espoused by the Wahhabi teachings that hold sway in the kingdom. Whereas most sects in Islam view jihad as necessary only when attacked, the Wahhabis view it as a means to spread their religion.

"You should never initiate fighting without a reason; you undertake jihad when you are `defending' an Islamic nation, like the situation in Iraq or Palestine," said Abdel Rahem al-Lahem, a lawyer and specialist in militant groups.

The Wahhabi school, on the other hand, believes in smiting one's enemy first, Mr. Lahem said, although senior clerics preached against that idea last year after attacks here killed Muslims.

Saudi Arabia has a troubled history with preaching jihad, which was officially sanctioned against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980's. The ruling Saud family thought it could rid itself of the radical fringe, but instead their sponsorship now haunts them. Afghanistan became the training camp for elements now trying to overthrow them.

Hence there is no similar mobilization for going to Iraq.

"We do not believe in the American invasion of Iraq, it is illegal and illegitimate," said Soliman al-Oadah, a cleric once known for expressing hard-line views but whose pronouncements have grown more moderate in recent years. "We see that allowing people to go to Iraq has many negative points. For example, when the war is over, they will be trained and shaped in a way that could go out of control. They might go back to their home countries and act in bad way."

Fearing such an outcome, Saudi officials say they are ensuring that the long border with Iraq is sealed. They have installed heat sensors to detect movement, one official said, noting that events in Iraq are likely to inspire more problems at home.

"They can't do anything over there, and they think Arab governments are not doing anything," said Sayid A. al-Harthi, a senior adviser to Prince Nayif bin Abdel Aziz al-Saud, the interior minister. "They are consumed with anger which they transfer to their own government. If we let them, thousands would go, not just from Saudi Arabia, but from every Arab country."

Instead, the government has been trying to let off steam by, for example, allowing otherwise tightly controlled mosque sermons to inveigh heavily against the Americans.

"Oh God, avenge America, oh God, avenge its allies," the prayer leader at Prince Sultan bin Abdel Aziz mosque in a northern Riyadh neighborhood said last Friday. "Oh God, order your soldiers to show them torture, oh God divide them, oh God avenge them for what they are corrupting in Iraq."

Mr. Enezi, whose brother, 25, was killed fighting the Americans last Saturday, said he was unaware of any cleric swaying his brother's mind. He simply left one day about a month ago, entering Iraq from Syria.

"It was very normal, just like any other tourist crossing to Iraq," said Mr. Enezi. He called periodically to check in, and then his friends called to say he had died in a firefight with American marines near Qaim on the Syrian border. He was buried there.

"People are calling all the time to congratulate us — crying from happiness and envy," Mr. Enezi said.

Even among prosperous, upper-middle-class Saudis it is possible to hear support for such actions, especially after the string of events in the past month with the killing of two Hamas leaders in Gaza and President Bush's endorsement of Israeli plans to keep West Bank settlements and to prevent the long-cherished return of Palestinian refugees to Israel. Often the anger takes the form of endorsing Mr. bin Laden's calls for fighting the Americans.

"Young people are wearing T-shirts with bin Laden's picture on them just the way people used to wear pictures of Che Guevara," said Tufful al-Oqbi, a student at King Saud University. "It's simply because he is the only one resisting. Even if we reject his methods, it's because there is no other way, because this is the only way."

Fowziyah Abukhalid, a sociology professor at the university, has noticed a parallel phenomenon among her students. "Many young women are saying `My God, bin Laden is so charming,' or `My God, bin Laden is so handsome,' " she said. "He is politically appealing, that is why they view him as handsome."

Such feelings are volatile though, depending on whether the attacks are inside or outside the kingdom. "People literally change their minds and feelings every day about bin Laden," Mr. Oteibi said.

Shaukat Umer

Instead of being upset about the substance of the report, they seem to be only upset about the leak. From AP, with thanks to Twostellas:

GENEVA (AP)--Muslim countries Thursday protested the leaking of a U.N. report that accused Sudanese forces of raping non-Arab women and girls, bombing civilians and committing other atrocities in what may amount to "crimes against humanity."

"This is a matter of concern to all of us," said Pakistani Ambassador Shaukat Umer in demanding an investigation into who passed the report to reporters.

Umer, who was joined by delegates from Bahrain and Sudan in his protest, noted that Bertrand Ramcharan, the acting U.N. high commissioner for human rights, had denied that the report had been given to the news media by his office.

"The fact remains that this report has been leaked. It has been leaked from somewhere," Umer said. "Since member states apparently do not have this report, it would be reasonable to assume that it has been leaked from the office."

The 13-page report was the latest expression of U.N. alarm about indications that thousands of civilians had been killed and hundreds of thousands driven from their homes following a rebellion in the province.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which has been trying to care for refugees who have reached neighboring Chad, noted as early as last September reports of alleged atrocities in the province.

Ramcharan said he received the report Monday from a team of U.N. experts just back from visiting the refugees and had intended to make it public.

But he said held off because of a last-minute invitation from the Sudanese government for the team to be able to try to verify the allegations by visiting Darfur province.

The team was dispatched Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the invitation was received, and they are already in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, Ramcharan said.

"I have held to the belief that I will not release the document since my team is on the ground and I am sensitive to the security implications of this," he said.

He said, however, he would issue the report immediately if the team encounters "any difficulties on the ground."

Ramcharan said he also held back on the release to give the team an opportunity to look at the situation first hand and to review the document before it became public.

The report, based on interviews with some of the estimated 110,000 Sudanese refugees in Chad earlier this month, was obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press.

"The mission was able to identify disturbing patterns of massive human rights violations in Darfur, many of which may constitute war crimes and/or crimes against humanity," it said.

The government has denied that it is responsible for any atrocities.

The report said the atrocities against Africans were being committed by government forces and by Arab militias.

The team originally was supposed to visit to Darfur in connection with the visit to Chad, but the Sudanese government delayed granting permission.

Human rights groups said they were suspicious that the last-minute invitation from the government was part of an attempt to keep the report from coming before the commission before it adjourns its annual six-week session Friday.

"Denying the United Nations access is one of the delaying tactics the Sudanese government is using to pull the wool over the eyes of the international community," said Joanna Weschler of Human Rights Watch.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the commission earlier this month that he had "a deep sense of foreboding" about reports that Arab militia groups, with government backing, were engaged in "ethnic cleansing" against Africans in the province.

The report from the team that went to Chad said the government's campaign to put down a rebellion in a conflict that has intensified since early last year. The rebels have been demanding the government do more for the large, poverty-stricken area.

"There was a remarkable consistency in the witness testimony received by the mission in all places visited and in discussions with refugees who had entered Chad both many months ago and also very recently," the report said.

It said many witnesses said the government was using aircraft to attack villages and towns and that government forces or militias followed up with land attacks.

It said the attacks were often to destroy crops and property, but that there were also frequent reports of killings.

It also said, "a policy of using rape and other serious forms of sexual violence as a weapon of war seems to exist."

"There are consistent reports amongst refugee women from various locations that 'men in uniform' raped and abused women and young girls."

Rape was often committed by more than one man, sometimes in front of the victim's family, it said.

The effect was to cause hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes, it said. It said that, besides the refugees already in Chad, 700,000 people were believed to be homeless in Darfur as a result of the campaign.

The report was obtained as officials from the Sudanese government and two rebel groups met in Chad to discuss a peaceful end to a rebellion.

And like the good dhimmis they are, the Canadian government is distancing itself from the legislators who recognized the genocide. From the Globe and Mail, with thanks to Mentat:

Ankara — Turkey on Thursday condemned a decision by Canadian legislators to recognize as genocide the mass killing of Armenians during the First World War, accusing Canadian politicians of being “narrow minded.”

Canada's Parliament on Wednesday backed a resolution condemning the actions of Ottoman Turkish forces eight decades ago.

Government members were discouraged from voting for the motion, which was adopted 153-68 in the House of Commons. Prime Minister Paul Martin was absent during the vote.

The motion read: “... this House acknowledges the Armenian genocide of 1915 and condemns this act as a crime against humanity.”

In a written statement, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said Turkey strongly condemned the Canadian Parliament's decision and accused Canadian legislators of blindly “following those with marginal views.”

“Some narrow minded Canadian politicians were not able to understand that such decisions based on ... prejudiced information, will awaken feelings of hatred among people of different [ethnic] roots and disturb social harmony,” the statement said.

It said it was not up to parliaments to “reach conclusions over controversial periods in history” and insisted that the vote would not benefit Armenians in Canada or Armenia.

Canada is the 16th country to label the killings as genocide, a step already taken by Switzerland, France, Argentina and Russia, as well as 11 U.S. state governments.

Armenians say a 1915-1923 campaign to force them out of eastern Turkey amounted to a genocide and some 1.5 million people were killed. The Turkish government rejects the charge of genocide as unfounded and says that while 600,000 Armenians died, 2.5 million Muslims perished in a period of civil unrest.

In 2001, Turkey cancelled millions of dollars worth of defence deals with French companies after legislators in France recognized the genocide.

The statement did not say if Turkey planned similar sanctions but said Canadian politicians would “bear the responsibility for any negative developments the decision will bring.”

The Canadian vote split the ruling Liberal party between backbenchers and cabinet ministers. Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham said the Turkish government had warned that recognizing the genocide could have economic consequences and that he wanted to maintain good relations with Turkey.

On Thursday, the Canadian Embassy released a statement in an attempt to distance the government from Wednesday's vote.

“Private member's motions are not binding on the government of Canada,” the statement read.

Melanie Phillips on the hard choices before us. (Thanks to Nicolei.)

The killing by Israel of the Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantissi has been widely condemned in Britain and Europe. The Palestinians are screaming for revenge. Only America has stopped short of condemnation, confining itself to vague concern about consequences.

The Rantissi killing happened days after President Bush publicly endorsed Israel's policy of retaining some West Bank territory and refusing automatic right of settlement in Israel to the Palestinians. As a result, many in Britain may be inclined to the following conclusions: that Israel killed Rantissi because America has now given it carte blanche to do whatever it likes; that the killing will once again ratchet up the violence; and that instead of building upon America's support by keeping its head down, Israel has displayed its usual arrogance and aggression which has now killed off the chances of a political settlement.

This widespread reaction rests upon some profoundly dangerous misunderstandings, not just about Israel and the Middle East but about the wider phenomenon of global terror and what encourages it.

The first major error is the idea that Israel is torpedoing a political settlement. There is in fact no political settlement on the horizon. For all Tony Blair's insistence otherwise, the road map is dead in the water because the Palestinian Authority refuses even to attempt the map's first and most basic requirement, that it dismantle the infrastructure of terror.

Not only has it refused on the grounds that to confront Hamas would mean civil war, but Yasser Arafat's own militias — and even the PA's own policemen— are repeatedly involved in the human bomb attacks which are being regularly attempted (and mainly thwarted). You can't negotiate a settlement if there is no-one committed to peace with whom to negotiate.

Next, the idea of a connection between President Bush's statement and the Rantissi killing is demonstrably absurd. Israel decided some time ago that the only way to prevent yet more of its citizens being murdered by Hamas was to kill its entire leadership. Indeed, it tried unsuccessfully to kill Rantissi, the operational commander of Hamas's terrorism, last June, and killed its founder, Sheikh Yassin, a month ago.

Since its rules of military engagement forbid it from attacking if there is a risk of large scale civilian casualties, it could only strike when opportunities arose — and these have been rare.

In Britain, many see this as aggression. Undoubtedly, targeted killings are troubling. But since the alternative is to wait for more innocents to be blown apart by Hamas, how can that possibly be right? No legal authority in the world requires a state to sit on its hands while its citizens are systematically murdered.

When US forces killed Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay last year, there were plaudits from Tony Blair. Britain and the US are now hunting Osama bin Laden and his principal lieutenants in order to kill them. Earlier this month, at least 600 Iraqis were killed by the Americans in Fallujah with no outcry. Why, then, is Israel judged by a double standard?

The problem is that many in Britain simply don't grasp the reality of what is happening in Israel — from where, incidentally, I have just returned after a ten-day stay. Endless TV images of Israelis in tanks demolishing Palestinian houses, with an often hostile commentary, have created an impression of unbridled aggression.

In reality, Israel is fighting a war for its own survival that has now gone on for more than fifty years. The Palestinians have repeatedly stated that their aim remains the eradication of Israel altogether. Why is Israel alone deemed not entitled to defend itself?

But, people say, killing terrorists surely makes violence more likely. Well, history tells us that the opposite is true. It is the west's weakness and appeasement of terrorism over several decades which have encouraged the terror-masters to turn the screw ever tighter.

After all, Palestinian terror escalated during the years of the Oslo 'peace process', when a political settlement seemed more likely than at any time.

And here lies perhaps the biggest — and most bitterly ironic — error by Israel's critics. For to its Arab enemies, far from representing strength Israel actually embodies a terrible weakness.

Sure, Israel is armed to the teeth. And since Israel well understands that, for the Arabs, weakness rather than strength is the trigger for violence, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's decision to withdraw from Gaza has given targeted killings another strategic purpose — to show that Israel is not departing with its tail between its legs.

But the Arabs know that Israel is weak in their own terms. This is obvious in the way Israel and the Arabs respectively respond to attack. In 1982, Syria put down a revolt in Hama by wiping out at least 20,000 inhabitants. The Palestinians have been massacred in, or kicked out of, virtually every Arab state in which they have settled.

Israel, by contrast, goes in for pin-point targeted killings, or house-to-house terrorist hunts with a relatively severe attrition rate among its own forces. The weakness is embodied in the Palestinian taunt to the Israelis that 'we will win because you love life and we love death'.

And here, the warning for Britain and Europe too could not be starker. For like Israel, we are facing the same 'asymmetric warfare', in which conventional military might becomes worthless if countries are not prepared to use it against those who are willing to turn even children into human bombs.

The danger lies in not recognising that terrorism is encouraged by weakness, not strength. Al Qaeda attacked America because it perceived the west was decadent and so assumed it was not prepared to fight. It made a big mistake over America, but it got Europe (with the exception of Tony Blair over Afghanistan and Iraq) dead right.

The history of modern terrorism is a history of appeasement. From the first Palestinian plane hijacking in 1968, the response of the west was to assume there were legitimate grievances that had to be addressed. From that point, terrorists had every incentive to continue.

The Israelis themselves, in deep denial after half a century of annihilatory attacks, have also attempted appeasement — negotiating with the terrorists who have killed them, slapping them down for continuing to kill them and then making overtures again while still being killed by them. Now for the first time, they have said the charade has to stop.

But both they and we still face the same hideous dilemma. Terrorism can only be defeated by superior strength. This was shown in Falluja where (whatever other horrors Iraq still harbours) the huge American show of force produced a truce.

But in general, are we really prepared to use massive firepower? Are we in the west prepared to compromise our values by creating the carnage that may be necessary to defeat this new kind of terror warfare, which routinely uses human beings as both bombs and shields?

If it's a choice between our values and our lives, which course will we take? For in a war between those for whom life is everything and those for whom life is nothing, there's no contest.

Our values require us to distinguish between terrorism and self-defence. Moral courage means facing reality and making hard choices. Our survival depends on it.

Illustration courtesy of al-Muhajiroun

I wonder what brought that on?

WASHINGTON (AP) - Fearing that terrorists might target Congress, the House on Thursday approved a bill to set up speedy special elections if 100 or more of its members are killed.

The House, in a 306-97 vote, put aside for now the larger issue of whether the Constitution should be amended to allow for temporary appointments in the event that an attack caused mass fatalities among lawmakers.

The House, said Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., sponsor of the elections bill and a foe of appointments, "is rooted in democratic principles and those principles must be preserved at all costs."

Thursday's vote came two and a half years after the Sept. 11 attacks and the crash in Pennsylvania of United Flight 93, a plane that many believe was destined for the U.S. Capitol.

"Those passengers gave their lives to give us a second chance," said Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., a supporter of the broader constitutional approach. "Eternal shame on us if we do not take action" to protect Congress' survival after a possible attack.

The measure would require special elections within 45 days of the House speaker confirming that a catastrophic event had left at last 100 of the 435 seats vacant. Language was added to ensure that military personnel stationed overseas would have their voting rights protected.

Hellfire awaits the bombers, says Saudi Arabia's top Muslim cleric. Why? Because they killed Muslims. When he can say the same thing about the murder of non-Muslims, we'll be getting somewhere. From AP:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Those responsible for Saudi Arabia's latest suicide attack will be "burned in hell," the kingdom's top cleric said Thursday, as investigators searched for clues to the deadly bombing.

Five people, including two senior police officers and an 11-year-old girl, were killed along with the suicide bomber in Wednesday's attack on the administrative building of the General Security, the Interior Ministry said. It said 148 people were injured.

A shadowy Islamic extremist group, the purportedly al-Qaida inspired al-Haramin Brigades, released a statement on at least two Islamic Web sites claiming responsibility for the attack. The authenticity of the statement could not be verified.

Grand Mufti Abdul-Aziz al-Sheik, the kingdom's highest religious authority, condemned the attack "as one of the greatest sins."

"God revealed the criminality of this wayward group, which harms Islam and the nation," he said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

"Whoever kills an (Islamic) believer on purpose will be punished by being burned in hell, punished by God's anger and will be cursed and suffer great pain."

He was probably quoting the Qur'an, Sura 4:93: "If a man kills a believer intentionally, his recompense is Hell." The Qur'an contains no explicit statement to the effect that the same punishment awaits unbelievers, and in fact Islamic law mandates a less severe punishment for the killing of an unbeliever than for the killing of a believer.

Villepin

Tough talk from Dominique de Villepin. From Reuters, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

PARIS, France (Reuters) -- France must tackle the issue of training Muslim prayer leaders in a moderate "French Islam" that respects human rights and rejects terrorism, Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin says.

Speaking a day after he deported an Algerian imam for saying Islam let husbands beat adulterous wives, Villepin urged the country's prefects Thursday to expel any foreign preacher who advocated violence, hate, racism or abuses of human rights.

Only about 10 percent of imams in France are citizens and about half of all imams in the country speak French, experts say.

Most are imported from Arab countries, where some have been trained in radical Islamist views that clash with France's secular laws.

But mainstream Muslim leaders' calls for help require funds, scarce at a time when France is struggling to cut its huge budget deficit. Their appeals for subsidies also conflict with the country's strict separation of church and state.

"We must face the issue of training imams," Villepin told a meeting of prefects, who oversee the application of government policy in departments across France.

"I ask you to help the Muslim faith get organized better and more quickly so a real French Islam can emerge," he said, adding that training programs would help the official French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) to supervise imams.

Abdelkader Bouziane, 52, who preached in a mosque near Lyon, was packed off to Algiers Wednesday after he told a magazine that Islam allowed the stoning and beating of unfaithful wives.

France expelled another imam last week for preaching radical Islam and defending the Madrid train bombs that killed 191 people.

Zero tolerance

"We will not tolerate any preacher, of any philosophy or religion, who advocates violence, abuse of human rights, hate and racism or who has links to organizations that condone terrorism," Villepin said.

CFCM chairman Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the moderate Grand Mosque of Paris, requested state aid Tuesday to launch a seminary to train imams in a tolerant "French Islam."

The Grand Mosque and a rival group offer some imam training courses, but these are not officially recognized and teach differing versions of Islamic theology.

"The CFCM must tackle the problem of training imams, but the state must also help us with a minimum of financing to create a training institute," Boubakeur said.

Bordeaux imam Mahmoud Doua said prayer leaders in France -- some of whom have no training at all -- needed a modern education. "The ideal would be a university education in both the social sciences and Koranic studies," he said.

Mohammad Kouba, an administrator of the An-Nour mosque near Caen in Normandy, told Reuters his congregation never hired foreign imams because they did not understand life in France.

"We tell our girls to respect French laws on secularism, even if that means they have to take off their headscarves in state schools," he said. "An imam from Saudi Arabia would not tell you to obey a French law."

Qaradawi

Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi has affirmed that the struggle in Chechnya is indeed a jihad, and he doesn't mean that Chechen Muslims should struggle to better themselves. Qaradawi, you may recall, is the radical cleric who has praised suicide bombing and whose endorsement was touted in an Arabic brochure by a Boston Muslim group raising funds for a new mosque — but not in the English material.

Here's Qaradawi's fatwa, from the jihadist site Kavkaz Center:

In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.

It is the duty of every Muslim to back oppressed Muslims in all parts of the world. No doubt that Chechens fight in defense of their lands, honor and religion, and hence they are doing one of the best kinds of Jihad in the Cause of Allah.

Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi - «I think – Allah knows best– that the marvelous fighting carried out by our brothers in Chechnya is considered one of the best kinds of Jihad in the Cause of Allah. They fight – in defense of their lands, honor and religion – a tyrannical oppressive force, which does not fear Allah nor have mercy on any creature. There is a scholarly consensus (Ijma’) that whoever fights in defense of his religion, land and household, and is killed in that fighting, is considered a Martyr (Shahid).

We all know that the people of Chechnya did not launch an attack against anyone; however they have been attacked and killed in their homes. But we are sure that Allah the Almighty will help them put their enemy to rout, grant them victory and help them gain supremacy in their lands. Allah, Exalted be He, says: «Permission to fight (against disbelievers) is given to those (believers) who are fought against them (believers) victory». (Al-Hajj: 39)

The recent days augurs victory for Chechnya, and the Promise of Allah will for sure come true soon. Allah, Exalted and Glorified be He, says, «If Allah is your helper none can overcome you...» (Al ‘Imran: 160)»

Allah Almighty knows best.

From the Times Online: more radical attempts to strong-arm the House of Saud. Note the fact that the self-proclaimed bombers position themselves as the defenders of Islam.

An extremist group linked to al-Qaeda has purportedly claimed responsibility for yesterday's deadly suicide bomb in Riyadh.

At least four people were killed and 148 injured when a car driven by a suspected suicide bomber exploded, destroying the Saudi security services headquarters in the capital.

A statement published on an Islamic web site today read: "The Brigade of the Two Holy Mosques in the Arabian Peninsula has succeeded in blowing up the headquarters of the special security and anti-terrorism forces related to the interior ministry.

"The explosion totally destroyed the targeted building and killed and wounded tens of soldiers, officers and commanders of the criminal and apostate organisation."

The radical group has made several such claims in the past.

It was the worst terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia since suicide bombings that killed 50, including nine Americans, at residential compounds for Westerners last year. It was also believed to be the first terrorist bombing of a Saudi Government target rather than a Western one.

The statement said that the attack was launched against those who "are aggressive against Muslims, kill the Mujahidin, imprison the ulemas (religious scholars), the reformists and the young"

It went on to insist that the group "will not forget the blood of the martyrs" in the anti-terror hunt by Saudi security forces in the kingdom, and added: "Our wounds can only be healed by jihad (holy war)."

Addressing the "tyrants" in Saudi Arabia, the group warned that yesterday's attack "is only one punishment technique that we are going to inflict on you. These techniques will not stop, (and will materialise) through explosions, assassinations and other forms of vengeance," the statement said.

"If the brave Mujahidin of the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, for whom God has assured victory ... stops attacking you ... (in favour of) the occupier war by the crusaders ... we will devote ourselves to inflicting on you the price for apostasy, crime and corruption," the statement claimed.

The attack was mounted yesterday by a suicide bomber who drove up to a protective barrier outside the six-storey building in the capital and exploded his bomb after he was challenged by guards, one witness said.

The explosion was heard at least three miles away. It tore off the building's façade, ignited fires and gutted dozens of vehicles. A huge cloud of black smoke and dust covered the immediate area.

The city had been on high alert after five other large car bombs were intercepted in recent days and after the deaths of several Saudi policemen killed in gun battles with militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades.

"We succeeded in preventing five like this and one got through," an Interior Ministry source said.

The building was believed to be the headquarters of the Saudi domestic security service, whose officers have been in the front line in the kingdom's crackdown on Islamic militants. It was an establishment target that suggested that the terrorists were now seeking a direct confrontation with the Saudi state.

Last month an internet message purportedly from al-Qaeda threatened Saudi police, intelligence service workers and other security agents, saying that to target them "in their homes or workplace is a very easy matter".

The attack yesterday seemed to send the signal that if the terrorists could hit such an obvious target, despite increased security in the city and numerous roadblocks, they could strike anywhere in the world's biggest oil-producing country.

The Brigade has previously claimed responsibility for blowing up a Saudi security officer's car outside his home in Riyadh in December, and gave warning that it would "liquidate" anyone who passes on information to the Saudi authorities to help the kingdom capture armed extremists.

The internet statement today will be analysed for authenticity by local and foreign intelligence agencies, who must determine whether the attack was the work of desperate and outmanoeuvred militants, or if it signals a greater threat to the country than was realised.

"Every time the security forces seem to be making a difference, either a new cell is uncovered or there's a shoot-out or there's a bombing," one analyst said.

The Saudi authorities have been involved in a determined crackdown on al-Qaeda-linked militants inside the kingdom since the first devastating attack on a residential compound last May, which killed more than 30 people, including two Britons. Scores of militants have been killed in raids and gunfights, hundreds of others have been arrested and weapons caches seized.

American officials have praised recent Saudi efforts against the militants. Earlier they had expressed disquiet at the country's perceived tolerance for radical Islam - 15 of the 19 September 11 suicide hijackers were Saudi nationals. Last week, one of Saudi Arabia's most-wanted al-Qaeda militants, in a video carried on an Islamist website, called on Muslims to kill Americans everywhere and vowed attacks against Arab leaders allied to Washington.

The latest carnage will worry the 25,000 Britons in the kingdom, but they have become resilient to the terrorist threat and are used to taking measures for their personal security. Many live in fortress-like compounds, vary their routes to work and check under their cars for bombs before they get in.

The latest "wardens' notice" posted on the British Embassy web site earlier this month, said that "terrorists remain determined to carry out further attacks in Saudi Arabia. These may be in the final stages of preparation."

Last week the United States ordered the departure of non-essential government employees and their relatives from Saudi Arabia. It also urged private citizens to leave.

Persson

Four Swedish Muslims have been arrested, and a spokesman is complaining that the arrests are simply examples of discrimination. From the BBC, with thanks to Filtrat:

Swedish police say they have arrested four suspected Muslim militants.

They were detained in operations in the capital, Stockholm, and the southern city of Malmo on Monday, police said.

Officials say the four have links with "Islamic extremism" outside Europe, but gave no details. Prime Minister Goran Persson welcomed the arrests.

According to Swedish media reports, the suspects are of foreign origin and were detained in connection with attacks on US-led forces in Iraq.

One newspaper said the arrests were made "based on information that US authorities sent to Sweden".

Mr Persson declared the arrests justified "in a law-and-order society".

An outspoken critic of the US-led invasion of Iraq, the prime minister said he was not surprised that suspected militants had been caught in his country - which is neutral.

"The fight against terrorism must take place also in Sweden," he said.

'Discrimination'

Mr Persson said: "We have long received many people [from abroad] in Sweden.

"Among them there are of course people who sympathise strongly with groups today connected to terror activities."

More than 400,000 Muslims live in the country.

However a spokesman for the community implicitly condemned the arrests.

Mahmoud Aldebe, chairman of Sweden's Association of Muslims, said there was not "a single Muslim in Sweden who deserves to be called terrorist".

"Since 11 September discrimination against Muslims and Arabs has burst into the open," he added.

Muslims in mosque near Geneva

The Swiss government has announced that several Islamic radical groups are operating in Switzerland, including Hamas. Swiss Muslims had an opportunity to say, "We will gladly cooperate with government anti-terror initiatives, as we are just as anxious as non-Muslim Swiss to root terror out of our midst." Instead they are complaining about the prospect of a "witch hunt." From Swissinfo via NZZ Online, with thanks to Nicolei and Alex:

Muslim leaders have expressed fears of a “witch-hunt” against the 300,000-strong community in Switzerland. Their alarm follows government revelations that members of half a dozen militant Islamic groups are operating secretly on Swiss soil.

The Federal Refugee Office on Tuesday confirmed a report in “Le Temps” newspaper that these groups include the Tunisian Islamic Front; Hamas, the Palestinian militant Islamic group; and Algeria’s Islamic Salvation Front.

Spokesman Dominique Boillat told swissinfo his department was working closely with the Federal Police Office to monitor the situation.

“We are responsible for asylum seekers and if we suspect that people could be dangerous to the safety of this country then we have to signal this and they will then be placed under surveillance by the police,” he said.

“Sometimes these people have contacts with terrorist groups or they could be contacted here in Switzerland by terrorist groups and later used for arms trafficking.”

Police surveillance

News of a militant presence and police surveillance operations have prompted alarm among Switzerland’s Muslims that the community will now be hounded.

These fears were stoked in January this year when Swiss police arrested eight foreign nationals suspected of links to last May’s terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia.

Hafid Ouardiri, spokesman for Geneva’s Islamic Cultural Foundation, said he was “terrified” that people would mistakenly link Islam with extremism.

“This is beginning to become unbearable,” he said. “People are going to confuse a tiny minority with the great majority of Muslims.”

Similar concerns have been raised by British Muslims following a series of high-profile arrests related to alleged terrorism offences.

Nadia Karmous, the head of the cultural association of Muslim women in Switzerland, said she was astonished to hear that radical groups were active in the country.

“As far as we’re concerned, there is no rise in Islamism, but rather an increase in Islamophobia,” she said.

Witch-hunt

Boillat categorically denied that the authorities themselves were involved in any systematic targeting of Switzerland’s Muslims.

But he admitted that the government had become more sensitive to potential threats in the wake of the September 11 attacks in the United States.

“We would like to reassure the Muslim community that there is no witch-hunt by the authorities,” said Boillat.

“The impression the public is getting is that there is a real problem - which there isn’t. We are concerned about a very, very small number of people, and we have the means to control [them].”

Wrong message

Professor Reinhard Schulze, director of the Institute for Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Bern, said he believed the situation was being blown out of all proportion.

Schulze maintains that out of a Muslim population of around 300,000, there are only one or two extremists or “Jihadis” likely to be actively in contact with terrorist groups.

He says the majority of those being monitored by the Swiss authorities do not pose a threat.

“These people do not represent a danger to Switzerland, because Switzerland is not a target for these groups,” he explained. “They consider Switzerland a place of refuge and not a place to carry out operations.”

Demonisation

And he sympathised with Muslim leaders who fear a whole community is in danger of being demonised.

“It’s understandable. Even if there are one or two people in contact with terrorist organisations, they are not representative of the Muslim community as a whole. You cannot blame the whole community,” he said.

“My impression is that the officials are exaggerating the situation a bit and maybe contributing to the impression that there is a witch-hunt going on. I can understand why the Muslim community is worried about this.”

Jürg Schertenleib, spokesman for the non-governmental Swiss Refugee Council, takes a similar view. He says the authorities are right to take action where there is a clearly identifiable threat.

But he warned against giving the impression that Switzerland was a hotbed for Islamic fundamentalism.

“We shouldn’t forget that in many other countries the authorities are using the pretext that someone is a terrorist to justify repression,” he said.

More on the terror threat at sea, from The Daily Star (with thanks to Nicolei):

There are growing concerns that the global energy industry, particularly in the Middle East, could become the focus of terrorist attacks. Osama bin Laden has identified energy facilities as targets in his war against the West. In the second and concluding article on this issue, The Daily Star examines the dangers at sea.

BEIRUT: Admiral Thomas Fargo, the top US military commander in the Asia-Pacific region, said last month that the Americans were considering deploying Marines and Special Forces troops on high-speed vessels to protect the strategic Straits of Malacca, which links the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. The fastest route around the southernmost tip of continental Asia, it is a vital energy artery from the Middle East to Asia.

The narrow, 900-kilometer waterway is one of the world's busiest shipping routes. More than 25 percent of the world's trade and oil, and 80 percent of Japan's oil imports, go through it. It is already plagued by pirates, but security chiefs fear it is also a potential magnet for terrorists. The maritime chokepoints in the Middle East - the Suez Canal and the Bab el-Mandeb Straits at either end of the Red Sea, the Strait of Hormuz (the only way in and out of the Gulf), and the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles in Turkey - are also high-risk zones.

The suicide bombing of the French supertanker Limburg in the Gulf of Aden by Al-Qaeda on Oct. 6, 2002 as it headed for Asia with a cargo of 400,000 barrels of Saudi crude was a wake-up call. A small boat loaded with explosives was rammed into the tanker by an Al-Qaeda team. It was the same tactic, first employed by Tamil Tiger rebels against the Sri Lankan Navy in the 1980s, that Al-Qaeda used to strike the US destroyer Cole in Aden Harbor on Oct. 12, 2000.

Although there have been no known attacks on tankers since the Limburg, a group of Islamic extremists in Morocco were planning attacks on ships traversing the Straits of Gibraltar, the western gateway to the Mediterranean, before they were arrested in 2002.

Geography dictates that the mammoth supertankers of today have to use such waterways, which are often narrow and studded with islands in which pirates and terrorists can hide. One of these lumbering behemoths, set afire and spewing crude, could block these vital maritime arteries and cause widespread economic disruption.

"Tankers are sitting ducks. They don't have any security, any protection," says Harry Banga of the Hong Kong-based Noble Group, a shipping company.

Dozens of tankers were sunk or damaged by Iranian Revolutionary Guards using speedboats armed with rocket-propelled grenades during the so-called "tanker war" of the 1980-88 conflict with Iraq, but the economic impact was minimal. The disruption in oil supplies was not sufficient to cause major problems. But a sustained assault on the energy industry on a global scale could have serious repercussions.

While attacking moving ships, even in confined waters, is much more difficult than striking static targets on land, the arrest of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in November 2002, identified as Al-Qaeda's operational commander in the Gulf region and an alleged specialist in maritime operations, pointed to plans to attack shipping targets. The US Navy's maritime liaison office in the Gulf had warned several weeks earlier that Al-Qaeda was looking to hit shipping in the region.

US authorities said that Nashiri had been engaged in flight training in the tiny emirate of Umm al-Quwain, the first indication that Al-Qaeda may have been preparing for new aerial attacks, possibly against a tanker.

Born in Saudi Arabia to Yemeni parents, Nashiri played a key role in planning the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, in which 17 American sailors were killed, as well as an abortive attack against another US destroyer, the Sullivans, nine months earlier, and the bombing of the Limburg, in which one seaman was killed and the tanker set ablaze.

According to one Western counterterrorism official, Nashiri's interrogation after his arrest produced a lot of information on Al-Qaeda's operational planning for attacks on supertankers, "particularly their vulnerability to suicide attacks and the economic impact of such operations."

He told The Daily Star: "They actually have a naval manual on this. It tells them the best places on the vessels to hit, how to employ limpet mines, fire rockets or rocket-propelled grenades from high-speed craft and turn liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers into floating bombs. They are also shown how to use fast craft packed with explosives and the use of trawlers, or ships like that, that can be turned into bombs and detonated beside bigger ships or in ports where there are often petroleum or gas storage areas that could go up as well. They even talk of using underwater scooters for suicide attacks."

Last year the London-based International Maritime Bureau (IMB), which monitors security on the world's oceans, reported a suspiciously high number of tugboats were being hijacked in the Malacca Strait. The agency warned shipping authorities that these could be packed with explosives and rammed into tankers carrying gas or petroleum products, or into port facilities close to large cities.

The burgeoning trade in LNG, much of which goes through the Straits of Malacca, heightens both the threat of such maritime terrorism and the devastation it could produce.

The IMB's Piracy Reporting Center also noted another disturbing change in the pattern of pirate attacks. In the past marauders tended to board ships to steal money or valuable cargo. Now they often try to steal specific types of ship to order, pointing to an emerging collaboration between criminal gangs and invisible paymasters who may well be transnational terrorists.

Largely Muslim Southeast Asia has become a hornet's nest of expanding activity by Islamic extremists in the last couple of years. Some militant groups like the Tamil Tigers have successfully waged anti-shipping campaigns, developing dedicated maritime commandos with underwater capabilities, including demolition. Those kind of operations put coastal refineries and oil loading terminals at risk, and the Gulf states are seeking to develop underwater surveillance systems to protect their facilities.

Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, the Philippines, Malaysia and more recently Thailand are all plagued by Islamic violence - and all are considered high-risk piracy zones as well. That could be a deadly combination. Indeed, militants of the avowedly Islamic Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines have a history of launching maritime attacks and claim to have blown up at least two ferries with considerable loss of life.

Indonesia, Southeast Asia's biggest oil and gas producer, pumps around 1.1 million barrels of crude daily and exports 23 million tons of LNG a year. Malaysia, which has large oil fields in Borneo, is the second largest producer in the region. Singapore is Asia's oil trading hub and has four refineries with a total capacity to process 1.26 million barrels of oil daily. Government figures show that the island state has around 25 million barrels of refined products in commercial storage at any given time - making it a fat target for terrorists.

Cal Thomas examines the Gaza pullout agreement in light of jihad.

By deciding to give up areas populated by Jews in Gaza (known as "settlements" by those who regard it as "occupied territory") and effectively annexing disputed territory in Judea and Samaria (known as the West Bank by those who also consider this area "occupied"), Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has decided to risk his country's future on promises he received from President Bush.

On paper, those promises sounded pretty good for Israel, which will continue to control land, sea and air passages throughout Gaza to prevent a terrorist base from being established.

Sharon also took from his meeting with the president a green light to continue building the "security fence" to keep terrorists from entering some of the main population centers in the heart of Israel and to go after terrorists, such as Hamas' new leader, who was killed by Israel on Saturday.

Perhaps most important for his country's stability is that Sharon got his wish for no "right of return" by Palestinians, an infusion that would overwhelm the Jewish population. In the president's letter of understanding to Sharon, he says that any return should be to an eventual Palestinian state, not Israel.

As with previous agreements, including the "road map," this "understanding" requires a response from the Palestinian side. Israel and the United States reasonably expect that in exchange for this unilateral action ceding Gaza to the Palestinians, the Palestinians will stop trying to tear down the Jewish state and start building one of their own.

Based on past performance, there is little likelihood that the Palestinian side will do this and end the jihad rhetoric that offers nothing but blood and misery instead of hope and a meaningful future.

Sharon believes that the offering up of Gaza as Palestinian territory will disabuse the world of the notion that terror "is the result of us sitting on their land," according to a senior member of the Israel delegation. But certain people always find ways to blame Israel for everything.

What should be troubling is the number of promises made by previous American presidents that were not fulfilled, either because the United States failed to uphold them or an Israeli prime minister did not press the matter.

In 1956, President Eisenhower made commitments to get Israel to withdraw from the Sinai. In 1967, President Johnson failed to implement those commitments, and the Six-Day War followed.

In 1970, President Nixon made promises to end the war of attrition between Israel and Egypt. Egypt violated the agreement, and the United States failed to live up to its commitments. The 1973 Yom Kippur War followed, which killed 2,800 Israelis.

In 1996 and again in 1998, President Clinton promised to refrain from pressuring Israel into making further concessions until the Palestinian Authority altered its charter, which calls for the elimination of Israel. The charter was not altered, but Israel was expected to honor its promises.

In 2000, Clinton committed $800 million in special assistance to induce Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon. Israel withdrew, and Hezbollah quickly filled the geographic and military vacuum, increasing terrorist attacks. The promised assistance never arrived.

Now President Bush has made a new commitment to Israel.

The depth of the problem is revealed in a new study by the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, which has been examining what the next generation of Egyptian children are learning about Israel.

In Egypt's regular and religious educational system, the books celebrate jihad, or Islamic war, and exalt those who die in the fight against "nonbelievers." The center says jihad is described in military terms, not as a spiritual endeavor, as so many Muslim leaders claim.

"Jihad is encouraged and those who refrain from taking part in it are denounced," says the report.

Sharon's pronouncements sound good, and the strategy might work. But the Palestinian track record should warn Sharon not to bet his ranch on it.

Willie Brigitte

From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Police on Thursday arrested an Australian man accused of planning a terrorist act and having links to a French terror suspect implicated in a plot to attack a nuclear reactor on Sydney's outskirts, a top police official said.

Lodhi Faheem, 34, was charged in Sydney's Central Local Court with seven offenses, including preparing for a terrorist act and recruiting for a terrorist organization, Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said. He did not elaborate on the charges.

The case stemmed from a terrorism investigation of Willie Virgile Brigitte, a 35-year-old French man who was extradited from Australia to France in October, Keelty said.

Faheem, of Pakistani origin, was denied bail.

He is the second person to face charges under tough new federal terrorist laws in Australia and faces a maximum penalty of life in prison if convicted.

Brigitte has been implicated in an Australian-based terror cell that reportedly was considering attacks on a nuclear reactor on Sydney's outskirts and other targets. Australian and French intelligence officials have been working together to try uncovering the reported cell.

He also is being questioned about the Sept. 9, 2001, killing of anti-Taliban military commander Ahmed Shah Massood in Afghanistan.

Last week, 21-year-old medical student Izhar ul-Haque was arrested and charged for allegedly training with Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba in January and February last year.

Ul-Haque remains in custody until his next court appearance in May. If convicted, he faces 25 years in jail.

This is a strange story. Didn't the gunman know that the Spanish are leaving Iraq? Did he care? From Reuters, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

BAGHDAD, April 22 (Reuters) - A lone gunman in traditional Arab dress killed a Spanish civilian and seriously wounded his Iraqi translator in Baghdad on Thursday, police sources said.

They said the man was shot in the head while in the Iraqi capital's Adhamiyah neighbourhood, a Sunni Muslim stronghold. The translator was also hit by bullets and rushed to a nearby hospital.

Risks to foreigners in Iraq have spiralled this month with the abduction of about 50 foreign civilians and the killing of at least five others. Most of the hostages have been freed unharmed.

Spain, key member in the U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq and toppled leader Saddam Hussein a year ago, plans to withdraw its troops from Iraq by the end of May to the dismay of Washington.

Crown Prince Abdullah at the international conference on Islam and terrorism in Riyadh on Tuesday. (SPA)

LGF has an intriguing juxtaposition of news items: Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah has declared Islam a religion of peace. However, some recent sermons suggest that not everyone has gotten the idea. First, Abdullah, from Arab News:

RIYADH, 21 April 2004 — Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, yesterday reaffirmed that Islam is a religion of peace and moderation.

The crown prince was delivering the inaugural address at an international conference on Islam and terrorism, organized by Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University.

“Islam condemns all forms of terrorism and we must strive to correct wrong perceptions about our religion,” he said. “This is my vision.”

More than 200 experts on terrorism and academics from European, American and Asian universities and think-tanks attended the event, titled “The Stand of Islam on Terrorism, Violence and Extremism.”

Higher Education Minister Dr. Khaled Al-Angary, in a keynote address for the conference, reiterated Saudi Arabia’s resolve to combat terror.

Constant clashes between the West and the Islamic world were a bad omen for the future of the world, the education minister said, adding that the three-day conference was intended to clarify these misconceptions.

Dr. Al-Angary also underlined the importance of unearthing the roots of terrorism and extremism.

He said Islamic teachings called for dialogue, and asked the faithful to expose lies and accusations about the religion.

Later, the crown prince laid the foundation stone of Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University’s SR350-million women’s campus and of an SR100 million project for a college of languages, translation and computing.

The university has been trying to shed its extremist image after it emerged that a number of terror suspects on the government’s most-wanted list were IMSIU graduates.

On the sidelines of the conference, it screened a documentary highlighting the growth of the university and its contribution to curbing extremism and violence.

Gee, that's swell. Yet meanwhile, on Saudi TV, Shaykh Salih Bin-Abdallah Bin-Humayd denounces extremism in language obviously meant to refer to Al-Qaeda, but his overall message is not quite peaceful. From IMRA:

Riyadh Kingdom of Saudi Arabia TV1 in Arabic, official television station of the Saudi Government, at 0929 GMT on 16 April 2004 carries a 25-minute live sermon from the holy mosque in Mecca.

Shaykh Salih Bin-Abdallah Bin-Humayd delivers the sermon. ... The imam then recalls how the Al-Khawarij [dissident group in early Islam, which rebelled against caliphs whom it regarded as corrupt] killed two caliphs, fought the messengers' companions, and alleged that theirs was the only right path. The imam also warns Muslims against "religious extremism," which he describes as "the reason behind destruction." The imam says that "acts of violence, such as bombings, destruction, and bloodshed cannot defeat great values, destroy great achievements, liberate a nation, or impose a religious school," stressing that "extremism, violence, and terrorism result only in destruction." ...

In the second sermon, the imam says "the recent sinful aggressions, reckless actions, and criminal behavior will not discourage our brothers, the security men, from carrying out their duties," urging everybody to be alert to "what is being concocted against this nation, its religion, its people, its security, and its leaders."

In conclusion, the imam asks God to strengthen Islam, protect our homeland and our leaders, support the "mujahidin" in Palestine and elsewhere, "destroy the Zionist Jews," and lift the suffering of the Iraqi people.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, the same message:

Gaza Palestine Satellite Channel Television in Arabic, official television station of the Palestinian Authority, and Gaza Voice of Palestine in Arabic -- Second Program -- official radio station of the Palestinian Authority broadcasting from Gaza -- at 0950 GMT on 16 April 2004 carry a 25-minute live sermon from Shaykh Zayid Mosque in Gaza.

Shaykh Ibrahim al-Mudayris delivers the sermon. After praising God and His messenger, he says suffering leads to victory, citing relevant Koranic verses. ... He says: "Our battle with our enemy is bigger than some politicians and media men think. Our battle is not with a Zionist prime minister, a government, or a jailer. The battle is between Islam and unbelief in this land. It is a battle in which crusaders and World Zionism have united. Zionism and crusaders are two sides of one coin. We are waging a big battle against Zionism, which rules the world and influences international decisions and economies. This alleged state will soon vanish, God willing. We are waging a big battle with crusaders and World Zionism, which dominates US decision-making."

The imam then denounces the US President for urging Palestinians to relinquish their repatriation right in order to "please his Zionist masters and to keep his post." Addressing President Bush, the imam says: "You are mistaken, Bush. Your decisions and statements will dump you into the dustbin of history. We stand firm on this land, and we defy all these decisions and statements though our belief in our rights."

In conclusion, the imam asks God to support Palestinian prisoners, destroy Jews, "take revenge against the United States and Israel," and help our kinfolk in Iraq and Palestine.

As well as in Syria:

Damascus Syrian Arab Republic Radio in Arabic, official station of the Syrian Government, at 0954 GMT on 16 April 2004 carries a 29-minute live sermon from Al-Rawdah Mosque in Damascus.

Shaykh Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman Barakat delivers the sermon. ... The imam urges the Arab nation to close ranks in the face of "the arrogant Zionist enemy," to put minor differences aside, "to deter the Zionist enemy," and to help the fraternal Iraqi people "restore their security, stability, and prosperity." He says President Bashar al-Asad's tour of a number of Arab countries "has cleared the Arab atmosphere and reactivated Arab and Islamic solidarity in order to regain the land and rights from the Zionist enemy and to achieve a just and comprehensive peace based on the resolutions of international legitimacy."

In conclusion, the imam asks God to unite Arabs and Muslims, to help them defeat their enemy, "to destroy the Zionist Jews and their supporters," and to give success to the Syrian president.

Destroy the Zionist Jews. Revenge upon the U.S. Remember, these are not political rallies, but sermons inside mosques (in each case carried on government television). What about the peaceful picture Abdullah painted? Is there room in it for this kind of sermon? Imagine the uproar if a Christian preacher prayed that God destroy -- any group. If Abdullah's bland assertion that Islam condemns terrorism doesn't encompass sermons like these, it's meaningless.

The destroyed Saudi national police headquarters building in Riyadh, after the car bomb explosion (AP)

The House of Saud continues to reap what it has sown, and the mujahedin they have supported for so long continue to try to compel them to end their alliance with the U.S., or be forced from power so that someone else can end it. From AP:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - A suicide attacker bombed a security police building in the Saudi capital Wednesday, killing at least four people and wounding 148. The attack had the hallmark of an al-Qaida operation, officials said.

The explosion, heard three miles away, shattered the glass facades of nearby buildings and ignited several fires. Smoke billowed from the seven-story General Security building, where workers issue drivers license renewals and do other administrative tasks.

The deathtoll was expected to rise after hospital officials reported early Thursday that body parts have been recovered possibly indicating four more deaths, in addition to the four already confirmed by the Interior Ministry.

The bombing came about 2 p.m., a time when staff would have been leaving their offices. The headquarters of the Saudi Security Forces used to be in the building. Some security forces still work in part of the building, a Saudi official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A woman who lives nearby, Hanan Batteesha, said that after the explosion, "We heard wails and cries, then saw our neighbors running down the stairs." She rushed out with her two children.

"The fronts of the buildings around us were damaged. The air conditioners were mangled, and there was smoke everywhere," she said.

The Interior Ministry said the assailant tried to drive his vehicle into the General Security building.

When stopped by guards, the driver exploded the car about 100 feet from the gate, the government said.

Five other vehicles were apprehended with explosives, the Saudi official said.

No Americans were hurt in the bombing, said U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Carol Kalin. Half an hour after the attack, Deputy U.S. Secretary of State Richard Armitage met with Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal at the Foreign Ministry.

Crown Prince Abdullah and Interior Minister Prince Nayef visited the wounded in the hospital.

"I am sorry that those criminals are Muslims," Nayef told reporters. He said Saudis should not cooperate or sympathize with militants "because those who do will be considered criminals."

"The terrorists are not targeting foreigners; they are targeting the nation," Nayef said.

The General Security service has been heavily involved in the campaign against Islamic militants that followed the suicide attacks in May and November 2003 in Riyadh.

Those attacks, also vehicle bombs, killed 51 people including the assailants. They were blamed on al-Qaida, which carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

A U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the attack has the hallmark of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and appears to be related to the terrorist group. Al-Qaida, the official noted, has previously used car bombs in Riyadh.

The Saudi official agreed that Wednesday's attack fit al-Qaida's pattern.

Saudi U.S. ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan said in Washington that the attack was aimed at "the Saudi people and the royal family and officials of the government ... are all Saudi citizens," said Bandar.

Bandar, who spoke after meeting with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, pledged his nation would "fight them (terrorists) hard, there will be no compromise."

The attack came days after the United States ordered the departure of nonessential U.S. government employees and family members from Saudi Arabia. The U.S. Embassy in Riyadh issued an advisory warning of "credible indications of terrorist threats aimed at American and Western interests in Saudi Arabia."

Last month, an Internet message purportedly from al-Qaida threatened Saudi security officers, saying that to attack them "in their homes, or workplace, is a very easy matter."

Saudi police said last weekend that they seized three booby-trapped Sport Utility Vehicles loaded with more than four tons of explosives. The vehicles had apparently been abandoned by militants involved in a shootout with security forces.

There were conflicting accounts on the death toll throughout the day.

The Interior Ministry said four were killed: two police officers, an adult and an 11-year-old Syrian girl. But the ministry's statement did not include the suicide bomber, whose death was reported to The Associated Press by a security official speaking on condition of anonymity.

Officials from the three hospitals that admitted casualties said at least nine people were killed.

The Interior Ministry said 148 people were wounded, three critically, according to the official Saudi Press Agency. Forty-five remained hospitalized.

The casualty tolls could rise as rescue workers were still going through the rubble late Wednesday. Most of the casualties at King Faisal Specialist Hospital were police, but there were also four children, said hospital spokesman Fahd al-Shaar.

Sayful Islam: "When I watched those planes go into the Twin Towers, I felt elated"

The Evening Standard profiles a group of British Muslims from the notorious Al-Muhajiroun, who admire Osama and talk openly about bombing London and the glories of violent jihad — all the while collecting British welfare money. Note that Sayful Islam explains his turn to radicalism by saying, ""I made a decision that I wanted to follow what Islam really said." (Thanks to LGF.)

Four young British Muslims in their twenties - a social worker, an IT specialist, a security guard and a financial adviser - occupy a table at a fast-food chicken restaurant in Luton. Perched on their plastic chairs, wolfing down their dinner, they seem just ordinary young men. Yet out of their mouths pour heated words of revolution.

"As far as I'm concerned, when they bomb London, the bigger the better," says Abdul Haq, the social worker. "I know it's going to happen because Sheikh bin Laden said so. Like Bali, like Turkey, like Madrid - I pray for it, I look forward to the day."

"Pass the brown sauce, brother," says Abu Malaahim, the IT specialist, devouring his chicken and chips.

"I agree with you, brother," says Abu Yusuf, the earnest-looking financial adviser sitting opposite. "I would like to see the Mujahideen coming into London and killing thousands, whether with nuclear weapons or germ warfare. And if they need a safehouse, they can stay in mine - and if they need some fertiliser [for a bomb], I'll tell them where to get it."

His friend, Abu Musa, the security guard, smiles radiantly. "It will be a day of joy for me," he adds, speaking with a slight lisp.

As they talk, a man with a bushy beard, dressed in a jacket emblazoned with the word "Jihad", stands and watches over them, handing around cups of steaming hot coffee. His real name is Ishtiaq Alamgir, but he goes by his adopted name, Sayful Islam, meaning "Sword of Islam". He is the 24-year-old leader of the Luton branch of al-Muhajiroun, an extremist Muslim group with about 800 members countrywide, who regard Osama bin Laden as their hero.

Until recently, nobody took the fanatical beliefs of al-Muhajiroun too seriously, believing that a British-based group so brazenly "out there" could not be involved in something as "underground" as terrorism. The group is led by the exiled Saudi, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammad, from his base in north London. Yesterday, in a magazine article, Bakri warned that several radical groups are poised to strike in London.

For all its inflammatory rhetoric, al-Muhajiroun has never been linked to actual violence. Yet, with the discovery last month of half-a-tonne of ammonium nitrate fertiliser - the same explosive ingredient used in the Bali and Turkey terror attacks - and with the arrest of eight young British Muslims in London and the South-East, including six in Luton, extremist groups such as al-Muhajiroun are under the spotlight like never before.

Detectives fear that the "enemy within", the homegrown extremists leading apparently normal lives in suburbia, now pose the greatest threat to security in Britain. Sayful and his friends fit this "homegrown" profile: three were born here, two came as young children from Pakistan; all were educated in local Luton schools; and they grew up in families of full employment - one of their fathers is a retired local businessman, two are engineers, and two worked in the local Vauxhall car plant.

The question is: how worried should we be? Is al-Muhajiroun nothing more than a repository for disaffected Muslim youths who have adopted an extreme interpretation of Islam - perhaps to cock a snook at the white establishment - but who are essentially posturing? Or does the group also perform a more sinister function, sucking in alienated young men and brainwashing the more impressionable into becoming future suicide bombers?

Although none of the arrested Muslims - aged 17 to 32 - appear to be current al-Muhajiroun members, rumours have circulated of informal links to the group. Moreover, parents of the arrested men have spoken anxiously of the "radicalising influence" of al-Muhajiroun militants who " corrupt" their children at mosques.

Nowhere has this public confrontation between radicals and moderates been more apparent than in Luton, which has the highest density of Muslims in the South-East - 28,000 out of a total population of 140,000 - and has long been regarded as a hotbed of extremism.

Sayful Islam, for one, is particularly proud of his contribution to Luton's hardline reputation. His exploits include covering the town with " Magnificent 19" posters glorifying the 11 September suicide bombers. "When I joined al-Muhajiroun four years ago, there were five local members," he says. "Now there are more than 50 and hundreds more support us."

The strange thing is that four years ago, Sayful Islam was a jeans-clad student completing his degree in business economics at Middlesex University in Hendon, north London.

The son of a British Rail engineer who came to this country from Pakistan, Sayful grew up in a moderate, middle-class Muslim family in Luton. At the local Denbigh High School, he is remembered as one of the smartest kids, and was selected to attend a science masterclass at Cambridge University. He would go on to marry, have two children and find work as an accountant for the Inland Revenue in Luton. He was thoroughly uninterested in politics.

THEN he met Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammad at a local event. Within two years, he had swapped his decently paid job as an accountant for an unpaid one as a political agitator. What turned him into an extremist? And how far is he prepared to go to achieve his aims?

Prior to seeing the group at the fastfood restaurant, Sayful meets me at his semi-detached rented home in Bury Park, Luton's Muslim neighbourhood. He no longer works, even though he is able-bodied, he admits, preferring instead to claim housing benefit and jobseeker's allowance. He smiles sheepishly and says the irony is not lost on him that the British state is supporting him financially, even as he plots to "overthrow it".

"I made a decision that I wanted to follow what Islam really said," Sayful begins, sitting on his sofa in his thowb (a traditional robe) and bare feet. "I went to listen to all the local imams, but I found their portrayal of Islam was too secularised. When I heard Sheikh Omar [the leader] of al-Muhajiroun speak, it was pure Islam, with no compromise. I found that appealing.

"At the same time," continues Sayful, "wars were happening in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan. People were being oppressed simply because they were Muslim. Although I had never experienced racism in the UK, it opened the eyes of a lot of Muslims, including mine."

But it was the events of 11 September that crystallised Sayful's worldview. "When I watched those planes go into the Twin Towers, I felt elated," he says. "That magnificent action split the world into two camps: you were either with Islam and al Qaeda, or with the enemy. I decided to quit my job and commit myself full-time to al-Muhajiroun." Now he does not consider himself British. "I am a Muslim living in Britain, and I give my allegiance only to Allah."

Help wanted: Bouziane's Islamic center in Venissieux

Just this morning I posted a story saying that a French imam, Abdelkader Bouziane, faced legal action for advocating wife-beating. Well, he has been expelled from France. Note that he based his arguments on the Qur'an. From the BBC, with thanks to Filtrat:

A Muslim cleric who advocated the beating of women has been expelled from France, officials have announced.

Algerian-born Abdelkader Bouziane was detained on Tuesday after telling a magazine the Koran backed the beating and stoning of adulterous wives.

Mr Bouziane also expressed hopes that "the entire world becomes Muslim".

The remarks caused an immediate outcry in France, which hosts Western Europe's largest Muslim community - about five million people, mainly of north African origin.

Muslim leaders in France also condemned the imam's remarks, saying Islam did not condone domestic violence.

However, the leader of France's National Council of Muslims warned the French media not to seek to portray all Muslims in the West as fundamentalists, or to stir up anti-Islamic sentiment by seeking out extremist opinion.

Mr Bouziane was prayer leader in Venissieux, near Lyon, and had lived in France for the last 25 years.

He was expelled on Wednesday to his native Algeria, officials said.

The French interior ministry said remarks against human rights, particularly women's rights, could not be tolerated.

The imam told the April issue of Lyon Mag he favoured wife-beating "under certain conditions, especially if the woman cheats on her husband".

He then went on national television to clarify his comments.

He said he had not advocated hitting women on the face, but insisted that the Koran did authorise husbands to beat their wives if they had been unfaithful.

He was also quoted as saying he favoured an Islamic republic in France.

"But not just for France. I want the whole world to become Muslim."

An expulsion order had already been issued in February after the interior ministry deemed his views to be a threat to public order, AFP reported.

The interview confirmed that the decision was correct, the French interior ministry said.

A critique of a Malaysian child custody ruling that demonstrates the influence of the Sharia (Syariah) there. From Malaysiakini, with thanks to Susan:

The Malaysian Federal Constitution 3(1) states that, ‘Islam is the religion of the Federation; but other religions may be practiced in peace and harmony in any part of the Federation.

In Shamala Sathyaseelan vs. Muhammad Ridzwan Mogarajah; Mogarajah had converted his two children aged two and three to Islam after his own personal conversion.

Justice Faiza Thamby Chik had referred the case to the Syariah Court and eventually delivers a verdict in favor of the Muslim father. Justice Faiza also claimed that the father had the capacity to convert the children to Islam because:

a) The wife did not challenge his own conversion nor seek a divorce when he converted; and

b) He is the natural father of the said children and a Muslim.

Justice Faiza concluded by claiming that only the Syariah Court has the capacity and expertise to hear this case and therefore, the mother should take her application to the Federal Territory Religious Council.

This is an unwise judgment due to the following points:

a) It is a violation of the basic religious rights of the non-Muslim minority in Malaysia.

b) It contradicts Section 5 of the Guardianship of Infants Act.

c) Malaysia’s ratification of the Convention against All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child is not being observed and practiced by the Malaysian judiciary.

d) It enables a disgruntled father an easy way to gain custody of his children by only converting to Islam.

e) The lack of protection to the non-Muslim female citizen to fight for the legal custody of her children as the non-Muslim mother has no legal locus standi to seek relief under Syariah law.

Islam is a social justice system, but the Malaysian judiciary system, has conveniently denied justice to this non-Muslim mother in her struggle for custody rights. This has created the circumstance of forcing the non-Muslims to accept the judgment of the Syariah Court.

This is not what the Malaysian constitution meant.

In Shamala Sathyaseelan vs. Muhammad Ridzwan Mogarajah case, Justice Faiza failed to recognise:

a) The motives of Mogarajah’s conversion to Islam. If Mogarajah converted purely for child custody, then judgment should take this into consideration.

b)That the custody case of the children should be heard by the court after the parent’s divorce proceedings or before the conversion of Mogarajah to Islam.

c) That the Syariah Court should not be involved in cases that involves inter-faith family law.

d) That although there is no law governing non-Muslim parental and religious rights in Malaysia, the courts need to exercise wisdom and analyse such cases rather than conveniently passing their responsibilities to the Syariah Court.

Thaksin Shinawatra: "We do not go there to fight. If we get killed, why should we stay?"

Thailand, which has suffered increasingly from jihad attacks, is toying with the idea of joining the appeasers. From the Telegraph, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

A threat by Thailand's prime minister to withdraw his country's troops from Iraq if they are attacked again by anti-coalition forces was criticised yesterday as offering a victory to terrorists. "I would prefer the Thai soldiers to stay here to challenge these terrorists because, if they do have to leave, this will be a triumph for the killers," said Lt Ammar Atia, commander of the Iraqi police post outside Camp Lima base in the southern city of Karbala.

Thaksin Shinawatra, the Thai premier, said the 451 Thai medical and engineering troops at Camp Lima could soon be ordered home. "If we get hurt or killed, I will not keep them there. We do not go there to fight. If we get killed, why should we stay?"

Coalition officials fear that such sentiments could encourage further attacks on Thai troops. Two were killed in December when a car loaded with explosives was crashed into their base. Thailand's warning came a day after Spain announced it would pull out its 1,432 troops from Iraq, and Honduras said its 368 soldiers would be leaving as soon as possible.

At Camp Lima yesterday, Thai soldiers were inside the heavily fortified base, surrounded by concrete barriers topped with coils of barbed wire. An officer at the gate declined to comment on whether troops would prefer to remain.

"Sorry, regulations do not allow me to speak," he said. "I'm not permitted to say anything about our mission or what we think."

Lt Atia said the Thai troops had distinguished themselves in Karbala. "These soldiers are very well educated. Many of them are Muslims. They have been rebuilding our roads and giving food to the people. They are very popular."

Colin Powell, the American secretary of state, said it was possible more members of President George W Bush's 32-country "coalition of the willing" would evacuate its troops but broke off from a marathon round of telephone calls to gauge the level of commitment to insist he remained optimistic.

"I am getting solid support for our efforts, commitments to remain and finish the job that they came to do."

But Mr Powell's task was made more difficult by the continuing chaos in much of Iraq despite the uneasy truces still holding in the flashpoint centres of Fallujah and Najaf. At least 22 were killed and about 100 injured in a mortar attack by insurgents on a prison near Baghdad.

The dangerous security situation was further underlined by confirmation from the American company Halliburton that three bodies found in shallow grave near Baghdad were employees of one of its subsidiaries.

Lt Atia said he had sympathy for the predicament of coalition countries. "Every leader is responsible for the wellbeing of his men. They have the right to withdraw their soldiers because they came as liberation troops but now there is chaos here. It is very sad."

Mueller

In China, the head of the FBI has declared that jihad terrorism is a threat there. From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

BEIJING (AP)--The head of the U.S.' FBI Wednesday said China was home to Islamic fundamentalists who may want to further their ideological agenda by staging terror attacks.

Speaking in Beijing, Robert Mueller didn't elaborate on whether new terrorist groups had been identified or whether there was any sign of al-Qaida activity in China.

While China isn't known to have been targeted by international terrorist groups, Mueller cautioned against complacency.

"Just because you have not seen substantial terrorist attacks in China does not mean that there could not be one in the future or in other countries in Asia," he said.

Beijing has long contended that its predominantly Muslim Xinjiang region in the northwest has been a breeding ground for terrorists and violent separatists, although officials have provided little evidence.

However, the Federal Bureau of Investigations director said terrorists included a "wide variety of individuals who may, to a greater or lesser degree, subscribe to extremist Islamic fundamentalism.

"There certainly are individuals in China who could be described as having that same mindset as well as that desire to utilize terrorist acts to further their agenda," Mueller told reporters at a news conference.

In 2002, the U.S. identified the Xinjiang-based East Turkestan Islamic Movement as a terrorist organization - a classification some believed was a diplomatic bone thrown to China in exchange for its tacit support of the American-led war on terror.

Washington has been mostly reluctant to back Beijing's claims of Muslim extremism in Xinjiang and has told Beijing that anti-terror efforts shouldn't be abused to target those with legitimate grievances against China's heavy-handed rule in the province.

Diplomats and foreign experts say most violence in Xinjiang blamed on separatists isn't politically motivated and appears to stem from personal disputes.

Mueller said he discussed issues ranging from intellectual property rights to extradition of prisoners during his three-day visit that began Monday.

He called also for increased international cooperation against terrorism, saying: "With these threats against our countries, it's only by working together cooperatively, that...we will be able to overcome those threats and protect the safety of our people."

Mueller said he had met with officials from the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of State Security and the prosecutor's office to strengthen future cooperation.

"The most important thing for us is the exchange of intelligence, the exchange of information quickly and swiftly to address threats, particularly the threat of terrorism," he said.

They warned them: a few days ago I posted a story in which Kashmir jihadis said that "those taking part in the farcical process would be taken as blatant traitors of the oppressed Kashmiri nation." Now they have taken action. From Press Trust of India, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

In a gruesome incident, terrorists chopped off ears of two persons for participating in election process in Mahore area of Udhampur district in Jammu and Kashmir, official sources said on Wednesday.

Unidentified terrorists kidnapped Misruddi and Haji Amkala from Kalwa village in Mahore Tehsil of Udhampur district on Tuesday and later chopped off the left ear of Misruddin and right ear of Amkala before freeing them, they said.

The terrorists snatched a bag containing posters of a political party from them, the sources said adding, both the villagers had been threatened by ultras not to participate in the election process.

Meanwhile, two terrorists surrendered and a youth escaped from the captivity of Jaish-e-Mohammad outfit from the same district since Tuesday, the sources said.

Inventing the past, and denying the present. A Jihad Watch EXCLUSIVE essay by Bat Ye'or and Andrew G. Bostom:

On Sunday, April 18, 2004, this revealing exchange took place between outgoing Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, and interviewer Chris Wallace of FoxNews:

Chris Wallace: “In the apartment that was blown up, police found a videotape in which the bombers referred to Spain as Andalusia, what it was called by the Muslim Moors before they were driven out in 1492.”

Jose Maria Aznar (through the translator): “So this means that Iraq, for them, was just a pretext. In the eyes of Islamic terrorism, it looks at the West, and Spain is a very special part of this parcel, because they feel that to recover Spain is to get back some of their territory.”

Islamic scholar Mordechai Nisan recently discussed the contention by the founder of the Institute of Islamic Education, M. Amir Ali, that Medieval Spain had actually been "liberated" by Muslim forces, who "deposed its tyrants". Nisan extrapolated this ahistorical narrative line, and pondered:

"Reflecting on March 11, as Muslim terrorism killed 200 and wounded 1,400 in Madrid, one wonders whether one day this event will also not be commemorated as a liberating moment. "

Events surrounding the completion of the new Granada Mosque, which was marked by celebratory announcements July 10, 2003 of a “…return of Islam to Spain”, were also consistent with Nisan's dark musings. At a conference entitled “Islam in Europe” that accompanied the opening of the mosque, disconcerting statements were made by European Muslim leaders. Specifically, the keynote speaker at this conference, Umar Ibrahim Vadillo, a Spanish Muslim leader, encouraged Muslims to cause an economic collapse of Western economies (by ceasing to use Western currencies, and switching to gold dinars), while the German Muslim leader Abu Bakr Rieger told Muslim attendees to avoid adapting their Islamic religious practices to accommodate European (i.e., Western Enlightenment?) values.

Shortly after this event, a Wall Street Journal editorialist in a grossly distorted encomium to Muslim Spain, mentioned the “pan-confessional humanism” of Andalusian Islam, and even asserted: "one could argue that the oft-bewailed missing ‘reformation’ of Islam was under way there until it was aborted by the Inquisition."

María Rosa Menocal, Yale Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, in her 2002 hagiography of Muslim Spain, The Ornament of the World, has further maintained that "the new Islamic polity not only allowed Jews and Christians to survive, but following Qur’anic mandate, by and large protected them."

We believe that reiterating these ahistorical, roseate claims about Muslim Spain abets the contemporary Islamist agenda, and retards the evolution of a liberal, reformed “Euro-Islam” fully compatible with post-Enlightenment Western values.

Iberia (Spain) was conquered in 710-716 AD by Arab tribes originating from northern, central and southern Arabia. Massive Berber and Arab immigration, and the colonization of the Iberian peninsula, followed the conquest. Most churches were converted into mosques. Although the conquest had been planned and conducted jointly with a strong faction of royal Iberian Christian dissidents, including a bishop, it proceeded as a classical jihad with massive pillages, enslavement, deportations and killings.

Toledo, which had first submitted to the Arabs in 711 or 712, revolted in 713. The town was punished by pillage and all the notables had their throats cut. In 730, the Cerdagne (in Septimania, near Barcelona) was ravaged and a bishop burned alive. In the regions under stable Islamic control, Jews and Christians were tolerated as dhimmis - like elsewhere in other Islamic lands - and could not build new churches or synagogues nor restore the old ones. Segregated in special quarters, they had to wear discriminatory clothing. Subjected to heavy taxes, the Christian peasantry formed a servile class attached to the Arab domains; many abandoned their land and fled to the towns. Harsh reprisals with mutilations and crucifixions* would sanction the Mozarab (Christian dhimmis) calls for help from the Christian kings. Moreover, if one dhimmi harmed a Muslim, the whole community would lose its status of protection, leaving it open to pillage, enslavement and arbitrary killing.

By the end of the eighth century, the rulers of North Africa and of Andalusia had introduced Malikism, one of the most rigorous schools of Islamic jurisprudence, and subsequently repressed the other Muslim schools of law. Three quarters of a century ago, at a time when political correctness was not dominating historical publication and discourse, Evariste Lévi-Provençal, the pre-eminent scholar of Andalusia, wrote: "The Muslim Andalusian state thus appears from its earliest origins as the defender and champion of a jealous orthodoxy, more and more ossified in a blind respect for a rigid doctrine, suspecting and condemning in advance the least effort of rational speculation."

The humiliating status imposed on the dhimmis and the confiscation of their land provoked many revolts, punished by massacres, as in Toledo (761, 784-86, 797). After another Toledan revolt in 806, seven hundred inhabitants were executed. Insurrections erupted in Saragossa from 781 to 881, Cordova (805), Merida (805-813, 828 and the following year, and later in 868), and yet again in Toledo (811-819); the insurgents were crucified, as prescribed in Qur’an 5:33*.

The revolt in Cordova of 818 was crushed by three days of massacres and pillage, with 300 notables crucified and 20 000 families expelled. Feuding was endemic in the Andalusian cities between the different sectors of the population: Arab and Berber colonizers, Iberian Muslim converts (Muwalladun) and Christian dhimmis (Mozarabs). There were rarely periods of peace in the Amirate of Cordova (756-912), nor later.

Al-Andalus represented the land of jihad par excellence. Every year, sometimes twice a year, raiding expeditions were sent to ravage the Christian Spanish kingdoms to the north, the Basque regions, or France and the Rhone valley, bringing back booty and slaves. Andalusian corsairs attacked and invaded along the Sicilian and Italian coasts, even as far as the Aegean Islands, looting and burning as they went. Thousands of people were deported to slavery in Andalusia, where the caliph kept a militia of tens of thousand of Christian slaves brought from all parts of Christian Europe (the Saqaliba), and a harem filled with captured Christian women. Society was sharply divided along ethnic and religious lines, with the Arab tribes at the top of the hierarchy, followed by the Berbers who were never recognized as equals, despite their Islamization; lower in the scale came the mullawadun converts and, at the very bottom, the dhimmi Christians and Jews.

The Andalusian Maliki jurist Ibn Abdun (d. 1134) offered these telling legal opinions regarding Jews and Christians in Seville around 1100 C.E.: "No…Jew or Christian may be allowed to wear the dress of an aristocrat, nor of a jurist, nor of a wealthy individual; on the contrary they must be detested and avoided. It is forbidden to [greet] them with the [expression], ‘Peace be upon you’. In effect, ‘Satan has gained possession of them, and caused them to forget God’s warning. They are the confederates of Satan’s party; Satan’s confederates will surely be the losers!’ (Qur’an 58:19 [modern Dawood translation]). A distinctive sign must be imposed upon them in order that they may be recognized and this will be for them a form of disgrace."

Ibn Abdun also forbade the selling of scientific books to dhimmis, under the pretext that they translated them and attributed them to their co-religionists and bishops. In fact, plagiarism is difficult to prove since whole Jewish and Christian libraries were looted and destroyed. Another prominent Andalusian jurist, Ibn Hazm of Cordoba (d. 1064), wrote that Allah has established the infidels’ ownership of their property merely to provide booty for Muslims.

In Granada, the Jewish viziers Samuel Ibn Naghrela and his son Joseph, who protected the Jewish community, were both assassinated between 1056 to 1066, followed by the annihilation of the Jewish population by the local Muslims. It is estimated that up to five thousand Jews perished in the pogrom by Muslims that accompanied the 1066 assassination. This figure equals or exceeds the number of Jews reportedly killed by the Crusaders during their pillage of the Rhineland, some thirty years later, at the outset of the First Crusade.

The Granada pogrom was likely to have been incited, in part, by the bitter anti-Jewish ode of Abu Ishaq, a well known Muslim jurist and poet of the times, who wrote: "Put them back where they belong and reduce them to the lowest of the low..turn your eyes to other [Muslim] countries and you will find the Jews there are outcast dogs...Do not consider it a breach of faith to kill them...They have violated our covenant with them so how can you be held guilty against the violators?"

The Muslim Berber Almohads in Spain and North Africa (1130-1232) wreaked enormous destruction on both the Jewish and Christian populations. This devastation- massacre, captivity, and forced conversion- was described by the Jewish chronicler Abraham Ibn Daud, and the poet Abraham Ibn Ezra. Suspicious of the sincerity of the Jewish converts to Islam, Muslim “inquisitors” (i.e., antedating their Christian Spanish counterparts by three centuries) removed the children from such families, placing them in the care of Muslim educators. Maimonides, the renowned philosopher and physician, experienced the Almohad persecutions, and had to flee Cordoba with his entire family in 1148, temporarily residing in Fez — disguised as a Muslim — before finding asylum in Fatimid Egypt.

Indeed, although Maimonides is frequently referred to as a paragon of Jewish achievement facilitated by the enlightened rule of Andalusia, his own words debunk this utopian view of the Islamic treatment of Jews: "..the Arabs have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us...Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they.."

A valid summary assessment of interfaith relationships in Muslim Spain, and the contemporary currents responsible for obfuscating that history, can be found in Richard Fletcher's engaging Moorish Spain. Mr. Fletcher offers these sobering, unassailable observations:

"The witness of those who lived through the horrors of the Berber conquest, of the Andalusian fitnah in the early eleventh century, of the Almoravid invasion- to mention only a few disruptive episodes- must give it [i.e., the roseate view of Muslim Spain] the lie. The simple and verifiable historical truth is that Moorish Spain was more often a land of turmoil than it was of tranquility...Tolerance? Ask the Jews of Granada who were massacred in 1066, or the Christians who were deported by the Almoravids to Morocco in 1126 (like the Moriscos five centuries later)…In the second half of the twentieth century a new agent of obfuscation makes its appearance: the guilt of the liberal conscience, which sees the evils of colonialism- assumed rather than demonstrated-foreshadowed in the Christian conquest of al-Andalus and the persecution of the Moriscos (but not, oddly, in the Moorish conquest and colonization). Stir the mix well together and issue it free to credulous academics and media persons throughout the western world. Then pour it generously over the truth…in the cultural conditions that prevail in the west today the past has to be marketed, and to be successfully marketed it has to be attractively packaged. Medieval Spain in a state of nature lacks wide appeal. Self-indulgent fantasies of glamour...do wonders for sharpening up its image. But Moorish Spain was not a tolerant and enlightened society even in its most cultivated epoch."

The socio-political history of Andalusia was characterized by a particularly oppressive dhimmitude that is completely incompatible with modern notions of equality between individuals, regardless of religious faith. At the dawn of the 21st century, we must insist that Muslims in the West adopt post-Enlightenment societal standards of equality, not "tolerance," abandoning forever their hagiography of the brutal, discriminatory standards practiced by the classical Maliki jurists of "enlightened" Andalusia.

*The Noble Qur'an- Three esteemed translations, online:
Sura 005, Verse 033
YUSUF ALI: "The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter;"
PICKTHAL: "The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom;"
SHAKIR: "The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement"

Bat Ye'or, www.dhimmitude.org, www.dhimmi.org , is the author most recently of Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide, and the forthcoming Eurabia.

Kubaissi on Danish TV (TV2)

Note Kubaissi's blaming of the Americans for this man's death.

UPDATE: Change that to "Note Kubaissi's sly suggestion that the Americans may have been responsible for this man's death." This is a distinction without a difference, as Kubaissi is clearly trying to hang responsibility for his death on the Americans, but for the record, no: he did not directly blame the Americans. He has, as they say in Washington, "plausible deniability." And it is worth about as much coming from him as it is coming from the pols.

COPENHAGEN (AFP) - A Danish businessman kidnapped in Iraq last week has been found dead, the Danish foreign ministry said.

The man was captured by unidentified attackers while travelling with an Iraqi driver and a Dane of Iraqi origin on a road near the village of Al Taji outside Baghdad. The two others were not taken hostage.

"The ministry was informed overnight by coalition authorities that the Danish national was found dead by Iraqi police on April 12, 2004," a foreign ministry statement said.

It said the Danish government had no further details about the man's death nor information about his killers.

"The Iraqi police investigation has been rendered difficult by the situation in Iraq," it said.

Danish daily Politiken identified the man as 35-year-old Henrik Frandsen, who was in Iraq to start a water purification and electrical appliance store in the southern city of Basra.

The Confederation of Danish Industries has issued a warning discouraging Danish businessmen from travelling to Iraq.

Denmark was a loyal ally of the United States in the war on Iraq, and currently has 500 troops stationed in Basra under British command.

It was initially reported that the man was captured on April 13, but the foreign ministry now said that he was captured on April 10 and it was informed on April 11.

The ministry said that it had "worked intensely on the case since being informed of his capture, and had followed several leads."

It said it had been in close contact with the US military and Iraqi Governing Council to secure the Dane's release, and confirmed media reports that it had also been in contact with Sheikh Abdul Salam Kubaissi.

Kubaissi, a senior official of the Committee of Muslim Scholars, has emerged as a key player in efforts to release foreign hostages in Iraq, including two Japanese hostages who were freed on Saturday.

Interviewed in Politiken on Wednesday prior to the announcement of the Dane's death, Kubaissi said he did not believe the businessman was taken for political reasons "because then we would have heard about it".

He suggested that the man may have been killed by US troops.

"Maybe he's been killed by the Americans because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And when the Americans have their backs against the wall, they shoot and make no distinction between rebels, civilians and foreigners," Kubaissi said.

Berlusconi caves

Italy to pay tribute. "Everyone pays. It has been done for centuries and centuries." Sure. There have always been appeasers, all the way back to Aethelred the Unready. From The Guardian, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Three Italians held hostage in Iraq were poised for release last night amid growing indications that Silvio Berlusconi's government has been negotiating a controversial ransom deal.

Top Italian government officials anticipated "positive news" within hours, while UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi predicted an imminent release.

"We confidently expect something to happen which should become clear in the coming hours," Mr Berlusconi said. His foreign minister, Franco Frattini, said: "We are waiting for positive news."

Asked if the way to get the hostages freed was to pay up, the Italian interim governor of Iraq's Dhi Qar province, Barbara Contini, said: "Everyone pays. It has been done for centuries and centuries."

Mr Brahimi, who was in Rome yesterday for talks with officials, said: "I think there is every reason to hope for a positive solution quickly."

Payment of a ransom would meet with an angry response in London and Washington where it would be seen as encouraging further kidnappings. But the release of the hostages, by whatever means, would take the political heat off Mr Berlusconi who, following the defection of Spain, is the coalition's most important ally in continental Europe.

With expectation of a resolution growing by the hour, Italy's defence minister, Antonio Martino, went to the headquarters of the military intelligence service, Sismi, to follow developments.

Four Italians were seized last week near Falluja by a previously unknown group calling itself the Green Brigade of Mohammed. On Wednesday, a video was delivered to the Arab-language satellite channel, al-Jazeera, showing one of the men being shot in the head.

Sources in Iraq and Italy have said talks for the release of the hostages have been unusually difficult because they work for a US firm and were carrying weapons when they were seized.

But in an interview with the newspaper Corriere della Sera, Ms Contini said she was "optimistic, very optimistic". She added: "The hostages will probably not be released straight away. But they will not be killed."

Ms Contini, a Middle Eastern expert, said she believed the four Italians had been seized by "local gangs" in a country where hostage-taking formed part of the tribal culture. The governor made her comments on her return to Baghdad from Rome, where she spent part of her time with the crisis unit set up to coordinate the government's response to the hostage-taking.

In an article citing "authoritative and confidential sources", the daily newspaper QN yesterday reported that a ransom had already been handed over. A foreign ministry official said: "We have no comment to make on this report."

There was also speculation of a link to the delivery of humanitarian aid to Falluja. It was reported that, on Sunday, the Red Cross's special commissioner, Maurizio Scelli, had telephoned Mr Berlusconi's office to ask for his help in persuading Washington to allow a convoy to take in water, food and medicine.

The convoy, two Iraqi Red Crescent lorries and one Italian Red Cross vehicle, reached Falluja yesterday.

According to Italy's foreign minister, Franco Frattini, the dead man and two of the other hostages - Maurizio Agliana, 35, from Prato in Tuscany and Umberto Cupertino, 35, from Bari in Puglia - were employees of a Nevada-based security firm called DTS Llc. The third man, Salvatore Stefio, 34, was said to be president of a company called Presidium.

Their kidnapping has revived controversy in Italy over the country's role in Iraq. Mr Berlusconi did not commit troops to the invasion but last summer he dispatched a peacekeeping force, which now numbers almost 3,000. There has been recurrent public concern over whether the force forms part of an occupying army or, as the prime minister has insisted, a humanitarian mission.

Despite deep-seated doubts, the main opposition in Italy has held back from demanding a withdrawal. But Romano Prodi, the European commission president and de facto leader-in-exile of the opposition, has expressed sympathy for the tough line taken by Spain's prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

Bravo, Azmi

A refreshing dose of realism comes from Razi Azmi in Pakistan's Daily Times (thanks to Mentat_99). In contrast to the fulsome dhimmitude served up by CNN and other Western media outlets, Azmi acknowledges that any negative feelings people may have toward Muslims have been provoked by ... Muslims. May many Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere heed Azmi's words, and start to clean up their act.

A good object will always sell itself, while a bad product will flop even with the best packaging and the finest advertising. Image is always a reflection of substance, however distorted or imperfect

Muslims of all hues and lands protest their so-called image problem, blaming it not on themselves, but on their detractors and perceived enemies, specifically the much-maligned Western media. It does not occur to them that their negative image could, by and large, be a reflection of reality. They should know from daily experience that a good object will always sell itself, while a bad product will flop even with the best packaging and the finest advertising. Image is always a reflection of substance, however distorted or imperfect. Why blame CNN, BBC, New York Times or Le Monde? One only needs to read a Pakistani newspaper on any given day, or the editorials on March 23 or August 14, to get Pakistani perspectives on the state of the nation. I mention Pakistan because it is one of the few Muslim countries with a relatively free press.

Take the most recent example of the image problem, although I doubt that Muslims would have seen it in this light: armed Iraqis holding daggers and knives to the throats of three abducted Japanese civilians, including a woman who went there to help Baghdad’s homeless children, and threatening to slit their throats amid cries of “Allah-o-Akbar.” It was no figment of the “infidel” West’s imagination, the film having been made by the abductors themselves and proudly passed on by its producers to the Arab Al-Jazeera television to be shown to the world. Ten thousand speeches about peace and tolerance in Islam will not be able to undo the damage done by this odious sight projected worldwide as wished by its Muslim producers.

Witness the images from Gaza, Chechnya and Kashmir, where, more often than not, violent acts are packaged in Islamic garb and slogans, portraying them less as liberation struggles than as elements of a universal effort to establish Islamic hegemony. Or the successive Osama bin Laden and Al Zawahiri tapes taking credit for 9/11 and swearing to wreak havoc and destruction on the “infidel West” unless it cowers before their threats.

Take the suicide-bombers in Palestine. Their last, pre-mission recorded statements are couched in religious language, representing their supreme self-sacrifice not so much as a struggle for liberation from Israeli occupation but as an Islamic mission in a war against Jews, with the expected reward of martyrdom and houris-in-waiting. One recalls that the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka were the “pioneers” of suicide bombing to achieve a political goal. But these suicide-bombers, called Black Tigers, were not paraded before cameras extolling the virtues of Hinduism or chanting the Tamil equivalent of “Jai Ram”. The world did not approve of their method but saw it for what it was — an instrument in the struggle to liberate what they called their land, not a holy war.

Even the names of the organisations that represent the struggle of Muslim people in various parts of the world necessarily carry religious connotations: Al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e Taiba, Jaish-e Mohammad, Hezb-ul Mujahideen, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Al Aqsa Brigade, Hamas (acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement). In Pakistan, the slogan “Pakistan ka matlab kiya, La Ilaha Illallah” is chanted even during games in stadiums. There exists a “Muslim Parliament” in UK and an Imam in London has demanded the implementation of Sharia law for British Muslims. The Pope may rule millions of hearts, but he controls less than half of one square kilometre (exactly 0.44 sq km or 0.17 sq miles) of territory, and even in this so-called Holy See there is no religious police to enforce a dress code or commandeer Christians to prayers.

A much-travelled email on the image issue emanating from a Muslim source recently landed in my mailbox. It juxtaposed a series of actual photos of Muslims and Westerners, while their captions attempted to highlight the “double-standards”. One of them showed two nuns in full garb next to three Muslim women in burqa, chador and scarf and then posed the question: “Why a nun could be covered from head to toe and she is respected for devoting herself to God. But when a Muslim woman does that she is considered oppressed and reactionary?” Now, any Muslim living in the West would tell you that he would have to travel some distance to see a nun, if he is lucky.

The reality is that while nuns are becoming something of an anachronism in the Western world, Muslim women, including those living in the West, are increasingly covering themselves in burqa or hijab. As if that is not enough, some of the more educated ones go around giving speeches and interviews claiming that it has a liberating influence on them. That might be true in Muslim countries, where perhaps the only way for a woman to avoid the lustful looks and sexual advances from men is to make herself invisible as best as she can. From any other perspective, the claim that the burqa is something of a liberator sounds a bit amusing. Ask any Muslim woman living in the West, hijab or not, and she will tell you that she feels more liberated and protected in London, New York, Sydney and Paris than in Lahore, Karachi, Tehran and Cairo, not to mention Riyadh or Kabul.

No, the negative image of Muslims is not the result of malicious Western propaganda against Islam. On the country, all the documentaries concerning Islam and Muslim lands shown on the mainstream western television channels — and there have been many in the last two years — present a very sympathetic picture of Islam as a religion and of Muslims as people. The image Muslims find unflattering reflects the larger reality of the Muslim world, steeped in dictatorship, corruption, ignorance and illiteracy, and characterised by the repression of women, honour killings, child abuse, sectarian and religious violence, persecution of minorities and a general and pervasive denial of basic freedoms and human rights.

The next step, of course, must be for Muslims to confront the sources within Islam of these behaviors, and repudiate them once and for all. I do not expect this to happen within my lifetime, if ever, but that doesn't make the need for it any less urgent.

Muhammad Bakar Yunus Al-Fallatta

From Arab News, with thanks to Jay Stevens, an update on the Rania Al-Baz wife-beating case:

JEDDAH, 21 April 2004 — Muhammad Bakar Yunus Al-Fallatta, who almost beat his wife Rania Al-Baz to death two weeks ago, has surrendered to po