July 2004 Archives

This is a common view in the Islamic world. From MEMRI:

Dr. Rif'at Sayyed Ahmad, director of the "Jaffa Research Center" in Cairo and columnist for Al-Liwaa Al-Islami, which is the Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party's paper, published a two-part article titled 'The Lie About The Burning of the Jews.' In his article, Ahmad stated, using the work of Western Holocaust deniers, that the burning of Jews in gas chambers during World War II was a tale made up by the Zionist movement in order to extort the West and make possible the establishment of the Zionist enterprise. The following are excerpts from the article:(1) 'Did this Holocaust Indeed Take Place, and what is the Truth about the Numbers?'

"The Zionist enterprise on the land of Palestine succeeded by means of lies and myths, from the myth of the 'Chosen People' and the 'Promised Land' to the lie about the burning of the Jews in the Nazi gas chambers during World War II. When these means were scientifically examined, it was proven that they were untrue, that their reasoning was weak, and that they cannot withstand the test of solid fact.

"What interests us here is that this lie [about] the burning of the Jews in the Nazi crematoria has been disseminated throughout the world until our time in order to extort the West and make it easier for the Jews of Europe to hunt [sic] Palestine and establish a state on it, in disregard of the most basic principles of international law and the right of peoples to independent life without occupation. [This lie] was raised [also] so that [the Jews] would receive financial, technological, and economic aid from the West.

"During the past 50 years, Germany alone gave a total of some $100 billion. Many European countries began to amend their laws so that they would be compatible with the Holocaust myth ... and they toughened the regulations, resolutions, and laws convicting anyone who mocks this lie or tries to [state that] the number of victims was smaller - as happened to Muslim philosopher Roger Garaudy in France.

"This entire situation has turned the Holocaust - that is, Hitler's operation of burning the Jews in gas chambers - into a drawn sword at the necks of historians and serious researchers in the West, and even in the East. At the same time, [the Holocaust] became profitable goods for the Zionist entity...

"Militants," they call them. The group calls itself "The Holders of the Black Banners." The article doesn't tell you this, but the black banner is the standard of jihad. These people have taken these hostages as part of their jihad against non-Muslims and secular Muslims.

How long will we pretend that we can fight against an enemy without naming him? How long will we delude ourselves into thinking that we can ignore who the enemy is and where and how he gains strength, and still defeat him?

From AP:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi militants said Saturday they kidnapped two Turks and threatened to behead them within 48 hours, the latest in the country's unrelenting wave of abductions, even as efforts intensified to win the release of seven truck drivers taken captive by other insurgents.

The Tawhid and Jihad group of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi demanded the Turks' employers leave Iraq in a videotape aired on Al-Jazeera television, which showed three masked, black-garbed gunmen standing behind two seated men holding various forms of identification, including what were apparently Turkish passports.

Al-Jazeera identified the men as two Turkish truck drivers working for a Turkish company that delivers goods to U.S. forces in Iraq. The network said the militants threatened to decapitate the men if their demands were not met....

The kidnappers have threatened to kill one of the hostages if their employers, Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Co., fail to meet their demands, including ending their work in Iraq.

The group, which calls itself "The Holders of the Black Banners," had said they would carry out their threat by Friday night, but they had extended their deadlines repeatedly in the past and appeared to have done so again.

It is a sad commentary on the American academic establishment. From CNSNews.com, with thanks to Nicolei:

Paris (CNSNews.com) - A Swiss-born Muslim scholar scheduled to begin teaching at a U.S. university next month is a controversial figure in Europe, where he is accused of anti-Semitism and advocating violence against women.

Tariq Ramadan plans to teach at Indiana's Notre Dame University, instructing students on Islam, conflict and peace building.

Ramadan is the grandson of Hassan Al-Banna, the Egyptian founder of the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

With a perfect command of the language and a tailored western look, he is well-known in France, where disaffected Muslim youths listen to his speeches on Islamic pride. But some municipalities have barred him from speaking because he is considered a threat to public order.

Ramadan has denied allegations in the French media that European agencies suspect him of meeting with senior al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Geneva, in 1991.

Late last year, in a television debate with French government minister Nicolas Sarkozy, Ramadan refused to condemn "lapidation" - the stoning of adulterous women, a punishment that is carried out under strict interpretations of the Koran.

Actually this punishment comes from the Hadith. But the point still holds.

A public outcry followed the publication of an article in which Ramadan accused French intellectuals of being pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian purely for sectarian reasons -- that is, because they were Jewish. They were placing their religion above their obligation as scholars, he charged.

Not all the intellectuals he singled out were, in fact, Jews. The article brought him vitriol at a time when France has seen a rise in anti-Jewish violence, often originating in the Muslim community.

"His thoughts seem European and appeal to Muslims living in the West," said Yonathan Arfi, president of the Union of Jewish Students of France. "And then he talks about 'lapidation.' We took a long time to understand his discourse, but now he has been unmasked."

Another Islamic "hijacking." Looks as if the jihad will continue. From AP, with thanks to DC Watson:

UNITED NATIONS - Sudan denounced a U.N. Security Council resolution that gave the government 30 days to stem ethnic violence in the western Darfur region or face sanctions, saying Khartoum needed international help, not threats.

Sudan said the resolution, passed 13-0 on Friday, violates a previous agreement with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in which it promised to crack down on the militias who have killed thousands of people and forced more than 1 million to flee in Darfur.

"Sudan expresses its deep sorrow that the issue of Darfur has quickly entered the Security Council and has been hijacked from its regional arena," Information Minister El-Zahawi Ibrahim Malik said in a statement.

But the violence has continued despite a cease-fire called in July and Sudanese promises of a crackdown. The three African countries on the council — Algeria, Angola and Benin — backed the U.S.-sponsored resolution.

Al-Qaeda trying to influence political policies through assassination? Don't they know jihad is an inner spiritual struggle? From AP, with thanks to DC Watson:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network may have been behind the failed attempt to assassinate the country's prime minister-designate, a senior Cabinet minister said Saturday, though investigators are still poring over the evidence.

The death toll from the suicide bomb attack Friday against Shaukat Aziz, meanwhile, rose to eight, with about three dozen injured, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said. Among those killed was Aziz's driver, who had not yet closed the bulletproof door on the car when a man approached and detonated a bomb.

"Al-Qaida may be behind it," Ahmed told The Associated Press, before adding that there is no hard evidence linking the group to the attack.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has said he believes al-Qaida was involved in two attempts to kill him in December, the last of which killed 17 people. He was unharmed.

Why was Al-Jazeera treated like any other news organization at the Democratic Convention? From Thomas Ryan at FrontPage, with thanks to Son of Infidel:

Despite Democratic Presidential Nominee John Kerry’s assertion that as President, he would “use every available resource to destroy terrorists and deny them sanctuary…and new recruits,” one of the invited guests at the now-concluded Democratic National Convention was an organization that has served as a terrorist recruitment tool, a communications conduit for al-Qaeda in general and Osama bin Laden in particular. This network has repeatedly described Palestinian suicide-bombers as “martyrs.” High above the platform and the sea of “Kerry-Edwards” placards, covering the convention from a skybox towering over the Fleet Center floor was Arabic network al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite news agency whose allegedly “factual and accurate” news coverage has been blatantly anti-American. The Democrats were at least savvy enough to remove the network’s banner, which had been strategically placed near the speakers’ podium. But how could any candidate or political party “serious” about terrorism make no fuss about allowing such a news group inside its convention?

Al-Jazeera was founded in 1996 and is renowned worldwide for its dubious claim that it is politically independent. In reality, the agency was started with $150 million in seed money from the emir of Qatar, who continues to grant the agency annual gifts. Al-Jazeera, which has been called the “Arab CNN,” acts as a public access channel for foreign terrorists.

It would appear al-Jazeera not only shares the airwaves with al-Qaeda; it shares personnel, as well. In 2003, Taysir Allouni, a popular reporter for al-Jazeera, was arrested in Spain for having links to the al-Qaeda terrorist group. Allouni, who interviewed Osama bin Laden after 9/11, was accused of giving assistance to two al-Qaeda officials: Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, alias Abu Dahdah, who was arrested in November of 2001, and is believed to have been Spain’s al-Qaeda commander; and Mohamed Bahiah, alias Abu Kalhed, who is believed to be an al-Qaeda militant fighting in Afghanistan....

Terrorists are certainly interested in the elections process. It was just this past March that a series of ten bombs exploded aboard a crowded commuter train in Madrid, Spain, killing 201 innocent people, and causing Spanish citizens to elect a government that was more appeasing to the desires of al-Qaeda terrorists. John Kerry has said, “As president, I will not rest until I can look into the eyes of the American people who want a future of freedom and security, and say ‘We are as safe as we can be.’” It wasn’t only the eyes of the American people that Kerry has looked into, but also the lens of an al-Jazeera camera, a camera that has pervasively portrayed the United States as the evil antagonist, and global terrorists as the guiltless victims, but which has subsequently portrayed Kerry as a more agreeable figure than the current incumbent.

John Kerry and the Democratic Party failed this terror test.

Yet another interesting detail about Annie Jacobsen's famous Northwest flight 327. From the Washington Times:

The Syrian singer of a band that was detained by the FBI's Terrorism Task Force for suspicious activity during a recent flight to Los Angeles has written about the "glorification" of suicide bombers to liberate Palestine.

Singer Nour Mehana's latest album includes the song "Um El Shaheed," or "Mother of a Martyr," said Aluma Dankowitz of the Middle East Media Research Institute.

The song tells the story of a woman who mourned her son's death until she realized that "he died for a good cause and he should be glorified for what he did," said Miss Dankowitz, who translated the song for The Washington Times.

Mr. Mehana, widely known as the Syrian Wayne Newton, sings to the mother that her son's goals are heroic and she should be happy he is dead.

"The song opens with the depiction of a mother crying over her son. He has said goodbye to his friends and family and is not going to come back. He went with a weapon in one palm and his heart in another palm and he's not going to come back," Miss Dankowitz said. "He went to fight to free Palestine, Golan Heights and South Lebanon."

The song ends with chants of "Allahu akbar," or "God is great," a common Muslim expression. Those were the last words shouted by a September 11 hijacker before the plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field and have been the last words of many suicide bombers in Israel.

This seems to be the same group that claimed responsibility for the April attacks. Note that the group's declaration amounts to a declaration of jihad until Sharia is instituted all over the Islamic world. No one seems to know much about this group, or how much trouble they can cause for this relatively moderate land. And Kofi Annan is dismayed, but what is he going to do? From Muslim Uzbekistan:

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan yesterday voiced his dismay at a series of bombings in Uzbekistan against the United States and Israeli embassies, as well as the office of the country's prosecutor. Mr. Annan's spokesman issued a statement saying the Secretary-General "condemns these criminal acts in the strongest terms." Uzbek prosecutor-general Rashyd Kadyrov announced in April the so called "Jamoats" (Communities) were behind Uzbek spring unrest "Targeting of diplomatic missions and civilians is a crime that cannot be justified by any cause," he said.

The blasts in capital of Tashkent reportedly killed two people and injured at least nine others. One of the killed was policeman and another was officer of the National Security Service of Uzbekistan. One of these two was of Russian nationality, according to RFE'RL's Uzbek service broadcast....

Not the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) on Friday claimed responsibility for suicide bombings against the US and Israeli embassies, as well as Uzbekistan's prosecutor general's office in Tashkent as i was reported previously, but an unknown group called "Jamoat" according to a statement posted on an Islamist website.

The claim was posted on (http://www.islamicminbar.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=338).

"Martyrdom operations carried out by the group will not stop. They are directed against the injustice of the apostate government and in support of our Muslim brethren in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Hijaz (Saudi Arabia) and other Islamic countries ruled by apostates," said the statement, signed Mohammed al-Fateh from Bukhara.

This still unknown group ... had previously assumed responsibility for March-April attacks.

Faisal Gill of the DHS is starting to attract attention. From FoxNews, with thanks to DC Watson:

WASHINGTON — Officials at the Department of Homeland Security are investigating the reinstatement of a top political appointee to the agency who was briefly suspended for failing to disclose ties to a controversial Islamic organization, FOXNews.com has learned.

Faisal Gill, director of policy for intelligence at DHS, was forced to take a few days off in March after sources close to the FBI raised flags about Gill's former position as spokesman for the American Muslim Council.

The now-defunct American Muslim Council was founded in 1990 to lobby Washington for the interests of American Muslims and had been involved in community activism to that end. AMC was established and headed by Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was indicted in 2003 on passport fraud and illegal finance activities with Libya.

Court documents call Alamoudi an active supporter of Hamas, which the U.S. State Department considers a terrorist organization, and an official in an international charity group run by Usama Bin Laden's nephew. Alamoudi recently told federal officials he was part of a plot to assassinate King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

According to a report first published last month by Salon.com reporter Mary Jacoby, Gill omitted his role with the American Muslim Council when he filed his employment application and requisite security clearances at the agency. Gill left off his "Standard Form 86" that he served as AMC’s spokesman in 2001.

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer's latest, "Sudan's silent jihad," appeared Thursday in FrontPage.

Just in time to mark the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide that it largely ignored, the human rights community is beginning to take notice of the genocide in Sudan. As welcome as this is, and as refreshing as it is that the New York Times and Washington Post have done extensive reporting on Darfur in recent weeks, few have noted that the tragedy of Darfur is actually the second Sudanese genocide of our age. The first killed over two million African Christians and animists in southern Sudan.

They may be forgiven for being slow on the uptake, however; after all, Darfur marks the third genocide in Africa that Kofi Annan is declining to notice: Rwanda, Sudan I and now Sudan II. Over 100,000 people have been killed in Darfur. By autumn the number of those who have been displaced or impoverished, or whose lives have been destroyed by the war in other ways, will most likely exceed three million. Yet Annan declared that he cannot consider it “genocide or ethnic cleansing yet.”

There is another word that Annan has never uttered in connection with Sudan. For a decade Khartoum has waged what the regime itself calls a jihad against Christians and tribalists in the South. A 1992 fatwa issued by a group of pro-Khartoum Sudanese imams declared: “An insurgent who was previously a Muslim is now an apostate and a non-Muslim is a non-believer standing as a bulwark against the spread of Islam, and Islam has granted the freedom of killing both of them.” This allowed for the murder of Christians and animists in the south; now it has been turned against the Muslims of Darfur, whose Islam doesn’t measure up to Khartoum’s hardline standards....

The victims are the blacks of Darfur and southern Sudan, who continue to be murdered and enslaved by Islamic Arab fundamentalists. The jihadists operate with impunity before a world that doesn’t dare give a name to the crime they are committing. How many more deaths will be needed before Annan and the human rights establishment admit the truth?

Alamoudi was one of the highest-profile "moderates" in the country. This article suggests that the main thing he was doing was trying to topple the House of Saud. That doesn't seem like criminal activity to me -- unless he was doing it so that an even more virulent regime could take its place. Questions linger. From the New York Times, with thanks to Steve:

WASHINGTON, July 29 - Abdurahman Alamoudi, a prominent American Muslim leader implicated in an alleged plot by the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, to assassinate the leader of Saudi Arabia, has acknowledged his role in the plot and agreed to plead guilty to having illegal business dealings with Libya, officials said Thursday. Mr. Alamoudi, who is president of the American Muslim Foundation and has had access to senior officials in the Bush and Clinton administrations over the years, is expected to enter his guilty plea on Friday in federal court in Alexandria, Va., his lawyers said. He faces a maximum of 23 years in prison, but his sentence could be reduced significantly because he has cooperated extensively with the American authorities in some 100 hours of interviews about his Libyan dealings, officials said.

The plea agreement lays out extensive new details about the Libyan plot, including Mr. Alamoudi's recruitment by Libyan intelligence officials last year as an intermediary who funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to anti-Saudi dissidents in London and elsewhere, officials said. A classified version also identifies Libyan officials thought to have acted at the behest of Colonel Qaddafi in seeking to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, said officials familiar with the report....

Mr. Alamoudi has been criticized by some outside groups for what they saw as virulently anti-Israeli rhetoric, but embraced by many Muslims for the political inroads he has made among high-level American officials. Even now, he appears to have significant support among American Muslims, including dozens who have packed the Alexandria courtroom.

"The people who know Abdurahman are definitely behind him under all circumstances," said Ashraf Nubani, a Washington-area lawyer who is a close friend of Mr. Alamoudi's. "There's no doubt that this was a selective prosecution. That doesn't excuse what people may or may not have done, whether it was Abdurahman Alamoudi or anyone else, but Muslims are being targeted by law enforcement all levels of society."

Targeted? Well, is he guilty or not?

As Doug Ross, who kindly sent this to me, observes: "This ... is the same group of which Chuck Schumer (someone pinch me, I can't believe I'm agreeing with him) said, 'we know [CAIR] has ties to terrorism.' The same CAIR that was directing donations, ostensibly targeted for the NY/DC Emergency Relief Fund, to Hamas. The same CAIR that changed their solicitation efforts to the 'Global Relief Foundation', which the Treasury Department states, '...has provided assistance to Usama Bin Ladin, the al-Qaeda Network, and other known terrorist groups.'"

A press release from CAIR:

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Congressman John D. Dingell (D-MI), Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY), and other Congressional Democrats were joined yesterday by national leaders of the Muslim American community in a roundtable discussion on issues of mutual concern to Democrats and Muslim Americans.

The discussion centered on working together to defend civil rights and to restore civil liberties.

"This discussion is only the first in an ongoing dialogue between
Congressional Democrats and Muslim Americans," Pelosi said. "We share a fundamental principle - the belief that diversity is the backbone of our communities. Generations of Muslims have made positive contributions in every aspect of American life. We must now work even more closely to navigate through the challenges we face as a nation."

"Since September 11th, many Muslim Americans have been subjected to
searches at airports and other locations based upon their religion and national origin, without any credible information linking individuals to criminal conduct," Pelosi continued. "Racial and religious profiling is fundamentally un-American and we must make it illegal...."

A fascinating exchange between two Muslims who converted to Christianity and one Christian who converted to Islam is up at FrontPage this morning. Remember: only in America. In Muslim countries the two Christian converts would be in hiding, in fear for their lives. As it is, they have to take serious security measures.

One of the most important steps to abolishing dhimmi status once and for all must be the acceptance of freedom of conscience in the Islamic world. The death penalty for converts from Islam must be removed. But will it be. That's unlikely, as it is based on statements of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad himself.

At FrontPage, Andrew Bostom eviscerates the 9/11 Commission for taking halting half-steps toward the truth, but stopping short of it nevertheless.

While I see some limited evidence of progress in the 9/11 Commissioner's understanding of the global jihad we are facing, ultimately their report resorted to the same tired and ahistorical canards that distort the mainstream tradition – indeed which are central to Islam – of jihad war. The report mentions the ad nauseatingly referenced Hanbali jurist Ibn Taymiyya (d.1328), who despite his Muslim orthodoxy, now serves as a convenient prop for those who contend, either deceitfully or in blissful ignorance, that jihad war is not a main tenet of traditional Islam. Once again a distorted historical nexus is made between Ibn Taymiyya, but not countless other seminal jurists and theologians who expressed identical opinions, throughout the history of Islamic civilization, and 20th century ideologues like Sayyid Qutb, and the Muslim Brotherhood movement. This flimsy construct, reiterated in the 9/11 Commission Report, is completely untenable.

Jihad wars have been waged continuously for well over a millennium, through the present, because jihad, which means “to strive in the path of Allah,” embodies an ideology and a jurisdiction. Both were formally conceived by Muslim jurisconsults and theologians from the 8th to 9th centuries onward, based on their interpretation of Qur’anic verses (for e.g., 9:5,6; 9:29; 4:76-79; 2: 214-15; 8:39-42), and long chapters in the Traditions (i.e., “hadith,” acts and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, especially those recorded by al-Bukhari [d. 869] and Muslim [d. 874]). The consensus on the nature of jihad from all four schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (i.e., Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, and Shafi’i) is clear...

Bostom then provides an abundance of long quotations from Islamic legal sources, many of which I referenced also in Onward Muslim Soldiers. Read them. They're hair-raising in and of themselves, and remember: they have never been contradicted, rescinded, or abrogated by any Islamic authority.

A Jihad Watch exclusive commentary by Stella L. Jatras.

In his book, My Life, President Clinton devotes many pages to his peccadilloes with Monica Lewinsky, a woman young enough to be his daughter, and proudly writes he did it "Because I could." However, he gives scant attention to the destruction of the sovereign nation of Yugoslavia. Let us take a look at the results of what President Bill Clinton is so "proud" of regarding U.S. intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo.

A Telegraph (UK) of 26 July report titled, "US hunts Islamic militants in Bosnia," writes: "American military intelligence and the CIA have deployed hundreds of officers in Bosnia to track suspected Islamic militants amid concerns that the country has become a refuge, recruiting ground and cash conduit for international terrorism. Almost a decade after the end of the war in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia has become a 'one-stop shop' for Islamic militants heading from terrorist battlegrounds in Chechnya and Afghanistan to Iraq, according to European intelligence officials."

A Wall Street Journal (Europe edition) article of Nov 1, 2001 titled, "Al Qaeda's Balkan Links," reported, "The Balkan's uncharacteristically silent exit from the world stage as the most prominent international hot spot of the last decade belies its status as a major recruiting and training center of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. By feeding off the region's impoverished republics and taking root in the unsettled diplomatic aftermath of the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts, al Qaeda, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guard-sponsored terrorists, have burrowed their way into Europe's backyard.

"For the past 10 years, the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the Balkans, including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and 1996. The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factories and money-laundering and drug-training networks throughout Albanian, Kosovo, Macedonia (FYROM), Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia. This has gone on for a decade. Many recruits to the Balkan wars came originally from Chechnya, a jihad in which Al Qaeda has also played a part."

At the same time the Clinton administration was supporting the Bosnian [Muslim] government of Alija Izetbegovic, that government issued a passport to Osama bin Laden at their Vienna embassy in 1992.

In a very revealing commentary titled, "We bombed the wrong side?" of April 6, 2004 (Canadian National Post), Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, first UNPROFOR commander in Bosnia, wrote, "The Kosovo-Albanians have played us like a Stradivarius. We have subsidized and indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically pure and independent Kosovo. We have never blamed them for being the perpetrators of the violence in the early '90s and we continue to portray them as the designated victim today in spite of evidence to the contrary. When they achieve independence with the help of our tax dollars combined with those of bin Laden and al-Qaeda, just consider the message of encouragement this sends to others." Christopher Layne and Benjamin Schwarz wrote on the Opinion Page in The Washington Post on March 26, 2000, "Was it a Mistake? We Were Suckers for the KLA." The Kosovo Liberation Army is engaged in sex slavery, prostitution, murder, kidnapping and drugs. Furthermore, it is an army that was trained by Osama bin Laden dealing mainly in drugs, as confirmed in the May 4, 1999 article by Washington Times reporter Jerry Seper, in which he wrote, "Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden -- who is wanted in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa and killed 224 persons, including 12 Americans," yet we are told by the previous administration that at the time, Osama bin Laden was not the known threat that he is today.

In The Spectator [UK] article of Sep 6, 2003 titled, "How we trained al-Qa'eda," author Brendan O'Neill wrote, "For all the millions of words written about al-Qa'eda since the 9/11 attacks two years ago, one phenomenon is consistently overlooked - the role of the Bosnian war in transforming the mujahedin [Islamic warriors] of the 1980s into the roving Islamic terrorists of today."

Ironically, the U.S. is accusing Iran of intervening in the affairs of Iraq, yet in a House Republican Research Committee Report on Terrorism & Unconventional Warfare, titled "Iran's European Springboard?" analysts Yossef Bodansky & Vaughn S. Forrest wrote as far back as 1992, "Thus Tehran and its allies are using the violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a springboard for the launching of a jihad in Europe." Yossef Bodansky is the author of "Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War On America."

Through Clinton's misguided foreign policy, Bosnia has become al-Qaeda's corridor into Europe. As an example, Spanish media reported that one of the suspected terrorists involved in the Madrid bombing was born in Bosnia and linked to al Qaeda. (Financial Times, April 8, 2004/BBC monitoring). Reuters of 30 Dec 2003, writes, "UN adds Bosnia charity director to al Qaeda list." Furthermore, The Associated Press of 28 June reported, "In mosques and storefront Muslim charities, U.S. and European intelligence agencies are engaged in covert conflict in Bosnia, tracking up to 300 suspected Islamic militants and shutting down those financing them."

As for President Clinton's "successful" mission in Kosovo, National Review Online of March 19, 2004, wrote, "A pogrom started in Europe this week, with one U.S. official being quoted as saying, 'Kristallnacht is underway in Kosovo.' Serbs are being murdered and their 800-year-old churches are aflame. Much of the Christian heritage in Kosovo and Metohija is on fire and could be destroyed forever. By these deeds too many of Kosovo's Albanians have shown that their rhetoric about 'democracy' and 'multiethnicity,'is false, and demonstrates also that the international community's acceptance of them have been naive."

Americans are rightly outraged by the beheadings of our citizens. However, photos of Saudi Arabian mujahedin holding the severed heads of Serbs in Bosnia as early as 1992 or the most recent photo of KLA terrorists holding the severed of Serbs in Kosovo as late as 1999 went virtually unreported.

During a CATO discussion group the question was raised: "How could we bomb a sovereign nation in violation of the UN Charter, International law and the tenants of NATO." The answer from one of the pro-NATO bombing panelist said, "Because we could." Sound familiar?

Iyad Allawi, Prime Minister of Iraq, is quoted as saying (The New York Times, June 21) "We will do all we can to strike against the enemy forces aiming at harming our country, and we will not stand by with our hands tied." President George W. Bush said precisely the same thing when he said that we will do whatever it takes to defeat (Muslim) terrorists," yet we denied the Serbs the right to defend themselves against the same enemy that we are fighting today. As Gen. Charles Boyd, USAF (Ret), former Deputy Commander in Chief, European Command said, "The Serbs are not fighting to conquer new territory, but to hold on to what was already theirs."

I would like to suggest that if we are serious about finding Osama bin Laden, we look in Bosnia and Kosovo.

_________________________________________

As a career military officer's wife, Stella Jatras has traveled widely and has lived in many foreign countries where she not only learned about other cultures but also became very knowledgeable regarding world affairs and world politics. Stella Jatras lived in Moscow for two years (where her husband, George, was the Senior Air Attaché), and while there, worked in the Political Section of the US Embassy. Stella has also lived in Germany, Greece and Saudi Arabia. Her travels took her to over twenty countries.

Now DHS has retracted an earlier statement and says that Annie Jacobsen's 14 Syrian musicians were here legally after all. What does that suggest about what DHS really knows about anything? An op-ed from the Washington Times, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

The Homeland Security Department reversed itself yesterday, announcing that all 14 Syrian musicians who exhibited bizarre, menacing behavior on a flight from Detroit to Los Angeles last month were legally in the United States after all. DHS blames the confusion about the visa status on Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees. The flip-flop by DHS is just the latest odd twist in a story that raises troubling questions about the ability of our immigration authorities and airline security apparatus to keep potentially dangerous people off passenger planes.... Since the story became public, there has been a campaign by some unnamed government officials and Internet bloggers to discredit Annie Jacobsen — a journalist and passenger who wrote about what occurred on the flight in WomensWallStreet.com — as hysterical and unreliable. Her critics point to DHS' official position that it has no intelligence showing that terrorists are conducting surveillance of airline security procedures. One problem with this is that other passengers have given accounts first reported in this newspaper that corroborate Mrs. Jacobsen's. Also, pilots and air marshals (the latter being DHS' own employees) privately speak about groups of men engaging in similar behavior on other flights, in what look like dry runs for attacks. Also, on Feb. 8 the London Observer published a story quoting intelligence officials as stating that terrorists are practicing ways to smuggle explosive components onto planes so they can assemble bombs in midflight. It stretches credulity to believe, as DHS contends, that terrorists aren't carrying out surveillance of airliners. We dismiss these serious security concerns raised by Mrs. Jacobsen at our peril.

They are fleeing Muslim anti-Semitism, which is just part of the steadily mounting Islamic jihad in Europe. The jihad against their new home of Israel is already fully raging. From CBS News, with thanks to "Allah":

(CBS/AP) Just 10 days after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon enraged French leaders by urging France's Jews to leave for Israel, a group of 200 French Jews arrived to start a new life in the Jewish state, with Sharon at the airport to greet them.

As one émigré told CBS News Correspondent Mark Philips: You wear something to say you are Jewish and you have difficulty. We are afraid. It's simply that we are afraid."...

Carol Ben Guigui, 41, carrying a dog in her arms, said: "In five or 10 years, all the Jews of France will be in Israel because of anti-Semitism."

"Welcome to Israel," Sharon said, "welcome home."

Also at the airport to greet the immigrants were opposition Labor Party leader Shimon Peres and Israel's two chief rabbis....

In a July 18 speech to visiting Jewish American leaders, Sharon told them France was host to "the wildest anti-Semitism."

"If I have to advocate to our brothers in France, I will tell them one thing: Move to Israel, as early as possible," he said....

France is widely viewed in Israel as biased in favor of the Palestinians. The French Jewish community — at 600,000 the third-largest in the world — tends to be strongly pro-Israel, creating friction with a Muslim population of almost 5 million.

The latest French Interior Ministry figures show 510 anti-Jewish acts or threats in the first six months of 2004 — compared to 593 for all of last year.

While France has strengthened security at Jewish institutions and enacted tougher punishments for people convicted of such crimes, a sense of uneasiness and betrayal has some Jews questioning where they belong.

According to the Israeli government, 7,024 immigrants have come from France since 2000 — from a low of 1,160 in 2001 to a high of 2,385 in 2002. In the first half of 2004, 647 French Jews immigrated to Israel.

I have posted here many stories about the persecution of Christians in Iraq over the last few months. The situation is not improving. Christians felt safer when Saddam was in charge because, genocidal murderer that he was, he was not interested in enforcing Sharia provisions of dhimmitude. But people like Muqtada Al-Sadr are. From AP, with thanks to Nicolei:

BAGHDAD, IRAQ (AP) -- On a Sunday afternoon, attendance at mass at St. Peter and Paul's Cathedral in Baghdad was decidedly thin.

A handful of Syrian Orthodox loitered on the steps of the church afterward, women removing their dainty white lace veils as they chatted with friends. For many, church on Sunday is the only time they can really socialize because of safety fears.

Most Christians blame concern over a tumultuous security situation for keeping them away from church, but it's only a small part of a greater, and growing, predicament.

Numbering some 750,000, Christians are a minority here, and even as secular Iraqis worry about the growing tide of Islamic fundamentalism, so long repressed under Saddam Hussein, their Christian compatriots are feeling the effects closer to home. They're anxious about their place in the new world around them, one that often sees them as collaborators with their American occupiers.

The new Iraq seems destined to be dominated by a mix of Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites, leaving many Christians wondering if it is time to leave....

Eighteen-year-old Fadi, studying accounting at Baghdad's university, spoke of learning to hold his tongue when Muslim students turned on him and his Christian friends.

"They think that because the Americans are Christians and we're Christian that we must be collaborating with them," he said. "There's more of them than there are of us, so we have to pull back without answering back."

Christians who fled Iraq before the war are in neighboring Jordan and Syria, waiting and watching before deciding whether to return, said Bishop Andreas at the Assumption of the Virgin Mary Church.

"They're very afraid," he admitted.

Of the 750,000 Christians in Iraq, the majority are Chaldean Roman Catholic, the rest Syrian Catholic, Syrian Orthodox and Assyrian. Most live in Baghdad and its outskirts and some dwell further to the north.

Islamic radicals have warned Christians running liquor stores to shut down their sales, and have turned their sights on fashion stores and beauty salons. The increasing attention on this minority community has many within looking for a way out.

Local newspapers reported that last week, the Chaldean Patriarch, the Rev. Emmanuel Delly, met with Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and told him that Christians wanted to flee the country because they feared for their lives in the new Iraq.

Allawi's office wouldn't comment on the report and Delly reacted furiously when confronted with the question.

"How can you ask me a question like that? Do I ask you who you visit?" he raised his voice at a reporter, knocking down a tape recorder.

He later softened to say the visit was "merely to congratulate him and his new government and to wish him all the best." He told his diocese to stand firm.

"I tell them that we love our nation, and we will work for a better Iraq," he said, fingering a large silver crucifix around his neck. He said he didn't know anything about threats to Iraqi Christians and their livelihoods.

What else can he say?

Shaking the hands of the last worshippers to leave the Cathedral, Father John could only shake his head at the dwindling number of parishioners coming to Mass each week. He said that while Saddam Hussein dragged the country through "war after war," Christians felt safer when he was in charge.

"We have no future in Iraq now," he said.

Dr. Ajai Sahni in OutlookIndia (thanks to Fanabba) takes aim at the dhimmi analysts and academics who refuse to acknowledge the Pakistani jihad that is in front of their faces:

A "failure of imagination", the Panel investigating the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US stated, was what kept US officials from understanding the Al Qaeda threat before the catastrophic events in New York and Washington.

There is, however, a manifest and abiding danger today, that a future investigation into terrorist plots that are yet to be accomplished would find another, even greater, 'failure of imagination', culminating in horrors that may easily dwarf the events of 9/11.

The 9/11 Panel has been sagacious in noting that the critical element that must be understood if an adequate response to global terrorism is to be crafted, is that "we are in the midst of an ideological conflict". The contemporary assessment of where precisely inimical ideologies are located will be crucial to the outcome of this conflict - and here, again, there is an evident error in the dominant American evaluation. It is, of course, the case that Osama bin Laden has been one of the most articulate representatives of this ideology, and his Al Qaeda one of its most effective manifestations. But there are many 'future bin Ladens' waiting in the wings, largely unnoticed, or systematically and intentionally ignored, by the American establishment, as well as by much of the world.

Among the most dangerous instances of this neglect occur in Pakistan....

There follow a series of lengthy and revealing statements about jihad from radical Muslim leaders in Pakistan and Kashmir.

Worse still, as has been repeatedly noted in the past, the extremist Islamist discourse on jehad, and shahadat (martyrdom) and the 'global conspiracy' against and threat to Islam is not the province of mullahs and militants alone, and has penetrated every aspect of the Pakistani educational system - and not, as is widely believed, just the extremist madrassahs.

It is useful to note that the examples drawn up in this assessment are a small selection of statements and writings in the past less than three months. A comprehensive archive of extremist discourse in this vein for the entire period since 9/11 would fill volumes, and would include innumerable statements by elements proximate to, or directly connected with, the Musharraf regime.

Some of these dangers have been acknowledged, for the pre-9/11 period under its review, by the 9/11 Panel. One writer notes that a cursory key word search of the Panel's report recovers "more than 200 references to Pakistan, many of them damning. There are less than 100 references to Iran and Iraq combined."

Nevertheless, ignorance persists at unacceptable levels. The international press and diplomatic community, largely located in protected and affluent enclaves, with their attention fixed firmly on the relatively moderate and westernized English language media, remain substantially uncomprehending of these dangerous undercurrents. Worse, denial remains integral to the mindset of many Western - and particularly US - observers. A mention of the 'dominant ideology of Pakistan' to a senior US diplomat posted in that country, for instance, drew a sharp response rejecting the idea that any such 'dominant ideology' could actually be identified.Such denial also characterizes the mainstream political discourse on the issue in India today, and constitutes a danger even greater than the direct threat of contemporary terrorism, creating vast spaces for the continuous consolidation of ideas that will breed much worse in the years to come.

A new story on the courageous American Muslim Asra Nomani, who is fighting for equality of dignity for women in a West Virginia mosque. She entered through the front door; they want to banish her altogether. Bull Connor couldn't have done it better. From the BBC, with thanks to Fanabba:

Indian Muslim Asra Nomani has found herself on the frontline of a battle for women's rights in Islam in the United States.

She entered the local mosque through the front door and dared to pray alongside men, an act that has triggered heated discussions among America's Muslim community.

An all-male "tribunal" of the mosque in Morgantown, West Virginia, wants to banish Ms Nomani because they think she is a frequent trouble-maker.

In their campaign to silence her, she has been depicted as heretical, misguided and westernized, someone in need of reform.

Who really needs reform here?

Here's one that will build your confidence in American counter-terrorism activities. From the New York Times, with thanks to Al-Canine:

WASHINGTON, July 28 - A classified Justice Department investigation has concluded that a former F.B.I. translator at the center of a growing controversy was dismissed in part because she accused the bureau of ineptitude, and it found that the F.B.I. did not aggressively investigate her claims of espionage against a co-worker.

The Justice Department's inspector general concluded that the allegations by the translator, Sibel Edmonds, "were at least a contributing factor in why the F.B.I. terminated her services," and the F.B.I. is considering disciplinary action against some employees as a result, Robert S. Mueller III, director of the bureau, said in a letter last week to lawmakers. A copy of the letter was obtained by The New York Times.

Ms. Edmonds worked as a contract linguist for the F.B.I. for about six months, translating material in Turkish, Persian and Azerbaijani. She was dismissed in 2002 after she complained repeatedly that bureau linguists had produced slipshod and incomplete translations of important terrorism intelligence before and after the Sept. 11 attacks. She also accused a fellow Turkish linguist in the bureau's Washington field office of blocking the translation of material involving acquaintances who had come under F.B.I. suspicion and said the bureau had allowed diplomatic sensitivities with other nations to impede the translation of important terrorism intelligence.

The Edmonds case has proved to be a growing concern to the F.B.I. because it touches on three potential vulnerabilities for the bureau: its ability to translate sensitive counterterrorism material, its treatment of internal "whistle-blowers," and its classification of sensitive material that critics say could be embarrassing to the bureau.

The Justice Department has imposed an unusually broad veil of secrecy on the Edmonds case, declaring details of her case to be a matter of "state secrets." The department has blocked her from testifying in a lawsuit brought by families of Sept. 11 victims, it has retroactively classified briefings Congressional officials were given in 2002, and it has classified the inspector general's entire report on its investigation into her case. As a result, groups promoting government openness have accused the Justice Department of abusing the federal procedures in place for classifying sensitive material....

The inspector general "also criticized the F.B.I.'s failure to adequately pursue Ms. Edmonds's allegations of espionage as they related to one of her colleagues," Mr. Mueller said in his letter.

Here's one that will build your confidence in our border controls. From the Brownsville Herald, with thanks to Al-Canine:

Middle Easterners with possible terrorist ties have been detained after entering the country from Mexico but released for lack of jail space, said U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness.

“It is true. It is very reliable information, from the horse’s mouth, and it’s happening all over the place,” Ortiz, D-Texas, told The Herald on Thursday.

“It’s very, very scary, and members (of Congress) know about this. We have contacted several agencies, and I have talked to some people, but I can’t say who.”

A horrific story from Qatar's Peninsula Online, with thanks to Raymond for the link:

Jammu: The women of Jammu and Kashmir are paying with their honour and lives as terrorists target the families of those who they feel have betrayed them.

Mariam Begum of Gandoh in Doda district was raped for days together before she was defaced by militants, who chopped off her nose and ears. She had to pay with her honour because her brother, a militant, had decided to lay down arms and live a normal life.

“How could that be?” Mariam’s captors reportedly asked her as long as she was in their captivity last month.

If Mariam, who is in her twenties, is thanking god that she survived to live another day, women in the border district of Rajouri have not been so lucky.

Teenaged Zarina, for whom her father Mohammad Shafi was looking for a match as girls in rural areas are married off at an early age, was lowered into a grave on Monday afternoon.

Her beheaded body had to be put together before the last rites. Militants had slit her throat.

Her father and brother were also buried in a similar condition the same day.

A week ago, two female members of Abdul Ghani’s family were among five people shot dead by Lashker-e-Toiba terrorists.

The fault of both these families was that their men were suspected of siding with the Indian security forces.

Women, in most cases, are raped, if not killed as the militants attempt to humiliate families suspected of working with the security forces.

“The women are targeted because this is the raw nerve of all the families and the militants have used rape as a tool against these families,” said a police officer....

Most cases of rape go unreported as shamed families keep matters to themselves, police said.

One unspoken element is the likelihood that he's too popular to be charged. And what does that tell you? This man has spoken openly about violent jihad, and defended the Bali bombings. From AP, with thanks to many:

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesian police dropped plans Wednesday to charge a radical cleric in the 2002 Bali bombings, but said the man Washington accuses of being a terror mastermind in Southeast Asia will remain in jail.

The 65-year-old Abu Bakar Bashir will be charged with other crimes, including heading the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah terror group and a deadly suicide attack last year on Jakarta's J.W. Marriott Hotel, chief detective Suyitno Landung said. Jemaah Islamiyah was blamed for both attacks.

The announcement followed last week's landmark ruling by the Constitutional Court, which barred the retroactive use of an anti-terror law rushed through parliament after the Bali bombings. The explosions killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists....

Earlier this year, U.S. Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge said in Jakarta that Bashir had "intense and deep involvement in the planning and execution of terrorist activities." Australia's foreign minister called Bashir a "loathsome creature" and said he should remain behind bars.

His case is sensitive in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. Authorities want to be aggressive in the U.S.-led anti-terror war while not being seen as subject to Washington's influence.

Via the Holy Land Foundation. From CBS11 News, with thanks to EPG:

The federal government's roundup Tuesday of seven Middle Eastern men on charges of funding the terrorist group Hamas yielded an unexpected disclosure: a link between Dallas City Hall and Hamas’ top leader in Israel’s occupied territories.

North Texas resident Mufid Abdulquader is a city of Dallas engineer who was among the men charged Tuesday in a 42-count indictment for allegedly using the Richardson-based Holy Land Foundation to funnel millions of dollars to Hamas terrorist operations. But Abdulquader, a Palestinian and naturalized U.S. citizen, has a connection to Hamas shared by none of the others.

Abdulquader’s Syrian-based half brother is a top leader of Hamas, ranking so high that he has been a target of high-profile Israeli assassinations that have killed other organization leaders in recent months. Abdulquader’s half-brother – they share the same father – is Khaled Mishaal, Hamas’ political bureau chief and U.S. designee as a global terrorist.

Until the government unsealed its indictment Tuesday, the family relationship between the city of Dallas engineer and Mishaal was known only to a few intelligence officials who had grown increasingly concerned about it as Hamas leaders began publicly threatening to target Americans.

Hamas has deployed dozens of suicide bombers who have killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in a quest to annihilate that country and replace it with an Islamic regime.

But recent threats by Hamas leadership to mount attacks on American soil provoked heightened fears within the FBI that the engineer could pass along sensitive information about the city’s vital infrastructure systems to terrorists, two sources have told CBS-11 News.

From the superb Cox and Forkum.

Watch for a column about this exact point from Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer, coming very soon -- maybe even tomorrow.

Is this story connected to the theological green light that was just issued? From AP:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A militant group holding two Pakistani contractors hostage said Wednesday it had killed the men but freed their Iraqi driver, the Al-Jazeera television station Al-Jazeera reported.

The group, calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq, had announced in a video Monday that it kidnapped two Pakistanis working for U.S. forces and sentenced them to death because their country was discussing sending troops to Iraq.

In a new videotape sent to Al-Jazeera on Wednesday, the men said they had carried out their threat, the station reported. The newsreader said the video showed the corpses of the two men; however, the station declined to show the footage.

The kidnapped men were identified by Pakistan as engineer Raja Azad, 49, and driver Sajad Naeem, 29, both of whom worked for the Kuwait-based al-Tamimi group in Baghdad. The militants also warned the company to stop doing business in Iraq or they would kill more of its employees.

A bid for freedom of conscience at the UN. You will be able to read documents related to this initiative in my forthcoming essay collection The Myth of Islamic Tolerance. From Reuters, with thanks to David G. Littman:

GENEVA, July 28 (Reuters) Religious rights campaigners, buoyed by a UN call for an end to repression of minorities by majority religions, today urged the world body to tackle persecution of ''apostates'' in Muslim countries.

The move came as humanist groups hailed the UN's 2004 Human Development Report for declaring that ''individuals must be free not only to criticise the religion into which they are born, but to reject it for another or to remain without one.'' The campaigners' appeal -- in the form of a petition signed by nearly 90,000 people in 32 countries, including present and former Muslims -- was delivered to new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour.

It said Muslim religious leaders and organisations should make a clear public call for reinterpretation of Islamic law ''so that Muslims who change their faith will not have to face intimidation, harassment, persecution or death as a result.'' The petition, launched by British-based Christian group The Barnabas Fund, called on the U.N. Human Rights Commission, governments and international bodies to speak out on the issue and raise it ''as a matter of urgency'' with Muslim groupings.

Fund advocacy manager Paul Cook -- who welcomed the UN report's ''very encouraging affirmation'' of the right to apostasy -- said his group's efforts to get dialogue going with Muslim bodies on the problem had so far met with silence.

I don't find any confirming stories, but here is one provocative report from Texas. From FederalNewsRadio.com, with thanks to Al-Canine:

A South African woman picked up in Texas almost 10 days ago may turn out to be a key, high level al-Qaida operative.

Her name is Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed. She was stopped at McAllen Miller International Airport on July 19th headed to New York.

Eddie Flores of the U.S. Border Patrol office in McAllen, Texas tells FederalNewsRadio.com that a review of her papers raised some concerns. "In looking at her documents, they did not find any entry documents in her passport where she was legally admitted into the United States," says Flores....

Government sources tell FederalNewsRadio.com that capturing this woman could be comparable to the arrest of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11. It was revealed in court yesterday that she was on a watch list and had entered the U.S. possibly as many as 250 times.

The Council on American Islamic Relations is demanding an apology from Jackie Mason and lots of other people for his remarks on radio the other night. From WND:

Comedian Jackie Mason raised the ire of a controversial Islamic lobby group by calling "the whole Muslim religion" a "murderous organization" that teaches "hate, terrorism and murder."

The remarks came when Mason hosted the Jim Bohannon Show, syndicated nationally by the Westwood One radio network. Mason was elaborating on a comment by his co-author, New York lawyer Raoul Felder, who said Islam "is a religion of hate, this is a religion of murder."

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, filed a complaint with the FCC and wants Westwood One to apologize.

Mason, according to CAIR, amplified on Felder's "bigotry."

"This is amazing information that almost nobody is aware of ... everyone thinks that it's a legitimate religion that preaches love and brotherhood," said Mason. "The truth of the matter is [that terrorists] are reflecting the religion and following the religion."

They are "following the orders of the religion directly from the Quran ... in plain English, the whole Muslim religion is preaching and teaching hate, terrorism and murder, and nobody knows it, and its about time they found out about it, " Mason said.

"The Quran ... is 50 versions of hate, venom, hostility, and murder ... dedicated to terrorism," he added. " ... I don't know how we can call it a religion in the traditional sense. It should be called a murderous organization that's out to kill people."

In a letter to Westwood One, CAIR demanded a public apology to the Muslim community and "an opportunity to refute Mason's Islamophobic smears."

The letter stated: "It is this type of hate-filled propaganda that was used by the Nazis as justification for their persecution of the Jewish community in Germany."

Now wait a minute. No it isn't. Mason didn't say anything (as far as I can tell) about Muslims. He was talking about Islam and the Qur'an. There is nothing in his remarks inconsistent with the fact that many Muslims are not murderous and hate-filled. Nor did Jackie Mason say anything like this: here is a real Nazi statement about Jews, spoken by Adolf Hitler himself in 1922:

If I am ever really in power, the destruction of the Jews will be my first and most important job. As soon as I have power, I shall have gallows after gallows erected, for example, in Munich on the Marienplatz-as many of them as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged one after another, and they will stay hanging until they stink. They will stay hanging as long as hygienically possible. As soon as they are untied, then the next group will follow and that will continue until the last Jew in Munich is exterminated. Exactly the same procedure will be followed in other cities until Germany is cleansed of the last Jew! (quoted in John Toland, Adolf Hitler. London: Book Club Associates, 1977, p.116)

CAIR is operating in a pluralistic society. Instead of demanding apologies, they should show why Mason is wrong about Islam and the Qur'an. In a pluralistic society, everyone must tolerate not only those who disagree, but those who find one's beliefs ridiculous or appalling. In this environment, Christians and other groups tolerate constant attacks on their beliefs; most, instead of demanding apologies, publish responses. Readers may find them more or less convincing, and so goes the marketplace of ideas. If Ibrahim Hooper and CAIR cannot handle this, I wonder how deep their commitment is to secularism and pluralism.

Also: in 2002 on MSNBC, Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR called me a "hatemonger." This was false, slanderous, and designed to discredit me in the eyes of the American public, but I have never demanded an apology. Instead, I have responded in many ways, directly and indirectly. I have taken pains to emphasize that I am not condemning all Muslims, or saying that they are all terrorists (as is often falsely claimed). I am focusing on the elements of Islam that give rise to terrorism and fanaticism, and asking that they be reformed. I have on several occasions made it clear that "nuke 'em all" haters are not welcome to post on this site (although comments continue to be largely unmoderated). I have made it clear that the proper response to jihad terrorism is not unfocused hate, but a clear and dispassionate recognition of its causes, coupled with a carefully calibrated program of reform.

If Hooper himself gave a similarly reasoned response to Mason, and worked to eradicate from the American Muslim community the hate to which Mason referred, he would be doing a real service to America and its Muslims. As it is, CAIR continues to try to position itself as a civil rights organization defending those beleagured by racism, and their spin on this incident will convince many. But anyone who looks closer should see that it won't wash.

A bit of common sense somehow lodges at Harvard. From the New York Times, with thanks to Seymour Payne:

Harvard University is returning a controversial $2.5 million gift to its donor, the president of the United Arab Emirates.

Harvard said in a statement Monday that the president, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, recently asked to withdraw the gift, which was to endow a chair in Islamic religious studies, before it was subjected to a formal deliberation this summer by the university.

Abdulla Alsaboosi, a spokesman at the United Arab Emirates Embassy in Washington, said negotiations between the university and Sheik Zayed's representatives had been going on for several months. "The negotiations were conducted in an atmosphere of cordiality and mutual respect," Mr. Alsaboosi said, "but in the end, since no decision was taken by the university, we felt regretfully that we had no option but to retract the gift."

Students and Jewish organizations had criticized the Harvard Divinity School for accepting the donation, which was made in 2000, because they objected to the sheik's support for a policy research organization, the Zayed International Center for Coordination and Follow-Up in Abu Dhabi, one of the seven states in the United Arab Emirates.

Speakers at the center had included an Arab scholar who has written that Jews use human blood to make pastries and a French author who claims that Israel masterminded the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 as well as American officials like former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Vice President Al Gore. It was closed last summer by the government of the United Arab Emirates, which said that the center had engaged in a discourse that "contradicted the principles of interfaith tolerance" espoused by Sheik Zayed.

You can say that again.

This is a declaration that those who aid unbelievers are themselves unbelievers, and can thus be killed. This is a well-attested principle in Islamic law. From the Jerusalem Post:

A lengthy audiotape purportedly by the spiritual adviser to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida-linked group justifies killing Muslims when their presence protects infidels and threatens revenge on Shiite Muslims.

The 74-minute tape, posted Wednesday on an Internet site that often carries statements from Islamic terrorists, identifies the speaker as Sheik Abu Anas al-Shami, spiritual leader for Tawhid and Jihad. His name often is cited in Islamic forums as a religious authority, but he was not known to have released such audiotapes.

"If infidels take Muslims as protectors and Muslims do not fight them, it is allowed to kill the Muslims," the speaker said, then gave an example.

"If there is an interest in killing a Turk, and if it is necessary - meaning that if targeting the infidels is impossible as long as the Turk exists - then killing the Turk serves an interest to all Muslims and his killing is allowed," he said.

Turks, Jordanians, Egyptians and other Muslims have been abducted, but thus far no Muslims are known to have been decapitated.

On extremist Islamic online forums, the accidental killing of Muslims who work for US coalition forces in Iraq has always been a controversial subject, but generally it has been considered justifiable.

Opinions have been more mixed on taking Muslims hostage and beheading them, with some saying "fellow Muslims" should be spared and others urging their killing as examples to others of the fate of those who are "allied with the devil."

Interesting: the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee is suing to stop bag searches around the convention in Boston. Now, why would they care? Is this an instance of anti-Arab discrimination? As far as I know everyone, Nordic, Far Eastern, whatever, is being searched. Here is a question of whether individual civil rights should trump public safety concerns.

So tell me: when you saw those videos of the 9/11 hijackers passing through airport security, did you think they should have been searched more carefully? Or waved through for fear of anti-Arab discrimination?

From AP, with thanks to LGF:

BOSTON - Two civil rights groups filed a lawsuit in federal court to stop the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority from randomly inspecting passengers' bags, saying it's an unconstitutional violation of personal privacy.

A judge scheduled an emergency hearing for Tuesday in the case filed by the National Lawyers Guild and the American Anti-Discrimination Committee.

The random inspections began Thursday, just in time for the Democratic National Convention this week at Boston's FleetCenter. The policy is the first of its kind in the country.

The groups say the searches violate the Fourth Amendment because they don't require information that the person searched is suspected of criminal activity. They've urged customers not to consent to the searches.

"There is no way the MBTA can implement this policy in a constitutional manner," said National Lawyers Guild national president Michael Avery.

MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said the bags aren't opened. Instead, they are run through a machine that detects explosives. Pesaturo said so far no one has objected to having their bags inspected.

If they win this case, won't that stop bag searches in places like museums as well? Not long ago I was in Washington, and I saw that places such as the Smithsonian buildings and even parking garages inspect bags. (I took a break from work long enough to stop by the National Archives, where I was searched going in, but not going out. I guess I could have carried the Constitution home in my socks.)

Rant Wraith (thanks to LGF) has found some exceedingly interesting information about the Muslim imam who said a prayer during the Democratic National Convention last night.

He works at Georgetown, "the first American university to hire a full-time Muslim chaplain. He earned a B.A. degree in Islamic Law and Theology from the University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan. He's a Ph.D. Candidate in Islamic Theology at American Open University, Fall Church, VA."

What is the American Open University? The offical site is mostly (and quite conveniently) in Arabic. But this site has the university curriculum from the summer of 2000 as taught in Fresno, CA.

What do they teach you ask? My favorite lesson is titled, Secularism is Shirk in the Lordship of Allah. Here are some high points of the lesson (tauhid or tawhid is the unity of Allah; mushrik and shirk are Islamic terms for polytheism, a grave sin for Muslims - Christians are considered shirk because they "attribute partners to God" through the divinity of Christ and the Trinity; shirk equals unbelief and infidelism; emphasis in bold added):

Whoever calls the people (and/or himself) to the following and obedience of another law other than the shari'a is a disbeliever and a mushrik.

The scholars of Usool-ul-Fiqh have all agreed on the axiom that "None has the right to legislate but Allah."...

That would rule out human documents like, say, the U.S. Constitution, wouldn't it?

Rant Wraith concludes:

What the hell is the DNC thinking? Did they research this guy before they signed him up? Do they even care?

UPDATE: DNC's Imam Testified for Sami al-Arian -- search the page for "Yahya Hendi." (Thanks to Charles at LGF).

Walid Phares in FrontPage points out: "America was betrayed by academics who told us Islamic terrorism was no threat."

A few months ago, when the 9/11 Commission released footage of the communications between several command centers and the transportation network during the dramatic minutes of September 11, one phrase chilled me to the bones. It summarized how unprepared America was to face to the Jihadist onslaught. A pilot of an F-16 rushing to the scene over the Pentagon screamed on his radio: "God, the Russians had us...they had us."

Since the end of the 1990s, Americans, were subjected to a campaign of intellectual subversion. The Jihadist factor, although identified by U.S. intelligence agencies as the driving force behind terrorism throughout the past decade, didn't make it into the national psyche. Hence, this American jet pilot automatically blamed "Russians," even 11 years after the end of the Cold War....

When an FBI agent rushed to her supervisors to inform them that "Saudi men" were learning to fly but not land airplanes, no one lifted a finger. Agents were told that CIA analysts were receiving cable after cable indicating that Jihadist elements were mounting operations against the mainland, and possibly planning to use planes. But the agency's political bosses had not produced guidelines to help the analysts properly recognize the terrorist threat. In 1998, bin Laden himself declared war against infidel America. The White House did not hear and Congress did not see. Back in 1994, a former CNN journalist, now an MSNBC Terrorism analyst, Steven Emerson, filmed Jihad preachers in New York calling for violence and showed it to the nation. Not only was there no response, but Wahhabi political factions began systematically lobbying against a crackdown. Worse, all experts who attempted to warn America were suppressed by Arabist-Islamist factions. The Wahhabi Lobby claimed that, "warning from the Jihad threat was a cover for pro-Zionist propaganda to advance Israel's interests!" Overall, the American public was denied every single opportunity to be educated.

Americans have a great imagination. What the U.S. lacked was a basic education about Jihadist terror, the worse enemy we have met, the enemy who visited destruction upon New York and Washington in 2001. The pilot that morning embodied the state of America’s education about radical Islam and terrorism, not the state of our imagination. Some academic elites had insisted that after the Soviet Union collapsed, the West had no real enemies. Hence, the last foe the pilot knew was Russia. Don't blame him for what he said when he saw the smoke over the capital and Manhattan. He, along with millions of Americans, was told for a whole decade that Islamic Fundamentalism isn't a threat. Al-Qaeda was attacking us from one side, and our educators were failing us from the other.

Muhammad Qutb was freed, according to this, because he was a Muslim. From the New York Times:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 27 - In the end, Muhammad Mamdouh Qutb figures it was his captors' remorse that led to his freedom.

Yes, they roughed him up and bundled him into a car, took him hostage for four days and told the world they would kill him. But then, said Mr. Qutb, an Egyptian diplomat, it dawned on them that he was far from an ideal target: he prayed five times a day, he fasted, and as they learned from a television report, he was known for teaching the Koran to children at the neighborhood mosque.

It did not hurt, Mr. Qutb added, that his captors, who called themselves the Lions of Allah Brigade and snatched him as he came out of a local mosque on Thursday night, had accomplished their mission without killing him. Taking him hostage and airing their demands on television was a cheap, efficient way to make their grievances known.

Judging from their accents, he said, he believed that his captors were all Iraqi. Their goal, he gathered, was to impress upon Egypt that the price of aiding the new Iraqi administration would be steep.

"They wanted to send a message to the Egyptian government," Mr. Qutb said during an interview on Tuesday inside the Egyptian Embassy. "They did that through the media."

It would seem that the US VISIT program, which checks only people from selected countries, would be rendered useless by stories like this. From AP:

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Al-Qaida militants and other terrorists traveling through Europe have obtained South African passports, and authorities believe they got them from crime syndicates operating inside the government agency that issues the documents.

The illicit acquisition of the passports, which allow travel through many African countries and Britain without visas, sent shock waves through South Africa after one top police official said "boxes and boxes" of the documents were discovered in London.

Barry Gilder, director general of the Department of Home Affairs, told The Associated Press he has come across a number of instances in which South African passports were found in the hands of al-Qaida suspects or their associates in Europe — both in his current capacity and as a former deputy director in the National Intelligence Agency.

Another terror charity. And note: Hamas got $12.4 million from this one source alone. Remember that the next time you hear about desperately poor Palestinians having to blow themselves up on buses because they have no money to buy weapons and wage conventional warfare. From AP:

WASHINGTON - A major American Muslim charity and seven of its officers were charged Tuesday with providing millions of dollars in support to Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist organization blamed for dozens of suicide bomber attacks in Israel.

The 42-count indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Dallas, alleges that the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development provided more than $12.4 million to individuals and organizations linked to Hamas from 1995 to 2001. The U.S. government froze the charity's assets in December 2001.

The indictment names the foundation along with its president, Shukri Abu Baker; chairman, Ghassan Elashi; executive director, Haitham Maghawri; and four others. The charges include conspiracy, providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, tax evasion and money laundering.

Elashi, remember, is a former CAIR official.

At the time of the transfer of sovereignty, I said here that that transfer would change nothing: the mujahedin, the warriors of jihad, would still labor to transform Iraq into an Islamic state. From the Sydney Morning Herald, with thanks to Nicolei:

Gunmen assassinated a senior Iraqi Interior Ministry official and two of his bodyguards in Baghdad yesterday, a ministry source said.

Mussab al-Awadi was reported to have been killed along with two of his bodyguards as he left his house in the capital.

Earlier three people, including a child, were killed and seven others wounded in a suicide bombing outside the main US military base in the northern city of Mosul, the US military said....

Also yesterday, militants calling themselves the Mujahideen Corps kidnapped two Jordanian drivers and threatened to execute them in 72 hours unless their Jordanian company stopped doing business with the US military, Associated Press reported. It follows an announcement by a group holding seven other foreigners that it had extended the deadline for talks and repeated a demand for their Kuwaiti employer to leave.

The hostages - three Indians, three Kenyans and an Egyptian, all truck drivers for a Kuwaiti firm - were seized last week by a little-known group calling itself the Black Banners brigade of the Islamic Secret Army. The brigade said it had decided to extend the deadline in response to an appeal from Sheik Hisham al-Dulami, the head of what he calls the Detainees Association.

The firm, the Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Company, said on Sunday it had received assurances the captives would be freed.

An Iraqi group, the Islamic Army, said in a video aired on Al-Jazeera television that it had kidnapped two Pakistanis working for US forces and an Iraqi contract driver. It said it had sentenced the Pakistanis to death.

A report from a Muslim, Naeem Mohaiemen, in the Daily Star (thanks to Nicolei):

On July 15, Human Rights Watch issued a report on the condition of Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia. The revelation that "Guest Workers" are systematically abused in Saudi Arabia should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with that region's history. What a shame that it took Sarah Whitson, executive director of HRW's Middle East and North Africa Division, to finally speak the unpalatable truth. "We found men and women in conditions resembling slavery," said Whitson in the press conference announcing their findings. The report described "the pervasive abuses foreign workers endure...the abysmal and exploitative labor conditions many workers face, and the utter failure of the justice system to provide redress." The real question is this -- why did the Islamic world not uncover these human rights abuses, so close to the holy city of Mecca?

Based on interviews taken in Bangladesh, India and the Philippines, HRW found abysmal and exploitative labor practices, wanton rape of women workers, and beheading of guest workers accused of crimes without proper legal process. Anyone who has visited Saudi Arabia knows the racism with which ordinary Saudis treats the brown and black-skinned masses that come for Hajj. Like hundreds of Bangladeshis every year, my parents endured these indignities during their recent pilgrimage. When he returned from Mecca, my father told me, "To them, we will always be miskeen (beggar). Doesn't matter what we do, or where we come from. They see our skin and don't need to see more." If this is how pilgrims are treated, imagine how much worse is the plight of the "Guest Worker." Yet, we Muslims remain silent on these abuses -- after all the Saudis are the keepers of Islam's holiest site, so they cannot possibly be racist!

How appropriate as well that HRW used the phrase "slavery" to describe conditions inside the desert kingdom. Saudi Arabia was in fact one of the last nation-states to abolish slavery. Along with Yemen, the Saudis only abolished slavery in 1962. Prior to that, the Islamic world's experience with slavery was extremely problematic. Muslims once led the rest of the world in science, culture and human emancipation. The positive examples are numerous and often-repeated. However, the advances brought about in the early days of the Islamic Caliphate ossified, with very little innovation or re-interpretation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries....

The Muslim world is sliding backwards into medievalism, and it is time for reformers to speak openly and bravely. There is a cancer that is eating away at our soul -- a disease marked by paranoia, double standards and virulent racism. While we are in full-throated cry against abuses in Iraq and Palestine, we stay completely silent when it is Muslims who are the abusers (of both non-Muslims and Muslims).

How else to explain our outpouring of sympathy for the Bosnian genocide, but our complete silence on the ongoing genocide in Sudan? In that country's civil war between the Arab Muslim North, and the black Christian and Animist South, 2 million people have been killed to date. In a BBC profile of the hundreds of black Africans who have been raped by pro-government Janjaweed Arab militia, one victim described the attackers: "They called me Abeid (slave in Arabic)."

Shame on the Muslim world for staying silent!

Remember Reem Raiyshi? From CNN, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

A military official with the U.S. Central Command tells CNN that in one case after an attack, troops found a body with a foot tied with a rope inside a vehicle.

The official says there also is evidence of some individuals having their entire family held by extremists who then force them into suicide car bomb attacks....

In other cases, mentioned by the official, extremists with remote detonators have followed drivers to set off car bombs.

The official also said in one instance, U.S. forces went to a house and captured extremists holding a family hostage until a bombing mission was completed.

U.S. military officials say they have noticed another tactic, to use so-called "weekend jihadists."

This generally refers to using young men from neighboring countries who come to Iraq, and have no money. Then they are pressured into conducting attacks.

More rage and threats at Turkey, despised by the radical Muslims for its secularism. From AFX, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

ANKARA (AFX) - Turkey has received intelligence that the al-Qaeda network may try to carry out attacks in the country similar to the Sept 11, 2001 attacks in the US, the Milliyet newspaper reported.

Citing "an important source" the newspaper said Turkey received information on July 16 that Al-Qaeda may be planning to either hijack a plane and crash it into a target on the ground, or blow up a plane in the air using homemade explosives.

Milliyet said the interior ministry convened an urgent meeting of security and air authorities last week and ordered security measures at airports be raised to "level yellow", the highest state of alarm after the top "level red".

Back in the days of the Cold War, the doctrine of "Mutually Assured Destruction" was purported to have kept both sides from launching a nuclear attack on the other. But the problem with the "Islamic Bomb" is that those who will wish to launch it will not be given pause by the prospect of their own destruction: they will be martyrs for Allah, enjoying the sensual bounties of Paradise. From Al-Bawaba, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Intelligence Chief Major-General Aharon Ze'evi-Farkash said the Iranian-backed resistance movement had a few dozen rockets "apparently" with a range of 115 kilometers and perhaps as great as 200 kilometers....

Farkash's comments were published as a spokesman for Iran's Revolutionary Guards was quoted as saying the Islamic Republic will wipe Israel "off the face of the earth" if it dared to attack the its nuclear facilities.

"The United States is showing off by threatening to use its wild dog, Israel," the public relations head of the Revolutionary Guards, Commander Seyed Masood Jazayeri, was quoted as saying by the Iranian student news agency ISNA.

"They will not hesitate to strike Iran if they are capable of it. However, their threats to attack Irans nuclear facilities cannot be realised. They are aware Tehran's reaction will be so harsh that Israel will be wiped off the face of the earth and US interests will be easily damaged," he warned.

Of all places. From Daniel Pipes at FrontPage:

Finally, an official body of the U.S. government has come out and said what needs to be said: that the enemy is “Islamist terrorism … not just ‘terrorism,’ some generic evil.” The 9/11 commission in its final report even declares that Islamist terrorism is the “catastrophic threat” facing the United States.

As Thomas Donnelly points out in the New York Sun, the commission has called the enemy “by its true name, something that politically correct Americans have trouble facing.”

Why does it matter that the Islamist dimension of terrorism must be specified? Simple. Just as a physician must identify a disease to treat it, so a strategist must name an enemy to defeat it. The great failing in the U.S. war effort since September 2001 has been the reluctance to name the enemy. So long as the anodyne, euphemistic, and inaccurate term “war on terror” remains the official nomenclature, that war will not be won.

Better is to call it a “war on Islamist terrorism.” Better yet would be “war on Islamism,” looking beyond terror to the totalitarian ideology that lies behind it.

Significantly, the same day that the 9/11 report was published, July 22, President George W. Bush for the first time used the term “Islamic militants” in a speech, bringing him closer than ever before to pointing to the Islamist threat.

The report of the “National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States” has other good value. It paints an accurate picture of Islamist views, describing these as a “hostility toward us and our values [that] is limitless.” Equally useful is the description of the Islamist goal being “to rid the world of religious and political pluralism.”

In contrast to those analysts who wishfully dismiss the Islamists as a few fanatics, the 9/11 commission acknowledges their true importance, noting that bin Laden’s message “has attracted active support from thousands of disaffected young Muslims and resonates powerfully with a far larger number who do not actively support his methods.” The Islamist outlook represents not a hijacking of Islam, as is often but wrongly claimed; rather it emerges from a “long tradition of extreme intolerance” within Islam, one going back centuries and in recent times associated with Wahhabism, the Muslim Brethren, and the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb....

Wow. Sounds like those Commission guys have been reading my books.

The great pioneering scholar of dhimmitude, Bat Ye'or, many of whose most important essays will appear in my forthcoming collection The Myth of Islamic Tolerance, has a critically important essay on the state of Europe today at FrontPage:

Last Tuesday, the 25 nations of the European Union (EU) voted unanimously to support a United Nations Resolution condemning Israel’s defensive fence (ignoring that this barrier was constructed to keep jihadist murderers from entering the nation via Judea and Samaria). The EU’s craven, morally bankrupt stance was sadly consistent with Eurabian policies evident now for three decades. In fact, the EU has been completing a slow metamorphasis into the "Christian" arm of the Pan-Arab world, different in religious observation (or lack of same) but united in its views of Israel and America....

Prompted by fears of Khomeini's Shi’ite theocracy in Iran, international Arab terrorism and the rise of oil prices, the EC adopted the 1980 Venice Declaration. This declaration made clear that the EC, under French leadership, had adopted Pan-Arab conditions regarding Israel without qualification, including: the 1949 armistice as Israel’s legitimate borders; Arab sovereignty over East Jerusalem; an Arab Palestinian state; the recognition of the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinians, as well as its participation in all negotiations, and the obligation of Israel to negotiate with Arafat, exclusively; and the refusal to recognize a separate peace between Israel and any Arab country, for the resolution of the "Palestinian problem." By adopting all those conditions (which contradicted UN Resolution 242) Europeans could in turn justify their ahistorical designation of Judea and Samaria as occupied Arab land. Ultimately, the entire European effort to delegitimize and vilify Israel hinges upon this inaccurate, disingenuous formulation. In the 1970s and 80s, the Communist bloc and the burgeoning Euro-Arab alliance granted international legitimacy to the denial of Israel’s rights by the PLO. France, and to a lesser extent Germany, directed the entire European Community foreign policy in accord with Arab-Islamic sentiments. A careful reading of the Venice Declaration (1980), the Fez Islamic Conference (1980), the Amman Arab Summit (1980), and the Taif-Mecca Islamic Summit (1981) reveals the similarities between the European and Arab positions in relation to Israel. Europe’s modified wording is just a fig-leaf....

Beyond a fleeting awareness, the overwhelming majority of Europeans and Americans do not understand the new Eurabian entity, which only the first step in a steady progression toward its Arabization and Islamization. Europe has evolved from a Judeo-Christian civilization, with important post-Enlightenment/secular elements, to a "civilization of dhimmitude," i.e., Eurabia: a secular-Muslim transitional society with its traditional Judeo-Christian mores rapidly disappearing....

Most recently, this program of Euro-Arab symbiosis has been codified in a detailed report entitled, “Dialogue between Peoples and Cultures in the Euro-Mediterranean Area.” Released last October, this report (whose contributors included Umberto Eco and Tariq Ramadan) was to establish complete interdependence between Europe and the Arab-Muslim world. Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission, established the High-Level Advisory Group which stated the aims, policies, and routine functions of the foundation. The Advisory Group mandated that the foundation have complete financial and administrative independence in managing its budget and in choosing its partners. In support of this remarkable request, the Advisory Group argued that the foundation needed considerable resources to cover its activities that would be extraordinarily expensive, as they will encompass all the countries of the EU. The Advisory Group further justified such conditions by invoking its lofty aim, which “is nothing less than peace itself.” And this “peace” -- accomplished through “brotherly love” and “dialogue” between the North and the South of the Mediterranean -- will be achieved by a total economic, political, and cultural fusion....

One can choose to ignore it, but Eurabia is a tangible entity. Eurabia has a discernible historical development, and its functionaries are now well entrenched in each European parliament, and at the head of the European Commission. Often Javier Solana merely parrots the Arab League's Amr Moussa, or the Palestinian Authority's Yasser Arafat. Hence Solana's parrots the pan-Arab refrain that no reforms can be achieved in any Muslim country before the settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, reiterating the same fatuous statements made by Amr Moussa. The EU continues to proclaim that all negotiations must be conducted with Arafat alone and that the Middle East conflict is at the center of world politics. Those two assertions were repeated endlessly at the Fez, Amman, and Taif Summits (1980-81). The EU’s unlimited funds finance anti-Israeli and anti-American campaigns, as well as the "dialogue" industry. Regarding Israel in particular, it appears as if the EU has become the obsequious mouthpiece of the Arab League.

This Eurabian ethos operates at all levels of European society. Its countless functionaries, like the Christian janissary slave-soldiers of past Islamic regimes, advance a jihadist world strategy. Eurabia cannot change direction; it can only use deception to mask its emergence, its bias and its inevitable trajectory. Eurabia’s destiny was sealed when it decided, willingly, to become a covert partner with the Arab global jihad against America and Israel. Americans must discuss the tragic development of Eurabia, and its profound implications for the United States, particularly in terms of its resultant foreign policy realities. Americans should consider the despair and confusion of many Europeans, prisoners of a Eurabian totalitarianism that foments a culture of deadly lies about Western civilization. Americans should know that this self-destructive calamity did not just happen, rather it was the result of deliberate policies, executed and monitored by ostensibly responsible people. Finally, Americans should understand that Eurabia’s contemporary anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism are the spiritual heirs of 1930s Nazism and anti-Semitism, triumphally resurgent.

Read it all.

What pains were taken to make sure that these people do not hold to radical Islamic views? What is the extent of Wahhabi and/or Deobandi and/or Shi'te Iranian presence in Krasnodar? What efforts have been made to make sure that none of these 7,000 have any attachment to Sharia or violent jihad? Political correctness keeps these questions from even being asked, let alone answered. This story will be forgotten in a few days, and that will be that. But all it would take would be one -- or nineteen -- of these 7,000 to make sure it will be remembered forever. From IslamOnline, with thanks to Sparta:

KRASNODAR, Russia, July 24, (IslamOnline.net) - The United States has agreed to grant citizenship to 7,000 Ahiska Muslims who will be settled in Pennsylvania, reported a Russian newspaper on Friday, July 23.

The first 11-strong batch of the Ahiska Muslims, living in the Russian province of Krasnodar, left for Geneva on Thursday, July 22, before flying to Philadelphia, reported Novie Izvestia.

It added that the Muslims would be housed near the grand mosque in Philadelphia.

The paper recalled that Krasnodar governor Alexander Tkachev was notified of the American decision on February 15.

Izvestia said the Russian government does not treat Ahiska Muslims as citizens and has not therefore given them passports or IDs.

An official in Krasnodar administration had told Interfax on Tuesday, July 20, that of the 11,999 Ahiska Muslims living in the region, 4,943 have received Russian citizenship and 744 have embarked on Russian naturalization procedures.

He added that more than 5,000 others have expressed a desire to emigrate to the United States.

Earlier, Chingiz Neiman-zade, chairman of Vatan, a Meskheti Turks association based in Georgia, said the United States had offered to accept the Ahiska Muslims living in Krasnodar as immigrants.

"On February 16, the International Migration Organization began an information program in Krasnodar to explain the terms for the resettlement of the Ahiska Muslims in the U.S.," he told Chicago Tribune on Thursday, July 22.

"The immigrants will be provided with housing and furniture, they will be helped to learn the English language and to complete formalities needed for residence in the US, which is especially important, and have been promised life-long welfare allowances for pensioners and the disabled."

Uzbekistan is reputed to be another beacon of Muslim moderation, but evidently that moderation doesn't extend to dhimmis who dare to proselytize. Question: if Islam is so certain of its superiority as the last and perfect revelation from the true God, correcting and abrogating all previous revelations, why is it so unsure of itself as not to allow competition in the marketplace of ideas? Why doesn't it have confidence that its superiority will shine forth by comparison with its competitors? Why is it so insecure that it must instead silence those competitors by force? From the Barnabas Fund:

Baptists in Urgench in the north-western Uzbek region of Khorezm face interrogations and abuse from authorities who are cracking down on Protestant Christians in what appears to be an attempt to halt the spread of Christianity in this Muslim majority ex-Soviet republic. At least two Baptist Christians have recently been interrogated by the Uzbek secret police, known as the NSS. Both had been intimidated and threatened with long prison sentences, reportedly in an attempt to ascertain the extent and nature of their links with western missions organisations.

According to Forum 18, on 25 June NSS Officer Alisher Khasanov is alleged to have said to one, a Christian woman named Sharovat Allamova, “You Protestants rely on western money. The humanitarian western missions who support you are basically espionage organisations. So you yourselves are agents for foreign intelligence services.” On June 26 another Christian, Dilshod Dilbaev, was called in by Khasanov for interrogation about his links with missions organisations. Forum 18 reports that Dilbaev was hit by the NSS who also threatened to plant drugs on him.

Yes, this is the same Sheikh Qaradawi who made a big splash in London recently, praising suicide bombers and getting a return invitation from London mayor "Red Ken" Livingstone. This is, yes, the same Qaradawi who was featured prominently in the Arabic-language literature of a Boston mosque construction project -- but was conspicuously absent from the English-language material. And yes, this is the same Qaradawi who was praised as a moderate by Islamic "expert" John Esposito. From MEMRI:

However, on July 13, 2004, on his weekly program on Al-Jazeera television, 'Shari'a [Islamic Law] and Life,' Al-Qaradhawi explained his objections to including Jews in the May 2004 Conference of Islamic-Christian Dialogue in Doha. [3] Accusing "the Jews" of permitting the spilling of Arab blood and of being oppressors, Al-Qaradhawi concluded, "There is no dialogue between us except by the sword and the rifle…" [4]

The following are two columns from the Arab press about Al-Qaradhawi:

Former Editor of Leading Arab Paper: 'When it Comes to Political Matters, Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi Represents the Utmost Degree of Extremism'

In an op-ed titled 'Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi: Liberal or Extremist?' the former editor of the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, discussed the discrepancies in the positions expressed by Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi on his current visit to London and those expressed on his website and other venues: [5]

"There has been an uproar in the British papers because of the decision to allow Sheikh Dr. Yousef Al-Qaradhawi to enter Britain, and they have described him as 'The Mufti of Terrorism' and 'The Propagandist of Extremism.' They have demanded that the government stop him [from entering Britain] as did the U.S.

"Now, what is the truth: Is Al-Qaradhawi an extremist? The truth is that with regard to [internal] social problems, he is regarded as one of the most liberal ulama [i.e., Muslim religious scholars]. However, when we are talking about general political matters, he turns into a different kind of mufti, and his record is well known.

"Perhaps the fact that his name is connected to the Muslim Brotherhood organization has made him look on the world from the viewpoint of the party [i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood] rather than from the reality of the Islamic nation, its capabilities, and its needs. One can say about him what the Saudi minister for Islamic affairs said about some of the propagandists and mosque preachers – namely, that they incite the youth to go out to fight while they do not leave their countries and do not allow their own children to do so."

'Al-Qaradhawi, May Allah Forgive Him, Has Been One of the Most Prominent to Call for War and Confrontation'

"Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi, may Allah forgive him, has been one of the most prominent speakers calling for war and confrontation. But he himself has continued to live in Qatar, in an air-conditioned house. I heard what Al-Qaradhawi said in his own defense against the attack by the London press, denying that he is inciting [and claiming] that he is conducting a dialogue, and that he is against violence and in favor of peace."

'What He Said in London is Not Consistent with His Words in Doha'

"However, what he said in London is not consistent with his words in [the Qatari capital] Doha, which you can all read in their totality, as they are documented on his website. Two weeks ago, he announced on his program ['Sharia and Life'on Al-Jazeera] that he is against the Jews and against conducting a dialogue with them, and that they are all iniquitous. [6] The following are his words: 'The iniquity of the Jews, as a community, is obvious and apparent. Let me explain: The West, I can say about some of them [i.e., Westerners] who are iniquitous, and others who are not iniquitous. And it is possible. But iniquity on the part of the Jews is great iniquity, grave iniquity, iniquity that is incomparable and overt. Therefore, when it was suggested to me that Jews would be participating in the dialogue in the upcoming interview, I rejected this. I said no, we should not conduct a dialogue with these [people] while their hands are stained with our blood.' [7]

And how exactly would this change the way the Saudis and Pakistanis have already been operating? From the Washington Times, with thanks to chrisb:

The threat of Islamist extremists taking over Pakistan or Saudi Arabia is real and could "fundamentally change the balance of security in the world," September 11 commission member John F. Lehman said yesterday.

How the United States treats the delicate balance of pro-American governments and radical Muslim forces in those two nations is critical to the success of U.S. strategy on terrorism, Mr. Lehman said during a meeting with reporters at The Washington Times.

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia "are not our enemies," he said. "If they are to fall into our enemies' hands, it would fundamentally change the balance and have enormous impact on our economy."

Kuwait also plans to try to keep the young from being misled by jihad ideology. I hope to see how they will explain the jihad verses in the Qur'an and Hadith. From AFP:

KUWAIT said today it was questioning 11 people in connection with an alleged campaign to recruit volunteers to fight US forces in Iraq and that some had confessed to undergoing military training.

"Eleven people have been referred to the prosecution for investigation of their role in ... enlisting youth for so-called jihad (holy war) in Iraq," Interior Minister Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmed al-Jaber al-Sabah said....

Sheikh Nawaf said some of the suspects were teenagers who had apparently been "brainwashed" with extremist ideas....

At its weekly meeting today, the Kuwaiti Cabinet discussed measures to protect young people from the "dangerous ideas propagated by some extremists".

The drive to prevent youngsters from being misled would be co-ordinated by several ministries, including those of the interior, social affairs and Islamic affairs, Deputy Premier and Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs Mohammed Deifallah Sharar said.

From the Globe and Mail, with thanks to Mentat:

The author also has a chilling message for the rest of us. Despite official protestations, she says, the vast majority of Saudis support Osama's extremist world-view. "Osama bin Laden is considered a true Muslim. They don't have any doubt about that," she says in a husky, French-accented voice. The Saudis, she maintains, are essentially Taliban with money.

Ms. bin Ladin, who is half Swiss and half Iranian, was married for 14 years to Yeslam bin Ladin, the 10th son of the family patriarch, Sheik Mohamed. Osama is Yeslam's younger brother. Ms. bin Ladin lived in the Kingdom with the extended bin Laden clan from 1976 to 1985. Today, she lives in Switzerland, where she's still in a bitter, protracted divorce battle with Yeslam. The family have cut off all contact. "I know they're not very happy about the book," she says. "But they know it's true."

The book's a scorcher, not for its fleeting glimpses of Osama (who recoiled in horror when she once answered the door unveiled), but for its depiction of the utter oppression and submissiveness of Saudi women and the dysfunction of the elites. While Saudi princes rake off billions in business kickbacks, their neglected and depressed wives abuse drugs, drown their sorrows in extravagant shopping sprees, and turn to lesbian affairs for comfort. Many of them have bone density problems because they never go outside or exercise. When their husbands divorce them, they may never see their children again.

The bin Laden women "did nothing, read nothing, and were like pets kept by their husbands," she writes....

She is deeply pessimistic that Saudi society is capable of reform. "I have never seen Saudis questioning their culture and principles." And that's bad news for the rest of us.

"When Osama dies, I fear there will be a thousand men to take his place," she writes. "The ground of Saudi Arabia is fertile soil for intolerance and arrogance, and for contempt toward outsiders. It is a country where there is no room for mildness, mercy, compassion or doubt. . . . Their way has been chosen by God.

"They are eager to understand our technology, and they understand our political systems. But inside them, there is nothing but scorn for what they perceive as the godless, individualistic values and shameless freedoms of the Western way of life."

American law students are drafting Sharia code for the Maldives. From Daniel Pipes at FrontPage, with thanks to DC Watson:

Today, July 26, 2004, is the day any of you who are students at the University of Pennsylvania Law School must get in your resumé and a grade sheet if you want to participate in the newly-announced seminar on “Islamic Criminal Law: Drafting a Criminal Code for the Maldives.”

The law school’s registrar, Gloria Watts, sent out a notice informing students of changes in the fall semester’s course offerings, as first noted at LittleGreenFootballs.com. One of the them is that Paul H. Robinson, Colin S. Diver Distinguished Professor of Law, cancelled his “Criminal Law Theory Seminar” and replaced it with the three-credit Maldive project. Robinson’s course description explains the reasons for the shift in the seminar’s topic and its urgency:

The seminar will revolve around a single project: drafting a new criminal code for the Maldives. The work has been requested by the Maldivian government and is sponsored by the United Nations Development Program. Because the Maldives is by constitutional mandate an Islamic nation and, as a matter of law, all citizens are Muslim, the code will be the world’s first criminal code of modern format that is based upon the principles of Shari‘a.

After studying the existing Maldivian criminal law statutes and the criminal law principles contained in Shari’a, student teams will propose criminal code provisions and critique the proposals of others.

Selected students will have the opportunity to travel to the Maldives as part of the U.N. mission to coordinate the criminal code drafting work. (The Maldives is a nation of 1200 islands in the Indian Ocean that has for centuries been a transit point between Africa, the Middle East, and Asia and continues to have strong cultural connections to all three.)

More moderation for non-Muslims from moderate Muslim Malaysia. Non-Muslims can't even throw their non-halal food wrappings into the school's garbage cans. Got to keep them clean, don't you know. From Malaysiakini, with thanks to Nicolei:

Parents are fuming over a letter from a Kuala Lumpur primary school headmaster directing non-Muslim pupils not to bring non-halal food to school.

Parents who received the letter had called Zainal Abidin Senapi, headmaster of Sekolah Kebangsaan Seri Mega to complain and seek clarification on its contents.

Zainal’s letter dated July 14 sent to parents and guardians of students read: “Please be informed that non-Muslim students are altogether forbidden from bringing non-halal food to school, forbidden from using canteen utensils, for example forks and spoons, and from throwing rubbish into rubbish bins.”

In the letter made available to malaysiakini, the headmaster also wrote that the matter must be viewed seriously in order to respect Islam as the official religion of the country and to respect the school’s canteen operator.

Lenin boasted that the capitalists would sell the Communists the rope they would use to hang the sellers. Dhimmi Spain, meanwhile, having already capitulated to the jihadists in Iraq, is now selling arms to their brother jihadists in Sudan. I wonder if any of these very same weapons will one day be used to topple the Madrid government and reestablish the glorious Al-Andalus. From Expatica, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

BARCELONA - Amnesty International and Greenpeace condemned the Spanish government Friday for exporting arms to war-torn Sudan despite a European Union ban.

The civil rights and ecological groups said Spain was selling light arms and munitions to the Sudanese government, according to an investigation by researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

The claims came as the US government called on the Sudanese government Friday to prosecute the predominantly Araba Janjaweed militia who are attacking defenceless civilians in the Darfur province....

Amnesty and Greenpeace said Spain was breaking a weapons embargo imposed by the EU in 1994 and renewed in January last year....

Amnesty and Greenpeace claimed Inland Revenue records between February 2003 and January this year showed Spain exported EUR 8,000 worth of small arms and munitions to Sudan, breaking the EU human rights embargo.

Both groups called on the Spanish government to accept responsibility for the sale of these arms and the breaking of the EU sanctions.

India is not an Islamic state, so this controversy is indicative of the way many Muslims perceive the relationship between the Sharia and the laws of the state. From the BBC, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

A conservative Muslim body in India has gone to the High Court to challenge the legal age of marriage, which currently stands at 18.

The All-India Muslim Personal Law Board insists that in family matters the country's Muslims should be subject only to Islamic law, known as Sharia.

It maintains that it is supported by a 1937 act upholding Muslims' right to be guided by this law.

The debate has arisen because of a family who have been threatened with arrest because they allowed the marriage of an under-age girl.

Fatima Mehjabin and her husband Muazzamil dote on their four year-old son, Fazal, along with his little brother and sister.

But the very basis for their marriage is now being questioned in court because when they were wed five years ago, Fatima was 17 - one year under the limit set by Indian civil law.

Creeper plants

Fatima says: "Muslim personal law says you can marry at 12, so I didn't see a problem with it. There are lots of bad things in society these days, so the sooner a girl gets married, the better." ...

But Muazzamil wants to legitimise his own marriage and let other Muslims follow suit, from the age of puberty.

He says: "The case we've been fighting so long has become a national issue. And, God willing, we will win it and Muslims all over India will be able to follow Sharia law."

Muhammad's Army is at the ready in Sudan: the tiny minority of extremists alerts worshippers at the central mosque in Khartoum. From CNN, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Meanwhile a group calling itself Mohammed's army called on Muslims to prepare to fight Western forces sent on any mission to western Sudan....

In its warning of action against western forces, the previously unknown group said in a statement obtained by Reuters: "We have seen and heard of the American and British interference in Darfur and there is no doubt that this is a crusader war that bears no relation to the citizens of Darfur."

"We call upon you to speedily head towards Darfur and dig deep into the ground mass graves prepared for the crusader army," it added.

Witness said young Sudanese men were handing out the statements to worshippers at the central mosque in the capital, Khartoum.

This report on the jihad in Thailand considers and then downplays religion as a motivating factor in the violence. But to say that the Thai jihadists are not linked to Al-Qaeda, and that many Muslims there are not radicalized, or even that one of the TR Sports players dropped out of a madrassa, actually proves nothing at all about whether or not they were motivated by jihad ideology.

The underlying problem is that secular Westerners often cannot or will not understand religious motivations. They assume that if someone like Osama talks of religion, it is just a cloak for his real motivations, which must be ethnic or socioeconomic or something else. But this founders on the fact that people with ethnic and socioeconomic grievances have gone on for centuries without declaring jihad, and many have solved their problems through negotiation. Jihad is the element that inflames conflicts such that no negotiation is possible. Also, why did the great Islamic empires, which had no socioeconomic or ethnic grievances but were in fact the richest and most powerful polities in the world, nevertheless continue to wage jihads?

Just the other day I was reading an advance copy of Pat Buchanan's new book, in which he gets as far as to say that we should listen to what the jihadists are saying. Then he retails Osama's foreign policy grievances against the US, and says we should oblige him by withdrawing from Saudi Arabia, cutting support for Israel, etc. But why not listen to everything the jihadists say -- including their universalist, expansionist manifestos, declaring that they will fight until the whole world will be ruled by Sharia? Will those men be mollified by a new, Muslim-friendly American foreign policy? Mr. Buchanan, I doubt it. Just as I doubt that the Muslims in Southern Thailand will be satisfied by anything but an Islamic Sharia state there -- in which they will no doubt have the same (or worse) socioeconomic difficulties.

From the Observer, with thanks to Filtrat:

Fifty miles from the boot camp by the coast is Su So. The village, set on a ridge surrounded by forest, is dominated by the football ground's concrete grandstand. But few play football in Su So any more. The best side in the village was TR Sports, and all 19 of its players died when they launched a dawn attack on a police post in a nearby town on 28 April.

The men had machetes and knives, the police M-16s. The team's only survivor was the coach, Pittaiya. His brother, Kamaruddin, top scorer and captain, was killed. 'He was a normal man, a nice man, very quiet,' Pittaiya said last week. 'They were all normal men. I still can't understand how this happened.'

There are no clear explanations why more than 100 poorly armed villagers launched themselves against automatic weapons. Some blame religion, others 'outside influences' that convinced the men they were invulnerable. But what is clear is that the attack was part of a wider pattern that has brought the vicious little conflict in the south of Thailand, which has claimed 300 lives already this year, to a new level of intensity.

Last week two policemen, a school bus driver, a railway official and two village administrators were shot dead. One was Sawan Khaosee, who worked in Su So. When The Observer visited the village office, a few hundred yards from the football stadium, Khaosee's desk remained piled with the papers he had been working on in the hours before his death. Khaosee was a Buddhist, like nearly 95 per cent of Thais. The villagers of Su So, like most of the people in the three provinces where the violence has been concentrated, are Muslim.The fighting that has surged there is often, by outsiders at least, said to be based in religion.

Islam is a strong element. Ever since the Sultanate of Pattani, a local Islamic kingdom, was annexed by an expansionist Buddhist monarchy more than a century ago, some have fought central rule and called for a separate Islamic state. Revolts in the 1970s and early 1980s were put down with great brutality.

The most recent violence also has a strong religious flavour. On the day that TR Sports died, another group of men attacked a police post on the outskirts of the town of Pattani after praying at a historic mosque near by. According to Niseng Nilaeh, an eyewitness, the leader called on local people to join the battle to 'sacrifice themselves for God'. Later the police found a 30-page tract arguing that it was a religious obligation for Muslims to fight for the 'lost land' of the Pattani sultanate.

Religious radicalism has been growing in the south for several years. More conservative, intolerant styles of worship have been imported from the Middle East. Certainly, many of the TR Sports players had been educated in government-registered religious schools and at least two ran their own Islamic study groups. Some had studied in the 200 new medressas -independent Islamic colleges devoted purely to religion - that have sprung up in the past decade. There are some links to a Saudi-funded hardline religious college.

According to Rawsedee Lertariyapongkul, the president of the Association of Thai Muslim Youth, world events may have angered the footballers. 'People see what is happening in Palestine and Iraq and Kashmir and feel that Muslims are being treated very badly everywhere. They want to fight for justice,' he said.

But there is no real evidence of any link between the separatists and al-Qaeda or its local affiliates. And for every one of the TR Sports team who appeared devout, there are others who were not. The youngest in the side, 18-year-old Samit Suthonehh, had left a religious school three months earlier because he didn't like it. Four others had just completed their compulsory military service.

Nor did the players ever show any interest in, or knowledge of, international affairs. There is no satellite dish in Su So. 'The guys were never interested in religion or politics,' said Pittaiya. 'They just liked to play football. All their favourite players were from Brazil or England.'

Many say the problem is ethnic.The southern provinces are mainly Malay, not Thai.The assailants who decapitated a Buddhist monk in May left a note saying: 'If you continue to arrest innocent Muslims, we will kill innocent Buddhists.' But those who wounded two policemen last week threatened to 'kill innocent Thais' if 'innocent Malays' were harmed. 'That demonstrates how confused these issues are,' said one Thai intelligence expert.

Others point to socio economic factors. Thailand's economic growth has left the southern provinces trailing. Su So's village elders complain of a lack of electricity, public transport and water pumps. The government has launched major development plans - in Su So there is scheme helping women to stitch clothes for export - but many locals still feel they are treated as second-class citizens.The police are almost entirely Buddhist Thais and abuse human rights. Alleged activists, including a human rights lawyer, frequently 'disappear'. Witnesses, who did not want to be named, said that the young men of TR Sports were executed after surrendering. The 32 men attacked in Pattani appear to have been killed in cold blood.

The final complicating factor in the south is crime. Smuggling - of arms, people and drugs - generates hundreds of millions of dollars and penetrates every part of society, including the civil administration and security authorities. Much of the violence, including a recent bomb outside a bar, is likely to be connected to business disputes. No one knows exactly who looted a huge amount of explosive from a quarry or stole 380 automatic weapons from a barracks earlier this year. But the means for massive violence are clearly available.

This article identifies Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as head of the Anglican Church. Actually that's the Queen of England. But Rowan is right up there. No doubt about the fact that he will deserve the title of the world's Chief Dhimmi after this. From AFP, with thanks to Susan, Sparta, and Jonathan:

THE head of the worldwide Anglican Church, the archbishop of Canterbury, will reportedly mark the third anniversary of the September 11 attacks by praising Islam in an address from the pulpit of an Egyptian mosque.

Rowan Williams had accepted an invitation to speak at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, considered by many to be the Muslim world's most important centre of learning, Britain's Sunday Times said today.

He would speak of the common ground between Christianity and Islam with their shared inheritance as "children of Abraham", the report said.

The article quotes Zaki Badawi of the Muslim College in London:

"The Muslims throughout the world feel beleaguered and a comforting word from Archbishop Williams will assure our people they are not alone."

Al-Azhar is considered the most important religious uiniversity in the Muslim world and is attended by 90,000 students.

Here's some background on the new friends Rowan will be making:

Former Al-Azhar Fatwa Committee Head Sets Out the Jews' 20 Bad Traits As Described in the Qur'an

Tiny minority of extremists burns American and British flags at Cairo's Al-Azhar University

Some See Ramadan as a Chance for Jihad Acts

More misadventures of that staunch U.S. ally, Pakistan. From the Times of India, with thanks to Fanabba:

WASHINGTON: Pakistan's intelligence officials knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks, a well-known American analyst has said, based on a ''stunning document'' that he claims was given by a Pakistani source to the 9/11 Commission on the eve of the publication of its report.

The document, from a high-level, but anonymous Pakistani source, also claims that Osama bin Laden has been receiving periodic dialysis in a military hospital in Peshawar, says Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor-at-large of the news agency UPI.

''The imprints of every major act of international Islamist terrorism invariably passes through Pakistan, right from 9/11 - where virtually all the participants had trained, resided or met in, coordinated with, or received funding from or through Pakistan,'' Borchgrave cites the confidential document as saying.

But one does not have to go to Borchgrave's unnamed sources to find Pakistan’s involvement in terrorist activity leading to 9/11. The 9/11 commission report itself nails Pakistan in chapter after chapter, revealing that the Pakistani intelligence was in cahoots with the Taliban and al Qaeda, far more than Iran and Iraq ever were.

There follows a series of eye-opening extracts from the commission report. Read it all.

"Osama bin Laden is a good man. Osama bin Laden wants the same as me -- he wants to see the implementation of God's law." From the San Francisco Chronicle, with thanks to Twostellas:

London -- "Osama bin Laden is a good man. Osama bin Laden wants the same as me -- he wants to see the implementation of God's law," says Khalid Kelly as he sips coffee in a sun-filled London cafe and expounds on his allegiance to the man who has declared war on the West.

Kelly, an Irishman, converted to Islam two years ago while imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for distilling and selling alcohol. Since then, he has become the public face of the tiny London-based organization called Al-Muhajiroun. The radical organization is led by Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, who has long been linked to bin Laden's International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders.

The presence of militants like Bakri has earned the British capital the sobriquet "Londonistan" among diplomats and terrorism experts, who see London as a worldwide center of Islamic terrorism.

"The Islamists use Britain as a propaganda base but wouldn't do anything to a country that harbors them and gives them freedom of speech," Camille Tawil, a terrorism expert at the Arabic daily Al Hayat, told the New Statesman magazine.

Recently, however, British security officials have staged several high- profile crackdowns on suspected terrorists.

On March 30, police netted eight suspects and more than half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, the ingredient used in the 2002 Bali nightclub explosion that killed more than 200 people. The bust came after months of bugging telephone lines and tracking suspects and following a web of leads across Europe and the Middle East, according to Peter Clarke, the deputy police commissioner who serves as Britain's anti-terrorism chief.

The scheme was apparently planned abroad but was to be carried out by British citizens. "That is something that is deeply worrying to us,'' Clarke said.

In April, 10 foreigners suspected of plotting attacks were arrested in central and northern England.

Then on May 27, acting on an 11-count U.S. indictment, police arrested Abu Hamza al-Masri, the fiery former preacher at London's Finsbury Park mosque, the spiritual home of several notorious terrorists, including convicted shoe- bomber Richard Reid.

Al-Masri, who lost both hands and an eye in Afghanistan, is being held in London's high-security Belmarsh prison pending extradition on charges of aiding al Qaeda, attempting to set up a terror camp in Oregon and plotting the hostage-taking of 16 tourists in Yemen in 1998. At a hearing Friday, a London court delayed a decision on his extradition until Oct. 19.

But other clerics continue to take advantage of official British tolerance to openly espouse jihad and support for al Qaeda.

In recent weeks, Britain has allowed visits by two high-profile Middle Eastern clerics -- Egyptian Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Sheikh Abdur-Rahman al- Sudais of Saudi Arabia -- who are known for their anti-Semitic and anti- Western views. Yusuf, who has been banned from the United States since 1999, has publicly expressed support for suicide bombers on the grounds that the "martyrdom operations'' are the only available "weapons of the weak."

Read it all.

Spanish police have found the car used by the Madrid bombers. It seems that they were listening to self-improvement tapes. From AP, with thanks to many who kindly sent this to me:

MADRID, Spain — Three months after the Madrid train bombings, Spanish police found a rental car used by the terrorists containing personal effects, including tapes of Quranic verses and chants praising jihad, an official said Saturday.

Police found the car on June 13 in the town of Alcala de Henares, the departure point of three of the four trains bombed in the March 11 attack, a police spokeswoman said on anonymity.

She said that investigators believe the bombers used the car, a Skoda Fabia, to transport some of the explosives used in the blasts, which killed 191 people and injured 2,000.

DNA tests on clothes found in the trunk confirmed that it was used by two suspected Islamic terrorists, one of whom later committed suicide to evade capture, she said.

"Apart from clothes, an alarm clock, an agenda and a Palestinian headscarf, police spotted two cassettes with calls to jihad and martyrdom," the spokeswoman said.

Besides the miscarriage of justice, note the differential in blood money: if the victim is not a Muslim, or female, the payment is less. From CP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

(CP) - An Iranian court's acquittal Saturday of the man charged in the murder of Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi came as no surprise to her son who said "the only justice we have come to expect from Iran is injustice."

Stephan Hachemi vowed to continue his fight for justice saying he was looking to Ottawa and the International Court of Justice in The Hague to take up the case. "This is Canada's responsibility to do so," Hachemi, 26, said in an e-mail from Montreal to The Canadian Press hours after the verdict was issued in Tehran.

"Beside the ICJ, I now more then ever deserve answer from Canada. I'm expecting to meet with the minister of foreign affairs to be assured of the other effective measures (Canada) is intending to take."

Earlier in Tehran, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, who led the four-member legal defence team, said the court which acquitted the lone man charged in the beating death was not competent and the legal proceedings were flawed.

"I'm required to work until my last breath to make sure that justice is done to my client," Ebadi said.

She also threatened to take the matter to international organizations.

"I'll protest this verdict. If the appeals court and other legal stages fail to heed our objections, we will use all domestic and international facilities to meet the legal rights of my client," an angry Ebadi said.

The intelligence agent charged with killing Kazemi, counterespionage expert Mohammad Reza Aghdam Ahmadi, pleaded not guilty during the trial. He was the only person implicated by the judiciary in what is called Kazemi's "semi-premeditated murder."

Kazemi, a Montreal-based freelance journalist of Iranian origin, died July 10, 2003, while in detention for taking photographs outside a Tehran prison during student-led protests against the government....

Ebadi said the court ruled that Iran would give blood money, or compensation, to Kazemi's family. Payments of blood money are common in the Middle East.

The average compensation now paid to relatives of an Iranian Muslim man killed is about $24,800 Cdn. The payment is about half that if the victim was Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian or a woman, regardless of her religion.

From The Sun, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Met Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens said yesterday: “It’s more than possible we have foiled four or five.”...

And he added: “Since September 11 there have been 520 arrests, half have been charged with an offence and there are 90 about to go to court.”

In March Sir John, 62, said it would be “miraculous” if London was not attacked by terrorists.

This is the kind of story you should remember the next time you hear about Israeli troops firing on civlians. Palestinian Arab fighters routinely launch attacks from civilian areas, precisely in order to provoke this. From Haaretz (scroll down), with thanks to the many who sent it to me:

An Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades cell killed a 16-year-old Palestinian boy in Beit Hanun on Friday after a row in which his family opposed the cell's attempt to launch Qassam rockets from their yard, Israeli security sources said.

According to a report obtained from Palestinian sources, the cell, comprised of six men, arrived in a van at the Za'anun family's Beit Hanun home on Friday morning. The militants then placed a Qassam rocket launcher adjacent to the family home, and one of the cell members opened fire on an armored Israel Defense Forces vehicle nearby.

Members of the Za'anun family came out of their house holding sticks and rocks, and tried to drive the Al-Aqsa militants from their yard, most likely fearing that their house would be demolished if Qassam rockets were launched from it.

During the clash, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades members opened fire, killing Hassan Za'anun and wounding three other family members.

The cell left the area following the incident, without firing the Qassam rockets.

Much has been made of the fact that the 14 Syrians on Annie Jacobsen's famous flight were indeed musicians -- as if that proves they couldn't have been up to anything.

But, as Michelle Malkin points out, they were all here on expired visas.

Two questions: Why, and How did they get in?

Mr. Selbourne, welcome to my world. From the Telegraph, with thanks to Twostellas:

A distinguished writer and academic has accused leading publishers of turning down his latest book because it is too critical of Islam.

David Selbourne, who has written more than a dozen books, and his literary agent suspect that publishers are shunning The Losing Battle With Islam because it could provoke anger from Islamic extremists and other critics.

Among the subjects covered in the book is the "negative impact" of actions by Muslims in recent decades. It suggests that Islam is not a religion of peace, balance and compassion, as many of its adherents claim.

The book also discusses the fatwa that was issued against Salman Rushdie, the novelist, by the Ayatollah Khomeini, after the publication of The Satanic Verses. Mr Selbourne writes of the "cruel bounty repeatedly offered for his [Mr Rushie's] head".

Six publishers, including Penguin, HarperCollins and Heinemann, have turned down the book in the past five months.

Mr Selbourne, who is British but lives in Italy, said that he believed that the reason for the repeated rejection was clear.

"The reaction of the publishers is unprecedented. The subject is very contentious. I think there are some people who have fixed views which don't permit them to look at the matter dispassionately.

"It is controversial because it is a record - written without fear or favour - of what has actually happened during the Islamic revival. My book has been turned down because there is hesitation about looking at these matters squarely in the face, especially in Britain."

In the past, Mr Selbourne, whose previous publishers have included MacMillan, Cape, Penguin and Little, Brown, has had little difficulty getting his work into print.

57 terror threats in Israel over the weekend. From the Jerusalem Post:

The arrest on Friday of three Islamic Jihad members in the village of Tubas, southeast of Jenin, prevented a planned suicide attack in Israel, security officials revealed on Saturday. The three terrorists, arrested by soldiers from a reconnaissance unit of the armored corps, include the suicide bomber to-be, the man who recruited him and the man who planned the attack.

The three apparently planned to launch an attack in a petrol station in the northern Jordan valley- Beit She'an area. The suicide bomber was to have entered Israel from a Jordan Valley area where the security fence has yet to be completed.

In his interrogation with the Shin Bet, Shadi Nawaf Daraghme, 24, of Tubas, admitted he had planned to blow himself up in Israel.

Have the Saudis been financing terror in Australia? From the Australian via The Advertiser, with thanks to Twostellas:

A VISITING Saudi Arabian government delegation was summoned to a meeting with senior Canberra bureaucrats this month to discuss Australia's concerns about the kingdom's financing of terrorism.

The Saudi officials had been in Australia several days to meet Islamic community and business leaders before the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade learned of their whereabouts and arranged a meeting through the Saudi Arabian embassy.

A member of the delegation from the Ministry for Islamic Affairs and Endowment told The Weekend Australian it was here to sort out problems with the lucrative business of exporting halal meat to Saudi Arabia.

But members also met trustees raising $2.65million for the controversial purchase of a mosque in southwestern Sydney.

Supporters of hardline Islamic cleric Sheikh Abdul Salam Mohammed Zoud have bought the mosque and must raise the full amount before the July 30 settlement date.

Sheikh Zoud preaches at the prayer hall around the corner whose congregation has included Faheem Lodhi, who is in custody charged with committing an act in preparation for a terrorist attack.

Another astoundingly courageous and insightful piece from Will Cummins in The Telegraph (thanks to Fanabba):

Konrad Henlein, the Nazi leader of the Sudeten Germans - whose cynical attitude to liberal, democratic, minority-friendly inter-war Czechoslovakia offers a metaphor for what we face - once observed: "We must always demand so much that we are never satisfied." He wouldn't have got very far in Leicester South, where the idea of refusing Muslim voters any part of their global Jihadi agenda was so distant from the candidates' minds that they couldn't even wait to be asked.

However, my fellow Telegraph writer Jenny McCartney is plagued by a very different anxiety. She is deeply concerned for, not because of, Britain's burgeoning Muslim population. It is the persecuted Jews of the Third Reich, not its Nazis, to whom we should compare this notoriously gifted, useful and self-effacing group, she has written in her column of July 18.

Jenny sees in the revulsion for Islam displayed by the British National Party an echo of the anti-Semitism to which hideous German publications like Der Sturmer gave vent. Though why she has to ransack back numbers of hoary Fascist tradesheets when almost every mainstream Muslim paper in the world today is full of loathsome anti-Jewish rants and images isn't clear.

"In the miserable event" of "an al-Qaeda attack in Britain", she wrote last week - which repeated warnings from our Government have termed inevitable - "there is little doubt in my mind that assaults on peaceful, law-abiding British Muslims would increase".

Well, it's good to know that, as the rest of us hug our bottles of Evian in the irradiated ruins, mourning thousands of dead, Jenny will be lying awake at night worrying that someone might drop a dog poo through the letterbox of her local balti house. Such outrages, she warns, will be "fanned by an increasingly hysterical rhetoric - already in place - that encourages non-Muslim Britons to see each and every Muslim citizen as a threat". Whose rhetoric is that exactly?

The Guardian newspaper is the Bible - perhaps one should say the Koran? - of Islamo-fascist Britain. However, it has recently been lending its opinion pages to one Fuad Nahdi, a leading Islamic "moderate" who publishes Q-News, a magazine for young UK Muslims. When two British Muslims launched a suicide attack in Israel, this is what he wrote in The Guardian of May 2, 2003: "I am not surprised by news of Britain's first suicide bombers. What, however, I find astonishing is that it took place in Tel Aviv, not Manchester." He goes on to say, "We should brace ourselves for the forthcoming intifada on the streets of Birmingham and Detroit."

Mr Nahdi, who arrived in Britain from Kenya in 1983, is comparing himself and his fellow Muslims here to the Palestinians conducting the second intifada against Israel. In Muslim folklore, the Palestinians are a native people disposessed by Zionist invaders. Mr Nahdi seems not to have grasped that, in Britain, he and the rest of the faithful are the "Jewish settlers", we, the usurped Palestinians. If anybody is going to mount an intifada against the invader, it will be us.

Jenny writes that those who are afraid of Islam ignore the diversity of the religion, which replicates that of Christianity itself. Christianity too, she writes, has its extremists. To which one might, like St Paul, say, "and what has Christ to do with Baal?" All Muslims, like all dogs, share certain characteristics. A dog is not the same animal as a cat just because both species are comprised of different breeds. An extreme Christian believes that the Garden of Eden really existed; an extreme Muslim flies planes into buildings - there's a big difference.

A press release from the American Hellenic Institute, condemning Turkey's ongoing illegal occupation of northern Cyprus, where Cypriot Christians were treated like dhimmis, expelled from their homes and given no recourse. (Thanks to sparta for sending this.)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Vivian Basdekis (202) 785-8430 July 20, 2004 No. 48/2004

Statement by the American Hellenic Institute Commemorating the
30-Year Anniversary of Turkey's Aggression Against Cyprus

Washington, DC-On July 20, 2004, the American Hellenic Institute issued the following statement commemorating the tragic 30-year anniversary of Turkey's aggression against Cyprus:

Today, July 20, marks the sad 30-year anniversary of Turkey's illegal invasion and illegal occupation of the sovereign country of Cyprus.

Thirty years ago Turkey invaded Cyprus with the illegal use of American arms and equipment, which resulted in the occupation of 4% of the Cypriot territory. The second massive phase of Turkish aggression against Cyprus came on August 14-16, 1974, three weeks after the legitimate government of Cyprus had returned to office on July 23. These aggressions were conducted by the Turkish military using hundreds of U.S. tanks, hundreds of U.S. airplanes and 35,000 ground troops, with the result being a land grab by Turkey of 37.3% of Cyprus and the forced leaving of 200,000 Greek Cypriots from their homes and properties.

Since 1974, U.S. policy on the Cyprus problem has been a foreign policy failure. For years the U.S. has favored Turkey regarding Cyprus, thereby disregarding its moral obligation and national security interests.

The latest example, in the form of the flawed Annan Plan, only serves to illustrate the support for Turkey regarding Cyprus.

The Annan Plan, engineered by Britain and the U.S., was a flawed document that did not go to the core of issues of unifying Cyprus and providing for a just and viable solution.

The disparity in the referenda vote, Greek Cypriots 76% against and Turkish Cypriots 65% in favor, further underscores, even to the uniformed observer, that this was not a document that was fair to both, but rather biased against one, the Greek Cypriots.

In examining various provisions of the plan the sharp bias towards Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots is clear. It actually wipes out, believe it or not, Turkey's aggression against Cyprus.

Incredibly, for our government to have helped draft and to support this plan and the ensuing undiplomatic attacks by our U.S. officials on the Greek Cypriots for their "no" vote is an embarrassment to our foreign policy.

In the final analysis the Greek Cypriots voted "no" against the Annan plan because it was unfair, unbalanced, unworkable, not financially viable and rewarded the aggressor, Turkey, and punished the victims, the Greek Cypriots. For the State Department to contend otherwise is Orwellian.

So, thirty years later, we still are commemorating the Cyprus problem. If the U.S. and the world community is serious about solving this problem solutions have to be pursued that are just and viable.

As Americans we need to keep reminding our policy makers and elected officials that in pursuit of U.S. interest and American values the U.S. should immediately call for the following:

a.. Full demilitarization of Cyprus by support of and implementation of the unanimous UNGA Res. 3212 of November 1, 1974 urging "the speedy withdrawal of all foreign armed forces and foreign military presence and personnel from the Republic of Cyprus and the cessation of all foreign interference in its affairs;" and calling "upon all states to respect the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity" of Cyprus;
b.. Support for a constitutional democracy for Cyprus "based on majority rule, the rule of law and the protection of minority rights;"
c.. Support for changes and modifications in the UN Annan Plan for Cyprus: (1) to make it fair, balanced, workable, financially viable and just; (2) to include the immediate demilitarization of Cyprus; (3) to provide for the prompt return to Turkey of the over 110,000 illegal settlers from Turkey with all costs to be borne by Turkey, the aggressor; (4) to call for the immediate tearing down by Turkey of the Green Line barbed wire fence; (5) to have a property recovery and compensation system paid for by the aggressor Turkey; and (6) to have the right of all Cypriots to buy property and live wherever they chose without being limited by ethnic quotas.

None of us wishes to commemorate 31 years next year.

###

For additional information, please contact Vivian Basdekis at (202) 785-8430 or at vivian@ahiworld.org. For general information about the activities of AHI, please see our website at http://www.ahiworld.org.

Some time ago someone signed me up for a message board entitled "The Straight Path of Islam." It is often fascinating as a glimpse into the jihadist mindset, and to Muslim attitudes in general.

The post below was sent out to alert Muslims to false Qur'anic passages that are circulating; the sender says they are designed to ensnare and lead astray unwitting Muslims and prospective converts. What they are in fact are answers to the challenge issued in two verse of the Qur'an:

And if ye are in doubt as to what We have revealed from time to time to Our servant, then produce a Sura like thereunto; and call your witnesses or helpers (If there are any) besides Allah, if your (doubts) are true.(2:23)

Or do they say, "He forged it"? say: "Bring then a Sura like unto it, and call (to your aid) anyone you can besides Allah, if it be ye speak the truth!" (10:38)

A Christian group answered this challenge by producing several pieces in Qur'anic Arabic that expound Christian doctrine. One of them is below. But note the heading on the message "ALERT: JEW PRODUCING FAKE QURAN": once again, the Jews are blamed -- despite the clear Christian content of the third verse. This is another manifestation of the widespread Muslim assumption that if there is a challenge to Islam, Jews must be behind it (and I, of course, must be a Jew as well), producing diabolically clever material that the faithful must be on guard against.

ALERT: JEW PRODUCING FAKE QURAN

Dears Assalamu Alaikum WB,

PLEASE READ AND ACT.....

BE CAREFUL there are certain anti-Islam groups are trying to produce a new Qur'an!! Please read this and send it to all friends. Some enemies of Islam have established an on-line Qur'an Surah with addition of some self-written SURAHS; examples can be seen below.

It's very dangerous for the Muslim world, especially for the newly converted Muslims or the Muslims who don't know FALSE and Bad material.

Kindly send this message to inform as many persons as you can.

They Developed Four SURAH'S with additions by them....

EXAMPLE of fake surah and translation:

SURAT AL-MUSLIMOON:

TRANSLATION:

(1) Alef Lam Saad Meem
(2) Say: O Muslims, You are far astray.
(3) Those who disbelieved in God and his Christ
shall have in the lifeafter the fire of hell
and a severe torture.
(4) Some faces that day will be subdued and darkened
seeking forgiveness from God
and God shall do whatever He wants.
(5) That day, the Most Merciful shall say:
O my servants I favored you with my guidance
revealed to you in the Torah and the Injeel.
(6) And you should have not disbelieved
what I have revealed to you
and go astray from a plain road.
(7) They said: We did not go astray ourselves
but he, who claimed he was one of the messengers (of God)
has mislead us.
(8) And as God says: O Muhammad, you allured my servants
and caused them to become disbelieves.
(9) He said: O my Lord, it is Satan who allured me and truly
he has always been the most corrupting to children of Adam.
(10) And God will forgive those
who have been allured by man and then repented
and he will compel that one who was Satan's advocate to hell,
a hapless journey's end.
(11) And if God rules something, He is most knowing of what He rules
and of what He had ruled and He is able to do all things.

The US Congress calls it genocide. Beshir says it's all an anti-Muslim plot — not the genocide, mind you, but the reaction against it. From AFP:

KHARTOUM, July 24 (AFP) -- Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir has accused the international community of targeting Islam in his country as the government struggles to fend off mounting international pressure over the Darfur crisis, the pro-government Al-Anbaa reported Saturday.

The paper quoted Beshir as telling supporters in the central region of Gezira following Friday prayers that the real aim of the campaign against his country was not the situation in the troubled western region of Darfur, but to derail the growth of Islam in the country.

Sudan has come under increased pressure from the international community in recent days to resolve the situation in Darfur, where the UN says at least 30,000 people have died in the 16-month-old conflict between government forces and Arab militia allies and two main rebel groups in the region.

"The international concern about the Darfur issue is targeting the status of Islam in Sudan," claimed Beshir, who seized power in a bloodless Islamist coup in 1989.

Khartoum has brushed off criticism that it is not doing enough to help alleviate the humanitarian situation in Darfur, described by the United Nations as the world's worst, and pledged to improve the access of international aid agencies to the region and the needy.

The Sudanese president insisted, however, that his government's concern for Darfur was first and foremost because of the responsibility it felt for the people before God and not aid agencies or other countries.

He said his national "salvation" government, as the regime's supporters refer to it, will continue "to adhere to Islamic sharia (law), set an example for social cohesion and bring humanity out of darkness to the light of Islam."

Having successfully attached the heads of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to their belts, the jihadists go after Australia. From AP:

CAIRO, Egypt - An online statement by a group representing itself as al-Qaida's European branch threatened on Saturday to turn Australia into "pools of blood" if it doesn't withdraw its troops from Iraq.

It was the second statement in a week by the Tawhid Islamic Group, a previously unknown group which on Wednesday threatened attacks in Bulgaria and Poland if their troops remained in Iraq.

"We call upon you to leave Iraq before your country turns to pools of blood," the statement warned the Australian government.

"We will shake the earth under your feet as we did in Indonesia, and lines of car bombs will not cease, God willing," the statement said, referring to the 2002 Bali bombing that killed 202 people, many of them Australian tourists.

The al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah was blamed for that attack.

The Tawhid statement also warned Italy to comply with an earlier warning.

"We advise you to accept our offer and if you don't, you will see the lines of cars laden with explosives hit your towns and turn your nights to mornings, God willing. We swear you will see hell with your eyes," the Tawhid statement said.

Another look at Islamic tolerance. From AFP:

KUALA LUMPUR - Four Malaysians who renounced Islam lost an appeal in the nation's top court where they had sought a declaration that they have freedom to practise the faith of their choice, their lawyer said yesterday.

'The Federal Court this morning dismissed the appeal after taking nine months to deliberate the matter,' said Mr Ang Hean Leng.

Mr Daud Mamat, 62, Ms Kamariah Ali, 51, her late husband Mohamad Ya and Mr Mad Yacob Ismail, 62, who served 20 months in jail for 'deviant practices inconsistent with Islamic teachings', renounced Islam in 1998.

They were charged with contempt of the Syariah court for refusing to attend repentance classes which were part of the earlier sentence and were jailed for another three years in 2000.

An update on the trial of the notorious British-based jihadist Abu Hamza. From The Mirror:

MILITANT cleric Abu Hamza is a leading member of a "global conspiracy" to wage war on the West, a court was told yesterday.

The allegation was made in a statement by a senior FBI agent on the opening day of a hearing to decide whether he is extradited to the United States to face terror charges....

The hearing at Belmarsh magistrates court in South London was told he played a key role in Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network.

Hamza is accused of plotting to set up terror training camps in Bly, Oregon, and giving letters of introduction to high-ranking Taliban fighters. The allegations also relate to a hostage-taking incident in the Yemen in which three Britons were killed in 1998.

If found guilty in the US, he faces more than 100 years behind bars - or possibly the death sentence.

An affidavit from FBI terrorism expert Michael Butsch said: "The evidence demonstrates that Abu Hamza is a member of a global conspiracy to promote Jihad against the US government and other Western countries."

Referring to his preaching at Finsbury Park mosque in North London, Mr Butsch added: "He taught his followers that Jihad demanded killing the enemy of Islam."

David Brooks in the New York Times shows a glimmer of understanding that this is an ideological war, and not simply a battle against lovers of undifferentiated mayhem or raw power. He credits the 9/11 Commission with this great discovery (Dave, my books have been out longer; do I get to be George Kennan?), and makes a few good observations -- along with (this is the Times, after all) one ridiculous, PC one. (Thanks to Nicolei for the link.)

hen foreign policy wonks go to bed, they dream of being X. They dream of writing the all-encompassing, epoch-defining essay, the way George F. Kennan did during the cold war under the pseudonym X.

Careers have been spent racing to be X. But in our own time, the 9/11 commission has come closer than anybody else. After spending 360 pages describing a widespread intelligence failure, the commissioners step back in their report and redefine the nature of our predicament.

We're not in the middle of a war on terror, they note. We're not facing an axis of evil. Instead, we are in the midst of an ideological conflict.

We are facing, the report notes, a loose confederation of people who believe in a perverted stream of Islam that stretches from Ibn Taimaya to Sayyid Qutb. Terrorism is just the means they use to win converts to their cause.

That's the ridiculous one I warned you about: "a perverted stream of Islam that stretches from Ibn Taimaya to Sayyid Qutb." A perverted stream of Islam that is 700 years old? Ibn Taymiyya died in 1328. The line from him to Qutb, who died in 1966, is as much of a "perverted stream" of Islam as Protestantism, which is 200 years younger than Brooks' perverted Islam, is a perverted stream of Christianity. That's not a "perverted stream," that's an entire tradition.

There are other things wrong with this as well. For one, Ibn Taymiyya invented nothing. He had plenty of antecedents, and his thinking wasn't out of line with that of other Muslim thinkers. Nowadays American Muslim advocacy groups and their allies try to portray him, because of his forthright statements about violent jihad and the frequency with which he is quoted by people like Osama, as some sort of heretic. But he has never been considered such in Islamic tradition.

A little quiz. Ready, Dave? Who said this: "...in the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force." In Islam, the person in charge of religious affairs is concerned with "power politics," because Islam is "under obligation to gain power over other nations."

Got to have been that heretic Ibn Taymiyya, right? Wrong. It was Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), the pioneering sociologist who has, for a complex of reasons, become a kind of totem for the democracy movement in Egypt and elsewhere in the Islamic world.

That's right, the democracy movement.

Also: those who claim objectivity shouldn't make such distinctions between Islamic sects. Way back when I was in college, I noticed in studying both Christianity and Islam that my professors would studiously avoid words like "orthodox" and "heretical" (to say nothing of "perverted") when speaking of various sects; those words and judgments were the province of believers only. But Brooks and other members of the PC elite have no trouble identifying "true" and "perverted" Islam. If only they could convince the Muslims.

It seems like a small distinction - emphasizing ideology instead of terror - but it makes all the difference, because if you don't define your problem correctly, you can't contemplate a strategy for victory.

Just what I have been saying all along, Dave.

When you see that our enemies are primarily an intellectual movement, not a terrorist army, you see why they are in no hurry. With their extensive indoctrination infrastructure of madrassas and mosques, they're still building strength, laying the groundwork for decades of struggle. Their time horizon can be totally different from our own....

Most of all, we need to see that the landscape of reality is altered. In the past, we've fought ideological movements that took control of states. Our foreign policy apparatus is geared toward relations with states: negotiating with states, confronting states. Now we are faced with a belief system that is inimical to the state system, and aims at theological rule and the restoration of the caliphate. We'll need a new set of institutions to grapple with this reality, and a new training method to understand people who are uninterested in national self-interest, traditionally defined.

Last week I met with a leading military officer stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq, whose observations dovetailed remarkably with the 9/11 commissioners. He said the experience of the last few years is misleading; only 10 percent of our efforts from now on will be military. The rest will be ideological. He observed that we are in the fight against Islamic extremism now where we were in the fight against communism in 1880.

We've got a long struggle ahead, but at least we're beginning to understand it.

From the Prague Post, with thanks to Nicolei:

TEPLICE, NORTH BOHEMIA: Milos Kejzlar angrily recalls the reaction of visiting Arabs in Teplice following the events of 9/11.

"The people of the town were very surprised to see a great number of Arabs here celebrating in the parks and the restaurants after they learned what happened in the U.S.," he said, downing shots of slivovice at his well-kept house in a leafy suburb.

Shocked by some Arabs' response to the destruction of the World Trade Center and flooded by constant media coverage of terrorist plots, Kejzlar concluded that a mosque a few blocks from his home was a bad idea.

"It seems that terrorism often springs from those who gather at the mosques and from those who preach from them," said the 41-year-old high school math teacher.

Last spring, after learning of a private company's plans to erect a temple to cater to the thousands of Arabs, mostly Saudis, who seek extended medical treatments in this historic spa town, Kejzlar launched a petition against the mosque, which would be the country's second.

An informal prayer house already exists on the proposed site of the 132-square-meter (1,467-square-foot) mosque.

"Islam is a strongly orthodox religion that is based on principles that are contrary to our cultural environment as well as the development of our society," the petition reads.

"At the time when Arab terrorism is growing all around the world, it would be very dangerous even to consider granting a permit for such a building. ... Recently there have been many cases of mosques becoming centers of radical Muslims who preach about the necessity to physically liquidate people of different faiths."...

Ramiz Ahmadie, a Beirut native and owner of the Lebanese restaurant that would abut the controversial house of worship, said he doesn't care if the mosque is built because he is a Druid, not a Muslim. However, he scoffed at the notion that the mosque would attract terrorists. He said most of the spa-going visitors are over 60 years old.

"I thought there was supposed to be freedom here. If I want to go to the disco, I can go to the disco," Ahmadie said. "So what's the big deal if someone wants to go pray in a mosque?"

Is he really a Druid? An old English pagan -- from Lebanon? Probably he is a Druze. Anyway, the man's questions are answered above by Kejzlar. Until they are addressed by the Muslim community, Kejzlar has reason to be concerned.

In the new Iraq, dhimmis better not get out of line. From the Barnabas Fund, with thanks to Bruce Gordon:

The Christian owner of Al-Hanna restaurant in Mosul’s Al-Dawasa district was murdered by the Islamic Wahhabbeen group on Monday 19th July because he had American customers. A local report states that the militants accused the shopkeeper: “You are a Christian. Why do you sell food to the Americans? Are you an agent for the Americans?”

Regular readers of Jihad Watch will find nothing new about the Council on American Islamic Relations in this Washington Times piece, but it is gratifying to see that word is getting out. On the other hand, all this has been known for some time, and government and media organizations continue to assume that CAIR is a neutral civil rights organization. Time to answer some questions, Ibrahim! (Thanks to Jeffrey Imm for the link.)

This piece recounts five incidents in which CAIR officials have been involved in terrorist activities, and concludes:

We understand that no organization can be responsible for the independent actions of its officials or affiliated members. To its credit, CAIR has denounced terrorist acts, most recently the beheadings of two Americans in Iraq. At the same time, the examples cited above reveal some unsettling connections between certain CAIR officials and extremist groups that demand at a minimum an internal investigation. The federal government has not yet turned its "draconian" reach on CAIR directly, and at this point we are not prepared to ask it to do so. For now, it would be better if CAIR itself began a conscientious and deliberate effort to purge members it believes have terrorist ties and to thoroughly condemn those already convicted.

Hey, as long as there are Gloria Macapagal Arroyos and Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapateros out there, keep going with what works. From AP:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Militants kidnapped a senior Egyptian diplomat as he left a mosque Friday and demanded his country abandon any plans to send security experts to support Iraq's new government, according to a video broadcast on the Al-Jazeera television station....

The abduction of the diplomat threatened to undermine efforts of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Thursday to persuade Arab and Muslim countries to provide troops to protect the U.N. mission in Iraq.

A separate militant group holding seven foreign truck drivers, including one Egyptian, announced a new set of demands in a new video, insisting that their Kuwaiti employer pay compensation to those killed by U.S. forces in the city of Fallujah. They have threatened to begin beheading the hostages starting Saturday.

The practice of beheading hostages has stirred opposition in Iraq, with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who led a two-month uprising against U.S. forces beginning in April, joining the criticism Friday.

"We condemn what some people are doing regarding the beheading of prisoners and it is illegal according to Islamic law," al-Sadr said at the Kufa mosque south of Baghdad, where he led Friday prayers. "Anybody doing this is a criminal and we will punish him according to Islamic law."

No word on what Al-Sadr makes of Suras 8:12 and 47:4.

From WND:

Former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger blocked four separate plans of action against the al-Qaida terrorist network from 1998 to 2000, according to the newly released 9-11 commission report.

The report cites a 1998 meeting in which then-director of the Central Intelligence Agency George Tenet presented a plan to capture Osama bin Laden, notes the New York Sun.

"In his meeting with Tenet, Berger focused, however, on the question of what was to be done with Bin Ladin if he were actually captured," the report says, citing a May 1, 1998, CIA memo. "He worried that the hard evidence against Bin Ladin was still skimpy and that there was a danger of snatching him and bringing him to the United States only to see him acquitted."

Berger, who served in the Clinton administration, is facing a Justice Department investigation for allegedly smuggling secret files out of the National Archives prior to the 9-11 commission hearings.

After news of the probe broke Monday, Berger stepped down from his informal position as security adviser to Democratic Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign.

What happened to "obey the laws of the Western countries where you live"? From AFP, with thanks to Susan:

LONDON (AFP) - The radical Muslim group Al-Muhajiroun will not back down from plans to hold a demonstration on Sunday in central London despite a ban imposed by the city authorities and their threat to sue the organisers.

"Al-Muhajiroun do not have permission to hold a rally on Trafalgar Square and they have not applied for permission," a spokesperson for the city authorities said. The city had sent a letter to the head of the group's British branch but had received no reply.

Up to 700 sympathisers are expected to attend the event, aimed at converting non-Muslims to the faith. There are fears that Britain's extreme right-wing right party, the BNP, might organise a rival demonstration in Trafalgar Square, a favourite haunt of tourists in London.

UPDATE: The rally has been canceled after all -- or at least moved.

The Philippines' Appeaser-in-Chief summons up some courage -- to direct at critics. From AFP:

Arroyo brushed off US criticism that she had played into the hands of militants and said she had no regrets about her decision.

"It won't take more than three lines to summarise my case, and let me say them. One, I take responsibility. Two, I make no apologies. Three, I stuck to my oath," she said....

Analysts said Arroyo had decided to act to avoid angering the estimated seven million Filipinos working abroad, a formidable constituency whose billions of dollars of remittances keep the economy afloat.

"I trust that our allies will come to understand that the Philippines is in a special circumstance unlike the US, Australia, Bulgaria and other countries," Arroyo said, referring to other countries with troops in Iraq.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday added to previous US criticism of the troop withdrawal saying that "in effect the kidnappers were rewarded for kidnapping."

"We were very disappointed in the actions of the Philippine government," he said.

"I'm pleased that the Filipino gentleman was returned home safely, but I think a very high price was paid for the policy position that the Philippine government took."

In his reaction, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday that "weakness is provocative."

In The Spectator, Anthony Browne cuts through the prevailing dhimmitude and obfuscation to point out what I have been pointing out for years now. (Thanks to all who sent me this link.)

A year ago I had lunch with an eminent figure who asked if I thought she was mad. ‘No,’ I said politely, while thinking, ‘Yup.’ She had said she thought there was a secret plot by Muslims to take over the West. I have never been into conspiracy theories, and this one was definitely of the little-green-men variety. It is the sort of thing BNP thugs claim to justify their racial hatred.

Obviously, we all know about Osama bin Laden’s ambitions. And we are all aware of the loons of al-Muhajiroun waving placards saying ‘Islam is the future of Britain’. But these are all on the extremist fringe, representative of no one but themselves. Surely no one in Islam takes this sort of thing seriously? I started surfing the Islamic media.

Take Dr Al-Qaradawi, the controversial Egyptian imam who was recently fawned over by the Mayor of London even though he promotes the execution of homosexuals, the right of men to indulge in domestic violence, and the murder of innocent Jews. During the brouhaha it went unnoticed that he also wants to conquer Europe. Don’t take my word for it, just listen to him on his popular al-Jazeera TV show, Sharia and Life.

‘Islam will return to Europe. The conquest need not necessarily be by the sword. Perhaps we will conquer these lands without armies. We want an army of preachers and teachers who will present Islam in all languages and in all dialects,’ he broadcast in 1999, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, which translates his programmes. On another programme he declared, ‘Europe will see that it suffers from a materialist culture, and it will seek a way out, it will seek a lifeboat. It will seek no life-saver but the message of Islam.’

Far from being on the fringe, his immensely popular programmes are watched by millions across the Middle East and Europe. The BBC cooed that he has ‘star’ status among the world’s Muslims.

Dr Al-Qaradawi, who is based in Qatar, is also the spiritual guide of the hardline Muslim Brotherhood, which is growing across Europe, and whose leader Muhammad Mahdi Othman ’Akef declared recently, ‘I have complete faith that Islam will invade Europe and America, because Islam has logic and a mission.’

In the most sacred mosque in Islam, Sheikh Abd al-Rahman al-Sudais of the Grand Mosque in Mecca uses his sermons to call for Jews to be ‘annihilated’ and to urge the overthrow of Western civilisation. ‘The most noble civilisation ever known to mankind is our Islamic civilisation. Today, Western civilisation is nothing more than the product of its encounter with our Islamic civilisation in Andalusia [mediaeval Spain]. The reason for [Western civilisation’s] bankruptcy is its reliance on the materialistic approach, and its detachment from religion and values. [This approach] has been one reason for the misery of the human race, for the proliferation of suicide, mental problems and for moral perversion. Only one nation is capable of resuscitating global civilisation, and that is the nation [of Islam].’

Al-Sudais is the highest imam appointed by our Saudi government ally, and his sermons are widely listened to across the Middle East. When he came to the UK in June to open the London Islamic Centre, thousands of British Muslims flocked to see him, our so-called race relations minister Fiona Mactaggart shared the platform, and Prince Charles sent a video message. He is probably the closest thing in Islam to the Pope, but I haven’t recently heard the Pope call for the overthrow of all other faiths....

Read it all.

"This is nothing alarming," officials told the passengers. Ignore that bomb-sniffing dog. Not that I am saying that they shouldn't have tried to calm passengers, but I think this is part of a larger official pattern of downplaying every incident, leaving the public largely unaware of the magnitude of the continuing threat. From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

NEWARK, N.J. — A threatening note found aboard a Washington-to-New York Amtrak train prompted police to detain it for an hour and a half Thursday morning while they checked all passengers for identification and examined the overhead luggage racks.

After officers videotaped the passengers and searched the cars with at least one bomb-sniffing dog, the train was declared safe and allowed to leave Newark Penn Station to continue on its way.

Amtrak spokesman Dan Stessel said he did not know the exact contents of the note, but a law enforcement source said it contained "pro-Muslim, anti-Jewish rhetoric." The note included the phrase, "You're all sitting ducks," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The note was attached to the mirror in a restroom of the train's cafe car, Stessel said. The passenger who found it notified the train crew, and police were waiting for the train when it reached Newark, its next scheduled stop.

Joel Mowbray points out a glaring omission in the much-flawed but elephantine 9/11 report. From the Washington Times, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

In an epic-sized 567-page report, the September 11 commission glossed over one of the most important aspects of the attack: All 19 of the hijackers entered the United States on legal visas, even though at least 15 of them didn't qualify under the law. And the panel mostly shrugged off the U.S. policy that Saudis were granted easier access to visas than any other Arab country.

The commission's latest interim report emphasizes, perhaps unintentionally, the importance of easy visas to the September 11 plot. The panel revealed that one of the biggest difficulties faced by al Qaeda was getting Osama bin Laden's hand-picked hijackers into the United States — unless they were Saudis.

So easy visa access for Saudis cleared a major obstacle: Had al Qaeda had even one more hijacker, the White House or the Capitol might have met a different fate that day.

Three non-Saudis identified by the commission tried and failed to receive visas, including the would-be fifth pilot, Ramzi bin al Shieb, a Yemeni national. September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed didn't even bother having two other Qaeda operatives selected by bin Laden to apply for visas.

Why? Because, as an earlier staff statement noted, "It soon became clear to KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] that the other two operatives, Khallad bin Attash and Abu Bara al Taizi — both of whom had Yemeni, not Saudi, documentation — would not be able to obtain U.S. visas."

Afforded only a brief mention — buried in a footnote on page 492 — was a reference to what Mr. Mohammed reportedly told U.S. interrogators last year: that 15 of the hijackers were Saudis because they had the easiest time getting visas.

The Saudi visa policy was the natural result of the "courtesy culture," an effort spearheaded by the head of Consular Affairs, Mary Ryan, which started with her appointment in 1993. The goal was simple: make "customer" service and satisfaction the top priority in visa policy, where the "customer" was not American national security.

American Airlines specifies the Bible as an offensive item, but the Qur'an gets a pass. From WND, with thanks to EPG:

Some Christian employees of American Airlines think the company's anti-harassment policies – which include a warning not to place a Bible in a Muslim's cubicle – discriminate against them.

The warning was included in a written reminder of the company's workplace policies. One of the examples of what might be "considered to be harassment under company policy" was:

"Placing a Bible in a Muslim co-worker's cubicle, which could support a claim for harassment."

One employee who contacted WND noted, "It makes no mention of a Quran being classified as offensive, the Bhagavad-Gita or any other religious book – EXCEPT the Bible. Obviously, these rules have an anti-Christian bias that needs to be remedied."

Remember, as you read this story, that if all of this is being instituted now, that means it wasn't being done before. Not just English, but "a knowledge of, and engagement with, British civic life" and "professional qualification." And as has been abundantly established, there are clerics in Britain whose only engagement with British civic life is a dedication to subverting it and replacing it with a Sharia state. (Remember Omar Bakri and Abu Hamza?)

From the Telegraph, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Muslim imams and other "ministers of religion" wishing to enter Britain to work must show a basic command of spoken English, under new Home Office regulations. Within two years of entry, they will have to reach a higher standard as "competent" English writers or speakers, according to the restrictions, which will come into force by the end of next month.

The Home Office is also considering introducing a requirement for imams and priests who have been in Britain for a year to show "a knowledge of, and engagement with, British civic life". They may also be required to have some form of "professional qualification".

The restrictions, and the proposals under consideration, have been prompted by Government concern that some foreign imams may be preaching radical teachings, which could incite terrorism.

However, the Home Office announcement yesterday made clear that the restrictions would not be targeted only at Islamic preachers but all kinds of "ministers of religion".

That's good. Watch out for Buddhist terrorists.

The Iranian mullahs weren't just involved in 9/11. They're still involved with Al-Qaeda. Is that a surprise to anyone? Not to anyone familiar with the jihad ideology. From Bill Gertz in the Washington Times:

A senior CIA official has revealed that al Qaeda operatives in Iran probably had advance knowledge of recent terrorist attacks, a sign that the cooperation between Tehran and al Qaeda is continuing since September 11.

"There have been al Qaeda people who have stayed for some time in Iran ... and because they have been in touch with colleagues outside of Iran at times when operations have occurred, it's hard to imagine that they were unwitting of those operations," the senior official said.

"And it's not hard to make the leap that they may have had at least some operational knowledge. It's harder to make the leap that they were directing operations like that."

The senior official spoke to reporters on the findings of the September 11 commission. The commission's report provides new details of Iranian government support for al Qaeda, including travel assistance to several of the hijackers involved in the 2001 airline attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

U.S. intelligence officials have said that a senior al Qaeda operations official, Sayf al-Adl, has been in Iran since 2002. He has been linked to the terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia in May, and to the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa.

The commission inquiry revealed that captured al Qaeda leaders Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh disclosed to interrogators that at least eight of the September 11 hijackers "transited Iran" on the way to Afghanistan, "taking advantage of the Iranian practice of not stamping Saudi passports," the nearly 600-page report stated.

This just in from Fox News:

WASHINGTON — A report of a bomb aboard a Turkish merchant ship Thursday forced the U.S. Coast Guard to escort the vessel away from the port of Philadelphia and out into the sea off Delaware, senior Defense officials told FOX News.

The ship's master notified authorities about the possible bomb, officials said. The information was revealed after the captain refused to have portions of the ship searched by the Coast Guard....

UPDATE: There was no bomb. The FBI has now charged the ship's captain with making a false statement. From CBS:

BOWERS BEACH, DE (CBS) The captain of a Turkish merchant ship headed into Philadelphia harbor falsely told a Coast Guard inspector the vessel had a bomb on board Thursday, forcing officials to order the ship to turn around, an FBI spokesman said.

Yildirim Bayazer Tumer, 46, became agitated when members of the Philadelphia Coast Guard boarded the ship for a routine inspection Thursday morning, said Barry Maddox, a spokesman for the FBI's Baltimore field office.

Tumer told an officer that there was a bomb on board that was set to blow up when the ship docked at the port of Philadelphia, Maddox said.

The Coast Guard notified the FBI and other agencies, and the ship was turned around and held at a safe anchorage point near Bowers Beach on the Delaware Bay. Authorities performed a thorough search that lasted a few hours, and no evidence of a bomb was found, Maddox said.

Tumer was charged late Thursday with making a false statement to a federal official, a felony. He was expected to have an initial appearance Friday in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Maddox said.

Plus some information on the latest hostages, from Reuters:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) - A decapitated corpse was found by police in northern Iraq Thursday and Bulgaria said it was investigating whether the body was one of two Bulgarians seized by militants loyal to al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

In Kuwait, the transport company that employs three Indians, three Kenyans and an Egyptian also kidnapped by guerrillas in Iraq said it would do all it can to win their release.

The announcement of their kidnapping Wednesday sparked a new hostage crisis just a day after guerrillas freed a Filipino driver following Manila's capitulation to their demands.

Their captors say they will behead one hostage every three days unless the firm that employs the men, Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Company, stops doing business in Iraq.

Iraqi police said the decapitated body and its severed head were found in the Tigris river near Baiji, 100 miles north of Baghdad, and taken to the city of Tikrit. Earlier this month another headless body in an orange jumpsuit was found in the river in the same area. It has yet to be identified.

The severed head was bloated from being submerged in the water. The body was dressed in a faded and torn reddish-colored tunic. Zarqawi's group dresses its hostages in orange clothing before executing them, mimicking the orange jumpsuits worn by U.S. prisoners including Muslim detainees in Guantanamo Bay.

The two Bulgarians, Georgi Lazov and Ivailo Kepov, were seized as they delivered cars to Mosul in northern Iraq. Zarqawi's group has already executed an American and a South Korean hostage, and has claimed responsibility for a series of suicide bomb attacks in Iraq.

"We are officially looking into the situation and are checking if the body is one of the Bulgarian hostages. We are trying to confirm this," Bulgarian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Vicky Melamed said in Sofia.

BEGGING FOR THEIR LIVES

Video footage given to news organizations showed the seven kidnapped drivers looking tired and afraid in a dingy room, stating name and nationality to the camera and begging for their lives to be spared. One of them, Mohammed Ali Sanad from Egypt, tried to reassure his family.

"Mom, if you see me on TV don't get worried, we are with the best people, the Iraqis," he said. "You too my kids, Ahmed and Ali, don't worry. I am coming at the end of the month as I promised you, but if we die then I say thank God."

After reading the Spencer/Kristof letters posted yesterday, and witnessing the don't-confuse-me-with-the-facts attitude they display, Mrs. Obelix kindly sent me this ee cummings sendup. I also decided to post here the original for those who may not be familiar with it.

Here is cummings:

plato told

him:he couldn't
believe it(jesus

told him;he
wouldn't believe
it)lao

tsze
certainly told
him,and general
(yes

mam)
sherman;
and even
(believe it
or

not)you
told him:i told
him;we told him
(he didn't believe it,no

sir)it took
a nipponized bit of
the old sixth

avenue
el;in the top of his head:to tell

him

And Mrs. Obelix:

spencer told

him:he couldn't
believe it(serge trifcovic

told him;he
wouldn't believe
it) daniel

pipes
certainly told
him,and victor davis
("he must be a

jew")
hanson;
and even
(believe it
or

not)you
told him:i told
him;we told him
(he didn't believe it,no
sir)it took
a radioactive bit of
the old sixth

avenue
el;in the top of his head:to tell

him

Once again: is it really "Islamophobia" to point out that Islam, unlike all the major forms of Christianity, has a comprehensive system for the governance of a state and the ordering of a society, and that many Muslims believe that that system must be implemented wherever possible? The Dutch PM says that "the decision on whether to open EU membership talks with Turkey, due to be taken in December, must be strictly on the basis of whether or not Turkey meets the agreed standards of human rights and democracy." Fine; but why can't there be on that basis a forthright discussion of whether Islamic law itself meets those standards?

Yes, Turkey is a secular state, but it is a secular state under constant pressure from radical Muslims, to whom over the years it has granted significant concessions. What form will those concessions take in the future?

Apparently the Dutch PM assumes that Islam is just another species of "religion," i.e., like the Calvinism and Roman Catholicism that the Dutch used to believe in. Neither one challenged the character of the state, at least in modern times; why should Islam? He shows no awareness of the likelihood that many European Muslims want to create Sharia states there, or of other key elements of the Turkey EU question. From the BBC, with thanks to Joe Kraft and Sharon:

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has said Islamophobia must not affect the possibility of Turkey's entry to the European Union.

Speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, he attacked Muslim groups, which he said were sowing hatred, and promised new anti-terror measures.

Mr Balkenende was outlining the plans of the Dutch presidency of the European Union over the next six months.

The newly enlarged parliament is meeting for the first time this week.

BBC European affairs correspondent William Horsley says Mr Balkenende's comments were unusually harsh and blunt from a European head of government, especially one who speaks for the whole EU.

Same criteria

The Dutch prime minister said Turkey's possible entry into the EU troubled many European citizens.

But he said the decision on whether to open EU membership talks with Turkey, due to be taken in December, must be strictly on the basis of whether or not Turkey meets the agreed standards of human rights and democracy.

There was not a problem that Turkey was a Muslim nation, he said.

"The decision must be arrived at honestly, under the ground rules to which we previously, in 2002, firmly committed ourselves," he said.

"That means strict application of the criteria laid down, but without inventing new criteria.

"We must not allow ourselves to be guided by fear, for example of Islam."

He said the problem was the misuse of religion to sow hatred and to repress women.

It also should be asked forthrightly whether the sowing of hatred and repression of women are really "misuses" of Islam, considering passages of the Qur'an such as 98:6, 9:29-30, 48:29, 4:34, etc. etc. Is this very question "Islamophobic"? Why must it be? Why cannot there be an open acknowledgement by secular and moderate Muslims that they do not live with these assumptions about unbelievers and women, and that they do not believe that such texts are the words of God?

Yes, they would be portrayed as apostates. Yes, they would be in fear of their lives. And this is why we see no large-scale reform in Islam.

In Islamic law, the penalty for conversion from Islam is death. And dhimmis are strictly forbidden to proselytize. These warnings are in full accord with these provisions, once again illustrating that the "extremist" Muslims are the by-the-book types, and that only when moderate Muslims acknowledge, confront and repudiate what is actually taught in Islamic theology and law will reform even become possible.

From WND, with thanks to Cathy J. Palmer:

Terrorists have threatened retaliation against South Korea if the Asian nation sends missionaries to Iraq.

"We have received information that terrorists will act against South Korea if they find South Koreans have entered Iraq for the purpose of propagating Christianity,'' South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo Hyuck told reporters.

After the beheading of South Korean interpreter and businessman Kim Sun Il last month, Seoul advised all civilians to leave Iraq.

The group that murdered Kim, Tawhid wa al-Jihad, or Unification and Holy War, posted a message on its website saying the killing was linked to religious activities of the firm that employed Kim, Gana Trading Co.

Tawhid is not "unification," as it is translated here. It is the Islamic concept of the absolute unity of Allah, by which radical Muslims judge nearly every non-Muslim to be a polytheist -- and thus to be warred against, as per Sura 9:5 and many other passages of the Qur'an.

In a statement both in Arabic and English, the group said Kim, with degrees in the Arabic language and theology, wanted to be a Christian missionary in the Arab world.

The terrorist group said, "We killed him because he was a heretic who tried to spread Christianity in Iraq. The president of Gana Trading is also a sincere Christian. He contributes 10 percent of his earnings for missionary work and the company's name also comes from the Bible."

Annie Jacobsen's now-famous experience was not isolated. According to this Washington Times piece (thanks to Jjp Mackie), those kinds of dry runs are going on with disturbing frequency.

Flight crews and air marshals say Middle Eastern men are staking out airports, probing security measures and conducting test runs aboard airplanes for a terrorist attack.

At least two midflight incidents have involved numerous men of Middle Eastern descent behaving in what one pilot called "stereotypical" behavior of an organized attempt to attack a plane.

"No doubt these are dry runs for a terrorist attack," an air marshal said.

Pilots and air marshals who asked to remain anonymous told The Washington Times that surveillance by terrorists is rampant, using different probing methods....

A January FBI memo says suicide terrorists are plotting to hijack trans-Atlantic planes by smuggling "ready-to-build" bomb kits past airport security, and later assembling the explosives in aircraft bathrooms....

The article then recounts the details of Ms. Jacobsen's experience, adding:

The pilot confirmed Mrs. Jacobsen's experience was "terribly alike" what flight attendants reported on the San Juan flight.

He said there is "widespread knowledge" among crew members these probes are taking place.

A Middle Eastern passenger attempted to videotape out the window as the plane taxied on takeoff and, when told by a flight attendant it was not permitted, "gave her a mean look and stopped taping," said a written report of the San Juan incident by a flight attendant.

The group of six men sat near one another, pretended to be strangers, but after careful observation from flight attendants, it was apparent "all six knew each other," the report said.

"They were very careful when we were in their area to seem separate and pretended to be sleeping, but when we were out of the twilight area, they were watching and communicating," the report said.

The men made several trips to the bathroom and congregated in that area, and were told at least twice by a flight attendant to return to their seats. The suspicious behavior was relayed to airline officials in midflight and additional background checks were conducted.

A second pilot said that, on one of his recent flights, an air marshal forced his way into the lavatory at the front of his plane after a man of Middle Eastern descent locked himself in for a long period.

The marshal found the mirror had been removed and the man was attempting to break through the wall. The cockpit was on the other side....

... [A] flight attendant reported that a passenger was using a telephoto lens to take sequential photos of the cockpit door.

The passenger was stopped, and the incident, which happened two months ago, was reported to officials. But when the attendant checked back last week on the outcome, she was told her report had been lost.

Recent incidents at the Minneapolis-St. Paul international airport have also alarmed flight crews. Earlier this month, a passenger from Syria was taken into custody while carrying anti-American materials and a note suggesting he intended to commit a public suicide.

A third pilot reported watching a man of Middle Eastern descent at the same airport using binoculars to get airplane tail numbers and writing the numbers in a notebook to correspond with flight numbers.

"It's a probe. They are probing us," said a second air marshal, who confirmed that Middle Eastern men try to flush out marshals by rushing the cockpit and stopping suddenly.

UPDATE: Clinton Taylor has shed a great deal of light on Annie Jacobsen's experience. It seems that the Syrians on her flight were indeed musicians, but that she had reason to be suspicious.

Despite the best efforts of their craven elites and the politically correct establishment, the Spanish are not all ready to deny their history and culture. From the Telegraph, with thanks to Susan:

St James the Moor Slayer, Spain's patron saint, has notched up another victory.

Church officials have been forced to overturn a decision to remove a statue of the saint from the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain.

The statue, an 18th-century work by Jose Gambino which depicts St James on a white charger hacking off the heads of Moors beneath his rampant mount's hooves, was deemed to be offensive to Muslims.

However a spokesman for the church, which is Christendom's third holiest site after Rome and Jerusalem and attracts half a million pilgrims each year, said yesterday that, due to public anger over the proposed move, the statue will now remain in place.

"It is still here on the same spot. It is not going anywhere," a spokesman for Alejandro Barral, the president of the cathedral's art commission, said. "We have decided that the statue of St James will stay in the cathedral. There is no reason why it should be removed in the near future. For the moment the debate over its future has been suspended."

The Spanish press reported that terrorist bomb attacks on Madrid trains in March had precipitated the withdrawal of the statue.

The Spanish national newspaper, El Mundo, said: "According to our sources the authorities fear that the image could attract the anger of the Arab world in a period of high tension."

The plan was to put the statue in a museum and replace it with a less provocative effigy, one of St James the Pilgrim.

The decision outraged Roman Catholics. One newspaper commentator dubbed it "political correctness gone mad". People gathered in strength to place flowers at the foot of the statue and newspapers published letters of complaint condemning the "intolerable heresy".

The announcement of the withdrawal was welcomed by the Muslim community as a "step towards peace" according to Houssam El Mahmoudi, the president of the Association of Moroccan Students in Santiago.

How about, as a step toward peace themselves, they root out the elements among Spanish Muslims that perpetrated the 3/11 Madrid train bombings, and that want to reestablish glorious Al-Andalus?

For those who think that nothing has been attempted by radical Muslims in America since 9/11, here is a short list from the Star Tribune (thanks to Jeffrey Imm) of terror-related arrests since then in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area alone. It starts with Zacarias Moussaoui, the famous "20th hijacker," and adds:

• August 2002: Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi, a Moroccan who lived in Minneapolis, was indicted and later convicted of conspiring to provide material support or resources to terrorists, of fraud and of misusing documents. ...

• November 2002: Indictment unsealed against Ilyas Ali, who was born in India and lived in St. Paul. He pleaded guilty to charges that he conspired to supply weapons to terrorists through the sale of drugs.

• December 2003: Mohammed A. Warsame, 30, a Canadian man born in Somalia who lived in Minneapolis, was arrested in the Twin Cities. He has been charged with conspiring to provide aid to Al-Qaida, and federal prosecutors allege he fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

• April 2004: Agents began questioning Mohamad Elzahabi, 41, a Lebanese man who was later charged with lying to federal agents after saying that he didn't send walkie-talkies to Pakistan. Elzahabi, who lived in Minneapolis, is also charged with lying about his role in helping a man fraudulently obtain a Massachusetts driver's license. An FBI affidavit says he admitted to participating in an Al-Qaida training camp.

• July 7: Ali Mohamed Almosaleh was arrested at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport carrying a suspicious note hinting at a public suicide. It hasn't been determined if he has terrorist ties.

Memo to Gloria Macapagal Arroyo: see what you have done? I am glad Angelo de la Cruz is alive and free. But are the lives of these people, who have been captured because you have shown them that hostage-taking works, worth less than his? From AP:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Militants took six foreign truck drivers hostage and threatened Wednesday to behead them unless their company ends its business in Iraq, and their countries — India, Egypt and Kenya — pull all their citizens out. The threat came as militants launched a rocket attack on a Baghdad hospital, killing two people, and set off a car bomb in the capital that killed four....

The threat to behead the hostages — and separate warnings against Bulgarian, Polish and Japanese troops — is the latest development in a violent campaign to scare off foreigners, who play a vital role in supporting the new U.S.-backed government and in the reconstruction of Iraq....

A militant group calling itself "The Holders of the Black Banners," announced Wednesday it had taken two Kenyans, three Indians and an Egyptian hostage, and said it would behead a captive every 72 hours beginning Saturday night if their countries do not announce their intentions to withdraw troops and citizens from Iraq.

The black flag is the flag of jihad.

The post below has gotten quite long enough, but I can't resist adding just one more exchange I have had over the Dallas Morning News article.

This one is a classic example of the moral confusion and myopia that keeps people from understanding the reality and magnitude of the threat of radical Islam. It ought to be obvious to everyone that the "Christian extremists" he mentions have done nothing remotely approaching 9/11, or 3/11, or Bali, or Nigeria, or the suicide attacks in Israel, or hundreds of other incidents I could name -- and that therefore any comparison of them with jihadists, like Kristof's, amounts to nothing more than a slur, and a diversion of our attention from where it should be. Unfortunately, it isn't obvious.

Mr. Spencer,

After reading your response to Kristof's article about the "Left Behind" series of novels, it occurs to me that you don't really understand many of the salt-of-the-earth Christians who, quite literally, take these novels as gospel. I work at a public library in a poor area of town in a midwestern state, where Christian extremism is routine. The comments from my customers indicate that they believe the "Left Behind" novels are non-fiction accounts of what will truly happen. They are often incapable of distinguishing fiction from fact. These novels are stirring up dangerous emotions in these folks that entrench their beliefs, and render them incapable of living in even a remotely pluralistic society. Mr. Kristof's view is in no way giving comfort to the Muslim extremists, but, rather, explaining how Christian religious intolerance is incompatible with living in the United States.

Sincerely,
[Name deleted]

Reply:

Thanks. Please send me news articles recounting how these folks have begun taking up arms and killing non-Christians. I look forward to receiving them.

Best regards
Robert Spencer

How interesting to get hate mail from Christians for a change. Here is a choice one I received, thrillingly paradoxical in its lustily slung insults combined with its self-righteous pious posturing and castigation of me for insulting Mr. Kristof. My reply follows, along with another exchange.

These are not posted, however, just for entertainment value: it is instructive to note that these attitudes are still held by large numbers of Americans, and that they obstruct anti-terror efforts. Thus it is important, I believe, to reply to them whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Also, a little State-of-the-Union note: all of the mail I have received about this column, and it has been considerable, has been either from haters or skeptics. Not one message of support or agreement. (UPDATE: I have now received a few very kind notes. Thanks to all who sent them.)

Dear Mr. Spencer, It’s very interesting how many times you mentioned Mr. Kristof’s name and followed it by an insult of some sort. Instead of sharing an intelligent and thought provoking opposite perspective you made yourself look like someone with their head up their a--.

After reading your view point of “Are Left Behind Books Dangerous?”,
in the Wednesday, July 21, 2004 edition of The Dallas Morning News, I
was ashamed and embarrassed that I share the faith of Christianity with you. Somehow, your warped sense of self has been allowed to be shared with the mass public and spread uneducated and yes, ignorant hate against all Muslims.

It is extremely ignorant to take short passages out of any book, let
alone a holy book such as the Quran, and say “See…this is what all
Muslims believe”. Many American and world Muslims do NOT believe in
the extremists actions the radical Islamic Militants have taken. The
reason I am told, is because of their holy book, the Quran. Do some
further research and you will find many passages that encourage peace, faith and tolerance in the Quran. That way, Mr. Spencer, you would have spared yourself the embarrassment of looking like a moral and racist imbecile.

It is amazing how you seem to forget all the atrocities that have
been conducted against non-Christians in history and in present day by people who share our love in Jesus. Grow up and get a grip on reality Mr. Spencer.

The several people in my office who read the article (primarily a
Christian group) felt disturbed by what you wrote and how it came
across. Your random spewing has shamed all Christians into looking like archaic fools who can’t tell their behind from their head.

I praise our Savior Jesus that there are MANY intelligent, thoughtful
Americans who think of how their words, thoughts and actions effect
other people before they speak and will realize that what you wrote was exactly that….YOUR viewpoint.

I thank Jesus, that by sharing himself in love by HIS thought, word
and action that many Americans understand that we need to remain
tolerant and humble always. Really, it takes so much time and effort to remain daily in the love and light that Jesus taught us and conduct ourselves in a “Christian manner”, that we don’t have time to stupidly slam others.

I am not sure how you got this far in life Mr. Spencer, but it is
clear that you have some serious doubts in yourself, your faith and
your own confidence as a human being. Our actions have a funny way of coming back to visit us and I pray, Mr. Spencer that you are spared the hate that you have spewed in your article.

May God Bless you,
[Name deleted], Dallas TX

And my reply:

Dear [Name deleted],

Thanks for your note. Please specify where in this article or in any of my books or other articles I have ever said: "See…this is what all Muslims believe."

I would invite you to study the Qur'an, as well as Islamic theology,
jurispudence, and history, and tell me whether you can still maintain
that Islam has no doctrine mandating violence against non-Muslims. You can find these documents readily, or see them quoted abundantly in my book "Onward Muslim Soldiers." Does this mean that all Muslims believe this? Of course not. Nor have I ever said that they do. But to ignore or gloss over this fact is to take away the principal weapon that Muslim reformers have: they can't repair what no one will acknowledge is broken.

Cordially,
Robert Spencer

And another:

How convenient for you to mention only the New Testament when talking about Christians killing other people. You fail to note, my friend, that Christians very frequently refer to Jesus' Jewishness and Christians very carefully study the Old as well as the New testaments.

And in that Old Testament are many instances where God commanded his people to go out and kill entire communities!

Also, you take a tremendous amount of literary license when you
castigate Mr. Kristof, implying that he lumps Christians and Islam so
conveniently in the same bag.

[Name deleted]

Reply:

Dear [Name deleted],

Please specify the Christian churches that teach that Christians have
the responsibility to kill non-Christians. Most Christian churches
actually teach that the Old Testament passages to which you refer have been superseded by New Testament passages such as Matthew 5:38, etc.

Also, please point out to me the existence of a global network of
Christian terrorists that take their justification from the Old
Testament, analogous to the many jihadist groups that take their
justification from the Qur'an -- not just Al-Qaeda, but Hamas,
Hizballah, Islamic Jihad, Jemaah Islamiyah, etc. etc. etc.

Please also specify any specific statement I made that misrepresents
anything Mr. Kristof said.

Cordially,
Robert Spencer

Plus this exchange, which is not hate mail but which I put up for the information contained therein:

Mr. Spencer,

I read your column (Dallas Morning News, July 21) and appreciate your
efforts, but I have do have two questions.

(1) The citations from the Quran are obviously translations. Can we be sure the word translated "fight" means a physical, armed conflict? Even our word "fight" can mean to struggle or contend, as in fighting a disease, fighting to succeed in business, etc. When I was young, we sometimes sang hymns entitled "The Fight is On" and "Onward Christian Soldiers." I don't think anybody interpreted these to go get a gun to literally fight the non-Christians.

Further, I have heard Muslims say that "jihad" means "the struggle to be a good Muslim." The context of at least one of the references you cite suggests the meaning is not a physical battle: the one about making war on non-Muslims until they either become Muslims or pay the tax. If the purpose of the war was to literally kill them, they could hardly become Muslims OR pay a tax.

(2) To my knowledge, all Christians accept the Old Testament as
Scripture. Go back and read Exodus through Judges, and see how much war you find.

Not only that, but the command to "wipe out" the enemies (non-Israelites), sometime men, women, and children, is frequently heard. Is this substantially different from what is in the Islam Scriptures?

Answers to these two sets of questions would be most important if we are to assess your overall thesis.

[Name deleted] (retired minister)
Dallas, Texas

And my reply:

In Islamic tradition, jihad has all these meanings, including physical, armed struggle. I have written a whole book about this, but in any case, the context is clear in this and many other Qur'anic verses: "Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks; At length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly (on them): thereafter (is the time for) either generosity or ransom: Until the war lays down its burdens." (47:4). "Smite at their necks" is not the language of dialogue and preaching, but of warfare.

"Further, I have heard Muslims say that 'jihad' means 'the struggle to be a good Muslim.'"

That is true. However, the legal manual to which I referred, Umdat al-Salik, devotes one paragraph to this meaning of jihad, and ten pages to warfare. It is clear where the emphasis lies, and this is not an isolated or unusual text in this regard.

"The context of at least one of the references you cite suggests the meaning is not a physical battle: the one about making war on non-Muslims until they either become Muslims or pay the tax. If the purpose of the war was to literally kill them, they could hardly become Muslims OR pay a tax."

Right. 9:29 makes it clear that the purpose of the jihad is NOT solely to kill them, but to subjugate them. As is clear from Islamic theology and law, unbelievers have three choices: conversion, submission, or death.

"(2) To my knowledge, all Christians accept the Old Testament as Scripture. Go back and read Exodus through Judges, and see how much
war you find. Not only that, but the command to "wipe out" the enemies (non-Israelites), sometime men, women, and children, is frequently heard. Is this substantially different from what is in the Islam Scriptures?"

Yes. Neither Christians nor Jews believe that those were commandments to the believers that were valid for all time. Radical Muslims, however, regard the martial verses of the Qur'an, because they were revealed later than those counseling peace and tolerance, as superseding the verses of peace and mandating a belligerent posture towards unbelievers. This is also the traditional teaching of Islamic divines.

UPDATE: For a further exchange with the first letter-writer above, read on. Once again, I believe the exchange is instructive, as exchanges like this take place every day in America nowadays. I hope you find my responses to all these helpful.

Here is another issue that has been clouded by talk of pluralism and religious freedom. That's all very well; but pluralism and religious freedom are generally not allowed to non-Muslims in the countries from which the Hamtramck Muslims came to Michigan. Nor are they allowed under Islamic law. What demands will be made next upon the non-Muslims of Hamtramck?

Also note: the Muslims there weren't going to respect the vote anyway. From AP, with thanks to KR Ingalls:

HAMTRAMCK, Mich. (AP) -- Residents agreed Tuesday to include the Islamic call to prayer in the city's noise ordinance, a victory for those in favor of allowing mosques to issue the call to prayer over loudspeakers.

Those in favor of allowing the broadcasts won the vote 1,462 to 1,200, or 55 percent to 45 percent, with all precincts reporting and all absentee ballots counted.

Opponents and backers of the measure acknowledged that the vote was merely symbolic. The ballot measure would not have stopped the amplified call to prayer; it would merely have repealed an amendment to the city's existing noise ordinance. The amendment regulates the volume and timing of the call. City officials have said there would be nothing to prohibit the broadcasting of the call to prayer itself.

"Now we truly have approval from the residents of the city," said Abdul Motlib, head of the al-Islah mosque, who joined others Tuesday night at city hall to await the results of the vote. "It's a long time we are waiting for this."

The City Council unanimously passed the amendment in April after a local mosque asked for permission to begin broadcasting the Arabic chants, traditionally issued five times a day.

The council's action provoked an outcry among some longtime residents of Hamtramck, a once predominately-Polish city of 23,000 people that is surrounded by Detroit. In recent years, the city has seen a rapid influx of immigrants from Bangladesh, Yemen and other countries.

City Council president Karen Majewski has said that repealing the amendment would have left the city powerless to regulate the calls, but would not allow officials to stop them. Nothing in the current noise ordinance bans the practice, she says.

The al-Islah mosque began the call to prayer in May. Masud Khan, secretary of the mosque, said the broadcasts would have continued whatever the outcome of Tuesday's vote. At least one other Hamtramck mosque also has begun the broadcasts via loudspeakers since May.

Last night on Hardball with Chris Matthews, Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) said that he knew for a fact that another country besides Iran was behind 9/11 and Al-Qaeda. (Thanks to Foehammer for the link.)

GRAHAM: Chris, you‘re also assuming that the only foreign government that provided assistance to al Qaeda was Iran, based on this new information. I don‘t think that‘s correct. There were a number of instances in which our people were put at greater risk because of the actions of foreign governments. Unfortunately, for reason that are inexplicable to me, that‘s been withheld from the American people. I hope that this instance in Iran will be the basis of the government telling our people who are our friends and who our enemies really are.

MATTHEWS: Right. But Senator Graham, do you know for a fact that any other government helped the al Qaeda people hit us on 9/11?

GRAHAM: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Who?

GRAHAM: I cannot say that.

MATTHEWS: Is it among usual suspects?

GRAHAM: Well, I don‘t know who your usual suspects are.

MATTHEWS: Well, how about—how about—how about the kind of governments the president lists in his “axis of evil”? How about that for a start?

GRAHAM: Well, let me say this. There is—as Senator Lott has just said, there has been some reporting in those newspapers and magazines about this, so it‘s not completely withheld from the American people. And some of that has been declassified. But the government has not been forthcoming in saying, Here‘s who was involved, and here‘s what we‘re going to do about it.

MATTHEWS: I‘d love to know that list.

Of course, the "right" to wear hijab is just the proverbial camel's nose under the tent. This "right" rather quickly becomes a grim requirement -- as women in Iran and elsewhere have discovered. It is just like conversion: one is free to convert to Islam; one is not free, however, to convert from it. Women in the UK must be free to wear headscarves. All right, but how long will it be before they are not free not to wear them? From Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, with thanks to Sharon:

London, 20 July 2004 -- A newly established group in the United Kingdom aims to protect the right of Muslim women to wear traditional Islamic head scarf, or hijab.

The Assembly for the Protection of the Hijab was created in July by the U.K.'s Muslim Women's Society and the Muslim Association of Britain.

It vows to fight bans on wearing the hijab in schools, as well as the impact such bans have on communities in Western Europe. It has even declared 4 September, the start of the new school year in Europe, International Hijab Solidarity Day.

"I think it shows how concerned the Muslim community is about the whole issue of dress, and how much emphasis is being placed on how Muslim people dress," said Shabana Khan, a spokeswoman for the Muslim Council of Britain, which is affiliated with the Muslim Association of Britain.

Khan pointed out that two recent events acted as a catalyst for the group's formation.

One is the ban on hijab in state schools in France that comes into force after the summer school holidays.

The other is a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights to uphold the decision of a university in Turkey to force a female student to stop wearing the hijab.

Khan said both decisions represent a basic violation of mainstream Muslim views[.]

"The mainstream Muslim or Islamic view is that for men and women there is a dress requirement, and I think that the covering of a woman, including her hair and her body, is part of that requirement," Khan said.

This woman's language betrays the unilateral nature of her quest. If a "dress requirement" is part of "mainstream" Islam, what will prevent it from eventually being required of everyone?

Relax, Mr. Kerry: nukes, but no WMD's. And seriously, why isn't this on the front page of the New York Times and the Washington Post? From UPI, with thanks to "Allah":

Baghdad, Iraq, Jul. 21 (UPI) -- Iraqi security reportedly discovered three missiles carrying nuclear heads concealed in a concrete trench northwest of Baghdad, official sources said Wednesday.

The official daily al-Sabah quoted the sources as saying the missiles were discovered in trenches near the city of Tikrit, the hometown of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"The three missiles were discovered by chance when the Iraqi security forces captured former Baath party official Khoder al-Douri who revealed during interrogation the location of the missiles saying they carried nuclear heads," the sources said.

They pointed out that the missiles were actually discovered in the trenches lying under six meters of concrete and designed in a way to unable sophisticated sensors from discovering nuclear radiation.

The whole world has voted for terrorism — except for Australia, Israel, the US, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau. More evidence of the rank corruption and utter worthlessness of the UN. From AAP, with thanks to Kevin:

Australia was among just six nations that opposed a United Nations resolution calling on Israel to tear down part of its West Bank barrier, in a stance described as proof America dictated Australia's foreign policy.

Australia voted against a UN General Assembly resolution which backed a World Court ruling calling on Israel to tear down part of barrier - an unfinished 700km concrete and barbed wire fence built partly on West Bank territory.

The resolution was supported in the UN by 150 countries with only Australia, Israel, the US, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau voting against it, and 10 abstentions.

Australian Federation of Islamic Councils president Ameer Ali said the Australian vote sent a message to the Muslim community that the government had no sympathy for Palestine.

"It is disheartening," Dr Ali said.

"Israel, America and Australia - these are three important countries that have voted against it.

"I expected that to happen because the present government goes all the way with what the Americans say, we don't have independent foreign policy at the moment.

"The government has not said anything in favour or in sympathy with the Palestinian people.

"That is the most troubling issue in the Muslim world and as long as that problem remains boiling, the governments that support this American foreign policy will be looked at with disfavour."

A respectful suggestion for Mr. Ali: maybe if he conveyed to his Palestinian Arab friends that if they stopped blowing up civilians in buses and restaurants, renounced violent jihad and Sharia provisions of dhimmitude, and accepted a peaceful negotiated solution to the conflict, they would command a great deal more sympathy. These words from the Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism explain it all:

The Coalition believes that terrorism can never be justified.

No other issue has been more frequently used to justify global terrorism than the alleged support for the Palestinian cause....

The Coalition believes unambiguously that organizations like HAMAS, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad are criminal terrorist organizations and their alleged support for the Palestinian cause does not in any way justify their use of terror or the killing of innocent Jews, Christians and Muslims.

The Coalition believes that terrorist organizations such HAMAS and Islamic Jihad have done more to hurt the Palestinian cause than any perceived enemy of the Palestinians. The Coalition believes that the Palestinians have a just cause and have the right to live in peace and prosperity. The Coalition also believes that Israelis have a just cause and have the right to live in peace and prosperity.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is characterized by the same jihadist rhetoric as conflicts around the world between Muslims and non-Muslims. Israel is just one front in the global jihad, and all anti-jihadists should recognize that.

But of course, all this is not a problem for Palestinians at the UN, where they already have won the allegiance and sympathy of the world.

It is time for this stout coalition of six countries — and any others who may find within themselves some last vestiges of moral discernment and courage — to leave the UN and shake the dust from their feet. It's time for any states that wish to resist the global jihad to take a long, serious look at Dr. Rafael Israeli's proposal: an Alliance of Western and Democratic States (AWADS):

Coexistence between the West and the Muslim world, if not peaceful then at least non-belligerent, cannot exist or last unless a system of unilateral measures of self-defense is adopted by the West, but advertised and made clear to all, on the one hand; and another system of reward and non-lethal punishment is put in place, as a menu for every Muslim country or organization to choose from, if it elected to enjoy the goodies of the West, on the other.

Both do not require any agreement on the part of the Muslim countries, but do assume a united and uniform policy of Western countries, who are willing to participate in the effort and also to benefit from its fruits, those who belong there today, or prove in the future that they respond to the cumulative criteria, set by the West itself, for joining in, such as a certain per-capita income, a certain GNP judged necessary to maintain Western norms, a regime of liberal democracy- elected, with pacific transfer of power, accountable, a-personal, non-hereditary; a free press, transparency of government, human rights and freedoms; free enterprise, freedom of property, transaction of real estate and funds; freedom to create in the arts, the humanities, literature, and protection of one's creation; and a strong and independent judiciary to oversee all this. Such countries that would be accepted to the AWADS (Alliance of Western and Democratic States), at the center of which will be the US, Canada, Australia and Western Europe, will add other applicants as they prove their adaptability to its rules and their willingness and capacity to live by and up to them.

This system may sidetrack the chaotic situation in the UN today, where politics and shifting majorities, composed of dictatorships for the most part, determine the moral and other standards of behaviour in the world body. Durban 2001, should remain for ever a warning to the level of hatred and bigotry that the UN today is capable of stooping to.

Rules of Co-existence

AWADS will announce that it is organized to fight in unison terror, but is open not only to cooperation with Muslim countries who so desire, as long as they meet the two criteria of renouncing violence externally and enhance human rights domestically, but would even consider co-opting them into the organization if they should wean themselves from terror and develop political systems acceptable to it.

Thus, without threats, recriminations, forced reforms and all the rest, a powerful incentive is introduced in the international arena for change, the Western way, if a country so elects, or stay in the putrid marsh of UN politics. The West will then determine whom to get into AWADS, and once there what sort of obligations every country has to meet, proportionately to its strength, population and wealth, in contrast to the universality of the UN, which permits that any group of evil terrorist countries, such as Algeria, Syria and Sudan can determine the agenda and resolutions of, for example, the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva....

Even though it only had 51 troops in Iraq, the Philippines has dealt the coalition and the free world a major blow by caving in to terrorist demands and withdrawing them. Not only will they not bring peace to the Philippines or the Middle East, but many more people will be murdered by the terrorists. After all, they have seen that it works. From AP:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - New online statements by purported militants threatened attacks against three U.S. allies — Poland, Japan and Bulgaria — if they don't pull their troops from Iraq, a day after a Filipino hostage was released because the Philippines bowed to insurgents' demands and withdrew its tiny contingent....

The new threats against Poland, Japan and Bulgaria were worrying signs that militants may be emboldened by their success against the Philippines. The United States and other coalition allies had criticized the government for agreeing to withdraw its 51-member contingent to save the life of truck driver Angelo dela Cruz, who was kidnapped two weeks ago.

The same group that kidnapped dela Cruz, the Khaled bin al-Waleed Corps, took aim at Japan. The group is the military wing of Tawhid and Jihad, the group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"To the government of Japan: Do what the Philippines has done. By God, nobody will protect you and we are not going to tolerate anybody," said a statement signed by the group. "Lines of cars laden with explosives are awaiting you; we will not stop, God willing."

A Foreign Ministry official in Japan said Wednesday that Tokyo would not pull its 500 troops, sent here for medical and reconstruction duty. Japan refused in April to withdraw after three Japanese were kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents. They were released unharmed....

The veracity of the latest statement could not be determined. A new statement signed Tawhid and Jihad on Wednesday cautioned readers to trust only statements posted on the group's behalf by Abu-Maysara al-Iraqi, the pen name of a frequent contributor to sites known for militant Muslim content. The threat against Japan was not posted by Abu-Maysara al-Iraqi.

While Tawhid and Jihad — a name referring to the central Islamic tenet of monotheism and to holy war — has claimed many attacks, it rarely issues threats or warnings. It earlier claimed responsibility for beheading U.S. businessman Nicholas Berg and South Korean translator Kim Sun-il.

An online statement from a previously unknown group that identified itself as al-Qaida's European branch contained threats to carry out deadly attacks in Bulgaria and Poland if the two countries don't withdraw their troops from Iraq.

The statement, signed by the Tawhid Islamic Group, appeared Wednesday on an Islamic Web site known as a clearing house for al-Qaida and groups linked to the terror network. The group identified itself as "al-Qaida in Europe." The authenticity of the statement and the group could not be verified.

The group said Bulgaria and Poland will "pay the price" just like the United States and Spain did, referring to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington and deadly explosions on trains in Madrid in March.

"To the crusader Bulgarian government which is allying itself with the Americans and to the Bulgarian people we demand, for the last time, that you withdraw Bulgarian troops out of Iraq or we swear we will turn Bulgaria into pools of blood if you don't comply," said the statement.

Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov said Friday he won't pull out Bulgaria's 480-strong infantry battalion from Iraq. Last week militants threatened to kill two Bulgarian truck drivers in Iraq, while the fate of the second hostage remained unclear.

The group's statement also had a warning to Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka: "Pull your troops out of Iraq or you will hear the sounds of explosions that will hit your country, at the time we choose."...

On Wednesday, Deputy Defense Minister Janusz Zemke said withdrawing troops from Iraq would be a "terrible mistake" that would only encourage terrorism.

I'm glad somebody realizes that. It's too bad Janusz Zemke doesn't work in Manila.

Why was it in the freezer? Stored away for later propaganda use? From AP (thanks to Romy):

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - The head of slain American hostage Paul M. Johnson Jr., who was kidnapped and decapitated by militants in Saudi Arabia last month, was found by security forces during a raid that targeted the Saudi al-Qaida chief. Two militants were killed, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday.

The Saudi Interior Ministry said Johnson's head was found after a search of one of three locations after the raid late Tuesday that hit the home of Saudi al-Qaida leader Saleh Mohammed al-Aoofi. Weapons, including an anti-aircraft SAM-7 missile, chemicals, video cameras and cash were among items seized from the location.

In a statement broadcast on Saudi al-Ekhbariya television, the Interior Ministry said the head was found in a freezer in an apartment. The body was not found....

During the past year, Saudi Arabia has been rocked by suicide bombings, gunbattles and kidnappings targeting foreign workers. The attacks have been blamed on al-Qaida and sympathizers of the anti-Western terror network headed by Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden. Al-Qaida wants to topple the Saudi royal family and replace it with its own Islamic government.

A slightly expanded version of my criticism of Nicholas Kristof's appalling equation of Christian Fundamentalists with Islamic jihadists appears today in the Dallas Morning News:

Mr. Kristof either has no clue or doesn't care that Christianity does not have and never has had a doctrine mandating warfare against non-Christians. Islam, on the other hand, has now and has always had a doctrine mandating warfare against non-Muslims.

See, just to cite a few references, Quran 9:29 ("Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day ... (even if they are) of the People of the Book [Jews and Christians], until they pay the Jizya [the special tax on non-Muslims] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued") and hundreds of other verses; Sahih Muslim 4294 (Muhammad says: "Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war"); a legal manual endorsed by the closest thing to a Vatican that Sunni Islam has, Al-Azhar University: "Umdat al-Salik o.9.8 ("[make] war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians ... until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax"); plus the writings of all the major Islamic jurists....

This is, of course, the one thing that people like Nicholas Kristof can never and will never admit, because it would explode the foggy multiculturalism and relativism that passes for a worldview in their minds. But it is simply a fact. Prove me wrong.

For Mr. Kristof to term this set of novels "militant Christianity," which is somehow equivalent or becoming equivalent to militant Islam, shows that he has not the remotest idea of what the jihadists are really saying, why they are saying it, and how it differs from what Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are saying. This kind of theological equivalence is the idiot stepchild of the moral equivalence that the learned pundits used to preach regarding the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

And just as moral equivalence played into the bloody hands of the Communists, so theological equivalence plays into the hands of the jihadists, attempting as it does to blunt the force of the moral argument against them. Yeah, sure, they preach murder, but, hey, look at these novels!

Maybe. But they still can't search backpacks. So even if there is no terrorism link here (and they always seem to say that these days) what's to prevent there from being one next time? From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

A backpack that set off a small explosion in a Times Square subway station may have contained a pipe bomb and not just fireworks, as originally believed, police said Tuesday.

The explosion at 8 p.m. Monday slightly injured a retired police officer and disrupted subway service.

Scores of heavily armed police trained in anti-terrorism tactics and hundreds of other officers sealed off parts of the surrounding streets around 43rd Street and Eighth Avenue.

Investigators said later, however, that they did not suspect any terrorism link.

Another activist judge makes us all a little more vulnerable. From the New York Daily News:

NYPD cops blasted a federal judge's ruling aimed at stopping them from searching demonstrators' bags outside the Republican National Convention, saying the decision gives "an open door to terrorists."

Manhattan Federal Judge Robert Sweet's decision - made public yesterday - prohibits blanket searches of bulky bags and backpacks in the absence of a "specific threat."

"In this day and age of terrorism, it's an extremely dangerous step in a very dangerous time in New York City," said an outraged Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association.

"It's giving an open door to terrorists, and further handcuffing police at a time that they should be given a little bit more latitude," Palladino said. He said he plans to urge Mayor Bloomberg to appeal the ruling.

Sweet's decision also limits how many streets the NYPD can close around Madison Square Garden, and prohibits cops from penning protesters behind metal barricades.

The ruling does not prevent the use of hand-held metal-detecting wands around the perimeter of the convention.

Sweet wrote that his ruling is an attempt to "define a resolution which can serve to encourage free expression in a secure society."

He described the preventive measure by police as an "invasion of personal privacy."

Christopher Dunn, an attorney for the New York Civil Liberties Union, called it a "historic victory."

The Ingushetian Shura Council in Chechyna has declared jihad. Of course, jihad has been raging there for some time, so this isn't really a new development, but there is a noteworthy point in their communiqué: the jihad is so that "the Earth could be cleansed of unbelief."

This assumes an endless jihad against unbelievers, until Islamic hegemony is established everywhere. This is traditional Islamic doctrine, but since it is obscured and denied by so many taqiyya artists (that's deception as allowed by the Qur'an, 3:28 and 16:106) and dhimmis, it is useful to see what they're saying about it in Chechnya -- which is the same thing, by the way, that jihadists today are saying worldwide, though few are paying attention.

From the Kavkaz Center via Jihad Unspun, with thanks to Nicolei:

In the name of God, Most Merciful, Most Gracious!

Praise Allah, the Lord of the Worlds, peace and blessing be to our Prophet Muhammad, his family and all of his disciples.

Indeed, Allah created people so that He could be worshipped alone, so no companions are ascribed to Him, and He permitted Jihad on His Straight Way, so that the Religion of Allah could be above all, so that all areas of life could be guided by Islam, and so that the Earth could be cleansed of unbelief.

Allah said, «Make war on them until no more temptation remains…» (Anfal 39) [That's Sura 8:39]

The reason why the Muslims are weak is because they abandoned the Jihad. Allah set the infidels on Muslims, these infidels are guided by ignorance and unbelief and in the Muslim countries they have tried to do everything to make Muslims forget their Religion. Enemies are taking the riches of Muslims, they are persecuting the Muslims and thus confirming the warning from Allah:

«They will not cease to fight with ye until they avert ye from your Religion, if they will be able to do it»....

Everyone who cooperates with the invaders and helps them in the war against Muslims with weapons or with snitching thus becomes one of them. Requirement of the Shariah Law applies to such people. These people will be punished by death, because fighting shoulder to shoulder with infidels or helping the infidels in the war against Muslims banishes them from Islam. For Allah said that those who make friends among infidels become one of them. And Allah will not be guiding the wicked.

Muslims must be convinced that the only salvation and the only way to obtain honor and dignity is the Religion of Islam. Our enemies know it and this is why they are trying to do all they can to lead Muslims astray. They appoint their lackeys as muftis, imams of mosques, who in turn pervert the truth and lead Muslims away from the Religion of Islam; they spread ignorance and heresy; they split Muslims into groups and sects; they spread polytheism and they call to obey the enemies.

Muslims, do believe the promises of Allah about His help. Jihad on the Way of Allah is the truth that restores justice.

Allah is our Master and there is no help other than from Him.

Allah Akbar!!!
God is Great!!!

Military Council Majlis Al-Shura of Ingushetia
2004-07-09

Legal jihad, from Henry Mark Holzer at FrontPage.

First, from the editor's note:

The article below by Henry Mark Holzer discusses the Supreme Court's recent decision to give constitutional protection to foreign "enemy combatants." This development, which epitomizes activist judges "legislating from the bench," overwrites decades of precedents and undermines the country's ability to fight the War on Terror. Meanwhile, terrorists and their radical America-hating lawyers are lining up to find and exploit loopholes in the rulings that may ultimately set a large number of criminals and murderers free -- and a large number of Americans to their graves.

The advocates of these terrorists come mainly from two leftist organizations with a long history of defending the dregs of American (and now Islamic) society: the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). These groups have teamed up to challenge the rights of America to defend our jihadist enemies.

The CCR, which was founded by radical leftist attorneys William Kuntsler and Arthur Kinoy, has a long record of defending and identifying with our enemies. Like the CCR, the NLG never met an anti-American, anti-capitalist, or anti-Semite it didn't like. Both, for instance, stand firmly behind accused terrorist and former University of South Florida professor, Sami Al-Arian, who awaits trial for providing material aid to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The NLG is at the forefront of fighting on behalf of Guantanamo terrorist prisoners. It actively opposes legislation designed to prevent terror attacks, supports other terrorist groups like the Basque Separatists, and routinely passes out literature in Arabic to immigrants and visitors so they can "know their rights" with respect to U.S. investigators. "Talking to the FBI or other agents can be dangerous," says one NLG pamphlet.

The most notorious terrorist advocate currently is NLG member Lynne Stewart, who is now on trial herself for aiding and abetting the terrorist leader Omar Abdel Rahman. Stewart is a self-proclaimed champion of terrorism and an avowed Communist whose heroes include Lenin, Mao and Ho Chi Minh. Rahman's followers perpetrated the first World Trade Center bombing and had planned other attacks on NYC. While acting as his lawyer, Stewart disseminated instructions to Rahman's followers....

And from Holzer:

Rumsfeld v. Padilla. An American citizen, Jose Padilla (the so-called “dirty bomber”) was arrested in Chicago, brought to New York, later designated an “enemy combatant,” and given into military custody in South Carolina. Assigned counsel sought habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in Manhattan), challenging Padilla’s detention.

In a narrow technical decision, the Supreme Court held that Padilla’s lawyer had sued in the wrong jurisdiction. Since the “immediate custodian” who had control of enemy combatant Padilla was the warden of the naval brig in South Carolina, that jurisdiction, not New York, was where the alleged dirty bomber’s case belonged. Accordingly, the Supreme Court told Padilla that if he wanted to challenge the detention, he would have to re-file his case in the South Carolina federal court. Thus, Padilla decided nothing substantive—the case only further defined the statutory meaning of “immediate custodian.” (Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer were prepared, knowingly, to misinterpret the habeas corpus statute and reach the merits because Padilla’s claims, apparently unlike the plain meaning of a venerable federal statute, were “important”)....

There follow details of other important cases. Read it all.

To paraphrase Godfather Don Corleone: Radical lawyers with word processors can do more harm than 100 terrorists with machine guns.

Yes, he is. Think about it. I argued here several days ago that his ridiculous smear of evangelical Christianity would gave aid and comfort to the jihadists. And lo and behold, his piece has been picked up by the Pakistan News Service and ... (ready?) ... Al-Jazeera.

For a little background on what Al-Jazeera is and what it has done, see here.

Chirac is smarting over Sharon's call for French Jews to flee rising antisemitism in France. That's right, Jacques: shoot the messenger. I'll bet Sharon's heart is broken over this. From CNN, with thanks to cgiddensjr:

PARIS, France (CNN) -- French President Jacques Chirac said says Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is not welcome in Paris until he explains his appeal to French Jews to leave the country, a presidential spokeswoman said.

"A visit by the Israeli prime minister won't be looked at closely until the requested explanation is provided," the spokeswoman said.

Sharon said last weekend that French Jews should consider immigrating to Israel because of the rise in anti-Semitic incidents in France.

Sharon's remarks, which included the charge that France was host to "the wildest anti-Semitism" -- were misunderstood, Jacques Revah, the charge d'affaires of the Israeli Embassy in Paris, told The Associated Press. He said Sharon's comments were only a way of telling Jews they belong in Israel.

"Mr. Sharon had the same message for all Jews in the world, and if he pointed out France, it was to praise the position and the measures France has taken to combat anti-Semitism," Revah told the AP.

An invitation to visit France had apparently been extended to Sharon, but no date had been set, French officials said.

The French foreign ministry said Sharon's remarks were "unacceptable," and other officials described them as an "insult to France."

No: antisemitism, perpetrated by jihadist Muslims in France and largely unpunished by French authorities, is an insult to France.

Why shouldn't the Janjaweed being doing this? Nothing in Islamic law forbids the treatment of women who are considered war captives in this way. From Reuters, with thanks to cgiddensjr:

BEIRUT, Lebanon (Reuters) -- Arab militias in Sudan are gang-raping and abducting girls as young as eight and women as old as 80, systematically killing, torturing, or using them as sex slaves, an Amnesty International report said on Monday.

Militias known as Janjaweed, which rights groups say are backed by the government, have been fighting rebels in Sudan's western Darfur region since last year, triggering one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

"When we tried to escape they shot more children," one woman identified only as A. told Amnesty researchers.

"They raped women, I saw many cases of Janjaweed raping women and girls. They are happy when they rape. They sing when they rape and they tell us that we are just slaves and that they can do with us how they wish."

As many as 30,000 people have been killed in Darfur and more than a million displaced, their homes bombed by government planes, their crops stolen.

In a report called "Rape as a Weapon of War," Amnesty outlines sexual violence against women it says is happening on a massive scale. It says Khartoum is actively violating its legal obligations to protect civilians.

"Soldiers of the Sudan government army are present during attacks by the Janjaweed and when rapes are committed, but the Sudan government has done nothing so far to stop them," Amnesty researcher Benedicte Goderiaux told a news conference.

Darfur's rebels accuse the government of arming the Arab Janjaweed to loot and burn African villages in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Khartoum denies the charge.

The Sudan embassy in Beirut said in a statement that the Amnesty report was aimed at defaming the government, distorting Arab culture and driving a wedge between Sudan's ethnic groups.

Annie Jacobsen's harrowing piece "Terror in the Skies, Again?" came under fire from many quarters, including from some who claimed it was a hoax. But it was anything but, and Jacobsen provides more information in a follow-up piece in WomensWallStreet.com(thanks to Kemaste for the link):

And I now have another important question... Is there a link between my experience on flight #327 and the arrest of Ali Mohamed Almosaleh by customs agents at the Minneapolis Airport on July 7 (approximately one week after my flight)? Almosaleh was traveling from Damascus, Syria, to Minneapolis on KLM/Northwest Airlines. According to CNN.com, "Agents found Almosaleh to be carrying what they described as a suicide note and DVDs containing anti-American material."

It was initially reported by CNN.com that the man "is not known to the intelligence community, and that his name was not on any terrorist watch list." The following day, on TwinCities.com, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported that Almosaleh "had something with him indicating a connection with at least one known terrorist." So, did a more thorough check of the man reveal this critical new information? Remember, according to Adams, FAM checked the 14 Syrian men on my flight against the terrorist watch lists. They found no match, so they let them go. I wonder what might have happened if the 14 Syrians on my flight had been looked into more thoroughly?

Since publishing the first article, I have received dozens of emails from people in the airline industry, including flight attendants, captains and pilots, some of whom I have also spoken with on the telephone. As of Sunday morning, to my knowledge, WWS had received no emails from anyone in the airline industry suggesting that the incident described in my first article did not happen. Here is what some of them are saying, all of it on the record.

Jeanne M. Elliott, Security Coordinator for the Professional Flight Attendants Association (PFAA), which represents the flight attendants of Northwest Airlines, said, "By the uneducated eye, and to those who don't walk in our shoes, it may have been perceived that we were doing nothing, when indeed we were putting the safety and security of those passengers as our first priority."

This is just a small excerpt. Read it all.

The latest article by Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer, "Jihad TV Comes to Canada," is available today at FrontPage:

Al-Jazeera executives have claimed that the network has been criticized by American officials only because it doesn’t accept the American understanding of the war on terror, and because it portrays the Muslim perspective on the burning issues of the day. No doubt these two considerations made the network’s application far more attractive than Fox’s to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. The members of that august body no doubt share the visceral anti-Americanism generally held by the Canadian elite — as well as an anxiousness to accommodate and pacify Canada’s rapidly growing Muslim population.

But the incidents recounted above and others like them suggest that Canada may be getting more than it bargained for. According to a recent report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, “Terrorism of foreign origin continues to be a major concern in regard to the safety of Canadians at home and abroad. … Canada is viewed by some terrorist groups as a place to try to seek refuge, raise funds, procure materials and/or conduct other support activities. ... Virtually all of the most notorious international terrorist organizations are known to maintain a network presence in Canada.” From the looks of its track record, Al-Jazeera will provide these Canadian-based terrorists with a source of news, encouragement, and instruction.

What’s more, it will serve these radical Muslims as a useful recruiting tool. For jihadist recruiters in Canada, Al-Jazeera is likely to be an electronic madrassa beaming, twenty-four hours a day, the teachings and perspective of radical Islam into the living rooms of Canadian Muslims. Nor will this be a problem for Canada alone: what is to prevent those whom Al-Jazeera radicalizes and recruits for the global jihad from slipping across the border into the Great Satan?

Whenever that happens, and whatever they succeed in doing here, you can be sure that it will be carried — and celebrated — on Al-Jazeera.

A welcome announcement from Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun. From AP:

QUANTICO, Va. - Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, the Marine who disappeared under mysterious circumstances while on duty in Iraq, insisted on Monday that he was captured by enemy forces and that he is still a loyal Marine.

"I did not desert my post," he told reporters outside Quantico Marine Corps Base. "I was captured and held against my will by anti-coalition forces for 19 days. This was a very difficult and challenging time for me."

He did not answer any questions during his brief appearance. He was joined by his brother, who arrived from Utah.

"I would like to tell all the Marines as well as all those others serving in Iraq to keep their heads up and spirits high. Once a Marine, always a Marine, Semper Fi," Hassoun said, invoking the Marine Corps motto, Latin for "always faithful."

I hope he will eventually explain why his family thought it necessary to explain to the Muslim world that he joined the Marines out of necessity — strongly suggesting that he did not hold to Marine principles and was not motivated by a sense of patriotic duty.

Funny thing: I never thought of oil refineries as a popular tourist destination. I wonder if this is the same guy who was taking pictures of a Texas chemical site last winter.

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Law enforcement officials said on Monday they are looking for a man seen taking pictures of two refineries in Texas City, Texas.

Texas City, located on the Texas Gulf coast about 30 miles south of Houston, has three refineries including the largest U.S. plant operated by BP Plc., which is the third-largest U.S. refinery, processing 470,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

The man, described as white with dark hair, was seen taking pictures outside the refineries, all located on the same highway, at about 5 p.m. CDT on Saturday, said Bruce Clawson, emergency management and homeland security director for Texas City.

While it is not illegal to take pictures of a refinery from a highway or street, officials would like to talk to the man to find out his reason for taking the photographs.

"This is based on the idea that al Qaeda does its homework," Clawson said. "That's not to say we don't have enough home-grown idiots already who might want to do something."

For an interesting precedent, see here. (And a book review here.) From Nettavisen, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

Central members of Kristiansand Progress party claims Hitler’s «Mein Kampf» and the Koran are one of the same, and they want Islam banned in Norway.

According to the Norwegian paper Dagbladet, central figures in Kristiansand Progress party (Frp) wants to ban Islam in Norway.

«We are not the only ones demanding this ban,» said Halvor Hulaas, chairperson in Krstiansand Frp to the paper. «This is an opinion that is well established in Scandinavian countries. We are now importing people with a religion that is practiced in the same way it was practiced when it was established in year 600. The freedom we have in Norway may be taken away from us if we do not start to have some demands to these immigrants.»

Karina Udnæs, deputy leader of the Progress party’s city council group in Kristiansand is pushing it even further.

«It is about high time Norway and Europe make the ideology Islam and the practice of this, illegal and punishable in the same way as Nazism,» Udnæs said. «The prophet Muhammad urged them to kill everyone infidel.»

Kill or subjugate, of course.

Another sermon full of peace, tolerance, and sanity from the PA. (Yes, that was a sarcastic sentence.) This is noteworthy for its reassertion of the radical Muslim insistence that rule must be according to the Sharia, as well as for its naked hostility and preposterous fantasizing regarding Jews and Americans. From IMRA:

Gaza Palestine Satellite Channel in Arabic, official television station of the Palestinian Authority, carries on 16 July 2004 at 0958 GMT a live sermon from Shaykh Zayid Al Nuhayyan mosque in Gaza....

Shaykh Ibrahim Mudayris delivers the sermon, which he devotes to the theme of trust....

The imam also says that fulfillment of trust goes with governing in accordance with the shari'ah. He cites the Koranic verse that says: "And, when you govern among people you must do so fairly." He then says: "Trust was lost when we the rulers stopped ruling as revealed by God. There are more than 60 Muslim states. How many of them rule as revealed by God? If the rulers had lost this trust, where is the trust of the ulema?'

The imam says: "Jews rejoiced the death of the religious scholar Shaykh Abd-al-Aziz Bin-Baz, may his soul rest in peace. They rejoiced his death, believing that the field is now open before them. Here they are trying to spread chaos in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Indeed, Jews are responsible for that. Jews and Americans are behind all this chaos in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, because it is the country of the prophet, may the peace and blessings of God be upon
him, and also because they want to avenge for their ancestors, who were expelled and killed."

What's that? Jews and Americans want to avenge their ancestors, who were expelled and killed? It is refreshing that Sheikh Ibrahim Mudayris acknowledges, and assumes that his hearers will take for granted, that Jews and Christians were indeed expelled from the Arabian Peninsula and killed by Muslims. But the idea that any American actually knows that, or cares to avenge it, is, well, just as farfetched as everything the Sheikh says.

The imam concludes with a general prayer to God for success in the fulfillment of the trust. He prays: "O God, preserve our country and all Muslim countries from every evil. O God, preserve the country of the two holy mosques and the country of the night journey by the prophet, may the peace and blessings of God be upon him. O God preserve holy Al-Azhar from the filth of the Crusaders and Jews."

A fresh attack in the Indonesian jihad. From the BBC, with thanks to Nicolei:

A priest has been killed and four others wounded during an attack inside a Christian church in Indonesia.

Police said gunmen entered the Effata church in Palu, in Central Sulawesi province, on Sunday evening.

The female priest, 29-year old Reverend Susianti Tinulele, died at the scene after preaching a sermon. One of the wounded is in a critical condition.

At least 1,000 people have been killed in Muslim-Christian unrest in the province over the past five years.

The shooting happened near the town of Poso, which has seen some of the worst religious violence in recent years.

That "Muslim-Christian unrest" is, of course, provoked by jihad ideology. The conflict didn't begin because Christians were attacking Muslims.

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

July 19, 2004 -- WASHINGTON — American officials believe that millions of dollars Saddam Hussein skimmed from the scandal-plagued U.N. oil-for-food program are now being used to help fund the bloody rebel campaign against U.S. forces and the new Iraqi government, The Post has learned.

U.S. intelligence officials and congressional investigators said last night that the "oil-for-insurgency link" has been recently unearthed in the numerous probes now under way into the giant U.N. humanitarian program, in which Saddam is believed to have pocketed $10.1 billion through oil smuggling and kickbacks from suppliers....

U.S. intelligence officials believe a portion of the funds in these hidden accounts — possibly millions— is now being used to fund the Ba'athist guerrillas responsible for much of the postwar violence against coalition troops, sources said.

"We are still in the early stages of investigating this. But from what we know so far, it's the same financial system, and we believe there is now some connection between what was left over from the illegal profiteering under the oil-for-food program and the funding of insurgency," said a U.S. official familiar with the recent intelligence information.

U.S. officials revealed earlier this month that a network of Saddam's cousins led by Fatiq Suleiman al-Majid, a former henchman in Saddam's murderous Special Security Organization, is involved in funding and arming the militants.

Investigators found a money trail connected to Saddam's clansmen that flowed through banks in Syria. Some of these same banks, congressional investigators said, also handled the kickback depos- its during the oil-for-food program.

Why is the State Department whitwashing jihad terror attacks against Israel? From Daniel Pipes in FrontPage:

Patterns of Global Terrorism, an annual report compiled by the Department of State, provides the authoritative U.S. government survey of the scourge of terrorism. Unfortunately, as I documented in an article about the 2001 edition (“State's Terror Untruths”), it is "a highly politicized document, reflecting the Washington debate and diplomatic imperatives, but this year it has veered into unreliability and even falsehood. It's a dangerous document likely to harm the war on terrorism."

He goes on to list 22 murders of Israelis that didn't make the report:

Jan 2, 2003 - The charred body of Massoud Makhluf Alon, 72, from Menahemiya in the Lower Galilee, was found in the northern Jordan Valley in his burned out car. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Brigades claimed responsibility for the murder.

Jan 12, 2003 - Eli Biton, 48, of Moshav Gadish was killed and four people wounded when terrorists infiltrated the community and opened fire. Two terrorists were killed by Israeli forces. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

Mar 19, 2003 - Zion Boshirian, 51, of Mevo Dotan was shot and killed while driving in his car between Mevo Dotan and Shaked in northern Samaria. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

May 4, 2003 - The body of Tali Weinberg, 26, of Beit Aryeh, was discovered in a garage in Rosh Ha'ayin with numerous stab wounds. The suspect, Weinberg's boyfriend, arrested on June 11, a 21-year-old Arab resident of Kafr Qasem, is believed to have carried out the murder as part of a "loyalty test" administered by Palestinian terrorist organizations.

May 5, 2003 - Gideon Lichterman, 27, of Ahiya, was killed and two other passengers, his six-year-old daughter Moriah and a reserve soldier, were seriously wounded when terrorists fired shots at their vehicle near Shvut Rachel, in Samaria. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

May 11, 2003 - Zion David, 53, of Givat Ze’ev near Jerusalem, was shot in the head and killed by Palestinian terrorists in a roadside ambush half a kilometer from Ofra, north of Jerusalem. Both Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack.

May 17, 2003 - Gadi Levy and his wife Dina, aged 31 and 37, of Kiryat Arba were killed by a suicide bomber in Hebron. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

May 19, 2003 - Kiryl Shremko, 22, of Afula; Hassan Ismail Tawatha, 41, of Jisr a-Zarqa; and Avi Zerihan, 36, of Beit Shean were killed and about 70 people were wounded in a suicide bombing at the entrance to the Amakim Mall in Afula. The Islamic Jihad and the Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades both claimed responsibility for the attack.

June 5, 2003 - The bodies of David Shambik, 26, and Moran Menachem, 17, both of Jerusalem, were found near Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital in Jerusalem, brutally beaten and stabbed to death. Believed to be terror victims.

June 12, 2003 - Avner Maimon, 51, of Netanya, was found shot to death in his car near Yabed in northern Samaria. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

June 17, 2003 - Noam Leibowitz, 7, of Yemin Orde was killed and three members of her family wounded in a shooting attack near the Kibbutz Eyal junction on the Trans-Israel Highway. The terrorist fired from the outskirts of the West Bank city of Kalkilya. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command claimed responsibility for the attack.

June 19, 2003 - Avner Mordechai, 58, of Moshav Sde Trumot, was killed when a suicide bomber blew up in his grocery on Sde Trumot, south of Beit Shean. The suicide bomber was killed. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

June 26, 2003 - Amos (Amit) Mantin, 31, of Hadera, a Bezeq employee, was killed in a shooting attack in the Israeli Arab town of Baka al-Garbiyeh. The shots were fired by a Palestinian teenager, who was apprehended by police. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

July 7, 2003 - Mazal Afari, 65, of Moshav Kfar Yavetz was killed in her home on Monday evening and three of her grandchildren lightly wounded in a terrorist suicide bombing. The remains of the bomber were also found in the wreckage of the house. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

July 15, 2003 - Amir Simhon, 24, of Bat Yam was killed when a Palestinian armed with a long-bladed knife stabbed passersby on Tel Aviv’s beachfront promenade, after a security guard prevented him from entering the Tarabin cafe and was wounded. The terrorist, who was shot and apprehended, is a member of the Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which claimed responsibility for the attack.

Aug 10, 2003 - Haviv Dadon, 16, of Shlomi, was struck in the chest and killed by shrapnel from an anti-aircraft shell fired by Hizbullah terrorists in Lebanon. Four others were wounded.

Aug 12, 2003 - Yehezkel (Hezi) Yekutieli, 43, of Rosh Ha’ayin, was killed by a teenaged Palestinian suicide bomber who detonated himself at the local supermarket.

Aug 29, 2003 - Shalom Har-Melekh, 25, of Homesh was killed in a shooting attack while driving northeast of Ramallah. His wife, Limor, who was seven months pregnant, sustained moderate injuries, and gave birth to a baby girl by Caesarean section. The Fatah al-Aqsa Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

Sept 9, 2003 - Nine IDF soldiers were killed and 30 people were wounded in a suicide bombing at a hitchhiking post for soldiers outside a main entrance to the Tzrifin army base and Assaf Harofeh Hospital. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. The victims: Senior Warrant Officer Haim Alfasi, 39, of Haifa; Chief Warrant Officer Yaakov Ben-Shabbat, 39, of Pardes Hanna; Cpl. Mazi Grego, 19, of Holon; Capt. Yael Kfir, 21, of Ashkelon; Cpl. Felix Nikolaichuk, 20, of Bat Yam; Sgt. Yonatan Peleg, 19, of Moshav Yanuv; Sgt. Efrat Schwartzman, 19, of Moshav Ganei Yehuda; and Cpl. Prosper Twito, 20, of Upper Nazareth. Sgt. Liron Siboni, 19, of Ramat Gan died of her wounds on November 19.

Sept 26, 2003 - Eyal Yeberbaum, 27, and seven-month-old Shaked Avraham, both of Negohot, south of Hebron, were killed during the holiday meal on the eve of Rosh Hashana in the Yeberbaum home when a Palestinian terrorist who infiltrated the settlement opened fire with an M-16 assault rifle. The terrorist was killed by IDF forces. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

Nov 22, 2003 - Two Israeli security guards, Ilya Reiger, 58, of Jerusalem, and Samer Fathi Afan, 25, of the Bedouin village Uzeir near Nazareth, were shot dead at a construction site along the route of the security fence near Abu Dis in East Jerusalem. The Jenin Martyrs’ Brigades, affiliated with Fatah, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Dec 25, 2003 - Adva Fisher, 20, of Kfar Sava; St.-Sgt. Noam Leibowitz, 22, of Elkana; Cpl. Angelina Shcherov, 19, of Kfar Sava; and Cpl. Rotem Weinberger, 19, of Kfar Sava were killed and over 20 people were wounded in a suicide bombing at a bus stop at the Geha Junction, east of Tel Aviv, near Petah Tikva. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack.

That the Department of State, even in revising its basic research document on terrorism, does such a shoddy job points to its inability to carry out this task which needs to be handled by some other department or agency, one that can do properly objective work.

Hear, hear.

More like Presbyterian dhimmitude. More on the Presbyterian church's anti-Israel resolutions, from Richard Baehr in FrontPage. The Presbyterian church, like so many others, has no idea that Israel faces the same jihad that non-Muslims are facing in Indonesia, Philippines, Kashmir, Chechnya, Nigeria, etc. The alternative to Israel is a maximalist, totalitarian Sharia state that will be just as bad for Presbyterians in the area as it will be for Jews.

Jewish liberals received a shock last week. The liberal Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) declared war on Israel at is annual General Assembly meeting, approving a divestment campaign from Israel with 87 percent of the vote, casting the Holy Land as the new South Africa. The shock was doubly painful since liberal Jews believe that liberal churches are supposed to be their allies in all kinds of common fights....

The leftist Presbyterians apparently thinks that now is the time to pile on Israel and force it to “behave better” with the Palestinians. The Church strangely did not pass any resolutions at their General Assembly this year about the slaughter of black Muslims in the Sudan by Arabs, and they never passed any resolutions in prior years, when the Sudanese Arabs chose to slaughter black Christians. They were silent when the Rwanda genocide occurred, as well. But hey, what're a few million black African lives when Muslim olive trees are being cut down near the “green line”?

Needless to say, the Presbyterians’ resolution against Israel is entirely silent on the subject of Palestinian terrorism or suicide bombing, or the incitement to martyrdom and Jew-killing in the Palestinian media, mosques, summer camps and official government statements.

Like other liberal Christian churches (the Lutherans, the Episcopalians, the Unitarians, the United Church of Christ, the Quakers) the hatred and condemnation of Israel has grown so strong that advocates for Israel are not permitted to make presentations to these congregations anymore. If Jews want to speak abut Israel, they have to be from the far-Left, and they must come to trash Israel (and help bury it). On the other hand, any representative of the International Solidarity Movement is sure to draw a full house and be warmly welcomed....

For years, the Israel-haters have tried to link Israel to South Africa, and even more outrageously, to the Nazis. The Presbyterian Church (USA) has now legitimized this slander. For this, they should be ashamed -- or simply shamed.

More on the deleterious influence of Grover Norquist on anti-terror policy. From Frank Gaffney in FrontPage mag: "Why is an associate of groups sympathetic to radical Islamists a policy director at the Department for Homeland Security?"

It now appears that Mr. Norquist’s help has extended beyond facilitating high-level access and influence for various Muslim-American and Arab-American entities with troubling ties to, or at least sympathy for, radical Islamofascists – and even terrorists. Reportedly, his association also helped someone affiliated with such a group to gain a political appointment to an exceedingly sensitive post: “policy director” of the Department of Homeland Security’s Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection division.

As the title of this position suggests, its occupant would have access to highly sensitive information about the vulnerability of, among other things, U.S. ports, transportation infrastructure, chemical plants, oil refineries and nuclear power plants to terrorist attack. The incumbent is a 32-year-old lawyer named Faisal Gill.

It is unclear what qualified Mr. Gill for such a post. In response to press inquiries, a DHS spokeswoman declined to describe his qualifications or background so it is not known whether he has any prior experience with intelligence or, for that matter, with security policy.

What is known is that Gill’s political patrons include Grover Norquist, who was listed by Gill as a reference on employment documents. After all, Gill had been a spokesman for the Taxpayers Alliance of Prince William County, Virginia, which is affiliated with Norquist’s group, Americans for Tax Reform. Gill had also worked in 2001 as director of government affairs for the Islamic Free Market Institute (also known as the Islamic Institute), whose founding president was Grover Norquist.

Interestingly, news articles published after September 11 described Gill in another capacity – as a spokesman for the controversial American Muslim Council (AMC). The AMC was founded and controlled by a prominent Islamist activist, Abdurahman Alamoudi. Alamoudi was indicted last October on terrorism-related money laundering charges. While in jail awaiting trial, he has reportedly engaged in plea-bargaining by confessing to participating in a Libyan plot to murder the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.

For some reason, Gill is reported to have failed to list his work with the AMC on his “Standard Form 86” national security questionnaire. This is a potential felony violation of the full and truthful disclosure required by law of all applying for clearances.

According to two recently published articles in Salon.com, the FBI raised concerns last March about Gill’s non-disclosure of his ties to Alamoudi’s AMC. At the time, he was reportedly briefly removed from his position at DHS.

Curiously, however, Gill is said to have been reinstated within days. According to a DHS spokesman, the Department had conducted a "thorough investigation" that found Gill "exceeded all requirements" for his job.

Fortunately, on 23 June, after news reports revealed Gill’s omission, attendant suspension and subsequent reinstatement, the Homeland Security’s Inspector General, Clark Kent Ervin, announced that he would be launching an inquiry into how Gill received a security clearance, despite the omission. For some reason, though, the IG’s report is said to require as much as six-months to complete.

This is an intriguing site. (Thanks to Jonathan for the link.) Their statement that "Political Islam is a movement that arose in the 1940s as a reaction to foreign domination and political corruption" is demonstrably false; political Islam is as old as the Prophet Muhammad, and I provide an abundance of proof of this in Onward Muslim Soldiers.

Nevertheless, there is no quarrel with this:

We, the undersigned, oppose Political Islam, its agenda of hatred and oppression, and its imposition of the most barbaric interpretation of Sharia law. We seek a future in which all people, men and women, Muslims and non-Muslims, enjoy the benefits of equality, justice, democracy and human rights, and freedom of inquiry, freedom of thought, and freedom of expression.

Check it out.

But of course, it has nothing to do with terrorism. The man just loves to fly. From AP, with thanks to EPG:

Sami Abuhamatto, 24, was arrested Friday and was being held pending a hearing on Monday.

There are no allegations that the case is terrorism-related....

Abuhamatto's six-month visitors visa expired in 1996, according to court documents. He applied for the pilot's license in May 2002, claiming he was a U.S. citizen born in Brookfield, the Chicago suburb where he lives, the documents show.

The Federal Aviation Administration approved the application less than a week later.

Authorities said they learned of the incident after Abuhamatto arranged a bogus marriage late last year in an effort to gain resident alien status.

More on the fence in Israel from Jeremy Rabkin in Opinion Journal. (Thanks to EPG).

Maj. Michael Newton, a military lawyer who teaches at West Point, coined a new term earlier this year: "lawfare." It is the pursuit of strategic aims, the traditional domain of warfare, through aggressive legal maneuvers. Last Friday's decision by the International Court of Justice holding Israel's security fence in violation of international law is another milestone in the onward march of lawfare. The ICJ has now confirmed that lawfare and warfare can be pursued simultaneously.

The terror war against Israel, launched in the summer of 2000, has by now resulted in the deaths of nearly a thousand Israeli civilians. The security fence, by greatly impeding the movement of would-be terrorists into Israel, has helped to achieve a sharp decline in terror attacks over the past year. Nonetheless, the ICJ admonished that the nations of the world are obligated not to pressure Palestinians to abandon terrorism, but to pressure Israel to dismantle its security fence.

Most of the court's reasoning, based on arguments advanced by British barristers, is superficially plausible--so long as one ignores the actual political context of the dispute. Perhaps the Children's Rights Convention or the Fourth Geneva Convention do provide arguments against disrupting the free movement of innocent Palestinians. But the arguments are more plausible if one ignores the terror threat to Israeli lives, as the court essentially does. In concluding that the fence sits on "occupied territory," the court assumes that the armistice lines of 1949 are Israel's final borders, though never accepted as such by Israel's neighbors. In concluding that Israel cannot undertake intrusive measures to prot