September 2004 Archives

Another victory a la Beslan, perhaps. From Reuters, with thanks to Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Insurgents detonated three car bombs near a U.S. military convoy in Baghdad on Thursday, killing 41 people, 34 of them children who were rushing to collect sweets from American troops.

In two other attacks, a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near a U.S. checkpoint outside the capital, killing two policemen and a U.S. soldier, and a car bomb killed four people in the restive northern Iraq town of Tal Afar.

The Baghdad bombs went off as crowds gathered to celebrate the opening of a new sewage plant. It was not clear if the event or the U.S. convoy passing by was the target.

The first explosion was followed by two more that struck those who rushed to help the initial victims, residents said.

Ten U.S. soldiers were wounded in the attack, two of them seriously, the military said. Iraq's Health Ministry confirmed 41 dead and 139 wounded, the vast majority children.

1. Mail is readable. Write to me at director@jihadwatch.org.

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Thanks again to all who have so generously and kindly helped out.

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Berlusconi says he still has his spine. Nonetheless, he still might need to be measured for a zunnar* if he intends to maintain his nation's status as "a country, Italy, loved and esteemed by the Arab world." For that love is always a result of deeds, not just because the Arab world admires the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

From AFP:

ROME (AFP) - Italy insisted it did not pay a million-dollar ransom to win the release of two aid workers, as the country rejoiced in the homecoming of the women who said they were ready to return to Iraq to continue their work there.

Foreign Minister Franco Frattini insisted "absolutely no ransom" had been paid for the release of Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both 29, known affectionately by Italians as "the two Simonas".

A proud Frattini said Italy had simply used its "wide system of contacts" in the Arab world, adding that this "made the kidnappers understand concretely what they were dealing with: a country, Italy, loved and esteemed by the Arab world".

"That was our only ransom," he said in an interview with RAI state radio.

*Zunnar: a wide cloth belt that was often in Islamic countries part of the mandated dress code for dhimmis.

Repulsed? Disgusted? Ashamed? No: flushed with victory. From the Dow Jones Newswires, :

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Al-Qaida is using the recent deadly hostage crisis at a Russian school as a recruiting tool, even though there's no direct evidence linking Osama bin Laden's terror network to the attack carried out by Chechen rebels, NBC News reported Tuesday.

Wouldn't that in itself be compelling evidence? What these media types don't understand is that there is a strong ideological and religious bond between jihadist groups, even if there is no organizational connection. A victory for the Chechen jihadists is a victory for Hamas, and for Jemaah Islamiyah of Indonesia. (However, I am not saying that Al-Qaeda itself was not involved in Beslan.)

Citing a posting on the Internet, NBC News said an al-Qaida statement celebrates the deadly attack in the southern Russian city of Beslan. The posting claims the attack changed the course of the war between Chechen insurgents and Russia and urges Muslims to send money and fighters to Chechnya.

Russian officials have claimed al-Qaida had a direct hand in the school attack, although no direct evidence has surfaced. Chechen warlord Shamil Besayev has claimed direct responsibility for the attacks and militants who seized the school included two Arabs, but he has also sought to downplay connections to al-Qaida....

The report cited fears among intelligence officials that al-Qaida and Chechen rebels may team up to attack targets in Europe, most likely Russian interests.

An astounding story from the New York Post (thanks to Unhinged):

The Justice Department has charged that a veteran New York Times foreign correspondent warned an alleged terror-funding Islamic charity that the FBI was about to raid its office — potentially endangering the lives of federal agents. The stunning accusation was disclosed yesterday in legal papers related to a lawsuit the Times filed in Manhattan federal court.

The suit seeks to block subpoenas from the Justice Department for phone records of two of its Middle Eastern reporters — Philip Shenon and Judith Miller — as part of a probe to track down the leak.

The Times last night flatly denied the allegation.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago charged in court papers that Shenon blew the cover on the Dec. 14, 2001, raid of the Global Relief Foundation — the first charges of their kind under broad new investigatory powers given to the feds under the Patriot Act.

"It has been conclusively established that Global Relief Foundation learned of the search from reporter Philip Shenon of The New York Times," Fitzgerald said in an Aug. 7, 2002, letter to the Times' legal department.

He said he understood journalists' concerns about protecting the identities of their sources, but national security and preventing leaks that thwart probes into "terrorist fund-raising" trump such confidentiality.

"I would posit that the circumstances here — the decision by the reporter to provide a tip to the subject of a terrorist fund-raising inquiry which seriously compromised the integrity of the investigation and potentially endangered the safety of federal law-enforcement personnel — warrant such cooperation in full," Fitzgerald said.

Times lawyer George Freeman told The Post that Fitzgerald "wrongly" suggested that Shenon alerted the Islamic charity to the raid.

"We deny he tipped anyone off," Freeman said.

He added that Global Relief would have anticipated the raid in any case because the feds had already hit the office of another suspected terror-funding Islamic charity, the Holy Land Foundation, and the government had frozen the assets of several other charities.

Norwegian Kafir of LGF sends me some interesting background on the Algerian axeman who attacked the pilots on a Norwegian plane. He writes:

To those of you wondering why the Jihadist could bring an axe inside the plane: All major Norwegian cities, like Oslo, have standard international security equipment and screening. This happened between two minor towns in the far north. All the smaller airports are supposed to have this equipment within the next year or so, but they still don't have it. Norway is a naive little country that isn't used to this kind of stuff. It will be a steep learning curve........

The funny twist to this is: Two passengers on the plane rescued everybody by overpowering the man with the axe, and pulling him out of the cockpit. The injured pilots managed to stop the fall only 100 feet above the ground. It was literally seconds from disaster. The funny part: One of the two persons who beat the Jihadist, Odd Eriksen, is a Socialist politician, who until a couple of years ago served as a Member of Parliament for the Labor party. Who would have thought: A Socialist turns out to be a mean fighting machine!

Euro Socialist politician kicks ass of Jihadist axe-man!

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article880632.ece

"We can be happy that it went as well as it did," Vangen said. The plane went into a spin during the attack and the wounded pilots only regained control over the aircraft 30 meters above the ground.

http://pub.tv2.no/nettavisen/english/article284934.ece

Two of the passengers managed to drag the man out of the cockpit and force him down on the floor.

The media here are careful not to mention the word "terrorism," and claim that the Arab man was "mentally unbalanced." What they are quiet about is the fact that he served as an imam for the local congregation:

http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4321

However, according to this article from Norway's largest newspaper, the man was not yet an imam, but was trying to become one. He is described as a "very religious Muslim" that campaigned to open a mosque in the local municipality.

http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=247553

Let's see. The man wants to go join the perpetrators of the Beslan atrocities. Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane also said that the Danish PM and foreign minister were "legitimate Muslim targets." I'd say it's a good thing that he thinks there is "no room" for him in Denmark. From the Copenhagen Post, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

Former Guantanamo prisoner Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane announced yesterday that he has dropped plans to sue the US government and will quit Denmark for Chechnya to aid Muslim insurgents in the country.

In response, Conservative Party justice spokesman Helge Adam Møller has urged authorities to jail Abderrahmane.

"He's a terrorist," Helge Adam Møller told TV2 news. "He wants to go someplace where he can kill women and children."

Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane told DR News Magazine on Wednesday evening that he had decided against suing the US government for his two-year detainment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Sounds like a good decision, given his other statements.

Although Abderrahmane signed an agreement with the US barring him from engaging in jihad ever again, the Danish-Algerian citizen is prepared to leave Denmark in favour of Chechnya.

An agreement with the US barring him from engaging in jihad! What a great idea! Let's make them all sign such forms. Men who glory in the deaths of little children will certainly honor a signed agreement!

"Lots of Danes are ready to hang me - a million and a half want me jailed for life, and the rest want me deported," said Abderrahmane, who told DR that he was abandoning his lawsuit against the US government because he had no chance of winning.

"Western democracy has no room for people who think differently. There's no room for me here in Denmark, so I'm going to war in Chechnya, where I can support Muslims and be of some use, " said Abderrahmane.

The Security Intelligence Service (PET) is considering further action following Abderrahmane's threat to move to Chechnya.

Thanks again for all your kindness and support. With your help I will be able ultimately to solve these problems, but right now the bugs just keep multiplying:

1. No improvement yet on the problem that makes it difficult to post. If the system tells you to sign in after you have written a comment, copy your message and sign in again. It should work after a few tries. I am sorry for the inconvenience. (Also, please note: this is not a hate site, and was not meant to be. This is a site in defense of universal human rights in the face of the gravest threat those rights face today. If you think all Muslims are evil people, or your idea of a solution to the global jihad is somehow to kill all Muslims, please don't post. Comments are unmoderated and so such posts may slip by me, but they are unwelcome.)

2. I just recently asked people to direct their emails to me to director@jihadwatch.org, but now that address is hanging up messages I send; ten are waiting to go now. I am not giving up on this, as I hope it is a temporary problem. And I seem to be receiving messages with no problem. So if you just want me to see something or have a link, please send it there. But if you are looking for a response from me, for now please write to spencer952@hotmail.com. This is only temporary (I hope).

3. For some reason, Amazon seems to be telling people that I am not accepting donations. In fact, as you may know, just the other day I put out a call for donations. Nor will Amazon allow me to access my account. Emails to them have so far gone unanswered, but I am sure we will work this out. In the meantime, if you would like to donate, please use Pay Pal. And again, many thanks.

A second article today by Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer: a review of David Horowitz's Unholy Alliance at Human Events.

I have long insisted that the problem of radical Islam is not a liberal or conservative issue; it's a human rights issue. The unfortunate fact, however, is that largely it is only conservatives who care about it. In the face of the global jihad, the left is strangely silent: no protest marches, no angry full-page ads in the New York Times. When the Left does notice an adulterous woman being stoned to death under Sharia law, or some other outrage in the Islamic world, it is usually dismissed as an aberration or somehow blamed on their all-purpose bogeyman: the United States government.

Why? Because to the left any conflict in the world must be the result of Western aggression, either historic (the Crusades, colonialism) or current. And as David Horowitz illustrates in harrowing detail in his new book Unholy Alliance, the American left not only shares the radical jihadist view of America as the source of all evil in the world, but is now actively making common cause with America's enemies.

"The demise of the Cold War involving the USA and the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s left military strategists in the West searching for a new enemy"--and they fastened on radical Islam. This was the assessment of Pakistani journalist Abdus Sattar Ghazali. But it isn't original to him. Horowitz shows that it has become a commonplace among Westerners as well. He quotes Columbia professor Eric Foner in the wake of 9/11: "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House."

The left, Horowitz recounts, quickly turned its attention entirely away from the murder and mayhem of 9/11 to half-baked "analyses" of the "real causes" of the atrocities of that day. This search for root causes, he says, "was a code for the utopian agendas of the left. It was a declaration of war against the War on Terror"--a war that is being waged with particular ferocity in the 2004 presidential campaign.

This anti-anti-terrorism is motivated by an anti-Americanism that was born, as Horowitz details, in Communism and the Vietnam-era antiwar movement. Although the revolutionary fact (the Soviet bloc) has been consigned to the dustbin of history, the revolutionary illusion persists, and continues to identify America as the chief obstacle to its utopia. Horowitz quotes another Columbia professor, Nicholas De Genova: "Peace is not patriotic [but] subversive. . . . Peace anticipates a very different world than the one in which we live -- a world where the U.S. would have no place." De Genova, of course, won nationwide notoriety when he declared just before the beginning of the Iraq war: "The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military. . . . I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus."

Horowitz explains that "as long as America continues to maintain the will and ability to protect what radicals regard as the global order of 'social injustice,' all reforms and social advances within the existing structure of American democracy will be illusory." In other words, it won't be enough for the left to elect John Kerry: America itself must be brought down.

What's more, this creates a peculiar harmonic convergence between the left and radical Islam. "The goals of radical jihad," says Horowitz, "are purification and social justice, both of which are to be achieved through the institution of Islamic law in the states conquered by Islamic arms."

Hence we see the phenomenon, which Horowitz traces in detail, of leftists like lawyer Lynne Stewart, who has been indicted for aiding and abetting the terrorist activities of her client, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. Rahman is currently doing time for his role in the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. For this Stewart has been stoutly defended by the ACLU, the American Bar Association, and other stalwarts of the left. "In their defense of America's terrorist enemies," Horowitz notes, "the organizations of the legal left are reminiscent of Communist Party fronts of the Cold War era."

Ghazali was right about one thing: Communism and radical Islam are indeed quite similar in many ways. And as Horowitz outlines in this book, the American Left is once again showing what side it's on.

From SkyNews, with thanks to Dehra Dun:

British hostage Ken Bigley has appeared caged, chained and pleading for his life in new video footage.

In the harrowing recording, shown on the Arab TV channel al Jazeera, Mr Bigley renews his appeal for Tony Blair to meet the kidnappers' demands and save his life.

He then breaks down in tears as he accuses Mr Blair of ignoring his plight.

"He doesn't care about me. I'm just one..." he says before holding his head in his hands and sobbing.

He said his captors did not want to kill him.

I hope Blair doesn't give in to their demands -- not because I don't care about Mr. Bigley, but because if he does, many more will be killed by the emboldened jihadists.

Did Silvio Berlusconi morph into Aethelred the Unready? From AP:

ROME (AP) - One of the two freed Italian aid workers said Wednesday that their abductors in Iraq taught them about Islam and reassured them they wouldn't die. While the women rested with their families after a joyous reunion, questions were raised whether a $1 million ransom had been paid to secure their freedom.

Simona Torretta spoke briefly to a mob of reporters outside the front door of the apartment building where her family lives on the outskirts of Rome before dawn, a few hours after being questioned by Italian investigators.

Torretta and Simona Pari, who was also freed in Baghdad on Tuesday after three weeks in captivity, had flown to Rome late Tuesday night. Two Iraqis abducted with them on Sept. 7 were also freed on Tuesday.

Asked if she feared she would die during her captivity, Torretta first said "Yes." Then she added that their abductors "reassured us. They understood the work we did" for a volunteer group in Iraq.

Selva is a member of National Alliance, a partner in Premier Silvio Berlusconi's conservative government. La Stampa, a moderate Turin daily, quoted Berlusconi as brushing off the questions over ransom, saying "About this business, we won't say anything. Even more, we won't talk about it any more."

Officials of Kuwaiti newspaper Al-rai al-Aam, which in recent days had said the women's release was imminent, told Italian state radio Wednesday that the ransom had been paid and that the negotiations were conducted in Baghdad.

This is the mosque I warned you about months ago. From the Boston Herald, with thanks to Twostellas:

Roxbury resident filed suit yesterday against the city of Boston and a controversial new $22 million Islamic center in his neighborhood, arguing that Boston violated the separation of church and state when it cut a complex land deal with the center's developers.

In a suit filed in Suffolk Superior Court, plaintiff James C. Policastro alleges two violations each of the state and federal constitutions:

He claims the Boston Redevelopment Authority accepted less than fair market value for the parcel of city land where the towering new mosque and community center are being built. The project is expected to yield the biggest Islamic institution in the Northeast.

The BRA valued the parcel at $401,187.50. According to the suit, it took a cash payment of $175,000 from the center's developers, then made up the rest of the price tag by valuing at $272,663 a series of benefits the developers are granting Roxbury Community College.

For example, the BRA assessed the value of a lecture series the Islamic Society of Boston plans to conduct at the college at $115,598. It assessed the value of an Islamic library of 5,000 volumes slated for the community college at $80,000.

Policastro claims the valuations are ``substantially inflated,'' and as a result the city is unconstitutionally subsidizing a religion - Islam.

George Carey has now rejoined the dhimmi ranks, and is displaying all the fervor of a new convert. I wonder why: is he running for office? From the BBC, with thanks to Twostellas:

The term Islamic should be dropped when referring to terrorists in a bid to foster better relations between the West and Islam, Lord Carey says....

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has warned that linking international terrorism and Islam was damaging.

"There is an urgent need to stop tarnishing the Muslim world by unfair stereotypes," he told the United Nations this week.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has also said there is an "iron curtain" falling between the Islamic world and the West.

However, Lord Carey said that while there was a divide, he wanted to resist using such a serious phrase as "iron curtain"....

He had begun a personal campaign "to challenge anyone who talks about Islamic terrorists", Lord Carey added.

Well, George, I hope you see this, because I would love for you to challenge me on this point. I'll explain below.

"I think we have to drop the word Islamic because in so doing we deprive the terrorist of his religious legitimacy.

"He wants religious justification for his evil deeds, and we shouldn't give it to him," Lord Carey said.

"And second, by dropping Islamic before terrorist we are taking a lot of pressure off the average Muslim who simply doesn't want to be portrayed as a fellow murderer."

'Tiny minority'

He said he accepted that the problems in the Middle East and Iraq had to be addressed, "but it would help the building of bridges if we helped the average Muslim to understand that we are not blaming Islam for this".

"We're blaming that tiny, tiny minority of people who are using Islam as a weapon to get their own back against the West and to undermine all we're trying to do."

Lord Carey reiterated his call for Muslims to denounce terrorism more often.

"Terrorists are very evil people and I want to hear Muslims say that more and more," he said.

So do I, George, so do I. But it is myopic and naive to think that if we — non-Muslims — stop calling terror "Islamic," we will thereby "deprive the terrorist of his religious legitimacy." How can we take away what we did not give? George, I didn't invent the idea of Islamic terrorism, and neither did you. Jerry Falwell didn't either. The idea of Islamic terrorism comes from people like Shamil Basayev, who use carefully constructed Islamic arguments to justify the murder of children. No is Basayev alone. I can refer you also to the writings of Osama bin Laden, which are full of Qur'an and Hadith references, or to those of other Islamic radicals around the world. You can read many of them, George, in my book Onward Muslim Soldiers.

These are the people who are responsible for the term "Islamic terrorism," George, and it is only they who can make the term disappear by stopping doing violence in the name of Islam. But until they do, I myself am going to talk about "Islamic terrorism" all the more: as long as no one wants to admit what the problem really is, it can't possibly be fixed. As long as you and your ilk, George, want to ignore and even cover up the Islamic roots of modern terrorism, that terrorism will continue to flourish. I, on the other hand, am going to keep shining light on it, in hopes that one day it may be eradicated. There is no other way that the necessary reforms of Islam can even be contemplated.

So call me, George. I accept your challenge regarding the term "Islamic terrorism," and I look forward to our debate.

Vile hatred unmasked in MEMRI, man-on-the-street interviews in Saudi Arabia, asking about attitudes toward the Jews:

"Allah's wrath is upon them, as the Koran says. Allah's wrath is upon them and they all stray from the path of righteousness. They are the filthiest people on the face of this earth because they care only about themselves - not the Christians, not the Muslims, nor any other religion.

"The solution is clear, not only to me but to everyone. If only [the Muslims] declared Jihad, we would see who stays home. We have a few countries… There is one country with a population of over 60-70 million people. If we let them only march, with no weapons even, they would completely trample the Jews, they would turn them into rotten carcasses under their feet. There is another country that donated money, saying, 'I am behind you, I'll support you with weapons, just wage [ Jihad ].'

"But the cowardice inside us, deep within our hearts, was instilled by the Arab leaders, may Allah forgive them. They breast-fed us with it from the day we were born to this very day it has grown with us."

Why the mullahs have their fingers crossed, hoping to be able to keep a lid on all this for another six weeks. From the SMCCDI, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

Deadly clashes rocked, today, Iran's main southern port of Bandar-Abbas located by the Hormoz Strait on the Persian Gulf.

Elite commandos of the Pasdaran Corp. entered in action in order to smash a popular protest initiated following the news of murders of three local fishermen by members of the regime's security forces. Rumors had stated that the fishermen were killed as they had refused to bribe the regime's agents.

Angry residents attacked several public buildings and the regime forces vehicles with pieces of stones and incendiary devices after that the militiamen started to shoot on the crowd. Several deaths and injured have been reported.

The situation is very tense and the accesses to the city-port and the port's facilities are under heavy military watch.

Bandar Abbas is the main commercial entry to Iran and its paralysis will plunge the country in an unprecedented chaos from which the Islamic regime won't survive.

Why six weeks? Consider this detail from Andrew2's report from Munich:

The Democratic representative, John McQueen, took the podium with the trademark shout-out from the movie Good morning Vietnam--“Good morning Munich!” He immediately went to work highlighting the Democratic view of the current administration. “The preservation of civil rights, dialogue with North Korea and Iran, and health care are all important to John Kerry”.

It's amazing how in the US all this is against Islam, but so many Muslim leaders elsewhere don't seem to have gotten the message. From Aftenposten, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

The director of The Islamic Association in Norway has defended suicide bombing under certain circumstances in a question and answer page at the web site islam.no. Progress Party leader Carl I. Hagen said in a press release that the comment did not surprise him, and renewed his offensive against sectors of the Muslim community. "If the war is legal, seen from an Islamic viewpoint, and if one has does not have the possibility to harm the enemy with other means than offering one's own life, then this is legal," said Basim Ghozlan in reply to a young boy's question about suicide bombing, radio station Kanal 24 reports.

Ghozlan also emphasized that such actions could not harm the innocent.

"The necessity of not harming innocents must not be forgotten. Unfortunately we see many places where suicide bombers hurt far more innocents than those they wish to harm. In Iraq innocent people are killed nearly every day by such blind bombs. This is not jihad. The prophet would never encourage such a thing," Ghozlan wrote.

The problem with this caveat, of course, is that Muslim leaders have shown again and again how elastic their idea of "innocent" is. Osama would not have brought down the Towers if he had thought the people in them were "innocent."

At a Qur'an recital class, they made bombs to kill the "enemies of Islam." From AFP, with thanks to Nicolei:

JAKARTA - Nine hardline Indonesian Muslims who attended a bomb-making class that went awry have gone on trial here and could face death if convicted under an anti-terror law, court officials said yesterday.

The nine were accused of involvement in a bomb-making workshop held under the guise of a Quranic recital at a house in Cimanggis on the central island of Java in March, which ended when one of the assembled devices exploded.

Four of the group went on trial yesterday charged separately with 'taking part in a sinister conspiracy' to carry out an act of terrorism, said Mr Juniati, a clerk at the Cibinong district court, south of Jakarta....

The alleged leader of the group, 32-year-old Oman Rahman, has been charged with planning or motivating others to take part in terrorism and ordering others to illegally engage in efforts to produce explosives, Mr Agung said.

The bomb-making ingredients that the group was using were similar to those used in the Bali nightclub attacks of October 2002 in which 202 people were killed.

Police have said the group intended to use the bombs to battle 'enemies of Islam', but it was not clear if they were connected to the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah (JI), which has carried out a spate of attacks in recent years.

The Thai government is planning to run Islamic schools in the country's southern regions, in order to try to stamp out the radicalism and terrorism that is coming from existing Islamic schools there.

But will Muslims accept these state-run schools? Who will determine their curricula? What will they teach about the Qur'an? Somehow I suspect this enterprise is doomed to fail.

From AFP, with thanks to Nicolei:

BANGKOK - The Thai government announced yesterday that it planned to set up state-run Islamic schools to try to stem separatist violence that has left more than 310 people dead this year.

The government has accused a small group of Islamic teachers at privately run traditional schools in the Muslim-majority south of stoking violence.

'Teachers brainwash hardliners to keep up the violence in the south,' said government spokesman Jakrapob Penkair.

He said the government would consult religious leaders in the south about the idea of setting up government-run religious schools, adding that the schools would be of a 'high standard and closely supervised by the Education Ministry'.

An "asylum seeker from Algeria." Perhaps also a jihad seeker. From Aftenposten, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

Two pilots were injured when a passenger went amok with an axe on a flight from Narvik to Bodø in the north of Norway. A passenger was also injured in the attack. The assailant, an asylum seeker from Algeria, was arrested at Bodø airport around 11 a.m. on Wednesday.

"Two pilots and a passenger are injured. They were injured with an axe," Margrete Torseter, duty lawyer at Salten police district, told Aftenposten's Internet edition. "There is nothing to indicate that the alleged perpetrator used an axe that he had taken on board," Torseter said.

Flight leader Leif Sandham at Kato Air said that a crisis team was being assembled to take care of passengers and employees.

Police operation leader Arve Westgaard said that the axe used was taken from an overhead rack, and is carried on board to smash windows in an emergency situation.

"The man has been living in recent weeks at an asylum center in northern Norway," Westgaard said, and added that terrorism was not an aspect of the attack.

Oh, good. I feel so much better now.

Jihad Watch reader Andrew2 attended a political debate in Munich yesterday and sent in this report:

Over a hundred and fifty people filled the auditorium of the Amerika Haus in Munich tonight to hear representatives of the Democratic and Republican parties abroad debate the issues. John McQueen of Democrats Abroad and Henry Nickel of the Republicans abroad were moderated by Patricia Guys, who read questions submitted by the audience.

The US Consul to Bavaria, General Matthew Rooney, opened the debate with a short speech. He said that the US was an ally who helped Germany become an independent player on the world stage. He mentioned terrorism and said “Islamism or Jihadism as terrorism should be analyzed and defined”.

General Rooney, you're right. "Islamism" and "jihadism" should be defined. Pull up a chair and read awhile at Jihad Watch, and you may get a clearer idea of what they are.

Among the hostages freed yesterday were three Egyptians who recounted how they reassured their captors about their employer. From AP, with thanks to Romy:

Three Egyptian telecommunications workers abducted last week were also among those freed Tuesday, their parent company, Orascom, announced in Cairo. A fourth Egyptian in the group was freed Monday and two others remain hostage.

The freed Egyptians said their captors treated them well.

"They didn't torture us. We slept well, they offered us clean food," Alaa Makar told Iraqi TV. "They wanted to know whether this organization belongs to Jews and we explained ... it is purely Egyptian."

If they had answered, "Why, yes it does!" would they still be in captivity?

More details of the meeting I mention in my own piece below. From the National Post, with thanks to the many who sent this to me:

TORONTO - Yusuf Islam, the British singer formerly known as Cat Stevens, was the guest of honour at a Toronto fundraising dinner hosted by an organization that has since been identified by the Canadian government as a "front" for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

In a videotape of the 1998 event obtained by the National Post, Mr. Islam describes Israel as a "so-called new society" created by a "so-called religion" and urges the audience to donate to the Jerusalem Fund for Human Services to "lessen the suffering of our brothers and sisters in Palestine and the Holy Land."

The Jerusalem Fund is one of four "fronts" named in a secret Privy Council Office memo that was sent to Jean Chretien, then prime minister, on May 23, 2000, discussing what it called groups that "have unsavoury links with terrorism.

"In a limited number of cases, fundraising in support of violent foreign struggles takes place in Canada through the cover of ethnic, religious or community-based associations and groups, lobbying and even criminal activity," the report says.

"Front groups operating in Canada include the Jerusalem Fund for Human Services (Hamas Front), the World Tamil Movement (Tamil Tigers Front), the Canadian Kurdish Information Network (Kurdistan Workers Party Front) and the Babbar Khalsa (a Sikh extremist front)."

Hamas, also known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, is responsible for most of the suicide bombings against Israelis. Canada has outlawed Hamas under federal anti-terrorism legislation, making it illegal to support the group....

But on June 20, 1998, Mr. Islam gave the keynote address at a Jerusalem Fund fundraising dinner held in Toronto. The event was videotaped, and a copy was obtained by the SITE Institute, a U.S. terrorism research organization.

The video opens with a scene of Niagara Falls, overlayed with the Jerusalem Fund logo, which features the al-Aqsa Mosque and the maple leaf. It begins with an unidentified man explaining the activities of the Jerusalem Fund, which he describes as "helping the Muslims in Palestine" by financing hospitals, health clinics, families in need and orphans.

"Palestine is close to the heart of each and every Muslim. What the Muslims of Palestine have been doing for many years now has been that bright light shining, that hope ... that they are still believers that can raise the banner of jihad in the most difficult of circumstances."

Mr. Islam then begins a 45-minute speech in English in which he says it is "intolerable" for Muslims to "stand and watch" the situation in the Middle East. He describes Jerusalem as the centre of a land that is holy because of its connection to Allah.

"So this city which is blessed because of its religious nature. Therefore, what we see today is the result of the departure of religion from this area, of the uprooting of religion. So many of the people of the faith have been exiled from this region, moved on, to make way for what? Strangely and ironically, they moved on in the name of so-called religion, on behalf of ... the Jews.

"Of course, that would explain what is happening. Because the moment that religion and religious virtues disappear, there for sure follows trouble, tyranny, oppression," he says. "So what do we see then today? The concoction of a so-called new society based on an old society."

He says there could be "no redeemer except Allah. No political concept or construct or treaty or agent except the laws of Allah, which he instructed for this world. Jerusalem is that, the symbol of that. Out of the hands of the righteous then it falls into disrepute and blood.

"Jerusalem, al-Quds, it is a mirror reflecting the reality ... If it is dark, if it is bloody, then so too is the world. Today it reflects injustice of the secular man over the religious man. And how can the secular man be given the control and the sanctuary of the divine place of worship when he doesn't even respect what is holy? How? And how can those of faith allow that to happen? Therefore, peace will not return until we return to the Holy Land."

In case anyone is still skeptical. From the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to LGF:

Further evidence emerged Monday of the direct link between the armed wing of Fatah, Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and the Palestinian Authority.

Obituary notices distributed in the West Bank town of Salfit by Fatah and the PA's General Intelligence Force revealed that the local commander of the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, who was killed on Sunday when his M-16 rifle exploded, had doubled as a security officer.

Jihad Hassan, who is also known as Abu Naaim, was the commander of the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Salfit and has been wanted by Israel for the past two years.

Residents said Hassan purchased two days ago from an arms dealer an M-16 rifle that had been apparently booby-trapped by Israel's Shin Bet. They said the rifle exploded on Sunday while Hassan was carrying it, amputating his right arm.

Hassan was rushed unconscious to a hospital in Ramallah, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Doctors said he had lost a lot of blood before arriving at the hospital.

An obituary notice published by the General Intelligence Force, headed by Gen. Tawfik Tirawi, revealed that the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades commander also served in the force with the rank of lieutenant.

"The command of the Palestinian General Intelligence Force and all its officers and soldiers mourn the death of martyr and hero lieutenant Jihad Hassan, who was martyred on the soil of Salfit on September 26, 2004 while carrying out his duties," said the obituary statement.

Two other obituaries distributed in Salfit by Fatah groups also pointed out that Hassan was an officer serving in the General Intelligence Force. In one of them, published by Fatah's shabiba organization in Salfit, Hassan is referred to as "one of the leaders of the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a member of the General Intelligence Force in Salfit, and a member of the organizational committee of Fatah in Salfit."

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer with a new take on the recent Yusuf Islam affair in FrontPage:

One thing that has been overlooked in the whole recent Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens imbroglio is that if he is indeed telling the truth, the implications are even worse than if he is lying.

Islam, the former pop star, was denied entry into the U.S. last week because, according to Homeland Security department spokesman Brian Doyle, “of activities that could potentially be related to terrorism. It’s a serious matter.”

DHS has steadfastly remained mum about what exactly these activities are. Opponents of the department have rushed to fill the vacuum with theories mining both the incompetent and the sinister. Yusuf Islam himself complained: “The whole thing is totally ridiculous. Half of me wants to smile, half of me wants to growl.” Time magazine asserted that it was a case of mistaken identity based on a spelling error: it quoted “aviation sources with access to the list” to the effect that “there is no Yusuf Islam on the no-fly registry, though there is a ‘Youssouf Islam.’” The Muslim American Society chipped in with the sinister angle by posting at its website a message from a leftist blogger named Kurt Nimmo, asserting that Bush kept the singer out of the U.S. “as a public relations ploy in an effort to seize control of airline passenger lists … and also portray a famous Muslim and peace activist as a terrorist in support of Hamas.”

DHS wouldn’t have had to work very hard to portray the ex-Cat as a supporter of the terrorists of Hamas. The connections to the terror group are relatively recent: in 1998, Yusuf Islam spoke at a fundraising dinner sponsored by an organization, the Jerusalem Fund for Human Services, that has been identified by the Canadian government as a Hamas front group. He exhorted his hearers to donate to the group in order to “lessen the suffering of our brothers and sisters in Palestine and the Holy Land.” In 2000, he was denied entry into Israel for donating thousands to Hamas. Again, Islam denied it all, saying: “I want to make sure that people are aware that I’ve never knowingly supported any terrorist groups — past, present or future. It’s simply an attempt to cast doubt again on my character and good intentions.”

So in essence, if Cat Stevens is not a proponent of the global jihad, he is, by his own admission, a dupe. He sent thousands to Israel to support his “brothers and sisters in Palestine”; even if he really didn’t intend it to go to Hamas, it did. This is an indication of what Muslims who do not support terrorism face daily: so many Islamic “charities” have turned out to be terrorist fronts that many whose intentions were quite different have ended up being supporters of terror unwittingly. There is no separation in mosques and Islamic communities between moderate and radical Muslims, and neither camp has shown any indication of wanting to create one.

What’s more, the checkered post-conversion career of the former feline himself indicates that even the moderate/radical distinction itself is not hard and fast. He publicly supported the Ayatollah Khomeini’s death sentence for blasphemy against Salman Rushdie in 1989 (“The Qur’an makes it clear,” said the author of “Peace Train,” that “if someone defames the Prophet, then he must die”), although he has backtracked since then. His statements supporting the Rushdie fatwa are a case in point: now he says he spoke out of new convert’s enthusiasm and based his answer on abstract considerations of Islamic law, not intending actually to support the novelist’s murder — thereby saying something about both Islamic law and converts. Khomeini’s fatwa, as Cat the student of Islam had no doubt recently learned, was no innovation, but entirely consistent with Islamic law mandating death for blasphemers. And his convert’s zeal, anxious as he was to act upon the newly-absorbed lessons of Islam, has manifested itself in more ominous forms more recently: witness “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, shoe bomber Richard Reid, dirty bomb hopeful Jose Padilla, and on and on. They didn’t set out to learn “radical Islam” or “moderate Islam.” They just wanted to learn Islam.

Thus if Cat is telling the truth about not supporting terrorism, his case is a striking reminder of the deep crisis within Islam: terror has intertwined itself with the religion so tightly today that it cannot be separated even by those who claim to abhor all that the terrorists stand for. Muslims today can’t seem to ride the peace train even if they want to.

John Quincy Adams, that is. A few quotes from the sixth president:

"...he [Muhammad] declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind...The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God."

"The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute."

"As the essential principle of his faith is the subjugation of others by the sword; it is only by force, that his false doctrines can be dispelled, and his power annihilated.

They [The Russians] have been from time immemorial, in a state of almost perpetual war with the Tatars, and with their successors, the Ottoman conquerors of Constantinople. It were an idle waste of time to trace the causes of each renewal of hostilities, during a succession of several centuries. The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace; and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force. Of Mahometan good faith, we have had memorable examples ourselves. When our gallant [Stephen] Decatur ref had chastised the pirate of Algiers, till he was ready to renounce his claim of tribute from the United States, he signed a treaty to that effect: but the treaty was drawn up in the Arabic language, as well as in our own; and our negotiators, unacquainted with the language of the Koran, signed the copies of the treaty, in both languages, not imagining that there was any difference between them. Within a year the Dey demands, under penalty of the renewal of the war, an indemnity in money for the frigate taken by Decatur; our Consul demands the foundation of this pretension; and the Arabic copy of the treaty, signed by himself is produced, with an article stipulating the indemnity, foisted into it, in direct opposition to the treaty as it had been concluded. The arrival of Chauncey, with a squadron before Algiers, silenced the fraudulent claim of the Dey, and he signed a new treaty in which it was abandoned; but he disdained to conceal his intentions; my power, said he, has been wrested from my hands; draw ye the treaty at your pleasure, and I will sign it; but beware of the moment, when I shall recover my power, for with that moment, your treaty shall be waste paper. He avowed what they always practised, and would without scruple have practised himself. Such is the spirit, which governs the hearts of men, to whom treachery and violence are taught as principles of religion." [p. 274-275]

Thanks to the many generous people who responded to yesterday's small appeal and donated to Jihad Watch. I am very grateful for your support. Thanks also to those who gave me your input about advertising on the site. (No decision yet, however!)

This is a struggle for universal human rights. But awareness of the true dimensions of what we are up against is still quite low. So if you appreciate what Jihad Watch does, above all, tell your friends.

Long may she wave.

No, this post is not a digression, and has everything to do with jihad and dhimmitude!

After making an anti-Israel video. This is a clear indication (as if one were needed) of the jihadist and totalitarian nature of the Palestinian struggle at this point: if the Druze have no grievance, they must be coerced into solidarity on the basis of pan-Arabism or pan-Islamism. From CNN, :

GAZA CITY (CNN) -- CNN Producer Riad Ali, who was abducted at gunpoint a day earlier, was released Tuesday and was in the custody of Palestinian police.

Shortly before his release, a videotape surfaced in which Ali explained he was being held by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.

On the tape, Ali explained in Arabic that he is a Druze Arab and that his father and other members of his family have served in the Israeli military.

No demands were made on the tape.

The Druze Arabs are an Arabic-speaking, non-Jewish minority in Israel. Many Druze have served in the Israeli military.

On the video, which was recorded while he was in the custody of his abductors, Ali called for the Druze not to serve in the Israeli military, saying the cause of the Druze is the same as that of Palestinians.

Don't you think that if we gave the jihadists some of what they wanted, there would be peace? If we just tried to understand why they hate us, and adjusted our policies accordingly, they would love us?

Alas, the jihadists themselves don't believe in this exhausted bit of conventional wisdom. From The Scotsman:

Privately, Blair recognises the Bigley family’s predicament is "ghastly", but he will not negotiate with terrorists.

This does not seem to bother the hostage-takers. They began taunting Western governments over their efforts to seek their citizens’ release from captivity. Late on Friday a fresh message appeared on a website believed to be used by al-Zarqawi which read: "What is laughable is the insistence of the ministers of all infidel nationalities on the phrase ‘no negotiations’. As if there was any question of negotiation. Far from it - they must obey the demands of the Mujahadeen. If you refuse, we slaughter."...

Tawhid wal Jihad is a Sunni Muslim group. But unlike deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, also a Sunni Muslim, it is extremist and sees itself as being in a struggle against American crusaders.

The group justifies its executions with the controversial Koranic verse: "Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers, smite at their necks; At length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly [on them]."

That would be Qur'an 47:4.

One of the earliest and strangest figures of the war on terror, the American Muslim convert John Walker Lindh, is appealing for early release. From Reuters:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The lawyer for an American sentenced to 20 years in a U.S. prison for fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan appealed to President Bush to lessen his sentence after a man in a similar case was freed.

John Walker Lindh, 23, dubbed the "American Taliban," was captured during the Afghanistan war and was sentenced in 2002 under a plea deal.

His lawyer, James Brosnahan, said he had filed an appeal on Tuesday to commute the sentence after a long-held accused enemy combatant, Yaser Hamdi, was scheduled to be freed from the United States to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

Hamdi, a U.S. citizen, was also captured in Afghanistan.

"I hope America can find it in her heart to forgive John," Lindh's mother told a news conference. "John has admitted he made a mistake when he went to Afghanistan in June 2001 to fight in the civil war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance."

Yes, it was all just a mistake that I joined your enemies and the forces of the global jihad. What a faux pas! What a crazy youthful error! Gosh darn it, little Billy put a dent in the fender, and little Johnny joined the Taliban! Surely he shouldn't serve 20 for taking orders from Osama bin Laden, should he?

I shudder to think what John Walker Lindh would have and could have done if he had not been captured (or killed), and had been sent back to his native country on a mission by his Al-Qaeda handlers. Also, I'd like to know if he still endorses the global jihad, and would fight against the United States again given the chance.

Many of you have written me to tell me of your difficulties in commenting. I wish I knew what the problem was, and I apologize for the inconvenience. There is something very wrong with the system, and I do know this: Movable Type has an upgrade, and I will get it as soon as is humanly possible. I hope it will solve the problems, and I thank you for hanging in until then.

Meanwhile, I have tried not to ask for assistance, but the upgrade is going to be costly, and I'd be most grateful to anyone who can help by hitting the donations mechanisms on the left. Dark rumors I have seen on some websites to the effect that this site and organization are funded by some shadowy, deep-pocketed right wing lever-puller (Mossad?) are, alas, untrue. It is always a close-run thing, and we have postponed several organizational expansions and improvements because of lack of funds.

However, this site still stands as a resource for journalists, historians, students, and anyone who is interested in standing up to the global jihad in the name of universal human rights. If you have found it helpful, I hope you will be able to help us. Many thanks.

ALSO: An informal poll: should we take ads on the site? I have had several requests, but have hesitated for various reasons. What do you think?

Good news from AP:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two Italian and two Iraqi aid workers kidnapped this month in Iraq were freed Tuesday after three weeks in captivity, Italy's prime minister said.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told Parliament that the four were handed over to the Red Cross in Iraq. He said the Italians were expected to return in Italy soon, possibly Tuesday evening.

"Finally a moment of joy," Berlusconi said. "The two girls are well and will be able to return to their loved ones tonight."

Berlusconi went before Parliament to give details of the release, thanking the intelligence agencies of neighboring countries, including Jordan, whose king was in Rome Tuesday.

Berlusconi's comments were reported just after the Arab television network Al-Jazeera announced that the Italians, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, had been freed. A Muslim leader from Italy met with a local Muslim association earlier Tuesday in Baghdad to press for their release, though it was not immediately known if there was a connection.

Truth-telling and shoring-up of the Big Lie in Chicago. From the Daily Herald, with thanks to Twostellas:

The Republican challenger to three-term Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky said Monday he's distrusted Islam "for years" and supports the federal government planting human monitors in mosques to track the activity of those practicing the religion there.

Kurt Eckhardt's comments brought swift criticism from Schakowsky and Muslim groups, who described his remarks as inaccurate and dangerous.

"This feeds the cycle of misunderstanding, feeds the cycle of prejudice, feeds the cycle of hate crimes," said Yaser Tabbara, executive director of the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Tabbara's organization, North America's largest Islamic civil rights group, is working to promote the mainstream Muslim voice, which does not condone violence.

No mention, of course, of the fact that "Tabbara's organization" was so busy promoting the mainstream Muslim voice that it failed to notice that three of its officials were involved in terrorist-related activities: Bassem Khafagi, Ismail Royer, and Ghassan Elashi.

"We are unequivocally opposed to terrorism," he said. "Our religion does not condone it in any way."

Great. What are you doing to inform Osama bin Laden, Abu Hamza, Shamil Basayev, and other people who say things like this of this much-overlooked fact about your misunderstood religion?

In an interview with the Daily Herald editorial board, Eckhardt, of Chicago, called the threat of fundamentalist Islamic expansion "profound" and said secular democracies around the world need to become proactive and in some cases pre-emptive against the spread of the groups worldwide.

"No other issue matters if we're dead," Eckhardt said....

Eckhardt said terrorist acts were not "aberrational behavior" by a few extreme Muslims but possibly part of a broader culture.

"Where is the voice of reason in the Islamic community?" Eckhardt said. "There is none, except in nations we control."

Schakowsky, an Evanston Democrat, said terrorism or calls to violence were "not at all" inherent in Islam.

"Going in with the suspicion that every mosque is somehow a breeding ground for terrorism defies all the information," she said.

Does it really? Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi Muslim, testified before a State Department Open Forum in 1999 that 80% of American mosques were under the control of extremists. That claim has never been investigated. What "information" does Schakowsky that makes it certain that it's not true?

Kareem Irfan, chair of the Lombard-based Council of Islamic Organizations, noted that 35,000 Muslims congregated peacefully at an Islamic Society of North America convention in Rosemont over Labor Day weekend. Irfan said Islam has 1.25 billion peaceful believers worldwide.

"They have nothing to do with violence and terror," he said.

I am certain that many, if not most, do not. But to make such a blanket assertion about all 1.25 billion Muslims worldwide is to fly in the face of reality. Unless, I suppose, Irfan is assuming that the Muslims who are waging jihad today in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Chechnya, Bosnia, Nigeria and elsewhere are all really CIA and Mossad operatives, trying to smear Islam.

Stop using your eyes and your mind, says Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. From Asia News Network, with thanks to Twostellas and Laika:

However, he said the most damaging of all was the increasing tendency to attribute linkages between international terrorism and Islam. "The time has arrived for us to debunk, once and for all, the theory that there is a clash of civilisations," he told the 59th session of the United Nations General Assembly here on Monday.

"We must cease associating Islam with violence, poverty and indignity," he said, adding that in reality these troubles had nothing to do with Islam and neither were they exclusively in the domain of Muslims.

Abdullah, certainly violence, poverty, and indignity are not the exclusive province of Muslims. No one is saying they are. But stop associating Islam with terrorism? I would respectfully ask you to direct such requests to Mr. Osama bin Laden, Mr. Abu Hamza, Mr. Shamil Basayev, and to other people who say things like this.

Speaking of Islamic tolerance, here's a fresh steaming pile of taqiyya from Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer. From TurkishPress.com, with thanks to Nicolei:

ANKARA - ''Freedom of belief and worship is the most important guarantee of social peace,'' Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said on Monday.

Addressing the opening of 3rd meeting of the Religion Council, Sezer underlined that secularism in Turkey was enforced not with the reports prepared by some foreign elements, but with the experiences obtained in historical and social evolution of Turkey and within the perspective of reforms of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the Founder of Modern Turkish Republic....

Sezer said Turkey has a special position in this respect, stressing that territories of Anatolia, throughout the history, embraced people having different cultural and religious beliefs.

Sezer seems to have forgotten a few small matters like the genocide of the Armenians and the wholesale exile or forced conversion of the Greeks -- both of which emptied Anatolia of millions of non-Muslims whose forefathers had been on that land for centuries. Both of these, of course, took place under the auspices of the Ataturk regime he lauds, as the cultural habits of dhimmitude combined with Turkish nationalism into a mix that was lethal for the region's non-Muslims.

Funny how you never hear the UN calling for a "right of return" for the tens of millions of people around the globe whose historical, cultural, and familial roots are in Anatolia, and which have been utterly erased and continually denied by Kemalism.

I myself am ready to retake possession of my ancestral home there as soon as Kofi Annan gives the green light, and sends a few troops to make sure the Kemalists don't decide on a repeat performance. Kofi, my friend, the ball's in your court. Email me and I'll tell you where to send the title deed and the keys.

More saber-rattling from Tehran. From AFP, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

TEHRAN, Sept 27 (AFP) - Iran said Monday it was being deliberately ambiguous over its missile capability, currently a topic of intense speculation following fresh tests and the introduction of a "strategic" device.

On Saturday, Defence Minister Ali Shamkhani told state-run television that the Iranian army has taken delivery of a new "strategic missile" and that the weapon, unnamed for security reasons, was successfully tested last week.

"Mr Shamkhani intentionally spoke in an ambiguous way and we want this ambiguity to remain," government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh told reporters when asked to elaborate on what this "strategic missile" was.

Nothing ambiguous about this, however:

During a military parade last week, Iran showed off its range of ballistic missiles draped in banners vowing to "crush America" and "wipe Israel off the map".

"The Shahab-3 missiles, with different ranges, enables us to destroy the most distant targets," said an official commentary accompanying the parade, which was carried live on state television.

From AP, with thanks to Dennis Hale:

WASHINGTON - Despite major increases in money and personnel, the FBI is still failing to translate many al-Qaida surveillance recordings in a timely manner and faces a giant backlog of untranslated material from terrorism and espionage investigations, a new Justice Department audit shows.

The report released Monday by Glenn A. Fine, the department's inspector general, found more than one-third of al-Qaida intercepts authorized by a secret federal court were not reviewed within 12 hours of collection, as required by FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Hmmm. Maybe they should have hired all the Jews and other non-Muslims who have been turned down under curious circumstances for translator's jobs over the last couple of years.

One evening a few months ago I was having dinner with a prominent Muslim spokesman; we were explaining ourselves to each other. It was a quite pleasant evening, during which I said, "I just don't want my grandchildren to be dhimmis." He let it pass, but returned to the point later in an email, asseerting that the laws of the dhimma were dead, and no one was trying to revive them.

The problem with that view is that the laws of dhimmitude, mandating oppression of non-Muslims, are part of the Sharia, and this article shows that for some parties within Islam, any element of Sharia is absolutely non-negotiable. From IslamOnline, with thanks to Nicolei:

ALGIERS, September 27 (IslamOnline.net) – Islamic parities and figures in Algeria have set up a committee to counter proposed amendments to the Muslim country’s family law, which they saw as contravening Shari’ah (Islamic law).

The self-styled National Committee for Protecting Family urged in a statement, a copy of which was sent to IslamOnline.net Sunday, September 26, the Algerians to “take an action to defend their families and thwart the exported amendments”.

The statement said, however, that the Islamic powers in the country do support change but for the better.

“But we reject tailored and selective amendments imposed from high authorities and we call for a public referendum,” read the statement.

The statement was signed by an elite of Muslim figures in Algeria, including Sheikh Abdul Rahman Shaiban, chief of Algeria’s Muslim Scholars Association, and the chief of the Ibadiya Council.

An Algerian Justice Ministry’s committee has put forward several amendments to the 1948-enacted law.

The amendments, to be put to vote in the parliament, mainly call for ending the role of a wali (a woman’s guardian) in concluding marriage contracts and setting a prior judicial consent as a condition for polygamy.

According to Shari'ah, in order to conclude her marriage, a Muslim woman should have a guardian, given that women are subject to the desires of the ill-hearted and evil opportunists.

A guardian should be a relative Muslim male and is usually the father. Next to the father comes the closest male relative.

The order, according to many is: father, paternal grandfather, son, grandson, full brother, paternal half-brother, and paternal uncle.

Often when I discuss issues related to dhimmitude in public forums or on radio, Muslims bring up verse 2:256 of the Qur'an, "There is no compulsion in religion" -- as if the existence of this verse proves that there could be no legal superstructure mandating the oppression of non-Muslims such as I have outlined. But 2:256 itself has a quite interesting interpretative history in Islamic tradition. In Onward Muslim Soldiers I detail how the influential radical Muslim theorist Sayyid Qutb insists that 2:256 means that dhimmis must not be forced to accept Islam -- but he does insist that they should be stripped of all political power and placed in a subordinate position in society. (He has no problem reconciling 2:256 with such measures.) Qutb was echoing traditional Islamic views. Now, in FrontPage this morning, Daniel Pipes has more about the curious interpretations of this verse, many of which militate against the meaning that Muslim apologists in America often abscribe to it:

What do Muslims believe regarding freedom of religious choice?

A Koranic verse (2:256) answers: “There is no compulsion in religion” (in Arabic: la ikrah fi’d-din). That sounds clear-cut and the Islamic Center of Southern California insists it is, arguing that it shows how Islam anticipated the principles in the U.S. Constitution. The center sees the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”) as based on concepts in the Koran’s no-compulsion verse.

In a similar spirit, a former chief justice of Pakistan, S.A. Rahman, argues that the Koranic phrase contains “a charter of freedom of conscience unparalleled in the religious annals of mankind.”

To a Western sensibility, this interpretation makes intuitive sense. Thus does Alan Reynolds, an economist at the CATO Institute, write in the Washington Times that that the verse signifies the Koran “counsels religious tolerance.”

Were it only so simple.

In fact, this deceptively simple phrase historically has had a myriad of meanings. Here are some of them, mostly premodern, deriving from two outstanding recent books, Patricia Crone’s God’s Rule: Government and Islam (Columbia University Press) and Yohanan Friedman’s Tolerance and Coercion in Islam (Cambridge University Press), augmented by my own research. Proceeding from least liberal to most liberal, the no-compulsion phrase is considered variously to have been:

· Abrogated: The passage was overridden by subsequent Koranic verses (such as 9:73 “O Prophet! Struggle against the unbelievers and hypocrites and be harsh with them”).

· Purely symbolic: The phrase is a description, not an imperative. Islam’s truth is so obvious that to coerce someone to become a Muslim does not amount to “compulsion.”; or else being made to embrace Islam after defeat in war is not viewed as “compulsion.”

· Spiritual, not practical: Governments may indeed compel external obedience, though they of course cannot compel how Muslims think.

· Limited in time and place: It applied uniquely to Jews in Medina in the seventh century.

· Limited to non-Muslims who live under and accept Muslim rule: Some jurists say it applies only to “Peoples of the Book” (Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians); others say it applies to all infidels.

· Excludes some non-Muslims: Apostates, women, children, prisoners of war, and others can indeed be compelled. (This is the standard interpretation that has applied in most times and places).

· Limited to all non-Muslims: Muslims must abide by the tenets of Islam and may not apostatize.

· Limited to Muslims: Muslims may shift from one interpretation of their faith to another (such as from Sunni to Shi‘i), but may not leave Islam.

· Applied to all persons: Reaching the true faith must be achieved through trial and testing, and compulsion undercuts this process.

And no charges will be pressed against him by the dhimmis he has identified as targets. From DR Nyheder, with thanks to LGF:

A Danish born former Guantanamo prisoner did not break the law when he told Danish media that Danish ministers and soldiers are legitimate terror targets.

In an interview with the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, former prisoner Slimane Abderahmane identified both the Danish Prime Minister and the Defence Minister as legitimate terror targets for radical Islamic organisations.

The Defence Minister said afterwards that he did not know whether these intolerable and offensive threats were illegal.

Nonetheless, spokesmen from both the government and the opposition agreed with legal experts in saying that it would not be possible to press charges against Abederahmane on the basis of his statements.

Abderahmane himself said later that he while did not intend to promote violence or terrorism, it had to be said that Denmark was at war with an Islamic nation and that made its leaders legitimate targets according to Islam.

Evidently multiculturalism trumps feminism at Duke. From Cinnamon Stillwell at FrontPage, with thanks to the many who sent this to me:

Afghanistan’s Taliban was one of the most oppressive regimes in the world, and doubly so when it came to women’s rights. For years, various activists expressed concern about the situation of Afghan women and supported the efforts of RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan [1], to try and affect reform. So when the opportunity arose to overthrow that brutal regime, it was expected that RAWA activists would naturally back the insurrection.

However, it turned out these activists were more opposed to U.S. military intervention than they were in favor of getting rid of the Taliban, even if it meant that Afghanistan’s women remained in a state of perpetual slavery. And among those who subscribe to such views is Duke University Professor Miriam Cooke. Cooke is a Professor of Asian and African Languages and Literature and President of the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies, an international organization staunchly opposed to what they call on their website the “new imperialism,”[2] and a disciple of the theory of post-colonialism. [3] Cooke is also a strong proponent of “Islamic feminism.”[4]

Islamic feminism holds that Muslim women should enact social change from within the confines of their own culture and religion. Western powers are viewed as having purely imperialistic designs and, as a result, their intervention is unwelcome. Such is the “logic” that caused Cooke, a longtime proponent of Muslim women writers, activists, and intellectuals, to oppose the U.S. overthrow of the Taliban, as well as the democratization of the Middle East.

During a talk at a forum on the future of Iraq at the John Hope Franklin Center on March 26th, 2003, [5] Cooke rejected the liberation of Afghan women as a reason to go to war. Rather than being grateful for calling attention to the suffering of fellow women, she castigated First Lady Laura Bush for her radio address on behalf of the women of Afghanistan. Cooke accused Laura Bush of furthering “the imperial project in her highly gendered appeal to a world conscience.”

Of course, this never was the principal reason for overthrowing the Taliban, but rather a welcome side effect. As for the al-Qaeda terrorist training camps dotting the Afghanistan countryside, Cooke said nothing. She is equally silent today on the ten million Afghans who are now registered to vote - forty percent of them women - in the upcoming election.[6]...

So what exactly does Cooke have to offer to Muslim women as a concrete course of action to better their lives? It turns out, not much. Not only are her ideas vague and overly academic, all too often she falls back on concepts steeped in the terminology of Islamism. For instance, throughout her career, Cooke has written extensively about the idea of a “women’s jihad.”

During a lecture at Wellesley College in November, 2003, Cooke elaborated on this concept. [11] This jihad, she maintained, is not for an “Islamist state,” but rather for “an Islamic community.”...

As usual, Cooke jumps through hoops to blame anyone other than the culture that created suicide bombers - female or otherwise. And she conveniently overlooks the use of sexism in Palestinian society to coerce women into becoming suicide bombers as penance for the shame of having sex out of wedlock, being raped or unable to marry.

Beyond teaching her own courses, Cooke is very active in Duke’s Islamic Studies Department. She is co-director of the university’s Center for the Study of Muslim Networks (CSMN), [13] as well as being involved in the 2003-2004 Carolina Seminar on Comparative Islamic Studies.[14] She accompanied a group of students on a trip to Lebanon in 2002 [15] and has taken part in various local film festivals in the past few years.[16] As such, Cooke has a lot of influence over the way Duke students experience Islamic culture and particularly its relationship to women.

Unfortunately, instead of learning about women’s liberation, these students are receiving a lesson in women’s oppression, and especially oppression caused by the United States. And as long as Islamic studies professors like Miriam Cooke serve as apologists for backwardness and repression, they will continue being part of the problem instead of the solution.

No confirming word on Zawahri, which makes me think it is a false report. But there is this, from AP:

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — Security forces following up on a raid that killed a top al-Qaeda fugitive arrested four more suspected extremists Monday, and Pakistan's president predicted the investigation would lead to more high-profile militants.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf lauded the killing of Amjad Hussain Farooqi, who died in a four-hour gunbattle Sunday after vowing never to surrender. Farooqi was wanted for his alleged role in the 2002 beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and in two assassination attempts on the Pakistani president in December 2003. Three other Pakistanis, one of them an Islamic cleric, were arrested in the raid.

"We eliminated one of the very major sources of terrorist attacks. He was not only involved on attacks on me but also on attacks elsewhere in the country. So a very big terrorist has been eliminated," Musharraf told reporters in the Netherlands while traveling home from New York.

"Together with him there have been some other arrests and we will get a lot of useful information leading to further arrests and eliminations, I am very sure," Musharraf added. He did not identify those who had been captured.

From the Jerusalem Post:

Top Bin Laden deputy Ayman al-Zawahri has been caught in Pakistan, according to a report from the region quoted on Israel Radio Monday.

Pakistani forces operating against al Qaida strongholds in the country report capturing the Egyptian national, who was formerly the head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which operated in the past against the Egyptian regime.

We have posted many stories here about the plight of Christians in Iraq. Here is a new report from an Iraqi paper about the plight of Christians all over the Middle East, courtesy MEMRI:

In an article in the Iraqi daily Al-Zaman, a newspaper published simultaneously in London and Baghdad with an independent and liberal pedigree going back to the 1940s, columnist Majid Aziza highlights the plight of the Christian Arab community in the Muslim world. The following are excerpts from the column: [1]

"Christians, natives of Arab countries, are escaping their countries of origin. This is a common statement nowadays everywhere and it is correct one hundred percent. Statistics show that a large number of them have emigrated to safer countries for them and for their children, like the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe. The reason is the harassment to which they are subjected to by government agencies on the one hand and extremist groups on the other hand in countries they have inhabited for thousands of years…

"The Christians have lived in the territory currently referred to as [the Arab countries] for centuries alongside other religious groups, and particularly with Muslims who shared with them the afflictions of life. But the Christians have lost their partners for many reasons, including religious extremism among some Muslims, the demographic increases out of religious reasons, and the acts of discrimination, coercion, and individual and collective expulsion of Christians, and the pressures placed upon them even when they were serving their countries. There are many examples of that in Palestine, Iraq, Sudan, Lebanon, Egypt, and other countries.

"Approximately 4 million Lebanese Christians have emigrated from their country as a result of the pressures placed upon them by others. About half a million Iraqi Christians have left their country for the same reasons… The situation gets worse today because of the discrimination by salafi [Islamic fundamentalist] extremists. In Palestine, the Christians are becoming almost extinct as a result of the control of extremist Muslims on the Palestinian issue and the marginalization of the role of the Christians, apart from the negative impact of the Intifada, which is led by Islamist organizations, on the Christians of Palestine. With regard to Christians in Egypt, the Copts, what happened and is happening to them equally on the part of the state and the Islamists will suffice to fill pages of books and newspapers to explain the coercion, discrimination and persecution. What is happening in Algeria, Mauritania, Somalia, and others is too long to explain.

Read it all.

Here's another stop-the-presses story, as I have chronicled Al-Azhar's radicalism for years, but it is good to see it being acknowledged in the Islamic world -- especially the parts about the oppression of dhimmis, which are almost never admitted by Muslim spokesmen. From MEMRI:

Progressive writer and Cairo University lecturer on the sociology of religion Sayyed Al-Qimni wrote, in an article in the Egyptian weekly Roz Al-Youssef, that the curricula of Al-Azhar University encourage extremism and terror. The following are excerpts from the article:(1)

'A Few of the Sheikhs at Al-Azhar are Trying to Drag it [Back] to the Middle Ages'

"Let us take a look together at the curricula of Islamic jurisprudence, which are taught in Al-Azhar's intermediate stages, not in order to call for the banning of [books on these curricula], but in order to understand that their removal from the curricula is the first step required for reform. They should, of course, remain in an Islamic library as a source for whoever wants to know what the Muslims thought in the golden era of Islamic jurisprudence and in order for us to understand the way of thinking of [certain] sheikhs [today] and what they want from our youth...

"Al-Azhar continues to be a place of acquisition of education and defense of moderate Islam and of the [generally] accepted ideas. Nevertheless, a few of the sheikhs at Al-Azhar are trying to drag it [back] to the Middle Ages and to draw [their ideas] from some radical schools of thought. If Al-Azhar gets rid of them and of their ideas, it will remove those black stains from its garments.

"If we examine some of the extremist curricula, we will find that the principle of fighting any non-Muslim and killing him is not an offensive innovation by [founder of Wahhabism] Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd Al-Wahhab and by [Ayman] Al-Zawahiri, [Osama bin Laden's deputy and the head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization]. This [is] because a book of the Hanafi [school of thought], 'Al-Ikhtiyar fi Ta'lil Al-Mukhtar' [by Abdallah Ibn Mahmoud Al-Mawsily] teaches the next generation that 'the war against the infidels is an obligation of all intelligent, healthy, free, and able men... And when the Muslims besiege their enemies in a town or a fortress, they must call upon them to convert to Islam. If they convert, [the Muslims] must cease fighting them, and if they do not convert, they must call upon them to pay the jizya [poll tax]. If they refuse to pay the jizya, the Muslims must call upon Allah's help in the war against them, to erect catapults, to destroy their fields and their trees, to burn them, and to pelt them [with catapult stones], even if [the enemies] use Muslims as a human shield...'"

'What Kind of Thinking are We Teaching Our Next Generation, that It has the Right to Attack Other Countries in Order to Convert Them to Islam?'

"The book then instructs [Muslims] to act with compassion in this war: 'The Muslims must not breach a contract assuring protection [of the subjugated], must not take more than their share of the booty, must not mutilate bodies, kill madmen, women, children, cripples, one whose right hand has been amputated, or an elderly man, unless one of them is a king or a person able to fight, to incite [to war], to give advice about war or to instigate [fighting] by means of his possessions.' The stipulation that women, elderly, and cripples would be pardoned if they did not incite to war implies that everyone, in effect, should be killed, since no citizen living in a country attacked by foreigners does not incite to battle...

"Let us continue to read from some of the curricula of the extremism ['Al-Ikhtiyar fi Ta'lil Al-Mukhtar']: 'When the imam conquers a country by force, if he so desires - he will divide it among those taking the spoils, [and] if he so desires - he will execute the prisoners, subjugate them, or leave them under the patronage of the Muslims. [Moreover,] if he wishes to return [to the country] [and has] livestock, which he cannot take with him, he will slaughter and burn it.'

"What kind of way of thinking are we teaching our next generation, that it has the right to attack other countries in order to convert them to Islam or to [make them] pay jizya, and that if they don't - we will annihilate them down to the very last one? [That it has the right] to pillage countries and return with the loot, and [that] if it cannot transport the booty - [that it can] burn it? Can anybody imagine a member of another religion, paying jizya, in a state of subjection, to a people he does not recognize, merely because it is able to attack, to kill and to slaughter?...(2)"

'One Must Degrade Dhimmis [Non-Muslims Living in Muslims Countries]'
"And what about after the conquest, the emigration and the taking up of residence in the conquered land alongside its non-Muslim residents, who pay the jizya? [On this matter] there are guidelines [in 'Al-Rawdh Al-Murabba Sharh Zad Al-Mustaqna' by Mansur Ibn Yunes Al-Buhuti] [through which] one can see what the position of an Al-Azhar graduate [will be] towards his [non-Muslim] brother in the [Arab] homeland: '... The [hair] on their foreheads must be cut... They are permitted to ride [mounts] other than horses, such as donkeys, without a saddle... [One] must not rise in their honor or precede them in greetings... [One] must not offer them condolences, visit them in sickness or participate in their celebrations. They are forbidden to establish new churches or to rebuild those that were destroyed... They are forbidden to build a structure higher than those belonging to Muslims... They must be forbidden to raise their voice in mourning the dead.' If a dhimmi(3) invites a Muslim to a wedding celebration, he must not go, 'because one must degrade dhimmis...'"

Read it all.

Try as they might, the Pakistani police just can't seem to figure out who might have killed seven Christians two years ago. From Compass Direct:

Two years after seven Christians were gunned down at the Karachi headquarters of one of Pakistan’s established Christian welfare agencies, local police investigators have failed to identify a single suspect.

Tomorrow marks the second anniversary of the execution-style massacre of seven staff members shot to death on September 25, 2002, in their downtown Karachi offices of the Institute of Peace and Justice (IPJ). The attack effectively shut down the IPJ ministry, with their offices still sealed by police order.

Two Survivors

Of the two Christians who survived the attack, 26-year-old Robin Sharif remains partially paralyzed and unable to work due to a gunshot wound to the head.

The other, Robin Piranditta, has been in strict hiding separated from his wife and four children since last year, while Christian advocacy groups continue a frustrating search for a country that will grant him asylum.

According to the Crisis Management Committee formed by the Catholic and Protestant bishops of Karachi immediately after the incident, both of the survivors were handled incorrectly by the police investigators.

In a report issued this past July, the committee declared that Robin Piranditta was “made a scapegoat,” while Robin Sharif’s statements to the police “were not taken seriously enough.”

"Anti-Muslim sentiment"? Did the Swiss vote for "racism"? Or simply against Sharia? From VOANews, with thanks to Nicolei:

Voters in Switzerland have rejected a proposed easing of the country's strict citizenship rules that would have made it easier for second- and third-generation immigrants to attain Swiss citizenship....

The measures had been fought by the right-wing Swiss Peoples' Party. That party appealed to anti-Muslim sentiment among voters by suggesting the proposed rules would create an Islamic majority by mid-century.

AP has just discovered -- get this -- that the Chechen "separatists" and "militants" might actually be ... Islamic jihadists! I know, it's shocking beyond measure, but here are the grisly details:

MOSCOW (AP) — The brutality and meticulous planning of the school hostage-taking and other recent terror attacks in Russia have focused new attention on the growing influence of Islamic extremists over Chechen rebels and raised suspicions of a global terror connection.

The conflict in Chechnya, which began a decade ago as a secular fight for independence from Moscow, has steadily evolved into what local and foreign militants have described as jihad, or “holy war” against Russia.

“Over time, a growing number of people in Chechnya have identified themselves with global jihad,” said Alexei Malashenko, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment’s Moscow office.

Fundamentalist Islamic groups have methodically recruited followers among Russia’s 20 million Muslims since the 1990s, often driving mainstream Muslim clerics from their mosques in such Caucasus regions as Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkariya, both near Chechnya.

Along with radical Islamic doctrines, Arab fighters and instructors also have brought new tactics to Chechnya, such as suicide bombings. “They act as a catalyst and give an international dimension to these attacks … as part of global jihad,” Malashenko said.

Isn't that amazing? And look: it's September 27 today -- only ten months after you could have found this out by reading Jihad Watch, and only a little more than a year after you could have found it out by reading Onward Muslim Soldiers. Got to hand it to AP: they're right on top of things.

Those oppressive, bloodthirsty Buddhists are at it again, provoking peaceful Muslims to violence by daring to ... hold a festival. From Reuters, with thanks to Twostellas:

BANGKOK (Reuters) - A bomb wounded nine soldiers and civilian volunteers manning a checkpoint near a local Buddhist festival in Thailand's mainly Muslim south on Sunday, police said. The bomb, the latest act of violence in the region near the Malaysia border, exploded just 500 metres from the temple, they said.

"Nine people, including two solders are injured. Two voluntary officials are in serious condition," a police spokesman told Reuters.

More than 320 people have been killed in the south since January, when the violence the government blames largely on radical Muslim teachers began with a raid on an army camp in which nearly 400 M-16 assault rifles were stolen.

Radical Muslim teachers? Don't these teachers know their subject?

Nicole Gelinas in the New York Post outlines what the Treasury Department should do about Saudi terror financing. I'm not holding my breath here.

Saudi Arabia, as everyone knows, promotes domestic intolerance of Christians, Jews and Shia Muslims. That would be mostly a Saudi problem — if the Saudis didn't have so much money. But their oil riches — and well-documented largesse — allow the kingdom to export a distilled version of Islamofascist hatred.

Saudi money funds Islamist schools and mosques all over the Middle East and in Europe. Of more immediate concern for Americans, rich Saudis likely underwrote the 9/11 attacks — by giving money to known terrorist charities, which then piped millions of dollars to al Qaeda.

"Al Qaeda appears to have relied on a core group of financial facilitators who raised money from a variety of donors . . . particularly in Saudi Arabia," the 9/11 Commission reported. "Some individual donors surely knew, and others did not, the ultimate destination of their donations."

This easy money makes Saudi intolerance our problem. To fund the 9/11 hijackings, those Saudis — and al Qaeda — had to get some of that money from there to here. This is where the Treasury Department comes in.

Treasury Secretary John Snow (under the direction of President Bush) is responsible for damming terrorist dollars before they flow into U.S. bank accounts — so that more Saudi money won't fund more attacks on America.

After 9/11, Congress gave the department the powers to execute this urgent mandate. The Patriot Act granted Treasury officials vast new authority to review suspicious banking transactions in the United States. The new law also directed American banks to report suspicious activities to the government — like large cash withdrawals or wire transfers, or unverifiable customer identities....

Treasury has invoked its new powers nine times — but not against Saudi Arabia, or against any other major Mideast financial hub. Last month, Treasury identified banks in Cyprus and Belarus as suspected money-launderers; last year, it took action against Burma, Nauru and Ukraine.

But some common-sense financial profiling is in order here:

* Fifteen of the 19 9/11 hijackers weren't from Nauru — they were from Saudi Arabia.

* Several prominent Saudi princes and subjects, and more than a dozen prominent Saudi banks and charities, have been fingered in civil lawsuits filed in connection with the 9/11 attacks as alleged al Qaeda donors or money-launderers.

* Earlier this year, Treasury shut down the Saudi-based Al Haramain Islamic Foundation branch in Oregon. AHIF was "directly linked" to Osama bin Laden, Treasury officials said — and laundered money across borders over its seven-year history here to fund the work of al Qaeda.

* It's not just Saudi Arabia. Two of the 9/11 hijackers received $114,500 via five wire transfers to America from an al Qaeda operative in the United Arab Emirates.

But Treasury has yet to designate Saudi Arabia (or the UAE) as a swamp of terrorist financing.

Islam Online (thanks to A. El Haji) has a lengthy statement from the International Association of Muslim Scholars (IAS) condemning hostage taking. At first glance it looks great: a carefully reasoned argument from Islamic sources showing that the behavior of the Iraqi jihadists is wrong. Just what we need. However, once again there is somewhat less than meets the eye.

The first reason for that is that the Chairman of the IAMS is none other than Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who has said of suicide bombing: "It's not suicide, it is martyrdom in the name of God, Islamic theologians and jurisprudents have debated this issue. Referring to it as a form of jihad, under the title of jeopardising the life of the mujahideen. It is allowed to jeopardise your soul and cross the path of the enemy and be killed." So evidently it is OK to blow up civilians on a bus, just not to take them hostage.

Another is that the reasoning itself is unlikely to convince educated jihadist Muslims (and if you don't think the jihadists are educated, read this). The argumentation is likely to convince non-Muslims who are largely unfamiliar with the Islamic sources, but not Muslims who are steeped in those sources. For example, the article says:

Similarly the Prophet did not sanction what one of his companions, Salamah ibn al-Akwa’, did when he kidnapped four unbelievers after the signing of the peace treaty at al-Hudaybiyah. Salamah did so thinking that the unbelievers had already violated the peace treaty. The Prophet, however, said: “Leave them so that they will be the ones who initiate evil and repeat it.”(1)

This means that initiating evil is characteristic of unbelievers. It must never be characteristic of Muslims. Muslims may repel evil with a similar measure, but their purpose in doing so is not to retaliate; rather, it is to prevent a repeat of the evil committed against them, and to remove it totally from the domain of human relations.

This is an account from Sahih Muslim, a hadith collection that is generally accepted as authentic. It seems to be used here as evidence that Muhammad himself was against kidnapping and hostage-taking. Note, however, that Salamah thought they had violated a peace treaty. This leaves open the question of whether hostage-taking is acceptable if a peace treaty has, in fact, been violated. Also, consider another account from the same source, involving the same companion of the Prophet, Salamah ibn al-Akwa’:

It has been narrated on the authority of Salama (b. al-Akwa') who said: We fought against the Fazara and Abu Bakr was the commander over us. He had been appointed by the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him). When we were onlv at an hour's distance from the water of the enemy, Abu Bakr ordered us to attack. We made a halt during the last part of the night to rest and then we attacked from all sides and reached their watering-place where a battle was fought. Some of the enemies were killed and some were taken prisoners. I saw a group of persons that consisted of women and children. I was afraid lest they should reach the mountain before me, so I shot an arrow between them and the mountain. When they saw the arrow, they stopped. So I brought them, driving them along. Among them was a woman from Banu Fazara. She was wearing a leather coat. With her was her daughter who was one of the prettiest girls in Arabia. I drove them along until I brought them to Abu Bakr who bestowed that girl upon me as a prize. So we arrived in Medina. I had not yet disrobed her when the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) met me in the street and said: Give me that girl, O Salama. I said: Messenger of Allah, she has fascinated me. I had not yet disrobed her. When on the next day. the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) again met me in the street, he said: O Salama, give me that girl, may God bless your father. I said: She is for you. Messenger of Allah! By Allah. I have not yet disrobed her. The Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) sent her to the people of Mecca, and surrendered her as ransom for a number of Muslims who had been kept as prisoners at Mecca. (Sahih Muslim, book 19, no. 4345)

Quite aside from the rape elements of the story ("I had not yet disrobed her," but it would have been inconceivable for him to have said, "I had not yet asked her consent"), this indicates that when Muhammad ordered the other hostages freed, he may have done it for many reasons, but not because of a general prohibition of hostage-taking. For in this case he uses the girl precisely as a hostage, winning the freedom of Muslim captives as her ransom.

Now once again: why am I taking issue with moderate Muslim arguments, instead of supporting them? Because I want the moderate Muslim arguments to be strong enough to refute the radical Muslim arguments. When I, who am not even a Muslim, can easily find fault with them, how much easier will it be for a hardened mujahid, who has given his whole life to the study and practice of Islam, to do so? That leads me to believe that fatawa such as this one are intended more for non-Muslims than for Muslims: to reassure non-Muslims that Islam is cleaning its own house. But I need to see a fatwa that is strong enough to convince radical Muslims to lay down their arms. I'm still waiting.

Wait a minute? Weren't the Chechen jihadists condemned by the whole world after Beslan? Apparently not: in Indonesia, radical Muslim groups were taking notes. From The Star Online, with thanks to Nicolei:

SINGAPORE: Indonesian radical groups with links to the Jemaah Islamiah terrorist network have produced VCDs and documents on how Chechen separatists make and use land mines and bombs for their cause.

This latest discovery has sparked fears among regional intelligence agencies that JI militants in Indonesia may pick up the more aggressive tactics used by the Chechen terrorists.

Regional intelligence agencies have also pursued leads that at least three JI leaders from Indonesia had travelled to Chechnya, possibly to establish links with Chechen fighters.

The terrorism material, believed to be in at least 24 VCDs titled Neraka Rusia (Russia’s Hell), surfaced at rallies and meetings in Indonesia conducted by groups such as Komite Aksi Penanggulangan Akibat Krisis (Kompak), a militia group in which many JI members are said to be involved.

Mourners paying their respects at the scene of the hostage crisis in Beslan on Sept 9. VCDs and documents used by Indonesian radical groups have sparked fears among regional intelligence agecies that JI militants may pick up the more aggressive tactics used by the Chechen terrorists.

They were also distributed at meetings involving the Majlis Mujahideen Indonesia (MMI) headed by Indonesian cleric Abubakar Ba'asyir, who is about to face terrorism charges, and Wahdah Islamiah.

Abubakar, who is now detained in Indonesia, has been accused of being involved in the direct activities of the JI while Wahdah Islamiah is a group based in Makassar, Sulawesi.

One of the VCDs had footages said to have been downloaded from websites linked to the Chechen cause, showing Chechens undergoing arms training in Afghanistan under Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda movement.

The VCDs also highlight the use of women in suicide bombings – a trademark of the Chechens but never practised by JI members in the region.

From UPI, :

Beirut, Lebanon, Sep. 27 (UPI) -- Maj. Gen. Rahim Safawi, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, said Monday his country is ready to confront U.S. pressure, including military. In an interview with the London-based Saudi daily al-Hayat, monitored in Beirut, Safawi said although the United States is deeply involved in Iraq, it is expected to increase its political and diplomatic pressure on Iran in the next two months.

"We advise the Americans and the Europeans to beware of Iran regional weight and capacity and to recognize its rights and importance in the region," Safawi said.

"We are ready to confront any pressures against us, be they political, economic and even military."

Jihad in northern Cyprus, which is illegally controlled by secular Turkey. Evidently secular Turkey is not secular enough to keep the jihadists out of northern Cyprus; it only maintains its "secular" character by a continuing series of concessions to radical Muslims; maybe this is one. From VOA News, with thanks to twostellas:

Cyprus' justice minister says Chechen terrorists are training in Turkish Cypriot areas in the north of the divided island. Justice Minister Doros Theodorou leveled the charge in an interview published Sunday in the newspaper Phileleftheros, but he declined to give the details of intelligence reports he said supported his claim.

Mr. Theodorou did say the terrorists are training to attack Russian targets.

While the Greek Cypriot government is internationally recognized, the Turkish region of Cyprus is recognized only by Turkey.

An interview with an international hero of the resistance to jihad, the Somali-born Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali. From Expatica, with thanks to Peter Rockas and RickB:

People who object to her criticism of Islam should take her to court rather than take the law into their own hands, Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells Abi Daruvalla. Hirsi Ali has been moved to a safe house following new death threats and the publication of her private address on an Islamic website just four days after her controversial film 'Submission' was screened on Dutch TV. Somali-born Hirsi Ali, 34, is herself a former Muslim and an outspoken critic of Islam's treatment of women. Her film 'Submission' which depicts the text of the Koran on the naked flesh of Muslim women, is provoking a furore in the Netherlands.

With the assassination of right-wing political leader Pim Fortuyn in May 2002 still horribly fresh in people’s minds, the Dutch security services are clearly taking no chances and have mounted round-the-clock protection.

But Hirsi Ali is undaunted: "Reactions to my film have been varied and I accept some people are offended, that's legitimate, but in a democracy it is not legitimate to intimidate and threaten someone for expressing her views. I made the film to publicise an injustice that is being ignored not only in Holland but throughout the world."

Hirsi Ali reflects the spirit of today's Dutch society with her conviction that 'tolerance' means Muslims in the Netherlands – almost one million in a total population of 16 million – must accept Western values.

"That means people from non-Western countries need to be educated about democratic values which include the freedom of expression," said Hirsi Ali. If people feel she has gone too far with her film they must take her to court and not take the law into their own hands, she said defiantly. "Otherwise the rule of the jungle will prevail," she added. ...

'Submission' is written and narrated in English by Hirsi Ali. The 11-minute film takes the form of four monologues by women praying to Allah: one has been whipped for having an illicit love affair; another faces an arranged marriage to a man she finds sexually repulsive, a third was beaten by her husband and the last is pregnant after being raped by her uncle. Their injuries are clearly visible through their transparent chador.

Hirsi Ali claims more than 60 percent of those fleeing domestic violence in Dutch women’s shelters are Muslim. But Muslim organisations say 'Submission' contributes nothing towards a solution.

Canan Ujar of the women’s federation of Holland's biggest Muslim organisation, Milli Görüs: "This film is worthless and the nudity unnecessary. Emancipation has to come from within the Muslim community itself and we are already working on this by encouraging women to talk about domestic violence, organizing workshops to educate women on their rights and teaching them how to handle threatening situations."

To others, the film resembles more an 'erotic' art film than a political statement. Cisca Dresselhuys, Holland’s veteran feminist, concedes that the carefully choreographed scenes conjure up erotic associations for her but said this doesn't detract her from the central message of the film: "It is a very beautiful, poetic film but it is shocking. I don’t think it would have been any stronger by making it full of blood and gore."

Hirsi Ali said the actresses are nude – she insisted that pubic hair and nipples were not visible – because she wants to show the "naked truth" that domestic violence committed against Muslim women is condoned by the Koran.

The film also has supporters among Muslim women. Fadoua Bouali, a 33-year-old nurse in Amsterdam who has lived in Holland since she was seven, said she and many other Moroccan women are grateful that she is giving them a voice. "The conversations the women [in the film] have with God touched me as a Muslim woman enormously because they symbolize 'real' prayers." The fact that the women are naked does not disturb Bouali.

Hirsi Ali says her aim is to reach out to Muslim women who live in fear so that they could see themselves reflected in the film and find the strength to break out of their situation. She also wants to provoke western liberals into taking a stand against violence against Muslim women: "People don’t want to insult other cultures, but they should not close their eyes to the violence."

Of course, hostage-taking is completely against Islam, but 93% of Muslims support it. I suppose now we are to believe that Muslims have failed so utterly to instruct their children in their faith that they have almost all picked up a violent, Orientalist caricature of the real thing? The taqiyya (religious deception, sanctioned by Qur'an 3:28 and 16:106) gets harder and harder to maintain. From the BBC, which fixes a headline to the story that is completely belied by its own poll results : "Arabs ambivalent over hostage crisis." Opposition to the hostage-taking seems confined only to those who think it hurts Islam's image. No one seems particularly concerned about the hostages themselves.

In a phone poll 93% supported the kidnappings.

A little later - after the beheading of the second American hostage - an Iraqi religious leader told al-Jazeera that the foreign hostages were capturing the world's attention at the expense of the Iraqi people's suffering.

In the Arab media, naturally enough, this order is reversed - with the plight of Iraqis and Palestinians overshadowing that of the hostages.

But this is not to say that the Arab satellite channels have ignored the human impact of the story - the hostages' relatives appeared live on al-Jazeera, hoping to convey their pleas for mercy directly to the kidnappers.

The Arab press has also, in the past, condemned Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as a thug who perverts Islam.

But there has not been the same outcry as when two French journalists were taken hostage and their kidnappers demanded that France rescind its ban on Islamic headscarves in schools.

Then, many Arab commentators warned that the kidnappers' actions could irrevocably tarnish the image of Islam and the Arab world.

This time, the kidnappers' demands are limited to Iraq, whose political and security problems remain the focus of Arab attention rather than the fate of Western hostages.

Hope it's true. From Xinhuanet:

ROME, Sept. 26 (Xinhuanet) -- A Kuwaiti paper said that the two kidnapped Italian aid workers in Iraq were in good health and being treated well by their kidnappers, Italian News Agency ANSA reported on Sunday.

The Al Ray Al-Aam, Kuwait's top newspaper, said the kidnappers would not release the women Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, untilItalian troops were withdrawn from Iraq.

The daily said it had been told by its sources that "all mediation attempts will be rejected unless Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi's government respects the kidnappers' request for the complete withdrawal of Italian forces from Iraqi territory."

"They are determined not to free them until their demand has been met," it said.

He had gone back to resume fighting the jihad. And what was preventing him? Guantanamo does nothing to disabuse inmates of the jihad ideology. From AP, with thanks to Douglas:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A former inmate at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who returned to Afghanistan to rejoin the Taliban as a key commander, was killed along with two fellow fighters in a raid by Afghan security forces, two senior officials said Sunday....

The Taliban commander, Maulvi Abdul Ghaffar, died along with two comrades in a gunbattle Saturday night in Uruzgan, a southern province, said Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan.

He said authorities had received intelligence that Ghaffar was hiding in a village called Pishi and was planning an attack against the government. Security forces launched the raid after surrounding the house where the militants were hiding. No Afghan forces were reported hurt.

The governor said Ghaffar had been a senior Taliban commander in northern Afghanistan and was arrested about two months after a U.S.-led coalition drove the militia from power in late 2001. He was held for eight months at Guantanamo Bay before his release and return to Afghanistan.

Khan and Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali Khan said Ghaffar was then appointed leader of Taliban fighters in Uruzgan, a rugged region believed to be a stronghold of the hardline Islamic militia.

U.S. military officials said they could not immediately confirm Ghaffar had once been in U.S. custody.

Taliban-led insurgents are active in much of southern and eastern Afghanistan and frequently launch attacks on the U.S.-backed government despite the deployment of thousands of U.S. forces to hunt them down.

From Reuters, with thanks to Jeff Lastname:

GAZA, Sept 26 (Reuters) - The Palestinian militant group Hamas threatened on Sunday to target Israelis abroad after blaming Israel for the killing of a Hamas official in Syria.

"We have let hundreds of thousands of Zionists travel and move in capitals of the world in order not to be the party which transfers the struggle. But the Zionist enemy has done so and should bear the consequences of its actions," said the statement by Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.

The statement issued in Gaza and obtained by Reuters mourned the death in a car bomb of Izz el-Deen al-Sheikh Khalil, believed to be in charge of Hamas's military wing outside the Palestinian territories.

Hamas blamed Israel for the assassination.

"The Zionist enemy has opened a new door for the struggle by transferring the battle outside Palestine, in spite of the fact that al-Qassam Brigades has always been keen to keep its rifles directed against the entity in the land they occupy," said the statement, which had been broadcast earlier by the Arabic television station al-Jazeera.

A Hamas representative in Lebanon denied that the group had taken a decision to attack Israeli targets abroad. He and a spokesman in Damascus said Hamas would launch attacks only inside Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Hamas, which has launched scores of suicide attacks against Israel and Palestinian territories, has always maintained that its policy was not to attack Israeli targets worldwide.

In Jerusalem, a senior Israeli government source said that Hamas' pamphlets and Web sites made clear it was engaged in a "total war against Jews" and the latest threat reported by al-Jazeera, whether genuine or not, would not be new.

Also, consider this from the Hamas Charter:

As a result of the fact that those Moslems who adhere to the ways of the Islamic Resistance Movement spread all over the world, rally support for it and its stands, strive towards enhancing its struggle, the Movement is a universal one.

That's from Article 7. Doesn't it mean that the sphere of Hamas' activities is not restricted, but is universal? Yet now they pretend that they are being provoked to act outside of Israel?

Ayman Gomaa of Al Akhbar in Cairo writes in the Sunday Herald that hostage-taking is against Islamic law:

Moderate Muslims are united in believing that the taking and killing of hostages is forbidden by the teachings of Islam. Almost 150 foreigners have been seized in Iraq since April, in the name of Islam and under the pretext of a jihad (holy war) against infidels.

But the majority in the Islamic world describes such operations as a “grave crime which contradicts Islam and its teachings”. In fact, such teachings also forbid Muslims to kill unarmed soldiers in wartime.

Some radical Muslim clerics have scoured Islam’s sacred texts for justifications of violence and found them, but they remain a small yet very vocal minority within Islam. Safwat Hegazy, one of the most popular sheikhs in the Arab world, says: ‘‘Prior to the rise of this minority no-one ever spoke about the taking and maltreatment of hostages.

‘‘Unfortunately, some of the western media rarely give a balanced presentation of Islamic thought; they tend to over-emphasise the extreme radical fundamentalist element and largely ignore moderates within Islam.

"It should be clear that Islam maintains the protection of life and does not sanction any violation against it, irrespective of the people’s religion, race or sect.’’

All right. I would be very happy if this were true, but I have to ask: if it is only an "extreme radical fundamentalist element" that believes this, why does it show up in Islamic legal manuals? Why does Al-Azhar University, the most respected institution in Sunni Islam, endorse 'Umdat al-Salik, a manual of Islamic law that says this: "When a child or a woman is taken captive, they become slaves by the fact of capture, and the woman's previous marriage is immediately annulled" (o9.13)? If the capture of non-combatants is forbidden by Islam, are we to believe that these captured women and children were acting as soldiers? If the vast majority of Muslims reject this sort of thing, why does Al-Azhar say that 'Umdat al-Salik "conforms to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community (ahl al-Sunna wa al-Juma'a)"?

If the killing of these hostages is likewise forbidden, why does the same manual stipulate that prisoners can be killed, exchanged for ransom (why exchanged for ransom, if they are not hostages?), enslaved, or released, depending on what is best for the Muslim community (o9.14)?

The radical extremists, meanwhile, seem to be rather sure of their Islamic bona fides. In Onward Muslim Soldiers I quote the notorious Abu Hamza:

If a kafir person (non-believer) goes in a Muslim country, he is like a cow. Anybody can take him. That is the Islamic law. ...If a kafir is walking by and you catch him, he’s booty. You can sell him in the market. Most of them are spies. And even if they don’t do anything, if Muslims cannot take them and sell them in the market, you just kill them. It’s OK....I say the reality that’s in the Muslim books anyway. Whether I say it or not, it’s in the books.

Do you think that Hamza will believe Gomaa's assertion that it's not in the books, and stop all his preaching and plotting of violence?

Later on in the article Gomaa quotes that great moderate, Qaradawi, who has endorsed suicide attacks:

Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a popular religious leader, has begged the hostage-takers to release Bigley, “whose only fault is having come to Iraq to help rebuild and restore the development”.

Then another Sheikh adds a final canard:

Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, an Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Canada, said: “How unjust it would be to say that Christianity is a religion that teaches violence and bloodshed, by looking at the historical performance of some so-called Christians.”

Oh, Kutty. Please show me anywhere in any Christian authority anything like the statements I quoted from 'Umdat al-Salik above, and I will grant you your point. The absence of such teachings in Christianity is precisely why your point is far from valid, although it is endlessly repeated.

"Unify the times of your prayer calls," said Powell. "Yes, master," said Mubarak. The ridiculousness of this fantasy is only partly rooted in the immense distance between this "reform" and the reform that is really needed in Islam worldwide. From AP:

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - The government said Saturday it wants to unify the calls to prayer that blare separately from thousands of mosque loudspeakers in the capital Cairo, but the idea was criticized by radicals as un-Islamic.

"We need one live voice prayer call from Cairo's 4,000 mosques through a wireless network," Minister of Religious Endowment Mahmoud Hamdi Zaqzouq said.

Newspapers of opposition parties and militants writing in Islamic Web sites criticized the initiative as a step toward banning the dawn prayer.

"I did not expect this fuss in the newspapers, magazines and the satellite television stations as if it was a doomsday," the minister told a news conference....

Prayer calls are blared through loudspeakers of mosques five times a day. Mosques in the same neighborhood in Cairo sometimes call Muslims to prayer two to three minutes apart, causing confusion among the worshippers.

Zaqzouq, whose ministry is in charge of religious affairs, said the government has heard the complaints of Cairenes.

"Everyday I receive complaints from people about the loudspeakers and when I ask them to make official complaints, they say they were afraid of being accused of being infidels or acting against religion," Zaqzouq said.

Zaqzouq defended the unified prayer call, which he said opponents considered a heresy. "In fact, the loudspeakers is heresy because Islam has been doing fine for 1,350 years without loudspeakers," he said.

Hear that, Hamtramck?

Zaqzouq dismissed some opponents' criticism that the initiative was part of a U.S. pressure on Egypt to carry out religious and educational reform.

"The opponents say this initiative is an American one, as if every step of reform should come through instructions from America," Zaqzouq said.

"Dark-skinned youngsters" aren't really the problem. Youngsters, even blonde and blue-eyed ones, who want to turn Switzerland into an Islamic state are. From AFP:

GENEVA - Voters in Switzerland decide Sunday on controversial government proposals to make it easier for the children and grandchildren of immigrants to become Swiss citizens.

The result of the referendum has been predicted to be close despite support from a wide spectrum of the country’s political parties, following a campaign marked by virulent anti-foreigner advertising by right-wing opponents.

Posters have depicted dark-skinned youngsters grabbing Swiss passports while leaflets warned of a massive growth in the Muslim population if the draft legislation to streamline cumbersome procedures for second and third generation immigrants is approved.

Right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) parliamentarian Hans Fehr, who heads the main anti-immigration lobby group, also predicted an ”explosion” in citizenship bids from “problem” youngsters from the Balkans.

“This project is dangerous for Switzerland,” he said.

The SVP became the largest political party in the country at the general election with 27 percent of the vote, and is one of the four governing parties.

Its stance has prompted an outcry from the five other main parties, including the conservative Radicals, which launched an unprecedented joint appeal against hatred in the final week of the campaign.

That they can frame the debate as one over "hatred" shows how completely they have captured the intellectual field. It is not hatred or racism or bigotry for Swiss to be concerned that proponents of Sharia will try to attain sufficient numbers in Switzerland to remake the country.

Not only is this exercise patently offensive to the many people who have sensibly opted out of the moral and intellectual cesspools that are public schools today. This is also part of the continuing story of government officials' steadfast refusal to acknowledge the real source of what is by far the largest and most lethal terrorist threat today (they don't dare have an exercise against a threat from some Islamic jihad group, although that is actually a much more likely scenario than the one they came up with), and (since officials tend to equate homeschooling with Christian fundamentalism, although the two don't necessarily go together at all) of the American intelligentsia's persistent tendency to regard Christian fundamentalism as more dangerous than Islamic radicalism, despite the fact that there is no global Christian fundamentalist network of violent groups, and Christian preachers don't tell their followers to make war and kill unbelievers. From WND, with thanks to Raymond:

In a federally funded exercise to prepare emergency responders for a terrorist attack, a Michigan county concocted a scenario in which public-school children were threated by a fictitious radical group that believes everyone should be homeschooled.

The made-up group was called Wackos Against Schools and Education.

The exercise in Muskegon, Mich., yesterday simulated a situation in which a bomb on board a bus full of children knocks the vehicle on its side and fills the passenger compartment with smoke.

UPDATE: JS points out that the WND story above doesn't have the full quote from the government materials. He sends me to Michelle Malkin at TownHall, who does:

"The exercise will simulate an attack by a fictitious radical group called Wackos Against Schools and Education who believe everyone should be homeschooled. Under the scenario, a bomb is placed on the bus and is detonated while the bus is traveling on Durham, causing the bus to land on its side and fill with smoke."

Why don't they teach them there that Islam is peace? From Itar-Tass, with thanks to Twostellas:

ORENBURG, September 25 (Itar-Tass) - The perpetrators of a series of recent terror strikes in Russia could have been trained in a religious Muslim school in the town of Buguruslan, the northwest of the Orenburg region, a source at the press service of the Federal Security Service department for the Orenburg region told Itar-Tass on Friday.

There is information that some graduates of the Buguruslan Muslim religious school took part in the preparation and perpetration of the terrorist acts in Moscow and the Moscow region as well as the attacks in Nazran and complicity to recruiting militants for illegal armed groups operating in Chechnya....

A mosque and a religious school were set up in Buguruslan, the northwest of the Orenburg region, under the control of the local mufti council in the 1990s. The project was financed predominantly from Saudi Arabia. Most of the teachers at the Buguruslan Muslim school were Arabs.

Srdja Trifkovic zeroes in on media misunderstanding and dhimmitude in this Chronicles piece (thanks to Jim):

On September 19 the Sunday edition of the Chicago Tribune published an article entitled Struggle for the Soul of Islam: A rare look at secretive Brotherhood in America. This 5,000-word feature sought to reveal the existence, methods and ultimate goals of the American offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, "the world’s most influential Islamic fundamentalist group." The Tribune story is important for revealing the magnitude of the threat America faces no less than for revealing the underlying misunderstanding of that threat by the American elite class in general and the media in particular.

The Brotherhood’s slogan, ever since it was founded in Egypt in 1928, has been unambiguous: "Allah is our goal; the Messenger [Muhammad] is our model; the Koran is our constitution; jihad is our means; and martyrdom in the way of Allah is our aspiration." It has had a major impact on Islam in America by establishing mosques, Islamic schools, summer youth camps and Muslim organizations. Since 1993 it has operated under the name of Muslim American Society (MAS), a "charitable, religious, social, cultural and educational not-for-profit organization" with 10,000 members in 53 chapters nationwide.

The article claims that "because of its hard-line beliefs, the U.S. Brotherhood has been an increasingly divisive force within Islam in America, fueling the often bitter struggle between moderate and conservative Muslims." While separation of church and state is a bedrock principle of American democracy, the article says, "the international Brotherhood preaches that religion and politics cannot be separated and that governments eventually should be Islamic."

Other facts of the case concerning the Brotherhood, as revealed by the Tribune, can be summarized in seven key points:

1. Its long-term goal is the establishment of a world-wide Islamic state.

2. It does not seek "the overthrow of the U.S. government" but wants to convert the nation to Islam so that one day Americans will choose to be governed by Islamic law.

3. It endeavors to "save" the younger generations of Muslims in the United States from "melting into the American lifestyle."

4. Its ideologues believe "the Koran justified violence to overthrow un-Islamic governments."

5. Its current leaders praise Palestinian and Iraqi suicide bombers, call for the destruction of Israel and assert that the U.S. has no proof that Al Qaeda was to blame for 9-11.

6. Its leaders scout mosques, Islamic classes and Muslim organizations for those "with orthodox religious beliefs consistent with Brotherhood views."

7. Its proselytizing in the U.S. is backed financially by the Saudi Arabian government, "which shares the Brotherhood’s fundamentalist goals."

The problem with the Tribune story is not faulty research but flawed editorial paradigm. "Muslims [are] divided on Brotherhood," the sub-headline asserts, and the story itself suggests that the group’s goals are "controversial" and that its "hard-line views" have "alienated many moderate Muslims." The claim that the Brotherhood is in tension or even conflict with the Islamic "mainstream" is a figment of the liberal mind, however. In reality the tenets of the Muslim Brotherhood, its methods and its goals—as enumerated by the Tribune—are in full accordance with standard Islamic teaching and practice. Such editorial slant reflects a structural problem: the refusal of the American opinion-forming elite to accept that Islam as such poses a threat, and not some allegedly aberrant variety of it.

The failure to come to grips with the message and implications of Islam, its sacred texts and teaching, its historical record and its contemporary political ambitions, is not limited to the media. It is endemic to the American elite class, which is prone to interpret the world by "Americanizing" reality. All religions are supposedly equally peaceful and tolerant, Islam is a religion, ergo it is also peaceful and tolerant. A blatant casuistic fallacy has become establishmentarian orthodoxy.

The most serious security implication of such mindset is manifest in the failure of the elite to examine the implications of Muslim immigration in the United States. It is evident that the existence of that multi-million-strong Muslim presence in the Western world is essential in providing the terrorists with the recruits, the infrastructure, the mobility, and the relative invisibility without which they would not be able to operate. Terrorist plots involving Muslim immigrants and their children or native-born converts are on the notable increase both in the United States and in Western Europe. That there is a correlation between the presence of a Muslim population in a country and the danger that it or some other Western country will be subjected to a terrorist attack is a demonstrable fact. Muslims are the only group, in Western Europe or North America, that harbors a substantial segment of individuals who share the key objectives with the terrorists, even if they do not all approve of all of their methods.

The Tribune asserts that the Brotherhood is in tension with the Muslim mainstream in America, but that claim is at odds with recent studies. In a survey of newly naturalized citizens, 90 percent of Muslim immigrants said that if there were a conflict between the United States and their country of origin, they would be inclined to support their country of origin. In Detroit 81 percent of Muslims "strongly agree" or "somewhat agree" that Shari’a should be the law of the land. This internal threat to America is increasing. Between 1987 and 1997 8 percent of all immigrants—two million—came from Muslim countries, but that proportion is rapidly increasing. While overall immigration (legal and illegal) has grown by 300 percent since 1970, growth of immigration from the Middle East has gone up 700 percent, from under 200,000 in 1970 to 1.5 million in 2000. Expected number of immigrants from the Middle East in 2010 will be 2,500,000. These figures are matched and likely to be exceeded by the number of Muslim immigrants from the Indian Sub-Continent (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh). Currently Muslims account for close to one-tenth of all naturalizations, and their birth rates exceed those of any other significant immigrant group. Even a conservative estimate of their number of three million, or one-percent of the population, has alarming security implications and the potential for disproportionate growth. A coherent long-term counter-terrorist strategy therefore must entail denying Islam the foothold inside the United States. The application of ideological and political criteria in determining the eligibility of prospective visitors or immigrants has been and remains an essential ingredient of any anti-terrorist strategy, whereby Islamic activism would be treated as eminently political rather than "religious" activity.

Read it all.

While Muslim Council of Britain members try to secure the release of Ken Bigley in Iraq on the grounds that Islam forbids targeting non-combatants, some of their coreligionists back home were plotting to set off a dirty bomb that would probably have killed a non-combatant or two, either in Britain or the USA. From the Times Online, :

ANTI-TERRORIST police have arrested four men suspected of trying to buy material for a radiological “dirty” bomb. Three men were arrested at a hotel in north London, while a fourth was arrested at his home nearby.

It has been reported that the men — one of whom was from Goa, India, another from Somalia and a third from Mozambique — were middlemen acting for a Saudi Arabian.

The men were arrested on Friday after a tip-off from reporters at the News of the World. The suspects claimed to the reporters that their client was willing to pay £300,000 for a kilogram of radioactive “red mercury”.

“It’ll be for use here in the UK or the USA,” the reporters were told.

I briefly discussed the Muslim Council officials trip here. The questions I raised there remain unanswered. From AP, :

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. warplanes, tanks and artillery repeatedly hit at Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror network in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah on Saturday, while two British Muslim leaders came to Baghdad to try to convince his followers to release a British hostage.

The strikes in Fallujah targeted two buildings where militants were allegedly meeting and a cluster of rebel-built fortifications used to mount attacks on nearby Marine positions, the U.S. military said. Doctors said 16 people were killed and 37 wounded.

Well, I guess it's not all that secret if it's in The Telegraph, is it? (Thanks to Beardown and Captain Ed for the link.)

Syria's President Bashir al-Asad is in secret negotiations with Iran to secure a safe haven for a group of Iraqi nuclear scientists who were sent to Damascus before last year's war to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Western intelligence officials believe that President Asad is desperate to get the Iraqi scientists out of his country before their presence prompts America to target Syria as part of the war on terrorism.

The issue of moving the Iraqi scientists to Iran was raised when President Asad made a visit to Teheran in July. Intelligence officials understand that the Iranians have still to respond to the Syrian leader's request.

A group of about 12 middle-ranking Iraqi nuclear technicians and their families were transported to Syria before the collapse of Saddam's regime. The transfer was arranged under a combined operation by Saddam's now defunct Special Security Organisation and Syrian Military Security, which is headed by Arif Shawqat, the Syrian president's brother-in-law.

The Iraqis, who brought with them CDs crammed with research data on Saddam's nuclear programme, were given new identities, including Syrian citizenship papers and falsified birth, education and health certificates. Since then they have been hidden away at a secret Syrian military installation where they have been conducting research on behalf of their hosts.

Read it all. Then read the Captain's comments, which include:

Let's recall that Syria is a member of the UN Security Council, supposedly a member of the body that Kofi Annan says has to approve our actions in defense of our own security ... and also a member of the counterterrorism committee for the UN, a laughably inappropriate assignment. This UNSC member-state allowed Saddam's nuclear scientists to flee just ahead of the invading Americans, which means that Syria knew the Iraqis had not complied with any of the 16 resolutions calling for its disarmament.

No Westerners are safe any longer in Saudi Arabia. From AP, with thanks to JP Mackie:

A Frenchman was shot dead in the Saudi port city of Jiddah early Sunday.

The Saudi Interior Ministry, in a terse statement by an unnamed spokesman, said a French resident of the kingdom was shot dead in the Zahra neighbourhood of the city Sunday morning.

A Saudi security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the victim worked in the French Consulate. He was shot while driving in the Al-Tarikh roundabout area of Jiddah.

The Interior Ministry statement, quoted by the official Saudi Press Agency, said authorities were following up the incident. The report did not name the victim, nor provide details about the shooting.

The motive behind the attack was not known.

Yeah, surrre.

Time (thanks to Unhinged) contends that the whole Cat Stevens imbroglio comes down to a spelling error:

The Yusuf Islam incident earlier this week, in which the former Cat Stevens was denied entry into the U.S. when federal officials determined he was on the government's "no-fly" antiterror list, started with a simple spelling error. According to aviation sources with access to the list, there is no Yusuf Islam on the no-fly registry, though there is a "Youssouf Islam." The incorrect name was added to the register this summer, but because Islam's name is spelled "Yusuf" on his British passport, he was allowed to board a plane in London bound for the U.S. The Transportation Safety Administration alleges that Islam has links to terrorist groups, which he has denied; British foreign minister Jack Straw said the TSA action "should never have been taken."

Maybe this is so. After James Yee was arrested for mishandling classified documents and then prosecutors had to go back to determine whether or not they were really classified, and finally ended up dropping all charges, I am not surprised by federal incompetence. But was Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens barred from Israel also for a spelling error? Or is there more to his case than DHS has yet made public? They still aren't talking.

UPDATE from The Guardian: The Cat is initiating legal action:

Yusuf Islam, the former pop star previously known as Cat Stevens, said today he had begun legal action over what he called the "baseless slur" of the refusal to grant him entry to the United States.

A statement from his lawyers said he wanted to "find out exactly what is going on, and to take all necessary steps to undo the very serious, and wholly unfounded, injustice which I have suffered".

Great. I want to know too. DHS's silence about this only allows its opponents to impute to it the basest of motives, and makes even its friends suspect incompetence (at least).

Moral jihad in Kashmir. This is a taste of what a state will experience whenever jihadists gain the upper hand. From the Times of India, with thanks to Twostellas:

SRINAGAR: Activists of a separatist political party went on a rampage in this summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir Saturday, smashing furniture and property of restaurants accusing them of spreading vulgarity.

The activists said these restaurants had become centres of "obscenity and vulgarity" in Kashmir because they provided separate cabins for their clients.

Dozens of activists of the Democratic Liberation Party formed by Hashim Qureshi stormed some hotels and restaurants in the posh Regal Chowk, Gogjibagh and Rajbagh areas of Srinagar.

They smashed glass, destroyed furniture and even dragged out some restaurant owners and waiters, beating them severely. All this was done ostensibly in the name of checking obscenity and vulgarity.

Qureshi hit the headlines in 1971 when he hijacked an Indian airlines plane to Lahore.

Interestingly, the activists included many females who carried banners denouncing vulgarity.

"These cabin restaurants have become the centres for vulgarity in public life. We had been requesting their owners to shut down the cabins but they did not heed our warnings," said a masked activist of the outfit as he dragged a waiter out of a restaurant in the Regal Chowk area.

The police later arrested the activists to prevent them from continuing with their destruction. But some police personnel ended up beating two photographers shooting the event.

Hmm. I wonder why they wouldn't want pictures of this sort of thing getting out.

When the separatist campaign broke out 15 years ago, the separatist Dukhtaran-e-Milat (Daughters of Faith) group and Allah Tigers forced a shutdown on bars, wine shops, cinema halls and fashion and video parlours in the Kashmir Valley to check what they said were obscenity and promiscuity. The campaign also targeted women who ventured out of their homes without wearing the veil.

As the separatist grip on society loosened with the passage of time, some cinema halls re-opened in Srinagar, and video and beauty parlours re-started their businesses.

I'm off to Fox News for one of those blurry fast appearances. If you tune in around 3:10, you may be able to catch a glimpse of me.

Just in from Reuters:

DUBAI (Reuters) - An Islamist website which has posted unsubstantiated claims about hostages in the past says that a group led by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has killed British construction engineer Ken Bigley.

The Foreign Office said it believed the website lacked credibility and it had nothing to confirm such a claim.

Alezah website, which earlier this week carried a widely dismissed statement claiming the deaths of two Italian aid workers, did not accompany its brief chat room posting with a statement or video tape from Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group.

"Tawhid and Jihad announced the killing of the Briton and kidnapping of seven British soldiers," said a statement posted on Alezah's chat room, adding that a video would be posted soon.

Finally, a new book clears it all up for us. From Straits Times:

Entitled Moderation In Islam In The Context Of Muslim Community In Singapore, the book will be launched today by Mufti Syed Isa Mohamed Semait, the highest Muslim religious authority here....

Responding to calls that moderate Muslims should speak up against acts of terrorism, some 130 religious scholars deliberated on issues and definitions that were often misunderstood. For example, the meaning of extremism and the understanding of 'jihad' are discussed in the book.

Understanding jihad as only engaging physically in a 'holy war', was a misinterpretation and led to extremism and ideologies alien to the original teaching of Islam, said Ustaz Murat.

Instead, jihad has to be understood in its 'broader meaning, which is to make the best effort for Allah', including self-improvement, community development or missionary work.

Do they really think that jihadists don't know that? In Onward Muslim Soldiers, I detail how the great jihad theorists Hassan Al-Banna and Abdullah Azzam actually dismiss this argument as being based on weak hadith -- that is, traditions of Muhammad that are most likely forgeries. They strongly argue that the proper meaning of jihad is warfare, and that those who argue otherwise are either ignorant or malevolent. So now the Singapore mufti is going to explain blandly that jihad means striving to be good, and not just warfare? I expect that the operatives of Jemaah Islamiyah and other radical Muslim groups in that area are well familiar with that idea already, and will regard this book with contempt.

Until the mufti actually confronts and refutes their own Islamic arguments, they will still be able to recruit freely using them.

Parvez Ahmed of CAIR complains in the Seattle Times (thanks to Peter Rockas) that his religion is misunderstood, and that he gets hate mail (sometime I'll have to show you my email box, Parvez):

Each round of beheading brings with it condemnations from Muslim groups, both in America and abroad. Muslim groups keep condemning the brutal acts of terror, partly because it is the right thing to do but also partly to protect their community from backlash.

Each condemnation from Muslim groups is inevitably preceded by bone-chilling hate mail from people who, like the terrorists, hide behind anonymity. It is almost mind-numbing to think that both groups believe God is on their side.

Islam does not teach such wanton violence no matter what the level of grievance is for the aggrieved. There is no doubt that Iraqis and Chechens have a lot to be angry about. They have not just paid in blood but in lost human dignity. But their legitimate grievances do not justify the illegitimate and barbaric acts of beheading innocent souls and planting bombs in schools.

The fact that many, if not most, Americans view Islam as the enemy is not surprising. This unfortunate view is perhaps a reaction to the actions of a deranged group of Muslims who kill indiscriminately, contrary to Islam's central message of sanctifying and purifying life.

But equally undeniable is the fact that current attitudes toward Islam are a result of generations of ignorance about a world religion, which the West has demonized for too long and thus finds itself ill-prepared to understand, much less deal with the legitimate aspirations of its many adherents.

This misunderstanding is also at the heart of repeated demands made to the American-Muslim community to condemn every gruesome act that takes place overseas. It is not enough that all major American-Muslim groups condemned the 9/11 terrorist attacks less than three hours after the planes hit the first tower. It is not enough that a major American-Muslim group took out an ad in The Washington Post condemning terror. It is not enough that each gruesome act that shocked Americans — from the murder of Daniel Pearl to the bombing of a seder party to the beheading of Nick Berg to the massacre in Beslan — has equally shocked Muslims and brought swift and unequivocal condemnations. It is not enough that an online petition, "Not in the Name of Islam," garnered over 700,000 signatories.

What do repeated condemnations achieve anyway? They have not satisfied our many detractors and more importantly they have failed to make any impression on the terrorists. Does someone legitimately believe that a faceless, stateless and mindless group of people will be swayed by intellectual appeals to reason?

Well, sir, one reason why these condemnations are not satisfactory either to your "detractors" or to the terrorists is because they fail utterly to address the Islamic justifications that buttress the terrorists' actions. You go on to ask rhetorically: "If bone-chilling cries of a helpless and defenseless human being moves nothing in their souls, what meaning do words from sacred texts have for them?"

Actually, sir, I think that words from sacred texts, if they really refute the terrorists' own words from the same sacred texts, are likely to move them more than the bone-chilling cries of a helpless and defenseless human being. Why? Because they have repeatedly declared that they are working from those sacred texts: that those sacred texts command them to do such things to helpless and defenseless human beings. The problem is not that they won't listen to sacred texts. The problem is that they are listening so hard to sacred texts that command such actions. Your own "words from sacred texts" don't refute their own arguments from the same texts, and that, sir, is the real reason why your attempts are ineffective.

I have yet to see a "moderate Muslim" even attempt to confront and refute the real Islamic arguments that terrorists use to justify their actions. Mr. Ahmed, why don't you be the first?

Among the root causes are perceptions that U.S. policy turns a blind eye to the legitimate aspirations of Muslims who desire to live in freedom — with dignity, and in control of their own destiny. Our continued support of brutal dictatorships, even as we toppled one, have a lot to do with the current rage.

Muslim societies also need to be introspective of their socio-political-religious structures and examine how the situation evolved to a point that life has lost all its meaning. Blaming America first is not going to absolve them of their own shortcomings.

Indeed. Nor are hollow claims that appeals to Islam won't move these men whose whole lives are, by their own account, based on Islamic principles. Why don't you confront those principles, Mr. Ahmed?

As the jihad escalates there. From AFP, with thanks to Nicolei:

BANGKOK - More than 1,000 teachers and education officials have sought transfers out of southern Thailand following the latest shooting of a teacher by suspected Islamic separatists, an official said. At least 200 teachers in Pattani, one of three provinces wracked by violence this year, have petitioned the authorities for immediate transfers after a deputy school principal was gunned down on Wednesday and left fighting for his life, a Pattani education department official said. About 1,000 others in Narathiwat and Yala provinces are also believed to have requested transfers.

The authorities are unable to provide sufficient security in the region, where more than 310 people including teachers have been killed this year, the official said.

'We are terrified. We don't know what will happen to us,' she said.

'Even though I was born here, I want to leave and work somewhere else because we are living in fear here.'

The penalty for leaving Islam is death. That is not "extremism"; it is mainstream, traditional Islamic law. From AsiaNews, with thanks to Kemaste:

Dhaka (AsiaNews/Ucan) -- A Bangladeshi Christian doctor who converted from Islam 15 years ago has been killed by men local media described as militants.

The Bengali daily newspaper "Janakantha" reported that "Islamic warriors" killed Doctor Gani Mondol on the night of Sept. 18 as he was walking home from work in Jamalpur district, 140 kilometers north of Dhaka. The daily mentioned that local people cited the manner in which Mondol was slain -- his throat was slit -- as consistent with the way the "warriors" operate.

Mondol was buried two days earlier; a Protestant pastor conducted the funeral rites and burial, attended also by Muslims.

Some local Muslims did not take kindly to his conversion 15 years ago, and that they had been spreading rumors about him. However, she reported that Mondol's two elder brothers, both Muslims, maintained good relations with him.

The government doctor embraced Christianity through affiliation with the Baptist Church, but also has associated with the Catholic Church in recent years. She explained that his relations with both Protestant and Catholic Churches enabled him to serve local people through Church relief and social projects.

May his memory be eternal.

"In a certain sense, the West has become part of the global jihad, to spread jihad around the world." No kidding. From WND:

U.S. officials say Saudi Arabia has eliminated al-Qaida leadership at home but continues to fund the terrorist network abroad, reports Geostrategy-Direct, the global intelligence news service.

Officials said Saudi Arabia has captured or killed many al-Qaida leaders over the last three months. Saudi security forces, with support from U.S. intelligence and law enforcement, raided al-Qaida strongholds in Buraida, Mecca, Jeddah and Riyadh, they said.

"Saudi Arabia is working hard to shut down the facilitators and financial supporters of terrorism, and they have captured or killed many first-tier leaders of the al-Qaida organization in Saudi Arabia," the White House said in a Sept. 11 statement. "Today, because Saudi Arabia has seen the danger and joined the war on terror, the American people are safer."...

But U.S. officials said Saudi Arabia has failed to stop financing to al-Qaida. Despite U.S. appeals, Saudi charities continue to relay funds to al-Qaida abroad, particularly in financing Arab operatives in Africa and Chechnya.

In September, the U.S. Treasury Department designated the U.S. and Comoros branches of the Al Haramain Foundation, a state-sponsored Saudi charity, as financiers of terrorism. The department also designated a director of Al Haramain in the United States, Suliman Al Buthe, as a financier and facilitator of terrorism.

So far, more than a dozen branches of Al Haramain have been listed as facilitators of terrorism. These include the former director of the foundation, Aqeel Abdul Aziz Al Aqil. Al Haramain has dismissed the U.S. designations.

Officials said the latest designation came after more than two years of cooperation between U.S. and Saudi officials investigating Al Haramain's financial activities. The FBI and other federal agencies have also investigated Al Haramain branches in the United States.

"The investigation shows direct links between the U.S. branch and Osama Bin Laden," the Treasury Department said. "In addition, the affidavit alleges the U.S. branch of AHF criminally violated tax laws and engaged in other money-laundering offenses."...

"The Saudis have been jolted by the al-Qaida threat," said Dore Gold, a senior Israeli government consultant and president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. "At the same time, they are ideologically committed to supporting jihad externally."...

Yehudit Barsky, an analyst with the American Jewish Committee, cited U.S. reports that Riyadh has pumped $70 billion in the propagation of Wahabi ideology around the world since the 1970s. Barsky said the Saudi goal was to bolster radical Muslims in their effort to turn the West into part of the Islamic world.

"In a certain sense, the West has become part of the global jihad, to spread jihad around the world," she said.

The family of Ken Bigley and the Muslim Council of Britain are working in Baghdad to save the poor man's life. From the New York Post:

September 25, 2004 -- WASHINGTON — Britain took its desperate campaign to save the life of hostage Kenneth Bigley directly to the streets of Baghdad yesterday, distributing 50,000 leaflets carrying a message from his anguished family for help. The pamphlets were being handed out in the western part of Baghdad, near where the 62-year- old civil engineer was captured from his home — and where the headless bodies of his two American housemates and co-workers were discovered.

"This is a personal appeal from a family whose son is missing," the message written in Arabic says on the leaflets, according to the British Foreign Office.

"A family man called Ken Bigley is being held somewhere in your community. We are Ken's family. Ken's mother, brothers, wife and child love him dearly," the leaflet continued.

"We are appealing for your help. We are waiting for him to come home."

The leaflet gives a phone number of the British Embassy in Baghdad and urges anyone with information to call.

The Muslim Council of Britain also announced it was sending a team of negotiators to Baghdad to try to gain Bigley's freedom.

"We are calling on those who have taken him to please return him to be merciful. Our religion, Islam, does not allow us to harm the innocent," said the group's spokesman, Inayat Bunglawala.

Will that argument really wash with the Tawhid and Jihad group? Do they really think someone like Bigley is innocent, and that Islam forbids them to kill him? I think at this point, given all that has happened over the last few months, anyone who actually believes that is quite severely out of touch.

An appalling story recording the rapid advance of dhimmitude in Spain: the Zapatero government is going to cut state funding for the Catholic Church -- while increasing it for mosques. From the Telegraph, with thanks to LGF:

The Spanish government sparked a furious row yesterday after it emerged that it had drawn up a timetable to halve state funding of the Roman Catholic Church and to ban crucifixes from public buildings. The Socialist government has already pedged to confront the Church ideologically and fiscally and to transform Spain into a fully secular society by scrapping the Church's "privileged position in society".

The newspaper El Mundo reported yesterday that the government has now drawn up a timetable to break the bonds, removing any lingering hopes that it might reach an accommodation.

The government plans to put an end to the arrangement whereby Spaniards can offer a percentage of their taxes to the Church. This arrangement contributes £54 million a year to Church funds.

Governments in the past have made up the remainder directly or indirectly through government funds paid to Church organisations. This funding, which was agreed in accords signed 17 years ago, is also now under review.

El Mundo complained in an editorial yesterday that the government's "secularism should not be used as a weapon against half the country". Although only a minority are regular churchgoers Spain continues to be "a sociologically Catholic country", it said. In a reference to the Spanish Civil War the editorial said: "If we should learn anything from recent history that it is a mistake to use secularism as a weapon against believers."...

Further enraging conservatives, the government has drawn up plans to finance the teaching of Islam in state-run schools and to give funds to mosques on the grounds that it will create greater understanding of the country's one million Muslims.

From AFP, with thanks to Nicolei, who asks: "Why don't they also deal with the violent Qur'anic verses that are being quoted by the terrorists to justify the terror?"

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - Western countries have fuelled international terrorism through the invasion of Iraq and their stand on the Palestinians, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Thursday.

Then what fueled jihad from the 7th century to 1948? Why did Islamic armies invade and conquer North Africa and the Middle East? Why did they hold large parts of India and Europe for centuries?

From AP, :

NEW YORK - The former director of a basement mosque that prosecutors described as a "cesspool of fraud" has been convicted of defrauding the government by processing hundreds of bogus applications for people hoping to enter or stay in the United States.

Muhammad Khalil, 63, was convicted Wednesday of conspiring to submit the applications on behalf of aliens under the federal Religious Worker Program and to obtain Social Security cards in false names.

He could face more than five years in prison at his sentencing Jan. 18, prosecutors said Thursday.

In closing arguments, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Burns told a jury that Khalil's "unbridled greed generated ... hundreds of thousands of dollars off the backs of aliens desperate to stay in this country any way they could."

Prosecutors allege Khalil's mosque, run out of his variety store's basement, was actually a roach-infested front that rarely saw worshippers.

Defense lawyer Roger Stavis insisted in his closing that Khalil operated a legitimate mosque and that prosecutors relied on a "rogues gallery of witnesses" to discredit him.

"These people are lying," he said.

Of course. Do they ever tell the truth?

This conference tried to move from Berlin to Austria; no dice. From TotallyJewish, with thanks to Twostellas:

The Austrian government has vowed it will not host an Islamic conference this weekend after organisers were banned from holding the summit by authorities in Germany.

The event, which was billed as “the first Arab Islamic congress in Europe”, attracted controversy over the call for “resistance and intifada” in Iraq and Palestine featured on its website.

The site also announced support for the “struggle against American-zionist hegemony and liberation”.

Austria’s pledge not to allow the summit came in a meeting between Rabbi Marvin Heir, founder of human rights group, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, and the country’s president, Heinz Fischer.

Professor Francesco Zannini, who teaches at the Pontifical Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies in Rome, ignores the Qur'an's injunction to "strike the necks" of unbelievers (Sura 47:4) and finds "no justification" in Islam for the recent spate of beheadings. From AsiaNews, with thanks to JRH:

Rome (AsiaNews) - If killing enemies is a precept of Islam, then "live-broadcast decapitations" are the result of a "radical leap" in fundamentalism. According to Professor Francesco Zannini, an expert on Islam, this type of killing finds justification nowhere in the Koran nor in any traditional maxim. The choice to decapitate and use telecommunications is a way "to bring the West to its knees...By cutting off a person's head, [fundamentalists] inflict, thanks to mass media, mass destruction by striking the psychology and the fear of the Western world".

Professor Zannini, who teaches at the Pontifical Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies in Rome (PISAI, according to its Italian acronym), says that fundamentalist terrorists in Iraq "have taken an ideological leap: they have redefined the figure of the "enemy". For traditional Islam, women, children, farmers, young people could not be killed. But, by now, for these groups "the enemy has become the West as such. Every Western, even if a child, is someone who "attacks Islam", a militant that wants to destroy Islam and, as such, must be annihilated. It is an ideological framework that justifies total Jihad".

I'm amazed that this man can teach Arab and Islamic Studies and not know that many traditional and contemporary Islamic legal sources justify actions against women and children if they are seen as aiding the war effort. It prohibits the killing of women and children "unless they are fighting against the Muslims" ('Umdat al-Salik o9.10, cf. al-Mawardi, al-Akham as-Sultaniyyah, 4.2).

According to Zannini, faced with this latest evolution in extremist Islam, the world of Islam is appalled, even the fundamentalist Islam of the Muslim Brothers of Egypt. And many Muslims see the urgent need to give new ideals to young Muslims "to avoid a future of darkness".

Great. Let's see some evidence of this.

Zannini says:

Decapitations exist in the history of Islam. But decapitations, cutting off heads are not a punishment foreseen by Islamic rules. It may have existed in the past but it was not a specific punishment. And above all it is not specified as for use against enemies. There are texts that order the killing of enemies of Islam, but they do not order decapitations. The Koran does not mention it. Nor do the hadith (the Prophet’s maxims). But the choice to decapitate and the use of media to broadcast such killings are made precisely to attract attention and to intimidate. Kidnappers are using decapitations to bring the West to its knees. They are seeking to attack people psychologically. Cutting the head of one person, they are inflicting, thanks to mass media, mass destruction by striking the psychology and the fear of the Western world. Strangely enough, the kidnappings themselves, the hostages, etc., are more part of the Western world, which fundamentalists use to have greater media impact.

"Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks..." (Sura 47:4). The Qur'an nowhere mentions it, eh?

These terrorists are going against every traditional rule. The killing of women is explicitly condemned by Islamic tests. The most accredited hadith (the collection of the Prophet's maxims) say that women, children, clergy, even farmers cannot be killed, nor can young men of military age who are not in the military.

"It is not permissible to kill women or children UNLESS THEY ARE FIGHTING AGAINST THE MUSLIMS" (Umdat al-Salik, 09.10). Emphasis, as you may have guessed, added.

Even some members of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt have admitted their astonishment. The Muslim Brothers see that the Iraqi terrorists go partly by their ideology, but they themselves feel that, to some extent, "they are giving Islam bad publicity". Iraqi groups have by now surpassed the horror of Al Qaeda. In the Islamic world, the attack against the Twin Towers was seen as a start to Jihad. But, in Iraq, it is a question of total and idealess slaughter.

Now wait a minute, Professor. The Twin Towers attack was the start of jihad? But there were lots of innocent non-combatants in the Towers. Why, then, didn't the Muslim world react with revulsion then, if what you say about non-combatants in Iraq is true?

A good summation of Saudi intolerance and State's continuing dhimmitude from Jeff Jacoby at Town Hall (thanks to JP Mackie):

Last week, the State Department added Saudi Arabia to its list of the world's most religiously intolerant nations. It was a step long overdue. Section 402 of the International Religious Freedom Act requires the department to designate each country that has "engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom" as a "country of particular concern for religious freedom." Few nations deserve that designation more than Saudi Arabia. But for reasons of politics and corruption, the law's clear mandate was always flouted before.

For years, the Saudi regime was exempt from harsh criticism in official US circles - an immunity bought with the hundreds of millions of dollars Riyadh lavished on US policymakers, ambassadors, and lobbyists. Former CIA officer Robert Baer laid out many of the disgraceful details in his recent bestseller, "Sleeping With the Devil."

But that changed after 9/11, when a group of mostly Saudi terrorists sent thousands of innocent victims to their deaths. Countless Americans realized for the first time that Saudi Arabia, with its Wahhabi strain of Islam - a radical, aggressive, and poisonously intolerant creed - was the incubator of the world's most virulent anti-American savagery. The old speak-no-evil wall of protection began to crack. One result is the addition of Saudi Arabia to the State Department's list.

"Freedom of religion does not exist," the department states in its report on Saudi Arabia. "It is not recognized or protected under the country's laws, and basic religious freedoms are denied to all but those who adhere to the state-sanctioned version of Sunni Islam. Citizens are denied the freedom to choose or change their religion, and non-citizens practice their beliefs under severe restrictions. Islam is the official religion and all citizens must be Muslims."

The report notes that "conversion by a Muslim to another religion is . . . a crime punishable by death if the accused does not recant. . . . The government prohibits non-Muslim religious activities. Non-Muslim worshippers" - millions of foreign-born Christians and Hindus work in Saudi Arabia - "risk arrest, imprisonment, lashing, deportation, and sometimes torture for engaging in religious activity that attracts official attention."

That is clear enough as far as it goes, but Ambassador John Hanford, whose office compiled the report, took pains to reassure the Saudis that it would go no further. Asked at a press briefing whether the listing of Saudi Arabia should be seen as a "pressure tactic," Hanford replied:

"Oh, no, no. Uh-uh. No. These designations are ones that we make with a certain degree of sorrow because these are valued relationships, particularly in a case such as Saudi Arabia. But the US Congress has laid out for us a standard that we feel we must follow."

Secretary of State Colin Powell likewise did his best to allay any Saudi worries. "This is not to punish them, or in any way to show displeasure," he assured Al Arabiya, the Arab satellite channel. "One should not see this as anything but two friends talking to one another about a problem of mutual concern."

Yes, we see that you persecute Jews, Christians, and Hindus mercilessly, but we don't want you to think we're displeased.

More tolerance and gentleness toward the dhimmis. From the BBC, with thanks to Belisarius:

A Christian teacher has gone into hiding in the northern Nigerian city of Kano after offending her Muslim pupils. During an economics class, the teacher reprimanded a teenage girl for not concentrating and threw the book she was reading onto the floor.

This outraged students as it was a part of the Koran, Islam's most holy book. Police arrived to calm their protests after all the school's teachers fled.

Earlier this year Kano was the scene of bloody anti-Christian riots.

In danger

Police remain on duty at the Ace Academy secondary school and will do so until the tension eases, Assistant Superintendent Baba Mohamed told the BBC.

The name of the teacher, who had only been working at the school for two weeks, is not being released by police.

They fear that if people knew where she was, her life would be in danger.

How many youngsters in the Netherlands will grow up to live "in the spirit of jihad"? From Expatica:

AMSTERDAM — A last will and testament was found when an 18-year-old man was arrested for allegedly plotting terrorist attacks in the Netherlands. The list of potential targets included the Dutch Parliament, Schiphol Airport and the nuclear reactor Borssele, a court in Rotterdam was told on Thursday.

The former student of Moroccan ancestry wrote in the will that he wants his newborn son to live "in the spirit of Jihad", an Islamic holy war, newspaper NRC reported on Friday.

Samir A. was arrested on 30 June this year on suspicion of involvement in an armed robbery at an Edah supermarket. Police seized floor plans of possible terrorist attack targets in a raid of his home. The plans also contained details about security....

Reports from the Council for Child Protection and the Forensic Psychiatric Service have described A. as someone who "gradually fell under the spell of ideas about the oppression of Islam". They also said that A. — who was a minor at the time of his arrest — is "adult in life" and is "fearless and fatalistic".

The latest on the Damra proceedings. From the Cleveland Plain Dealer, with thanks to Fred:

A federal judge Thursday stripped the citizenship of convicted Muslim leader Imam Fawaz Damra, setting in motion what could be years of fighting over his deportation.

Federal prosecutors assured Damra that they would hold off on the deportation proceedings and not detain him until after the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decides the imam's appellate case. Deportation proceedings cannot begin until the 6th Circuit decides his appeal, the judge ruled.

U.S. District Judge James Gwin made the citizenship ruling three days after he sentenced Damra to two months in prison and four months of home confinement for hiding his ties to terror. Damra must report to prison Nov. 22, after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The process of appealing the conviction is likely to be slow. Many decisions take as long as 14 to 18 months. U.S. Attorney Gregory White said his office may ask for an expedited appeal.

"Whatever we can do to get this done quickly, we will," White said. "The main thing for us from the beginning was to get this individual out of the country. He doesn't deserve to be a U.S. citizen."

Attorney David Leopold filed papers to represent Damra in federal immigration court on the day of sentencing, but said there's nothing to do unless Damra loses his appeal. If that happens, Damra's immigration case moves forward.

In that event, Leopold said, Damra's immigrant status should revert to what it was before he was granted citizenship - that of green-card holder, or legal permanent resident.

It's a common misconception, Leopold said, that people stripped of their citizenship "are shown the door" out of the United States.

"There are many, many people in this country who are not citizens," Leopold said. "As legal permanent residents, they live here for many years."

From Compass Direct:

September 16 (Compass) — Two Pakistani children were snatched away from their Christian mother by their Muslim father on Monday, secretly spirited out of the Lahore court premises where they had been brought for a court-supervised visitation session.

Abdul Ghaffar kidnapped his five-year-old son and three-year-old daughter on September 13, fleeing from the Lahore Family Court with them around noontime, shortly after he had begun a two-hour visit alone with them.

There has been no trace since of the whereabouts of the children or their father, who is from Gujranwala, 40 miles north of Lahore. “Their mother is very sad and very worried about the children,” a Christian lawyer involved in the case told Compass today.

The presiding judge over Ghaffar’s child custody case has declared that the abduction constituted contempt of court. He promptly filed criminal charges of kidnapping on behalf of the court against Ghaffar under Section 364 of the penal code.

In addition to the kidnapping charge, Judge Khizer Hayat Ghondal of the Lahore Family Court issued a warrant ordering local police officials to produce the two children before his court by next Monday, September 20.

Second Kidnapping

For the children’s Christian mother, Maria Samar John, it was the second traumatic kidnapping in her life.

Seven years ago, as a teenager of 17, she had been abducted and held prisoner for five months until her Muslim captors literally sold her to Ghaffar for the rupees-equivalent of $2,000.

When she was forcibly married to Ghaffar, her name was changed to Kalsoom and she was forced to thumbprint a certificate of so-called “conversion” to Islam. For the next two and one-half years, she was a virtual slave in Ghaffar’s home in Gujranwala, locked in the house and beaten by both her husband and mother-in-law for refusing to say the Muslim prayers.

She had borne a son and was pregnant for the second time when she found a mislaid housekey and managed to flee her captors to return home. Soon afterwards, her husband sent men to recapture her. At the same time, her own father and brothers refused to shelter her and the baby, declaring she had shamed their family and was now a Muslim.

Safe House

So in December 2000, the Lahore-based Center for Legal Aid Assistance and Shelter (CLAAS) provided lodging for Maria and her children in a safe-house location. Christian lawyers affiliated with CLAAS successfully won her lawsuit for a legal divorce from her forced marriage in February 2003.

Read it all. It's a harrowing story.

I respect Stephen Schwartz's work exposing the depredations of the Wahhabis, but when I saw this piece in the Weekly Standard, I thought it important to note that the interpretations Schwartz attributes to the Wahhabis by no means originated with them. Why? Because otherwise people will be deceived into thinking that if we can stop the Wahhabis, the problem of radical Islam will disappear. Unfortunately, it isn't so. The problem is older, wider, and deeper than the Wahhabi phenomenon.

Here is the relevant part of Schwartz's piece with commentary from me:

The Wahhabi Koran is notable in that, while Muslims believe that their sacred text was dictated by God and cannot be altered, the Saudi English version adds to the original so as to change its sense in a radical direction. For example, the opening chapter, or surah, is known as Fatiha, and is recited in Muslim daily prayer and (among non-Wahhabis) as a memorial to the dead. The four final lines of Fatiha read, in a normal rendition of the Arabic original (such as this translation by N.J. Dawood, published by Penguin Books): Guide us to the straight path, / The path of those whom You have favored, / Not of those who have incurred Your wrath, / Nor of those who have gone astray.

The Wahhabi Koran renders these lines: Guide us to the Straight Way. / The Way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who have earned Your Anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians). The Wahhabi Koran prints this translation alongside the Arabic text, which contains no reference to either Jews or Christians.

There is nothing to indicate to the uninformed reader that these interpolations, printed in parentheses, are absent from the Arabic. The reader encountering Islam for the first time, as well as the Muslim already indoctrinated in Wahhabism, is led to believe that the Koran denounces all Jews and Christians, which it does not.

All right. But the renowned Qur'anic commentator Ibn Kathir (1301-1372) says that the two paths (those with whom Allah is angry and those who have gone astray) "are the paths of the Christians and Jews, a fact that the believer should beware of so that he avoids them. The path of the believers is knowledge of the truth and abiding by it. In comparison, the Jews abandoned practicing the religion, while the Christians lost the true knowledge. This is why 'anger' descended upon the Jews, while being described as 'led astray' is more appropriate of the Christians."

This is, of course, the sort of thing that makes Ibn Kathir beloved of Wahhabis today, but remember: Wahhabism emerged in the eighteenth century, 400 years after Ibn Kathir. So his commentary demonstrates that this understanding of the Fatiha wasn't invented in 2004 by the Wahhabis, but existed in Islam long before the Wahhabis existed.

Distortions of the text stating or implying that God has condemned the Jews and Christians are scattered throughout the Wahhabi Koran. Notably, they invert the meaning of the several verses that express respect for the "People of the Book," the Jews and Christians. Thus, verse 2:62 in its authentic form states: Believers, Jews, Christians, and Sabaeans--whoever believes in God and the Last Day and does what is right--shall be rewarded by their Lord. (The Sabaeans were followers of an ancient religion impossible to identify clearly today.) In the Saudi English translation, this passage is footnoted to declare, No other religion except Islam will be accepted from anyone, although no such statement appears in the Arabic.

In this the Wahhabis are merely making reference to another verse of the Qur'an: "If anyone desires a religion other than Islam (submission to Allah), never will it be accepted of him; and in the Hereafter He will be in the ranks of those who have lost (All spiritual good)" (Sura 3:85).

It is common teaching in Islam that this verse clarifies the meaning of 2:62 by emphasizing that only Jews, Christians and Sabeans who accept Islam will enter Paradise. Ibn Kathir also quotes 3:85 in his discussion of 2:62, and adds: "Allah does not accept any deed or work from anyone, unless it conforms to the Law of Muhammad -- that is, after Allah sent Muhammad. Before that, every person who followed the guidance of his own Prophet was on the correct path, following the correct guidance and was saved."

The standard translation of verse 3:113 reads: There are among the People of the Book some upright men who all night long recite the revelations of God and worship Him, who believe in God and the Last Day, who enjoin justice and forbid evil.

The Saudi translation again inserts verbiage hostile to non-Muslims. In the Wahhabi Koran, the upright Jews and Christians turn out to be those who convert to Islam: those enjoining Islamic Monotheism and following Prophet Muhammad and not opposing Prophet Muhammad. To repeat, where the Arabic text actually praises pious Jews and Christians, the Wahhabi English version praises only Jews and Christians who become Muslims.

For this verse, Ibn Kathir cites several even earlier authorities to support what Schwartz represents as the newly-minted Wahhabi view: "Muhammad Ibn Ishaq and others, including Al-Awfi who reported it from Ibn Abbas, said; 'These Ayat [verses] were revealed about the clergy of the People of the Scriptures who embraced the faith....This Ayah means that those among the People of the Book whom Allah rebuked earlier are not at all the same as those among them who embraced Islam."

The original verse 5:65 says of the Jews and Christians: If they observe the Torah and the Gospel and what is revealed to them from their Lord, they shall enjoy abundance.

The Wahhabi edition adds that, in addition to Jews' observing the Torah and Christians' the New Testament, both must accept the Koran--that is, become Muslims--which nowhere appears in the Arabic text and conflicts with traditional Islamic theology. Mainstream Islam treats the Torah, the New Testament, and the Koran as different books. Wahhabism, by contrast, treats the Jewish and Christian scriptures as primitive editions of the Islamic text.

Once again, Ibn Kathir explains that this verse means that "had the People of the Book believed in Allah and His Messenger [that is, Muhammad]...We would have removed the dangers from them and granted them their objectives."

Stephen, if you are reading this, please give me some references to the "traditional Islamic theology" that conflicts with this idea, and I will put them up on this site.

And, inevitably, the Wahhabi Koran adds language aggravating Muslim-Jewish controversies. Verse 17:1 refers to the night journey, an out-of-body experience in which the Prophet Muhammad was taken on a magical steed to a site called in the standard text the farther Temple. The Wahhabi translation alters this to stake the Islamic claim to Jerusalem. It refers to Muhammad's journey by night from Al-Masjid-al-Haram (at Makkah) to the farthest mosque (in Jerusalem).

Ibn Kathir: "...'to Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa,' means the Sacred House which is in Jerusalem..."

Nor does Schwartz mention the many other verses in the Qur'an which support this "Wahhabi" reading. A sampling:

The Jews call 'Uzair [Ezra] a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah's curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth! (9:30)

Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. (9:29)

And this one, in which the first speakers are the Jews, thus affirming the old "deicide" canard, even while denying the deicide itself:

That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah"; but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not: Nay, Allah raised him up unto Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise; And there is none of the People of the Book but must believe in him before his death; and on the Day of Judgment he will be a witness against them...

Jesus will be a witness against the Jews and Christians on the Day of Judgment -- and yet we are supposed to believe that the Qur'an regards Jews and Christians with respect, and that that was Islamic tradition until the Wahhabis came along? Both the Qur'an and Islamic tradition reveal otherwise.

I agree with Schwartz that these sentiments need to be repudiated. But it can't be done simply by blaming them on the Wahhabis. Their broader roots in the Qur'an and Islamic tradition must be confronted--and repudiated along with the Wahhabis.

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer discusses an often hidden aspect of jihad: rape. In FrontPage this morning:

“Each of us was raped by between three and six men….One woman refused to have sex with them, so they split her head into pieces with an axe in front of us.”

This happened in Darfur, from which Sudanese military personnel actually airlifted women to Khartoum to serve as sex slaves.

Meanwhile, Indira Dzetskelova, the mother of one of the child hostages in Beslan, Russia, reports that “several 15-year-old girls were raped by terrorists.” Her daughter “heard their terrible cries and screams when those monsters took them away.”

This indicates that there are two things the massacre in Beslan have in common with the ongoing massacres in Darfur: both, no less than the 9/11 attacks, are examples of Islamic jihad terrorism, and both are characterized by rape.

The jihadist element has been made clear by the ringleaders of both atrocities. Sudanese General Mohamed Beshir Suleiman recently declared: “The door of the jihad is still open and if it has been closed in the south it will be opened in Darfur.” In southern Sudan, of course, the jihad was waged against Christians; in Darfur, the targets are black African Muslims whose Islamic bona fides don’t satisfy Khartoum. As for Beslan, the Chechen jihadist leader Shamil Besayev warned the Russian government last winter: “Praise Allah, we are dreaming of dying in jihad, we are dreaming of dying on the way of Allah, so that we could earn paradise and mercy of Allah.”

What does rape, then, have to do with these religious conflicts? Unfortunately, everything. The Islamic legal manual ‘Umdat al-Salik, which carries the endorsement of Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, stipulates: “When a child or a woman is taken captive, they become slaves by the fact of capture, and the woman’s previous marriage is immediately annulled.” Why? So that they are free to become the concubines of their captors. The Qur’an permits Muslim men to have intercourse with their wives and their slave girls: “Forbidden to you are ... married women, except those whom you own as slaves” (Sura 4:23-24).

After one successful battle, Muhammad tells his men, “Go and take any slave girl.” He took one for himself also. After the notorious massacre of the Jewish Qurayzah tribe, he did it again. According to his earliest biographer, Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad “went out to the market of Medina (which is still its market today) and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for [the men of Banu Qurayza] and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches.” After killing “600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900,” the Prophet of Islam took one of the widows he had just made, Rayhana bint Amr, as another concubine.

Emerging victorious in another battle, according to a generally accepted Islamic tradition, Muhammad’s men present him with an ethical question: “We took women captives, and we wanted to do ‘azl [coitus interruptus] with them.” Muhammad told them: “It is better that you should not do it, for Allah has written whom He is going to create till the Day of Resurrection.’” When Muhammad says “it is better that you should not do it,” he’s referring to coitus interruptus, not to raping their captives. He takes that for granted.

With Muhammad revered throughout the Islamic world as al-insan al-kamil, the perfect man, the rapes of Darfur and Beslan are nothing surprising. What is surprising, or ought to be, is the silence from the Islamic world about the rapes in both cases. Where are the reformers who will dare to say that Muhammad’s example must not be followed in this case? Who will acknowledge that the world has developed principles of human rights that must supercede those forged in seventh-century Arabia? Where are the Western spokesmen who are not so in thrall to multiculturalism that they will condemn rape that is justified according to Islamic religious principles? The much-lionized “Muslim Martin Luther,” Tariq Ramadan, now banned from entering the U.S., can so far only bring himself to call for a moratorium, not a definitive ban, on stoning for adulterers. Rape of captives? His sentiments are not known. Where is the Muslim Solzhenitsyn, who will speak honestly about the aspects of Islam that so desperately need reform, and call for the overhaul that the system so obviously needs?

The whole world is waiting. But for the girls and women of Darfur and Beslan, it is already too late.

Just in from CNN, :

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Muslim lecturer, Ali al-Timimi, was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday, on charges including counseling people to engage in a conspiracy to levy war against the United States, to aid the Taliban and to use firearms in violent crimes.

The United States alleges al-Timimi, who lectured at a prominent Northern Virginia mosque until the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, told followers attending a meeting that Islamic history justifies attacks on civilians, that those fighting Americans in Afghanistan would die as martyrs and how to reach a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.

"We are going to deny all the charges," al-Timimi's attorney, James Vann, told CNN.

"He has a record of lectures going back years and years, 15 to 20 years preaching non-violence and cooperation between the Muslim world and America."

The indictment is part of a government case in which 11 men were charged last year as part of a "Virginia jihad network." The 11 faced accusations of helping the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba and using paintball games as a way to train for possible terrorist activity. Nine of the men either pleaded guilty or were convicted. Al-Timimi was not charged in the indictment.

A provocative bit of anti-dhimmitude. From AFP:

PARIS, Sept 23 (AFP) - French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin reiterated France's support for Turkey's eventual membership of the European Union but warned Ankara might not yet be ready to accept Western values, in an interview published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal Europe.

"We don't think we should tell Turkey that the doors of Europe are forever closed to it," Raffarin told the newspaper, but then said: "Do we want the river of Islam to enter the riverbed of secularism?"...

Raffarin said Turkey had made some progress on the road to preparing its entry into the 25-nation bloc, but suggested that the mainly Muslim nation was perhaps not ready to embrace certain Western ideals.

"The issue isn't the commitments made by Turkey's government, it's the attitudes of Turkish society," the French prime minister explained.

"We're not doubting the good faith of Mr Erdogan, but to what extent can today's and tomorrow's governments make Turkish society embrace Europe's human rights values."

French President Jacques Chirac has said he believes the path to Turkish membership is "irreversible", but cautioned that the accession negotiations could last years.

The tiny minority of extremists sells DVD's of their atrocities. And evidently there is a substantial market for them. From AFP:

Hostage throat-slitting videos rub shoulders with pornography in the stalls of central Baghdad's infamous "thieves market", as Islamic radicals immortalise their acts of terror in grisly films like Monday's beheading of a US national.

The latest video, posted on Monday night on an Islamic website, showed five masked gunmen reading out their Islamic verdict against their American captive Eugene "Jack" Armstrong and then slicing off the victim's head as he cried out in pain.

Once such gory videos are posted on the Internet it does not take long for them to make their way to the packed stalls of central Baghdad's Bab al-Sharqi marketplace where consumer appetite is hungry for bloody spectacle....

Behind a plastic case, a dull picture of a local singer on the cover, are concealed the grisly exploits of the Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) group of alleged Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.

The telltale sign is a little white rectangular sticker on the sleeve, on which is written by hand in Arabic, "Al-Assifa" (storm).

The televisions show images, some of them previously aired on the Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera, of hostages being murdered or attacks on US forces in the rebel stronghold of Fallujah.

The graphic footage is accompanied by a martial beat and thunderous songs about "resistance" and "honor".

In one video, an Egyptian hostage — his hands tied behind his back — sits in front of a banner with the Tawhid wal Jihad emblem.

He makes his confession, swearing he planted electronic bugs in Iraqi cities so US warplanes could pick out their targets. He confesses he provided women to coalition soldiers.

Standing behind him, three masked men prepare to deliver their judgement. Two grip Kalashnikovs, while the third brandishes a knife and reads out his verdict.

"The spies are sent from Satan's caravan," the man says. And in a sudden motion, the Egyptian's throat is sliced and his head cut off amid cries of "Allah Akbar" (God is Greatest).

"The Nepalese, the Bulgarians and others will be subjected to the same fate," warns the executioner.

Pedestrians pass by these grotesque flickering images. No one says a word. Asked where they got the discs, the vendors refuse to answer.

A step toward the explanation I asked for, but not quite it yet. From AP:

WASHINGTON — The singer formerly known as Cat Stevens is forbidden from flying into the United States because of his alleged association with possible terrorists, U.S. officials said Wednesday in explaining why a London-to-Washington flight carrying the peace activist was diverted....

Meantime, there was confusion about how someone on the government's "no-fly list" was allowed to board a plane. Airline personnel are supposed to check passengers' names against people on the list. Anyone who matches is to be kept off flights.

United spokesman Jeff Green said the airline followed procedures in checking Islam's name, and it wasn't on the list.

"The information did not match," Green said.

Green and Homeland Security Department spokesman Dennis Murphy said the airline and the government are working together to figure out what happened. It's possible Islam's name was spelled differently on the list, Homeland Security officials conceded.

Under rules imposed following the Sept. 11 attacks, once an international flight is bound for the United States, passenger information is forwarded to U.S. officials. The amount of data varies, but can include name, address, flight details, seat location, form of payment and meal preference.

U.S. authorities use the information to run a more thorough check against government watch lists. That's when authorities discovered that Islam was on the plane....

U.S. authorities provided few details about Islam's alleged connection to terrorism.

Homeland Security spokesman Brian Doyle would only say that the intelligence community has recently obtained information that "further heightens concern" about Islam.

"Yusuf Islam has been placed on the watch lists because of activities that could potentially be related to terrorism," Doyle said. "It's a serious matter."

A second government official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said U.S. authorities think donations from Islam may have ended up helping to fund blind sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, convicted for a plot to bomb New York City landmarks, and Hamas, a Palestinian militant group considered a terrorist organization by the United States.

In July 2000, Islam was deported hours after arriving in Jerusalem. A local paper reported then that the government claimed he had delivered tens of thousands of dollars to Hamas during a visit in 1988. Islam denied ever knowingly supporting Islamic terrorists.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations at a news conference Wednesday said the deportation "sends a message to the Islamic world that even those who seek peace and condemn terror are not fit to enter the United States."

But of course CAIR said nothing about why he was barred from Israel, or whether he really supported Hamas and Omar Abdel Rahman, etc.

Yesterday on a Florida radio show the host asked me why, if Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens really has terrorist ties, has the UK not prosecuted him. Excellent question. We have seen dhimmitude from Jack Straw before, but still, this incident shows the need for Homeland Security to make public at least some of its information about this man: it is important for the public to be able to have confidence in its decisions. From AFP, with thanks to Kevin:

BRITISH Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has complained to his American counterpart Colin Powell about the deportation from the US of former pop star Cat Stevens as a possible terrorist risk. Mr Straw, in New York for United Nations meetings, had spoken to the US Secretary of State about the imminent removal of the British musician, his spokesman said.

"He heard the reports of the incident involving Cat Stevens," the spokesman said. "He did say to the Secretary of State that this action should not have been taken."

Stevens, who sold many millions of records before abandoning his pop career when he became a Muslim in the late 1970s, changing his name to Yusuf Islam.

He was due to be sent back to Britain later today.

Yesterday, a United Airlines flight from London to Washington was diverted to Bangor, Maine, after US authorities discovered that Islam was aboard.

His name appeared on several terrorism "watch lists" and he was rejected entry by US authorities.

"Why is he on the watch lists? Because of his activities that could be potentially linked to terrorism," US Homeland Security spokesman Brian Doyle said yesterday.

"The intelligence community has come into possession of additional information that further raises our concern."

Mr Islam was denied entry to Israel in 2000 over suspicions that he had given money to the radical Palestinian group Hamas. The singer has consistently denied supporting terrorism.

But unnamed British officials claim there is no evidence known to the country's intelligence services that the former singer posed any danger.

The decision was also slammed as divisive by Islamic groups in Britain.

Mr Islam, who has been a vocal campaigner for the establishment of faith-based Muslim schools in Britain, was "a very moderate man", the Muslim Council of Britain's deputy general secretary, Mohammad Abdul Bari, said.

"We are really appalled at what is happening," said Bari, who later held talks on the issue with junior foreign office minister Douglas Alexander.

"It is a slap in the face of sanity. If prominent, well-known personalities are treated like this, then how can there be bridge building?"

Daniel Pipes (thanks to Andy for the link) uncovers some disquieting information about the renowned "moderate Muslim" Tariq Ramadan:

The Italian magazine Panorama interviewed Ramadan and posted the result on Sept. 13. Dissatisfied, Ramadan wrote the magazine, alleging that it misquoted him. Unfortunately for Ramadan, the interview with him was taped, so Panorama replied by publishing the following update by Silvia Grilli in its Sept. 23 issue (not yet online), titled "The art of ‘explaining' the killing of Jews":

L'arte di ‘spiegare' l'omicidio degli ebrei

After the publication of the last issue with his interview, Ramadan sent this letter: "Panorama attributes me unacceptable sentences that I never pronounced and that would lead people to believe that ‘it is comprehensible to kill children.' Nothing can justify the killing of children and the innocent and these acts are in contradiction with the principles of Islam. My condemnation is clear."

The interview with Ramadan was recorded. Here is the full transcript of his answer to the question of whether it is right to kill children and Israeli civilians because they are considered soldiers.

I don't believe that an eight year old child is a soldier. These acts are condemnable; therefore one has to condemn them in themselves. But I say to the international community that they are contextually explicable, and not justifiable. What does this mean? It means that the international community today has placed the Palestinians in a situation where they are delivered political oppression, which explains (not justifying it) that at a certain point people say: we don't have arms, we don't have anything, and so we cannot do anything other than this. It is contextually explicable but morally condemnable.

Saying that killing Israeli children is "contextually explicable" is tantamount to a "clear condemnation"? Justifying that there is no choice but to kill is a "clear condemnation" of the culture of death? Is it a "clear" position to say that an Israeli eight year old child is not a soldier, but his parents who ride the bus and get blown-up are soldiers? Who then are the "innocent" in Ramadan's eyes? Why did he not reply to this question, as did Magdi Allam [a prominent Italian journalist of Egyptian Muslim origins], that "human life is sacred"?

Comment: It's case closed on the matter of both Ramadan's being moderate or truthful. He is neither one nor the other. (September 23, 2004)

More dhimmitude from one of the world's chief dhimmis, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. All this sounds great and high-minded until one actually studies the statements of radical Muslims and realizes that they are people who will accept negotiation only as an interim step to gather strength to fight again. From the BBC, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

The Spanish prime minister has called for an international effort to resolve cultural and religious differences between the Western and Muslim world.

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said "an alliance of cultures" was necessary in a world facing conflict because of poverty and Islamic radicalisation.

Mr Zapatero, at the UN General Assembly meeting, said the alliance could deepen political and cultural relations.

He also defended his decision to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq.

Dialogue

Mr Zapatero said he had asked the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, to set up a high level group to study the creation of an alliance of civilisations.

Speaking on the fringes of the UN meeting in New York, Mr Zapatero said: "This alliance would have as its fundamental objective to deepen political, cultural and education relations between those who represent the so-called Western world and, in this historic moment, the area of Arab and Muslim countries."

The BBC's Michael Buchanan says the Spanish prime minister is trying to position his country as a bridge between Europe and north Africa.

Mr Zapatero said the world could become a clash of civilisations, with poverty and Islamic radicalisation tearing Western and Muslim countries apart.

The alliance he envisages could therefore prevent hate and misunderstanding from developing by looking at political and cultural issues - everything from joint peace keeping missions to interfaith dialogue.

A remarkable story of dhimmitude at Reuters from HonestReporting.com, with thanks to many, many people who sent this to me:

As Islamic terror continues to spread worldwide, one major news outlet decided that enough is enough ― it's time to call terrorism by its name. CanWest, owners of Canada's largest newspaper chain, recently implemented a new editorial policy to use the 'T-word' in reports on brutal terrorist acts and groups.

So when CanWest's National Post published a Reuters report on Sept. 14, they exercised their right to change this Reuters line that whitewashes Palestinian terror:

... the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which has been involved in a four-year-old revolt against Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. (Jeffrey Heller, 9/13 'Sharon Faces Netanyahu Challenge')

to this, more accurate line:

... the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a terrorist group that has been involved in a four-year-old campaign of violence against Israel.

Reuters didn't like the adjustment, and took the unusual step of officially informing CanWest that if it intended to continue this practice, CanWest should remove Reuters' name from the byline. Why? The New York Times reported (emphasis added):

"Our editorial policy is that we don't use emotive words when labeling someone," said David A. Schlesinger, Reuters' global managing editor. "Any paper can change copy and do whatever they want. But if a paper wants to change our copy that way, we would be more comfortable if they remove the byline."

Mr. Schlesinger said he was concerned that changes like those made at CanWest could lead to "confusion" about what Reuters is reporting and possibly endanger its reporters in volatile areas or situations.

"My goal is to protect our reporters and protect our editorial integrity," he said.

[Schlesinger repeated this statement in a recent radio interview with CBC, when he described the 'serious consequences' if certain 'people in the Mideast' were to believe Reuters called such men 'terrorists.']

This is a stunning admission ― Reuters' top international editor openly acknowledges that one of the main reasons his agency refuses to call terrorists 'terrorists' has nothing to do with editorial pursuit of objectivity, but rather is a response to intimidation from thugs and their supporters.

So will they stop trying to impose it on the rest of Nigeria? From Afrol News, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

After twelve Northern Nigerian states since 2000 have introduced Islamic law, or Shari'a, the Muslim population majority is mostly disillusioned. They had hoped Shari'a courts would be better than Nigeria's old and discredited justice system, but many by now find that only the harsh aspects of Shari'a are implemented while generosity and compassion is overlooked, a new report says.

North Nigerian state governments and Shari'a courts had failed to respect international human rights standards, according to Peter Takirambudde of the US group Human Rights Watch. "They have also disregarded what many Muslims argue are key principles of Shari'a itself. They have concentrated on the harsh aspects of Islamic law while ignoring its principles of generosity and compassion," Mr Takirambudde added.

The US human rights group today in London presented a 111-page report on the use of Islamic law in Nigeria. The report documents how human rights are systematically violated as a consequence of the Shari'a courts' practices, while admitting that similar abuses are at least as common in Nigeria's non-Shari'a legal system.

The report claims that Shari'a courts in Northern Nigeria have "failed to respect due process rights, resulting in discriminatory and harsh sentences." Further, northern state governors had used Shari'a as "a political tool while condoning serious abuses."

Terence Jeffrey asks: Will promoting democracy in Islamic lands really make us safer from terrorism? Clearly, the answer is no, as he demonstrates from the career of Chechnya's Shamil Basayev. Only a thoroughgoing worldwide repudiation of the Islamic principles that lead to terrorist violence will suffice. From Town Hall, with thanks to EPG:

By turns, Shamil Basayev has been a terrorist in the murderous mold of Osama bin Laden, a top candidate for the presidency of Chechnya and the Chechen prime minister. Now he is back in his Osama-bin-Laden mode.

As Americans debate our future foreign policy -- in an era when terrorism is the greatest threat -- we would do well to study the Russian experience with Basayev. It raises the question: Will promoting democracy in remote lands be effective in defending America against terrorists?

Basayev took credit last week for the hostage-taking raid on the school in Beslan, Russia. He also claimed responsibility for other recent terror attacks: the suicide bombing of two Russian jetliners, a suicide bombing outside a Moscow subway station and another bombing at a Moscow bus stop.

For Russians, it was no surprise Basayev was behind the Beslan raid. He had done this before.

In "Chechnya -- Calamity in the Caucasus," co-authors Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal, who worked as reporters for the Moscow Times during the first Russo-Chechen war, describe the June 14, 1995, raid Basayev personally led against the Russian town of Budennovsk. Basayev and his raiders shot up the police station, rounded up civilians -- "many of them old men and women and housewives sitting at home" -- and blockaded themselves in a hospital with more than 1,000 hostages.

He was contemptuous of innocent life. "I thought, what difference is there, whatever means I use, if they are Russian, they are jackals. My people are more important to me than these Russian children or women," Gall and de Waal quote him as saying.

After the Russians failed to free the hostages through force, Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin agreed to allow Basayev and his terrorists safe passage back to Chechnya in a convoy of buses. They took hostages with them as human shields.

A year later, Russia agreed to withdraw its forces from Chechen territory and allow a Chechen presidential and parliamentary election. But the Russians did not recognize Chechen independence, saying Chechnya's status should be decided in five years.

Now, Basayev, the bloody terrorist, became Basayev, the presidential candidate.

His main opponent was Aslan Maskhadov, the one-time Soviet colonel who had commanded Chechen forces in the war. Both candidates stood for Chechen independence, but Maskhadov was deemed the "moderate."

Basayev ran on his war record. "Candidate Basayev," reported the Philadelphia Inquirer, "has compiled what amounts to a greatest-hits video of his audacious war exploits and turned it into a campaign advertisement. At any hour of the day or night, people in this ruined land can tune to a pro-Basayev television station and watch graphic reruns of the most savage moments in Chechnya's 21-month-long war with Moscow, all starring the controversial rebel. There's Basayev, the daring commander, laying siege to the Russian town of Budennovsk, where civilian hostages were doused with gasoline."

One Basayev supporter told Moscow Times correspondent Gall: "I voted for Basayev because I want to show Russia that they may see him as a terrorist, but we do not."

This tiny 60- to 65% minority thinks highly of Osama, too. From ANI, with thanks to KnowIslam:

Six in ten Pakistanis have come out in support of suicide attacks against "enemies" of Islam.

Going by a report prepared by the Washington-based PEW Research Centre, though most people in Muslim-dominated nations are divided over violence against civilian targets, 41 percent of those interviewed in Pakistan said it was justifiable in the defence of Islam.

According to the Daily Times, which quoted the report extensively, 47 percent of the Pakistanis said that Palestinian bombings against the Israelis was justifiable, while 36 percent said it was not.

Six in 10 older Pakistanis said that the suicide attacks against American troops in Iraq was correct, compared with the 44 percent of those who are younger saying it was not....

Surprisingly however, Osama Bin Laden is viewed with almost universal disdain throughout Europe and Turkey, but regarded favourably by 65 percent of the Pakistanis polled.

Turkey's recent dalliance with criminalizing adultery seems to have awakened a bit of long-slumbering EU anti-dhimmitude. From the BBC, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

"If this central element of reform, that is the new civil code, is not adopted negotiations cannot start," said a Commission spokesman on Monday.

The Commission is due to present a report on 6 October on whether Turkey has met the criteria set by the EU.

A move to criminalise adultery in the penal code has caused much controversy.

Last week Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan hit out at the European Union, telling it not to interfere in his country's internal affairs.

He spoke after the European Commission warned that Turkey's bid to join the EU could be complicated by its delay in passing the penal code.

The bill was withdrawn on Thursday because of the adultery row.

Time pressure

EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen summoned the Turkish ambassador on Saturday to ask for clarification from his government on Ankara's position on the code.

But Commission spokesman Jean-Christophe Filori said that as far as he knew Ankara had not yet answered, Reuters news agency reported.

The Turkish bill was intended to bring Ankara's laws closer to those of EU member states and was seen as crucial to its chances of EU entry.

However, the entire package of measures is now subject to review and may not be ready in time for the commission's report on Turkey's progress.

Mr Filori rejected Mr Erdogan's criticism of the EU's position, saying "it is not intereference in Turkish affairs, it is the rule of the game if a country wants to be an EU member".

The clause re-criminalising adultery is part of a package of proposed changes to overhaul Turkey's 78-year-old penal code. The reforms also include:

• Tougher penalties for convicted torturers. Torture in police stations and prisons would be punished with 12 years in jail

• Clauses on genocide, crimes against humanity and people-trafficking - the first time such crimes are mentioned in the Turkish penal code

• Stronger laws against rape and so-called "honour" crimes against women.

The dilemmas of defense play out in the Netherlands. Why not ask the leaders of the Muslim community there to formulate what they believe would be an adequate defense against the specter of terrorist attacks? That could be an extremely enlightening exercise. From AP, with thanks to Nicolei.

After the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, Dutch intelligence claimed to have uncovered a series of Islamic terrorist plots, prompting many people here to wonder: "Are we next?"

The terror fears have spawned a raft of harsh security measures - from forcing citizens over 13 to carry identity cards, to authorizing police to stop and search people with no apparent cause - that challenge the image of the Netherlands as one of the world's most progressive nations.

Some people are already talking about a serious erosion of civil liberties.

"The government is playing a game of panic football, where they move from one expansion of the law to another in reaction to the latest development," said Jessica Silversmith, a spokeswoman for the National Anti-Discrimination Bureau, a nongovernment organization.

While there is no equivalent to the U.S. Patriot Act in Europe, most countries have taken anti-terrorism steps that curtail civil liberties: Britain has held foreign suspects without charge, while Germany began religious profiling of suspects in the days after Sept. 11.

In France, with its history of attacks from Algerian dissidents, special judges have wiretapping powers similar to those granted to prosecutors under new Dutch laws.

But the new power of the law enforcement agencies seem an odd fit here in the Netherlands - a country with a let-live attitude that was the first to tolerate marijuana use and to legalize euthanasia and gay marriage.

Among other measures implemented in reaction to the threat of terror in the Netherlands are relaxing rules on wiretapping and monitoring Internet traffic, and tripling the amount of time suspects can be held without charge from three days to ten.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, 40 Muslims have been arrested on suspicion of terrorism-related activity - only two have been convicted of any crime. The latest arrests came in July, but the detentions were only disclosed this month.

Many Muslims claim the anti-terror laws - and the willingness of authorities to enforce them - are part of a wider problem of xenophobia that has gripped the nation in recent years.

Said Bouddouft, chairman of a support group for North African immigrants, said the security laws are a "cause for concern," citing several instances where Muslims seemed to have been victims of racial profiling.

Here is Daniel Pipes with a good piece on profiling, and why it is counterproductive to search for terrorists among the Pennsylvania Amish.

I have been saying this for several years now, in three books, scores of articles, and many public addresses. Now here is Daniel Pipes with more. He outlines the material in a recent Chicago Tribune article about the Muslim Brotherhood in the USA, and its goal to establish an Islamic state here, and then draws an important conclusion. From FrontPage, with thanks to EPG:

The hardest thing for Westerners to understand is not that a war with militant Islam is underway but that the nature of the enemy’s ultimate goal. That goal is to apply the Islamic law (the Shari‘a) globally. In U.S. terms, it intends to replace the Constitution with the Qur’an.

This aspiration is so remote and far-fetched to many non-Muslims, it elicits more guffaws than apprehension. Of course, that used to be the same reaction in Europe, and now it’s become widely accepted that, in Bernard Lewis’ words, “Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century.”

Because of the American skepticism about Islamist goals, I postponed publishing an article on this subject until immediately after 9/11, when I expected receptivity to the subject would be greater (it was published in November 2001 as “The Danger Within: Militant Islam in America”). I argued there that

The Muslim population in this country is not like any other group, for it includes within it a substantial body of people—many times more numerous than the agents of Osama bin Ladin—who share with the suicide hijackers a hatred of the United States and the desire, ultimately, to transform it into a nation living under the strictures of militant Islam.

The receptivity indeed was greater, but still the idea of an Islamist takeover remains unrecognized in establishment circles – the U.S. government, the old media, the universities, the mainline churches....

In suburban Rosemont, Ill., several thousand people attended MAS’ annual conference in 2002 at the village’s convention center. One speaker said, “We may all feel emotionally attached to the goal of an Islamic state” in America, but it would have to wait because of the modest Muslim population. “We mustn’t cross hurdles we can’t jump yet.”

These revelations are particularly striking, coming as they do just days after a Washington Post article titled “In Search Of Friends Among The Foes,” which reports how some U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials believe the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence “offers an opportunity for political engagement that could help isolate violent jihadists.” Graham Fuller is quoted saying that “It is the preeminent movement in the Muslim world. It’s something we can work with.” Demonizing the Brotherhood, he warns, “would be foolhardy in the extreme.” Other analysts, such as Reuel Gerecht, Edward Djerejian, and Leslie Campbell, are quoted as being in agreement with this outlook.

But it is a deeply wrong and dangerous approach. Even if the Muslim Brotherhood is not specifically associated with violence in the United States (as it has been in other countries, including Egypt and Syria), it is deeply hostile to the United States and must be treated as one vital component of the enemy’s assault force.

In fifteen airports. From Reuters, with thanks to Teri:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Undercover investigators were able to slip explosives and weapons past security screeners during tests at 15 U.S. airports, USA Today reported on Thursday, citing an investigation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Results of the department's tests conducted during the second half of 2003 were presented in a classified report to members of Congress while a less detailed version was released by the agency's inspector general on Wednesday, the newspaper said.

Rep. John Mica, chairman of a House aviation subcommittee, confirmed that the classified report showed weapons and explosives got by screeners, the newspaper reported.

USA Today quoted the Florida Republican as saying that the results on weapons were "bad enough," but the results on explosives were "absolutely horrendous."

"Unfortunately, it may take some horrific wake-up call (for security shortfalls) to get attention," Mica told the newspaper.

That may go for more than just security screening.

"The verdict of Allah Almighty." Tell me again how God is glorified by brutality and murder. Dangerous workers on school and water projects here neutralized; the mujahedin must be congratulating each other tonight. From AP:

CAIRO, Egypt - An Internet statement purportedly by a group which claimed to have kidnapped two Italian aid workers in Iraq said Wednesday it had killed the women. The Web site posting could not be immediately verified....

The Italians, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both 29, were seized from their Baghdad offices by armed militants on Sept. 7. They worked for "Un Ponte Per ..." ("A Bridge to ...") and were involved in school and water projects in Iraq.

"We in the Jihad Organization of Iraq declared that the verdict of God Almighty against the two Italian prisoners has been carried out, by slaughtering them," the statement said.

Meanwhile, we're getting a lot of email tonight, in English and Italian, assuming we are a pro-jihad site on the side of these bloody barbarians. Please note that this is an anti-jihad site, dedicating to raising public awareness of the global jihad in the name of equality of human rights for all.

Airman Ahmad Al Halabi accepts a plea bargain arrangement. From the Sacramento Bee:

Al Halabi, who once faced charges that could have resulted in the death penalty, agreed to a plea bargain that involves substantially reduced charges, admitting he was guilty of illegally taking photographs, lying to investigators and improperly handling sensitive materials....

Al Halabi, a Syrian native and naturalized U.S. citizen, was accused of attempting to spy for Syria while stationed at the military prison camp at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He was working as a supply clerk at Travis in November 2002 when he was transferred to Guantánamo to serve as a translator for suspected al-Qaida and Taliban terrorists being held there. He was arrested in July 2003, en route to Syria, where the government contends he planned to pass on secrets to unidentified foreign enemies. The defense maintains it was nothing more than a long-planned trip, well-known to his supervisors, to marry and bring his bride back to live with him at Travis.

The defense has argued Al Halabi was wrongly singled out because he is Muslim and of Middle Eastern origin and, in a series of pretrial hearings, presented testimony and other material contending that the government fabricated and overstated evidence in its zeal to make a case.

Last month, the Air Force concluded that most of the documents found in his possession had been wrongly labeled classified and were not, in fact, secret.

From Nettavisen, with thanks to Andy:

The audience got more than they bargained for when they attended Sunday’s game between Djerv 2 and Hetlevik at Askøy outside Bergen.

Several of the Djerv 2 players acted aggressively towards both other players and the audience. According to the local paper Bergensavisen, one person was injured after being knocked to the ground by a Djerv player.

Violent threats

The sudden outburst of rage was also directed against several audience members, several received death threats and several were threatened with decapitation. Some of the women in the audience were threatened with rape.

The police had to be called to calm people down.

Neither the players nor the leaders want to comment the incident, but it has been reported to the police.

Section leader Roald Bruun-Hanssen said to the paper that it is not the first time this year that Djerv 2 has been in the media because of negative behavior. Earlier this year, a keeper from the team attacked a referee. He was later refused to play soccer for the rest of the year....

However, he does not want to condemn the entire team which mainly consist of immigrants.

«Most of the people on the team are there to get a positive experience and to play soccer,» Bruun-Hanssen said. «Now Djerv has to present its view of the case, and then we have to evaluate possible sanctions against players and the club afterwards. But at the same time as it is important to send a clear message, we are also forced to try to aid Djerv as a club so that they can incorporate persons with multicultural background into the club in the most sensible way.»

Allah is glorified yet again: one killed and fourteen wounded at a bus stop. From AP:

JERUSALEM - A female Palestinian suicide bomber blew herself up near a crowded bus stop in Jerusalem on Wednesday, killing one person and wounding at least 14 others, Israeli authorities said.

The explosion occurred at a busy intersection in French Hill, a Jewish neighborhood close to the West Bank. The neighborhood has been attacked by suicide bombers in the past.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent group loosely linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the attack in a phone call to The Associated Press.

Moshe Suissa of the Jerusalem fire department said the attacker tried to approach a hitchhiking post used by Israeli soldiers when a border police officer spotted her.

"He tried to stop her and she blew up," Suissa told Channel Two television.

The blast destroyed the bus stop, leaving shards of glass scattered in the road as the smell of burnt rubber wafted in the air.

Israeli rescue workers reported one dead and 14 wounded, at least one in serious condition.

It was the first Palestinian suicide bombing since Aug. 31, when a pair of attackers killed 16 people in the southern city of Beersheba, and the first to strike Jerusalem since Feb. 22.

Palestinian militants have staged more than 100 suicide bombings inside Israel during four years of fighting. Women have carried out at least eight of the attacks.

From the New York Daily News, :

WASHINGTON - After mocking President Bush as an arrogant "Christian dog," terrorists beheaded American hostage Eugene Armstrong in Iraq yesterday and posted a horrific video of his murder on an Islamic Web site.

A helpless and clearly terrified Armstrong was forced to await his brutal death until a preening militant read a taunting, hate-filled statement for the camera. Then the masked militant cut Armstrong's throat, sawed off his head and held it aloft.

The militant group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility and threatened to behead another hostage - American Jack Hensley or Briton Kenneth Bigley - unless Iraqi women held by the U.S. were released within 24 hours.

The chilling, nine-minute video, similar to one of the beheading of American Nick Berg last April, began with the blindfolded and bound Armstrong, of Hillsdale, Mich., sitting on the floor wearing an orange jumpsuit. He swayed from side to side, then back and forth.

Behind him stood five masked and black-clad terrorists, four carrying assault rifles. The banner of al-Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad terror group was tacked to a wall.

"Now, you have people who love death just like you love life. Killing for the sake of God is their best wish, getting to your soldiers and allies are their happiest moments, and cutting the heads of the criminal infidels is implementing the orders of our lord," the statement said.

"Oh, you Christian dog Bush, stop your arrogance."

From WFTV.com, :

KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- Channel 9 has discovered another controversial toy. A local mother took a closer look at the toy and realized something wasn't right. It's a toy cell phone with a picture of Osama bin Laden on it with one word above it, "King."

The toy cell phone is tiny, only about two and a half inches long, and the picture of bin Laden is even smaller. But it infuriated a Kissimmee mother.

Channel 9 has discovered there is a connection between this toy and another toy we've told you about.

Two-and-half-year-old Carolina Vega's dad bought her a cellophane package of toys. He saw the doll, colorful sunglasses and lollipops in the package. He did not spot the picture of the most hated man in America.

Carolina's mom noticed it after she found the little cell phone in her car.

"Who would sell this knowing America went through this tragedy? Who would put this on a toy for a kid to play with," she questions.

The girl's father bought the package at a Hispanic grocery store on 17-92 in Polk County. The owner tells Channel 9 he never noticed exactly what the deliveryman was hanging.

A company called El Club Mexicano, based in Ashboro, N.C., packages and distributes the toy packs. A spokesman tells Channel 9 they stopped shipping them two months ago when they discovered the picture of bin laden. They say they received their shipment from L and M Exports in Miami.

You may remember the name. That's the same company that shipped a toy depicting a plane spinning between two identical towers, and the serial number on the toy was 0911.

"Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great" (Qur'an 4:34).

From Reuters:

An Iranian woman, beaten every day by her husband, asked a court to tell him only to beat her once a week....

"Just tell him to beat me once a week ... Beating is part of his nature and he cannot stop it," Maryam told the court.

The Tehran court found the man guilty and banned him from beating the wife, the paper said.

"If I do not beat her, she will not be scared enough to obey me," the husband said.

More on the conspiratorial mind of the Muslim world. From the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Hugh Fitzgerald:

Dr. Nawwal Nur and her son Hazem Saleh Abu Isma'il, who preach Islam in the US, were interviewed about 9/11 by Saudi Iqra TV on July 15. The host asked if the attacks had harmed Americans' image of Islam.

Nur explained, "Not at all. It has not even been proven that Muslims committed it. There hasn't even been an investigation They are confused about what happened That is why more people converted to Islam."

Her son added: "I am one of those who believe these events were fabricated from the outset as part of the global groundwork for the distortion of Islam's image Even before these events took place there was preparation for them ."

On the third anniversary of 9/11, Arab and Iranian TV have been commemorating the attacks by airing such shows.

Aside from the occasional denunciation of the attacks, the murder of 3,000 Americans is often observed in the region's government-controlled TV with statements made by leading professors, religious leaders, government officials, and even Muslim-Americans that are often conspiracy theories stating that Arabs and Muslims were not involved and that the US government or Jews are the true culprits.

Many reasons are given as to why the US government would attack its own country.

Syrian researcher Tayyeb Tizini, interviewed on Iran's al-Alam TV on August 16, claimed that an intifada against globalization had broken out, and that in order to thwart it America attacked itself on 9/11:

"According to American and European documents, including the investigation of President Bush and his aides about 9/11, I'd like to say that 9/11 was an American action. These Americans began to understand that the new order must be marketed by a great event that would create new dangers for the world. 9/11 was for this purpose ."

Former dean of humanities at Egypt's 'Ein Shams University, Mustafa Shak'a was interviewed by Iqra TV on June 16, where he attributed the 9/11 attacks to the US and the Jews:

"To this day, we don't know who attacked the US on September 11. Why is the attack attributed to [Osama] bin Laden although it has not been proven that he was involved in the operation? It is way above his capabilities.

"Those who created him have made him a legend. The operation was 100% American, and this is not the place to elaborate, but what proves the operation was a Jewish one is that five Jews climbed up a high building and filmed the first attack of the first plane ."

At the Al-Shahid Mosque in Khartoum, Sudan on August 27, the imam 'Abd al-Jalil al-Nazir al-Karouri, discussed 9/11 during a Friday sermon that appeared on Sudan state TV:

" Let's say in brief, that whether the events and the destruction of the two famous buildings in the US were carried out by Israel's enemies, as the US claims, or by Israeli agents, as we claim, the outcome is the same: The Jews are the cause. These Jews hasten America's death.

"The US must beware. We offer this advice via the TV channels so they won't wake up when it is too late."

When he sent this, Hugh asked me:

Should not those who attempt to suggest that the attack on America was by American plotters, or American allies such as Israel, be subject to some kind of punishment? In other words, should it not be made the subject of legislation, so that, just as in Germany "Holocaust denial" is punished, this kind of thing becomes a punishable offense, perhaps leading to stripping of citizenship and subsequent expulsion?

It's a reasonable question. There are many examples in U.S. history of seditious and treasonous speech being limited. And certainly the allegation that 9/11 was the work of the US and/or Mossad is highly political, and plays into the hands of the jihad terrorists who were in fact responsible. Perhaps this is a question that should be debated by American politicians -- and I'm sure it will be, one snowy day in July.

Do Muslims have a natural right to enter the Netherlands? In light of the fact that many want to subvert the state, doesn't the state (the U.S. as well as the Netherlands) have a right to limit such immigration or halt it altogether? From Expatica, :

AMSTERDAM — The Netherlands could have a new Pim Fortuyn on its hands, as outcast MP Geert Wilders called Tuesday for a five-year ban on people from Turkey and Morocco immigrating to the Netherlands.

Wilders is also calling for an immediate ban on all non-western immigrants who want to join their families in the Netherlands.

He claims that problems with integration in the Netherlands are so "immense and acute" that action must be taken now. "All attention must be focused on the immigrants who already live here," Wilders said.

The "right-wing conservative" said immigrants who have Dutch passports should be deported and deprived of their Dutch citizenship if they are not prepared to learn Dutch.

The same applies to those who commit crimes or disturb public order. Wilders also said Islamic imams who incite hatred or violence should be deported and deprived of Dutch citizenship, newspaper Algemeen Dagblad reported.

The MP is an independent in the Lower House of Parliament, Tweede Kamer, after turning his back recently on the Liberal VVD when the party tried to curtail his right-wing statements.

His comments about immigration call to mind anti-immigrant politician Pim Fortuyn who claimed the Netherlands was full and demanded that Dutch borders to be closed to new immigrants. He was shot and killed by animal rights activist Volkert van der Graaf on 6 May 2002.

Van der Graaf claimed he killed Fortuyn to protect the weaker groups in society.

Actually Van der Graaf said quite explicitly that he murdered Fortuyn for the country's Muslims.

Of course, when non-Muslims lay this out, they're "Islamophobes" -- so then what is Shaikh Abdurrahman Abdul-Khaliq? Well, for one thing he is refreshingly candid. From Islamweb (thanks to Nicolei):

The fourth reason for sending Prophet Mohammad is to establish Islam as the dominant religion above all, till the Day of Judgment. Allah said, what translated means: "He it is Who has sent His Messenger (Mohammad) with Guidance and the Religion of Truth (Islam), that He may establish (make) it (Islam) superior over all religions. And All-Sufficient is Allah as a Witness." [48:28] Also, "It is He Who has sent His Messenger with Guidance and the Religion of Truth to establish (make) it superior over all religions even though the Polytheists hate (it)." [9:33]

To establish it means to make apparent its domination above all religions. Allah made this promise a reality whenever Muslims were seeking victory by being well-prepared with the right belief and material needs. Muslims dominated all the powers and religions of the world with reasoning first and then using the sword. Above mentioned are a short summary of the goals of the Message of the Prophet Mohammad.

No surprise here. From the Washington Times, and Ali Dashti:

Iran's Assembly of Experts, the body of powerful Muslim clerics that chooses the country's supreme leader, opened its 12th session Sunday calling for an Islamic republic in Iraq.

In his opening speech, the assembly's speaker, Ayatollah Ali Meshkini, urged Iraqi leaders to unite to expel foreign troops in Iraq and establish a government based on the principles of Islam similar to the one in Iran, according to reports in the Tehran Times yesterday.

The Iraqi leadership must "expel the occupiers and establish an Islamic government," the ayatollah said.

He also said that the United States and Britain were responsible for "the ruthless massacre of the Iraqi people and must be punished by a competent court."

Revenge for his arrest. From the New York Times, :

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn claimed yesterday that a Yemeni cleric accused of major terrorism financing had issued a "public call for revenge against Americans for his arrest."

The cleric, Sheik Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad, is in custody in Brooklyn awaiting trial Jan. 10 in federal court on charges of funneling money to Osama bin Laden.

A court document filed by the prosecutors quoted Mr. Moayad as denying what he called muddled American charges. "And the American side must be cautioned that it is not in their benefit to antagonize all the people," the document quoted the sheik as saying.

"They will not be spared the revenge even if it is late in coming," the quotation continued. "And as they showed us that they have power, we hope to see good manners from them. And God has destroyed uncounted people before them. And he will definitely revenge us."

The terrorism financing charges were announced in March 2003 by Attorney General John Ashcroft. Officials said that the sheik had funneled millions of dollars to Al Qaeda, some of it raised in Brooklyn, and that he had boasted of personally delivering $20 million to Mr. bin Laden.

Mr. Moayad's comments appeared to come from an interview he gave to a Yemeni news organization while he was held in Germany before being extradited to the United States in November.

His lawyer, Howard L. Jacobs, questioned the translation in an interview yesterday. He said he had not heard that his client had made such comments until he was told about the allegation by a reporter.

"I find it totally inconsistent with the behavior I've seen since I've been representing him," Mr. Jacobs said, adding that his client had a peaceful and anti-terrorist record.

Don't they always?

Clash of civilizations in Como. From NBC, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

ROME - An Italian woman who is married to an Arab man and converted to Islam, has been ticketed twice in the past week for wearing a burqa in her small village in the province of Como.

The dispute, which may eventually reach Italy's highest court, highlights growing unease in this staunchly Catholic country over a growing Muslim population.

Many Italians are unhappy with the impact of immigration from Islamic countries. Prior to the controversy in Como, there was a public outcry when a judge agreed last October to a Muslim activist's demand that a crucifix be removed from his son's classroom wall.

The number of Muslims in Italy is growing. According to the latest data, there are now between 700,000-1 million Muslims living in the country, out of a population of 57 million.

Convert to Islam

Many right-wingers in Italy believe that the violent world triggered by 9/11 is simply today’s version of the Moors versus the Crusaders of a thousand years ago.

To them this is a clash of cultures, east against west, Christ against Mohammed, harsh theocracy versus indulgent democracy.

In Drezzo, on the outskirts of Como in northern Italy, a skirmish is under way.

Sabina Varroni is a 34-year-old woman who has lived in Drezzo for many years. She’s married to a Moroccan man with whom she has four children, Sarah, 10, Omar, 9, Delel, 7, and Imen, 5.

Now that she has converted to Islam she has decided to observe her religious obligations by wearing the full burqa, the solid veil covering the entire face rendered infamous by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

When she started wearing the burqa in public, Mayor Cristian Tolettini got an earful of complaints from local women who didn’t like the new style one bit and were not about to tolerate it.

The mayor gave in to the pressure and instructed the one municipal policeman in town to crack down on Varroni with a ticket.

Violation of arcane law

The ticket was based on the violation of Article 85 of a package of security laws imposed in 1931 under the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, which forbids citizens to “mask themselves in public.”

But the text of the law is not specific as to the covering of one’s face.

Indeed, in that interpretation, people would not be able to celebrate Carnival here and even nuns' habits could conceivably be in violation of the law.

Michele Ainis, a law professor at the University of Teramo told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera that he’s certain that the mayor will lose the legal battle when the issue goes to Italy’s constitutional court.

He said the security decree was one of the “most fascist laws in 20 years of fascism,” and each time any part of it has come before the court it’s been thrown out as unconstitutional.

Burak Bekdil in Kathimerini (thanks to Ali Dashti) asks some much-needed questions about Turkey's radical Muslims and its hopes to enter the EU:

This column has invariably argued that Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a reformist, but an overrated one. He has reformed some of Turkey’s laws, not necessarily because he genuinely believed in reforms, but because he wanted to win a date from the European Union, a date which would minimize the military’s powers and earn him a second and perhaps a third term in power in a country where three in every four support the idea of membership in the EU. Inevitably, the time has come for Mr Erdogan’s alter ego to speak on his behalf....

Mr Erdogan, apparently under pressure from his party’s Islamist flank, wants to outlaw adultery despite increasingly loud warnings from the EU that if he went ahead with the plan Turkey would not be given a date to start membership talks. Mr Erdogan is dangerously zigzagging between his broader goals and his own roots. Guenter Verheugen, enlargement commissioner, had to remind Mr Erdogan of the bitter truth: that Turkey wants to join the EU, not vice versa....

Mr Erdogan hopes, first and foremost, to reward the “greener” of his party members and grassroots supporters. He has failed to please them in matters like removing the headscarf ban — a dispute seen by many as the symbol of the clash between political Islam and secularism and one of Mr Erdogan’s pre-election pledges. Larger groups of Islamists tend to protest that Mr Erdogan, once their much-praised “Imam of Istanbul,” has failed to keep his “greener” promises....

There is something deeply wrong in the thinking of the “reformist” and his men. They claim that they are the “real secularists.” But it is an open secret that they want to outlaw adultery because it is a sin under the Koran (as in other holy books). This is dangerous thinking. With a clear majority in Parliament, Mr Erdogan’s men may one day wake up with the idea of criminalizing alcohol or pork, for both are banned under the Koran.

Also, Mr Erdogan thinks that EU understanding on criminalizing adultery would show that the bloc was taking Muslim values into account. This mind-set is not healthy. Confident that a date was in sight, Mr Erdogan wanted to test the waters to see what Muslim values he could impose on the non-Muslim club during accession talks. The answer to his curiosity lies in Mr Verheugen’s clear-cut reply to his bravado — that the EU was not a sine qua non for Turkey. A smart man, Mr Erdogan should be able to get the message. But he has made things more difficult for himself.

When he bluntly played down the EU criticism on the adultery dispute and delivered stronger messages to his “greener” grassroots, Mr Erdogan tied himself to his promise to outlaw adultery. If, under EU pressure, he steps back, he will once again ridicule himself in the eyes of the Islamists whom he cannot give up.

The solution is simple. Mr Erdogan must decide on his true identity at once. He must either completely break with the Islamist past and walk toward the center, or give up his reformist, pro-EU rhetoric. He cannot continue to be both. Besides, Mr Erdogan should be able to understand that he cannot change the rules and values of the club he hopes to join one day.

They were planning to bomb several embassies and kill some diplomats. From AP, :

At a news conference, Interior Minister Elias Murr identified the leaders of the plot as Ahmed Salim Mikati and Ismail Mohammed al-Khatib, both Lebanese, and said they had eight Lebanese and Palestinian accomplices, who were also arrested on Friday night.

Khatib "is an al-Qaida operative ... his role was to recruit fundamentalist youth to carry out operations against coalition forces in Iraq," Murr said. He added that one of al-Khatib's recruits was a Lebanese citizen who was killed in Iraq on Sept. 17.

Prosecutor-General Adnan Addoum told the press conference that both al-Khatib and Mikati had "links to al-Qaida," the militant group led by Osama bin Laden.

The two leaders and their accomplices "cooperated and exchanged information" in planning simultaneous bombings of the Italian and Ukrainian embassies and several Lebanese security and judicial targets, Addoum said.

An Interior Ministry statement said the suspects planned to pack a car with 660 pounds of TNT and use it to blow up the Italian Embassy in Beirut.

The Muslim News in Britain asked this of its readers (thanks to Ali Dashti for the link):

Who do you think you are? British-Muslim? British Muslim? Muslim in Britain? English / Indian / Jordanian / Nigerian / Other Muslim in Britain?

The Muslim News is interested in your views of what you feel defines your identity in Britain in the 21st Century. What makes you proud to be living in Britain? What makes you despair? Who do you support when international sporting fixtures feature British teams? What do you call 'home'?

Some of the responses are quite reasoned. Others are quite revealing. Here are just a few:

well I don't know what being British has to offer any Muslim in terms of culture or idea's. Islam is a unique sytem and unique Identity. I ask you Muslims in Britain, would you fight for Britian in Iraq? Would you let your children "decide" if homosexuality is ok? Would you let your children decide if they should be Muslim or Kafir?I am sure you would say no to all. This "British" Muslim rubbish seeks to divide Muslims from Britian from the rest of the Ummah!!! Don't let this happen!!! Rashaad, Faisalabad, Pakistan

Andrew Ipswich: 2 things following your comment. firstly, all Muslim countries today are non Islamic and are run by greedy, Machiavellian rulers and cronies using Islam for their own benefit. That's why we're trying to get rid of them. The last true Islamic state (Caliphate) was the Ottoman empire that stretched from East to West.

Secondly, if freedom is ones capacity to exercise choice: what better choice is there than to worship the Creator rather than the disparing man-made laws?
Umm Sulayman, London, United Kingdom

I was bor and raised in a predominatly muslims country. Thre, we accepted them, but they never accepted us. Why is this? A Christian accepts a mulim, but a muslim will never accept a Christain? Why is this? We offer yiou peace, but you never accept it. Why? We belive you, but you never believe us. Why? We are trutful to you, but you are devious to us. Why? We allow muslims teachings in our countries (which we shoul not), but you dont. Why? You have a choice of leaving, why dont you?
Peter Lumaj, New York City, United States

I believe first and forthmost as truely Muslim. I support any country who are Truely Muslim country. I don't believe be british culture.Howevery British society are very good poeple as ordinary society but government and police services are racist. I would not advice any truely muslim persons to come in UK whether to live or to work
Mohamed, London, United Kingdom

I consider myself as a muslim, first and foremost, where i come from is irrelevant. I am most definetly not a British muslim but a muslim living in Britain. I don't ascribe to the corrupt values thoughts of this society. Some people ascribe to the view that if we don't like it here then why don't we leave. Simply because i was born here. Also, at this moment in time there isn't a country which is implementing Islam in its entirety. We need to interact.
Saghir, United Kingdom

>EXPLORE YOUR BRITISH MUSLIM IDENTITY HERE

>what british Muslim identity? is there a seperate 'british' or 'french' to being a muslim?
where are the sura's and hadith in this site!

salam
abdul, Reunion

i got a british passport but am not british. am muslim
zamzam, london, United Kingdom

salam,
being muslim or british has two diffrent identities and the two oppose each other u cannot mix islam with kufr, u cannot be a muslim and accept british values.
selina, United Kingdom

ASSALAMUALAIKUM, Im a muslim & proud to be a muslim.Iwant 2be knowned&lookedat as a muslim.The word British does not make me happy or sad.Im happy to be called British MUSLIM becoz of d word MUSLIM and not british.Muslims shouldnt worry about being british,french etc coz dat would make muslims into groups of citizenship. Muslims all around the world are of one race,one family,one body,under one flag............... ISLAM.
WASSALAAM.
eEnam, west london, Albania

I am a Muslim and this can only mean one thing that I'm a slave of Allah, my life, my death and my wealth are for the cause of Him and his Messenger (s). How does a person geographical location of residence, passport or language have a role to play in defining his view towards life. This is a question of alliegence to the doctrines of Islam or the doctrines of secularism. There is no room within Islam to support secularism in any manner whatsoever, which is the cornerstone being British.
salman rahman, London, United Kingdom

There can only be one path a muslim follows and that is Islam a complete way of life which has given us our identity,values and a vision for our lives this give us a strong personality.Surely we saw the best example in Muhammad (saw) while He (saw) lived and worked in Makkah he (saw)never compromised on Islam. There can be no other answer then we are Muslims and belong to one Ummah.
ummjanaan, Rochdale, United Kingdom

If eating fish & chips,wearing a pinstripe suit makes me british so be it,as this is ok with Islam but if supporting british troops in iraq makes me british than I am definitely not that.I have heard people say "why don`t we go back to where we came from?" We cannot go back, we all came from our mothers womb just like all other humans.I am a muslim living in UK no more no less, our values are extracted from our sources i.e Quran & Sunnah and not from situation or circumstances past or present.
Abu Usayd, London, United Kingdom

An individual is defined by his/her values, so when we look to the muslims throughout the world not just in the UK they see themselves as one collective people not divided by borders (despite the efforts of the west).
I have heard the voice of cowardice say that if we dont like it here we should leave. Such a notion does not belong in the mind of a muslim. We believe Islam is a complete system for life, it is superior to anything dreamed of by men and we will never accept secularising Islam.
Mohammed Michael Rashid Khan, Birmingham, United Kingdom

The only identity I believe is relevant is that of Islam, my allegiance is to Allah and his Messenger (SAW) and unity is with the believers. I happen to reside/was born in UK. My duty is the same regardless of geography, ie adhere to Islam comprehensively.
Abdul-Rashid Hamid, Slough, Berkshire, United Kingdom

The Westerners who live/work in the Arab/Muslim countries say they are "ex-pats": they do not integrate, they maintain their Western culture, lifestyle and habits & are proud of them, & display them to the locals to adopt. In the same way, the Muslims in the West must consider themselves as "ex-pats", & be proud to maintain our Islamic lifestyle, & resist any call to reject it for the bankrupt diseased culture we find here. One day we will return home to an Islamic State so lets be ready for it.
Ziad, Bradford, United Kingdom

i view myself as a muslim living in Britain.Islam is a complete way of life and has soloutions for all problems.Our identity is clear we are muslims and our values,beliefs and principples have to emantae from our aqeeeda.
Islam covers all sapects of live from polititsc,economics,social and has soloutions to all problems faced by an individual and society.
If by being British we condradict any part of Islam then this is not allowed our allegiance is to nothing but Islam.
belal moahmmed, stoke-on-trent, United Kingdom

I am very dissapointed that people evenconsider this question as valid. The reality of what you are saying is like "are you half muslim and half non-muslim". I am sure that you are well aware of the fact that our creator did not address us in the above ways but just as Muslims. Therefore anyone that is calling for muslims to be recognised as Pakistani muslims or even British Muslims is working with those who are trying to water down the pure thoughts of Islam.

your Brother In Islam
Bashurat
Bashurat Ali, Birmingham, United Kingdom

We are Muslims Period.
If we were in Occupied Palestine would we be "ISRAELI Musim" nauzubillah.
Our Aqeedah is Islam our values come from Islam our solution is Islam. Integration into secularism is apostasy from Islam.
"the jews and christians will never be pleased with you till you don't follow them" & "who takes them as friends is then one of them" [al Quran)
May Allah destroy the hypocrite integrationist who are puppets of the west
Yaser fasel, bradford, United Kingdom

I am a Muslim living in Britain; I don't believe that Muslim should be divided based on nationalism because, Quran and Sunnah have prohibited it.

Britain is a place were I reside nothing more and nothing less.

I believe that International sporting events are a means of promoting division and nationalism. Sport has been used by the international community as a vehicle to carry this dis-unifying idea to the masses, and we should reject all it's guises.

Muslim nation is one nation.

A. Milad Ali, London, United Kingdom

Asalamu Alykum

Muslims who calls themselves 'British Muslims'attribute themselves to the ingredients of British Society.
We have our own islamic values which are incompatible with any other creed. There will always be a clash of cultures between Islam and the Secularists in West.
British Muslim?
Just like saying Halal Pork.
Asalamu Alykum
Mohammed Nasir, Dundee, United Kingdom

Dr Navidul Haq Khan, what alot of rubbish!! i shall remind u what being a British means...

1 Personal Freedom e.g Muslim girls should be free to date or marry non-Muslims?

2 Freedom of Expression-the Western media should be free to slander the Prophet (saw)

3 Sexual Freedom- Muslim youth should be free to express their sexuality anyway they choose?..& Muslim men should be free to commit adultery with women who consent?

Who can say there is no conflict with being British and Muslim??
Ramzan Haneef, Dundee, United Kingdom

Saying that your a 'British Muslim' is like saying that you are a 'Christian-Muslim' or a 'Capitalist-Muslim' - the source of our values is only the Quran and Sunnah - nothing else. British values include believing in homosexuality as legitimate, that human beings have the right to determine laws regardless of what Allah says, etc. Islam and Kufr (non-Islam) cannot be mixed. We are only Muslims, where we reside is irrelevent to our identity.
Abu Hafsa, Leicester, United Kingdom

aslam i am only muslim born in britain not a british muslim and i only go by the sharia not by the so called freedom that democrcy says aslam naveed G
naveed, glasgow, United Kingdom

It may seem ironic to speak of the "spiritual leader" of a gang of murderous cutthroats, but that is to assume that these men are transgressing the bounds of their religion, which is the one thing that they seem especially careful not to do. From AP:

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) The spiritual leader of a militant group that claimed to have beheaded two American hostages in Iraq has been killed in a U.S. airstrike, and his Jordanian family is preparing a wake, a newspaper and Islamic clerics said Wednesday.

Sheik Abu Anas al-Shami, 35, was killed when a missile hit the car he was traveling in on Friday in the west Baghdad suburb of Abu-Ghraib, said the clerics, who have close ties to the family. They spoke on condition of anonymity.

Al-Shami was a close aide to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of the militant group Tawhid and Jihad. The al-Qaida-linked group is blamed for some of the biggest attacks in Iraq, including the bombing of the U.N. headquarters last year, and the beheadings of foreign hostages including two Americans this week.

Al-Zarqawi is believed to have personally decapitated the American hostage Eugene Armstrong on Monday.

Al-Shami, a Jordanian of Palestinian descent who was also known as Omar Yousef Jumah, was believed to be the voice on several audio tapes that Tawhid and Jihad released via the Internet. In one such tape in August, a speaker identified as al-Shami said the militants planned to kill Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, soldiers and police officers.

''We will not allow you to destroy our hopes in this blessed holy war, and we will not let you steal our bright tomorrow, which is now appearing on the horizon,'' the speaker said on the tape....

In the late 1990s, the government closed down an Islamic center that al-Shami had established in Amman on grounds that it was propagating a fanatical interpretation of Islam, according to the clerics and Al-Ghad newspaper.

I saw this coming as long ago as March 2003. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Baghdad -- If Sunni clerics are a window into the soul of the violent resistance to U.S. aims in Iraq, the picture they reveal could not be bleaker.

For Sheikh Mohammad Ali Mohammad al-Ghereri, a Sunni Muslim cleric, the question is no longer whether his followers should fight the Americans -- that is a given -- but how to wage the war properly.

"The holy warriors should have a clerical leader with them to advise them on all points, such as how to properly treat the Americans they capture," he said just days before militants beheaded two American hostages.

And then we are supposed to believe that these "militants" are not treating the captives according to the dictates of Islamic law.

For Sunni cleric Abdul Sattar Abdul Jabbar, the question is no longer whether his followers should kidnap foreigners, but which ones.

"Isn't the trucker who brings supplies for the Americans and helps the occupation also part of the occupation? I think so," said Abdul Jabbar, a member of the Association of Muslim Clerics, the country's largest Sunni religious group.

Although Sunni religious authorities -- including the sect's highest authority, Grand Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi of Al-Azhar University in Cairo -- have condemned the beheading of captives, they have no such qualms about advocating violent warfare, including kidnappings and suicide bombings, in the battle to vanquish the Americans and their Iraqi allies.

Among Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, the United States can count on a few high-ranking moderate clerics to counter rabble-rousing preacher Muqtada al- Sadr's incendiary calls for holy war. But among the ulema -- the clerical leadership guiding Sunnis, who make up about a third of the Iraqi population - - calls for armed opposition to the United States have become increasingly strident.

"There is no discussion," says Imam Mahdi al-Sumaydai, a high-ranking Sunni cleric who was jailed for six months by the Americans for his inflammatory teachings. "Jihad is a must in the religion to defend your property, your honor or your religion. How can anyone deny our right to jihad?''

On the streets, the calls for jihad by clerics are rising and spreading into the mainstream. Young people are turning to popular media to learn more about the long-standing Islamic tradition of jihad -- a holy war waged to protect one's people or one's land. Videos of armed mujahedeen battling Americans sell briskly at CD shops and in bazaars. At Internet cafes, young people scan jihadi Web sites for news.

Jihad is still on in Chechnya, despite worldwide revulsion at the Chechen massacre. From AP, with thanks to Kevin:

A WOMAN has been detained in Chechnya on suspicion of recruiting suicide bombers and facilitating contacts among different rebel groups.

Russian television showed security agents questioning the suspect, 31-year-old Natalia Khalkayeva, and bringing her to a lockup in the Chechen capital, Grozny.

An explosives-filled belt and a satellite phone were confiscated from her, said Major-General Ilya Shabalkin, the spokesman for the Federal Security Service in Chechnya.

Shabalkin said Khalkayeva was a liaison for a rebel leader, Yunadi Turchayiv, the Interfax news agency reported.

He said Khalkayeva used the satellite phone, which had been bought in an Arab country, to maintain contact with funders in the United Arab Emirates, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Turkey, Austria and other countries.

Khalkayeva frequently travelled outside Chechnya over the past few months in order to receive foreign funds used for terror attacks and recruitment, including of female suicide bombers, Interfax quoted Shabalkin as saying.

"I'm being followed by a jihad shadow..." From AP:

WASHINGTON - A plane bound for Washington from London was diverted to Maine on Tuesday after passenger Yusuf Islam — formerly known as pop singer Cat Stevens — showed up on a U.S. watch list, federal officials said.

United Airlines Flight 919 had already taken off from London en route to Dulles International Airport when the match was made between the passenger and the watch list, said Nico Melendez, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration.

The plane was met by federal agents at Maine's Bangor International Airport around 3 p.m., Melendez said.

Federal officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, identified the individual as Islam.

One official said Islam, 56, was identified by the Advanced Passenger Information System, which requires airlines to send passenger information to U.S. Customs and Border Protection's National Targeting Center. TSA was then contacted and requested that the plane land at the nearest airport, the official said.

"He was interviewed and denied admission to the United States on national security grounds," said Homeland Security spokesman Dennis Murphy. He said the man would be put on the first available flight out of the country Wednesday.

I have no idea why DHS would have denied him admission, but I do know a few things about Yusuf Islam.

• He publicly supported the Ayatollah Khomeini's death sentence for blasphemy against Salman Rushdie in 1989 ("The Qur'an makes it clear if someone defames the Prophet, then he must die"), although he has backtracked since then.
• He was denied entry into Israel for donating thousands to the civilian-murdering terrorists of Hamas -- although now he denies this too.

Also in the first link above is the allegation that his royalties have gone to fund shadowy activities in Iran, possibly even including the Rushdie fatwa.

In any case, it is clear that there is a great deal questionable about this preposterous counterculture casualty, and I am not in the least surprised that he showed up on the watch list.

UPDATE: Cat Stevens to be deported.

Important not only because it reveals the connection between Damra and Al-Arian, but because it reminds us of how much influence radical Muslims bent on violent jihad have had, and to a great extent still have (are you listening, Mr. Norquist?) in Washington. From Newsnet5.com, :

CLEVELAND -- Newly declassified documents federal prosecutors said point to a strong link between Imam Fawaz Damra and organizations the government classifies as terrorist groups were released Monday....

An important piece of the trial had been declassified. That included transcripts of a 1998 phone conversation.

"All the aid and such. You have received it?" Damra asked.

"May God reward you and bless you" said Sami al-Arian.

"You will be receiving a second portion." Damra said.

Al-Arian, an alleged moneyman for terrorist organizations, is currently under a 50-count indictment in Florida.

U.S. prosecutors claim the conversation shows Damra's own ties to those groups, NewsChannel5 reported....

The calls also speak powerfully of how influential al-Arian has been, WEWS reported.

"Last week I saw Clinton," al-Arian said in the conversation.

"You met him?" Damra asked.

"Yes by God." he said.

Later, in the 2000 election, al-Arian actually campaigned with George W. Bush, even getting an invitation to the White House, NewsChannel5 reported.

More confirmation of the fact that "we need people who are capable of fearlessly acknowledging that terrorism nests within us as Muslims and that we must exorcise it."
From AP:

"The nation's zealous children slaughtered the second American hostage ... after the end of the deadline," said the statement, posted under the pseudonym Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, who has posted past statements in the group's name.

The statement said video of the killing would be posted "soon."

Mundir Badr Haloum is more forthright about the roots of modern terrorism than most American spokesmen. Anybody willing to stand up stateside and admit that he's right, so that we can set a real countercurrent going in the Islamic community? Karen Armstrong? John Esposito? Ibrahim Hooper? Anyone? Anyone? From MEMRI:

Mundir Badr Haloum, a lecturer at a Syrian University, wrote a column in the Lebanese daily Al-Safir stating that Muslims today are responsible for terrorism around the globe, and calling for Islamic religious reform in order to bring Muslims back onto the stage of history not through suicide attacks, but rather by other means. The following are excerpts from the column:(1)

'Ignominious Terrorism Exists, and One Cannot but Acknowledge its Being Islamic'

"Twelve Nepalese citizens are slaughtered - Islam. A metro station is bombed - Islam. Civilian aircraft crash - Islam. A school is taken and the souls of 50 children [are lost] for the soul of [each] terrorist - Islam. A bus is bombed here, a railway train there, and before that there were hospitals and theaters, etc ... all of them Islamic acts. [Behind] the color green are exposed rivers red with blood, flowing in the streets and public squares. And Muslims everywhere.

"Islam is in the names of all of the organizations that decapitate using knives, all the while saying the Fatiha [the first chapter of the Koran, said as a prayer] before the slaughter. The victims are butchered in the Islamic way ... Christians, Buddhists, and Jews... After all, they are only infidels, fuel for the blaze, enemies, or potential enemies, or the friends of enemies, or their neighbors, and so on. The soul has no value and the body parts are laid out and displayed on the tables of Islam ... Islam ... Islam. The Islamic press searches for something that will absolve 'Islam' of the crimes of the Shahada [martyrdom]... It is Islam that adorns television screens with body parts... Islam - whether those who praise its mercies like it or not - is the foul odor of the putrefaction of Islamic history and its stench, as well as [being] other things that are honorable, which some people like and others do not...

"Ignominious terrorism exists, and one cannot but acknowledge its being Islamic. Anyone who is unable to bear its ignominy and wishes to absolve himself of the ugly mark of terror which is stamped in our soul ... must scrutinize the recesses of his mind and search out there the terror that conceals itself behind pretty and misleading names..."

'What Gets Passed on from One Generation to the Next is the Belief in Legal Rulings that Forbid Thought and Permit Killing'

"Self-examination ... would result in favor of abandoning Islam ... yet what gets passed on from one generation to the next is ... the latest version of Islam - Algeria, Afghanistan, Moscow, and New York, the version of the planes and the buses, the metro stations, the theaters and the residential complexes. What gets passed on from one generation to the next is the faith of Jihad that takes lightly the spilling of others' blood. How easy it is to shove someone into the category of the enemy. What gets passed on from generation to generation is the belief in legal rulings that forbid thought and permit killing... Religious Muslims prepare an offering to heaven - a fresh bit of human flesh, meant to be evidence of the truth and the proof of Jihad for the absolute truth....

'Reform is the Only Path to Our Return to History as Muslims and Not as Terrorists'...

"This is a reality that must be acknowledged as a first step toward a non-terrorist Islam ...

"Islam is in need of true reform. Islam's need [for reform] - or, to be precise, our need for Islam's reform - is not less than the need for reform in the Arab political regimes... This is the need for people who are capable of fearlessly acknowledging that terrorism nests within us as Muslims and that we must exorcise it... Unfortunately, the meaning of delay is more death... The reform will take a long time and the price will be high, but it is the only path to our return to history as Muslims and not as terrorists..."

From Bill Gertz in the Washington Times:

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded recently that al Qaeda — fearing its credibility is on the line — is moving ahead with plans for a major, "spectacular" attack, despite disruptions of some operations by recent arrests in Britain and Pakistan.

Officials said recent intelligence assessments of the group, which is blamed for the September 11 attacks, state that an attack is coming and that the danger will remain high until the Nov. 2 elections and last until Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.

"They [al Qaeda] think their credibility is on the line because there hasn't been a major attack since 9/11," said one official familiar with intelligence reports on the group.

A second official said: "There isn't reason to believe that the recent arrests have disrupted their plans."

Authorities in Pakistan and Britain recently arrested key al Qaeda leaders, but the group uses tight "compartmentation" of its operations. The process, used by intelligence services, keeps information about operations within small "cells" of terrorists to protect secrecy.

Thus, details of the possible attack remain murky, but analysts say it is planned to be bigger and deadlier than the September 11 attacks, which killed 3,000 people.

Potential targets include the White House, Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and congressional buildings, as well as landmarks and business centers in New York, the officials said. The officials said that there is no specific information about targets.

Recently I posted a series of translations from Swedish papers, made for Jihad Watch by Ali Dashti, about the situation in Malmø. The story got a great deal of attention, as none of it was reported by the media elite. However, I was contacted yesterday by a woman who told me that a Swedish speaker had questioned the veracity of Ali Dashti's translations.

As it turns out, they were more summaries than word-by-word translations — I didn't know this at the time I posted them, and I apologize for any misapprehension. However, Ali Dashti is not in the least ready to join the "fake, but accurate" ranks, and brings forward a mountain of new evidence to support the original posting. Here is his reply to the questioner:

I am happy somebody took an interest in what I was telling about Malmø, or Sweden in general. And I hope people write much more about it. I read in Swedish newspapers on a daily basis what is going on in Malmø. I also have friends living there, and people I know who recently left because of the situation. As was quoted in one of my articles, the emigration from the city is higher than it has ever been for several decades. Many of the people who leave state the lack of security as their main reason for leaving.

As for the articles I linked to, what I wrote was quotes from the articles as well as my comments after reading perhaps hundreds of stories like these in Swedish. I apologize for not stating that clearly enough, and I will never do that again. That being said, there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with my description of the situation in Malmø. In fact, I probably understated it. Here is an article in Swedish from one of Sweden’s largest national newspapers, called “Malmø, 24 days in August”. It is a very long and scary list of stabbings, armed robbery, vandalism and pretty much any kind of crime and violence you can think of. The reason why this very politically correct newspaper wrote this article in the first place is because the situation is now so bad that it cannot be ignored any longer:

http://www.expressen.se/expressen/jsp/polopoly.jsp?a=181406Malmö, 24 dagar i augusti

Even though Malmø is the worst example, you will see the same trends in other major Swedish cities, too. Only a couple of days ago, city buses in a suburb of Stockhom had to be cancelled and rerouted, as three windows were smashed by rock throwing. As this was not the first time this had happened, the bus company decided they quite simply could not drive in this area anymore.

http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/stockholm/nyheter/artikel.asp?artikel=473749

Busslinjer i Tensta dras in efter ny stenkastning

Trafikföretaget Connex har fått nog av skadegörelse mot bussar i Tensta i nordvästra Stockholm. Nu dras flera busslinjer in i området, uppger Connex pressjour för Radio Stockholm.

Now, the article doesn’t state the ethnic origins of the perpetrators
(Swedish media rarely do), but this happens to be a neighbourhood with a lot of mainly Muslim immigrants. Throwing stones at buses hasn’t been that common in Sweden before. Two out of three new "Swedes" these days are immigrants, most of them Muslims:
http://www.spectator.se/stambord/index.php?p=97#comments

I attach a lot of links, most of them to major newspapers, and almost all of them in Swedish. This so that sceptical Swedish speaking people can see for themselves. I have more links if more is needed, but let us start with these. The majority are about the city of Malmø specifically, with some about Sweden in general at the end. I would also advice Scandinavian-speaking people to read some of the debates at the Swedish Muslim forum called http://www.sindbad.se/phpBB2/. It is scary, but
revealing.

As for the rape and gang rape situation, Swedish media have admitted that there has been a sharp increase in brutal rapes, including gang rapes, during recent years. They don’t state why, though. It may still not be as bad in Sweden as it is in Muslim ghettos in France, but the trend is the same:

http://www.iht.com/articles/114798.html

The phenomenon of gang rape in France has become banal. It occurs - how often is unknown - in the concrete wastelands built as cheap housing for immigrants on the outskirts of France's big cities. Here, according to sociologists and prosecutors, teenage boys, many of them loosely organized into gangs, prey on neighborhood girls. Many of the boys are raised in closed, traditional families and are hopelessly confused or ignorant about sex; others are simply street toughs. In this world, women enjoy little respect; often girls who appear weak, or who wear tight-fitting clothing or go out unaccompanied by their fathers or brothers are considered fair game. To avoid trouble, many girls of the projects have taken to wearing loose-fitting jogging clothes and hidden themselves behind domineering fathers or brothers; others have organized themselves into their own gangs. Many of the Muslim girls have donned head scarves - more for protection than out of religious conviction.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/13/60minutes/main617270.shtml

They rule gangland style, combined with the male-dominated traditions of the Arab countries they came from. It's gotten so bad that, today, most of the young women only feel safe if they are covered up, or if they stay at home. Girls who want to look just like other French girls are considered provocative, asking for trouble. “There was a trial in Lille where a 13-year-old girl was gang raped by 80 men. Sometimes, it’s 80, or 50 or 10. It’s absolutely terrible,” says
Bellil. “In the case of Argenteuil, it was horrible. A young woman was raped in a school. Of course, everybody knew, but they're so afraid of these young men that they prefer to close their eyes. That's the price of peace in the ghettos.” When the verdicts came down in this case, the courthouse turned into a madhouse. Eighteen teenagers were convicted of raping a 15-year-old girl over a two-month period. But what really shocked France was how the mothers of those boys reacted. "'You call this justice, seven years in prison for some oral sex,' says one mother. 'It's the girl who should be behind bars.'"

Again, I apologize for what may have been my clumsy presentation of these articles. The discription that was given of the situation was, however, 100% accurate. I stand by the information that was given. To my knowledge, Jihad Watch is the first English language news site that has ever mentioned the troubles in Malmø. I hope it won’t be the last.

Yours sincerely, Ali Dashti.

For the Swedish links, read on.

"Please, Mr. Chamberlain, give us peace in Europe! Give Herr Hitler what he wants!" From AFP, with thanks to Kevin:

THE family of a British hostage threatened with execution in Iraq has made a last-ditch appeal to Prime Minister Tony Blair to meet the kidnappers' demands and save his life. Kenneth Bigley was grabbed along with Americans Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong from their Baghdad home on Thursday by the Tawhid and Jihad group, headed by al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Armstrong was beheaded and video of his gruesome slaying by masked gunmen was posted on the internet early this morning (AEDT) when a 24-hour deadline was set for the other hostages.

That deadline is set to expire in the next few hours.

Al-Zarqawi has personally taken responsibility for Armstrong's murder.

Bigley's son, Craig, said Blair was the only person who could save his father.

"I ask Tony Blair personally to consider the amount of bloodshed already suffered," he said on BBC TV.

"Only you can save him now. You have children and you will understand how I feel at this time."

Bigley's brother Philip made a separate plea.

"The death of the American hostage has proved to us that if nothing is done then the two remaining captives will die by the most horrific means.

"The only person we can now beg to help us is the Prime Minister."

"We are begging you not to kill him," he said.

"We are begging you to find a compromise that will help to save the life of my brother."

This unfortunate man has virtually no way of knowing, because his press won't tell him, about the lineaments of the jihad ideology. He almost certainly doesn't know that no compromise is acceptable, only surrender.

The effects of the machinations that Bat Ye'or details here are playing out on Europe's streets, as outlined by Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer in this piece from WorldNetDaily. An excerpt:

What Europe has long sown it is now reaping. Bat Ye'or, the pioneering historian of dhimmitude, the institutionalized oppression of non-Muslims in Muslim societies, chronicles in her forthcoming book "Eurabia" how it has come to this. Europe, she explains, began 30 years ago to travel down a path of appeasement, accommodation and cultural abdication before Islam in pursuit of short-sighted political and economic benefits. She observes that today, "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."

After the Beslan child massacres, however, there are signs from Eastern Europe that this may be changing. Last Sunday, Poland turned away 100 Chechen Muslims who were trying to enter the country from Belarus. This is the sort of measure that the countries west of Poland have been so far unwilling to take. But since one cannot by any means screen out the jihadists from the moderate Muslims, and the moderates are not helping identify the jihadists either, what choice did the Poles have?

It might not be too long before they will have to turn away entrants from Scandinavia and France as well.

With Jamie Glazov at FrontPage:

Bat Ye'or: Eurabia represents a geo-political reality envisaged in 1973 through a system of informal alliances between, on the one hand, the nine countries of the European Community (EC)which, enlarged, became the European Union (EU) in 1992 and on the other hand, the Mediterranean Arab countries. The alliances and agreements were elaborated at the top political level of each EC country with the representative of the European Commission, and their Arab homologues with the Arab League's delegate. This system was synchronised under the roof of an association called the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) created in July 1974 in Paris. A working body composed of committees and always presided jointly by a European and an Arab delegate planned the agendas, and organized and monitored the application of the decisions.

The field of Euro-Arab collaboration covered every domain: from economy and policy to immigration. In foreign policy, it backed anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism and Israel's delegitimization; the promotion of the PLO and Arafat; a Euro-Arab associative diplomacy in international forums; and NGO collaboration. In domestic policy, the EAD established a close cooperation between the Arab and European media television, radio, journalists, publishing houses, academia, cultural centers, school textbooks, student and youth associations, tourism. Church interfaith dialogues were determinant in the development of this policy. Eurabia is therefore this strong Euro-Arab network of associations -- a comprehensive symbiosis with cooperation and partnership on policy, economy, demography and culture.

Eurabia is the future of Europe. Its driving force, the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation, was created in Paris in 1974. It now has over six hundred members -- from all major European political parties -- active in their own national parliaments, as well as in the European parliament. The creation of this body and its policy follow the 23 resolutions of the "Second International Conference in Support of the Arab Peoples", held in Cairo in January 1969. Its resolution 15 formulates the Euro-Arab policy and its all-embracing development over thirty years in European domestic and foreign policy.

It stated: "The conference decided to form special parliamentary groups, where they did not exist, and to use the parliamentary platform for promoting support of the Arab people and the Palestinian resistance." In the 1970s, pursuant to the wishes of the Cairo Conference, national groups proclaiming "Solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance and the Arab peoples" appeared throughout Europe. These groups belonged to different political families, Gaullists, extreme left or right, communists, neo-Nazis -- but they all shared the same anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism. France has been the key protagonist of this policy, ever since de Gaulle's press conference on 27 November 1967 when he presented France's cooperation with the Arab world as "the fundamental basis of our foreign policy".

FP: Is Europe's dependence on Arab oil a predominant factor in its pro-Arab policy?

Bat Ye'or: No, I don't think so. Arab leaders have to sell their oil; their people are very dependent on European economic, health and technological aid. America made this point during the oil embargo in 1973. The oil factor is a pretext to cover up a policy that emerged in France before that crisis. The policy was already conceived in the 1960s. It has strong antecedents in the French 19th century dream of governing an Arab empire and the exploitation of antisemitism to strengthen Arab Muslim-French solidarity against a demonized common enemy. Eurabia is not only a web of various agreements covering every field. It is essentially a political project for a total demographic and cultural symbiosis between Europe and the Arab world, where Israel will eventually dissolve. America would be isolated and challenged by an emerging Euro-Arab continent that is linked to the whole Muslim world and invested with tremendous political and economic power in international affairs. The policies of "multilateralism" and "soft diplomacy" express this deepening symbiosis. The Euro-Arab agreements are merely the tools for the creation of this new "continent." Eurabia is also based on the vision of Christian-Muslim reconciliation and has been strongly advocated by religious Christian bodies.

FP: For a moment, France looked like it was totally lost. But it seems to have adopted a new foreign policy, more oriented toward Europe. What is your view of this?

Bat Ye'or: France and the rest of Western Europe cannot change their policy anymore. Their future is Eurabia. Period. I don't see how they can reverse the movement they set in motion thirty years ago. Nor do Eurabians want to modify this policy. It is a project that was conceived, planned and pursued consistently through immigration policy, propaganda, church support, economic associations and aid, cultural, media and academic collaboration. Generations grew up within this political framework; they were educated and conditioned to support it and go along with it. This is the source of the strong anti-American feeling in Europe and of the paranoiac obsession with Israel, two elements that form the cornerstone of Eurabia. The new French orientation toward Europe indicates that France will work within Europe, and particularly with the new Eastern member states of the European Union, to convince them to forgo their Atlanticist vision and reorient their alliances toward the Arab Muslim world. This was French policy in the 1960s when Paris became the advocate of the Arab cause in the European Community. Until 1971, France had been isolated in the EC in its anti-Israel stance. European Community critics accused it of bias toward the Arab world. Faced with the oil crisis, the nine EC countries -- under French and German leadership -- unified their views regarding the Middle East conflict and this generated the Euro-Arab Dialogue's overall development.

Read it all.

From AAP, with thanks to Kevin:

INDONESIAN police fear the terrorist masterminds of the Australian embassy bombing in Jakarta are planning deadly attacks every six months.

They also say that al-Qaeda money was used by the South East Asia-based Jemaah Islamiah group to fund the September 9 blast as well as last year's Marriott Hotel suicide attack in the Indonesian capital.

Police sources said Malaysian bomb maker Azahari Husin and bag man Noordin Mohammed Top were aiming to increase the tempo of attacks, which have claimed 223 lives since the Bali bombings of 2002.

"If within six months they have no chances, then it will be done in the next six months," a senior police source was quoted today as saying by the Republika newspaper.

Azahari, the bespectacled British-trained geophysics professor, and Noordin are currently being hunted across Indonesia by US-trained anti-terrorist squads.

Now why would a British-trained geophysics professor become a bomb maker for an Islamic terrorist group? You'd think he'd be smart enough to read all those peaceful passages in the Qur'an and recognize the error of his ways.

There is no surprise here except for those who are unaware, or unwilling to accept, that these groups have identical ideologies, motives, and goals. From The Australian, with thanks to Kevin:

THE three main Southeast Asian Islamic terrorist groups have had a strong, secret alliance for almost 20 years, which continues to train Jemaah Islamiah's bomb-makers, intelligence documents reveal.

The documents, compiled from interviews with a senior JI defector and other sources, confirm long-held suspicions that two training camps of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the southern Philippines are the nerve centre of regional terrorism.

The former JI leader's admissions defy claims by the Philippines Government and the MILF that militant training in the camps ceased four years ago, at the start of delicate negotiations about autonomy for the Muslim minority in the country's south.

But the JI man Mohammed Nassir bin Abbas, formerly a leader of the main camp, has told foreign agents that links have instead strengthened, in particular with the infamous group Abu Sayyaf, renowned for beheading Westerners.

Nassir's first-hand account is seen as a missing link in decades of suspicion about the potential threat posed by the camps and their infiltration by terrorists.

A similar story comes from Kashmir. From ANI:

All Kashmiri militant organizations have reportedly decided to form one front to secure the right of self-determination for Kashmiris in Pakistan and India.

According to the Daily Times, the Muttahida Jihad Council (MJC) took this decision on Sunday.

"The decision was made at a meeting at an undisclosed location in Azad Jammu and Kashmir," sources told the paper.

More glorification of death in the name of jihad. From Reuters:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A militant group headed by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said on Monday it had beheaded an American hostage and posted a video of the killing on the Internet.

The video, on an Islamist site, identified the hostage as Eugene Armstrong and showed a masked man sawing his head off with a knife.

The video showed the banner of Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group, which said it had kidnapped the hostage along with another American and a Briton in central Baghdad last Thursday.

The video was the first word on the three men since a 48-hour execution deadline set by the group on Saturday expired earlier in the day.

Tawhid and Jihad said in footage posted on the Internet on Saturday it would kill the three men unless Iraqi women were freed from Abu Ghraib and Umm Qasr jails in 48 hours.

The families of Americans Armstrong and Jack Hensley and Briton Kenneth Bigley have appealed for their release. The men were seized from their house in an upscale neighborhood of Baghdad on Thursday by a group of gunmen.

The U.S. military says no women are being held in the two prisons specified, but that two are in U.S. custody. Dubbed "Dr Germ" and "Mrs Anthrax" by U.S. forces, they are accused of working on Saddam Hussein's weapons programs and are in a prison for high-profile detainees.

Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group has claimed responsibility for most of the bloodiest suicide bomb attacks in Iraq since the fall of Saddam. It has already beheaded several hostages, including U.S. telecoms engineer Nicholas Berg in May and South Korean driver Kim Sun-il in June.

From WCHS-TV, :

The head of Ohio's largest mosque has been sentenced to two months in prison and four months' house arrest for lying about ties to alleged terrorist groups.

The Palestinian-born Imam Fawaz Damra was convicted in June of one count of obtaining U-S citizenship by providing false information....

Damra was facing maximum sentence of five years in prison, however federal sentencing guidelines for first-time offenders call for a sentence ranging from probation to six months in prison.

US District Judge James Gwin did not rule on prosecutors' request that he immediately revoke Damra's rights as a US citizen.... Gwin says Damra can start serving his sentence after the Muslim holiday of Ramadan ends in November.

After some dithering. From Reuters, with thanks to Susan:

BERLIN (Reuters) - The Berlin state government said Monday it had banned an Arab-Islamic Congress due to be held in the German capital next month to rally support for Iraqi and Palestinian "resistance and intifada."

Henrike Morgenstern, a spokeswoman for the Berlin interior ministry, said an advertisement for the event published in English on the Internet expressed approval for suicide attacks against Israel and the United States.

"That significantly oversteps the limit of what can be allowed in terms of opinion-forming," she said.

The organizers said they would respect the ban, but added they had never shown approval of suicide attacks, either on the Internet or in interviews or talks with the authorities.

"I have ended my work and canceled the room," said Gabriel Daher, spokesman for the event. Asked whether potential participants would still show up in Berlin he said: "I don't think so."

Daher said the organizers had drawn a clear line between resistance and terrorist attacks, calling the latter wrong.

A distinction that is largely, if not wholly, semantic.

I have often encountered, in person and on radio shows, Muslims who claim that the jizya, the special tax required of non-Muslim dhimmis under Islamic law, was actually less than zakat, the Muslim obligation of charitable giving. This is patently absurd on the face of it, of course, since innumerable respected historians (including A.S. Tritton, Maxime Rodinson, and Bat Ye'or) have noted that it was money from the dhimmis, not from Muslims, that financed the early Islamic empires; indeed, Muslims paid nothing at all into the state treasury in the days when there were large populations (i.e., in Egypt and Syria) of conquered dhimmi Christians. Rodinson even points out in his biography of Muhammad that at certain times conversions to Islam were forbidden, as they were destroying the tax base! If the jizya had really been less than zakat, human nature being what it is, we would have seen large-scale conversions of Muslims to Christianity in the great Islamic empires -- but of course we don't, because who would want to exchange the position of the dominator for that of the dominated?

Nevertheless, today people read propaganda like Edward Said instead of history like Bat Ye'or, Tritton, and Rodinson, so they may be misled by this that recently appeared at IslamOnline (thanks to Ali Dashti for the link):

Non-Muslims are called dhimmis and were required to pay a levy or jizya. The jizya was not paid as a bribe for practicing their faith, but rather as compensation for not serving in the army, protection for Crusading armies and tribal warfare. While most so-called journalists scream that the jizya is a tool of inequality, they fail to see that there is a tax levied on Muslims as well, the zakat, which non-Muslims are not required to pay.

This assumes that jizya and zakat are equivalent, and other Muslims assert, as I have said, that the jizya is actually less than zakat. So let's look at the record:

For non-Muslims in Muslim societies, there was not just jizya, but kharaj, the land tax. Tritton in The Caliphs and Their Non-Muslim Subjects equates the two: "Hafs, another governor of Egypt, announced that all dhimmis who abandoned their religion would be free from kharaj, which is jizya" (pp. 35-6). It is important to remember the two names because while the jizya was generally set at a fixed amount by the jurists (although this was highly adjustable), the kharaj was another matter. In the Hedaya, an Islamic legal manual, in a discussion about the purchase of land by a dhimmi, it declares: "it is lawful to require twice as much of a Zimmee [dhimmi] as of a Mussulman [Muslim], whence it is that, if such an one were to come before the collector with merchandise, twice as much would be exacted of him as of a Mussulman" (Hedaya I.vi).

Also see these illuminating extracts:

The voluntary character of the zakat contribution as a religious duty is emphasized by Qudama in the beginning of Chapter Thirteen, where he states that Muslims are trusted with the declaration of what is due from them, in contradistinction to other taxes which are compulsory and pursuable. The Saudi law by charging Muslims with this religious tax is following the old precepts who lay down that the rate of the tax is fixed in accordance with the persons from whom it is collected, i.e., from a Merchant of a foreign country 10 per cent, from a merchant of an allied country 5 per cent, and from a Muslim 2.5 per cent.

That's from A. Ben Shemesh, Taxation in Islam Volume II, Qudama b. Ja'far's Kitab Al-Kharaj. Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1965, p. 14.

And this:

There is a desire to equate Zakat with Jiziyah to emphasize the fairness of the Islamic fiscal system. The Muslims pay Zakat and the non-Muslims Jiziyah. But the analogy is fallacious. The rate of Zakat tax is as low as 2.5 per cent and that on the apparent property only. All kinds of concessions are given in Zakat with regard to nisah or taxable minimum. In its collection no force is applied because force vitiates its character. On the other hand, the rate of Jiziyah is very high for the non-Muslims- 48, 24, and 12 silver tankahs for the rich, the middling and the poor, whatever the currency and whichever the country. Besides, what is central to Jiziyah is the humiliation of infidel always, particularly at the time of collection. What is central in Zakat is that it is voluntary; at least it cannot be collected by force. In India Zakat ceased to be a religious tax imposed only on the Muslims. Here Zakat was levied in the shape of customs duties on merchandise and grazing fee on all milk-producing animals or those which went to pasture, and was realized both from Muslims and non-Muslims. According to the Islamic law, 'import duties for Muslims were 5 per cent and for non-Muslims 10 per cent of the commodity'. For, Abu Hanifa, whose Sunni school of law prevailed in India, would tax the merchandise of the Zimmis as imposts at double the Zakat fixed for Muslims.

From K.S. Lal, Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India, Delhi, 1999, pp. 139-140.

Note that both have jizya as double the rate of zakat, as per The Hedaya.

And of course the bottom line is that radical Muslims who are working to impose Sharia on Muslim and non-Muslim states, will endeavor also to reimpose the jizya. In the name of the equality of rights of all people, this must be resisted.

If you still believe the fashionable nonsense about how jihad is solely a spiritual struggle or at most a struggle for defense of Muslim lands, don't take it from me. Take it from Muslim Creed, a website operated by and for Muslims. (Thanks to Jeff Lastname for the link.) In a new book-length piece, "Fundamental Concepts Regarding Al Jihaad" by Sheikh Dr. Abdul-Qādir Ibn ‘Abdul-‘Azīz, there is a clear statement of jihad as offensive warfare against unbelievers. It's also a strong rejection, using Islamic texts, of the idea that jihad is only for defense. This is the kind of argument that moderate Muslims must refute in order to defuse the global jihad. Ibrahim Hooper? Anyone? Anyone?

‘Jihad At-Talab’ is when you seek the enemy and battle them within their state. And ‘Jihad Ad-Dafa’ ’ is the fighting against the enemy, which initiated the fighting with the Muslims. [1]

And the evidence for Jihād At-Talab:

The statement of Allāh, the Most High:

…then kill the Mushrikīn wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush. But if they repent and perform As-Salāt, and give Az-Zakāt, then leave their way free. Verily, Allāh is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful. [2]

And He, the Most High, said:

Fight against those who believe not in Allāh, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allāh and His Messenger and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islām) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. [3]

So Al-Haqq (i.e. Allāh), the Majestic and Most High, commanded going out and fighting them and seeking them and besieging them. And these verses are from the clearest, of the last ones, which were revealed (about Jihād). And there is no abrogation for them. And the Prophet and his companions with him, and those after him, followed them, until Allāh, the Most High, opened the Earth’s East and its West to them.

And the Messenger of Allāh said, “I was commanded to fight the people until they testify that there is no deity worthy of worship except Allāh and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allāh and they establish the prayer (Salāt) and pay the poor due (Zakāt). Then if they do that, then they have protected their blood and their wealth from me, except in the rights of Islām and their reckoning is with Allāh, the Most High.” [4]

And in the Hadīth of Buraydah, which was narrated by Muslim, “That the Messenger of Allāh; whenever he would appoint a commander (Amīr) over an army, or a platoon, he would advise him privately, to fear Allāh and with those who were with him from the Muslims, with good. Then he said, ‘Battle in the Name of Allāh. Fight those who have disbelieved in Allāh. Battle, but do not misappropriate (the war booty) and do not betray and do not make examples from the polytheists (i.e. do not mutilate them). And do not kill a child. Then if you meet your enemy from the polytheists, then call them to three practices.’” – the Hadīth. And these texts are clear and obvious concerning going out to fight the enemy, while intending them, within their state. And this is the Jihād At-Talab....

I say: From what has passed, you understand that the one who rejects the fact that Jihād At-Talab is from Islām, such as those who say that Islām does not fight unless it is for defense or to repel transgression, then he is a rejecter of the aforementioned verses and Hadīths and the likes of them. And He, the Most High, said:

…and none but the disbelievers reject Our Āyāt… [9]...

A Misconception:
Some use as evidence to reject Jihād At-Talab, His, the Most High’s, statement:

But if they incline to peace, you also incline to it… [10]

And (they say) as long as the disbeliever is in a state of peace with the Muslims, then there is no Jihād. An they use as evidence, the statement of the Prophet, “Do not wish to meet the enemy…” [11]

And this is the condition of those who believe in some of the Book while disbelieving in some; those who used as evidence, one of the evidences in the matter, while leaving the remaining evidences, as I mentioned in the fourth principle from “The Principles of Holding Steadfast to the Book and the Sunnah”. And the response to this doubt is from different points:

The First: The Messenger of Allāh and his companions, who are the best of this nation, may Allāh be pleased with them, did not hold these texts upon the point, which those ones understood from it, in that they mean the leaving of the Jihād At-Talab, as the Prophet fought the Arabs and then went out to fight the Romans at Tabūk. And he fought in nineteen battles. [12] And he personally participated in fighting in eight of them. [13] As for the delegations and the platoons, which he sent out but did not go out in personally, then they numbered thirty-six in the narration of Ibn Is’hāq, and others mentioned even more than that. [14] Then the companions battled, after him, the Persians and the Romans and the Turks and the Copts and the Barbars and others from what is known. So this one who used these texts as evidence to invalidate the Jihād At-Talab; we say to him:

“This thing that you understood; is it something that the Prophet and his Companions understood, or not?” Then if he says that they did not understand it, we say to him, “You have understood that which they did not understand, therefore you have judged upon yourself with misguidance and that what you have understood was not from our religion.” This is because the religion was completed in his lifetime. Allāh, the Most High, said:

This day, I have perfected your religion for you… [15]...

In other words, you can't reject our argument, because this is how Muhammad, al-insan al-kamil, the perfect man, behaved.

There is much more. Read it all. If you are looking for sources, note that the footnotes all cite passages from the Qur'an and well-attested, generally accepted ahadith.

Yassin, Rantisi, and now Khaled Abu Shamiyeh. This article doesn't tell you, of course, that Hamas is a jihadist group, dedicated since its inception to the violent destruction of Israel -- not to a peaceful, negotiated settlement. These "militants" are actually mujahedin, ready to kill and die for Allah; their stated grievances are only a pretext upon which to base calls for jihad. From AP:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Hamas threatened revenge after an Israeli helicopter blew up a car on a busy Gaza City street, killing a Hamas militant who was involved in making and firing rockets at Israeli towns.

Six bystanders were wounded, two of them seriously, hospital officials said.

The missile struck Khaled Abu Shamiyeh, 30, as he was riding in his car in Gaza City. Abu Shamiyeh was the head of Hamas in Gaza's Sheik Radwan neighborhood, and was involved in building homemade Qassam rockets, the army said.

Omar Arfa, 52, who owns a fast food stand in Gaza City, said the street was full of cars when the helicopter fired the missile. "A spark came from the sky, then there was a huge explosion in part of street," he said.

Hamas militants gathered at the hospital and called for revenge against Israel. "Hamas will teach the enemy (Israel) a painful lesson," said Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri.

Israel has killed dozens of Palestinian militants and scores of bystanders in targeted attacks in four years of fighting. On Sept. 7, helicopters fired missiles at a Hamas training area, killing 14 militants. Hamas has carried out dozens of suicide bombings in Israel.

And celebrated them, too.

Meet the new generation of terror leaders. From The Australian, :

AL-QAEDA'S new torchbearers are on the march. The next generation of Islamist leaders is more determined, more ruthless and far more dangerous than its predecessors. And the world is just getting to know them.

The chilling prophecy was delivered last week by a panel of the world's leading counter-terrorist experts, who have, since the events of 9/11, watched al-Qaeda shift like sand dunes in a desert storm.

"What they have in store for us is probably more than any of us could bear," one security official told a closed session of the Terrorism's Global Impact summit in Tel Aviv.

The al-Qaeda brand now extends far beyond its ubiquitous leader Osama bin Laden. The five men who carry on his ideology feel emboldened enough to make revolutionary calls of their own.

First among them is Ayman el Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy and doctor, and the man who has for the past two years called most of al-Qaeda 's operational shots. Zawahiri has taken up the slack left by the arrest of a swath of mid-level organisers, in particular the group's operational chief Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was nabbed in Pakistan 18 months ago.

It was Zawahiri's face that the world saw on television screens last week, days before the third anniversary of 9/11. And, providing he eludes capture, it will be Zawahiri we will continue to witness publicly trumpeting the aftermath of future strikes.

But Zawahiri's rise to prominence is paradoxical. Just like his boss, he too has become a figurehead. And the organisation they have both sat atop for the past eight years has become an ideological brand.

"The new generation of leaders are more violent and will drive this campaign in ways that are difficult for us to imagine," says Rohan Gunaratna from Singapore's Defence and Strategic Studies Centre.

"Al-Qaeda has become an ideology of empowerment," says a former senior CIA officer, who did not want to be identified. "People want to identify with the power symbolised by the brand. The best thing bin Laden could do is to die. It would be the last step in the casting of his legend."

Al-Qaeda's strength now lies in the affiliates it has inspired - some directly and others in its name. Among this conglomerate are four people almost certain to shape the future of Global Jihad Inc; Sheikh Abu Muhammed al-Maqdesi, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Sheikh Ahmad al-Zahrani and Sheikh Abu Omar Seyf.

Al-Maqdesi is a Palestinian who combined the extreme doctrines of Jihadi Salafiyyah and Wahhabism to create the severe Islamic teachings espoused by the insurgency in Iraq today and its supporters in the pan-Arab world.

His teachings have inspired Afghanistan's former Taliban regime, bin Laden, and Islamists in Southeast Asia and Chechnya. No other contemporary Islamic figure has done more to radicalise Islam. Several influential Palestinian clerics have risen in his shadow, and so too has al-Zarqawi.

The Jordanian-born Zarqawi is the most dangerous man in Iraq and, within 12 months of guerilla warfare in Iraq, now ranks among the most menacing Islamists on the globe.

Without the successful intervention of intelligence officers from his home country, Zarqawi would have in April been responsible for the largest terror strike using chemical weapons the world had experienced.

The plot targeted the Jordanian intelligence headquarters and the US embassy in the capital of Amman and, if the chemicals had spread as intended, could have killed close to 50,000 people.

According to Reuven Paz, Israeli academic and director of the Project for the Research of Islamic Movements, the Zarqawi-led insurgency against US-led forces in Iraq is flourishing for reasons that had not been anticipated by the Bush administration.

Paz says the invasion triggered the emergence of fundamental conflicts and agendas that had lain dormant for generations -- in particular, allowing Sunni Arabs to ramp suppressed ideals of anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism.

At the heart of this comes a call for Jihadis to return to the heart of the Arab world after years of "struggle in exile" in sectarian hot spots such as Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya.

Remarkable that this appeared in Arab News. (Thanks to Ali Dashti for the link.)

For some time now, there has been a lot of talk, nationally and even internationally, about women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. Being a person who has broached the topic in more than one article, it is not unusual for me to be asked: “What are the rights you think women should have?” Westerners often make the assumption that we are totally deprived of all rights. Saudis, mostly conservatives terrified of any change, think that Saudi women enjoy all the rights they are entitled to by Islamic law. Both groups, of course, are wrong.

My article today is not comprehensive on the situation from all angles. Rather, it is a glimpse into the life of one Saudi woman. Hopefully, by the end of the article, my readers will have some idea about the kind of rights women are deprived of on a daily basis in Saudi Arabia. Before I begin, I would like to clarify that this story only sheds light on the problem from one perspective: That of a divorced woman, raising children alone in Saudi Arabia.

Mona is a divorcee in her late 30s with three children: Two daughters and a son. Her ex-husband, being resentful of her decision to leave him, decided to make Mona’s life miserable in every way possible. For the first two years after their divorce, true to his words, he took away her children and deprived her of visitation rights. Under Islamic law, the mother is entitled to keep the children until they are seven. After that, a girl must go to live with her father and a boy is asked where he would like to live. Mona’s children were all taken from her, regardless.

After months of Mona’s family pleading with the ex-husband with no result, Mona reluctantly decided to see a lawyer. The lawyer explained that since all the parties involved were living in the same city, then by law Mona was entitled to see her children every weekend. Her lawyer contacted the ex-husband, who promised he would comply, but he did not. After weeks with no result, Mona’s lawyer advised her that the only way to force compliance was to send policemen to bring the children out from the ex-husband’s residence. The lawyer explained that even if her ex-husband was depriving her of visitation rights, she still did not have a claim to custody. All she can do was send the police in every weekend.

Being an educated and affectionate woman, Mona decided not to put her children through that sort of psychological trauma and helplessly watch as her ex-husband tore down all that she had been building in the children. First, he took the children out of their private schools and placed them in public schools. Being a single man, the responsibility of three children weighed heavily on him so he hired a housemaid to stay with them. The children were practically being raised by a maid, but Mona could do nothing about it. When her ex-husband traveled, which he frequently did, he left the children with his aged parents or with any of their willing aunts. Mona’s heart broke to see the children being shifted from one house to another, not unlike orphans, while she was there, just dying to see them. She spoke to other lawyers, explained the situation, and every one of them said the same thing: Custody is his right despite all that he is doing.

After two years, Mona’s ex-husband decided to remarry. Fortunately for her, the children became a burden he no longer wanted to bear so he decided that they should live with their mother. Mona was ecstatic, but she soon realized that her ex-husband would always hold some power over all of them. First, he refused to pay any child support. The lawyers told Mona that there was nothing any judge would do except verbally reprimand her ex-husband. No law allows money to be cut from his salary without his consent for child support and no law can imprison him for child abandonment.

As a single mother, in a country where women’s salaries are usually between SR1,500-SR7,000, it has been very difficult for Mona to raise her children the way she wants, but she has done her best. She has scraped and saved to provide them with a good education. Of course, every school she has enrolled the children in has asked for their legal guardian’s original family card, which her husband has carelessly refused to give. In the end Mona has bribed private school officials to accept them.

Having three children, it became difficult for her to stay at her family’s already full house so she decided to rent a tiny apartment nearby for her children. No landlord would accept them without a male sponsor. With her father deceased, Nora pleaded with her brother to use his name and paid one year in advance to make all parties feel safer.

Unable to drive, she had to hire a driver. The cab she used to take to work every day, would no longer suffice for three different locations every morning and noon. As a woman, however, she could not finish her papers alone. All government institutions are run by men. So she was forced to hire a man and give him legal authorization to represent her; i.e. more expenses on an already stretched budget. Then there was the ironic request to prove her need for — and ability to pay — a driver. She had to provide papers proving employment and the salary she earned. I say ironic because, in a country where no woman can drive, it is like asking half the population why they need to get out of the house. More humiliating, then, was the fact that she was forced to send a copy of her divorce papers to complete strangers to decide if she was entitled to a driver.

Read it all.

An important announcement from Walid Phares:

Why a Middle Eastern American Convention for Freedom and Democracy?

Writing to the President of the United States and the US Congress, we relayed a common position reached by a number of Mideast-American leaders and organizations about a historic event to be organized by the largest and most diversed coalition of Mideast Americans ever formed in America.

Over the past few months, intense discussions and many meetings were held by a large number of Mideast-Americans from all religious, ethnic, cultural and social background to assess US position in the Middle East and towards Americans from Mideast descent at home.

American organizations and groups from Lebanese, Iraqi, Syrian, Egyptian, Sudanese, Iranian and other Arab and Mideast backgrounds, met and evaluated the War on Terrorism, the liberation of Afghanistan, the removal of dictator Saddam Hussein, as well as important actions towards the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, the genocide in Sudan, Iran's democracy movement as well as the issues of women, freedoms and education in the broader Middle East.

It is becoming a reality in the United States that most Mideastern-Americans believe in the following facts:

1) Numbers:
There are about 4 million Americans from Mideast ancestry. They encompass many ethnicities such as: Arab, ChaldoAssyrians, Lebanese, Persian, Kurds, Sudanese Africans, Copts, Berbers, Turkic, Aramaic, and others. They also belong to many religions and faiths including: Sunnis, Shiites, Maronites, Nestorian, Druze, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Melkite, Bahais, Zoroaistrans, Jews, etc.

2) Issues:
The overwhelming majority of this diverse Mideast-American community loves its country, the United States and stands firmly in support of National Security, Democracy and Pluralism. It is true that Wahabism and other anti-American ideologies are prevalent among a number of immigrants and visiting students from Mideast descent. But the majority, mostly silent, of all Mideast and Arab Americans, not only is opposed to these radical doctrines, but strongly supports the US Government policies on the Middle East and on Terrorism:

a. War on Terror: Overwhelmingly Mideast and Arab Americans are against al Qaida and support the US against Terrorism.

b. War in Iraq: Most Mideast and Arab Americans opposed Saddam and endorsed his removal.

c. Homeland Security: Most Mideast and Arab Americans stand by their Government, nation and support the principles of the Patriot Act.
d. Human Rights: A very large manjority of Mideast Americans endorses the promotion of Democracy and the rule of Law in their mother countries. They support freedom for civil societies and increasing rights to women, minorities as well as religious and political tolerance.

Therefore, and after they've noticed how the critics have been trying to undermine the Mideast initiatives triggered by the United States, both overseas and at home, the leaders of most Mideast organizations in America have decided to express their support to the vision and the actions by the US Government in public. They have organized a major national event in Washington, DC to tell the world and the American people, on whose side they are. They want to express their gratitude to the President of the United States, to his Administration and to the US Congress for standing by Freedom in the Middle East.

The leaders of the organizations have formed a coalition and are now working on a Mideast American Convention to be held in Washington on Friday, October 1, 2004 at the Wardman Park Marriott. Speakers will express these views at a forum as well as during the dinner.

For more information, see here.

The Saudis continue their double game. From Middle East Newsline:

HERZLIYA, Israel [MENL] -- Saudi Arabia, despite a vigorous military campaign against Islamic insurgents, was said to have continued financing the Al Qaida-inspired war against the West.

Several leading analysts and former officials echoed this assertion during a conference last week by the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel. The analysts said Saudi Arabia has maintained funding to ensure the spread of Al Qaida-inspired ideology abroad even as authorities fight the movement within the kingdom.

"The Saudis have been jolted by the Al Qaida threat," Dore Gold, a senior Israeli government consultant and president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said. "At the same time, they are ideologically committed to supporting jihad externally."

Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, presented documents that told of Saudi support to the Palestinian movement, Hamas, as late as May 2003. The payment was made through the kingdom-sponsored charity, International Islamic Relief Organization.

When I speak before audiences that include Muslims in this country, I often find that they deny -- scornfully -- the idea that any Muslims want to establish an Islamic state in the United States. This Chicago Tribune article about the Muslim Brotherhood (thanks to Charles for the link) is less disingenuous.

Over the last 40 years, small groups of devout Muslim men have gathered in homes in U.S. cities to pray, memorize the Koran and discuss events of the day.

But they also addressed their ultimate goal, one so controversial that it is a key reason they have operated in secrecy: to create Muslim states overseas and, they hope, someday in America as well.

These men are part of an underground U.S. chapter of the international Muslim Brotherhood, the world's most influential Islamic fundamentalist group and an organization with a violent past in the Middle East. But fearing persecution, they rarely identify themselves as Brotherhood members and have operated largely behind the scenes, unbeknown even to many Muslims.

Still, the U.S. Brotherhood has had a significant and ongoing impact on Islam in America, helping establish mosques, Islamic schools, summer youth camps and prominent Muslim organizations. It is a major factor, Islamic scholars say, in why many Muslim institutions in the nation have become more conservative in recent decades.

Leading the U.S. Brotherhood during much of this period was Ahmed Elkadi, an Egyptian-born surgeon and a former personal physician to Saudi Arabia's King Faisal. He headed the group from 1984 to 1994 but abruptly lost his leadership position. Now he is discussing his life and the U.S. Brotherhood for the first time.

His story, combined with details from documents and interviews, offers an unprecedented look at the Brotherhood in America: how the group recruited members, how it cloaked itself in secrecy and how it alienated many moderate Muslims.

Indeed, because of its hard-line beliefs, the U.S. Brotherhood has been an increasingly divisive force within Islam in America, fueling the often bitter struggle between moderate and conservative Muslims.

Many Muslims believe that the Brotherhood is a noble international movement that supports the true teachings of Islam and unwaveringly defends Muslims who have come under attack around the world, from Chechens to Palestinians to Iraqis. But others view it as an extreme organization that breeds intolerance and militancy.

"They have this idea that Muslims come first, not that humans come first," says Mustafa Saied, 32, a Floridian who left the U.S. Brotherhood in 1998.

While separation of church and state is a bedrock principle of American democracy, the international Brotherhood preaches that religion and politics cannot be separated and that governments eventually should be Islamic. The group also champions martyrdom and jihad, or holy war, as a means of self-defense and has provided the philosophical underpinnings for Muslim militants worldwide.

Many moderate Muslims in America are uncomfortable with the views preached at mosques influenced by the Brotherhood, scholars say. Those experts point to a 2001 study sponsored by four Muslim advocacy and religious groups that found that only a third of U.S. Muslims attend mosques.

In suburban Bridgeview, Ill., some moderates say they quit attending the Mosque Foundation because the leadership became too conservative and dominated by Brotherhood members.

Documents obtained by the Tribune and translated from Arabic show that the U.S. Brotherhood has been careful to obscure its beliefs from outsiders. One document tells leaders to be cautious when screening potential recruits. If the recruit asks whether the leader is a Brotherhood member, the leader should respond, "You may deduce the answer to that with your own intelligence."

Islamic state a long-term goal

Brotherhood members emphasize that they follow the laws of the nations in which they operate. They stress that they do not believe in overthrowing the U.S. government, but rather that they want as many people as possible to convert to Islam so that one day--perhaps generations from now--a majority of Americans will support a society governed by Islamic law. Muslims make up less than 3 percent of the U.S. population, but estimates of their number vary widely from 2 million to 7 million.

Federal authorities say they have scrutinized the U.S. Brotherhood for years. Agents currently are investigating whether people with ties to the group have raised and laundered money to finance terrorism abroad. No terrorism-related charges have been filed.

Former leader Elkadi, who has been questioned at length by federal authorities about the inner workings of the Brotherhood, says the group has served Muslims in the United States well. He personally helped establish an Islamic community in the Florida Panhandle, with a mosque, school and health clinic. And though he eventually lost it all--even his medical license--some Muslims still view him as a great Islamic leader.

"Islam is for everyone," he says. "It's good for America, good for Muslims too. . . . It's good knowledge, and good knowledge should be available to everyone."

Mohammed Mahdi Akef, head of the international Muslim Brotherhood, based in Egypt, lauds Elkadi and the activities of the U.S. Brotherhood.

"They have succeeded in saving the younger generations from melting into the American lifestyle without faith," he says. "They have saved their children."

There is much more of interest in this piece. Read it all.

For cooperating with Americans. From AP:

CAIRO, Egypt - A videotape posted by on a Web site Saturday showed the beheading of three hostages said to be members of an Iraqi Kurdish party, slain for cooperating with American forces, according to their Islamic militant captors.

A statement with the video was signed by the Ansar al-Sunna Army, which in August released footage showing 12 Nepalese hostages being killed.

The statement identified the hostages as three truck drivers who belong to the Kurdistan Democratic Party, captured in a roadblock near Taji, 15 miles north of Baghdad, as they were transporting military vehicles to an American base in Taji.

The video shows three young men showing their identity cards. Seconds later, each has his throat slit. A man is seen cutting off each hostage's head. The heads are then seen placed on the backs of the victims.

The "renegade military men, affiliated with the traitor Kurdistan Democratic Party" were beheaded, and their bodies were left on the road to Mosul "for them to be an example to others, and for us to revenge our women, children and elderly who die daily from American raids," the statement said.

Instead of endless disingenuous pieces explaining how all of this is against Islam, it would be refreshing and helpful this time for a Muslim spokesman to acknowledge that yes, this behavior is justified by Islamic law, and that's just one reason why that law is in drastic need of reform. Ibrahim Hooper? Anyone? Anyone? Moderate Muslims, please contact me at director@jihadwatch.org.

A glimpse of the realities of secular Turkey, where government officials seem to be suffering from a strong dhimmitude hangover. Let them into the EU! From the Barnabas Fund, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

Ephesus Protestant Church at Selçuk is to be sealed by the local council on the grounds that the corrugated roofing and metal poles of the veranda contravene building regulations. This is likely to be followed by a fine of $1,000 and the forced demolishing of the veranda. Although at least 20 buildings in the neighbourhood have a similar construction, only the church and one immediate neighbour have been targeted by the council. The veranda was already in place when the church fellowship bought the building which they now use for worship.

The chief civil engineer of Selçuk told church leaders that even if they were to demolish the veranda, there were other issues which the council would then raise with them requiring the demolishing of other parts of the building.

The church leaders believe it is the Christian training activities which take place at the church that have incurred the hostility of the local council. They fear that the council intends eventually to demolish the whole church building.

UPDATE: You may be more familiar with Selçuk's ancient name: Ephesus. It is one of the ancient Christian sites that was conquered by the Muslims. Turkey would love you to visit. They like the money that comes in from American tourists who are thrilled to see the ruins of famous New Testament sites. If you know of a group planning a tour to Turkey, have them let the Turkish government know that modern, living Christians in Turkey deserve the care and concern of Turkish officials as much or more than long-dead, buried ones.

From Malaysia's New Straits Times (with thanks to Nicolei) comes just what The Economist and the rest of the world is looking for: a moderate Muslim ready to denounce violence and terrorism perpetrated in the name of Islam.

Can we, the truly caring decent Muslims, not protest? Can we not say to the world that no, you have it wrong. Islam is not about killing. Islam is not about attacking five-year-olds on the threshold of a new life in a new country, killing them or leaving them impaired for life, if not physically, then definitely psychologically.

Islam is not about killing, torture and revenge, but whom do we tell this to? Where can we, the common man, go to plead the case for Islam? Is there a world tribunal for redress where people like you and I can plead on behalf of our faith? Where we can explain in simple layman's terms that mad people kill, not religion? I know I am not equipped to delve at length into the philosophies and the fatwa, or the intricacies and the why of clever things like international relations and politics. I just despair that we have still not resolved age-old differences, nor healed age-old wounds. Since the dawn of mankind, we have always been at strife with one another.

At least, sad though it may be, the one thing constant with mankind is we have never been at peace. But surely there must be something that we can all do. It is time for all true Muslims to stand up and denounce terrorism in our own way. On a personal level, perhaps we could help separate the real Muslims from the murdering frauds who kill in the name of religion for whatever cause. Help to explain that the taking of lives, but for self-defence, is something all decent Muslims don't condone.

People who kill innocents and who do not respect life must be exposed. Decent Muslims must stand up to expose them for the devils that they are for the sake of all good and peace-loving Muslims.

And we have to do it now.

For Muslims all over are being condemned and spat upon by people who do not know better.

"Before Sept 11, I never had a problem with what people wore or how they looked," said a friend. "Now, all the more after what happened in Beslan, I find myself reacting with anger at anyone who looks remotely like al-Qaeda.

"I cannot help feeling so angry that it's that kind of Muslim who gives my religion a bad name.

"I know this sounds stupid and totally tak masuk akal, but I'm only human and I cry at the carnage they leave in their wake.

"I just want to go out and bash them up, to show the world we do not condone what they do." Many feel the same but cannot articulate so, or don't feel the need or necessity to. ...

The Muslim world must counter these atrocities. For how else can we set the balance right? Soon after Sept 11, I remember sitting horrified for days watching and listening to the reports on CNN and BBC. Much of what was happening was beamed to the world, primarily through these two channels. The news was slanted to portray the suicide bombers as the cold-hearted cowardly common murderers that they were. And I cringed at the terms that flailed my very soul — Muslim terrorists, Muslim suicide bombers, Muslim this and Muslim that. It is so unfair to be associated with killers who have no right to call themselves Muslims.

How dare they claim to be on a jihad to save the Muslim world? When innocent blood is shed, you forfeit the right to call yourself a martyr. It's time Muslims had their own wide-reaching PR set-up to explain the other side of the story. It is because we are not doing so that we are being misunderstood, feared and reviled.

We should all make it our personal jihad to correct the negative perceptions before this madness comes to our shores.

This all sounds great, but Nicolei also sends along some pointed comments:

Osama and the likes of him are able to and confidently quote from the Koran and hadiths to justify their terror. Many of the Muslim terrorists have studied in madrassahs and too many Islamic teachers and scholars have have been associated with or condoned the Islamic terrorists for their Islam to be classified as an aberration. Those who do so, like this writer, can at best only quote the Meccan revelations, but they are unable to effectively deal with the Islamic doctrine of abrogation -- whereby the violent Medina verses that inspires the terrorists, overrules the peaceful Meccan verses. Islamic orthodoxy has consistently branded Muslims who deny the authority of the hadiths as heretics.

While I can cheer for Muslims like this writer, I also pity them; for until they deal with the violent verses in the Koran and hadiths and their historical tradition of violent jihad, they will be unable to convince knowledgable Muslims like Osama that what the terrorists did and will do in the name of Islam is wrong. On the contrary, Osama will view these peaceful Muslims as apostates, who ran away from the battle -- and deserve their wrath with extreme prejudice.

Here is an indication of just how deep and thoroughgoing is the Saudi democratization and reform. The women are still in their place, as are the dhimmis. One heartening sign, however, is that women were prepared to run, and this ruling may not go down easy. From ArabNews via MENAFN, with thanks to Nicolei:

JEDDAH, 19 September 2004 — The General Committee for Municipal Elections announced yesterday that women would not be allowed to run in the upcoming municipal elections. This puts an end to speculation about women's role in the Feb. 10 elections, Al-Jazirah newspaper said.

The paper quoted an unnamed source as rejecting speculation about women running for the elections. Responding to intentions of some women, military men and municipal officials to run for office, the source said they had misunderstood the law which had clearly stated that "all muwatin (male citizens) can participate in elections." The law did not use the word "muwatina (female citizen), thus excluding women from contesting elections, the paper said....

Representing the views that women should not run for office, an anonymous Shoura Council member said: "What do women want with voting and municipality elections? Why would they want to trouble themselves with things that are new and unfamiliar? These issues are against their nature so why ask for trouble?"

And the US. From The Telegraph, with thanks to Nicolei and Ali Dashti:

A Libyan hunted by Pakistan because of his senior role in the al Qa'eda terrorist network has taken charge of its sleeper cells in Britain and the United States, Pakistani intelligence officials believe.

Abu Faraj al Libbi, said to have taken over as third in command of al Qa'eda when his mentor, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was captured last year, has sent coded messages to "several" Islamic militants in Britain over the past 10 months, according to Pakistani officials.

Security officers who have interrogated recently captured militants say that Abu Faraj, who is now believed to be al Qa'eda's top operational chief, masterminded and financed assassination attempts against President Pervez Musharraf, the country's military ruler, last December.

They have now revealed that Abu Faraj, who was once Osama bin Laden's personal assistant, is also in frequent contact with al Qa'eda members and supporters abroad, particularly in Britain and America. They have identified two people - both of whom are in British custody - as recipients of coded messages from Abu Faraj.

The existence of a trove of secret al Qa'eda e-mail messages first emerged in July, when Pakistan announced the arrest of Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, a communications specialist who visited Britain often and gathered information on possible terror targets around the world. Eight British suspects were arrested and remain in custody, charged under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Pakistani officials now say that some of the encrypted messages sent to the Britons originated from Abu Faraj.

"The coded messages deciphered recently have revealed to us that he was not only co-ordinating pre-election terrorist acts in the US, but had sent several messages to several militants in the UK in the last eight to 10 months . . . to share notes with them about future terror attacks in the UK," said an investigator who has seen the communications.

The Economist has shown little sign of comprehending the realities of Islamic terrorism in the past, so it was somewhat refreshing to see these paragraphs in the self-important old rag (thanks to Ali Dashti for the link):

Even so, the sheer nastiness of jihadist violence has begun to generate a powerful groundswell of angry Muslim opposition. The coincidence of the anniversary of September 11th 2001 with the horrific slaughter of schoolchildren at Beslan provoked a chorus of condemnation. This was not only against terrorism, but also against the clerics whose extremist interpretations support that terrorism.

Why, demands a former Kuwaiti minister writing in the Saudi daily Al Sharq al Awsat, have we not heard a single fatwa against Osama bin Laden, when Muslims fell over themselves to condemn Salman Rushdie for writing a “vapid” novel? Who has done more damage to Islam? Muslims must no longer remain silent, declares an editorial in the Egyptian weekly Rose al-Yusef; our fear of speaking out has become the terrorists' fifth column.

But The Economist still cannot and probably will not answer its own question: why has there been no fatwa against Osama? That would lead it to a most un-PC consideration of Islamic theology, law, traditions, and history, and to the point I keep making that few, if any, want to admit: that Osama's theology represents a broad tradition in Islam, and must be acknowledged as such before anything truly effective can be done to contain it. There can be no revisionism of the Qur'an and Sunnah until the need for such revisionism is acknowledged. Otherwise new terrorists will continue to stream out of mosques and madrassas, and the dhimmis and multiculturalists at The Economist will wring their hands in puzzlement.

Of course, such stories are just a conspiracy of the West. From The Telegraph, with thanks to Nicolei:

A woman and teenage girl who were raped and abducted by soldiers in Western Darfur have claimed that the Sudanese army organised airlifts of sex slaves to serve as the "wives" of government soldiers in Khartoum. Their accounts appear to corroborate claims made privately by Sudanese and United Nations officials, and are the latest evidence that government forces are involved in activities which Khartoum blames on the Janjaweed militia.

"The army captured many children and women hiding in the bush outside burnt villages," said a senior politician in Khartoum who is familiar with the cases but asked not to be named.

"They were transported by plane to Khartoum at night, and divided up among soldiers as domestic workers and in some cases wives."...

Critics of the Sudanese government say that the cases of the two girls - both of whose names have been changed to protect them - are evidence of official wrongdoing.

"It takes a lot of co-ordination to kidnap 40 women from different parts of rural Darfur and fly them all secretly to Khartoum for forced marriage. This must have been agreed upon by senior politicians," said a dissenting parliamentarian.

"It is solid proof of collusion between the government and the army in rape, abduction and slavery of children and women."

The Sudanese government adamantly denied the women's claims, saying they were feeding anti-Arab propaganda.

"These things simply do not happen," one senior Sudanese diplomat said. "Such stories are a conspiracy of the West to discredit the government of Sudan.

But really, none of this is at all hard to believe, particularly in connection with an Islamic army. After all, the Prophet Muhammad himself behaved this way, as I discuss in Islam Unveiled, and as Serge Trifkovic reminds us in a piece on the Beslan atrocities in Chronicles (thanks to Jim):

The media in the United States have been oddly fastidious in failing to report one aspect of last week’s horror in Beslan: that several Russian girls were raped by Muslim terrorists in front of their parents and classmates. The failure to report rapes in the Russian school was at odds with the eagerness of American journalists, a decade ago, to report ad nauseam on the entirely fictitious "rape camps" supposedly run by Bosnian Serbs in which Muslim women were allegedly subjected to similar degradation.

That Muslim propagandists and their Western abettors should have resorted to this particular whopper is especially galling in view of Islam’s encouragement of violence against women in general, and its explicit blessing of rape of captive non-Muslim women by Muslims in particular. The behavior of Chechen terrorists in Beslan, disgusting in every gory detail by the standards of civilized humanity, was justified by the tenets of Islam and by the personal example of the cult’s inventor, Muhammad.

Having established himself as the ruler of Medina, Muhammad attacked the Jewish tribe of Banu-‘l-Mustaliq in December of A.D. 626. His followers slaughtered many Jewish tribesmen and looted thousands of their camels and sheep. They also kidnapped 500 of their women. The night after the battle Muhammad and his brigands staged an orgy of rape. As one of the brigands, Abu Sa’id Khudri, later remembered, a legal problem needed to be resolved first: In order to obtain ransom from the surviving Jews for the captive women, Muslims had pledged not to violate them:

We were lusting after women and chastity had become too hard for us, but we wanted to get the ransom money for our prisoners. So we wanted to use the Azl [coitus interruptus]. We asked the Prophet about it and he said: "You are not under any obligation not to do it like that."

Having ethnically cleansed and robbed of property all but one of three Jewish clans in Medina, in A.D. 627 Muhammad decided to deal with the last, Banu Qurayzah. He offered the men conversion as an alternative to death. Upon their unsurprising refusal, some 900—exact numbers are unknown—were decapitated, one by one, in a ditch surrounding their encampment, in front of their women and children. Muhammad’s Einsatzgruppen worked hard: Torches had to be lit so that the slaughter could be accomplished in one day. The women, thus widowed or orphaned, were raped that same night. Muhammad chose as his concubine one Raihana bint Amr, whose father and husband were both slaughtered before her eyes only hours earlier. (Such treatment of the victims had been duly sanctioned by a prophetic revelation in the Kuran.)

Read it all.

Immediate reactions from Middle East expert Walid Phares on Algeria, Russia, Jihad webs and Darfurians:

The United Nations Security Council in New York just passed a resolution (No1564) on Sudan, adopting the US draft. This resolution got 11 votes and 4 abstentions. Here are few important notes:

1. The ambassador of Algeria, representing the Arab League, Abdallah Baali, rejected the resolution. It is to note that M Baali has also rejected the previous UN resolution 1556 on Sudan. This shows that the Arab League bloc, represented by Baali is attempting to block all UN resolutions that could end up in interventions. Diplomatic sources explained the reasons why. The Algerian representative also rejected UNSCR no 1559, voted two weeks ago, calling on Syria to withdraw from Lebanon.

2. The Russian ambassador called for the disarming of the Janjawid. An interesting position showing the new Russian position regarding the Jihadist groups around the world.

3. More importantly, in the pro- al Qaida chat rooms, the vote and the discussions were followed closely. After the vote took place, a Jihadi room leader said "this is an attack against Islam. We must respond!" Which raises the Terror factor in Sudan. The Jihadis will try to use religion, but the African factor is stronger.

4. Today of the people of Darfur and Sudan have just won a battle.

From ANS, with thanks to Nicolei:

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA (ANS) -- A major Catholic news service joined an international campaign Friday, September 17, to free a "tortured" Christian guest worker from India who was reportedly produced before an Islamic court this week on charges of "spreading Christianity."

Brian O'Connor "was beaten and tortured and threatened with death unless he abjured his Christian faith," said AsiaNews, quoting several human rights groups, including Middle East Concern.

"Along with other associations, AsiaNews has embarked on an international campaign for Mr. O’Connor’s release," the news organization said.

Another Christian news agency, Compass Direct, said it had learned that O'Connor's hearing in front of an Islamic court in Riyadh Wednesday, September 15, lasted 90 minutes.

His court hearing came as United States Secretary of State Colin Powell named Saudi Arabia as one of eight "countries of particular concern" for its "gross infringements of religious freedom."

CHARGES AGAINST HIM

"O’Connor was informed for the first time of the legal charges against him, which include possession of alcohol, possession of pornographic movies and preaching Christianity.

It was not clear whether any evidence was produced to support the possession charges," said Compass, which has close contacts with persecuted Christians.

He has reportedly acknowledged that he led Bible studies for expatriate Christians in his home, which is illegal under Saudi Arabia's controversial policies.

Clash of civilizations in Tennessee. From The Tennessean, with thanks to Jeff Lastname:

Whirlpool was within its rights to tell a Muslim plant employee that he could not take a few minutes a day to say his religion's required sunset prayers, a federal jury decided yesterday.

The decision was a rebuff to Somali-born plaintiff Ibrahim Farah. Whirlpool argued that allowing the practice for all its Muslim employees would have been too disruptive at its La Vergne assembly plant.

''I thought that a religion was trying to dictate to a private entity,'' said juror Gordon Stannerd.

The three-day trial before U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger culminated two years of litigation that pitted a religious duty against the production schedules of an air-conditioner manufacturing line.

The eight-member jury took about an hour to reach its decision yesterday.

Attorneys for Farah had described Whirlpool's refusal to allow their client about five minutes of prayer each evening as evidence of religious discrimination. They argued that the plant where Farah worked from 1996-2001 was rife with prejudice against Muslims who took seasonal jobs at the Whirlpool factory.

But David J. Parsons, Whirlpool's lead attorney, countered that the corporation had welcomed its growing number of Muslim employees and had accommodated their religious needs, implementing dietary changes at the company cafeteria and permitting headdresses as long as they were within safety guidelines.

Fierce competition had forced the company to trim its salaried employees drastically, he said, at a time when its ranks of seasonal workers were rapidly filling with Muslims such as Farah.

Having as many as 40 Muslims at one time leave the assembly line to pray for a few minutes each evening was more than Whirlpool could reasonably allow, Parsons said.

The jury agreed.

This was the taxpayer-funded seminar I told you about some time ago. From Preston Today, with thanks to Susan:

More than 100 people turned out to listen to a series of speakers trying to dispel myths about Islam....

The seminar was the culmination of a week-long series of events to forge greater community understanding of Islam and to drive down racism caused by misconceptions and intolerance.

During the week, mosques in Preston opened up their doors so people could visit to find out more about the Islamic religion and culture.
Visitors and participants to the seminar event were asked to observe a one minute's silence for the victims of the September 11, Madrid and Beslan tragedies.

A number of Muslim speakers then covered topics ranging from women in Islam, Jihad - holy war - and converts to Islam.

Members of the public were encouraged to ask questions after each talk and had the chance to listen to the call to prayer as well as being invited to witness Muslims offering their prayers to Allah.

A free buffet lunch was served giving people the opportunity to try out Asian delicacies.

The event was rounded off with a question time when non Muslims could bring up any queries or issues relating to Islam which were answered by a panel.

Marilyn Casson, 50, of Fulwood, Preston, said: "I have been an atheist for more than 30 years and do not believe in God.

"I have attended this event purely to have a greater understanding of Islam.

"A few months ago, I attended an open evening at a Hindu temple and I feel it is important to learn about different cultures and communities.

"I do feel Britain is prejudiced in a many ways and racism is one of them.

"The more people can be exposed to events like these, the better for the whole community."

Robert Parkinson, from Knott End, said: "I am here as my daughter is doing one of the talks.

"Her name is Susan - now Aysha Bana. She married a Muslim man and converted to Islam. I am very interested in it all and am here to learn more about the religion."

John Bolton, who attended the event with wife Margaret, said: "I am a retired Methodist minister and I used to be the chaplain at the Royal Preston Hospital.

"I developed the prayer room at the hospital and took an interest in inter racial relationships.

"My wife and I decided to attend this seminar as we wish to extend our understanding of Islam.

"Unless we can find ways of integrating and mixing and working much closer together to understand and respect each other's faiths, there are difficult times ahead.

"It is important that events like this are supported, particularly by non-Muslims."

The organisers said that the week-long event had gone well.
Linda Guise from the Racial Equality Council, one of the event's partner organisations, said: "We feel that there is a lot of misconception out there about Islam and this event aims to dispel the myths.

"There are no questions that will not be answered and the organisers are as honest and informative as they can.

"The idea is that if people become more understanding of different religions and cultures, they will become more tolerant and this will lead to a better society."

The article doesn't detail what the seminar speakers said about Islam and violence, but I can imagine that they didn't quote Sura 9:29, Sayyid Qutb, or even Britain's own Omar Bakri. I would lay odds that the words "Sharia" and "caliphate" went unspoken the whole week. What I would like to see would be this Muslim group holding a seminar for Al-Muhajiroun, seeking to dispel that radical Muslim group's "misconceptions" of Islam. Then we might be getting somewhere.

Carl I. Hagen continues to speak out in Norway. Note that his concerns are not based on race, but on the possibility that such a party would try to advance Sharia in Norway. From Nettavisen, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

«I’m convinced that it’s just a matter of time before we get a political party based on Islam,» Hagen stated in an interview the TV 2 Nyhetene. «Of course, I don’t know if it will be a moderate or fundamental party, but I’m keeping an eye on the international expansion the Islamic fundamentalism is organizing and the coordination of Muslims in Europe as well, and I’m convinced that it will come to Norway too. It may take five or ten years, but it will come.»

A different Norway

Hagen said that he sees that visit of the controversial Pakistani politician Qasi Hussein Ahmad in August as a sign that Norway is also included in this international trend of strengthening Islamic fundamentalism.

«He works for the establishment of sharia law, and it’s strange if he not tries to stimulate it in Norway,» Hagen said. «There are many Muslims in Norway, and probably also some fundamentalists that keep out of view. It’s only a question of time before someone decides to become a representative in governmental organs through a political party.»

In his worst nightmare, Hagen fears that Islamic fundamentalists may get elected to the Norwegian parliament.

«This will be something I will fight as long as I live,» Hagen said. «If we get a party built on Islamic laws of sharia and a completely different set of values, then this will be a completely different Norway then what we inherited from our forefathers.»

He recruited Americans to wage jihad overseas. From AP:

WASHINGTON – A Palestinian with links to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and an Egyptian were charged Thursday with providing financial support for terror groups and recruiting would-be terrorists, including alleged al-Qaida plotter Jose Padilla.

A 10-count federal grand jury indictment returned in Miami charges Adhan Amin Hassoun and Mohamed Hesham Youssef with providing material support and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorist organizations. Both men already are jailed – Hassoun in Florida and Youssef in Egypt.

According to the indictment, Hassoun wrote checks totaling $53,000 between 1994 and May 2002 to charities and individuals with ties to terrorism. From a base in Broward County, Fla., Hassoun also allegedly recruited people in the United States for Islamic “jihad,” or holy war, in Afghanistan, Somalia, Chechnya and Kosovo.

“This indictment alleges that an individual living here in the United States, enjoying all the freedoms that our society has to offer, was secretly plotting to support murder and terror being perpetrated by violent jihadists overseas,” Attorney General John Ashcroft said.

More on Germany's belated action against the planned Berlin conference in October. From AP, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

Germany will deny visas to participants of a planned Islamic conference in Berlin next month that security officials say appears to be justifying terrorism, the Foreign Ministry said Friday.

Organizers of the Oct. 1-3 event call on the meeting's Web site for "the liberation of all the occupied territories and countries in struggle against the American-Zionist hegemony and occupation."

Organizers say they expect between 500 and 800 participants, but have declined to say who will speak and where in Berlin the gathering will be held.

German embassies worldwide have been instructed to refuse visas to anyone who says they want to attend, Foreign Ministry spokesman Walter Lindner told a regular news briefing.

"Fundamentalists and hate preachers have no place in Germany," he said.

Germany's top security official, Interior Minister Otto Schily, said this week that the conference "seems to fall under the heading of justifying terrorist acts."

Note the title of his book, meaning, of course, that the Americans are the terrorists. (That's why, evidently, he thought it wise to blow up a bunch of dancers in a nightclub.) Keep that in mind the next time you hear that an Islamic individual or group that denounced terrorism was actually mixed up in it. From AP, :

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Imam Samudra was 16 when he rejected his secular upbringing, beginning a journey into militant Islam that would ultimately claim 202 lives at a nightclub in Bali. In a newly published autobiography written on death row, the 35-year-old attributes his conversion to the disgust he felt at seeing friends skip prayers and girls fail to cover their heads as the Islamic holy book demands.

"I became an introvert, and stopped watching TV and listening to music. My best friends were the Quran and other religious books," he writes in the book, titled "I Fight Terrorists."

The "terrorists" referred to in the title are Americans, Samudra explains in the book.

The 280-page paperback offers a rare glimpse into the mind of a militant in the world's most populous Islamic nation as its secular government struggles against religious fundamentalism....

Samudra argues that the Oct. 12, 2002, Bali nightclub attack was justified, and calls for more suicide operations in Indonesia and elsewhere to avenge America's support for Israel and its attacks on Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Despite its inflammatory nature, there have been no calls to ban the book and its release has caused no controversy - reflecting what analysts say is a general indifference toward terror in Indonesia despite the horrors of the Bali blasts and last week's attack.

Islamic militancy is just one problem in the country of 210 million, which is wracked by ethnic, separatist and religious fighting that has killed more than 10,000 in the last four years alone.

Security minister Hari Sabarno said prosecutors would study the book to see whether it had broken any laws but added that "in this era of democracy we can't just simply ban books."

Samudra wrote the book from his cell in Bali on paper provided to him by his family. Its cover depicts him in a white Islamic cap against a fiery orange background.

Profits from "I Fight Terrorists" are being divided among Samudra's family, his defense attorneys and unnamed charities, his lawyers said. It is on sale for around $3.

Indonesia has no laws preventing convicted criminals from profiting from their actions. Sukirno denies the book glorifies Samudra's crimes, or could incite more attacks.

"We are presenting the whole story," he said. "We cannot deny this bombing happened. We hope this book provokes debate."

Samudra gives few details about the planning for the Bali bombings, which he argues are defensible in Islam.

"The wounds of the Palestinians are not dry, the cries of the weak in Afghanistan have not stopped," Samudra writes. "The Bali bombings were from a resistance to the American colonizers and its allies."

"Attacking civilians from the colonizer countries is reasonable and undertaken in the interests of balance and justice," he writes. "Blood is repaid by blood, life by life, civilian by civilian."

Hardline rhetoric like Samudra's is rarely heard in Indonesia, where the practice of Islam is often interspersed with older Hindu and animist beliefs. Calls for solidarity with Muslims in the Middle East do not resonate in this tropical, maritime nation on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

"Samudra does not represent anyone but himself," said Azyumardi Azra, president of the State Islamic University of Jakarta.

But since the downfall in 1998 of former dictator Suharto, who brutally repressed hardline Islamic groups, a new generation of young radical Muslims have emerged who are likely to be attracted to the book - which is peppered with slang, photos of dead Muslims allegedly killed by U.S. troops and even the occasional cartoon.

Like many other Southeast Asian extremists, Samudra traveled to Afghanistan in the early 1990s to join the CIA-funded resistance to the Russian occupation.

Many of his contemporaries later returned to Southeast Asia and formed the nucleus of Jemaah Islamiyah, the terror group blamed for the Bali blasts and the embassy attack.

"It truly was a happy time in my life. Our 'music' was the crack of bullets and the blasts of mortars ... Our songs were those designed to raise the spirit of jihad," he writes.

And really, what difference would it make if a radical Islamic jihadist were Secretary General (and yes, that is what he is), given the state of the UN today? From DPA, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

TEHERAN - Iran plans to propose President Mohammad Khatami as a candidate for secretary general of the United Nations to succeed Kofi Annan, the news agency IRNA reported on Friday.

Former Iranian vice-president Hassan Ghaffuri-Fard told IRNA the proposal was raised during a political forum in China and welcomed by most of the Asian officials at the meeting.

What do you think Secretary General Khatami would do about this problem? From UPI, :

Tehran, Iran, Sep. 17 (UPI) -- Influential Iran cleric Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani Friday said his country would reject any international ban on enriching uranium. The Iranian News Agency, IRNA, quoted Rafsanjani as saying "we cannot accept any decision calling on Iran to suspend the process of enriching uranium."

Rafsanjani, president for two terms from 1989-97 and currently chairman of the powerful Expediency Council, warned if the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, ruled against Iran's nuclear programs "it will be defying its mission and should be condemned."

So says Dr. Mohammed Al-Hindi, a leader of Islamic Jihad. And as long as they remain united on the road of jihad, there will be no possibility for peace in the region -- except total victory for the jihadists, and the imposition of Sharia. From the Palestinian Information Center:

He called upon the Palestinian Authority to thoroughly evaluate the results of the previous stages of the peace process and to give up indulging in futile negotiations with the Zionist enemy. "Zionist occupation is based on carnages and bloodbaths since its infancy; however, the Palestinian people were still holding on to their just question and brave resistance, that imposed a new equation in the region through which the resistance managed to baffle the Zionist enemy," he noted....

He underscored that the Palestinian people would remain resolute and steadfast in face of the Zionist enemy.

Hindi explained that the Palestinian people were being encumbered with the massacres committed against them at the hands of the Zionist forces, but, he said, they would remain powerful and united on the road of Jihad and valiant resistance.

This one's a shocker, eh? You'd think that in all their study of the Qur'an they would have noticed that this sort of thing is forbidden by Islam.

Also, the Reuters headline only mentioned the threat to the UK hostage, although the body of the story is clear that the US hostages were threatened as well. Hmmm. From Reuters:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Insurgents have threatened to kill two Americans and a Briton unless the United States free Iraqi women prisoners, Al Jazeera says, and a suicide car bomb has killed 23 people outside Iraqi National Guard offices.

The Arabic broadcaster aired scenes from a videotape on Saturday of the three men it had obtained from the Tawhid and Jihad Group of
suspected al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which said Washington had 48 hours to release Iraqi women prisoners in Abu Ghraib and
Umm Qasr.

"The Tawhid and Jihad Group gave a 48-hour deadline for the release of the women prisoners in return for releasing the two Americans and
Briton kidnapped on Thursday, or they would implement the death penalty against them," Al Jazeera said.

"Tawhid," for those of you who may be just tuning in, is Islamic monotheism. Jihad is the way to ensure its hegemony.

Which is, of course, the case also virtually everywhere in the world. From WND:

The United States must bolster intelligence assets in Africa and prevent Saudi financing to the continent, deemed a major arena for al-Qaida and related groups, asserts a new report, according to Geostrategy-Direct, the global intelligence news service.

The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said Africa, home to more than 300 million Muslims, represents a major terrorist challenge to the United States.

In a report, the center said the U.S. intelligence community must increase its human assets and monitor such trends as the financing of al-Qaida as well as the smuggling of man-portable surface-to-air missiles.

"Specifically, the administration should increase pressure on the Saudi government to regulate financial flows by Saudi charities to Madrassas in Africa at the same time that the United States demonstrates the seriousness of its commitment to expand educational opportunities," stated the report, "Rising U.S. Stakes in Africa."

The center also said the United States must increase its diplomatic presence in Africa and "dramatically expand human intelligence and language training."

A key goal is to tighten controls over Islamic insurgency financing through the diamond trade.

On Sept. 9, the U.S. Treasury Department designated the U.S. and Comoros branches of the Saudi-based Al Haramain Foundation as financiers and facilitators of terrorism, including the 1998 al-Qaida bombings of U.S. embassies in east Africa.

So far, more than a dozen branches of the state-sponsored Al Haramain, including the director of the organization, have been listed as facilitators of terrorism.

The report said any African initiative by the United States must include Sudan. In the 1990s, Sudan harbored al-Qaida, and Khartoum has remained a base for a range of Palestinian insurgency groups, including Hamas.

A revealing interview with a jihadist leader. From The Bulletin, with thanks to Kevin:

"I suspect that America and Australia themselves are behind the [embassy] bombing, for two reasons: one, the US issued a travel warning before the bombing. It means they already knew in advance; and two, the bomb intentionally exploded about the embassy gates which made victims of ordinary people, who are Muslim. It means it is aimed at pushing Islam into a corner. On these two indicators, I suspect the US and Australia are behind the bombing.

I disagree with fighting using bombing in a peaceful country like Indonesia. But I always appreciate the will and the purpose of those who fight against those who make war on Islam but the method is not correct if they use weapons in a peaceful country. But if we fight in the theatre of war, it is allowed.

We don’t need to compromise. The Islamic state must be fought for. If the [Indonesian] constitution says it is against sharia [Islamic law]. it is all a slander on Islam. All these disasters have continuously occurred, such as bombings, flooding and other destructions. This is simply because Allah has made it happen since the authority of this country has undermined Islamic law.

From Sukarno until today, the government has denied Allah’s law and, even worse, has harassed the law of Allah. The law of Allah has long been praised but here in Indonesia it has been rejected. That is the source of all these disasters in this country. If you are not serious in fighting to implement sharia, it will be difficult for us so I call on Majlis Mujahadeen Indonesia [Resistance Council of Indonesia] for their full effort....

Can Indonesia and Australia exist peacefully as neighbours?

Yes they can, as long as Australia understands they should not fight a war on Islam. We even can live together with America, under the same conditions. In Islam, we are asked to peacefully help non-Muslims as long as non-Muslims do not disturb Islam and do not make war on Islam. That is Allah's order, we have to live peacefully and help each other and commit good and just deeds with the non-Muslims. But if they disturb Islam, there should be a barrier so that we are not allowed to be friends again. The problem is right there.

Philip Flood [who recently held an inquiry into Australia's intelligence services] said the problem of terror in Indonesia begins in the pesantrens [Islamic teaching schools], and that action must be taken to shut them down. What do you say to this?

[Grows very angry/exasperated.] That is the basic mistake of Australia. Why do they accuse the pesantrens? The pesantren is the place where people are taught understanding of the true Islam and how to be devoted to Islam. But these devotees are considered fundamentalists by non-Muslims. So that is the Australian mistake. The pesantrens teaching true Islam will actually bring a peaceful life. So why make this a controversy? Those who make this a problem are kafir [strong Arabic word for infidels/unbelievers] and never Islam. Kafir, especially Jews and Christians, are not happy with the people who are devoted to Islam.

When that Australian man says there are problems in the pesantren, it shows the purpose of America and Australia is to destroy Islam from the inside. That is not the solution. The solution is that the kafir must have the will to live side-by-side with Islam and not disturb Islamic people who are devoted to their religion. If the kafir are willing to let Muslims be devoted to their faith, they will receive just treatment – it is said in the Koran. If Muslims want to rule their countries with sharia [Islamic law], do not forbid it.

Is there a "clash of civilisations"?

America will not be a superpower if Islam stands up. It is clear [a clash of civilisations] because kafir are evil and Islam is good but even though there is a clash, Islam can be peaceful. As long as the kafir lets Islam practise their religion, we Muslims will also let the kafir practise their own religion. Islam is not allowed to force kafir to convert into Muslims so between kafir and Islam, there will always be a clash of ideology but even so we can still live peacefully as long as they don't disturb Islam. We believe all Christians will be in hell after death but maybe Christians have another belief. Just let it be....

How can Indonesia deal with this situation?

The world and Indonesia belong to Allah. Therefore it should be ruled under Allah's law without bargaining. I believe that the clash of civilisations will continue but in the end, Islam will definitely win. It has been predicted by our Prophet Mohammad.

Is that because of a lack of knowledge of Islam by the West?

No, they just do not want to understand. As long as the West do not want to live peacefully and always force Islam to change in line with its own interests, this clash will continue. Peace can only be achieved after Islams triumphs....

What do you want to say to Australia?

I suggest to the Australian people and government, if you all want to be safe and good, please try to embrace Islam because you are created by Allah for Islam. It's only now that you are being disturbed by demons. If you are still unwilling not to embrace Islam, do not follow the steps of George Bush.

After two embarrassing security breaches, an uncomfortable revelation. From The Guardian, with thanks to Jeff Lastname:

The Commons leader, Peter Hain, today admitted for the first time that al-Qaida had been "focusing" on parliament and reiterated his call for an urgent security review after two embarrassing security breaches in 24 hours.

Today's Sun revealed how one of the paper's reporters, working as a waiter at Westminster, smuggled in a fake bomb just 24 hours after the storming of the chamber by five hunting campaigners.

Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme this morning, Mr Hain reiterated his call for an overarching security director to protect MPs and peers, and revealed details of briefings he had received from MI5 about "extremely disturbing" intelligence. He accused parliamentary authorities of failing to improve security despite this intelligence.

Mr Hain said: "The security service briefed me some time ago about some intelligence that they had about al-Qaida operatives in Britain focusing on parliament." He would not go into the detail of the briefing but said the security services had told him they had been trying "for some months" to persuade the authorities to be much more vigilant.

He added: "When I was briefed and I probed and I spoke to the director general about that intelligence I was very determined to act upon it. I was horrified about the potential threat" The incident underlined the need for better security, Mr Hain said.

Mr Hain added that the latest breach of security by the Sun reporter had "done us a favour" by exposing serious lapses. The reporter used bogus references to get a job as a waiter, then - filmed by the paper for its exclusive today - smuggled fake bomb-making equipment into the building.

A turf war over parliamentary security appears to be developing between the government - led by Mr Hain and the home secretary, David Blunkett - and the Commons, led by Speaker Michael Martin, who controls the current security set up led by the Serjeant at Arms.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Mr Blunkett said: "I'm in charge of security for the nation as a whole and what's happened here undermines confidence in the security service and counter-terrorism branch who, like me, have absolutely no control over the decisions of the House of Commons and the House of Lords."

He endorsed Mr Hain's call for a security director, saying Britain needed "not medievalism but modernity"

The office of Serjeant at Arms - currently held by Sir Michael Cummins - has responsibility for security in the Commons. The Serjeant and his staff of ushers and doorkeepers - known as the "men in tights" because of their traditional dress - are responsible for maintaining order in the Commons chamber, galleries, committee rooms and precincts, and the control of access to them. They have been criticised as farcically inadequate in the era of suicide bombers.

Indeed.

An intriguing story from the Star-Tribune, with thanks to Jeff Lastname:

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO -- A lawyer for an American-born terror suspect said Thursday that a deal had been tentatively reached with the U.S. government that will send the man to Saudi Arabia and spare him prosecution after being held for more than two years without charge.

Yaser Esam Hamdi, who grew up in Saudi Arabia, could become the first American classified as an enemy combatant to renounce his citizenship to avoid prosecution.

"There is an agreement in principle for his release and it's now in the hands of the government," said Hamdi's lawyer, Frank Dunham Jr.

John Novatsky, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, said negotiations were still underway.

The 23-year-old was captured fighting with Afghanistan's Taliban in late 2001 and held at the U.S. military outpost in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for three months before authorities realized he was a U.S. citizen. He was then transferred to a brig in South Carolina and later to the Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia.

Saying he was forced to fight for the Taliban, Hamdi had challenged his status as an enemy combatant, a classification given to the 585 detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay that affords detainees fewer legal protections than prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

And yet Muslims still regularly dispute my contention that Islam is a religion in dire need of drastic reform. Tough and needed words from an Orthodox Christian theologian, from AsiaNews, with thanks to Ming:

Moscow (AsiaNews) – Beslan was a “religious” crime, a “ritual murder” carried out by people shouting Allah Akbar (God is great), this according to Orthodox theologian Andrei Kuraev, professor at the Moscow Orthodox Theological Academy.

In “How to perceive Islam after Beslan?”, an article published on September 15 in the Moscow daily Izvestia, deacon Kuraev writes: “What happened in Beslan is not just a crime. It was a religious crime. It was ritual murder, the murder of children with prayers in the background. The terrorists killed in the name of their faith. They killed people shouting Allah Akbar and sacrificed innocent children on the altar of their religious ideas.”

Kuraev goes further: “They were not just gangsters who killed. They were people of one faith who killed Christians in the name of their creed.” One episode, he believes, makes this point clear. Sacha, a 13-year-old boy, was among the children taken hostage in the school. He wore a cross around his neck. When one of the terrorist saw it, the man turned his gun towards the boy and shouted: “Pray!” Sacha reacted by shouting “Christ is risen!” and escaped through a window.

In his message of condolences to President Putin, Patriarch Aleksij II said that “terrorism showed its satanic face” in Beslan. For Kuraev terrorism is “satanic”, not Islam as a whole. For this reason, he considers the Beslan terrorists satanic. “When I speak of Satanism in relation to the terrorists,” the theologian writes, “I am not defining Islam as a satanic religion. The Beslan terrorists killed many Muslims as well because they saw them as evil Muslims”.

Deacon Kuraev is certain that the fate of the world in the 21st century is in the hands of Muslim theologians. Someone like Mullah Omar (an Afghan spiritual leader linked to Osama bin Laden) supported the 9/11 attacks in New York. By contrast, other Muslim religious leaders strongly disapproved of them. Similarly, he adds, “whilst Saudi Wahabi ulema (legal scholars) have recommended sending women as shahida (martyrs) to Russia, Russian Muslim leaders have repeatedly stated that terrorism in the name of Islam violates Islam’s own principles.”

Kuraev suggests the Russian government create the appropriate conditions for the national media to serve as a forum for those who can offer a peaceful interpretation of Islam and curtail the sermonising by firebrand Muslim radicals.

“Even if the Islamic world refuses to admit it, it is responsible for Muslim terrorism,” Kuraev claims. “Its major fault lies in the fact that it allows itself to be used.”

"The motive is not clear," say Canadian officials, although they say they are investigating reports of persecution of Christians in Iraq. I expect they will officially admit it is happening around the time snowballs freeze in hell. From CP:

OTTAWA -- The sister of a Canadian killed in Baghdad this week said he was murdered because he was a Christian. She said the Canadian government has offered no help in returning Munir Toma's body to his adopted country for burial.

"He was killed because he was Christian," she said in a phone interview from Detroit yesterday.

She said relatives in Baghdad told her a grisly tale of how Toma and Andrew Shmakov died.

"They're killing a lot of Christians," she said.

The two men were leaving a construction company they had established to take advantage of Iraqi reconstruction opportunities when they were attacked by gunmen, Shary Toma recounted.

"He got in his car and after they got in, before he put the car into drive, they jumped on the top of the car and they shot," she said. "He managed to put the car into drive after he's been shot from the roof and four cars followed him. The four cars, they tried to ambush him and after they ambushed him, they got out of their car and they just shot them."

Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Marie-Christine Lilkoff said the department is communicating with Toma's family about repatriating his body. She said because Canada has no embassy in Iraq, it is forced to rely on the co-operation of its allies and local authorities.

'MOTIVE UNCLEAR'

The closest Canadian Embassy is in the Jordanian capital Amman.

Lilkoff said Shary Toma's statement that her brother was killed because he was a Christian cannot be confirmed.

"The motive is not clear," she said.

However, she said, Canada has expressed concern about reports Christians are being targeted in Iraq.

Shary Toma said her brother's wife and six-year-old daughter are in danger from the same killers.

I too think they should explain. Otherwise the visa denial becomes a propaganda victory for Ramadan, which, if there really are sound national security reasons to keep him out of the country, he should not be given. From AP:

INDIANAPOLIS — Scholars and critics worldwide are demanding that the U.S. government explain why it revoked the work visa of a Muslim scholar hired at the University of Notre Dame, saying the action threatens academic freedoms.

But few answers are forthcoming from the Department of Homeland Security, which cited security concerns when it barred Tariq Ramadan from entering the country.

That silence has sparked protests from at least four U.S. scholars' groups, led a United Nations-sponsored institution to issue an academic freedom alert and inspired appeals from Jewish organizations.

Robert O'Neil, who is chairman of an academic freedom committee for the American Association of University Professors, said Ramadan's case could have a chilling effect on an academic community already facing security measures stemming from the 2001 terrorist attacks.

"It does suggest ... foreign scholars may be scrutinized more carefully and may be denied entry on the basis of something less than overt terrorist activity or association," said O'Neil, whose group has written Secretary of State Colin Powell and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to protest the decision.

The State Department issued Ramadan a work visa in May but revoked it in July. The action came just weeks before the scholar was scheduled to begin a tenured position as professor of religion, conflict and peace-building at Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

Russ Knocke, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman, said last month that the visa was revoked based on "public safety or national security interests." Knocke has not responded to recent requests for interviews from The Associated Press.

Many who have rallied in Ramadan's support believe the scholar's controversial profile, including sharp criticism of Israel, the war in Iraq and U.S. policy in the Middle East, was the real reason for the revocation.

"We fear that pressures were applied to reverse the granting of the visa by people who disagree with Dr. Ramadan's views as a scholar," two groups, the Middle East Studies Association of North America and the American Academy of Religion, stated in a joint letter to Powell and Ridge.

From Reuters, with thanks to Nicolei, a Saudi Response to the the U.S. State Department's criticism

Prominent Saudis dismissed U.S. accusations of severe violations of religious freedom in the kingdom and said on Thursday that the criticisms were politically motivated.

Government officials were not immediately available over the Muslim weekend to respond to Washington's decision to put Saudi Arabia on a blacklist of countries of "particular concern" in an annual report on Wednesday tracking religious freedom worldwide.

But the move was met with skepticism by many in the kingdom, whose close alliance with the United States has come under increasing strain in the last three years and become an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign. "I can't say Saudi Arabia is the freest country. But it is the cradle of Islam. Are they proposing to have churches or synagogues or Buddhist temples here?" said Abdulaziz al-Fayez, a member of Saudi Arabia's consultative Shura Council.

"All Saudis are Muslims and this is a Muslim state."

Well, that settles that. Oh wait... there's more:

Saudi Arabia's minority Shi'ite Muslims have long complained of second-class treatment in the Sunni-dominated country. Human rights groups also say many of the 6 million expatriate workers are prevented from practicing their religion.

UPDATE: In the spirit of the above sentiment, I would like to wish each and every reader a happy Constitution Day.

From DPA via Expatica with thanks to Ali Dashti:

Germans hold negative views about Islam and a big majority believe there is a "clash of civilizations" following the attack on a school on southern Russia earlier this month, a poll said.

The survey was taken after the Russian school massacre.

When asked what they think of in association with the word "Islam" some 93 percent of Germans said "oppression of women", 83 percent said "terror", 82 percent said "fanatics and radicals", 70 percent said "dangerous", 66 per cent said "backward", 45 percent said "hospitality" and 6 percent said both "tolerance" and "nice". A survey before the terrorist attack on the Russian school in Beslan showed 44 percent of Germans believed there was a clash of civilizations between Islam and the Christian world.

But asked the same question after the Beslan attack, some 62 percent said there is now a clash of civilizations.

From Reuters

Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility on Friday for the Russian school siege in which more than 320 hostages were killed, half of them children, and threatened further attacks by any means he saw fit.

"We are not bound by any circumstances, or to anybody, and we will continue to fight as is convenient and advantageous to us, and by our rules," he said in an unrepentant statement published on a rebel Web site.

From AP

A team of kidnappers grabbed two Americans and a Briton in a dawn raid on their home on a leafy Baghdad street Thursday — a bold abduction that underlines the increasing danger for foreigners in the embattled capital as violence soars ahead of national elections planned for early next year.

I am off today to speak at Oakland University in Michigan. Updates may be a bit delayed, but I will be here when possible.

To any Muslims who may be reading this: this is an indispensable element of a free society. There are numerous sites trashing other religious figures as well. In a free society, Ali Sina is free to do this. You are free to disagree and to argue with him. It is not consistent with the parameters of a free society to try to close down his site or kill him.

From WND, with thanks to Anthony:

Claiming Muhammad's teachings are the root of terrorism, a website founded by an ex-Muslim attempts to dispel the oft-quoted statement "Islam is a religion of peace."

Headed by Ali Sina, FaithFreedom.org presents articles and commentaries that debunk much of the Quran and charge that Islam's founder, Muhammad, was a rapist, pedophile, mass murderer and an "evil man."

On the site, which features, the description "Islam and Quran denounced by ex-Muslims as the root of terrorism," Sina promises that if anyone can prove him wrong in his assertions about Muhammad and Islam, he will take the site off the Internet.

After presenting a list of charges against Muhammad, Sina writes, "Muslims are triumphalists and claim victory even when they are clearly defeated. A Muslim can never accept defeat. A Muslim's typical response to this site is: 'My faith in Islam grew after I read your site.' How can one's faith grow after reading the proof that the man whom he thought to be a prophet was guilty of all the above charges? Has anyone disproved any of those charges?"

Continues Sina: "I have debated with Muslims who claimed victory because according to them I have not proven that Muhammad's sexual relationship at the age of 53 with the 8 years 9 months old Aisha constitute pedophilia. I consider this a self-evident fact that needs no proof. I do not think there is any need to prove that day is bright and night is dark to a seeing person. And to [the] blind proofs are of no avail."

Besides Sina's writings, the site features other writers who delve into many different areas of Islam.

One section, for example, is called "Wives of the Prophet" and includes this introduction:

"The tales of Muhammad's wives and sex slaves are the most fascinating and also the most embarrassing part of the life of the Prophet. These are stories of lust, intrigues, mind games, jealousy and betrayal."

Another section attempts to disprove the alleged miracles of Islam.

Sina reads Arabic and, he says, uses only "the hadith, the Ibn Hisham's Sira and the Quran" when arguing against Islam.

An about-face. From Expatica, with thanks to Anthony:

BERLIN - The German government - in a policy shift - said Wednesday it will seek to ban a planned Islamic conference in Berlin billed by organisers as being aimed at "American and Zionist Nazism."

"The Federal Interior Ministry will do everything possible to see that this congress does not take place," said Rainer Lingenthal, chief spokesman for German Interior Minister, Otto Schily.

Lingenthal declined to say what measures were planned to prevent the meeting from taking place.

Initially the federal government said it was up to the city of Berlin to decide whether to ban the convention - but local officials declined to take action.

The "First Arab, Islamic Congress in Europe", scheduled for 1 to 3 October in the German capital, has been slammed by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, an international Jewish human rights group, which wants the meeting banned.

Islamic congress organisers declare in their manifesto that people invited to take part are those wanting to make "an intensive contribution ... to the world's resistance movement against the American and Zionist Nazism."

Dhimmitude is a total commitment, you see. It isn't enough to accomodate in all other matters and then deviate on this little problem of the headscarf. From AFP, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

DUBAI (AFP) - The Islamic Army of Iraq, which is holding two French journalists hostage, said that France is an "enemy of Muslims," in a statement on a website that gave no details on the fate of the captives.

The statement, carried on http://iaminiraq.tripod.com, cited France with a list of "crimes" that France had allegedly carried out against numerous Muslim countries.

"France has distinguished itself for its war against Islam and Muslims and has committed butchery against the nation," said the statement, whose authenticity could not be verified.

"France's history with Muslims is a black one, blemished by hatred and malice and blood. Its modern history is no less so that in the past," the statement added, calling on the "Islamic nation to unite against its enemies," such as France.

It accused France of "playing a principle role in blocking Muslims from taking power in Algeria after their victory" in 1992 legislative elections.

It said French prisons are "full of Muslims" being held in the name of the fight against terrorism, while denoucing continuing French support for the "Zionist entity" (Israel) and its "war against the symbols of Islam, such as the headscarf" for women.

The French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, along with their Syrian driver, were kidnapped on August 20.

The hostage-takers initially demanded that Paris rescind its ban on the wearing of Islamic headscarves and other "conspicuous" religious insignia in state schools, but the law went into effect on September 2 as planned.

Ali Dashti informs us that "Swedish radio for children, a department of national Swedish radio, is devoting AN ENTIRE WEEK to indoctrinating young Swedish kids with cosy tales about Muhammad."

Here is the Swedish link, and here is Ali's translation of some of the material there:

This week you will hear the exciting story of Profet Muhammad's dramatic life in the Arabian desert in the 7th century.

You will meet the first Muslims and their leader. You will also meet angels and crooks, and Muhammad's favorite camel Quaswa and her camel friends Sabah and Kasmir.

You will also learn more about Islam.

Ali Dashti asks some pointed questions:

Do you believe they do this for Hindus or Buddhists?

I wonder how they intend to present this? Will they mention how the single mother Asma bint Marwan was stabbed to death in her sleep, for saying something Muhammad didn't like? Or how the Jews of Banu Qurayza were slaughtered and dumped in a ditch, their women and children sold as slaves? Or how Muhammad himself that very same night had sex with Ruyhana, who had just watched her husband get murdered by Muhammad's men?

Why are these pertinent questions? Because Muhammad is al-insan al-kamil: the perfect man. His example is the one Muslims are constantly exhorted to follow. Do they follow him even in the things Ali Dashti lists above? See here for some evidence.

Some emails to reach the Children's Radio and protest:

barn@ur.se, bokeniorat@sr.se, lovteatern@sr.se, barnwebb@sr.se, barnradion@sr.se

Some emails to the Radio station itself:

monica.orlando@sr.se, jael.waern@sr.se, jan.svensson@sr.se, agneta.ekberg@sr.se, lyssnarservice@sr.se, kristina.hagglof@sr.se

If you wish, invite them to some good, Islam-critical websites as well.

And if you want to be effective at all: be brief, and be polite. Point out the problems without being abusive in any way. Otherwise they will not listen to you.

Here is a translation, made exclusively for Jihad Watch by John Eibner, of the German Die Welt story mentioned in this earlier AFP piece. (thanks to Looney Tunes.)

Last June, Syrian special troops used chemical weapons against the Black African population of Darfur. This action, which resulted in the death of dozens of people, took place with the agreement of the Government of Sudan. This is the conclusion of western intelligence services. It is substantiated by eyewitnesses, whose accounts have been published in various Arabic publications.

According to the documentation of western news agencies, of Die Welt is in possession, Syrian officers met with representatives of the Sudanese Army in May of this year in a suburb of Khartoum. During these talks, they discussed how to expand military cooperation. According to information from intelligence sources, the Syrian delegation offered to cooperate more closely with Sudan in the field of chemical warfare. It was proposed, the sources furthermore stated, to investigate the effect of chemical weapons on the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). As Khartoum was engaged in peace negotiations with the Rebels [presumably the SPLA] in May, the Sudanese delegation apparently advised testing the chemical material on the Black African population [presumably in Darfur, as opposed to Southern Sudan]. The Syrian civil airline, Syrian Arab Airlines, made at least five flights from Damascus to Khartoum. On board were specialists of the Syrian military college, together with technical equipment.

It can't be established precisely when the deployment of the weapons began in Darfur. One must say, on the Arab website Ilaf on the 2nd of August Sudanese eyewitnesses reported strange events in Khartoum's Al-Fashr Hospital [Do they mean the hospital is in Khartoum, or, what is more likely, Al-Fashr, Darfur?]. In June, several dozen frozen corpses were said to have been suddenly brought to the hospital. They had strange wounds all over their bodies. After a short time, the Sudanese soldiers are said to have closed off a wing of the building. If one believes the witnesses, permission to enter the closed wing was given to to only one team of unidentified Syrian doctors. After some days, Sudanese troops had disposed of the bodies.

Military experts have been in possession of information for some time about cooperation between the Sudanese and the Syrians in the area of chemical weapon research. Furthermore there are recurring reports from Syrian opposition sources about chemical weapon tests on prisoners.

Maybe the State Department is getting fed up with playing the dhimmi for Riyadh. From AP:

WASHINGTON - The State Department said Wednesday that Saudi Arabia has engaged in "particularly severe violations" of religious freedom and for the first time included the kingdom, a key U.S. ally, on a list of countries that could be subject to sanctions.

A department report assessing the state of religious freedom worldwide said that in Saudi Arabia, freedom of religion does not exist and is not recognized or protected under the country's laws.

The report also said that those who do not adhere to the officially sanctioned strain of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia can face "severe repercussions" at the hands of the religious police.

Wednesday's announcement was a departure from the Bush administration's practice of avoiding direct criticism of Saudi Arabia — a key ally in the war on terrorism, a strong backer of U.S. policies in Iraq and a major oil supplier.

Under U.S. law, nations that engage in violations of religious freedom deemed "particularly severe" are designated by the State Department as "countries of particular concern."

A stiff dose of taqiyya from WND, with thanks to Mike:

A Chechen politician has claimed that both Chechnya and Islam are innocent in the massacre of civilians at a school in Beslan, Russia.

Badr Al-Din Bino, who lives in Jordan, said in a television interview on Dubai's Al-Arabiya TV that Russia will continue to implicate Muslims but that it was "intelligence agencies" that are responsible for the carnage.

The Middle East Media Research Institute TV Monitor Project, or MEMRI TV, features a video clip and translation of the interview with Bino.

"I am surprised that Putin refuses to conduct an investigation into this issue," he said. "Even stranger … is that they initially said the leader of this group was from Ingushetia and later they said those who carried out this operation were Arabs or people from al-Qaida, and that 15 of them escaped. I am absolutely certain that just like in Qatar, when they assassinated the president, they will put on a show and release four or five Arab or Chechen prisoners and conduct a show as though they are the ones who carried out this operation. Therefore, the Chechen and Islam are innocent of this operation, which was planned by intelligence agencies.

"Where are the Russian forces? Either there is a failure and the Russian forces cannot secure this region or there was Russian collaboration."

An astounding assessment from the Cardinal who protested the U.S. treatment of Saddam Hussein. From Reuters, with thanks to Grigory Rasputin:

"We have entered the Fourth World War," said Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Council for Justice and Peace, saying he believed that the Cold War was World War 3.

"I believe that we are in the midst of another world war," he said in comments published in Italian newspapers on Tuesday.

"And it involves absolutely everyone because we don't know what will happen when we leave a hotel, when we get on a bus, when we go into a coffee bar. War itself is sitting down right next to each and every one of us," he said.

"Every state has to put in place the best possible policing method and this, naturally, might affect some personal freedoms. States have to carry out a defensive policy," he said.

Here is my piece in National Review today:

Not too many years ago, I witnessed a small band of angry protesters stalking down a Manhattan street chanting, "Columbus! Did Not! Discover! America!" I remember how quickly Columbus became a symbol of all that was wrong with the West: racism, imperialism, colonialism — and don't forget smallpox and cholera.

But now the old sea dog can come in from the cold, though an unlikelier candidate for a multicultural poster child could hardly be found. In a press release issued late last month titled "Islamic Influence Runs Deep in American Culture," Phyllis McIntosh of the State Department's Washington File burbles that "Islamic influences may date back to the very beginning of American history. It is likely that Christopher Columbus, who discovered America in 1492, charted his way across the Atlantic Ocean with the help of an Arab navigator."

Rewrite the history books, indoctrinate the children, and you can own the future. The bit about the Arab navigator is not just being put out by State, but will also be taught in Massachusetts public schools this year. Some lucky Massachusetts teachers were recently treated to a week-long workshop called "The Genesis and Genius of Islam." It featured professors from Boston College, College of the Holy Cross, Harvard, and Bridgewater State College, including Ibrahim Kalin, assistant professor of religious studies at Holy Cross. According to a local Massachusetts paper, Kalin said that "Islamic sailors were the best seamen of the day," and "noted that even Christopher Columbus had several Muslim sailors on his voyage that wound up in the New World."

Unfortunately for State and the schoolchildren of Massachusetts, there is not a shred of historical evidence for this. While assertions of this kind can readily be found on Islamic websites, none of the preeminent historians of Columbus's voyages — not Samuel Eliot Morison, Salvador de Madariaga, Paolo Emilio Taviani, or any other — has any record of this Muslim presence among the crew. And remember, Columbus was only sailing in the first place to find a way for European traders (who were Christians in those days) to avoid land routes to the Far East. Those land routes were controlled by Muslims, and passed through areas only recently conquered from Christians — most notably, the ancient holdings of the Byzantine empire, whose capital, Constantinople, had fallen to the Muslims in 1453. Columbus was commissioned by Ferdinand and Isabella, who had just defeated the last Muslims in Spain and driven them out of the country.

Did Columbus tag after the retreating Muslims and hire a navigator and a few sailors? According to the leading authority on Columbus's voyages, the historian Samuel Eliot Morison, the name of Columbus's navigator was Martín Pinzón, who served as captain of the Pinta. Of the known names of his crew members, there is an abundance of Juans and Pedros, but nary a Mahmoud or Ahmad. In those days, Christian names almost always meant the bearer was a Christian. As Muhammad Ali and Yusuf Islam can tell you, it is unlikely that a Muslim would have borne a Christian name.

It is even more unlikely that Muslim crewmen would have willingly served under Christians. Muslim Spain was not the multicultural paradise of modern myth; it was, rather, a sharia state in which non-Muslims were forbidden to hold authority over Muslims. This law was sometimes ignored, but that always aroused the resentment of the Muslim populace. Would Muslim sailors who had so recently been citizens of this state have willingly signed on to take orders from Christians — and men against whom they had just been at war?

Further, Muslim sailors would not have found Columbus's ships a congenial atmosphere: Columbus firmly believed that the Christian God had called him to this mission. In the diaries he kept during the voyage, he praised Ferdinand and Isabella for being "Catholic Christians, and princes who love and promote the holy Christian faith," as well as for being "enemies of the doctrine of Mahomet, and of all idolatry and heresy."

Columbus's crew prayed often on the ship — Christian prayers, not multicultural ones, and certainly not the maghrib and isha prayers or any other of the five daily prayers of Islam. "At sunset," according to Morison, "the Blessed Virgin was saluted with her ancient canticle, Salve Regina." Neither Morison nor any other historian of Columbus's voyages records any protest by Muslim crewmen against this overt display of Christian religiosity. Columbus's crew, historians record, even broke out in Te Deum, laudamus when they sighted land. Of the captain himself, Morison notes that "as a pious Christian, faithful in his religious duties, Columbus kept a book of hours in his cabin, and whenever possible said his prayers in private at the appointed hours."

There was an Arabic speaker on hand — but he was of Jewish, not Muslim background. According to historian Thomas W. Jodziewicz of the University of Dallas, "There was a converted Jew on board Columbus' ship who spoke Arabic: if Chinese or Japanese folks were contacted, he would supposedly be able to communicate with them!"

So why are the State Department and the Massachusetts public schools purveying all this hooey? Repeated calls to the State Department and Phyllis McIntosh went unreturned; the State Department's Bureau of International Information Programs issues a blizzard of press releases on its website, but offers no clear or easy way to contact a live human in the office. Its contact procedures are labyrinthine, self-contradictory, and generally culminate in an answering machine on which messages go unreturned.

Why would an "information" bureau play so hard to get? Could it be to fend off embarrassing questions from Americans while spreading politically motivated, ahistorical fairy tales to an eager international audience? The agenda is clear: This is about contemporary p.c. politics, not history.

It's all presented as an exercise in understanding. Speaking of his students, a Massachusetts history teacher who attended the workshop asked, "How can they understand Iraq if they don't know the history of the people?" Indeed. But it really isn't the history of Iraq, or of Columbus's voyages, that State and the Massachusetts educrats are interested in. What they're really on about is the history — and future — of the United States.

The multiculturalist fantasy is designed to make Americans more accepting of an influential Islamic presence in this country. But unfortunately, since few at the State Department seems concerned about how to screen terrorists out of this Islamic presence, they're likely to find that the Muslims to whom they have surrendered their history — and whom they have invited into their future — are no more multicultural than their forefathers of 1492.

A new audiotape from Zarqawi, just in from MEMRI:

Al-Zarqawi's speech is delivered in a high style of classical Arabic. Many of the sentences are in rhymed prose, inlaid with Koranic verses and poetry. The speech singles out Iraq's Prime Minister Iyad Allawi as a primary target. It is addressed to the Jihad fighters in Iraq, and in particular to the foreign volunteers.

The tone of the speech seems to suggest that it is intended to encourage the fighters, who have sustained great losses, and to restore their faith in the ultimate victory. Some of the expressions used by Al-Zarqawi - such as "a call for help from the deep" - may hint at the state of distress of the fighters, which prompted the speech.

According to Al-Zarqawi, the war in Iraq is against a "tri-partite Satanic alliance of heresy and deceit" of Americans, Kurds, and Shi'ites: "The first are the Americans who carry the banner of the cross; the second are the Kurds through their pashmerga forces, which are reinforced by Jewish military cadres under the command of the two collaborators, [Massoud Al-] Barzani and [Jalal Al-] Talabani; the third are the Shi'ites, the Sunnis' enemies, represented by the army of treachery ... the Party of Satan.

"The traitor Allawi is today their tool, and the lion's share of our arrows are for him, Allah willing."

Al-Zarqawi explains that the real aim of the U.S. is not the conquest of Najaf, but rather the Sunni Triangle. He says that America was defeated and humiliated by the Muslim warriors: "This is the brotherhood of Jihad, both Muhajireen and Ansar [i.e., both foreign volunteers and native Iraqis].(3) The other ones, who led the international alliance to drink the draught of humiliation..."

Al-Zarqawi calls upon young Muslims in Iraq and in every Muslim country to join the Jihad in Iraq. He also calls upon the Islamic nation not to be deceived by Western propaganda and by those who echo it in Muslim countries.

Al-Zarqawi calls on the Muslims to rise from their slumber and to unite against the infidels who offend their honor: "Here, the Abu Ghreib prison is in front of you - go ahead and ask it.

"As for you, fighters who came from afar, by Allah, missions of da'wa [the propagation of Islam] have never been a road lined with roses and sweet basil; the price of da'wa missions is heavy, and the price of bringing principles to the land of reality is a lot of torn limbs and blood. The light of dawn shall not be lit in this darkness save by Jihad fighters and shahids."

Note the close connection he makes between da'wa, the proclamation of Islam, and its next stage, jihad against those who have refused.

Rumsfeld on jihadists in Al-Jazeera. From AFP, :

Referring to suicide attacks and roadside bombings, Mr Rumsfeld said "it is striking that from time to time at least there is a journalist, quote-unquote, standing around taking pictures of it."

"It isn't every time and it isn't most times," he said.

"But it is sometimes, sometimes I suspect it happens because it is serendipidity, they just happen to be there.

"But we know for a fact that other times the terrorists have told journalists and I use the word inadvisedly, quote-unquote journalists, they've told journalists where they are going to be and what they are going to do.

"And the journalists have been there. And over and over and over again we've see that Middle Eastern television station Al-Jazeera that seems to have a wonderful way of being Johnny-on-the-spot a little too often for my taste," he said.

The Iraqi government banned Al-Jazeera from operating in Iraq on August 5, charging that its coverage was inciting violence.

Earlier this month, the government extended the ban and sealed the Qatar-based television station's Baghdad office.

Joseph D'Hippolito takes the dhimmi Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, to the woodshed in this Jerusalem Post piece:

"When the Christian, the Muslim, or the Jew sees his neighbor of another faith following the ways of this world instead of the peaceful will of God, he must remind his neighbor of the nature of the one God we look to," the Most Rev. Rowan Williams told Muslim scholars gathered at Al-Azhar in Cairo, Islam's most prestigious seminary.

This from a religious figure who personally witnessed the World Trade Center towers collapse.

As an American who saw thousands of his countrymen incinerated three years ago, I believe the good archbishop did nothing but politely revile the innocent dead and the loved ones they left behind.

Can men who hijack airplanes and plow them into buildings for the greater glory of Allah be considered the neighbors of civilized people?

Can men who abduct civilians committing the unpardonable sin of seeking a living in Iraq and behead them for the greater glory of Allah be considered the neighbors of civilized people?

Can men, women - and even children - who strap on explosive vests filled with shrapnel and blow themselves up in crowded buses, discos, markets, pizza parlors, and subway stations be considered the neighbors of civilized people?

Can men and women who invade a school, take hundreds of children hostage, deny them food and water, force them to drink their own urine, rape some of them, then shoot them in the back as they try to escape be considered the neighbors of civilized people?...

...[C]onsider what the archbishop said and wrote one year after the terrorist atrocity:

The National Catholic Reporter, a liberal American newspaper, quoted Williams saying at a British arts festival in August 2002 that, as the twin towers fell, he was "pondering at the time, thinking ... actually, I do not think this is an act of war. It is an act of terror, of violence, of barbaric carnage but somehow, war does not come into it."

In a collection of essays published one month later, Williams criticized the moral necessity to remember collectively the unique mass murder he personally witnessed: "The point at which we need to show more footage of collapsing towers, of people jumping to their death, when we raise the temperature by injunctions never to forget - that is when something rather ambiguous enters in Bombast about evil individuals doesn't help in understanding anything. Even vile and murderous actions tend to come from somewhere."

Instead of patronizing his Cairo audience, Williams should have said this:

"Fellow theologians We come together seeking mutual understanding and respect. Yet how can you claim to seek them when you do nothing about the atrocities committed in Allah's name?

"You say you respect Christians and Jews as 'People of the Book.' Then why do you do nothing when many of your fellow Muslims refer to Christians as 'infidels' or Jews as 'pigs' and 'monkeys'? Why do you do nothing when Arab media outlets broadcast the lie that Jews used the blood of Arab children to make matzot?

"You call Islam a religion of peace. Why do you do nothing when many of your fellow Muslims - including clerics - support and commit such 'unpeaceful' acts?

"You say that not every Muslim supports these fanatics. Not every Russian supported communism; remember Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov. Not every German supported Nazism; remember Martin Niemoeller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

"Where are your Bonhoeffers, your Niemoellers, your Sakharovs, your Solzhenitsyns?

After he was released from a Nazi concentration camp, Viktor Frankl was asked what he learned. Frankl responded that there are only two races - the decent and the indecent. In which camp does Islam lie?"

Such words would provide a refreshing change from the effete diplomacy that marks inter-religious gatherings.

They would be bold, visionary, honest.

Sharia threats in Iraq, from AP:

The group calling itself the Islamic Jihad Brigade in Iraq demanded that the minister of higher education separate men and women at all schools and universities. The video showed one man, his face hidden by a kefiyah, reading a statement.

On one side stood a masked man with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. On the other side stood a masked man with a machine gun.

"You must isolate the men from women because of the immoral attitudes existing in the private and public universities," the man reading the statement said. "If this is going to be continue, we will hit the colleges and universities."

The group read a statement in front of a banner that read "There is no God but Allah. Mohammed is the messenger of Allah."

David Medienkritik (thanks to Anthony) translates a portion of a German news article detailing how hard it is for German authorities to arrest known mujahedin -- who know well how to play the system.

The worst thing that acutely dangerous Islamists in Germany have to fear is the welfare office. A high official of a state criminal investigation agency said: "Six months after Madrid, we have to wind up our surveilance and file away the results. That's the policy set by the political level. Don't intervene too quickly, don't attract attention, don't appear to be anti-foreigner. Act only when someone has put on a explosives belt and is holding the detonator. How are we supposed to observe hundreds of these dangerous persons? Where will we get the personell? And when it blows up, or when we intervene too early, then they will say that we failed. Then the Islamists will just grin and play the victim."

"With the help of God alone." That is, of course, Allah. From AP:

CAIRO, Egypt -- The group headed by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility in a Web statement for Tuesday's suicide car bombing near a Baghdad police station, an attack that killed at least 47 people.

The statement, signed by the Tawhid and Jihad group, said: "Thanks to God alone, a lion from the Brigades of Those Seeking Martyrdom succeeded in attacking the center of volunteers for the renegade police apparatus."

From AAP, with thanks to Kevin:

THREE decapitated bodies have been reportedly found north of Baghdad today and are believed to be the corpses of foreigners, Iraqi security forces said.

It's a good thing that this kind of behavior is forbidden by Islam. Imagine what we'd be seeing if it weren't.

An update on the use of the US-Mexico border by jihadists. From Insight, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

In July, Defense Watch reported that, in Arizona, an area called the Naco Strip has become a primary route of illegal entry by "significant numbers of Arab-speaking males."

It took a small town weekly newspaper, the Tombstone Tumbleweed, to reveal that, "males of possible Syrian and Iranian descent have been detained in the past few weeks." Since October 1, 2003, 5,510 illegal aliens designated "Other Than Mexican" (OTM) have been apprehended while crossing the Arizona terrain. These OTM's are not here to pick vegetables, mow lawns, pluck chickens, or wash cars.

Just do the math. If only five Muslim terrorists crossed the border every day for a year that would add up to 1,825 people ready to do the bidding of Osama bin Laden. If this has been going on for just the years since 9-11, that's an army of 5,475. Then, too, there are an estimated 2.9 million Muslims in America.

And why would this be surprising, in light of this? From CNN, :

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A veiled shadow in a doorway of Beslan School Number One; delicate, slumped bodies in Moscow theater seats; the soft, youthful face in a suicide bomber's farewell video -- These images are gripping and contradictory.

"We still have difficulty imagining women as killers rather than as mothers," explains Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert with the RAND Corp.

Start imagining it, the experts tell us, because it's happening more and more.

Female terrorists participated in the hostage standoff this month at a school in southern Russia, where large numbers of children were among the more than 300 dead; in a suicide-bomb attack at a Moscow subway days earlier; in the near-simultaneous bombings of two planes in Russia last month; and in the standoff at a Moscow theater in October, 2002, that left 170 people dead.

Authorities believe women played central roles in all those incidents.

In Russia, the profile seems more consistent. These women are all believed to be Chechen -- some of them, experts say, are so-called "Black Widows."

"They are widows of men who fought in the war and were killed but most of them have had their whole families exterminated by the Russian Army in this conflict," says Svante Cornell of Johns Hopkins University.

Sinister news with extraordinary implications. From AFP, with thanks to Andy:

BERLIN : Syria tested chemical weapons on civilians in Sudan's troubled western Darfur region in June and killed dozens of people.

The German daily Die Welt newspaper, in an advance release of its Wednesday edition, citing unnamed western security sources, said that injuries apparently caused by chemical arms were found on the bodies of the victims.

It said that witnesses quoted by an Arabic news website called ILAF in an article on August 2 had said that several frozen bodies arrived suddenly at the "Al-Fashr Hospital" in the Sudanese capital Khartoum in June.

Die Welt said the sources had indicated that the weapons tests were undertaken following a military exercise between Syria and Sudan.

Syrian officers were reported to have met in May with Sudanese military leaders in a Khartoum suburb to discuss the possibility of improving cooperation between their armies.

According to Die Welt, the Syrians had suggested close cooperation on developing chemical weapons, and it was proposed that the arms be tested on the rebel SPLA, the Sudan People's Liberation Army, in the south.

But given that the rebels were involved in peace talks, the newspaper continued, the Sudanese government proposed testing the arms on people in Darfur.

Details of what were in the weapons were not disclosed.

Sharia delay in Turkey, probably EU-motivated. From AFP:

ANKARA (AFP) - Facing a popular outcry at home and stern warnings from Europe, the Turkish government discreetly stepped back from a plan to introduce a motion into a crucial penal reform bill to make adultery a crime punishable by prison.

The announcement came in a roundabout way, by implication, and from an unexpected source.

After a surprise 20-minute meeting, opposition leader Deniz Baykal, flanked by two top government ministers, told expectant reporters: "No motion that does not bear the signatures of both parties will be submitted to the assembly."

Baykal's social-democratic Republican People's Party (CHP) had always opposed the adultery clause.

Although none of the men even mentioned adultery, it meant the plan by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) had died a quiet death.

I just spoke with Kristin Siebeneicher, the public relations manager for Six Flags/Great Adventure, and she tells me that the "Muslims-Only Day" that has gotten some attention here and at WND is not actually that at all: non-Muslims will be allowed to buy tickets if they choose to do so.

But this wasn't always the case, at least in the mind of the Islamic Circle of North America. The event in question is the "Great Muslim Adventure Day," scheduled for this Friday, September 17. The ICNA originally stated on its website that "Alhamdulillah, the entire park is reserved for Muslims only!" But according to Siebeneicher, "Six Flags prevailed upon the ICNA to change that notice." And sure enough, now the ICNA website has been amended to say: "Alhamdulillah, the entire park is reserved for this event!"

Siebeneicher says that for thirty years, the park has been available for reservation groups on days when it would otherwise be closed. Jewish and Christian groups have reserved it, as well as political groups and others. But even these private events have always been open to anyone who wanted to buy a ticket, and the upcoming Muslim event -- at least now -- is no different.

I hope the publicity generated by this site and others played a role in Six Flags's getting the ICNA to change the notice on their site. We don't need a new Jim Crow era, and I applaud Six Flags for noticing and caring enough to make sure that no such event would be held on their grounds.

Uzbekistan has been touted as a bastion of Muslim moderation, but evidently neither the US nor the Russian governments believe that is entirely true. From AFP:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States and Russia carried out a secret operation last week to remove weapons-grade uranium from the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, whose government is facing growing Islamist unrest, said the Energy Department....

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Monday the one-day operation, implemented last Thursday, was crucial for enhancing international security.

"The recovery, return and eventual elimination of this highly-enriched uranium are an important milestone in our campaign to reduce this dangerous material worldwide," he said in a brief statement.

The operation targeted 11 kilograms (24.2 pounds) of enriched uranium fuel, including highly-enriched uranium that could be used for manufacturing nuclear weapons, that was brought to Uzbekistan during Soviet times, officials said.

Tell me again how these poor oppressed people want peace. From Palestinian Media Watch:

Twice in three days, PA religious leaders have openly called for the genocide of Jews. Broadcast on official PA TV, both called for the murder of Jews until the Jewish people are annihilated. Both presented the killing of Jews not merely as the will of Allah, but also as a necessary stage in history that should be carried out now. To support these mandatory killings, both cited the same Hadith - Islamic tradition attributed to Mohammed - expressing Allah's will that Muslims will kill Jews, before the "Hour" of Resurrection.

The words of the Hadith:
"The Hour [Resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews, and kill them. And the Jews will hide behind the rock and tree, and the rock and tree will say: oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, this is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!"

Numerous times in recent years Palestinian religious leaders and academics have taught publicly that this particular Hadith applies today. This teaching may well be a dominant motivating factor that drives terror against Israeli civilians, because it presents the killing of Jews as a religious obligation, not related to the conflict over borders, but as something inherent to Allah's world.

Note also the defining of Jews as "the brothers of the monkeys and pigs" in Maadi's religious lesson. PA religious leaders teach, based on a story in the Quran, that Jews were cursed by Allah and turned into monkeys and pigs. This is consistent with the PA teaching that the Jew's have inherent and unchanging character defects.

The Qur'an says this at Suras 2:62-65, 5:59-60, and 7:166.

Sheik Ibrahim Madiras Friday sermon, PA TV Sept. 10, 2004:

"The Prophet said: the Resurrection will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims kill them. The Muslims will kill the Jews, rejoice [in it], rejoice in Allahs Victory. The Muslims will kill the Jews, and ... The Prophet said: the Jews will hide behind the rock and tree, and the rock and tree will say: oh servant of Allah, oh Muslim this is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!. Why is there this malice? Because there are none who love the Jews on the face of the earth: not man, not rock, and not tree everything hates them. They destroy everything they destroy the trees and destroy the houses. Everything wants vengeance on the Jews, on these pigs on the face of the earth, and the day of our victory, Allah willing, will come."

Dr. Muhammad Ibrahim Maadi on his weekly TV show, Sept. 12, 2004:
"We are waging this cruel war with the brothers of the monkeys and pigs, the Jews and the sons of Zion The Jews will fight you and you will subjugate them. Until the Jew will stand behind the tree and rock. And the tree and rock will say: oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."

Resistance vs. appeasement, from Daniel Pipes at FrontPage:

In the Nepalese case, a group of cooks, janitors, laundry attendants, and other laborers had just crossed the border from Jordan into Iraq when it was kidnapped by Ansar al-Sunna, a violent Islamist group. On Aug. 31, an Islamist website showed a four-minute video of their executions.

Nepalese responded to this atrocity by venting their anger by assaulting the Muslim minority in Nepal. Hundreds of infuriated young men surrounded Katmandu's one mosque on Aug. 31 and heaved rocks at it. Violence escalated the next day, with five thousand demonstrators taking to the street, yelling slogans like "We want revenge," "Punish the Muslims," and "Down with Islam." Some attacked the mosque, broke into it, ransacked it, and set fire to it. Hundreds of Korans were thrown onto the street, and some were burned....

Thus did a frustrated, enraged, and powerless people overwhelm their authorities and target close-by innocents.

The French response could not have been more different. Threats to murder the two reporters met with a massive governmental effort to save their lives, not by targeting French Muslims but by cultivating them. Paris strenuously pushed local Islamists to condemn the kidnappings, hoping that their voice would convince the terrorists to release the two men.

In the process, Islamic organizations effectively took charge of the country's foreign policy, issuing statements and acting as though they represented the national population. Bertrand Badie of l'Institut d'études politiques in Paris complains that French Muslims became "a sort of substitute for the French foreign ministry."

Likewise on the international level, Paris called in chits for having stood with the Arabs against Israel and with Saddam Hussein against the U.S.-led coalition. French diplomats openly sought the support of terrorist groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

These efforts culminated thirty years of French appeasement and, in the scathing analysis of Norbert Lipszyc, "constituted a major victory for Islamists and terrorists." Lipszyc sees France acting like a dhimmi (a Christian or Jew who accepts Muslim sovereignty and in return is tolerated and protected). "France has publicly confirmed that its dhimmi status, its readiness to submit to Islamist overlords. In return, these have declared that France, dhimmi that it is, deserves protection from terrorist acts."

If the hostages are released, the policy of appeasement at home and abroad will seemingly have been vindicated. But at what a price! As Tony Parkinson writes in Melbourne's Age newspaper, "No democracy should have to jump through these hoops to keep innocent people alive." And jumping those hoops has deep implications.

The historian Bat Ye'or, the first person to comprehend the gradual process of Europe accepting the dhimmi status, observes that this fundamental shift began with the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, when the continent began moving "into the Arab-Islamic sphere of influence, thus breaking the traditional trans-Atlantic solidarity."

Bat Ye'or points to Euro-Arab collaboration now being near-ubiquitous; it is "political, economic, religious and in the transfer of technologies, education, universities, radio, television, press, publishers, and writers unions." She envisions this shift ending in "Eurabia," or Europe under the thumb of Arabia.

Returning to recent events: the abhorrent Nepalese violence reflected an instinct for self-preservation - hit me and I will hit you back. In contrast, the sophisticated French reaction was supine - hit me and I will beg you to stop. If history is a guide, the Nepalese thereby made a repetition of atrocities against themselves less likely. And the French made such a repetition more likely.

The jihad intensifies in Iraq. From AP:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A car bomb exploded near a police station in Baghdad early Tuesday as dozens of Iraqis were applying to join the force, killing at least 47 people and wounding 114, officials said. In Baqouba, gunmen opened fire on a van carrying policemen home from work, killing 11 officers and a civilian.

The attacks were the latest attempts by insurgents to disrupt U.S.-backed efforts to build a strong Iraqi police force capable of taking over security in many towns and cities ahead of nationwide elections slated for January.

In Baghdad, the blast left a gaping 10-foot crater outside the station at the end of Haifa street, a main Baghdad thoroughfare that has been the scene recently of fierce clashes. Dozens of cars parked nearby were destroyed and shops and buildings were badly damaged.

Paramedics and residents picked up body parts scattered across the street and put them into boxes. Anguished men lifted charred bodies and lay them gently on stretchers.

Health Ministry spokesman Saad Al-Amili said at least 47 people were killed and 114 wounded.

Interesting findings from Insight, with thanks to Nicolei:

PARIS -- The accelerating number of ever-bloodier outrages committed in the name of Islam has produced a curious transatlantic split over how this religion is to be seen.

A plurality of Americans (46 percent) believes that Islam is more likely than other faiths to encourage violence among its believers, according to a new survey released by the Washington-based Pew Forum on Religion and Pubic Life.

Yet more Americans take a positive than a negative view of Islam (39 vs. 37 percent). Meanwhile, European scholars interpret this result as a sign of "American naivitÈ" when it comes to judging the radical Muslim threat.

"This is in line with the tenor of 90 percent of the books on Islam currently oozing out of the United States," said Christine Schirrmacher, president of the Islamic Studies institute in Bonn, Germany.

"Every theologian over there seems to feel compelled these days to pen an apologetic tome on this religion, and almost all of these books are of questionably scholarship, except for those written by bona fide experts, who are often remarkably profound."

These sharp words are part of an astonishing phenomenon: In formerly "liberal" Europe, a radical turnaround in the public, scholarly and theological perception of Islam is underway, according to Schirrmacher and other specialists.

"People over here have come to believe that Islam is not comparable with Christianity," said the Rev. Hans Voecking, key Islamic affairs adviser to the Brussels-based Commission of European Catholic Bishops' Conferences.

Schirrmacher -- who is frequently traveling around the continent addressing a vast array of civic, military, police, foreign service and religious organizations -- observed amazing changes in her audiences' responses.

"It used to be that at every one of these events, some people would get up claiming that Muslims are much nicer and much more faithful than Christians with their history of crusades and inquisition.

"This is over," Schirrmacher went on. "Now I keep hearing: 'We must return to our Christian heritage.' You no longer hear the phrase, 'After all, aren't we all alike? Don't we all want the same?"

There will no doubt be mainstream media tut-tutting over this, but it is a necessary development, which even self-proclaimed moderate Muslims should welcome: how can they successfully reform Islam if no one will admit that anything about it needs reform?

Muslim Uighurs seek an independent Islamic state. But are they peaceful? Amnesty International thinks so. But of course, Amnesty International has never yet uttered the words "jihad" or "dhimmi" -- so how useful is its perspective on human rights, when it ignores these elephantine sources of human rights violations? From Radio Free Asia, :

HONG KONG, Sept. 13, 2004--Authorities in China's northwestern Muslim region of Xinjiang have sentenced more than 50 people to death this year in what government officials say is a war on terrorism.

"Due to the fact that the activities of international terrorist forces are rampant, we believe our fight against the crime of violent terrorists will continue for a long time to come," Xinjiang Communist Party leader Wang Lequan told reporters visiting the region.

Prior to the war in Iraq, which it opposed, Beijing backed the U.S.-led war on terror, using its momentum to call for international support for its campaign against Uyghur separatists, whom it has branded terrorists.

Conflicting claims

China says Uyghurs seeking an independent Islamic state have killed 162 people and injured 440 others.

But human rights groups say Beijing is using the threat of terrorism as an excuse to perpetrate further human rights violations against those involved in a peaceful campaign for an independent Uyghur state, which exiled groups call East Turkestan.

"Over the last three years, Uyghur nationalists who would formerly have been branded as 'separatists' have increasingly been labeled 'terrorists,'" Amnesty International said in a report last month on China's "War on Terror."

The government had cracked 22 groups involved in separatist and terrorist activities and meted out the 50 death sentences in the first eight months of the year, Wang said. But none of those sentenced to death had yet been executed, Wang said without explaining.

"Our efforts will exist as long as there are terrorist crimes," Wang said.

I told you about this planned conference several days ago. Here is more info, from KRT:

BERLIN - (KRT) - German officials are growing concerned about a conference for Arabs and Muslims on "American Zionist terror" that looks like it will go ahead as planned in Berlin, despite calls for its cancellation by a prominent Jewish organization.

The conference, scheduled for Oct. 1-3, is expected to attract as many as 500 Islamists from around the world to form "a unified response" to the American presence in Iraq and to Israel's existence, according to promotional literature for the First Arab, Islamic Congress in Europe.

The conference is to determine a response at a time when "occupation troops are portrayed as peacekeepers, and the suppressed people fighting for freedom are portrayed as extremists."

Plans for the conference have prompted members of the Berlin Parliament to demand an investigation into whether it will put the city under terrorist threat. Claus Guggenberger, a spokesman for the Protection of the Constitution branch of the Berlin government, said, "We're already keeping an eye on the congress. We've been aware of the plans for some time and have been studying it."

He added that German officials are scrambling to figure out what they can do, if anything, about the congress.

"If their agenda included bombing the Reichstag, we could stop them. But unless there's evidence of a crime, there's little we can do."

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish rights group, has asked the German government to "cancel the Jihadist assembly," saying it looks to have a dangerous agenda.

"The Berlin First Arab, Islamic Congress in Europe is not an innocent exercise, but a political platform for radical jihad and a market for potential European youth recruits to the ranks of terrorism," Shimon Samuel, the center's director for international liaison, said in a written statement.

But will the UN really do anything about this? From AP, :

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Buoyed by growing European support, the United States lobbied the U.N. atomic watchdog agency Monday to send Iran before the U.N. Security Council for refusing to freeze work that can produce nuclear weapons.

A European diplomat said Washington had revised a resolution originally drafted by France, Germany and Britain, adding an Oct. 31 deadline and toughening language meant to force Iran to dispel all suspicions it is trying to make nuclear arms in violation of treaty commitments.

The draft, summarized by the diplomat for The Associated Press, demands "complete, immediate and unrestricted access" to all sites and information requested by the International Atomic Energy Agency in its probe into Iran's nearly 2-decade-long clandestine nuclear program.

The secret work was discovered only two years ago, bringing intensifying international pressure on Iran's government to end nuclear programs that have uses in both electricity generation and the production of atomic weapons, such as uranium enrichment.

Long ago I wrote that the headscarf ban was wrongheaded, as it was a cosmetic thing and not a confrontation of the forces that wish to remake French society. It looks as if I was wrong, and that the ban itself is becoming the spark of that very confrontation. From AFP, with thanks to Teri, Ali Dashti and Anthony:

PARIS, Sept 13 (AFP) - A Muslim policewoman in Paris has annoyed her superiors and stoked a national debate in France over Islamic headscarves after refusing to take off her own head covering on religious grounds, a police union said Monday.

The woman, a traffic officer identified only as Nora C., refused an order given August 25 to take off a small headscarf that she wears under her uniform cap, the union said, confirming a report in a news magazine, L'Express.

She reiterated her stance the next day when she met another superior officer, whose hand she declined to shake, the union, Synergie, said.

The union added that the woman, who is divorced with two children, was currently off work on medical leave.

The incident focused attention back on a controversial new law in France banning Islamic headscarves and other religious insignia in state schools in a bid to uphold the country's strict secularity.

Jihad on the rise in Holland. From Expatica, :

AMSTERDAM -- The Netherlands is facing a far larger and more organised threat from Islamic terrorists than previously thought, it was reported Tuesday. One source said the Dutch authorities are conducting at least 15 investigations into planned attacks. A day after news broke on Monday that Dutch police investigating Islamic terrorism had arrested four people in July, newspaper Algemeen Dagblad (AD) said more terrorist suspects had been arrested than previously revealed.

One of the investigations is focusing on suspects who were allegedly planning a bomb attack on a hotel and another involved a planned attack against prominent Dutch politicians.

The Netherlands gave "political, but not military" support to the US-led war against Iraq last year and there are currently some 1,300 Dutch peacekeeping troops in Iraq. It is also involved in peacekeeping duties in Afghanistan and is regarded as a firm ally of the US.

Some 29 "serious" tips over possible terrorist operations in the Netherlands have been received so far this year by the anonymous tip line, Meld Misdaad Anoniem, which was set up by the Justice and Interior ministries. The Dutch intelligence service AIVD is investigating most of the tips.

A story about discrimination against Muslims which takes no notice of the many documented acts of violence by Muslims against others, or of the possibility that Muslim groups' stated intention to replace the existing order with Sharia states may give rise to "distrustful attitudes toward Muslims." From AP, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

VIENNA (Austria) - Hostility towards Muslims is 'widespread' across much of the European Union (EU), where Islamic followers are subject to verbal and physical attacks as well as discrimination in jobs and housing, a human rights group said yesterday.

Distrustful attitudes towards Muslims have grown since the Sept 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and the Madrid train bombings on March 11, said the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF).

'As the fight against terrorism has been stepped up, and public debate has increasingly focused attention on Islamic extremism, Muslim minorities have come under growing pressure in these countries and elsewhere,' said IHF executive director Aaron Rhodes.

The hostility goes beyond anti-Muslim sentiment, the Vienna-based group said in a new report, noting a rise in attacks on Muslims 'ranging from slurs and insults in the street to vandalism and serious physical violence'.

The 37-page report focused on complaints in Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany and Italy.

In Britain and Germany, Muslims were targeted by police searches and arrests 'in ways that have infringed on the rights of Muslims who have nothing to do with terrorism', it said.

In Italy and Denmark, politicians branded Muslims as a security threat, and Muslims in Belgium and France were caught up in government efforts to ban girls from wearing traditional headscarves.

'In all these cases, moderate and peaceful Muslims have been victimised because of the views and acts of a minority of extremist Muslims who advocate violence and intolerance,' Mr Rhodes said.

Well, that is unfortunate. Maybe the moderates could make everyone's task easier by distinguishing themselves somehow. Maybe they could, say, help identify the radicals? Or at least expel them from their communities? Then they might find they would get "victimized" a lot less often.

The story, like all such stories, doesn't tell us that these ten suspects of "North African origin" are warriors of the global Islamic jihad. Nonetheless, the more they do tell us, the more it becomes clear.

Still, they may walk, as the anti-terror laws needed to convict them were only passed after they did their evil deeds. From Expatica, :

The preliminary hearings are expected to last until 23 September, but it is still unclear whether the ten men, all of North African origin, can be actually be specifically charged with terrorist offences.

The prosecution alleges the suspects committed crimes including holding secret meetings and making false documents, in both cases with the aim of aiding terrorist groups.

But the prosecution's case may be thrown out as the alleged offences were committed before 19 December 2003 when Belgium passed legislation that specifically outlawed terrorism and support of terror groups.

The anti-terror law is not retroactive so it is not clear whether it can be applied to the ten suspects.

One of the most well known suspects is Tarek Maaroufi, who has already been convicted for assisting the assassins of former Afghani Northern Alliance leader Commandant Massoud.

Maaroufi is also believed to have had had close links with Mohammed Saber from Iraq, operating in Schaerbeek, and Moroccan Driss Elatellah, allegedly the lynchpin of an Antwerp-based logistical network for international terrorism.

The activities under scrutiny in the latetst hearings involve trafficking in false documents, recruitment and holding conspiratorial meetings....

The prosecution alleges that the Belgian suspects had links to terrorist leaders in Italy and Spain, including Essid Sami ben Khemais, who was accused of running an Al Quaeda cell in Milan.

The group all stand accused of allowing their telephones to be used to help coordinate terrorist atrocities such as the Casablanca bombing on 16 May 2003 which killed 45 people and the Madrid train bombing that killed over 200 people.

This is an elementary point that is often obscured by contentious debates over whether it was justified to go into Iraq or not. Leaving that discussion aside for the moment, the fact is that Iraq is now an arena of the global jihad (although it is still not the only one, which is an indication that those who think everything will die down if we leave Iraq are wrong again), and to leave it on undr jihadist pressure will only embolden the mujahedin. From AFP, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

WARSAW, Sept 13 (AFP) - If Poland decides to withdraw its troops from Iraq it will appear to be surrendering to terrorists, Poland's largest opposition party, which tops the country's popularity polls, said on Monday.

"To decide to stop participating in a war because there are casualties means, de facto, surrendering," Donald Tusk, head of the liberal Civic Platform party, told public radio a day after three Polish soldiers were killed in an attack south of Baghdad.

His comments came on the same day Iraq's interim President Ghazi Al-Yawar arrived in Warsaw for an official visit.

"The idea is to withdraw the Polish troops from Iraq in agreement with other allies so as not to give the impression that the Poles are surrendering to terrorism as the Spaniards did" last spring, said Tusk, who is considered a potential presidential candidate for the elections set for the end of 2005.

"On the other hand, we must pressure our allies, especially the Americans, so that they present a precise plan for ending the intervention in Iraq, and to learn what in the end was the object of this intervention," he added.

A few days ago I posted a notice from the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) announcing a Muslims-only day at Six Flags, and promised a follow-up after I found out more. But before I had a chance to do so, WND did; and just as I suspected, it's not unusual for the park to have days devoted to individual groups, but it is unusual for them to bar all those who are not members of the group. But that is what they will do on the 17th: only Muslims will be allowed into Six Flags. (Thanks to Sparta for the link.)

The ICNA website boasts, "First Time Ever - All Day - Entire Park Exclusively for Muslims!"

The event is designed to "provide entertainment for the entire family!" says the site. Imam Zaid Shakir will lead the Friday afternoon prayers at 2 p.m., the comedy routine "Allah Made Me Funny" will show twice, Comedian Azhar Usman will perform, and "Alhamdulillah, the entire park is reserved for Muslims only!"

The organization expects more than 10,000 Muslims.

Debbie Nauser, vice president of public relations for the Six Flags theme park, confirmed the park would be open only for "Muslims and their friends."

Six Flags has previously hosted other event days, including an annual Passover theme in which the park is predominantly filled with Orthodox Jews, but the venue is still open to outsiders and seasonal ticket holders, and organizers of previous events have never claimed exclusivity of the park....

Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, said "it is scandalous that Six Flags - a publicly held corporation whose stock trades on the NYSE - allows such a restriction for access to its property. It's fine for a Muslim organization to sponsor a day at the theme park, it's quite another to proclaim it for Muslims only, as ICNA does. "

The ICNA has drawn much controversy to itself in recent years. WorldNetDaily attended a conference in Orlando, Fla., sponsored in part by the ICNA, which featured a main speaker who voiced empathy and support for suicide bombers, denied Muslims were involved in 9-11, characterized the war on terror as a conspiratorial Zionist plot designed to destroy Islam and Muslims, and blamed attacks on affirmative action on "the rise of the Jewish cracker."

Judicial Watch says the ICNA has ties to Hamas, and terrorism expert Steve Emerson stated: "The ICNA's hatred of the Jews is so fierce that it taunted them with a repetition of what Hitler did to them."

In his book, "American Jihad," Emerson writes: "The ICNA openly supports militant Islamic fundamentalist organizations, praises terror attacks, issues incendiary attacks on Western values and policies, and supports the imposition of Sharia [Islamic code of law]."

This is the sort of measure that the countries west of Poland have been so far unwilling to take. But realistically, if one cannot by any means screen out the jihadists from the moderate Muslims, and the moderates are not helping identify the jihadists either, is what the Poles have done really so unreasonable? From Itar-Tass, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

MINSK, September 13 (Itar-Tass) - According to various data, between 100 and 150 Russian citizens from Chechnya congregated in the Belarussian city of Brest. Most of them are expected to try again on Monday to cross the Belarussian-Polish border.

On Sunday, over 90 Chechens passed the Brest border passage point, but 75 of them were forced to return to Belarus several hours later. On Saturday, the Polish side admitted only 24 Russian citizens of the Chechen nationality out of 125. No explanations have been received from the Polish side so far why the Polish authorities refused to admit Russian citizens. According to Belarussian borderguards, Russian Chechens have in order all documents, necessary for a foreign trip.

A few years ago an Al-Qaeda op said: "The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death." All the celebratory videotapes bear him out. From AP:

CAIRO, Egypt - A videotape purporting to show the beheading of a Turkish truck driver kidnapped last month in Iraq surfaced Monday on the Web site of an al-Qaida-linked militant group.

On the video, the victim identifies himself as Durmus Kumdereli. Speaking in Turkish, he says he was transporting goods to an American military base in Mosul. Arabic subtitles accompanied his words.

Afterward, a black screen reading ''the execution'' appears, followed by warnings from masked, armed militants to foreign drivers, and grisly footage of the beheading.

The authenticity of the video, which was digitally dated Aug. 17, could not be verified. It was posted on the Web site known for carrying statements from Tawhid and Jihad, a group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that has beheaded other foreign hostages.

They say they didn't carry out the Beslan atrocities, but they did down the airliners, and they are promising more. From Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, with thanks to Nicolei:

The murky group calling itself the Islambouli Brigades issued a call on 9 September to "all our cells in every region of Russia to launch a destructive war." The text of the message as reproduced in English on the globalterroralert.com website reads:

"The war is coming, if Allah wills it...we in the Islambouli Brigades call on all our cells in every region of Russia to launch a destructive war in the face of the infidels in Russia, and to target every place the same way that the evil Putin has declared that he has targeted every Muslim in the world and the Islamic land of Chechnya. O' Putin, everyone who lives in Russia will hear the sound of our response, and your nation will taste the hellfire as long as you thirst for the blood of Muslims and the Muslims in Chechnya...and until you withdraw from your cemetery that lies in the Islamic land of Chechnya.

"We in the Islambouli Brigades have put our words into action previously on the ground in Moscow and in the sky over Russia, and we declare that this infidel country will be a target for us in the coming endless wave of operations, if Allah wills it."

The group has denied responsibility for the recent attack on the school in Beslan, North Ossetia, but, in statements on the Internet, it has reiterated that it was responsible for the attacks that downed two Russian airliners on 24 August and the 31 August suicide bombing outside a subway station in Moscow that killed nine people.

What if it had been a cross or a Star of David that she wanted to wear? From AP, with thanks to Bill Webb, Nicolei, Ali Dashti, and all others who alerted me to this:

TAMPA - (AP) -- The University of South Florida will ask the NCAA to grant an exemption to its uniform policy by allowing a Muslim basketball player to wear clothing that adheres to her religion.

Andrea Armstrong, a 22-year-old Muslim convert, said she left the team and lost her athletic scholarship last week after her head coach told her she could not wear religiously mandated clothing during practices or games. She wanted to wear long pants, a top with long sleeves and a head scarf.

USF officials said Armstrong voluntarily left the team and was under no pressure to do so.

In a meeting Friday among Armstrong, university officials and a representative of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, officials agreed that the team would accommodate her Islamic attire and reinstate her scholarship. The university also agreed to work with the National Collegiate Athletic Association on the scarf issue.

''An athlete should not be asked to choose between engaging in healthy sporting activities and her deeply held religious beliefs,'' said Ahmed Bedier, who took part in the meeting as Florida spokesman for the American-Islamic council.

Headline and link courtesy Ali Dashti. From Reuters:

BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) -- La Louviere midfielder Rachid Belabed has been fired by his Belgian first division club after he was arrested on assault charges at the weekend.

He was put under arrest by an examining magistrate on Monday for punching and kicking a terrorism expert outside the Brussels studios of RTL-TVi where the victim had taken part in a television talk show.

"Unable to tolerate behaviour that goes against democratic values, La Louviere club has decided to fire Mr R. Belabed," read a club statement that described his acts as "unacceptable and unjustified."

Belabed, a 24-year-old Belgian of Moroccan descent, was waiting outside the studios when Claude Moniquet, a former journalist, walked out with a friend after the show, Controverse, which had hosted a discussion on terrorism.

"A man approached me. He was tense, nervous and said he wanted to talk to me," Moniquet, a writer on terrorism, told local tabloid La Derniere Heure.

"He said 'I don't like you. You are an enemy of Islam, a racist'."

Belabed hit him in the head and kicked him when he fell to the ground, Moniquet said, adding that he later had to be treated at a clinic for his injuries.

The latest from Nonie Darwish:

In the aftermath of the Beslan school massacre, some Arab media outlets and politicians have taken a new, stronger stand against terrorism. It was welcome news to many that several articles in the Arab press denounced the attack and maybe that signaled a new turning point in the Arab World. The Arab street did not express the usual celebrations where adult men and women cheer on the terror waged on the children of infidels. This incident brought out some Arab critics even against the way Islam is being taught. However, there are reasons other than just sympathy for the Russian victims that are bringing out critics of Arab media: I wonder if this vicious attack had been on Boston instead of Beslan, Arab media would have treated it in the same manner.

The way Arabs look at Russia and the former Soviet Union is different from how they regard Western Democracies, especially the United States. Arabs do not want to wake up the Russian bear because they know that Russia will deal severely with its enemies and without the baggage of political correctness we are all familiar with in the US. They know that America the Superpower, is bound by its morality, public opinion and often exercises self-restraint even in its War on Terror. Muslim terrorists in Iraq blow up churches, blow up fellow Iraqi citizens and murder Americans then hide in their mosques. They then dare the American soldiers to touch their holy shrines or even attempt to bring out the murderers from inside. The terrorists who burn churches then hide in mosques know exactly what they are doing and that they can get away with it if the enemy is America.

Russia, on the other hand, is a different world force, and in many ways can react with brutality equal to that of the Arab world. Russians will not introspectively ask, “Why do they hate us?” They will react severely against terrorism on their children. Having found Arabs among the terrorists in Beslan is proof of Arab connections. Most Arab countries openly support Muslim separatist movements around the world, such as in the Philippines, and worldwide. Russia might not strive to retaliate with limited surgical attacks on terrorists, but will likely do the old-fashioned bombing of whole blocks in cities, subjecting its enemies to more casualties and collateral damage. I do not believe that the political opposition in Russia will demand a more “sensitive” war on terror; that is a fact Arabs understand. The Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan was brutal and the Muslim world can still remember that.

The Arab world is now in a panic since by giving financial and moral support to all the Muslim separatist movements in the past they have created a monster. These Muslim minorities have been aided and abetted by Arabs for decades to turn against their non-Muslim nations from whom they demand a separate state. It is time for Arabs to let go and leave them to live in peace in their own communities. They cannot hide the fact that they caused much bloodshed and turmoil in all these minority Muslim regions and should take responsibility for it. Now they are trying to save face by denouncing terror in these regional conflicts that they have helped create.

I hope this is a wake up call to the West of what can happen when Muslims congregate to live in a separate section in a state or county and refuse to mix with the rest of the population. As soon as they take control of an area and become the majority in a city they demand a separatist movement. The Arab influence and support on these communities is not benign and harmless; its basic goal is the fueling of resentments and armed resistance from the larger community. The wealthy Saudi Arabs are respected in minority non-Arab Muslim communities first and foremost because they are the keepers of the holy Muslim grounds of Mecca and Medina and because they speak Arabic, the language of the Quran. That makes them more credible when interpreting it. Many Arab minorities in other countries believe that whatever comes from the Saudis are direct orders from in the words of the Prophet Mohammed himself. The Saudis also lure these communities with the petro-dollars desperately needed in these poorer communities. That is how all these hot spots of Muslim turmoil around the world began and are now being manipulated by Arabs. The Chechnyans are simply Russians who practice Islam now want to split and form an Islamic state of their own. Think of all the trouble it could bring to Europe and Russia. Such Muslim state, with its loyalty to Radical Muslim countries, would end up being yet another playground of terror controlled from Mecca in the heart of Europe.

Arab countries are now seeing shrinking support for Arab causes from world public opinion. They have turned many of their traditional friends into critics and even their money might not be able to buy them favoritism any more. With terrorism against France, Spain and Italy and other nations the Saudis should expect a united world public opinion against their activities, hopefully, coming through the UN, soon.

After all, the dhimmis need to learn about their masters. But of course, the only group that cares is "far-right." From DR Nyheder:

The Education Ministry has decided to make the Koran required reading in Danish upper-secondary schools.

As of 2005, all upper-secondary school pupils will be required to learn about Islam in their religious studies lessons.

The decision has angered the far-right and anti-immigration Danish People's Party, which said that the Education Ministry was turning Denmark into a multi-ethnic society by focussing unduly on Islam.

Clarification: I am not against studying Islam and reading the Qur'an. I've spent years doing these things myself. But I doubt that Denmark's Islamic curriculum will include a critical perspective.

Why would anyone want military-issue copy paper? Maybe they need to forge some memos. Maybe they thought something else was in the truck. Maybe they want the truck itself, which, if it has US Army markings, could be extremely useful for obvious reasons. From the Tri-Valley Herald, :

The state's new terror warning center issued an alert Thursday for a truck and shipping container full of U.S. Army supplies, reportedly stolen off the streets of Berkeley a week ago. Police and the FBI worried at first about the military cargo.

The warning bulletin listed the intended destination as Herlong, home to Sierra Army Depot, a logistics base in northeast California that also has stored and disposed of conventional munitions and missile fuel.

But Berkeley police think the truck thief escaped with ho-hum goods: some nylon rope, duct tape and reams of copy paper, apparently shipped from a U.S. military base in Germany through Rotterdam to Houston and brought by rail to Oakland.

The FBI confirmed the missing cargo as "general military supplies" and noted there were no weapons or explosives.

As to why anyone would want military-issue copy paper, said Berkeley police officer Shira Warren, "We have no speculatory guesses."

From Zenit News Agency, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, SEPT. 9, 2004 (Zenit.org).- For months Malaysians have been talking about a case concerning the denial of religious freedom.

Shamala Sathyyaseelan, a non-Muslim mother of two, asked Malaysia's highest court why her children were forcibly converted to Islam without her consent and knowledge.

The Supreme Court sidestepped the case by declaring it was incompetent and referred it to the Shariah Court. The woman's lawyers objected arguing that the Shariah, or Islamic law, tribunal does not have jurisdiction over non-Muslims. In the gap between two competing legal systems Sathyyaseelan is alone, her case in limbo.

In this Southeast Asian country of 23.5 million, two legal systems coexist: one based on the country's federal constitution and civil courts; the other framed by Shariah law and applied in principle only to Muslims.

In Sathyyaseelan's case, with the Supreme Court washing its hands, the Shariah Court is likely to uphold the father's claim and sanction the children's conversion to Islam.

Sathyyaseelan's case has been taken up by Malaysia's Catholic bishops, according to the AsiaNews agency. In a recently released paper, the bishops stress how in mixed marriages the weaker -- that is, non-Muslim -- party faces most of the problems.

Although formally protected under the law, non-Muslims must accept the decisions of Islamic courts which inevitably privilege Muslim applicants.

Maintaining the "spirit of Jihad and defense." Wait a minute: doesn't CAIR et al say that jihad is just for defense? And it's funny how they need all this equipment for an inner spiritual struggle aimed at bettering their souls.

From AFP, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) kicked off major exercises Sunday aimed at testing out new equipment and maintaining its "spirit of Jihad and defence", state television reported. The head of the IRGC, General Yahya Rahim Safavi, said the "Great Manoeuvre of Ashura" would involve 12 divisions from what he described as the "biggest deterrent power in the region".

He said the exercises across northwestern Iran were aimed at "testing and appraising new and advanced equipment and maintaining the spirit of jihad and defence among our forces" as well as testing "modern tactics".

"No place in Islamic Iran is outside the defence, security and supervisory domain of the Revolutionary Guards' defensive operations," the general was quoted as saying.

He said the manoeuvres would also try out "surface to surface missiles with different ranges, air defence systems with various surface to air missiles, fighter-bombers", and "for the first time in Iran, the transfer of T-72 tanks on gigantic planes".

To promote Hamas is to promote suicide bombing, and to promote the Palestinian cause has become just another way to promote the global jihad, for jihadist groups have taken over the Palestinian "resistance," and even the Palestinian Authority has Sharia as part of its basic law. So for the Swedes to fund Palestinian terror is to finance the wanton murder of civilians and the forces who wish to oppress Jews and Christians as dhimmis. From Lisa Abramowicz and David Frankfurter at LiveJournal, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

At a time when the world mourns the terrorist massacre in the Russian town of Beslan, the Swedish state agency for foreign aid, SIDA, is subsidizing a conference aimed at finding ways to fund Palestinian terrorism.

The “Palestinian Solidarity Conference”, scheduled to be held in the Gothenburg municipality Culture House starting September 7, culminates in a celebratory party on the night of September 11 – while the rest of the world finds other more sober ways of marking the anniversary of this turning point in the impact of terrorism.

One of the main conference agenda items is action to remove the PFLP, Hamas and other terrorist organisations from the EU’s terror list, so that these organizations can resume collecting money in Sweden and other European countries. Another agenda item is promoting a total boycott of Israel and other sanctions against the Jewish state. A third is developing strategies to explain the need for “armed resistance” (i.e. terrorism) in the struggle.

The conference is being organized by the Revolutionary Communist Youth, and the Proletären FF (Football Club), together with the Palestinian Progressive Youth Union (PPYU). The first two are associated with the most extremist and Stalinist of communist parties in Sweden. The PPY